Snuggly Tales of Hashish and Opium (ed.) Brian Stableford

 "The fay of opium is a mistress who refuses herself at first, but soon lavishes her lovers with the most intoxicating caresses."

--- Jane de La Vaudère, "Parisian Orgies"

9781645250401

Snuggly Books, 2020

291 pp

paperback

read in December

Prior to buying this book, it was the back-cover blurb that sold me, promising a "hallucinogenic sampling of psychotropic fashionability and fin-de-siècle exoticism."  Couple that with the star-studded table of contents and the fact that it was edited by Brian Stableford, it was a no-brainer -- I had to read it.   

That promise was definitely kept, and my god, I reveled in this book from first page to last. First, the selection of stories is  excellent, and second, Stableford's extensive scholarship and knowledge is beyond compare.  This isn't the first book  he's edited which  I've read pen in hand, iPad at the ready, and I always find something either in his introductions or notes that sends me scuttling through the internet.  

There is no bad story at all to be found here, and the "sampling" includes not only Hashish and Opium, but also those who engage in other hallucinogens of choice.  My personal favorites begin with two stories by Theophile Gautier, "The Club of Hashishins" and "The Opium Pipe," which open this anthology.  The first, as is explained in the introduction, borrows  "extensively from Hoffman" and presents 

"within the context of a hallucination a brief tribute to the extravagant fringe of the French literary and visual imagination."

I couldn't help myself -- Gautier's drug-induced encounters and dreams made me laugh out loud, as did Charles Newill's "The Club of Hilarants," in which a man gets his comeuppance after rejecting a suitor's offer for his niece's hand in marriage.  The mood changes from humorous after X.B. Saintine's "The Doctor's Hallucinations: A Moving Terrain. The Danae Delusions" with Marcel Schwob's "The Portals of Opium," in which curiosity (and opium) lead a man with "a desire for strange experience" to become "lost -- as wretched as Job."  Speaking of exoticism, you can't do better than   "Opium and Smara"  by Jean Lorrain which I'd read before (although it was a great, decadent pleasure to read them again),  but Jane de La Vaudère's "Parisian Orgies," my favorite tale in this book, exemplifies it.   The description of the "great hall of the Moulin Bleu," for example, stopped me in my tracks with some of the most descriptive prose to be found in this anthology:

"There were Hindu Pyres there, surrounded by byaderes with gauze langoutis, tragic mourners and Brahmin sacrificers. Egyptian houses, boats of flowers, gallant guinguettes, Byzantine Palaces and prehistoric grottoes offered women of all colors, all sellers of lust. The Moloch of Salammbo reared up in a corner, gigantic and terrifying, and the faint sounds of kisses departed from niches where cardboard gods raised their murderous arms. The priestesses of amour, always ready for sweet sacrifices, only had to disturb their jewels to offer their flesh to caresses..."

but that is nothing compared to her descriptions of what  follows at the "rendezvous of the Ladybird" cabaret.  According to the editor, this story "first appeared as three chapters in the novel Les Androgynes, roman passionel," in 1903, later appearing in Snuggly's The Demi-Sexes and the Androgynes, which after reading this story, I immediately pulled from my shelves onto the physical tbr pile.    The last story I'll mention is also delightfully decadent and bizarre, "The Night of Hashish and Opium" by Maurice Magre, which begins with a woman in India encountering three bad omens before undertaking a strange encounter at the Pagoda of Chillambaram.  

The remainder of these excellent stories are as follows:

"The Double Room" by Charles Beaudelaire

"The Opium Smoker's Dream," by Pompon

"The Malay," by Jean Richepin

"The Green God," by Gabriel de Lautrec

"The Phantom of Opium," by Louis Latourette

"Telepathy," by Theo Varlet

"The Opium Den," by Louy de Lluc

"The Initiation," by Frederic Boutet

"Dropping in on Anika," by Victor Margueritte

The only downside of reading this book, is that it is yet another  that needs to come with a warning label, as it caused me to pick up five more books even before I'd finished it.  Of these, four were from Black Coat Press and were edited or adapted by Brian Stableford: 

The Second Life, by X.B. Saintine 

 The Crazy Corner, by Jean Richepin 

Weird Fiction in France: A Showcase Anthology of its Origins and Development 

 The Sacred Fire, by Gabriel de Lautrec 

while number five, Claude Farrere's  Black Opium: Ecstasy of the Forbidden (1904) is a reprint of the 1974 edition, from Ronin Publishing (2016).   The toll on my wallet would have been much worse except for the fact that I already own several books mentioned in this one, a number from Snuggly books, some from Black Coat Press, and a couple from Dedalus.  

I get that French decadence is not for everyone, but it certainly is something I love, and this book is no exception.  Truth be told, I could read this book over and over for days on end -- it's that good, an experience of sheer reading bliss.  

The Double Star and Other Occult Fantasies, by Jane de la Vaudère

9781943813643
Snuggly Books, 2018
translated by Brian Stableford
242 pp

paperback

"Those who dream by day have knowledge of a host of things that will remain forever unknown to those who only dream by night. Visions are strewn with fulgurant lightning flashes that, at times, unveil eternity for us and permit us to regain a few scraps of the terrible mystery." 



What would we do without Brian Stableford? The man is a lean, mean translating machine, and he has an uncanny knack for uncovering the best work by heretofore unknown authors.  I actually read The Double Star and Other Occult Fantasies some time ago, but recently when someone I know online said he was currently reading it, I decided that I would give it a second read.  I'm so glad I did. It was time.

