Robert E. Howard Weird Tales , Nov They say foul beings of Old Times still lurk In dark forgotten corners of the world, And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights, Shapes pent in Hell. I read of it first in the strange book of Von Junzt, the German eccentric who lived so curiously and died in such grisly and mysterious fashion.
Collectors of rare literature are familiar with Nameless Cults mainly through the cheap and faulty translation which was pirated in London by Bridewall in , and the carefully expurgated edition put out by the Golden Goblin Press of New York in But the volume I stumbled upon was one of the unexpurgated German copies, with heavy leather covers and rusty iron hasps.
Von Junzt spent his entire life — delving into forbidden subjects; he traveled in all parts of the world, gained entrance into innumerable secret societies, and read countless little-known and esoteric books and manuscripts in the original; and in the chapters of the Black Book, which range from startling clarity of exposition to murky ambiguity, there are statements and hints to freeze the blood of a thinking man. Reading what Von Junzt dared put in print arouses uneasy speculations as to what it was that he dared not tell.
What dark matters, for instance, were contained in those closely written pages that formed the unpublished manuscript on which he worked unceasingly for months before his death, and which lay torn and scattered all over the floor of the locked and bolted chamber in which Von Junzt was found dead with the marks of taloned fingers on his throat?
But the contents of the published matter are shuddersome enough, even if one accepts the general view that they but represent the ravings of a madman.
