Seven years had passed since the disappearance of his grandfather Whipple when Ward Phillips received the lamp. This, and the Angell Street home where Ward lived, had belonged to his grandfather. Phillips had been living in the house since the demise his grandfather, but the lamp had been left to the lawyer until after the seven years that should elapse before finally giving up for dead. It had been his grandfather's wish that the lamp was well kept during those years, in the hands of drowning, if something unexpected occurred, death or other accident. The case was that Phillips had the time to familiarize yourself with the impressive library Whipple, in which he expected a great deal of wisdom. The old Whipple had decided that, if Phillips had finished reading the huge volumes that filled the shelves, have reached a sufficient level of maturity in order to inherit the "treasure valuable "to his grandfather, as Whipple's own statement.
Phillips was then thirty years old and in poor health, which was normal for a child, had always been a bit sickly. He was born in a family of moderately wealthy, but the savings from his grandfather flew in a misguided investments, so that Phillips the only thing left was the Angell Street House and what it contained. Phillips worked as a magazine editor in scandal, then, to round out the few gains that gave him the job, was engaged to review and correct the numerous and very promising manuscripts of prose or poetry other writers, more inexperienced than him, sent him with the hope of seeing his work published, once the pen Phillips had worked a miracle. Sedentary life had not improved their resistance to disease was tall, thin, wore glasses, had frequent colds, and when, much to his shame, sick of measles.
When the days were warm, loved to walk through the fields where he played as a child. On those occasions, he would take his papers under his arm and work outdoors, sitting in the lovely leafy banks of the river during his childhood, had been his favorite hiding place. This edge of the Seekonk River had not changed in all these years, and Phillips, who lived much of the past, believed that one way to defy time was to stay near the places that did not change. In a letter to a correspondent had described his feeling thus: "Among those paths of the forest that I knew, the gap between the present and the years 1899 or 1900 disappears completely, so that often surprises me to find again in the city, finding that it has lost its appearance of fin de siècle. " In addition to the banks of the Seekonk, another place he chose for his walks was Nentaconhaunt Hill. He liked to behold, From there, his hometown at sunset, and wait for the peaceful panorama of the population to be reflected in its nightlife, with the steeples and roofs of Dutch style gradually going darker on the bottom orange and crimson sunset . He thrilled the emerald glow or pearl that melted the horizon, and finally flashing lights that turned the vast and unequal city in a magical land for Phillips exerted a stronger pull than during the day.
Phillips had long had resigned illuminated by electric light because it was too expensive for its modest income. But as his long day trips required him to work late into the night, the famous lamp of his grandfather Whipple, however strange and old it was, it would be of great use. The letter that accompanied the last gift the old man, whose relationship with his grandson had been profound since the death of the child's parents, explaining that the light came from a tomb of Arabia, at the beginning of history. He said he had belonged to a half-mad Arab named Abdul Alhazred. Was the work of the great tribe of Ad, one of the four mysterious and little-known Saudi-Ad was in the south, Thamood in the north and the center of the peninsula was occupied by Tasm y Jadis-. Había sido hallada hace mucho tiempo en una ciudad oculta llamada Irem. Edificada por Shedad, el último de los déspotas de Ad, era la Ciudad de las Columnas, conocida por algunos como la Ciudad Sin Nombre. Decían que se encontraba cerca de Hadramant; según otros, debía estar enterrada bajo las antiquísimas y siempre movedizas arenas de Arabia. De todas maneras, salvo los favoritos del profeta que habían logrado encontrarla, nunca nadie había conseguido verla. Para terminar su larga carta, el viejo Whipple había escrito: «Puede proporcionar tanto placer encendida como apagada. Igualmente puede traer dolor. Es la fuente del éxtasis o del terror.»
appearance Alhazred lamp was unusual. Worked with oil, and seemed to be golden. By the way, resembled an oblong pot with a curved handle on one side and a spigot for the flame to the other. Its decor was strange drawings, mixed with letters and placed in such a way that seemed to form a word. But that language was unknown to Phillips, who knew several Arab dialects, however, could not decipher the inscription on the lamp. It was not Sanskrit. Undoubtedly it was an older language, his writing consisted of letters and glyphs, some of whom were pictographs. Phillips spent a whole afternoon to clean the inside, outside and, after he shined, filled with oil.
That night, Phillips removed the candles and lamp oil, which had lighting for so many nights of work, and lit the lamp of Alhazred. He was surprised a little warm in brightness, the stability of the flame, and the quality of its light. But the amount of work that awaited him was such that he could not continue playing in the lamp. Without wasting time, began to review a play in verse, which began as follows:
bright and early in the
dawn of a year, long before I was born,
When the earth was still chaos
filled long before the struggles ...
and continued so in the same archaic style completely fallen into disuse. However, it was a style that Phillips liked. He lived much in the past that their views and their philosophy about the influence of the past overflowing every fantasy. His notion of time and space was, from his earliest memories, so inextricably linked to her deepest thoughts and feelings that any attempt to describe in words their moods seem artificial, exotic or conventional. For decades, the dreams of Phillips were composed of an odd mix of adventurous restlessness coupled with landscapes, architectural perspectives and purposes of the sky. Kept in mind a certain image of itself to the three years was on a railway bridge. Through the gaps in the railing, his eyes penetrated the densest part of the city. And then she felt the imminence of a prodigy, he could not describe or to understand in its entirety, it was the sense of something wonderful, hidden in a dark dimension release. I sensed that, although rarely and with difficulty, the dimensions could be achieved by certain visual perspectives, such as the sight of an old road through miles of mountainous countryside, or the balustrades of the terraces focused from below, from the very foot of the endless marble staircase leading to them. It is true that Phillips dreamed of living in the eighteenth century or earlier, when there was still time for the art of conversation and when the man could dress a certain elegance without being observed with astonishment by their neighbors. But it was his intense desire to return to a time when the world was younger and less rushed, lack of imagination and the few ideas that reflect the lines on which he was working, coupled with his own exhaustion, made him feel unable to continue their task. Recognized that there could be interested in these lines so uninspired, set aside the manuscript and leaned back to rest. ue then observed the sudden change that had occurred around them.
The familiar walls lined with books, except in the recesses of the windows-Phillips had a mania for cover with curtains so that no external light, either the sun, the moon, or the stars, invade his sanctuary, were strangely changed. It was not just widespread clarity on them by the Saudi lamp what had changed, but the same light projected against the walls for Phillips unknown objects. Wherever illuminate the lamp, the walls, on the volumes of books lined up on shelves, Phillips watched a few scenes that neither the funds most mysterious of his imagination could have created. In contrast, in all dark areas, such as the large patch of shade that the back of the chair of Phillips planned on some of the shelves, he saw nothing, nothing but the darkness of the shadows and in them the monotony of books aligned.
sit and wonder, watched the scene unfolding before him. Then he wanted to react and thought that was the victim of an optical illusion. But such an explanation to this phenomenon was not satisfied, and rejected it. On the other hand, had the curious belief that he did not want to find any explanation, that did not need it, something wonderful had happened, I knew I had to be temporary and would not know or feel that admiration for what her eyes witnessed. The world saw the light of the lamp was a supreme rarity. It was a world that never had access, not by sight or by reading, even by way of their dreams.
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