The Nameless City - HP Lovecraft

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Nameless City by H. P. Lovecraft. When I drew
nigh the Nameless City, I knew it was accursed. I
was traveling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon,
and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands,
as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill
made grave. Fear spoke from the age worn stones of

(00:22):
this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great grandfather of
the eldest pyramid, and a viewless aura, repelled me and
bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no
man should see that no man else had dared to see.
Remote in the desert of Araby lies the Nameless City,

(00:42):
crumbling and inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the
sounds of uncounted ages. It must have been thus before
the first stones of Memphis were laid, and while the
bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked. There is no legend
so old as to give it a name, or to
recall the it was ever alive. But it is told
of in whispers around camp fires, and muttered about by

(01:06):
grand dames in the tents of shakes. So that all
the tribes shun it, without wholly knowing why. It was
of this place that Abdul Alhazred, the mad poet dreamed
of the night before he sang his unexplained couplet that
is not dead, which can eternal lie, and with strange
AONs death may die. I should have known that the

(01:27):
Arabs had good reason for shunning the nameless city. The
city told of in strange tales, but seen by no
living man. Yet I defied them and went into the
untrodden waist with my camel. I alone have seen it.
And that is why no other face bears such hideous
lines of fear as mine, why no other man shivers

(01:47):
so horribly when the night wind rattles the windows. When
I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep,
it looked at me, chilly from the rays of the
cold moon amidst the desert's heat. And as I I
returned its look, I forgot my triumph at finding it,
and stopped still with my camel to wait for the dawn.
For hours, I waited till the east grew gray, and

(02:09):
the stars faded, and the gray turned to roseate light
edged with gold. I heard a moaning and saw a
storm of sand stirring among the antique stones, though the
sky was clear and the vast reaches of desert still.
Then suddenly, above the desert's far rim came the blazing
edge of the sun, seen through the tiny sandstorm, which

(02:30):
was passing away. And in my fevered state, I fancied
that from some remote depth there came a crash of
musical metal to hail the fiery disk as Memnon hails
it from the banks of the nile. My ears rang,
and my imagination seethed as I led my camel slowly
across the sand to that unvocal place, that place which

(02:52):
I alone of living men, had seen. In and out
amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and places, I wandered,
finding never a carving or inscription to tell of these men,
if men they were, who built the city and dwelt
thereins so long ago. The antiquity of the spot was unwholesome,
and I longed to encounter some sign or device to

(03:13):
prove that the city was indeed fashioned by mankind. There
were certain proportions and dimensions in the ruins which I
did not like. I had with me many tools, and
dug much within the walls of the obliterated edifices, but
progress was slow and nothing significant was revealed. When night
and the moon returned, I felt a chill wind, which

(03:34):
brought new fear, so that I did not dare to
remain in the city. And as I went outside the
antique walls to sleep, a small, sighing sand storm gathered
behind me, blowing over the gray stones. So the moon
was bright and most of the desert still. I awakened
just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my

(03:55):
ears ringing as from some metallic peal. I saw the
sun peering redly through the last gusts of a little
sand storm that hovered over the nameless city and marked
the quietness of the rest of the landscape. Once more,
I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the
sand like an ogre under a coverlet, and again dug

(04:16):
vainly for relics of the forgotten race. At noon, I rested,
and in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the
walls and by gone streets and the outlines of the
nearly vanished buildings. I saw that the city had been mighty, indeed,
and wondered at the sources of its greatness. To myself,
I pictured all the splendors of an age so distant

(04:37):
that Coldea could not recall it, and thought of Sannath,
the doomed that stood in the land of Manah when
mankind was young, and of ib that was carven of
gray stone before mankind existed. All at once I came
upon a place where the bedrock rose stark through the
sand and formed a low cliff. And here I saw
with joy what seemed to promise further traces of the

