The Chymist quotations

[darrick]

this is another one of my favorite Ligotti stories. it's tempting to just quote the whole story in its entirety, however i shall try to restrain myself...

"In general, I think, there are always those varying factors that make every moment of our lives unique and strange to every other moment."

i appreciate Ligotti's sensitivity here.

"Well, I wouldn't say that this part of town is simply a pit. It is, of course, that; but the word doesn't begin to describe the various dimensions of decrepitude in the local geography. Decrepitude, Ro. It has your pit in it and a lot more besides. I speak from experience, more than you would believe. This whole city is a pitiful corpse, and the neighborhood outside the walls of this bar has the distinction of being the withering heart of the deceased. Yes, I've gotten to know it over the years. I've gone out of my way to note its outlandish points of interest."

This is probably the first instance of degeration in Ligotti's ouvre. Decay has been a favorite topic of his since "The Chymist".

"For instance, have you ever been to that place not far from here called Speakeasy? Well, then you have some aquaintance with the beautiful corruption of nostalgia, the putrescence of things past. Yes, up a flight of stairs from a crooked little street facade is a high echoey hall with a leftover Deco decor of silvery mirrors and sequined globes. And there the giant painted silhouettes of bony flappers and gaunt Gatsbys sport about the curving ballroom walls, towering over the dance floor, their funereal elegance mocking the awkward gyrations of the living. An old dream with a shiny new veneer. It's fascinating, you know, how an obsolete madness is sometimes adopted and stylized in an attempt to ghoulishly preserve it. These are the days of second-hand fantasies and antiquated hysteria."

yes, the very next paragraph was extremely quotable. rather than anonymous decrepitude, Ligotti specifically describes human reactions to the state of decay around us. as the master has told us, this world is like a haunted house. this quote gives us a view of such a spook shack.

"You don't much like the policia, do you Rrrosa? Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise... and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only a noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe."

more philosophy and more talk of paradise (from the last story i searched for quotes - "Les Fluers"). i like the 'where would all of us outlaws be' line, as if we were all outlaws - outlaws from nature. i am of the opinion that humanity (at least human potential) is alien to the natural world as well as a part of it. the lonliness of Ligotti's prose impresses me too.

"The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can't perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. Especially where the glamor and sanity of former days wears a new mask of rats and rot, where an old style is transformed by time into a parody of itself which no man could foresee, where greater and greater schisms are forever developing between past shapes and future shapelessness, and finally where the evolution toward ultimate diversity can be glimpsed as if in a magic mirror."

I love Liggoti's preoccupation with masks and mirrors. here might be the origin of his philosophy that all things are made up of the same "stuff" going into shapelessness as well as all things eventually looking the same 'as if in a magic mirror'.

"Oh, perhaps there is some solid and unchanging ideal, shining very dimly and very far off. Scientifically, I suppose we should allow for that improbability. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. What begins as a solitary truth soon proliferates the malignant cells in the body of a dream, a body whose true outline remains unknown. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires."

damn, this story is full of awesome prose! somehow Ligotti manages to imply more worlds than other authors can create with fine detail. speaking of which, i love how the narrator is almost fleshed out with these nuances. like his having a photographic memory, receiving his Bachelor of Science degree at age 16, his distaste for foul language, he always seems to know things intuitively like that the cop had money in stocks and which way to rosemary's apartment etc. does it all add up to something greater than the sum of its parts? we have no way of knowing, only guessing at the truth of our somewhat pompous narrator. in spit of, or because, i find it particularly creepy. awesome!

"A different city every night. Yes, Rosie, I have to say you're right - sarcastic tone and all - the city is indeed also a vessel. And it's one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below, look at their lines and interconnections. They're like a skeleton of something... the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay."

vivid imagination indeed! i like the interplay between sleep, dream, and waking up. Ligotti has a profound understanding of "reality" than most.

"The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather through me. To put it romantically, I'm now dreaming you. That's really the only way to I can explain it that you might understand. Not dreaming about you, like some old love song. I'm dreaming you. Your arms and legs don't respond to your brain's commands because I'm dreaming of someone who is as still as a statue. I hope you can appreciate how remarkable this is."

This is the high point of the story, the crux. now we see what all the fuss was about. it seems to be a form of concentrated magic, exaggerated and strengthened through chemistry.

"We are presently coming into perfect tune with each other, my dreams and my dream girl. You are about to become the flesh and blood kaleidescope of my imagination. In the latter stages of this game anything might happen. Your form will know no limits of variety, for now the Great Chemists themselves are working through me. Soon I will put my dreaming in the hands of greater forces, and I'm sure there will be some surprises for both of us. That is one thing which never changes."

"Now Rose of madness - Bloom!"

well, fantastic story. like i said, i could quote the whole story.

Darrick