HR#1 -- The Dedalus Book of French Horror" The 19th Century (ed.) Terry Hale

"...when the devil mixes himself up with our affairs, he is not easily shaken off."

-- from "The Invisible Eye," by Erckmann-Chatrian

1873982879

Dedalus, 1998

translated by Terry Hale and Liz Heron

361 pp

paperback

The first of the Halloween reads. 

One huge benefit of swimming out of the mainstream in my choice of books is that I occasionally come across collections like this one.  There are twenty-four stories included in this volume, nineteen of which, according to editor Terry Hale, are making their English translation debut here;  the other five by authors whose names may be more familiar are represented by somewhat lesser-known material.  The book is divided into three sections, encompassing "Frenetic Tales," "Contes Cruels," and "Contes Fantastiqes," and Hale notes that this book is "intended to demonstrate the breadth and range of French writing in relation to the strange and macabre."  He also notes that while "the French horror story of the nineteenth century may have freely requisitioned ideas gleaned from British, German and American authors,"  the writers here (and many others with works not found in this book, I'm sure) had been putting their own spin on them from the Romantics on through the writers of the fin-de-siècle:  

"Born in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Romantic writers of the 1820s and 30s brought to the genre narrative sophistication and their own set of macabre fears and anxieties concerning such matters as the death penalty, anatomical research, the cholera epidemic, infanticide, and man's inhumanity to man; the rise of spiritualism in the mid-century presented a fresh collection of moral problematics; finally, the end of the century, especially under the pioneering work in the discipline later to become known as psychology, witnessed a renewed fascination in diabolicism and morbid sexuality."  (35)

 So if you're looking for the standard horror fare, that's not what you're going to get here. That doesn't mean these stories aren't frightening, because they are, but in very different ways than one might expect. In some cases, all that's required is a bit of thought before the true, underlying horror actually hits you.

Now to the book, and while there will be no spoilers whatsoever, anyone who doesn't want even the briefest of descriptions ought to go read something else at this point.

Hale notes that "the first clearly recognisable development in the history of the French horror story" dates back to the 1820s, and this volume opens with six tales from the "école frénétique" a termed coined by Charles Nodier in 1821.   For me there are three standouts in this section: "A True Account of of the Travels of Claude Belissan, Clerk to the Public Prosecutor" by Eugène Sue,  "Solange," by Alexandre Dumas, and Xavier Forneret's "One Eye Between Two."  Sue's tale follows the exploits of a disgruntled man who feels the need to chuck civilization, return to his natural state, and raise himself to a "state of savagery."   This one is really good, with a great satirical and ironic ending that I never expected.  Dumas' entry occurs during the Reign of Terror, where "they guillotined thirty or forty persons a day," and is related by a loyal citizen who does what he can to protect the woman he knows only as Solange.  This one takes a weird, weird turn at the end when things  go horribly awry.  Forneret's very weird story is a tale of love, vengeance and revenge that takes place in Spain, with one of the most bizarre endings ever.  Yikes. The other tales here are   Frédéric Soulié's tale of revenge,  "The Lamp of Saint Juste;"   "Monsieur d'Argentière, Public Prosecutor," where the sting comes at the end, and  "The Covetous Clerk" by Alphonse Royer that has a delicious, ironic twist to look forward to.

French burial vault, from Pinterest

In the next section, "Contes cruels," the stories get a bit weirder. Considering that  Hale tells us that the "original impetus" for these sorts of tales was the "psychological insight" of Poe, I'm not surprised. Some though, seem to me to carry more of deSade's influence; sadly I can't explain since to tell is to ruin.   They're all very good, but I particularly enjoyed Edmund Haraucourt's "The Prisoner of His Own Masterpiece," and Catulle Mendès' "The Penitent." The Haraucourt story is probably the most Poe-like of all of the stories in this book,  revealed from the point of view of a man who knows and doesn't "disguise" the fact that  he's a "violent fellow." We soon discover though that he's  really freakishly weird and beyond perverse as well.  Mendès gives us the tale of a "little baroness" who goes to church and makes a confession that the priest may never forget.  I love Mendès'  fiction, and this is one of his best stories. He wrote a great scene in here with just one sentence:

"A sudden ray of sunshine bursting through a stained-glass window brought the face of the devil to life; and it would have been easy to believe that Christ's tempter paid the baroness the compliment of a smile."