(04:58):
Antediluvian pa people. Hewn rudely on the face of the
cliff were the unmistakable facades of several small squat rock
houses or temples, whose interiors might preserve many secrets of
ages too remote for calculation, though sandstorms had long effaced
any carvings which may have been outside. Very low and

(05:19):
sand choked were all the dark apertures near me. But
I cleared one with my spade and crawled through it,
carrying a torch to reveal whatever mysteries it might hold.
When I was inside, I saw that the cavern was
indeed a temple, and beheld plain signs of the race
that had lived and worshiped before the desert was a desert.
Primitive altars, pillars, and niches, all curiously low, were not absent,

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and though I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were
many singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means.
The lowness of the chiseled chamber was very strange, for
I could hardly kneel upright, but the area was so
great that my torch showed only part of it at
a time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners,
for certain altars and stones suggested forgotten rights of terrible,

(06:05):
revolting and inexplicable nature, and made me wonder what manner
of men could have made and frequented such a temple.
When I had seen all that the place contained, I
crawled out again avi to find what the temples might yield.
Night had now approached. Yet the tangible things I had
seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so that I did

(06:26):
not flee from the long moon cast shadows that had
daunted me when first I saw the nameless city. In
the twilight, I cleared another aperture and with a new torch,
crawled into it, finding more vague stones and symbols, though
nothing more definite than the other temple had contained. The
room was just as low, but much less broad, ending

(06:47):
in a very narrow passage crowded with obscure and cryptical shrines.
About these shrines, I was prying when the noise of
a wind and my camel outside broke through the stillness
and drew me forth the see what could have frightened
the beast. The moon was gleaming vividly over the primitive ruins,
lighting a dense cloud of sand that seemed blown by

(07:09):
a strong but decreasing wind from some point along the
cliff ahead of me. I knew it was this chilly,
sandy wind which had disturbed the camel, and was about
to lead him to a place of better shelter, when
I chanced to glance up and saw that there was
no wind atop the cliff. This astonished me and made
me fearful again. But I immediately recalled the sudden local

(07:31):
winds that I had seen and heard before at sunrise
and sunset, and judged it was a normal thing. I
decided it came from some rock fissure leading to a cave,
and watched the troubled sand to trace its source. Soon
perceiving that it came from the black orifice of a
temple a long distance south of me, almost out of
sight against the choking sand cloud, I plodded toward this temple, which,

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as I neared it loomed larger than the rest, and
showed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand. I
would have entered, had not the terrific force of the
icy wind almost quenched my torch. It poured madly out
of the dark door, sighing uncannily as it ruffled the
sand and spread among the weird ruins. Soon it grew fainter,

(08:15):
and the sand grew more and more still, till finally
all was at rest again. But a presence seemed stalking
among the spectral stones of the city, and when I
glanced at the moon, it seemed to quiver, as though
mirrored in unquiet waters. I was more afraid than I
could explain, but not enough to dull my thirst for wonder.
So as soon as the wind was quite gone, I

(08:38):
crossed into the dark chamber from which it had come
this temple. As I had fancied from the outside, was
larger than either of those I had visited before, and
was presumably a natural cavern, since it bore winds from
some region beyond. Here. I could stand quite upright, but
saw that the stones and altars were as low as

(08:58):
those in the other temples. On the walls and roof
I beheld for the first time some traces of the
pictorial art of the ancient race, curious curling streaks of
paint that had almost faded or crumbled away, And on
two of the altars I saw, with rising excitement a
maze of well fashioned curvilinear carvings. As I held my

(09:20):
torch aloft, it seemed to me that the shape of
the roof was too regular to be natural, and I
wondered what the prehistoric cutters of stone had first worked upon.
Their engineering skill must have been vast. Then a brighter
flare of the fantastic flame showed that form which I
had been seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses. Whence

(09:40):
the sudden wind had blown, and I grew faint when
I saw that it was a small and plainly artificial
door chiseled in the solid rock. I thrust my torch
within beholding a black tunnel with the roof arching low
over a rough flight of very small, numerous and steeply
descending steps. I shall always see those steps in my dreams,

(10:02):
for I came to learn what they meant. At the time,
I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds.
In a precipitous descent. My mind was whirling with mad thoughts,
and the words and warning of Arab prophets seemed to
float across the desert, from the land that men know
to the nameless city that men dare not know. Yet.