In his introduction, Brian Stableford shares what little there is to know about Jane de La Vaudère, suggesting that  owing to her family's social status, when as a child she lost both of her parents she was sent to a convent along with her sister to be raised and educated until she could later be married off.   Born Jeanne Scrive, after leaving the convent, she married a military surgeon named Camille Gaston Crapez, who inherited  the Chateau de la Vaudère in Sarthe and began calling himself Crapez de La Vaudère [If anyone is at all interested, there is an interesting (French) blog post in which the author, looking for genealogical information, discovers Jane de la Vaudère quite by accident while researching the Crapez family in Parigné-l'Ėveque].  Before her death in 1908, she had worked as an artist, a poet, a playwright, a novelist, and writer of short stories.  As Stableford also notes,

"a Poesque fascination with what the American writer called 'The Imp of the Perverse' seems to have been a constant feature in the artistry of La Vaudere's literary endeavour, and perhaps her life as well, if what seem to be echoes of her own sentiments in her work really are revealing.  That element of her work made her a significant writer in the development of modern horror fiction, although she is not mentioned in any reference book on the subject." 

Let me repeat:   "a significant writer in the development of modern horror fiction,"   yet her work remains relatively unknown.  I say, read this book and you'll want to read everything she's ever written.

my photo, back-cover image

 In these tales,  as quoted from "The Dream of Myses," the final story in this collection,

 "The passions ... all flow from amour, the fundamental law of the world." 

They do not, however, necessarily remain earthbound or cease at death; the obsessive desire for a love which continues beyond this earthly realm (and the consequences thereof)  is the essence of this book.  These stories encompass reincarnation,  reanimation, astral projection, hypnotism, chimeras, mysticism, dreams and more, with all but the opening story, "Emmanuel's Centenary," entrenched in elements of the erotic and the sexual. 

I'm not going to go into any detail at all about any of the nine stories in this volume; they are truly best discovered by the reader with no knowledge ahead of time.    To say that the stories in this book are excellent does not quite do them the justice they deserve.  They are  delicious, sublimely written,  decadent and dark, and offer a look at "the scraps of the terrible mystery" as they "unveil eternity." I seriously cannot praise this book enough.  Patience may be required but you will certainly be rewarded for your effort many times over. 

Exemplary Departures, by Gabrielle Wittkop, to close out 2018

9781939663139
Wakefield Press, 2015
originally published 1995
translated by Annette David
157 pp

paperback, read in December.



In the translator's postscript, Annette David says of this book that here

"we have at least five spectacular -- contingent or planned -- ways to make one's exit from the world of the living."  

It sounds bizarre to say this, but Exemplary Departures, even with its focus on death, is a beautiful book, one that should not be missed by readers of dark fiction, especially in the macabre zone,  who appreciate superb writing.  Wittkop, again quoting from the translator, was

"drawn to the realm of a decadent romantisme noir of previous centuries, and to writers of a scandalous reputation," 

including Poe, de Sade, Lautréamont, Mandiargues and Huysmans.  The back-cover blurb also reveals that she

 "spins these tales with her trademark macabre elegance and chilling humor, maneuvering in an uncertain space between dark Romanticism, Gothic Expressionism, and Sadistic cruelty." 

While most of these stories carry a streak of cruelty, there is a touch of dark humor to be found in them, as well as a sadness that permeates each one to the point where it's difficult not to engage in a certain amount of empathy for her subjects, four of which were real people who met with strange, untimely ends.  One of these, while never named, will be clearly and instantly recognizable once the story starts and the literary and biographical references start flying. I won't spoil it for you, but it is one of the best stories in this book although I truly enjoyed them all.

Five "exemplary departures" are found here, and so as not to spoil things and leave the pleasure of discovery to other readers, I won't say too much about them.  First up is "Mr. T's Last Secrets," based on the real-life Jim Thompson (not the author), once known as "the most famous American in Asia,"

"ex-architect, retired army officer, one-time spy, designer, silk merchant, and renowned collector of antiques"

also known as the "Thai Silk King," who simply vanished in 1967, leaving behind "his cigarettes and above all his pillbox..."   In the search for Thompson,  "soothsayers, clairvoyants, bomohs, Buddist Ascetics, sorcerers, and charlatans" all had an opinion as to where he might be, but I will say that none of them could have ever guessed what had happened to him in Wittkop's reimagining of his disappearance.   A much more stunning story is told in "Idalia on the Tower," set in the Rhineland of Germany in 1851.   I knew this one was going to be great right away since it started with an old legend involving an invocation made by Scots "when caught up in a catastrophe," before proceeding to whet the appetite with a hint of the

"catastrophic situation that  that Miss Idalia Dubb at the age of seventeen finds herself in, her agony and her death, would also be self-provoked, by her little foot in its fine ankle boot as well as by tacit betrayal."

"Idalia on the Tower" is just sheer writing excellence, in my humble opinion.  It also led me to buy another book, which purports to be based on the diaries left behind by the real life Idilia (not a typo) supposedly cobbled together while she awaited her fate: The Diary of Miss Idilia by Genevieve Hill, one of the real Idalia/Idilia's best friends.    Next comes "Baltimore Nights," concerning the unnamed main character of this tale.  Not only is it another piece of outstanding writing,  but Wittkop prolongs this person's suffering as she reveals his slide into complete, utter, hallucinatory madness.  Oh my god. It's like I wanted it to stop but couldn't help but turn the pages.

the author, from Alchetron

A bit of a reader jolt occurs  in the next story as we're taken from nineteenth-century Baltimore to a modern-day New York City in "The Descent."  The title is sort of a double entendre, although I won't explain why here.  Knowing that four of these tales were based on real-life people, prior to reading this story I spent way too much time online looking for the name Seymour M. Kenneth; it was only after I'd finished the book and read the translator's postscript that I discovered the following:

"Whether there is a precise actual basis to this story remains obscure. One can only guess that Wittkop perhaps came upon Seymour Kenneth's name on some missing persons list."