In this story, enough said.   This section opens with "Dorci, or the Vagaries of Chance," written by The Marquis de Sade. Very tame considering it's deSade,  it is the tale of two brothers who couldn't be more different; for one of them "kindness will get the better of him." Charles Beaudelaire is up next with his "Mademoiselle Scalpel" which finds a man in the hands of a woman with a grotesque fantasy.  "The Astonishing Moutonnet Couple" by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam follows, in which we learn the secrets of happiness for  couple who were "a model of conjugal existence." It's not at all what you'd think -- ick. The next five stories all share a keen sense of irony as well, falling under the heading of black humor.   Jean Richepin's "Constant Guignard" is a twisty tale in which a Good Samaritan suffers through an early life of "unfortunate events" and then things just get worse, followed by a similar sort of story by Charles Cros called "The Hanged Man."  Jules Lermina gives us his "Monsieur Mathias" about which I can say absolutely nothing, while Leon Bloy's "A Burnt Offering" should leave you cringing and squirming by the time you reach the end. Then, the story I giggled my way through, Huysmans' "A Family Treat" which is pure Huysmans. I know that remark says basically nothing, but if you've read his work, you'll get it. Satire at its finest.

Guy de Maupassant, 1892, from Nice-Matin

To round out this anthology, we finish the book with the "Contes fantastiques."  According to Hale, it was E.T.A. Hoffman who was the "literary lion" here, introducing a "range of themes, ideas and narrative techniques" which "served to renew" the contes fantastique, which would continue to "remain in vogue" over the next seven decades. (31)  Frankly, the stories in this section aren't quite up to par with the ones preceding them, but there are still some really good ones to be found here.

Hands down the weirdest tale in this section is Guy de Maupassant's "Head of Hair," followed by Henri Rivière's "The Reincarnation of Doctor Roger."  Maupassant's story is not only disturbing, it's completely unsettling as we watch a man whose "madness, his obsession, was there in his head, relentlessly devouring him." The subject of this tale led a relatively "quiet existence" until he was thirty two, when his life changed in an instant with the purchase made in an antique shop. But wait until you get to the ending.   Rivière's contribution here centers around a man who feels that he must right a wrong from his past, but of course, it's not that simple.  This one can go one of two ways, and that's up to the reader.  As for the rest of the tales, we open with "Jacques Cazotte's Prophecy," as reported by La Harpe, in which Cazotte reveals not only that he is "able to foretell the future" but then goes about telling everyone their respective fates. It's okay, not earth-shattering. Charles Nodier's "The Story of Hélène Gillet" takes the reader back in time to the seventeenth century where a young woman is to be executed for a crime she may or may not have committed. The subtext is very loud here so it sort of lessens the impact of the supernatural aspect. de Nerval makes an appearance with "The Green Monster" which really isn't one of his best, but still worth reading. It all starts with a police sergeant's desire to win the girl of his dreams, which he does, but to the very strange detriment of both.  The next story is from the pens of the duo Erckmann-Chatrian, "The Invisible Eye," in which suicides lead a man to discover the truth of what actually happens in a certain green chamber of a particular inn.  This one's just plain fun. "Mademoiselle Dafné" by Théophile Gautier follows, very gothic in tone, complete with secret underground passages and nefarious plots.  There's much more to this story, though, and it's always a pleasure to read Gautier because his writing is magnificent and he has quite a bit to say. Last but not least is Jean Lorrain's "One Possessed" which I think might have been an earlier, much shorter  version of his Monsieur de Phocas, since the stories are nearly identical.  Now that's a book that should not be missed for sure.

If you read this anthology with the idea in the back of your head that, as Hale says here, "horror fiction is a vehicle for exploring forbidden themes," then this collection completely adheres and is quite successful.  As I said, it's not your run-of-the-mill sort of horror story anthology and while not every story worked for me, it certainly gives an insight into the sort of anxieties that dominated over several decades of  nineteenth-century France, and in that sense, it also works well as a coherent collection.  I'll also say that I have not been disappointed in any Dedalus publication so far, and this is yet another to hold a special place in my home library.  Highly, highly recommended, but beware: reading this book increased my tbr pile as I added works by different authors represented here.

The Other Side, by Alfred Kubin -- prepare to be disturbed

9781910213032
Dedalus, 2014
originally published 1909 as Die andere Seite
translated by Mike Mitchell
248 pp

paperback (read earlier)

"...it all had a touch of the madhouse." 