(10:24):
I hesitated only for a moment before advancing through the
portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage
feet first, as though on a ladder. It is only
in the terrible phanfasms of drugs or delirium that any
other man can have such a descent as mine. The
narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous, haunted well,

(10:47):
and the torch I held above my head could not
light the unknown depths toward which I was crawling. I
lost track of the hours and forgot to consult my watch.
Though I was frightened when I thought of the distance
I must be traversing. There were changes of direction and
of steepness, and once I came to a long, low
level passage where I had to wriggle my feet first

(11:10):
along the rocky floor, holding torch at arm's lengths beyond
my head. The place was not high enough for kneeling.
After that were more of the steep steps, and I
was still scrambling down interminably. When my failing torch died out.
I do not think I noticed it at the time,
for when I did notice it, I was still holding

(11:30):
it above me as if it were a blaze. I
was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the strange and
the unknown, which had made me a wanderer upon earth
and a haunter of far ancient and forbidden places. In
the darkness, there flashed before my mind fragments of my
cherished treasury of demonic law, sentences from alhazread, the mad

(11:54):
Arab paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius and infamous lines,
and the delirious image demurn of Gautier de Metz. I
repeated queer extracts and muttered of a frazyab and the
demons that floated with him down the Oxus, later chanting
over and over again a phrase from one of Lord

(12:14):
Duncani's tales, the unreverberate blackness of the Abyss. Once, when
the descent grew amazingly steep, I recited something in sing
song from Thomas Moore, until I feared to recite more.
A reservoir of darkness, black as which as caldrons are
when filled with moon drugs in the eclipse, distilled. Leaning

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to look if foot might pass down through that chasm,
I saw beneath, as far as vision could explore, the
jetty side, smooth as glass, looking as if just varnished
her with that dark pitch. The seat of death throws
out upon its slimy shore. Time had quite ceased to
exist when my feet again fell to a level floor,

(12:58):
and I found myself in a place slightly higher than
the rooms in the two smaller temples, now so incalculably
far above my head. I could not quite stand, but
could kneel upright, and in the dark, I shuffled and
crept hither and thither at random. I soon knew that
I was in a narrow passage whose walls were lined
with cases of wood having glass fronts, as in that

(13:22):
paleozoic and abysmal place, I felt of such things as
polished wood and glass. I shuddered at the possible implications.
The cases were apparently ranged along each side of the
passage at regular intervals, and were oblong and horizontal, hideously
like coffins in shape and size. When I tried to
move two or three for further examination, I found that

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they were firmly fastened. I saw that the passage was
a long one, so floundered ahead rapidly, in a creeping
run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watched
me in the blackness, crossing from side to side occasionally
to feel of myces and be sure the walls and
rows of cases still stretched on. Man is so used

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to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and
pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass in its
low studded monotony as though I saw it, And then,
in a moment of indescribable emotion, I did see it.
Just when my fancy merged into real sight. I cannot tell,
but there came a gradual glow ahead, and all at

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once I knew that I saw the dim outlines of
a corridor, and the cases revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence.
For a little while, all was exactly as I had
imagined it, since the glow was very faint. But as
I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the stronger light, I
realized that my fancy had been but feeble. This hall

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was no relic of crudity, like the temples in the
city above, but a monument of the most magnificent and
exotic art. Rich, vivid and daringly fantastic stick designs and
pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines
and colors were beyond description. The cases were of a
strange golden wood, with fronts of exquisite glass, and containing

