The King in Yellow

CHAPTER SIX:
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It was from rumours of this book, the Necronomicon (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel " The King in Yellow " (1895)."

- History of Necronomicon by H.P. Lovecraft

fictional king identified only by a color with an alchemical correspondence. In this chapter we will explore the possible influence of Chambers and Lovecraft in the work of Peter Sinfield, as well as the Yellow King's similarities to Frederick II.

"Thus I mus'd when o'er the vision
Crept a red delirious change;
Hope dissolving to derision,
Beauty to distortion strange;
Hymnic chords in weird collision,
Spectral sights in endless range....
Crimson burn'd the star of madness..."

- Astrophobos by H.P. Lovecraft

'…in his writing, Lovecraft referred to "mysterious names or unclarifed events, in the form of brief and elliptical hints, which says little but lets the reader guess about gulfs of terror;"

- The King In Yellow: An Introduction by Christophe Thill English version: Sylvain Moisan

In his writings, Peter Sinfield employed the same literary device.

1968 saw the release of a British film based on the H.P Lovecraft story, Dreams of the Witchhouse .

"CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR or THE CRIMSON ALTAR] (Tigon/AIP) British/1968 C-87m. Dir: Vernon Sewell. Prod: Tony Tenser.

Starring: Boris Karloff (his last appearance), Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Mark Eden, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough

It is set in Arkham. That may be its Lovecraft connection. Witchcraft, diabolism and mystery in an English country house. Lackluster script…"

- A Lovecraft Filmology / Miskatonic University

Nonetheless, the title " Court of the Crimson King " is strikingly similar to " Cult of the Crimson Altar ".

Lovecraft also held, in History of Necronomicon , that the work was written in a desert called the "Empty Space" of the ancients or "Crimson desert of the modern Arabs."

"Mr. Chambers knows how to tell a story; and if you want to have the hair raised on your head, read The King In Yellow - or The Makers of Moons , for preference, all about a band of unscrupulous counterfeiters who have discovered the alchemist's long-sought gold, moonshine gold that defies chemical analyses... And there the dream-lady who appears to the hero, standing beside a fairy fountain, speaking of a magic city beyond, the seat-scented gardens, the pleasant noise of the summer wind, laden with bee music and the music of bells."

- The Men Who Make Our Novels by C.C. Baldwin

A collection of short stories, The King In Yellow first appeared in 1895. A lizard or salamander design appeared on the front cover. In the book, the King in Yellow is both a banned play and a malevolent supernatural entity referred to in some of the stories.

The first story, The Repairer of Reputations , tells of how the fictional play (The King In Yellow) was banned by the authorities, and how it "poisoned the minds of men with its terrible perfection."

In " History of the Necronomicon " Lovecraft writes:

"The book ( The Necronomicon ) is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of ornaised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences."

Clearly, H.P. Lovecraft borrowed this idea of a forbidden text from Chambers and meant for The Necronomicon to be equivalent to Chambers' fictional play The King In Yellow.
Also, Lovecraft's claim that The King In Yellow was inspired by The Necronomicon is false. In fact, the reverse is true. The King In Yellow provided Lovecraft with inspiration for the Necronomicon

One of the stories in The King In Yellow is entitled In the Court of the Dragon .

" In The Court of the Dragon shows a fascination for the Catholic Church, its traditions, its ceremonial, its bombastic music, the architecture of its churches."

- The King In Yellow : An Introduction by Christophe Thill
English version: Sylvain Moisan

In the Court of the Dragon

"The narrator first hears a note from the organ which sounds awfully wrong and he remarks that churches built a long time ago were not always consecrated completely, and thus were said to allow entry to wicked forces; "I wondered...whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church" might have entered the church. This would be one of the dark forces that the churches usually protects against…"

- Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow by Henrik Johnssson

"Throughout the middle ages, and up to the Baroque period at least, the Catholic Church had a strong influence on all music, and identified "the Devil's Interval", which is an interval of six semitones, also called an "augmented fourth" or "diminished fifth". (NB: not a "minor fifth"). The "Devil's Interval" was banned in all religious music, possibly because of the sound it makes…
…it is featured throughout King Crimson's musical catalogue, from "21st Century Schizoid Man" (e.g.the cadenza), through "Red", "Three of a Perfect Pair", and "Vrooom", mostly in Mr. Fripp's compositions and performances."

