as subjects create the world we see , then , but with how there is no stable , objective reality we can reach , or even perceive , and therefore no way of verifying our ideas , our preconceived notions , our perceptions . Hildred , when discussing the Play that drove him insane ( which is also titled The King in Yellow in these stories ), remarks that ‘ No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages , no doctrine promulgated , no convictions outraged ’, only that ‘ human nature could not bear the strain , nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked ’. The horror comes from the idea that there is something humanity cannot comprehend , and so it alludes to something , somewhere , outside , just beyond our horizon , to an objective reality . [ Twenty minutes of S staring straight ahead , caught in thought .] And so this horror of subjectivity comes with the horror of not being able to communicate —
[ S looks tired . Begins muttering to himself .] I think — I think there ’ s an idea of something beginning to form . I think … I
Richard Snowden-Leak
96 feel …
[ S spends a few hours writing away in a darkening room .]
S : Sorry . Just needed to collect my thoughts .
Now — I feel a little closer to this idea , that there is a horror manifesting itself not just through a reaction to Decadent literature and its conflation of art and life , and the fallibility of the self , but to the idea that there is something outside of us that binds everything , a truth , as it were . One thinker that might elucidate some of the more disturbing parts of King ( and hopefully the painting ) is Arthur Schopenhauer . Schopenhauer proposes that one can never find an objective reality , because ‘ The world is my representation ’. Schopenhauer goes on to say that one can never get past these representations , ‘ from the outside ’, and that ‘ no matter how much we look , we find nothing but images and names .’ On this painting , Hildred regarding himself indeed seems to echo this kind of idea , with him seeing only a world he is painting for himself .