(15:14):
the mummified forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most
chaotic dreams of man. To convey any idea of these
monstrosities is impossible. They were of the reptile kind, with
body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but
more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the

(15:34):
paleontologist ever heard. In size, they approximated a small man,
and their fore legs bore delicate and evident feet, curiously
like human hands and fingers. But strangest of all were
their heads, which presented a contour violating all known biological
principles to nothing can such things be well compared? In

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one flash, I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat,
the bullfrog, the mythic sata, and the human being. Not
Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead.
Yet the horns, and the noselessness, and the alligatorlike jaw
placed things outside all established categories. I debated for a
time on the reality of the mummies, half suspecting they

(16:19):
were artificial idols, but soon decided they were indeed some
paleogean species which had lived when the nameless city was alive.
To crown their grotesqueness, most of them were gorgeously enrobed
in the costliest of fabrics and lavishly laden with ornaments
of gold, jewels and unknown shining metals. The importance of

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these crawling creatures must have been vast, for they held
first place among the wild designs on the frescoed walls
and ceiling with matchless skill. Had the artists drawn them
in a world of their own, wherein they had cities
and gardens fashioned to suit their dimensions. I could not
help but think that their picks should history was allegorical,
perhaps showing the progress of the race that worshiped them

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these creatures, I said to myself, where to men of
the Nameless city, what the she wolf was to roam
or some totem beast is to a tribe of Indians.
Holding this view, I could trace roughly a wonderful epoch
of the Nameless City, the tale of a mighty sea
coast metropolis that ruled the world before Africa rose out

(17:26):
of the waves, and of its struggles as the sea
shrank away and the desert crept into the fertile valley
that held it. I saw its wars and triumphs, its
troubles and defeats, and afterwards its terrible fight against the desert,
when thousands of its people, here represented in allegory by
the grotesque reptiles, were driven to chisel their way down

(17:48):
through the rocks in some marvelous manner to another world
whereof their prophets had told them. It was all vividly
weird and realistic, and its connection with the awesome descent
I had made was unmistakable. I even recognized the passages.
As I crept along the corridor towards the brighter light.
I saw later stages of the painted epoch, the leave

(18:11):
taking of the race that had dwelt in the Nameless
City and the valley around for ten million years, the
race whose souls shrank from quitting scenes their bodies had
known so long where they had settled as nomads in
the earth's youth, hewing in the Virgin Rock, those primal
shrines at which they had never ceased to worship. Now

(18:32):
that the light was better, I studied the pictures more closely, and,
remembering that the strange reptiles must represent the unknown men,
pondered upon the customs of the Nameless City. Many things
were peculiar and inexplicable. The civilization, which included a written alphabet,
had seemingly risen to a higher order than those immeasurably

(18:53):
later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldea. Yet there were curious omissions.
I could, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths
or funeral customs, save such as were related to wars,
violence and plagues, and I wondered at the reticence shown
concerning natural death. It was as though an ideal of

(19:15):
immortality had been fostered as a cheering allusion. Still nearer
the end of the passage was painted scenes of the
utmost picturesqueness and extravagance contrasted views of the nameless city
in its desertion and grow in ruin, and of the
strange new realm of paradise to which the race had
hewed its way through the stone. In these views, the

(19:37):
city and the desert valley were shown always by moonlight,
golden nimbus hovering over the fallen walls, and half revealing
the splendid perfection of former times. Shown spectrally and elusively
by the artist, the paradise or scenes were almost too
extravagant to be believed, portraying a hidden wild of eternal day,

(19:59):
filled with gold, glorious cities, and ethereal hills and valleys.
At the very last I thought I saw signs of
an artistic anticlimax. The paintings were less skillful and much
more bizarre than even the wildest of the earlier scenes.
They seemed to record a slow decadence of the ancient stock,
coupled with a growing ferocity toward the outside world, from

