02 Sep 2003 16:25
Necronomicon, Il Libro dei Morti
La Storia del Necronomicon di H.P. Lovecraft:
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History of the Necronomicon
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By H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
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(There has been some difficulty over the date of this essay. Most give the date as 1936, following the Laney-Evans (1943) bibliography entry for the pamphlet version produced by the Rebel Press. This date, as can easily be ascertained from the fact that this was a "Limited Memorial Edition", is spurious (Lovecraft died in 1937); in fact, it dates to 1938. The correct date of 1927 comes from the final draft of the essay, which appears on a letter addressed to Clark Ashton Smith ("To the Curator of the Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, with the Concoctor's [?] Comments"). The letter is dated April 27, 1927 and was apparently kept by Lovecraft to circulate as needed.)
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Original title Al Azif -- azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos'd to be the howling of daemons.
Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia -- the Roba el Khaliyeh or "Empty Space" of the ancients -- and "Dahna" or "Crimson" desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. [The Rebel Press edition adds this editor's note: "A full description of the nameless city, and the annals and secrets of its one time inhabitants will be found in the story THE NAMELESS CITY, published in the first issue of Fanciful Tales, and written by the author of this outline."] He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.
In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho' surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice -- once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish) -- both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius' time, as indicated by his prefatory note; [the Rebel Press edition adds paranthetically: "there is, however, a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the present century, but later perished in fire" -- a transparent reference to Clark Ashton Smith's tale "The Return of the Sorcerer". Indeed, Lovecraft says in a letter to Richard F. Searight (1935) "This 'history' must be modified in one respect -- since Klarkash-Ton's 'Return of the Sorceror' (pub in Strange Tales 3 yrs. ago) tells of the survival of an Arabic text until modern times."] and no sight of the Greek copy -- which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550 -- has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692. An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript. [This sentence does not occur in the first draft of the essay. It was added later, after Frank Belknap Long had quoted from "John Dee's Necronomicon" in his tale "The Space Eaters" (1928).] Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.
Chronology
Al Azif written circa 730 A.D. at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred
Tr. to Greek 950 A.D. as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas
Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e., Greek text). Arabic text now lost.
Olaus translates Gr. to Latin 1228
1232 Latin ed. (and Gr.) suppr. by Pope Gregory IX
14... Black-letter printed edition (Germany)
15... Gr. text printed in Italy
Qui ne trovate una Versione:
http://utenti.lycos.it/magistrate/The_Necronomicon.pdf
The King Can Do No Wrong.
Peppe dice che Blackberry fa schifo, e che Android fa schifo ma per anni...
Peppe è stato un felice possessore di Blackberry Torch 9800.
Peppe è stato un felice possessore di Samsung Galaxy S III.
Il mondo è bello perchè è vario cmq.