Cassilda's Song

Recently, with that Minecraft video, the classic book “The King in Yellow” suddenly rose in popularity. I don’t read much, but this piece of work intrigued me. A bit of spoilers here, but this book seemed to have inspired legends like H.P. Lovecraft with their eldritch horror theming.

The book (or its first four chapters) revolves around a supernatural entity, named “the King in Yellow”. The book talks about a fictional drama play that when read, you would go crazy. A term I have found (unironically from the SCP wiki) that describes this phenomenon is cognitohazard. The knowledge of the entity or whatever about it kills your cognition.

The SCP Foundation

Some people might have heard, or even dabbled in the fictional world of this foundation. But I do think the concept of the King of Yellow does have some interesting similarities to some of SCP’s works. Similar only, but it’s nice to see.

One of my favorite teams in SCP is the antimemetic division. The team that fights entities or concepts that are inherently “antimemes”, ideas that are impossible to remember or share. Some notable encounters include:

• SCP-3125: A literal ‘concept’ that is incomprehensible by humans. The moment you “comprehend” it, ‘it’ also “comprehends” you and basically erases you from existence. The division has to fight ‘it’ while intentionally not knowing about ‘it’.
• SCP-055: Not a “danger” per se. But it’s,… something. No one knows what it is. You physically can not describe it, but you know what it is when you see it, just that you can’t remember anything once you look away.

Woah, I got some goosebumps writing these things out at 3AM. Go, me!

The Song

Okay, back to the matter at hand. The context is that I want to have some way to practice Japanese for my test, but oh, I hate having to do mock tests or questions. It just doesn’t rub me the right way.

I found a copy of the King in Yellow in Japanese. It’s as difficult to read as “人生論” by Miki Kiyoshi, but it didn’t slap me with a lot of philosophical thoughts at the moment of first page turn. There’s a poem, or a song that goes like so:

汀に雲の波砕け、双つの太陽、湖に沈み、影の伸ぶるは、カルコサなり。
奇しきなな、黒き星々の登る夜、奇しき月の巡る空よ。しかしなほも奇しきは、亡びしカルコサなり。
ヒアデスの歌ふ歌も、王の襤褸のはためきも、聞く者なきままに消え入りぬ。昏きカルコサにて。
我が魂の歌よ、我が声果つれば、汝も滅びん。歌われぬまま、流されぬ涙が乾き、消ゆるが如く。亡びしカルコサにて。

This was a lot to unpack. I tried to make it so it sounds poetic, sounds like a song sung outloud. There are definitely errors in my attempted translation, but that makes us human, doesn’t it

Here’s the original English version so you can prepare for whatever I wrote:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind 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.

Well, are you ready?

Cloud waves smash against the shore,
The twin suns, into the waters they sink.
The shadows lengthen, in Carcosa.

How enchanting are the black stars on the night sky,
How enchanting is the moon revolving the sky,
But what is more enchanting still, the Carcosa in ruins.

Sings the song of Hyades,
Flutters the tatters of the King,
As the listeners fade away, in dark Carcosa.

Sing my soul out, exhaust my voice, you are destroyed.
While unsung, the unswept tears dry away as you disappear.
In the ruins of Carcosa.

It did not hit as hard, huh. I definitely made a lot of mistakes here.

• I didn’t catch what the third paragraph wanted to describe about the unheard listeners or withering/fading away. It was rather unclear for me. There are limits to my language, haha.
• I also noticed that I didn’t catch the nuances, such as “Carcosa in ruins” compared to the original text of “Lost Carcosa”. Which I heard is very important to the story that Carcosa is a lost city, than a destroyed one.
• The last paragraph was also very blurry to me, even the English version is there. I still don’t really understand it.

Of course, the song may require some deeper knowledge of the book before full comprehension, so there are bound to be meaning mistakes in my wording, as I also tried to make it beautiful, while not being good enough. But I think it was an interesting topic that I wanted to write about. See you later, if I didn’t go crazy reading The King in Yellow.