(20:23):
which it was driven by the desert. The forms of
the people, always represented by the sacred reptiles, appeared to
be gradually wasting away, though their spirit, as shown hovering
above the ruins by moonlight, gained in proportion. Emaciated priests,
displayed as reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air

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and all who breathed it, and one terrible final scene
showed a primitive looking man, perhaps the pioneer of ancient Erem,
the city of Pillars, torn to pieces by members of
the elder race. I remembered how the Arabs fear the
names city, and was glad that beyond this place, the
gray walls and ceiling were bare. As I viewed the

(21:07):
pageant of mural history, I had approached very closely to
the end of the low sealed hall, and was aware
of a gait through which came all of the illuminating
phosphorescence creeping up to it. I cried aloud in transcendent
amazement at what lay beyond, For instead of other and
brighter chambers, there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance,

(21:32):
such one might fancy when gazing down from the peak
of Mount Everest upon a sea of sunlit mist. Behind
me was a passage so cramped that I could not
stand upright in it. Before me was an infinity of
subterranean effulgence. Reaching down from the passage into the abyss
was the head of a steep flight of steps, small

(21:54):
numerous steps like those of black passages I had traversed.
But after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything
swung back open. Against the left hand wall of the
passage was a massive door of brass, incredibly thick and
decorated with fantastic bas reliefs, which could have closed shut

(22:14):
the whole inner world of light away from the vaults
and passages of rock. I looked at the steps, and
for the nonce dared not try them. I touched the
open brass door and could not move it. Then I
sank prone to the stone floor. My mind aflame with
prodigious reflections which not even a deathlike exhaustion could vanish.

(22:36):
As I lay still with closed eyes, free to ponder,
many things I had lightly noted in the frescoes came
back to me with new and terrible significance. Scenes representing
the nameless city in its heyday, the vegetations of the
valley around it, and the distant lands with which its
merchants traded. The allegory of the crawling creatures puzzled me

(22:59):
by its universe verse or prominence, and I wondered that
it would be so closely followed in a pictured history
of such importance. In the frescoes, the nameless city had
been shown in proportions fitted to the reptiles. I wondered
what its real proportions and magnificence had been, and reflected
a moment on certain oddities I had noticed in the ruins.

(23:21):
I thought curiously of the lowness of the primal temples
and of the underground corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus
out of deference to the reptile deities their honored though
it perforce reduced the worshippers to crawling, perhaps the very
rites here involved crawling in imitation of the creatures. No
religious theory, however, could easily explain why the level passages

(23:45):
in that awesome descent should be as low as the temples,
or lower, since one could not even kneel in it.
As I thought of the crawling creatures, those hideous mummified
forms were so close to me, I felt a new
throb of fear. Men associations are curious, and I shrank
from the idea that, except for the poor primitive man

(24:05):
torn to pieces in the last painting, mine was the
only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of
the primordial life. But as always in my strange and
roving existence, wonder soon drove out fear for the luminous
abyss and what it might contain presented a problem worthy
of the greatest explorer. That a weird world of mystery

(24:27):
lay far down that flight of peculiarly small steps, I
could not doubt, and I hoped to find there those
human memorials which the painted corridor had failed to give.
The frescoes had pictured unbelievable cities and valleys in this
lower realm, and my fancy dwelt on the rich and
colossal ruins that awaited me. My fears indeed concerned the

(24:51):
past rather than the future, not even the physical horror
of my position in that cramped corridor of dead reptiles
and antediluvian fis frescoes miles below the world. I knew,
and faced by another world of eerie light and mist,
could match the lethal dread I felt at the abysmal
antiquity of the scene and its soul. An ancientness so

(25:14):
vast that measurement is feeble, seemed to leer down from
the primal stones and rock hewn temples of the nameless city,
while the very latest of the astounding maps in the
frescoes showed oceans and continents that man has forgotten, with
only here and there some vaguely familiar outlines of what

(25:34):
could have happened in the geological ages since the painting
ceased and the death hating race resentfully succumbed to decay.
No man might say life had once teemed in these
caverns and in the luminous realm beyond. Now I was
alone with vivid relics, and I trembled to think of
the countless ages through which these relics had kept a silent,

(25:57):
deserted vigil. Suddenly there came another burst of that acute
fear which had intermittently seized me ever since I first
saw the terrible valley and the nameless city under a
cold moon. And despite my exhaustion, I found myself starting
frantically to a sitting posture and gazing back along the
black corridor toward the tunnels that rose to the outer world.