Imagine this: one very ordinary day, you're sitting at home and suddenly a man appears at your door with a proposal that, should you accept, will change your life completely.   That's exactly how this very disturbing novel begins.  How it ends I won't say, but imagine any  dream you've ever had that starts out being sort of quirky and then rapidly devolves into a nightmare from which you struggle to awaken, and that describes this novel in a nutshell.  Sort of.

Alfred Kubin is famous for his art, which in illustration form has also graced the pages of many writers' works, including Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Poe, and Nerval. While there are a number of places anyone can turn to to look at his work, it's obvious that Kubin was no ordinary artist.  As author Jeff VanderMeer has stated, Kubin "allowed his subconscious to lead his creative expression," and  Karen Rosenberg wrote in a 2008 article in the New York Times that "Kubin's drawings map the shadowy corners of the unconscious,"  and I can say that the same is definitely true regarding The Other Side. This is no ordinary book by any stretch of the imagination.

In Kubin's 1917 autobiography (with the great title Alfred Kubin's Autobiography)  he says the following:

"The scraps of memory -- that is all they are -- that stay with us after a dream seem illogical only to superficial observers, on whom the splendid power and beauty of this kingdom are lost." (xli)

This quotation works perfectly as an introduction to his novel The Other Side, in which the unnamed narrator of this tale finds himself living in a strange place known as "The Dream Realm."  Indeed, those who are accepted into the Dream Realm are "predestined to do so, either by birth or later experiences," and there is a "strict selection process for people who are invited to take part in our community."   The inhabitants have "abnormally sharp sense perceptions," which allow them to experience "relationships in the outside world which do not exist for the average person;" and it is these "non-existent things" which "form the unfathomable foundation of the world which the Dream people never forget for one moment."

The Dream Realm is the creation of the narrator's old school friend  Claus Patera, whom he hasn't seen in sixty years or so.  They had been "wild hooligans" together, but eventually they'd lost touch. Now, after a marriage and a career as an "artist and illustrator," the narrator is handed a note from Patera's agent inviting him to come and live in Patera's country.  Patera, it seems, had been fortunate enough to have come into "possession of what is probably the largest fortune in the world," with access to "fairly inexhaustible resources," which allowed to him to realize an idea he'd had to "found a dream realm," the present population of which was 65,000 people.  It is

"... shut off from the rest of the world by a surrounding wall and protected against any attack by strong fortifications. There is a single gate for entry and exit, facilitating strict control of people and goods. The Dream Realm is a sanctuary for all those who are unhappy with modern civilisation and contains everything necessary to cater for their bodily needs."

Patera's agent goes on to say that it hadn't been Patera's intention to "create a utopia, a kind of model state for of the future." Instead, it is a place, as the narrator and readers will discover, where the idea of progress is completely rejected.    Our narrator's first thought is that he's been confronted by a madman, but eventually he accepts Patera's invitation and he and his wife make their way to the Dream Realm, which lies hidden somewhere in Asia. The final step of the journey to the city of Pearl finds them entering a tunnel, in which the narrator was suddenly

"...assailed by a sensation of horror such as had never felt before"

 and indeed,  what starts out as  an "adventure story," as the author refers to this book in his autobiography,  quickly turns into the stuff of nightmares.

 While it takes them some time to get used to their new home and its quirks and the strange occurrences there, our narrator begins to gradually become  "so accustomed to the improbable that nothing seemed out of the ordinary."  What he also notices though is that while the eye of Patera (read the bureaucracy) is everywhere, he himself remains hidden and inapproachable, sort of echoing the experiences of K. in Kafka's The Castle.  [As a sidebar, according to a 2014 article in The New York Review of Books, Christopher Benfey notes that Kubin's book is "widely assumed (though on scant evidence)" to have influenced Kafka's work.]

the author, from the blog Alfred Kubin 

Kubin  wrote The Other Side during a period in which he was unable to draw, a time which he says "filled me with alarm," and "in order to do something, no matter what, to unburden myself," he decided to write.  He finished this book in twelve weeks; within another four weeks he'd also illustrated it.  As he notes,

"During its composition I achieved the mature realization that it is not only in the bizarre, exalted, or comic moments of our existence that the highest values lie, but that the painful, the indifferent, and the incidental-commonplace contain these same mysteries,"

and that this is "the principle meaning of this book."  This idea plays out time and time again throughout the story, although I'll leave it to others to discover how.

