It has always been the prerogative of genius to batter on the portals of the Unknowable—and then thrust his soul into the crack, like the little Dutch boy, to keep the devil out. The Satanic legends surrounding the unbelievable career of the great concertist, Paganini, leave little doubt that somewhere there is a window such as Erich Zann's, beyond which lies a world more terrible than imagination can grasp, where science dwindles to zero and incredible passions rage as winds in a vacuum. Where? Why, on the Rue d'Auseil—which no one visits twice. . . .
The Music of
Erich Zann
By H. P. Lovecraft
■ I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d'Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place, and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d'Auseil. But despite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.
That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d'Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour's walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d'Auseil.
The Rue d'Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighboring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognize them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d'Auseil was reached.
Copyright 1925, by Popular Fiction Publishing Company; copyright 1939, 1943 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Published by permission of Arkham House.
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