(26:20):
My sensations were like those which had made me shun
the nameless city at night, and were as inexplicable as
they were poignant. In another moment, however, I received a
still greater shock in the form of a definite sound,
the first which had broken the utter silence of these
tomblike depths. It was a deep, low moaning, as of

(26:41):
a distant throng of condemned spirits, and came from the
direction in which I was staring. Its volume rapidly grew
till it soon reverberated frightfully through the low passage, and
at the same time I became conscious of an increasing
draft of cold air, likewise flowing from the tunnels and
the city above. The touch of this air seemed to

(27:03):
restore my balance, for I instantly recalled the sudden gusts
which had risen around the mouth of the Abyss each
sunset and sunrise, one of which had indeed revealed the
hidden tunnels to me. I looked at my watch and
saw that sunrise was near, so braced myself to resist
the gale that was sweeping down to its cavern home.
As it had swept forth at evening. My fear again

(27:26):
waned low, since the natural phenomena tends to dispel broodings
over the unknown, More and more madly poured the shrieking,
moaning night wind into the gulf of the inner Earth.
I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the floor
for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate
into the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected,

(27:49):
and as I grew aware of an actual slipping of
my form toward the abyss, I was beset by a
thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination the malignant sea.
The blast awakened incredible fancies. Once more, I compared myself
shudderingly to the only human image in that frightful corridor,
the man who was torn to pieces by the nameless race.

(28:12):
For in the fiendish clawing of the swirling currents, there
seemed to abide a vindictive rage, all the stronger because
it was largely impotent. I think I screamed frantically near
the last. I was almost mad, But if I did so,
my cries were lost in the hell born babel of
the howling wind races. I tried to crawl against the murderous,

(28:34):
invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own
as I was pushed slowly and inixorably toward the unknown world. Finally,
reason must have wholly snapped, for I fell to babbling
over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad arab
al hazard, who dreamed of the nameless city that is
not dead, which can eturn all lie and with strange eons,

(28:58):
even death may die only the grim, brooding desert. Gods
know what really took place, what indescribable struggles and scrambles
in the dark I endured, or what a badon guided
me back to life, where I must always remember and
shiver in the night wind till oblivion or worse claims me. Monstrous, unnatural,

(29:20):
colossal was the thing too far beyond all the ideas
of man to be believed except in the silent, damnable
small hours of the morning when one cannot sleep. I
have said that the fury of the rushing blast was infernal, cacodaemonaical,
and that its voices were hideous with the pent up
viciousness of desolate eternities. Presently, these voices, while still chaotic

(29:44):
before me, seemed from my beating brain to take articulate
form behind me, and down there, in the grave of
unnumbered eon, dead antiquities, leagues below the dawn lit world
of men, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of
strain tongued fiends. Turning, I saw outlined against the luminous

(30:04):
ether of the abyss, what could not be seen against
the dusk of the corridor, a nightmare horde of rushing devils, hate, distorted,
grotesquely panoplied, half transparent, devils of a race no man
white mistake, the crawling reptiles of the Nameless City. And
as the wind died away, I was plunged into the

(30:25):
ghaul pooled darkness of Earth's bowels. For behind the last
of the creatures, the great brazen door clanged shut with
a deafening peal of metallic music, whose reverberations swelled out
to the distant world to hail the rising sun, as
Memnon hails it from the banks of the nile end

(30:45):
of the Nameless City. By H. P. Lovecraft