I loved this book. It is so very different, so far out of the realm of normal; it is the very stuff I crave and go out of my way to look for.   It is extremely rare that I read a book that affects me like this one did,  but it did me in. When I find something out of the ordinary like The Other Side, I tend to get sucked in completely and have trouble getting out until the very last page. I wasn't too far in before the Moleskine notebook and the pens came out;  two notebooks later it was over. The first time through this novel I was shaken, my nerves were working overtime, and  I couldn't think straight for a while after having finished it. Being inside Kubin's head is a dangerous and very scary place to find oneself, even if it's only for the duration of the book.

Jeff VanderMeer (from the link above) says that this novel has a "cult status," and I can see why.  Reading it also validates my theory that there is most definitely greatness and wisdom to be found in a lot of what's old. Granted, this one is a tough and demanding read on several levels, but thinking people who really want to be stretched in their reading will most certainly appreciate this book, disturbing though it may be.

***

Ad Blankestijn has an excellent blog called Splendid Labyrinths, where there is a great discussion about how to possibly approach/read this book.  

The Green Face, by Gustav Meyrink

0946626928
Dedalus Books, 2004
originally published 1916
translated by Mike Mitchell
224 pp

paperback

This is one trippy book, and that's putting it mildly.  It is certainly classic Meyrink, though, and anyone who's read his The Golem would have to agree that the two books were definitely the work of the same person.  Once again turning to legend as a basis for his book, this time Meyrink uses the story of the Wandering Jew, and as in The Golem, he also incorporates several different sorts of esoteric and occult elements within the text.

Fortunatus Hauberrisser finds himself in Amsterdam.  Meyrink's Amsterdam is now "flooded with people of all nations," since the war was now over and people are there either hoping for "permanent refuge in the Netherlands," or they've made it a stopover while they consider where to go next.  Hauberriser finds himself going into a shop called Chidher Green's Hall of Riddles.  While waiting for the assistant to finish her phone call, he falls into "a deep sleep," after which he awakens and is spoken to by the old Jewish man who owns the shop. The old man had a face "like nothing he had ever seen before," with "eyes like dark chasms," and skin "a greenish olive colour." The face continues to haunt him long after he leaves the shop -- and  Hauberisser doesn't know it, but his sighting of this face will launch Hauberriser on a quest, not just to find the old man again as he wanders through Amsterdam, but also for the truth.  And, since it's Meyrink writing here, we know that his search will involve initiating Hauberriser and the other characters that he encounters into the journey to a higher plane of existence and spiritual knowledge.  However, there are major obstacles that Hauberriser and his fellow seekers will have to overcome before they can achieve their goals, none the least of which  is a Zulu bent on murder and destruction.

I'm sorry to keep comparing this book to The Golem, but it's really hard not to.  In both, elements of alchemy, Kabbalah, Buddhism, mysticism, and other esoteric beliefs find their way onto the pages; secret knowledge is given and the recurring idea is the way to transcendence of the physical self, and indeed of the physical world, while keeping one foot in both.  Here, though, a new element creeps into the story, a dark ending that is clearly a reflection of the anxieties of the time -- I mean, it is 1916; World War I is still going -- and the end, which many readers have noted as "apocalyptic" ... but I think I'll leave it there for now.

Meyrink's commentary on civilization is excellent here -- there's a scene that takes place in a "mixture of music-hall and restaurant" on Amsterdam's Nes that has Hauberriser shaking his head once the audience changes to "the same cosmopolitan would-be society" who have come to watch the most bizarre show.  Hauberisser is dumbfounded at what he witnesses both on stage and in the audience, noting that

"...a mask had been cast aside that had never concealed anything but intentional or unintentional hypocrisy, lack of vitality positing as virtue or ascetic monstrosities conceived in the mind of a monk!" 

He goes on to say that "a diseased organism" had been "taken for culture; now it had collapsed, laying bare the decay within."  And also, as one might expect at this time in history, Meyrink  tackles nationalism, demagoguery, and racism (although strangely, he does use a racial slur more than once to describe the Zulu so you've been warned).

Frankly, The Green Face isn't quite as good as The Golem, but I'd certainly rate it much higher than his The Angel at the West Window.  It's another novel that is NFE (not for everyone), but it's one I certainly recommend to anyone who is already of fan of Meyrink who may not have read this book yet.  It's another out-of-the-box read for people who enjoy pondering what they've just read, tailor made for someone like me.

