Зов Ктулху / The Call of Cthulhu. Уровень 2

The articles cut from papers were mainly about mental illness and outbreaks of group folly or mania in the spring of 1925.

The first half of the principal manuscript told a very interesting tale. On March 1st, 1925, a thin, dark young man came to Professor Angell. He was nervous and excited and bearing the singular clay bas-relief. That bas-relief was exceedingly damp and fresh. His card bore the name of Henry Anthony Wilcox. My uncle had recognized him as the youngest son of an excellent family. He knew that family a little.

The young man was studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design[17 - Rhode Island School of Design – художественная школа Род-Айленда]. He was living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys Building near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious young genius with great eccentricity. When he was a child he liked strange stories and odd dreams. He liked to relate them, too. He called himself “psychically hypersensitive[18 - psychically hypersensitive – чрезвычайно чувствительный психически]”, but the people of the ancient commercial city called him “queer.

” He disappeared gradually from social visibility, and was now known only to a small group of esthetes from other towns. Even the Providence Art Club[19 - Providence Art Club – Клуб любителей искусства в Провиденсе], that was trying to preserve its conservatism, found him quite hopeless.

What did the professor’s manuscript tell about the cause of the visit? The sculptor abruptly asked to help him identify the hieroglyphics of the bas-relief. He spoke in a dreamy, stilted manner which suggested pride and alienated from him. My uncle’s reply was quite sharp. The conspicuous freshness of the tablet did not show any relation to archaeology. Young Wilcox’s answer impressed my uncle. It was of a fantastically poetic nature.

He said, “It is new, indeed. I made it last night in a dream of strange cities.

These dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon[20 - These dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon – Эти сны древней, чем мечтательный Тир, созерцательный Сфинкс, или опоясанный садами Вавилон.].”

Then he began to tell his tale.