- King Crimson & The Devil's Interval by Brian Thomson

"Crimson always had the monopoly to what we call 'devil's interval'. This is a heavy sounding dissonant, gothic, black sound. In certain periods in history it was forbidden to play this chord because if you played it in church everything started to move due to the low sounds."

- John Wetton

"…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 !'" This is Hebrews 10:31 reproduced verbatim."

from "The Yellow Sign":

"I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only Christ to cry to now."

"I have absolutely no idea how to explain his connection to the Christian God. But it is in my opinion very intriguing and worth considering."

- Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow by Henrik Johnssson

In Frederick II, whose guardian was Pope Innocent III, Catholicism had allowed entry to "something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church" One of the dark forces that the churches usually protects against.

"Innocent IV died in December, 1254. His epitaph declares the victory of the pope over the dragon, Frederick II, the enemy of Christ."

- The Ecole Glossary by Karen Rae Keck

Whatever the earthly identity of the King In Yellow , in the eyes of the church he, like Frederick II, has much to atone for.
Is atonality a form of atonement?

"Redemption is an actual event, and music is one of its voices."

- Robert Fripp

"The act of music is one of many possible actions through which the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse may enter our lives, and direct and shape them in a way and manner so radical and overwhelming that one single note might change our world..."

- Robert Fripp 1994, Text from "David Sylvian and Robert Fripp: Redemption - Approaching Silence

Chambers explored the notion of people from the past coming back as spirits or somehow lingering in the present:

"In The Demoiselle d'Ys , the demoiselle refers to herself and her strange longevity when she says: "to go is different - and may take centuries." She is at least dimly aware that she is a survival from the Middle Ages."

"Chambers' second collection of Short Stories The Maker of Moons , includes The Thirty-Ninth Skull . In this story, about a ghostly priest who comes to accomplish his vengeance through the generations, we find brief hints to the Crimson Emperor."

"...among the Breton legends that she knows, the young narrator's wife quotes one about "the Man in crimson rags", which is not without reminding us of the tattered cloths of the King in Yellow ."

"The Black Queen chants the funeral march"

"Although not a part of the Mythology of The King in Yellow , the Black Priest is still worth mentioning.
In The Messenger , the Black Priest is revealed for who he is: a priest who lived and died in the seventeenth century. He betrayed the French fort where he lived to the English, and then he betrayed the English soldiers sent to capture the fort. The thirty-eight English soldiers were buried in a mass grave, along with the Black Priest. He cast a curse upon the ancestors of Lys, and said that when his skull, the thirty-ninth, was uncovered, he would rise from the grave and have his revenge. And that he does."

- The King In Yellow : An Introduction by Christophe Thill
English version: Sylvain Moisan

In The Pallid Mask , the King In Yellow is described in terms reminiscent of the first King Crimson album cover:

"The ghastliness of his face let us think that his
appearance might be the one of a cadaver or a skull."

Last King

"A character in one of the stories tells "the wonderful story of the Last King". Perhaps the last king is the King in Yellow himself, ie. the last true king ?"

Dante referred to Frederick II as "ultimo imperadore de li Romani"
"The last emperor of the Romans..."

"The final resting-place of Frederick II, according to Dante, is in a fiery coffin, in circle six with the heretics, in book ten of the Inferno (Inf. X 120). Farinata Addresses Dante by Gustave Dore

Farinata Addresses Dante by Gustave Dore

Dante asks Farinata to tell him who is in there with him, and Farinata replies "Here I lie with more than a thousand. Here within is the second Frederick, and the Cardinal, and of the rest I do not speak" (Inf. X 118-119).