What a great idea (if true) to go along with a truly great story  This may just be the most cruel story in the entire collection, another one where when you think it can't possibly get any worse it actually does.  If you've read Hoffman, you'll catch the reference here, as Seymour makes his way from a "distraught" mama's boy to willing partner (read slave) of a woman, Emily,  he refers to as "Mammily," to a place where

"eternal Mothers who rumble in the lava, of jealous fairies who, like the one in Falun, live at the bottom of mines."

The cruelty at the heart of this story is just heartbreaking, but it exemplifies that old cliché about knowing you're about to witness a trainwreck but you can't look away.  I actually had to put the book down at this point because I was afraid of what Wittkop would next pull out of her hat, although  the fnal story, "Claude and Hippolyte or The Inadmissible Tale of the Turquoise Fire," while strange (in a good way) was not thankfully nearly as gut wrenching.  The Countess Marguerite de Saint-Effory gives birth to twins in 1724, of whom

"No single sex dominated the other and herein resided the unique phenomenon of this perfect completeness, the one that according to Gnostic legends and the science of alchemy represents the hermaphrodite."

She revels in the fact that they are "freaks of nature," filling her with a "pride she was at pains to keep secret."  Inseparable, with a life that might have been envied by other children at the time,

"Handsome in the way of statues, the twins would nevertheless rejoin the dark subterreanean world of roots and blind larvae in the alluvial soil"

 with their journey to their departure the subject of this tale.

The literary references at work here range from Goethe to Hoffman to Poe to Kubin (and much more) on down to Somerset Maugham, so as you might imagine, there is great depth in Wittkop's writing.  Exemplary Departures  not only encompasses a macabre, often surrealistic look at death but also offers a look at human minds spiraling down into the darkest depths possible.  This is my first book by this author, but I have two others on the shelf,  The Necrophiliac and Murder Most Serene, that I'm now eagerly looking forward to reading.   If it's excellence in writing you're looking for, you will most certainly find it here.

so very highly recommended that it's not even on the scale of highly recommended.

The King in the Golden Mask, by Marcel Schwob. I loved this book. Absolutely loved it.

9781939663238
Wakefield Press, 2017
originally published as Le roi au masque d'or, 1892
translated by Kit Schluter
188 pp

paperback

The other day I decided that I really ought to read this book since it's been just sitting on my shelves sort of being neglected.   I grabbed the hardcover edition (Carcanet New Press, 1982; Iain White, translator) that I've been holding on to forever, and then I picked up this edition from Wakefield to see if there were any differences between the two before I started reading.  I chose the Wakefield over the Carcanet because translator says here that

"Although Iain White has translated a brilliant volume of Schwob's selected stories under the title of The King in The Golden Mask -- first published by Carcanet Press and recently updated and reissued by Tartarus Press -- White's selection includes roughly half of the original 1892 collection of that title.  As such, the book in your hands marks the complete publication of Schwob's original King in the Golden Mask in English. "

 Back went the Carcanet edition onto its shelf.  Why would I only want to read half a book?

from Abe Books

The titular first story sets the tone and the main theme that carries through this collection of stories.  Before that begins, however, there's Schwob's own preface that will clue readers in to what they're about to experience:

"There are, in this book, masks and covered faces: a king masked in gold, a wild man in a fur muzzle, Italian highwaymen with plague-wracked faces, and French highwaymen with false faces, galley slaves under red helmets, little girls aged suddenly in a mirror, and a singular host of lepers, embalming women, eunuchs, murderers, demoniacs, and pirates, between which I pray the reader belive I take no preference, as I am certaint hey are not, in fact, so various. And in order to demonstrate this most clearly I have made no effort, throughout their masquerade, to yoke them together along the chain of their tales: for we find them linked by their similarity or dissimilarity."

and, perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this book:

"To an observer from another world, my embalming women and my pirates, my wild man and my king, would possess no variety."

Schwob goes on to say that this "observer from another world"  would have "the blinkered view of the artist and the generalization of the scientist," which would help to shape his perspective; this "superior observer" would say that "all in this world is but signs and signs of signs."   Masks, he would say, are "signs of faces."

In an interview at The Paris Review, Translator Kit Schluter says that Schwob's book is "all about the way identity is a mask over our 'true' selves,"  and in the book's "translator's afterword" section, goes on to explain that the mask functions

"both literally and figuratively by turns, to represent the impossibility of attaining truth, be it of identity or narrative, or even of belief" 

 and is presented here in different ways, both physical and

"in the way many of the stories' narrators doubt or are uncertain of, what what they see for example -- there is an ambient paranoia throughout that narrative, even the most neatly 'historical' is only a mask laid over the inaccessible truth of the event..."

Both the author's preface and the translator's afterword lend themselves quite nicely to a discussion of semiotics if anyone's interested.   In terms of this book, quoting Schluter once again, The King in the Golden Mask

"suggests time and again that one's true identity comes to light only in the crucible of a struggle so intense that it bares him of any privilege or nicety behind which he could otherwise hide."

Schwob is known to have combed through all manner of  literary, historical, and biographical works as source material.  While the author is well known for his disbelief in "originality," Mr. Schluter notes that he

"made fiction new by making it deeply diachronic, indebted to history..."

