Robert W. Chambers – The King in Yellow

Readers of Lovecraft and other writers of the Myth will likely find a few familiar names in that book. And there is a reason to this: The King In Yellow truly marked Lovecraft’s mind, to the point of inspiring him in developing his universe.

The book gathers several short stories, all of them being linked by a specific thread, that of The King in Yellow, a play in two acts with a reputation of danger and totally immoral content, both beautiful beyond compare and able to cause anyone to fall into eternal damnation. In short, those who dare read it can never be the same again–when they don’t end up dead, mad, or with their soul utterly destroyed.

In the facts, the first stories in the book are more focused then the others about that cursed book and its mysterious protagonist, a King who apparently exists independently from the play. The very first of these ‘tales’ would even have to be classified as speculative fiction, since it takes place in a fictional New-York in the year 1920 (Robert Chambers published his writings in 1895). The following ones also focus on the theme of innocence forever lost, of a knowledge that should be left alone and never unveiled, but their fantastic side gets somewhat lost to leave more room to a painting of the Latin Quarter in Paris, depicting the life of its “French artists” at the end of the 19th century. One may or may not appreciate that; nevertheless, I thought that the atmosphere around those stories was quite poetic, even though, for a French reader of the 21st century, it may appear as idealizing the so-called boheme side of Paris a little too much.

Oddly (or not?), the short story I liked the most was The Street of the First Shell, a romanced account of the siege of Paris in 1870. Feelings of sheer despair (will the inhabitants ever manage to break that siege, or die there like dogs?) blended in it with hope (the end of the story, when that ‘street of the first shell’ is finally revealed). No Hastur nor King in Yellow here, only human beings trying to believe as much as they can in a better future. And this is in fact what the reader will find at the end of the book: a dive toward hope, rather than horror.