- Dante and Frederick II: The Poetry of History (Trans. Judith P. Shoaf)
by Roger Dragonetti

Note that, in the above passage, Frederick is not able to speak with Dante. He is mute and in flames.

"This mute, disquieting and destructive monarch wears a flaming tattered
yellow gown. It is sometimes the reading of The King in Yellow which prompts
his coming. It is, in any case, always synonymous with horror: at the
coming of the King, reality topples over in an unspeakable nightmare and
irremediable decay. By some aspects, the King seems only an allegory, the
embodiment of madness and death; from other standpoints he seems almost
human, for example in his ambition for immoderate power ("seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts.")

- The King In Yellow: An Introduction by Christophe Thill
English version: Sylvain Moisan

"Perhaps what troubled Dante is that Frederick treated heresy as a crime against the state, as treason, and assumed all responsibility for it. This view is supported by a comment Benvenuto makes about the emperor, that he tyrannically usurped all spiritual matters, "omnia spiritualia tyrannice usurpavit" (3.443).[61] Frederick did what Dante objected to most strenuously in the popes, he claimed jurisdiction in the other sphere."

- The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy
by Joan Ferrante

"Sound can do a lot of harm. That's one of the points that Spridgeon raises... the Greeks knew it, Pythagorus knew it, even medieval musicians knew it. That's why there's the Devil's Triad. a tritone or specific interval between notes that is basically not good for you to hear. You have to remember that when you listen to music your body is vibrating in sympathy with it. If your body is vibrating at the wrong speed, all matter has a frequency at which it can be destroyed. I mean, cancer is one of the immediate effects of listening to a record with, say, very low tones - although they have to be very consistent. And psychic harm as well - you can be made to think in a certain way.

- "Bang" - An Open Letter by Geoffrey P. Davis

King in Yellow (the figure)

"He seems to have some human traits, as did the gods of ancient Greece; he "seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts". A character in one of the stories says, "He is a king whom emperors have served."

Frederick II (in the preamble to his Liber Augustis ) characterized himself…

"The Chosen One of the Lord who has been raised miraculously above the princes of the earth."

- K. F. Reinhardt, Germany 2000 Years, p.95

"The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts".

"To his Sicilian subjects there was nothing incongruous in Frederick's references to himself as magnificus and Caesar or in his exaltation of himself by implication in referring to magnificus ille Julius primus Caesar ."

- The Emperor Frederick II von Hohenstaufen Immutator Mundi , by Thomas Curtis Van Cleve, p. 242

"Frederick is referred to as Caesar and Augustus by one of his most intimate advisors, Pier Della Vigne in circle seven (Inf. XIII 59, 66)"

- Dante and Frederick II: The Poetry of History (Trans. Judith P. Shoaf)
by Roger Dragonetti

"Louis later examines Hildred's library, and remarks: "...have you nothing but Napoleon there ?" ...Chambers was very much interested in history, and wrote many historical novels.
That which makes Caesar and Napoleon pale before him ( or it ) is probably the King in Yellow. Who else can control the thoughts of men before they are born ? And it is worth noting that "He is a king whom emperors have served." Exactly which emperors would this be ? Perhaps Napoleon; he was an emperor. And why not even Caesar ? The ramifications are intriguing; has the King in fact influenced mankind since the very beginning of time ?"

The colour yellow

"On the positive side, it is the same colour as gold, and the sun, connected for this reason to the divine, and to the royal monarch or emperor who in older times acted as a mediatory figure between gods and men, achieving a synthesis between the two.
Somewhere between wealth and decay, good and evil, life and death, yellow seemed to be well suited to clothe the disquieting monarch created by Chambers."

- Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow by Henrik Johnssson

As discussed in previous chapters, Frederick II achieved a synthesis of many disparate elements. As a supernatural entity, one would expect him to exhibit similar traits. Both yellow and red (crimson) represent stages of alchemical development, with red being the final stage (perfection). As explained in chapter three, yellow can represent a regression or decay from this highest stage.

