Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (51 page)

Publisher’s Note:
This presentation of the fragment,
The King in Yellow
, a drama for the stage by Charles Vaughan, is printed here in its entirety. No deletions, additions, corrections, or tampering of any kind have been made in the work. It is complete and unchanged as the day it was discovered in 1966.

The King in Yellow
is copyright © 1987 by the New York Public Library, The Charles Vaughan Memorial Collection, and cannot be reproduced in full or in part without the explicit permission of the members of the board in unanimity. Any resemblance of characters or situations in full or in part to real persons, alive or dead, is strictly coincidental. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the above mentioned play, being fully protected under copyright laws, is subject to license and royalty. Particular emphasis is laid on the matter of readings and performance rights (professional, stock, amateur), permission for which must be obtained in writing.

Charles Vaughan’s work, for the sake of clarification, can best be divided into two distinct groups: the political and the spiritual/metaphysical; although Vaughan, as Edmund Wilson pointed out, did not abhor mixing both when the need arose. The one thematic concern which can be traced from his earliest
Sketches
to his final artistic testament,
Metaphysique
which, indeed, can be seen as a bridge that spans the gap between the political and the mystical, is a quest for faith. Or, to be more precise, the need for a belief in the fact of its antithesis, unbelief or nothingness.

In Vaughan’s earliest works, such as the execrable
Rhine Sketches
, we begin to see the young poet toying with the existential fact of human mortality. Vaughan sees this fact on the one hand as being horrific, and on the other subtly seductive; the young man had shrewdly learnt that man is attracted to the unknown. With Vaughan’s more mature work his concern for the
blissful sleep of quietus
comes to the forefront; but always in conjunction with a sublimated quest for a belief system which will posit a philosophy in which death is not the final end, but a new beginning. I feel that Vaughan’s most effective creations dealing with the issue of faith are his unjustly ignored poems from the late thirties and early forties. Especially in his poem “Schliemann at Troy” (1939), where he uses the metaphor of the quest for the mythical city, as actualized by Schliemann’s unerring faith, as a superb parable for the need to believe in the presence of doubt and fatalistic denial:

If we go beyond the obvious analogies of the poem we find that Vaughan is saying that he is determined to reach a state of grace through the creative act, to grasp salvation “as Schliemann found/The gates of Troy.” This quixotic search for a kind of linguistic redemption would, ironically, lead to Vaughan’s downfall in the coming decades. This conflict was to become a central part of Vaughan’s later work. In such memorable scenes as the brilliant soliloquy of the condemned man in
The Age of Bronze
, and the third act of
Hadrian’s Wall
when the incorporeal voices of the forest night taunt the lost soldiers, he showed this tension between denial and affirmation. This inner conflict is perhaps most poignantly presented in the dialogue from the final act of
Descartes
when the mocking shade of Protagoras the skeptic comes to deny truth, while the aged philosophe lies on his deathbed, racked by pain and doubt.

Vaughan’s tragic undoing came in the 1950s when his ongoing search for the true reality on the one hand, and his unrelenting need for faith on the other crashed head-on. As a result, it seems, of that very language to which Vaughan had turned for salvation. It is safe to say that Vaughan, at least initially, had an interest in finding the essential meaning of words simply to expedite the instrument of his salvation; this inexorably grew into an interest in semiotics: the ways the words themselves “meant;” and, finally, a growing realization of the ways that words failed to “mean.” For Vaughan this was the supreme irony.

Vaughan’s study of logic, semantics, and philosophy made him aware of mankind’s essential inability to understand the universe it occupies; in effect man’s very “humanity” places an insurmountable barrier to his capacity to comprehend reality. Kurt Godel’s monumental work in mathematics, which conclusively proved this limitation, had a devastating effect on Vaughan’s thinking. The playwright now found the doors to his salvation irrevocably shut. To Vaughan, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, destroyed the possibility of ultimate “meaning” as surely as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle had destroyed Newton’s determinate, clockwork universe.
Metaphysique
, Vaughan’s last play, resonates with this bitter insight. Somnambular figures walk through a blighted landscape, a “Slough of Despond” in which random acts of brutality are performed without reason or explication. It is clear that
Metaphysique
is an artistic interpretation of the implications inherent in Godel’s Theorem: The existence of the “object” (God, truth, reality,
et al
.) can never be incontrovertibly proved by empirical methods. All that remains is inexpiable doubt.

The mystery surrounding the composition of Vaughan’s
The King in Yellow
is, I fear, insoluble. Most scholars believe that Vaughan based this unfinished, or partially destroyed, play on a fictitious work created by R. W. Chambers, an obscure early-twentieth-century novelist. Others have embraced a theory which states that both Vaughan and Chambers based their creations on a third, presumably lost, work which has come to be known, within certain circles, as the
Xanthic Folio
, or
Yellow Codex
. Could it be Vaughan’s final, pitiful attempt at philological deliverance; or merely an earlier, forgotten piece, briefly begun and then discarded, left forever unfinished by Vaughan’s premature death? Unfortunately the surviving fragment is too brief to provide any decisive indications.

In my initial examination of the manuscript, I discovered a quote written on the reverse of the last page. It was obvious from the diminutive, almost indecipherable nature of the letters, that this was Vaughan’s handwriting. I take this quote to be Vaughan’s adieu and perhaps, his epitaph:

Chorus:
A robed and hooded figure whose face is indistinct.

Angelique/Cassilda:
As Angelique, a woman in her early-thirties who reigns over the Paris art world, confident in her position as a broker of what’s acceptable and what’s not. An extremely attractive woman conscious of her power over men and perfectly willing to use it. As Cassilda, a leading lady of Carcosa, the world as it is revealed in the burning light of Truth, she is equally as beautiful, but revealing of character flaws: vanity, pettiness, fear and cruelty.