Rather than simply regurgitate though,  he uses the material to explore what it is that makes people human. In most of these stories, it seems that he uses the potential that exists in everyone to engage in some sort of violence or cruelty as a part of his definition.


There are twenty-one stories in this volume, each dedicated to a different friend, ranging from science fiction-ish to contes cruels to the out-and-out weird.  Honestly, I loved them all, and on the whole, the entire collection is just beautiful both in terms of writing and in what Schwob is able to bring out in each story.  I won't go into them but I will share a rather eye-opening experience about myself in reading "The Plague" that sort of sideways makes the point of the book.  Consider the seriousness of the spreading of the plague  in Medieval Europe for a moment, the fear that everyone had that they would become its next victim, and at the end of this particular story, I actually had to stop and reflect on my reaction at the end when I didn't know whether to laugh or to be horrified.  That's the sort of writer he is and when a story can make me go inward to try to examine myself, well, that's power.

You could read this book in one sitting, but don't. Take the time to go through it slowly and think about it.  If you're in it  looking only  for the horror/weird shockness (I know that's not a real word but it works here) you're reading it for the wrong reason. It's definitely there, but this book is a work of art between two covers, and those don't come along every day.  Highly, highly recommended for the thinking reader,  and for people who appreciate the beauty found in the written word.  You'll certainly find it here.

The Marvelous Story of Claire D'Amour, by Maurice Magre, adapted by Brian Stableford

9781612276526
Black Coat Press, 2017
254 pp

paperback

"They were all dreamers, and they were there because they had dreamed of the ideal on earth, and were suffering bitterly..." -- 175

After spending the summer exploring other areas of reading interest, I'm back here again with this book, which is the first of twelve in a series exploring the work of Maurice Magre, a French writer, who as Brian Stableford reveals in this book's introduction, was "one of the most far-ranging and extravagant writers of fantastic fiction active in France in the first half of the 20th century," and  "perhaps the finest of them."   The fourteen stories in this book are examples of "contes merveilleux," or "tales of enchantment," but as Stableford notes (and which quickly became obvious once I started reading), some of these are actually quite nihilistic, trending more along of the lines of tales of "disenchantment."  As I also discovered not too far into these tales, he's also on the money when he says that "in Magre's work the tragic component usually outweighs the comedic component, and sometimes swamps it entirely." [For a more complete take on Magre's work, I can point you to Stableford's articles in The New York  Review of Science Fiction  (NYRSF) vols. 341, 342, and 343; the last article is available for free online; the other two you can pick up as pdfs for $3.00 each.]

Before launching into just brief sketches of each story, I'll add here that while not true for every tale, there's no missing the message (as Stableford tells us)  that "amour, although irresistible is invariably fatal because it is blinded by illusion" (NYRSF, 341, 7), which may reflect on events in Magre's own life and how they influenced his fiction.  In the introduction, for example, we learn about the author's breakup with "the first woman with whom he became infatuated as soon as he discovered that she had slept with someone -- someone he found particularly loathsome," and that this same motif also runs "incessantly" through Magre's stories. It may be that the author "changed his philosophy of amorous relationships abruptly in 1903", and if so, it is probably

" not a coincidence that Maurice, in "Histoire merveilleuse de Claire d'Amour" is blinded by illusion, and thus immunized against jealousy. Such, so far as it can be determined, is the personal context of Magre's early fiction, insofar as it deals with claire d'amour -- i.e., the bright light of amour in the broad sense."

Whether or not this background is of interest to anyone else or not, the bottom line is that I fell in love with this book while reading it, and as brutal as it can be sometimes, it is absolutely delightful.

In this collection of tales, it is "amour," "the flower of youth," the power of illusion, and "the ideal" that takes center stage, beginning with "Marcelle."  Unlike the stories that follow it, there are no elements of the fantastic to be found anywhere, just a man whose lover deceives him with other men. He breaks it off in anger, later bemoaning that he'd killed "amour...by virtue of stupidity and pride."  "Doctor Faust's First Love" follows a young student named Fritz in love with the daughter of the local burgomaster, Elsbeth. Sadly, Elsbeth has a "mediocre soul" under her outer beauty and accepts her father's choice of husband, a "rich and aged lord." Fritz, believing that "science and labor might perhaps bring a remedy to his woes," goes to visit local sage Dr. Faust and arrives at just the wrong time. "Marinette and Old Water-Sprite" is a delightful tale about a sad young girl and those who love her, including a water sprite, a simple young man "full of gaiety and charm, and a "very rich lord," born under the sign of Saturn. The centerpiece of the book, and the titular story is next, "The Marvellous Story of Claire D'Amour. "  One would think that when one has Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin as godparents, life would be great for young Maurice.  It may have been except for the "gift of illusion" bestowed upon him by the Sandman that will permit Maurice "never to see life as it is." When he meets and falls in love with the poor, amoral but beautiful Claire, that extra gift will cost him.   Beyond excellent, it is my favorite story in the book and while this one is definitely on the nihilistic side, it is a joy to read.