Stephen King has listed Lovecraft as a major influence and he is undoubtedly intimately familiar with Chambers' work. Furthermore, the Crimson King has appeared in at least two of King's novels, Insomnia and Black House . In Insomnia , wherein Stephen King alludes to the fictional universe of H.P. Lovecraft, the Crimson King performs a role similar to that of the King in Yellow.

King in Yellow (the play)

"The play itself is the greatest mystery of all. It is apparently a work of very high quality, but it destroys the soul and mind of its readers. To quote Hildred Castaigne;

'I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth - a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by press and pulpit, censored even by the most advanced of literary anarchists.'

Note that he says that someone translated the book. Who translated it, and from what language ?"

- Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow by Henrik Johnssson

Lovecraft places the translation of his corollary work, the Necronomicon, squarely in the court of Frederick II.

From History of Necronomicon:

"For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages,…"
"The work, both Latin and Greek, was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232,
shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it."

During the reign of Pope Gregory IX, translations of Arabic texts were undertaken primarily via the efforts of Frederick II.

"The Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the Pope (Gregory IX), brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and studied."

- A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology by Andrew Dickson White Ph.D.

Among the reasons Lovecraft linked Frederick to The Necronomicon :

1) Frederick II, like Chambers, was linked to a notorious fictional work.

"Pope Gregory IX accuses Frederick of being the author of a work De Tribus Impostoribus , which, if it ever existed, is no longer to be found."

- Gibbons in "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chap. lix.,

And 2) Michael Scot:

The most famous sorcerer of his age, beginning in 1228, the Scottish alchemist and necromancer worked exclusively for Frederick II, even accompanying him to the Holy Land on the Sixth Crusade. Aside from being court astrologer, one of his primary concerns was the translation of Arabic texts.

"As one might expect, the multilingual nature of the Palermo Court attracted some of the most accomplished linguists from all over Europe. Under Frederick II, particularly, a number of Christian and Jewish translators were at work at Palermo, rendering Arabic texts (some of which were, themselves, translations from the Greek!) into Latin. The Englishman, Michael Scott, was a connecting link between the Sicilian Court and the great translation center which had sprung up in Toledo, where he had worked between 1217 and 1220."

- The Linguist of Ancient and Medieval Days by Ruth A. Roland

"He returned from Spain in command of innumerable demonic servants and in possession of a tome called The Book of Might, which contained the spells to release or restrain them."
"Michael Scot was frightening to the ordinary people around him. When he died, he was burned with respect and The Book of Might was hung on the church wall near his grave, but for centuries afterward, people refused to open the book, or even to touch it, for fear of releasing the creatures its spells commanded.
The reason for their fear, of course, was that Scot was in league with the enemy of the universe, imperiling himself, those near him and the very order of nature."

- Wizards - Masters of Forbidden Arts

"And one could never take away from me the idea that there is somewhere a
relation between the King in Yellow and another monarch, also symbol of
madness and death, but clothed in crimson: the one that we encounter in the
monumental first album of the British band King Crimson (1969). The last
verses of the title song, In the Court of the Crimson King , are:

"The yellow jester does not play, but gently pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance, in the court of the Crimson King"

- The King In Yellow: An Introduction by Christophe Thill
English version: Sylvain Moisan

"At these words, the flames of the fire seem to momentarily darken and turn red. Jack wishes he could believe that this is only a trick of his overstrained mind, but cannot. "The Crimson King," he says.
"Yes. His physical being is pent in a cell at the top of the Tower, but he has another manifestation, every bit as real, and this lives in Can-Tah Abbalah - the Court of the Crimson King."

- Black House
by Stephen King and Peter Straub

- The King In Yellow is available online at this link .

The Messenger, the story concerning the "*Crimson Emperor", is available here.

*In one French edition of The Maker of Moons, the "The Messenger" is entitled "The Thirty-Ninth Skull"
and the "Purple Emperor" is translated as the "Crimson Emperor".

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