Forsyth:
A young man in his early twenties, handsome and an American recently arrived in Paris. As Angelique’s latest infatuation, he has been raised high by her in the literary world and invited to her soiree as he has already been invited into her bed. Although he has been sponsored by Angelique, he is not without genuine talent as a writer and poet. He is a bit naive and completely entranced by Angelique.

Melbourne:
Although Forsyth’s senior, Melbourne is still under thirty years old. A few years before, he had occupied the position Forsyth now holds both in the literary world as well as in the esteem of Angelique, who has grown tired of him. Somewhat of a lush, Melbourne suffers from great melancholy and cynicism arising from a shattering event in the recent past in which Angelique has figured. He hasn’t written a word in years.

(As the curtain rises, darkness covers the stage area until a single spotlight from directly overhead illuminates a lone figure standing at extreme stage left. It is robed and hooded with its face indistinct.)

CHORUS: What is the world but a pallid masque? If one compares it with traditional alternatives, does it not pale in contrast? Is there not a heaven after life on earth? Did not Francis Bacon propose a House of the Six Day’s Work, a new Atlantis, to stand apart from the failed civilization he inhabited? Did not the City of Man have Augustine’s City of God? Does not every disappointing reality have its imagined ideal? Is the world a pallid mask? Does it hide the true scheme of nature beneath its flawed surface? Is life a pallid masque, a play, a small drama, played for a time and then ended? If so, then where is its true face? What is its real meaning? When shall it be revealed? How shall it be shown? And if it were, could you accept it? If the Truth were revealed to you in one searing instant, a single blast of revelation, would you know it for what it was? And then what? Would life be as sweet? Could life be as sweet? Or would it be as foul ashes in your mouth? As a world without a sun? Today without tomorrow? If your only choice was madness or the black hole of despair and self destruction, which would you choose?

(The figure extends a hand toward stage right as a few spotlights come on. The lights illuminate a party scene with the actors frozen in mid-motion.) Behold the masque. Some would call it a suitable representation of life, the real world. But how suitable is it? And how real is the world it represents?

(The light over the figure goes out as others come on, fully illuminating the entire stage area. There are about twenty people, men and women, standing about in a salon adorned with period furnishings. French doors border stage left, a big fireplace dominates center stage, and well stocked bookshelves fill the corner at stage right. The party-goers stand about, some with drinks in their hands, dressed in evening wear. The typical conversation of salon parties fills the air. The exact year is uncertain, but it could be the recent past. Suddenly, the French doors open and Forsyth enters. He closes the doors behind him as he glances about, then adjusts his bow tie.)

ANGELIQUE: There is our wayward poet now! (She detaches herself from a small knot of male admirers and approaches Forsyth, a small glass of champagne in her hand.) Clifton, where have you been?

FORSYTH: (Smiling nervously, but obviously ill at ease.) Sorry Angelique, but there was…

ANGELIQUE: Do not tell me, the muse hit you and you could not get away until you put those imperishable thoughts on paper? (She smiles and extends her drink.) Well, never mind that. Here have a drink. (Forsyth takes it as Angelique leans forward to give him a chaste peck on the cheek, but instead, bites at his ear.) Tonight? (She whispers.)

FORSYTH: You mean tomorrow morning don’t you? We’re hardly going to get out of here before two.

ANGELIQUE: (Shrugging.) Whatever. Just do not get so drunk that you cannot find your way to my room.

FORSYTH: I could find it in my sleep.

ANGELIQUE: Hardly an original line coming from a writer.

FORSYTH: We can’t be brilliant all the time, my dear.

ANGELIQUE: (As a chorus of male voices entreat her to return to them.) Speak for yourself, Clifton. (She turns and rejoins her admirers.)

MELBOURNE: She’s a fine looking woman; be careful.

FORSYTH: (Turning suddenly at the voice behind him. Melbourne holds a glass of champagne with the slightly disheveled look of someone who is just beginning to have too much to drink. He is very pale.) I don’t believe I have had the pleasure…?

MELBOURNE: (Smiling.) With me or her? (He indicates Angelique with a gesture of his glass.)

FORSYTH: (Scowling now.) Now see here…

MELBOURNE: (Still smiling but now bringing his hands up in mock self defense.) Hold on old chap, no offense meant. Just teasing you a little. It’s just that Angelique and I used to be friends too.

FORSYTH: (Putting his hands in his pockets.) Angelique has had many friends as I understand.

MELBOURNE: True. And you know what’s the nice thing about her? She treats every one as if he was her first and only. There are very few ladies of her experience willing to put that sort of effort into a relationship. Sometimes too much effort.

FORSYTH: She
is
a remarkable woman. She’s been invaluable in helping me in my career.

MELBOURNE: (Nodding knowingly.) She’s the best agent any writer could have in this town. Paris tends to eat us alive.

FORSYTH: You’re a writer too?

MELBOURNE: Used to be. Not any more.

FORSYTH: Not any more? How can that be? One just doesn’t shut one’s self down.

MELBOURNE: (Smiling and downing the rest of his champagne.) Damned stuff doesn’t have any kick at all. It can be, and it is. I don’t write any more. Just don’t. Haven’t set a word on paper for two years now. (Looking around for more liquor.)

FORSYTH: (Intrigued.) But why? What happened? (Begins to follow Melbourne as he heads for the liquor service.)

MELBOURNE: Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I mean. It just hit me one day of the absolute uselessness of writing as an art. I mean, w