Maurice Magre, from Black Coat Press

"The Toy Merchant" is the story of Lubin and Colette, who vow as children to love each other forever.  It starts out sweetly enough and then BAM!, end of that.  How I won't say, but it's another good one.  Next up is "The Story of Lili-Des-Roses and the Black Prince," in which Lili, "the glory of the country" scorns the simple pastor Jean-des-Bois and his "limitless love for her" in favor of the black prince"because he is rich."   This one is followed by "The Poor Musician and the Little Genie," which also touches on amour but also something a bit different -- the love and dedication of an artist for his art.  "The Flower of Youth" comes next, a true quest story in which young Joël must find the flower of youth in order to marry Princess Raphaële, who has sworn to love only the "King of France, the Devil," or the man who brings her this treasure.  She is, of course, taking advantage of his "naivety" and being cruel, but he doesn't know this, and off he goes, abandoning everything previously dear to him in his search.  A very twisty ending has this one, catching me completely by surprise.  In "The Story of an Unlucky Grenadier," a young man who has, since childhood, had the worst luck ever, desperately wants to impress the parents of the woman he loves after they refuse to consent to the marriage.  All I'll say about this story is that maybe he should have rethought that idea.  "The Doll" is its own way a poignant story, focusing on a man whose attraction to a beautiful actress causes him to rethink his career choices in order to get her attention while he wonders what he can do to make her love him.   "The Goatherd King" has a lovely touch of irony, beginning with a prophecy made to young Eloi by a witch who reveals that he is destined to be a king; this is followed by "The Last Siren" who is discovered by a man in the Seine after deciding to end it all.  Finally, the end of this book offers  "Jeannett's Three Professions," reminding me a bit of a rather twisted "Parable of the Talents."

I can't begin to say how very much I enjoyed this book and how I looked forward to coming back to it every time I had to put it down.  I've been stockpiling books from this series for a while, and now that I've had my first taste of Magre, I don't doubt that I'll be reading as many of them as I can.

yes, yes, yes, highly recommended. 

Demons of the Night: Tales of the Fantastic, Madness, and the Supernatural from Nineteenth-Century France (ed.) Joan Kessler

0226432084
University of Chicago Press, 1995
326 pp

paperback

And it's back to France once again with this stunning collection of tales, nine of which are newly translated by the book's editor, Joan Kessler.

A few days ago I was asked by someone about the similarity between the "scare elements" of French tales like these and those I'd find in an American collection from the same time period.  Well, for one thing, I'm not overly familiar with American stories of the same period, but for another thing, I have to admit being thrown off by this question, so I borrowed from Terry Hale in his introduction to  The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th-Century, trying to explain that it depends on who you read and when they wrote as to what you're going to find in their work:

"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)

I also noted that Hale  suggested that it was "the psychological insight of Poe" that stood as the "original impetus" for "contes cruels" while, as he stated, the "contes fantastiques" of the sort that are in this collection, were inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman, "the literary lion" who "introduced a range of themes, ideas and narrative techniques" that helped to "renew" these sorts of tales, which would "remain in vogue" over seven decades. (31) 

There are many other factors that go into the making of these tales, much too lengthy to list and to explain in a nutshell;  I hope  my short answer was  understandable.  What I didn't say is that I don't really approach any of these stories to be hit with the "scare element" -- that's not at all why I read them.  If the frisson of terror climbs up my spine now and then, hooray, but I look at my reading of the works of these authors as a way of discovering how they each engaged with past and contemporary anxieties as well as themselves.

Ms. Kessler says of these authors in her introduction that

"Their works repeatedly probe the subject of the unconscious, often through the metaphor of the divided self or the landscape of dream and madness.  As they gravitate toward those areas of experience inaccessible to rational understanding, they actually lead us to a more complete notion of our own minds, with their web of tangled, contradictory motivations and impulses."

Briefly and with no more than short annotations from me here, there are thirteen fantastic tales in Demons of the Night, appropriately led by Charles Nodier's "Smarra, or Demons of the Night" (1821).  I had read a Dedalus book some time back called Smarra and Trilby, two tales written by this author and neglected to post because of time; his Infernaliana is waiting to be read on my Kindle.   "Smarra" takes the reader immediately into the realm of dreams, but wait -- there are dreams within dreams, with the only real anchors to be found in this multi-layered story at the beginning and end, and even then there is a big question that needs asking.   In this case it isn't necessary, but it would be very helpful to be familiar with The Golden Ass by Apuleius; I had to give it a read before I could finish my first go round with this story.   Next up comes Balzac's "The Red Inn" which is absolutely great.  The overall meaning of the tale will become clear as you read it, but the getting there involves one man whose thoughts about committing a particularly heinous crime become a reality -- but when the deed is done, he can't remember doing it.  Obviously there's more, but you won't hear it from me. Balzac is followed by "The Venus of Ille" by Prosper Mérimée,  which starts out with a sort of MR James vibe before it gets positively dark and deliciously creepy, with an ending I swear I'll never forget.   This story is followed by two absolutely delightful tales by Théophile Gautier, "The Dead in Love" (aka "Clarimonde) and "Arria Marcella."  In the first, which I can only describe as a story of a man with a divided self, a priest finds himself mesmerized by a beautiful woman at the exact moment he is to take holy orders; in the second, a trip to a museum to view artifacts of Pompeii leads one man to the woman of his dreams.   "The Dead in Love" will hold you spellbound until the last word -- it's also one that requires a lot of thought in the long run for more under-the-surface readers.

from La Plume et Le Rouleau

Continuing on we find Alexandre Dumas with his "The Slap of Charlotte Corday," which I'd already read in One Thousand and One Ghosts.  This piece reiterates the absolutely riveting story of Solange so don't miss it.   Next up is my favorite piece of writing in the entire book, de Nerval's rather poignant "Aurélia, or Dream and Life".  This story, which was written during several stints in different asylums, has been studied left, right, and upside down, and because of the depth and the richness of what's in this story, a number of different interpretations have emerged.  I'll just give a little teaser from the Introduction, in which the editor notes that "The narrator-protagonist's plunge into madness is depicted as a journey into the self..." and here, I'll add that it's a story that touches on the connection between his own madness and his mythologized dream life, without saying anything else.  Sadly, shortly after he'd written this story, de Nerval committed suicide.   Following de Nerval is Jules Verne's "Master Zacharius" that reminded me in a big way of the work of Hoffman.  It follows the story of a master clockmaker whose clocks begin to slow down and stop working; he will, before all is said and done,  become engaged in a struggle for very his soul.  I can't remember where I read it, but someone writing about this story referred to it as an examination of the "power-hungry" side of science, and that's about right. Considering much of Verne's other work, well, no surprise there. 

