Ci sono occasioni nelle quali il piccolo feticista, fanatico e collezionista che è in noi prende il sopravvento e ci guida alla caccia di preziosi (e costosi) cimeli. E' questo il caso per l'oggetto in questione, una lettera originale scritta da Howard Phillips Lovecraft e indirizzata a Clark Ashton Smith, altro grande autore weird.

Due facciate su un singolo foglio, completa di busta, la missiva in questione è una delle poche di proprietà privata in quanto molti documenti lovecraftiani sono custoditi da alcune biblioteche come la John Hay Library alla Brown University per studi e analisi. A rendere ancora più prezioso il documento è il nome dell'autore cui è indirizzata e i contenuti che spaziano dai soliti scherzosi riferimenti ai miti di Cthulhu a annotazioni sparse su altri scrittori e riviste fino a comprendere anche un riferimento anti semitico nei confronti di Hugo Gernsback.

Riproduciamo qui di seguito il testo integrale in inglese:

"Yoth-Tlaggon at the Crimson Spring
Hour of the Amorphous Reflection

April 4, 1932

Dear Klarkash-Ton:

No -- the snowy blizzard happily escaped us, although March was on the whole a very inclement month. Yesterday was almost summer-like, but I am too worn out with a siege of dentistry to appreciate anything in the way of climate. I don't know how many more appointments I'll have to endure -- but fear there will be enought to spoil all my usual travelling plans both chronologically and financially.

By this time I presume you have my letter expressing enthusiastic admiration for "The Double Shadow." Truly, it is a great piece of work -- & Wright's rejection of it fills me with disgust & discouragement. Obviously, his standards are getting worse & worse -- as witness the current issue, in which only two stories, your's and Howard's, are really worh reading. I hope Bates-Clayton will take the "Shadow" -- though I fear the prospects are not very promising. Long is getting worried about his two submitted Clayton tales -- one of which has been held 11 weeks & the other 7 weeks. He intends to make an inquiry, though I told him that the delay is a favourable sign. Hope your Mohaun Los will take with King Pharnabazus in its ammended form.

I didn't know your Immortals of Mercury was going to be a separate booklet. Congratulations! I surely hope to see a copy. Glad the Invisible City is due in the near future, & that Gernsback has some appreciation of what he is offering. It's odd, but in spite of that damn'd kike's financial remissness & sharp dealings, I really think he offers a better & more vital range of scientifiction than either of his two competitors. He is not quite so rigid, in his demand for the commonplace & the stereotyped. I'll await the Plutonian Drug with the keenest interest -- as will others on the circulation list. As soon as I get the nerve to type the Witch House you shall see it. There's another story I want to write, but I don't believe I can till this tooth business is over.

Your Easter expedition to the canon dug by pre-human [undecipherable] in search of the lost [undecipherable]-metal must surely have been picturesque and memorable. I envy you the spectacle -- petrified tree, subterrane river, fall. Did I tell you that I saw the outlet of an underground river in Florida? It was somewhat north of Dunedin, & an unlighted aqueas crypt stretched sightlessly down & away from the visible basin where [queer? green?] froth disported. I had to keep watching it in fascination -- wondering the while whether some bloated, eyeless, albino _thing_ would float loathsomely & unexpected up from the nether abysses.

Yes -- that Tsathogguan eikon could have come from nowhere save archaic & immemorial Commoriom Which would be inferred by collating that Thing with the existing passages of the Book of Eibon.

Maybe -- since it was probably doomed from the start -- it is just as well that the Swanson venture perished when it did. By the way -- have you heard of a new magazine called _Weird Whispers_, published by the W. & Thompson Co of N.Y.? Someone has just told me about it, although I never heard of it before. Probably it doesn't amount to much, but it might be worth investigating.

I'm now helping Whitehead prepare a new ending and background for a story Bates has rejected. The original told of a young man who bumped his head and thereafter heard sounds as of a mighty cataclysm, although the city around him was quiescent. It was supposed to be due to a result of the bruise which made the fellow's head a natural radio and enabled him to hear the Japanese earthquake which was occurring at the time. Bates rightly thought this tame, so I am having the cataclysm and its causes somewhat different. I am having the bruise excite cells of hereditary memory causing the man to hear the destruction and sinking of fabulous Mu 20,000 years ago!


Yrs. for the nether sign,
Ech-Pi-EI"

Nel momento in cui vi scriviamo la valutazione è già arrivata intorno ai 1.200 dollari ed è destinata ancora a salire prima della scadenza del 19 novembre. Chiunque di voi sia dotato di una robusta carta di credito può tentare la fortuna fino a tale data. I nostri migliori auguri!