***

for an awesome perspective on this novel, check out this blog post at Zen Throwdown. 

an earlier read, but Halloweenworthy for sure: The Dark Domain, by Stefan Grabinski

Stefan Grabinski

Since Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936)  isn't exactly a household name, I think a brief bit of  background is relevant here.   While you can get some info about him from Wikipedia and from The Stefan Grabinski Website, thanks to a post at Writers No One Reads, I discovered a bit more from Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, who wrote a piece about Grabinski and The Dark Domain in the Asylum Annual of 1995 (Asylum Arts Publishing):

"While a child, he contracted tuberculosis. His health remained fragile throughout his life, and this condition no doubt played a part in the formation of his personality, which was gloomy and introspective.  By the time he had finished his education and embarked on a career as a teacher, observers describe him as already pale and gaunt, always dressed in black, a man apart in his own inner realm, and regarding his surroundings obliquely. 

His literary aspirations announced themselves early, and from the first his work was marked by metaphysical speculation and a concern with the mystery of existence. By 1909, Grabinski had self-published a slim volume of stories, all trace of which has disappeared, but with which his course was set; these first macabre compositions already demonstrating his preoccupation with issues of philosophical conjecture." (143)

Grabinski went on to write On the Hill of Roses (1918) - which I own but haven't read yet; later The Motion Demon came out in 1919 followed by 1920's  The Deranged Pilgrim, The Book of Fire and An Uncanny Tale in 1922. By 1926, his writing turned more toward novels and plays rather than just short stories.  He apparently "idolized" Poe, was a recluse, and was, as is very articulately revealed in his stories,

"thoroughly absorbed with what he perceived as the dark, hidden forces which permeate and propel human life and seem to deny the implied orderliness of our hyper-rationalistic, overly-explained, neatly categorized and patly-understood world."  (142)

 Grabinski was "opposed to any notion of mechanism or pre-determined order at work in the universe," and, according to Alter-Gilbert, his "fiction is a swirling cauldron of fetishes and obsessions, a heady brew of mania, hysteria, and dementia."  In short, he writes exactly the sort of stuff I've become addicted to reading, and I've become a total fangirl now.

So now without any more information that probably no one but me cares about, we come to

The Dark Domain

9781909232044

Dedalus, 2013

originally published 1918

translated and edited by Miroslaw Lipinski

153 pp

paperback

"And if, indeed, there is nothing beyond the corner? Who can affirm if beyond so-called 'reality' anything exists at all?"

There are eleven stories in this book, along with an introduction by the editor & translator Miroslaw Lipinski as well as an afterword by Madeleine Johnson. In a word, it is excellent; there is not one bad story in this entire book.  In Grabinski, I've found another writer whose work is just plain genius.  

Perhaps the best way to describe what's in this book is by quoting Brian Stableford, who in his News of the Black Feast and Other Reviews notes that Grabinski's

"... characters are prone to haunting themselves, unwittingly dislodging fragments of themselves that become independently incarnate." (79-80)

While that's not exactly the case in every story here, it's still an observation that absolutely hits the nail on the head.  

It would a shame to spoil anyone's first-time enjoyment of these stories, so as usual, I'm not going to reveal much about any of them, so here's the usual stripped-down version. The truth is though that I could spend hours and hours talking about this book. 

"Fumes" begins this collection,  with a young engineer who is lost in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, having been separated from his colleagues. He comes to an old inn, where he shares a space with the innkeeper, his daughter, and an old woman who, strangely enough,  tend to make separate appearances but aren't seen together at the same time  ... Yow. This one is amazing. Someone could write a thesis on this story alone.    "The Motion Demon" appears in both The Dark Domain and Grabinski's book of the same title. Here a man makes several train trips,  "unusual journeys under the influence of cosmic and elemental forces," meeting up with a strange train conductor.  "The Area" is one of my favorite stories in the book, about a writer who has lost his ability to write over the last twelve years, and so "removes himself from the public eye." As he has found, he needs "greater artistic material" with which to express himself since "Already the written word was not enough for him."  Isolated in a "solitary residence," he starts paying attention to the abandoned villa across the street for hours at a time, when one day someone starts paying attention to him. Oh my god. What a great story. And I do mean great. 