from Wikimedia Commons

Coming into the home stretch, we start with two stories from an author whose work I love, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, "The Sign," which takes us into the zone of uncanny coincidence, and "Véra," a story of a "love-obsessed" husband continuing on with his life after the death of his wife.   This one is very well done, pushing the envelope between reality and illusion to the very last word.  Supernatural? You be the judge.    Two tales of madness follow from another favorite author, Guy de Maupassant: his most well-known story, "The Horla," and his "Who Knows?"  I'm not going to discuss either of these but I will say that for me the joy in reading this author's work is that I find myself thinking "it could be this" or "it could be that," and realizing that my head is potentially getting as messed up as de Maupassant's protagonists who strive for rational explanations of strange phenomena.  By the time I'd finished these two stories, I felt so off-kilter that I had to seriously put this book down.   Personally, I think this man was a genius writer whose work ought to be read by everyone with an interest in the darker side of the human psyche.  Last, but by no means least, we have Marcel Schwob with his strange tale "The Veiled Man," which takes place entirely in a small train compartment.  I'll just say that it is quite possible that beneath the story he gives us there is an entirely different version.

Overall, this has proved to be another favorite book, one that I can absolutely without any hesitation recommend to all.  I get that French literature of the 19th century isn't everybody's thing, and also, if you're looking for something solely to scare the bejeezus out of you, this just may not be it.  These stories are things of beauty, not something you read simply in the hope of getting a few chills up your spine, although it happens quite a bit here.   Beyond great, really; I live to find collections like this one. 

HR #3: One Thousand and One Ghosts, by Alexandre Dumas

1843910829
Hesperus Press, 2004
originally published as Les mille et un fantômes, 1849
translated by Andrew Brown
160 pp

paperback

I actually killed two birds with one stone reading this book, since I discovered that it's the same book as The Horror at Fontenay, which I bought because it appeared in Wheatly's Library of the Occult.  The cover of Fontenay is a bit more reflective of what goes on inside this book than that of the Hesperus edition, although to be sure, not everyone in it ends up minus a head.

from Picssr

 Departing from his host's hunting party, the narrator of this book takes it upon himself to  "beat a retreat," setting out on a path that would take him to the village of Fontenay-aux-Roses.  As he's strolling along, he can't help but notice a man with a "fixed and lifeless" stare, "clothes in disarray and his hands spattered with blood."  Our narrator is intrigued enough to follow him as he presents himself at the home of the mayor, Monsieur Ledru, proclaiming that he's just killed his wife and he wants to give himself up. The mayor, the police superintendent, and the doctor insist he return with them to the scene of the crime, but the man is beyond reluctant -- it seems that after he'd killed his wife by chopping off her head, not only did the head  speak to him, but it also proceeded to bite his hand.  Later that day, a small party gathers at the home of M. Ledru, where the events of the day are still on everyone's mind.  A discussion begins around the question of whether or not a severed head continues to have "consciousness of feeling," moving on to "the persistence of life" after death.  Ledru reveals that earlier in his life, he'd become "obsessed" with the belief that the severed heads of the aristocrats who'd met their fate at the hands of the executioner were in fact, still alive, and proceeds to tell his guests about his own experience, launching into the story of "Solange." 

I'd just read "Solange" in The Dedalus Book of French Horror, but I had no idea that it originally came from this book. Shame on me for not having done my usual homework.  So now, I'm really intrigued, thinking that  if this collection starts with that story, then I'm in for a really good time here. I was not disappointed.

Ledru's tale sparks the question of whether his experience was real or hallucinatory; it also begins a series of stories told by everyone present except the narrator, who turns out to be Dumas himself. Each time a story is told, one of the group presents his or her own strange experience, prompting another round of theoretical discussion before the next one until each has had his or her say.   After "Solange" we have "The Cat, the Bailiff and the Skeleton," which hinges on the question of a real vs. imagined haunting; "The Tombs of Saint-Denis" an incredibly creepy tale that starts in 1793 and is based on a real-life event which occurred during The Terror, followed by  "L'Artifaille," inspired by the priest's belief that

"We live between two invisible worlds, one of them inhabited by the spirits of hell, the other by the spirits of heaven." 

 Up next is "The Bracelet of Hair," but mum's the word on this one; finally we have the story that for me was the proverbial jewel in the crown here, "The Carpathian Mountains."  Long before Stoker brought his Dracula into the world, Dumas gave us this story which has much more of an old-world flavor, a tale of two brothers vying for the attentions of a young woman, in as Wheatly says in his introduction to The Horror at Fontenay, "a castle deep in the forests of Central Europe."  This one is so atmospheric that every time their mother said "Kostaki loves Hedwige," I felt a shiver go up my spine -- with good reason.

While I can't really divulge much about the contents in this book, I will say that stories here speak to translator Andrew Brown's question of whether the dead are "really dead."  They all examine to some degree the idea of consciousness continuing to live on after death, continuing the debate which began back in the 1790s when death by guillotine was in its heyday.  There's much, much more going on here, of course, and I could talk about this book for hours -- that's how good it is.

sidebar:  [Aside from the article linked in that paragraph, there's another good one of particular interest here.]

