“…the inability of the...mind to correlate all its contents…a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity…dissociated knowledge…such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein…either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind…This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly…with undecipherable characters…the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees…a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this…perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity. The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and…a nasty, slopping sound…It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. There was some peculiarly abominable quality about them…mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror…built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars...hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene…the titan Thing…slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus…”
—At least, that's how I read it.
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