Coming up to "A Tale of the Gravedigger," we move more firmly into the horror zone. The story begins with the discovery that there may be something very wrong with the grave monuments created by Giovanni Tossati of Foscara, who also doubles as gravedigger and wears a gypsum mask which "adhered so hermetically to his face, that it wasn't noticed it all"-- until it was. "Szamota's Mistress," about which I'm not saying a thing, since the ending is a bit of a shocker when you actually stop and consider what's going on here. It's also one of the most eerie stories in the book, even creepier after a second read.  Next up is "The Wandering Train."  Railwaymen have a "strange and puzzling" problem involving a train, "an intruder without patent or sanction," that turns up everywhere out of nowhere.  It's been a secret kept from the public until one day ...  

 "Strabismus" captures the plight of a man who is locked in a strange battle with his "living antithesis," while "Vengeance of the Elementals" finds a fire chief whose "long-term study of fires and their circumstances" gives way to a "more personal" battle with a "spiteful destructive essence that had to be reckoned with."  Up next is another excellent story, "In the Compartment," where a "timid dreamer" changes into someone "unrecognizable" the minute he steps into a train, as his newlywed traveling companions will soon discover. 

"Saturnin Sektor" finds the author of a manuscript that he's never shown another living soul being dogged by someone who "knows it by heart, inside and out," while the last story, "The Glance,"finds  a doctor who comes to the conclusion that  "everything he looked at and perceived was a creation of his mind."  But is it a case of "hallucination caused by overwork," or does everything he thinks about actually become a physical reality?  

While I latched on to Grabinski purely by accident, from now on any new translations of his work are going to find a permanent home on my shelves.  He's that good.  Anyone who is serious about dark fiction, literary horror and keen insight into human nature and the darkness of the human mind should not miss this book.  Again, I wonder how many other books by authors like this are out there, just waiting for me to find them.  

diving into decadence -- Monsieur de Phocas, by Jean Lorrain

1873982151
Dedalus/Hippocrene, 1994
originally published 1901
translated by Francis Amery
270 pp

paperback

Monsieur de Phocas took me about ten days to read, a) because it is my  introduction to fin-de-siècle decadent literature and I wanted to get a feel for literature of the period (I'd read Huysmans' Lá-Bas, but that was some time ago) and b) because it is chock full of references to literature, to paintings, to sculpture, etc., that I'd never encountered before, so I felt compelled to look them all up. To be very honest, Monsieur de Phocas probably isn't where I should have started with literature of this period, because while doing a bit of digging about this novel, I discovered that in the opinions of some people, Lorrain's novel is somewhat "derivative" of the work of Huysmans' A Rebours, which will be my next choice of fin-de-siècle literature.  I suppose it doesn't really matter in the long run, since I loved this book -- if I don't know what I'm missing yet, well, that's okay. It certainly whet my appetite for more, and I've been buying books left and right to try to increase my knowledge of this type of literature.

The beginning of this story is related by an unnamed narrator, a writer who had written a tribute to an "engraver and his artistry," and who is visited one day by the Duc de Fréneuse.  After introducing himself  he reveals to the narrator that he is tortured and haunted by a "Demon" within him, haunting and torturing him ever since his adolescence and that

"Even though I may seem to you to be deluded, monsieur, I have suffered for many years the effects of a certain blue and green something." 

He also reveals that it is a certain "gaze" that he seeks --

"the gaze of Dahgut, the daughter of the king of Ys. It is also the gaze of Salomé. Above all, it is the limpid green clarity of the gaze of Astarté: that Astarté who is the demon of Lust and also the Demon of the Sea." 

The duc informs him that  he is about to leave for a "long absence," a last journey in which he is "exiling" himself from France; at the same  time he also tells him that "The Duc de Fréneuse is dead; that there is no longer anyone but Monsieur de Phocas."  Finally we become aware of exactly what has brought Phocas there: he wants to leave with him his manuscript to which he has consigned

"the first impressions of my illness: the unconscious temptations of a man of today, sunk in occultism and neurosis."

Phocas desires to go to Asia, where he hopes he might be able to find a cure for his obsessions -- he has a need "to cry out to someone" the "pangs" of his anguish:

"I need to know that here in Europe there is someone who pities me, and would rejoice in my recovery if ever Heaven should grant it to me."

