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.

Cassilda's Song in "The King in Yellow, " Act i, Scene 2.

The King in Yellow

There was a big moon over the Bosphorus; the limpid waters off Seraglio Point glimmered; the Golden Horn was like a sheet of beaten silver inset with topaz and ruby where lanterns on rusting Turkish warships dyed the tarnished argent of the flood. Except for these, and the fixed lights on the foreign guard-ships and on a big American steam yacht, only a pale and nebulous shoreward glow betrayed the monster city.

Over Pera the full moon's lustre fell, silvering palace, villa, sea and coast; its rays glimmered on bridge and wharf, bastion, tower arsenal, and minarette, transforming those big, sprawling, ramshackle blotches of architecture called Constantinople into that shadowy, magnificent enchantment of the East, which all believe in, but which exists only in a poet's heart and mind.

Night veiled the squalour of Balat, and its filth, its meanness, its flimsy sham. Moonlight made of Galata a marvel, ennobling every bastard dome, every starved facade, every unlovely and attenuated minarette, and invested with added charm each really lovely ruin, each tower, palace, mosque, garden wall and balcony, and every crenelated battlement, where the bronze bulk of ancient cannon slanted, outlined in silver under the Prophet's moo

The Moonlit Way

Datant de 1895, Le Roi en jaune est un recueil americain de dix nouvelles melant fantastique, horreur et roman policier. Les quatre premieres nouvelles du recueil font reference a une mysterieuse piece de theatre qui cree un tel choc esthetique aux yeux des spectateurs qu'ils deviennent fous et se suicident. Atmosphere oppressante, personnages etranges, spectres inquietants, chaque nouvelle offre son lot d'effroi et de mystere. Ce texte aussi troublant qu'etonnant de modernite, dans la droite lignee d'un Edgar Allan Poe, a inspire de grands noms comme Lovecraft, mais aussi la nouvelle serie americaine a succes: True Detective ecrite par l'auteur Nic Pizzolatto avec l'acteur star Matthew McConaughey. La serie est actuellement diffusee sur OCS et sera diffusee sur Canal + au premier semestre 2015. Elle cartonne deja dans le monde entier. La maison independente Malpertuis a publie ce texte en 2009."

Le Roi en jaune

Created complete, equipped for sporadic multiplication and later for auto-fertilization, the restless sex, intensely bored by the process of procreation, presently invented an auxiliary and labeled him.

A fool proceeding, for the inherited mania for invention obsessed him and he began to invent gods. The only kind of gods that his imagination could conceive were various varieties of supermen, stronger, more cruel, craftier than he. And with these he continued to derive satisfaction by scaring himself.

But the restless sex remained restless; the invention of the sign of Mars, far from bringing content, merely increased the capacity of the sex for fidgeting. And its insatiate curiosity concerning its own handiwork increased.

This handiwork, however, fulfilled rather casually the purpose of its inventor, and devoted the most of its time to the invention of gods, endowing the most powerful of them with all its own cowardice, vanity, intolerance and ferocity.

"He made us, " they explained with a modesty attributable only to forgetfulness.

"Believe in him or he'll damn you. And if he doesn't, we will!" they shouted to one another. And appointed representatives of various denominations to deal exclusively in damnation.

The Restless Sex

Only when the Nan-yang Maru sailed from Yuen-San did her terrible sense of foreboding begin to subside.

For four years, waking or sleeping, the awful subconsciousness of supreme evil had never left her.

But now, as the Korean shore, receding into darkness, grew dimmer and dimmer, fear subsided and grew vague as the half-forgotten memory of horror in a dream.

She stood near the steamer's stern apart from other passengers, a slender, lonely figure in her silver-fox furs, her ulster and smart little hat, watching the lights of Yuen-San grow paler and smaller along the horizon until they looked like a level row of stars.

The Slayer of Souls

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble.

When I first saw the sexton he was standing motionless behind a stone. Presently he moved on again, pausing at times, and turning right and left with that nervous, jerky motion that always chills me.

His path lay across the blighted moss and withered leaves scattered in moist layers along the bank of the little brown stream, and I, wondering what his errand might be, followed, passing silently over the rotting forest mould. Once or twice he heard me, for I saw him stop short, a blot of black and orange in the sombre woods; but he always started on again, hurrying at times as though the dead might grow impatient.

The Mystery of Choice

De Paris à New York, de jeunes artistes voient leur vie bouleversée par un étrange livre interdit, Le Roi en jaune. À travers celui-ci, c’est un univers de folie et de cauchemar qui fait irruption dans notre monde : celui de Hastur et de Carcosa, celui sur lequel règne le terrifiant Roi en jaune.Découvrez les nouvelles qui ont fait frémir H. P. Lovecraft, James Blish et Marion Zimmer Bradley, et dont l’ombre plane en arrière-plan dans la série True Detective. Explorez Carcosa et les mystères des Hyades. Au péril de votre santé mentale, feuilletez le livre maudit. Allez-vous trouver le Signe jaune...?Pour la première fois depuis sa parution originale en 1895, le chef-d’œuvre mythique du fantastique décadent est édité en traduction française intégrale.

Le Roi en Jaune

THE baby was born at Whitewater Farms about nine in the morning, April 19, 1900. Two pure-breed calves, -one a heifer, the other a bull, -were dropped the same day at nearly the same hour.

Odell came in toward noon, heard these farm items from his foreman, Ed Lister.

For twenty years Odell's marriage had been childless. He had waited in vain for a son, -for several sons, -and now, after twenty sterile years of hardship, drudgery, and domestic discord, Fanny had given him a girl.

He stood in silence, chewing the bitter news.

"Awright, " he said, "that's that ! Is Queen doin' good?"

Whitewater Queen was doing as well as could be expected and her fourth heifer-calf was a miracle of Guernsey beauty.

Eris

Datant de 1895, Le Roi en jaune est un recueil américain de dix nouvelles mêlant fantastique, horreur et roman policier. Les quatre premières nouvelles du recueil font référence à une mystérieuse pièce de théâtre qui crée un tel choc esthétique aux yeux des spectateurs qu'ils deviennent fous et se suicident. Atmosphère oppressante, personnages étranges, spectres inquiétants, chaque nouvelle offre son lot d’effroi et de mystère. Ce texte aussi troublant qu'étonnant de modernité, dans la droite lignée d’un Edgar Allan Poe, a inspiré de grands noms comme Lovecraft, mais aussi la nouvelle série américaine à succès : True Detective écrite par l'auteur Nic Pizzolatto avec l'acteur star Matthew McConaughey. La série est actuellement diffusée sur OCS et sera diffusée sur Canal + au premier semestre 2015. Elle cartonne déjà dans le monde entier. La maison indépendente Malpertuis a publié ce texte en 2009.

The King in Yellow

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