One Thousand and One Ghosts really is the perfect stormy-night read, and to those readers who disliked it because it wasn't "swashbuckling" or anything like The Count of Monte Cristo,  well, it obviously wasn't meant to be.

One goodreads reader says about this book that

"It might have been sort of freaky for the time it was written, but with mass media we are so inundated with macabre stories, this book almost seems like a bedtime story by comparison..."

which I think is a truly sad commentary on older supernatural fiction in general.  Don't be fooled -- Dumas has written something great here.

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 Nightcharmer and Other Tales of Claude Seignolle (ed) Eric Hollingsworth Deudon

0890961697

Texas A& M University Press, 1983

115 pp

hardcover

How odd that I should choose to read this book at this particular time, since 2017 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the author's birth. Claude Seignolle was born in Périgueux, and then at the age of 12 moved with his family to Paris. Eventually he crossed paths with archaeologist  Henri (aka l'Abbe) Brueil, who stirred his interest in the past, and later he met Arnold van Gennep, an ethnologist and folklorist who would motivate both Seignolle and his brother Jacques to start collecting rural legends. His childhood had been spent listening to his grandmother recount folk tales and legends in Occitan, so it's no surprise that Seignolle chose this path. He crisscrossed the French countryside, picking up old tales wherever he went, resulting in, as Lawrence Durrell notes in his foreword,  several "huge compilations" (the titles of which, if you're interested, can be found here).   He wrote his first novel in 1945, Le Rond des sorciers, and his first short story in 1958, "Le bahut noir."  Editor Eric Deudon  tells us that Seignolle's stories contain "a whole retinue of creatures of the night," but he 

"does not portray them merely as frightening characters, for the totality of these themes represents a direct transposition from his research on folklore into the literary domain."

And finally, Deudon reveals that

"Seignolle does not write gothic tales simply to intrigue, or even to terrorize, the reader. Above all, he writes in order to revive at the literary level a popular oral tradition in danger of becoming extinct."

And to me, aside from the fact that his stories are very different from standard gothic/weird/dark/horror fare, the fact that this "popular oral tradition" is on the edge of extinction should merit more publisher/English-reader interest in this man's work.  Someone should publish his books and introduce him into the world of dark fiction readers.  I know that Ex Occidente Press put out a limited edition of his The Black Cupboard, but sheesh -- a decent copy starts at $200 and I saw one on Amazon for over $800.  It's time to put this man's work into print at a price people can actually afford.

from Epistol'Arts

On to the book now, which was an absolute delight from beginning to end. It's once again a collection of tales that works more beneath the surface than on it, although it is also quite readable for readers who just want to be entertained by the stories. One thing I discovered here is that Seignolle is a master of irony, which adds much more dimension to his tales in a very  human sort of way and in more than one case, actually provides room for a bit of very black humor.   I can't really explain what I mean without giving things away, but trust me, you'll recognize it when you see it.

***

At this point, anyone contemplating reading this book who doesn't want to know anything at all about it should take the opportunity to bail. I'm going to list the stories, with minor annotations, but I will be giving neither spoilers nor great detail here, so just in case ...

***

The collection begins, of course, with "The Nightcharmer," from Seignolle's Les cheveaux de la nuit at autres récits cruels (1967).   Here, a man visits the home of an "eccentric zoologist" whose collection of various species of "dusty and docile fauna" takes up twenty rooms in an old manor house.  Not only is his home filled but he enjoys sharing his knowledge and memories about all things, including "the mythical creatures that the people of Brenne, dreadfully superstitious, grant to the nights there." One such legend he shares is that of the Nightcharmer.  As our visitor is about to discover, there is actually something the zoologist doesn't know.    Next comes "A Dog Story," played out in the trenches in October, 1939. As the "Khaki foxes" face "an invisible lumbering pack of green wolves" (I love the animal imagery here, and it will come back later in this book as well), back in the field kitchen, a mangy dog comes to visit the narrator and his friend.  As a dog lover myself, I'd advise a strong stomach for this one, since this is no ordinary canine. One more thing: look deep under the surface in this one and the story seriously intensifies.  From Comtes de Sologne, 1969, comes "The Healer," in which a man who takes three gold coins for each cure he provides finally meets his match in a most horrific way, as he discovers that he's "accepted a satanic proposition."  The next story, which has one of the most ironic twists I've encountered in a long while, is "Starfish," taken from "Contes Fantastiques de Bretagne" 1969.  An obviously-wealthy woman takes refuge in old villa in a "small village by the sea" that had been "deserted and abandoned." While the caretaker gets her settled, regaling her with stories from the villa's past, she's mentally elsewhere and could care less. All she can focus on is one thing... No more from me on this one, but oh, that ending!

okay, it's from a commercial, but it works. 

