There is some variety in the stories here. Four of them seem to have a link to the title. The rest do not. The references to the King in Yellow are sparse. I wonder if the references were added after the stories were written or if they were important. In any case, reading The King in Yellow (the fictional one in the first four stories) is a kind of curse that only ends in the ruin of whomsoever reads it. The first story nearly had me giving up on the text. I don't really recall why. Momentarily I thought I was reading something of poor quality. However, the quality does pick up considerably and it is well worth reading.
Ironically, when I first read them, I thought the stories toward the end were the best and the ones at the beginning not so great. Having reread them, however, I find the inverse true. The best stories are about the King in Yellow. The rest are entertaining, but romance is not the equal of horror.
Sadly, the author himself disappoints me as a person.
...this was an Anglo-=Saxon country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the country was diluted...
From "What is Genius?" Robert W. Chambers
It just goes to show that a great writer doesn't have to be a great human being.
Dedication
 |
| Image from AZ Quotes |
| Along the shore the cloud waves break, | ||
| The twin suns sink beneath the lake, | ||
| The shadows lengthen | ||
| In Carcosa. | ||
| Strange is the night where black stars rise, | ||
| And strange moons circle through the skies | ||
| But stranger still is | ||
| Lost Carcosa. | ||
| Songs that the Hyades shall sing, | ||
| Where flap the tatters of the King, | ||
| Must die unheard in | ||
| Dim Carcosa. | ||
| Song of my soul, my voice is dead; | ||
| Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed | ||
| Shall dry and die in | ||
| Lost Carcosa. |
The Repairer of Reputations
It was this story I nearly ended my relationship with Robert W. Chambers. The language felt fake. Like it was written in a vernacular that wasn't really the writer's. This is probably an accurate assessment considering he is American. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that. After all, half of a writer is fiction: he lives in the books he (or she) reads and the characters and language of those writers and writers' characters becomes the vernacular of the author, does it not? In any event, I'm quite happy that I fought past this impression and read through. The story itself isn't bad, and there are several that follow it that are much better.
The first chapter of this story caught my attention: that of the lethal chamber. A government sanctioned method of ending one's life. But for all but the tail of this tale, there is little or nothing to do with the lethal chamber.
The character, Mr. Wilde, is a repairer of armour. This is his passion and hobby. But his bread winning comes from repairing reputations. If someone has a bad reputation, they merely go to him, offer a lot of money, and his network of social manipulators.
The story is told in first person. Most interestingly that person goes quite crazy at the end and dies in a footnote after killing Mr. Wilde's crazy cat and terrorizing a doctor.
I'm unsure whether I like or dislike the disconnects that go through this story. It only makes sense since the narration is from a mad-man. But then that puts in doubt the truth of the narrative. But what is truth? Truth is a perspective from the interpretation of the observer, and not necessarily truth in some scientific truth or fact.
Of the four stories related to the title, this is the only one where it makes much sense. A kind of mad reference, if you will. The other three which reference it look contrived: as if they were added later to make them somehow better connected to the title of the book.
The Mask
This story is the first of a series based on some art students or artists (both, sometimes). I really enjoyed these. It's nice being transported to these times and places. The perspective though is definitely American with its Puritanical aesthetic which, in my opinion, reduced its appeal. "Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod's Mass." But nonetheless, the story was highly entertaining.
At this point in my review, I have already read all of the stories. I am scanning the stories trying to remember what they are about. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? In any case, this story feels out of the timeline. These are artists, not students. Later stories include a war and students. Why Chambers chose to arrange them so (or his editor) I cannot guess.
This is the second of the four stories which have a relation to The King in Yellow. Two artists love a single woman. The narrator is the loser in the worst way: the woman, Geneviève, goes for his friend, Boris, but really loves the narrator. Perhaps she said that to make him feel better about his loss.
The couple, his friend and his unrequited love, fall into the fabled King in Yellow and thereby invite a curse upon them. The curse turns the living into marble: Boris, a white rabbit, and Geneviève. She, however, comes back to the realm of the living. She does not know. She is surprised and remarks, "the marble rabbit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house." She does not know that she herself had been one of the marble statues brought back.
IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON
"I was worn out by three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble: the last had been the worst, and it was an exhausted body, and a mind benumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favourite church for healing. For I had been reading The King in Yellow."
There is a certain poetry of doom in this story. The soul of the narrator is doomed because of his reading The King in Yellow. The narrator is trying to escape an awful death: not death itself. For the religious, death is a kind of release: a release into heaven or hell. It's the latter I believe the author is fearful for. He is trying to escape an already dead gatherer of souls through the church.
I don't know if the narrator is living, dying, or dead at the end:
Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"Who is the living God that the King in Yellow refers to? Is it God and His sidekick, Jesus? Is it the God of the King in Yellow (presumably some Satanic figure, if not Satan himself--even if Satan is never mentioned by name).
The Yellow Sign
This is the last of the stories related to the title The King in Yellow stories in this book.
The narrator is again an artist. He is painting his canvas from a nude model posing. But his painting is overtaken by some kind of plague. Did he paint it that way and suddenly notice it, or was it somehow cursed? But it starts with his noticing a watchman.
Tessie, the model, dreams of the artist being dead. The dream terrifies her and resembles a scene: a kind of deja vu preceded by the dream. Their relationship of artist and favourite model transforms itself into a marital one. But in the end, not even the death of Death Himself saves the narrator: "I think I am dying. I wish the priest would—"
The Demoiselle D'Ys
This is a romance of science fiction proportions. A man travels back in time to meet a beautiful falconer. He falls in love with her. But as he is bitten by a snake, he finds himself awake back in his own time. He has nothing to remember her except that his name is on her tombstone, somehow survived all those centuries for him to see.
The Prophet's Paradise
This is the title to a series of sketches. Beautiful and dark.
On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whitening ashes: "Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street below.Who cannot but love such a vivid image? The more I work on this blog entry, rereading bits and pieces to remind myself on each story, the more I fall in love with this author's work. It is no longer any marvel to me that H.P. Lovecraft should love these stories so much.
The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.
"If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"
"Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked of Death beside me.
"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."
"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.
The Street of the Four Winds
This story is almost as magical as something that Oscar Wilde would have written--but with a macabre twist.
A lonely artist, Severn, speaks with the animals, and they speak with him. A cat comes to him in a terrible state. Her fur is in nasty shape and she is hungry. He feeds and takes care of her. Then they have a kind of conversation. Severn wanders around but eventually discovers that the owner of the cat is dead.
The kiss at the end of the tale is disturbing. But it is written so eloquently that it is almost forgivable that she is a corpse of indeterminate age.
She was pale, but not as white as he; her eyes were untroubled as a child's; but he stared, trembling from head to foot, while the candle flickered in his hand.
At last he whispered: "Sylvia, it is I."
Again he said, "It is I."
Then, knowing that she was dead, he kissed her on the mouth. And through the long watches of the night the cat purred on his knee, tightening and relaxing her padded claws, until the sky paled above the Street of the Four Winds.
The Street of the First Shell
What do artists do in Paris as the city lay in a siege? The Prussians are shelling Paris and starving her citizens. Even wealthy people are paying expensive sums for sewer rat meat. Regardless, the sculptor sculpts and the painters paint, as much as they can even as shells explode. They have relationships.
One couple finds extreme happiness in each other's affection. Surely love seems stronger at such a time: like how a star twinkles in the night sky. The story follows a rather exciting push back against an invisible enemy. The enemy is never really described. The narrator describes the grisly deaths of French fighters. I don't know if the resistance in this instance proves successful. But it is better to fight and die than die from hunger I think.
This was really an enjoyable story. It's definitely out of my usual reading genres. But it was exciting and provocative.
The Street of the Lady of Our Fields
Another story about artists. This time it follows a character who is American and Puritanical. For being Puritanical, he is praised up and down and wins the respect of fellow artists immediately rather than having to earn it in the usual fashion (over time).
It is charming, romantic. But there is nothing of the King in Yellow here.
Rue Barrée
This story is a romance. A poor but beautiful woman enchants all the artists. One of the wealthy ones even offers marriage to her, but is refused and is later very grateful. She never has a name and is referred to as Rue Barrée. It's a cute story, but there is no macabre delight here.
No comments:
Post a Comment