The unnamed narrator agrees, and the rest of this book is comprised of  Phocas' manuscript, free of narrator interjections, related in chronological order. The narrative goes on to tell of his repulsion of Paris society, for example, after a performance at the Olympia, he recounts the "marionettes" in the audience, including "the banal figures of the males" and "the artificial elephantiasis of wives, sculpted in jet." Taking up the theme of artificiality, he notes that he has a fascination with masks and masquerades, to the point of wondering if he'll be haunted by masks since he seems to see them everywhere, from his own peers in society down into the lower ranks of the population.   However, he discovers that he is not alone -- that there is another man, an English painter named Claudius Ethal, who also sees the masks and is haunted by them; he also "sees through the mask of every human face," and it is here that this book starts really taking off.    Ethal promises a "cure" but things begin to change when a second person, Sir Thomas Welcome, comes into the picture.  And where things go from there, well...

Salomé and the Head of John 

The real problem I'm having with trying to collect my thoughts about this novel is that there's so much here to think about; so much here I want to talk about, so much I really would love to share.  I didn't go and check, but there's enough in this one volume to feed several PhD dissertations so trying to come up with a focus here is really tough. Masks, narcissism, misogyny, eyes and the "gaze," instincts/nature, death and beauty, Paris itself, an underlying but to me obvious subtext of homosexuality  -- there's just a LOT going on here, so I'll leave it to readers to discover how these all help to shape this novel and how they play out thematically from beginning to end.  I would caution anyone who wants to read this book not to gloss over the art, the mythology or the literary references here -- there are reasons they are there and in my opinion, their importance culminates in a visit made by Phocas to the Musée Gustave Moreau, suggested, strangely enough, separately by both Ethal and by Welcome.

There is just so very much to say about this dark, dark novel that like Ethal's bizarre hold on Phocas, will certainly cast a spell on its reader.  It is one of those books that refuses to let go, one that gets down deep into the psyche, making me wonder at several points where this story was taking me and sort of being afraid to move on because it was getting very deep into Phocas' head, which trust me, is a very scary place to be.   Once again I fail to do this book justice -- it is another one that absolutely must be experienced on one's own. And I loved it. Very much recommended, but certainly not for everyone -- it is not an easy read on many levels.

Che vuoi? That is the question: The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte

9781907650055
Dedalus European Classics, 2011
originally published 1772 as Le Diable Amoureux
109 pp

paperback

After a short bout of food poisoning I'm back with The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte, who (as the story goes), predicted whom among his friends would be meeting Madame Guillotine as the horrors of the French Revolution unfolded; sadly, his prescience didn't include himself.

I was very much looking forward to reading this short book, but when I opened it and saw this illustration,




I knew instantly that  I'd seen these words before ("che vuoi?" -- what do you wish?)  so after some research online,  I went to my library of stuff no one else would ever read but me and dug out my copy of Écrits, by Jacques Lacan (1981) and sure enough, there they were.  It's not like you need to get Lacan's theory to understand The Devil in Love,but Lacan's work offers a clue as to how to approach the story. I'm a lazy person at times, so instead of rereading the whole shebang, I found a link to an online intro on his stuff.  Distilling it down from that page, what's relevant here is the idea of

“man’s desire is Other’s desire”: the subject desires only insofar as it experiences the Other itself as desiring, as the site of an unfathomable desire, as if an opaque desire is emanating from him or her. The other not only addresses me with an enigmatic desire, it also confronts me with the fact that I myself do not know what I really desire, with the enigma of my own desire."

That absolutely put Cazotte's work into perspective for me here, but since someone might want to read this little gem of a book and may not agree with how I see it, I'll leave it there for now.

The Devil in Love is narrated by the main character, Don Alvaro, a Spanish captain in the king's guard at Naples. When his company ran out of money for gambling and chasing women, they would "philosophize in our own quarters," and one evening, the subject of conversation turned to "the Cabbala and cabbalists."  Most of the group agreed it was "a mass of absurdities, a source of knavery, fit to dupe the credulous and to amuse children," but  the men eventually cleared out, except for Don Alvaro  and an older Flemish guy, Soberano, whose talk on the subject interests Don Alvaro enough that they meet up again.  Soberano leads Don Alvaro to believe that he can "give the spirits orders," and the young captain tells his friend that his "dearest wish" is to do the same.  He is told that it will take at least two years for the "necessary preparation", but Don Alvaro eventually gets his way after bragging that if he met the Devil himself, he'd pull "his devilish ears."  He is given the opportunity, told what to do, and sure enough, he summons the devil himself in the form of a camel's head, who on being summoned asks "che vuoi?." Our hero is petrified, but somehow manages to get over his terror enough to start commanding the Devil himself; his first order is that the camel transform into a spaniel.  This is only the beginning of several transformations that occur in this book; the spaniel then transforms into a young page named Biondetto who becomes Don Alvaro's servant.  Biondetto eventually becomes Biondetta, a beautiful blonde who has to the power to thoroughly distract Don Alvaro.  But let's not lose sight of the fact that the title is "The Devil in Love..."

