To the Devil His Dürer: Abasement, Exaltation, and the Architectotalitarian Impulse in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Dark Eidolon" -- by Trey Sallamont
"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!" --
Paradise Lost.
"What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I." --
"Napoleon", Walter de la Mare.
"Now the palace stood alone at the center of Ummaos, and to the north, west and south, for wide intervals of distance, there stretched the imperial gardens, full of superbly arching palms and loftily spiring fountains. But to eastward was a broad open area, used as a sort of common, between the palace and the mansions of high optimates. And in this space, which had lain wholly vacant at eve, a building towered colossal and lordly beneath the full-risen sun, with domes like monstrous fungi of stone that had come up in the night. And the domes, rearing level with those of Zotulla, were builded of death-white marble; and the huge façade, with multi-columned porticoes and deep balconies, was wrought in alternate zones of night-black onyx and porphyry hued as with dragons' blood. And Zotulla swore lewdly, calling with hoarse blasphemies on the gods and devils of Xylac; and great was his dumfoundment, deeming the marvel a work of wizardry. The women gathered about him, crying out with shrill cries of awe and terror; and more and more of his courtiers, awakening, came to swell the hub-bub; and the fat castradoes diddered in their cloth-of-gold like immense black jellies in golden basins." --
"The Dark Eidolon", Clark Ashton Smith
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait
The interior of St. Peter's Basilica by Giovanni Paolo Pannini
Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe
Adolf Hitler's Volkshalle
Nicolae CeauÅŸcu's Casa Republicii
“The true independent is he who dwells detached and remote from the little herds as well as from the big herd. Affiliating with no group or cabal of mice or monkeys, he is of course universally suspect.†—
The Black Book of Gore Vidal.
