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ligotti appreciation post feat. the real ligotti. please stand up

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Thomas Ligotti. Noctuary & The Spectral Link. Chiroptera Press, 2024. Art by Paul Romano. Softcover edition. 252 pages. Limited to 500 copies.

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Thomas Ligotti (July 9, 1953). The paradox to celebrate the birthday of a convinced antinatalist.

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“"Never written?" I inquired. "Why was it never written?"

"Why?" he said, pausing for a moment and grimacing in pain. "The answer to that is exactly what Grossvogel has been preaching in both his pamphlets and in his public appearances. His entire doctrine, if it can even be called that, if there could ever be such a thing in any sense whatever, is based on the non-existence, the imaginary nature of everything we believe ourselves to be. Despite his efforts to express what has happened to him, he must know very well that there are no words that are able to explain such a thing. Words are a total obfuscation of the most basic fact of existence, the very conspiracy against the human race that my treatise might have illuminated. Grossvogel has experienced the essence of this conspiracy first hand, or at least has claimed to have experienced it. Words are simply a cover-up of this conspiracy. They are the ultimate means for the cover-up, the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness - its ultimate artistic cover-up. Because of the existence of words, we think that there exists a mind, that some kind of soul or self exists. This is just another of the infinite layers of the cover-up. There is no mind that could have written An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race - no mind that could write such a book and no mind that could read such a book. There is no one at all who can say anything about this most basic fact of existence, no one who can betray this reality. And there is no one to whom it could ever be conveyed."

"That all seems impossible to comprehend," I objected.

"It just might be, if only there actually were anything to comprehend, or anyone to comprehend it. But there are no such beings."

"If that's the case," I said, wincing with abdominal discomfort, "then who is having this conversation?"

"Who indeed?" he answered. "Nevertheless, I would like to continue speaking. Even if this is only nonsense and dreams, I feel the need to perpetuate it all. Especially at this moment, when this pain is taking over my mind and my self. Pretty soon none of this will make any difference. No," he said in a dead voice. "It doesn't matter now."

(…)

But this strictly monetary inheritance was only the beginning of the success that all of us from that abolished circle of artists and intellectuals began to experience, the seed from which we began to grow out of our existence as failed minds and selves into our new lives as highly successful organisms, each in our own field of endeavor. Of course we could not have failed, even if we tried, in attaining whatever end we pursued, since everything we have experienced and created was a phenomenon of the shadow, the darkness which reached outwards and reached upwards from inside us to claw and poke its way to the heights of a mountainous pile of human and non-human bodies. These are all we have and all we are; these are what is used and thrived upon. I can feel my own body being used and cultivated, the desires and impulses that are pulling it to succeed, that are tugging it toward every kind of success. There is no means by which I could ever oppose these desires and impulses, now that I exist solely as a body which seeks only its efficient perpetuation so that it may be thrived upon by what needs it. There is no possibility of my resisting what needs to thrive upon us, no possibility of betraying it in any way. Even if this little account of mine, this little chronicle seems to disclose secrets that might undermine the nightmarish order of things, it does nothing but supports and promulgates that order. Nothing can resist or betray this nightmare because nothing exists that might do anything, that might be anything that could realize a success in that way. The very idea of such a thing is only nonsense and dreams.

There could never be anything written about the "conspiracy against the human race" because the phenomenon of a conspiracy requires a multiplicity of agents, a division of sides, one of which is undermining the other in some way and the other having an existence that is able to be undermined. But there is no such multiplicity or division, no undermining or resistance or betrayal on either side. What exists is only this pulling, this tugging upon all of the bodies of this world. At the same time, these bodies in no way attain a collective identity, an order of being or a species that might be the object of a conspiracy. A collective entity called the human race cannot exist where there is only a collection of non-entities, of bodies which are themselves only provisional and will be lost one by one, the whole collection of them always approaching nonsense, always dissolving into dreams. There can be no conspiracy in a void, or rather in a black abyss. There can only be this tugging of all these bodies toward that ultimate success which it seems my large-bodied friend realized when he was finally used to the fullest extent, and his body used up, entirely consumed by what needed it to thrive.

"There is only one true and final success for the shadow that makes things what they would not be," Grossvogel proclaimed in the very last of his pamphlets. "There is only one true and final success for the all-moving blackness that makes things do what they would not do," he wrote. And these were the very last lines of that last pamphlet. Grossvogel could not explain himself or anything else beyond these unconcluded statements. He had run out of the words that (to quote someone who shall remain as nameless as only a nominal member of the human race can be) are the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness - its ultimate artistic cover-up. Just as he could not resist it as his body was pulled toward that ultimate success, he could not betray it with his words.” - ‘The Shadow, the Darkness’

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Hello, Miss. Why, yes, as a matter of fact I am looking for some company this evening. My name is Simon, and you are... Rosemary. Funny, I was just daydreaming in the key of Rosicrucianism.

The Nyctalops Trilogy I: The Chymist. Published in Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti.

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No two times are the same. No two lives are alike. We’re like aliens to one another. And when you’re traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with how they see things, the way you now must deal with my 20-20 visions and I with your blasé near-sightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimney and trees, and then pass on?

Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1985; 2010)

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