However you choose to read this very short book, it is a delight from beginning to end; the ending itself leaves much pause for thought and actually sent me back to the start for a second read.  The short of it is that questions of gender identity, sexual desire, reality vs. nonreality, and much more  make their way through this tale; however, it's also a book that's just a fun read that I can definitely recommend.

This coming year I plan to spend a LOT of time with Dedalus classics -- this is just the first of many.

The Golem, by Gustav Meyrink

9781873982914
Dedalus, 2000
originally published as Der Golem, 1915
translated by Mike Mitchell
262 pp

paperback

"The soul is not a single unity; that is what it is destined to become, and that is what we call 'immortality.' Your soul is composed of many 'selves,' just as a colony of ants is composed of many single ants."

I read The Golem with a group, which in my opinion, is a very good way to read this novel.  I spent a full two weeks with this book, dragging in other books to use as a reference when I got stuck, in particular my old, raggy copy of  Gershom Scholem's wonderful and classic Kabbalah which came in very handy.  Kabbalah is only one element of the mystical in The Golem, though; as you start this novel you're already into Buddhism, then you get into theosophy, Hindu mysticism and whatever else Meyrink was into -- it's all here.  But the mystical has a purpose -- it is all about spiritual reintegration and self awareness,  and that is most definitely the subject of this novel. Then again, it's a novel of many possible interpretations, so mine may not match anyone else's.

I'm not going to go too much into plot here, but the story focuses on an unnamed narrator who is dreaming/hallucinating  and whose mind makes his way into the body of a gem-cutter named Athanasius Pernath. The truth is that our narrator has lost his memory and he finds himself as Pernath after putting on a hat he had found earlier at church. Pernath's name is written on the headband in gold letters -- and the careful reader will see that this is the first instance of the power of the written word in this novel,  an important theme that follows the story here.  Pernath is in his apartment when he is approached by a strange man who hands him a book that needs repairing -- as it is happens, it is called the "Book of Ibbur," and it is the "I" on the front which needs to be fixed.  Issuing forth from this book in a metaphorical way are all of the important components of Pernath's life that he must discover before the "I" can be repaired, but as things progress, he comes to understand that this is not something he can really do alone. The ghetto's archivist, Hillel, takes Pernath under his wing, and initiates him into the mysticism of Kabbalah (mixed with the other practices I've already mentioned).

   The action in this book takes place in the Prague ghetto, where it is also rumored that the Golem lives in an inaccessible room with no doors; it also known that the Golem returns every thirty-three years in times of spiritual crisis. It seems that this is one of those times;  Pernath will cross paths with the Golem more than once as he attempts his spiritual journey, and along the way he will fall in love, will be tempted by forces he doesn't quite understand, and act as a friend to many in need, all the while trying to remember his past. It is also a book about memory and forgetting, and where better played out than in the streets of the Jewish Quarter of the Prague Ghetto? 

I could go on and on and on about this novel, because frankly, I absolutely loved it.  After I read the book and let things gel in my own head, I looked at several reviews of this novel where the reader had his or her own take on things; rarely did any two agree.  But I do think that it's interesting that Meyrink wrote a book about a man who, because of the influence of outside forces beyond his control, was separated from parts of his memory -- which seems to reflect the story of the upheavals in the Jewish quarter of the Prague Ghetto, and indeed reflects some of the  modernist concerns of the time.  Another thing -- Meyrink may come across as a bit of a woo-woo writer to some people with his intense focus on mysticism here, but considering the fact that psychoanalysis was just barely getting started at this time, it's interesting that Meyrink's focus here is on the importance of connecting with one's self/soul/identity to achieve one's own "salvation" so to speak. There's so much more I could say but well, time and all that.

The Golem is a lovely book, and I'm so very happy to have read it.  I can't think of enough superlatives to describe this book, but  Meyrink's writing here is absolutely beautiful, and this book has led me to others he's written that I plan to read in the very near future.  One thing, though...if you're getting into this novel thinking it's going to be about a monster, or that it's a horror novel, forget it. That's just not the case here.  It's a story about identity in crisis, much more than anything else.