 That short tale is followed by the longest story in the book, "The Outlander," running about forty pages long, from Un Corbeau de toutes coleurs, 1962.  A stranger shows up at the local inn, pockets filled with gold, and in making smalltalk, the innkeeper manages to discover that the man is a blacksmith by trade, and that he's ready to settle down.  The innkeeper tells him that the town already has a blacksmith and that he won't get any business because everyone goes to Christophe.  As if on cue, a crowd of people burst in to inform the innkeeper and his wife that Christophe is dead.  With the widow ready to sell, the new guy sets up shop, and that is where this story really begins.  Let's just say that the original title was called "Le Diable in Sabots" and leave it at that.   From Contes Sorciers (1974), the next story is one of my favorites, precisely because of that irony I mentioned earlier.  In "The Last Rites," a cuckolded husband prays earnestly to Hubertine, the local saint of "hapless victims of unrequited love," and gets way more than he'd bargained for. Oh my gosh -- this was a good one!    Another tale that is laced with irony is "Hitching a Ride," where looking back to a time where he actually saw death,  a man remembers the day he was in a rut and decided to pick up a hitchhiker. . He lives to tell the tale, but the question here is why and how.   I couldn't help laughing out loud after reading this one; the same was true for "The Last Rites," gruesome as it was.  "Night Horses" finishes off this lovely collection, in which a traveler learns the hard way that "The night does not belong to the living" at a small inn in Brittany.  His curiosity, as well as his desire to get to his fiancée as quickly as possible,  makes him fail to heed the warning, at a huge cost.  No humor here, for sure, just good old-fashioned dark storytelling with suspense plus major jolt  at the end.

I'd love to really get deeper into this book here and dive underneath,  but as I always say, to tell is to spoil, so you're on your own.  As I said, Seignolle is well deserving of a large audience, and after finishing this book, I bought an old copy of a two-story collection of his work entitled The Accursed. The Nightcharmer and Other Tales is unique, very nicely done and is a beyond-welcome addition to my home library which seems to be taking a French turn here lately.  I can recommend it without any qualms whatsoever, although I'm sure for the splatterfest crowd this would be way too mild.  It is absolutely perfect for me though, and for those who enjoy their dark fiction more on the cerebral side, it is not to be missed.

as we venture into the realm of the fays: Bluebirds, by Catulle Mendès

9781943813254
Snuggly Books, 2017
originally published as Les oiseaux bleus, 1888
translated from the French by Brian Stableford
163 pp



"...who would assume the task of writing fairy tales if he did not have the right to transform, in the course of his tales, the most hideous individuals into young ladies dazzling with beauty and adornments?" -- 110



I just loved this collection of French tales  -- it's one of those "sorry, I'm out of the real world right now so please leave a message" kind of books that I look forward to finding and only every so often do.

In describing this book to others, I've said that it's a collection of "fairy" tales for adults, but that description isn't quite accurate as I embarrassingly discovered after finishing the book while reading the introduction that talks about the evolution of the French conte.  For our purposes (beware of what's coming next  - I love reading about the history of literature so it will be a moment before I actually get to the book),  in the seventeenth century, a new "fad" was created when

"collections of reconfigured folktales and imitations thereof began to appear in several European nations," 

and became a hit with the "literary salons associated with some of the leading ladies of Louis XIV."  Authors of this sort of  "salon literature"

"deliberately employed and exaggerated the elements of the merveilleux in such traditional tales, in calculated flagrant defiance of the dawning 'Age of Enlightenment' that ruled such material superstitious, obsolete and unworthy of credence."

One particular "promoter of salon literature" of the time was the Baroness d'Aulnoy, who, in the same year that Charles Perrault published his Contes de ma mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose),  put together a collection of tales called Les Contes de fées.   This little factoid is noteworthy since (and I swear I'm getting around to my point about wrongly labeling this book a collection of fairy tales in case you've wondered where the hell I'm going with all of this)  as Stableford goes on to say that

"The nearest equivalent to the French word féerie is "enchantment," and fées are, strictly speaking, enchantresses (as in the enchantress of Arthurian legend known in English as Morgan le Fay), but the title of Madame d' Aulnoy's first collection was translated into English as 'fairy tales,' thus foisting that label on an entire genre of subsequent English fiction, most of whose included stories do not, in fact, feature 'fairies' as prevously defined and deployed by such influential domestic writers as William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser." 

He also notes that while Mendès' stories often feature "individuals very similar to the fairies of previous English literature and art," the "genre defined by Madame d'Aulnoy," became adapted for children's literature. The truth is though that "the production of such tales in the French salons was intended for the use of adults."  Finally getting down to where I said I'd be going, the stories in this book are less "fairy" tale than as Stableford puts it, "fakeloristic contes" and a "specialized collection of pastiche folktales"  which happen to involve "fays" in most cases, and trust me, there are several here that are certainly not meant to be bedtime reading for children.

Because there are twenty-seven of these little contes to be found here, there is no way to quickly go through each one, and I probably wouldn't anyway since the joy is in the reading and I wouldn't want to mess that up for anyone considering this book.   There are quite a few that made me laugh -- offering just two examples here, "The Dreaming Beauty,"  a sort of riff on "Sleeping Beauty," carries the traditional tale to a new level as a prince gets his comeuppance after waking the sleeping princess; "The Bonnet Collector" gave me a serious case of the giggles after reading Stableford's footnote about the French usage of the term "flinging (or throwing) one's cap or bonnet over the windmill," which was likely not taken from Don Quixote.  Then there are the darker ones in which I could clearly see elements of later Decadent fiction, including "The Lucky Find," in which Amour and Beauty step into a property shop to find something they've lost.  And, while they're all wonderful little tales, to add to the few mentioned above, I did have my favorites  -- "The Beauty of the World" (in which the author makes a great point), "The Maladroit Wish," in the vein of "be careful what you wish for...", and "Isoline-Isolin," the nature of which which I won't even hint at, and "The Three Good Fays," another one with a beyond-true ironic ending.

There is great wisdom to be discovered in the sheer irony of these tales, so even though they're short, they're also quite complex, deserving of a slow, careful read.  I just love when I find works like this, and this time, it's left me wanting more of the same.  Hint hint, Snuggly.

Highly, highly recommended, it's absolutely beautiful. My copy came from Snuggly, so a huge  merci bien, mes amis to the great people there.