Joris-Karl Huysmans

Marcel Schwob

Jean Lorrain

Janice Law

Michael P. Daley

Lou Perliss

Dan A. Stitzer

Jeremy Kitchen

Julia Bembenek

Mark Iosifescu

Villiers De L'Isle-Adam

Sam Kunkel

Tales of the Strange & Estranged

Echoes of a Natural World

None of Jean Lorrain's biographers has contrived to discover exactly when or why he began taking ether, or how much of it he took before realising (too late) that it was an extremely bad idea. The drug certainly helped provide the feverish, nightmarish atmosphere of these wonderfully decadent and sophisticated tales, and many of the apparitions with which they are populated. Brian Stableford's superb translations represent the first appearance in English of Jean Lorrain's ether-inspired 'nightmares', originally collected as Sensations et Souvenirs in 1895. The later tales also translated here for the first time are in the tradition of the contes cruel, and in them the influence of ether-drinking is still very much apparent. In his authoritative Introduction Brian Stableford presents Lorrain as one of the select band of literary figures "whose life and art were bound together into the most seamless whole. He was the man who embodied, more intimately and more inescapably than any other, the absurdities, affectations, paradoxes and perversities of the Decadent style and the Decadent world-view."

Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker

When Jean Lorrain (1855-1906) was recruited to the stable of writers assembled by Catulle Mendès to supply L'Écho de Paris with material on a weekly basis, in July 1890, he joined in readily with the experimental spirit of that enterprise, exploring various narrative strategies that could be employed in fitting work to slots that varied in length between 1,000 and 2,000 words. The contributions to the paper that he signed with his own name were soon outnumbered by the items that he signed "Raitif de la Bretonne," in honor of the prolifically innovative Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), most of whose publications had appeared without the royal warrant necessary prior to the 1789 Revolution for works to be printed and sold legally. Presented here, for the first time in English or any other language, are sixteen of the pieces Lorrain wrote under the "Raitif de la Bretonne," by-line, collected and translated by Brian Stableford, the contents of the present volume partaking in the same meticulously perverse point of view that were the author's unique literary hallmark, thus performing the valuable function of offering readers an eccentric sampling of the his heretofore "lost" work.

Princesses of Darkness and Other Exotica

Brian Stableford

Masks in the Tapestry

Fiction. LGBT Studies. French Literature. Translated from the French by Eva Richter. In Jean Lorrain's MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON, an eccentric, outmoded dandy leads ennui-filled French tourists around misty Amsterdam. Guiding them through sailors' bars, whorehouses, and costume galleries, Monsieur de Bougrelon recounts hallucinatory stories of his past and delves into his heroic friendship with his aristocratic companion Monsieur de Mortimer. MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON is a unique character: loquacious, proud, a leftover from an earlier age, wearing garish outfits and makeup that drips. To his speechless audience, he waxes nostalgic about his life as an exile in Holland, as well as what he calls imaginary pleasures - obsessions with incongruous people, animals, and objects. These obsessions are often sexual or border on the sexual, leading to shocking, surreal scenes. MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON also enthuses over his beautiful friend Monsieur de Mortimer, making this novella one of the rare works of the nineteenth century to broach homosexuality in a meaningful way, years before Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. Originally published in French in 1897, MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON is now available in English translation for the first time. Its inventiveness and sheer decadence find kindred spirits in the novels of Comte de Lautréamont, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and even Louis-Ferdinand Céline, while the novella's indulgent language and unconventional vision of art and sex embody the best of fin-de-siècle literature. It is, in the novella's own words, a true boudoir of the dead.

Monsieur de Bougrelon

and Other Decadent Fantasies

The Soul-Drinker

Sobre "O Senhor de Bougrelon" André Breton escreveu: «A esta obra admirável não vejo nada equivalente na nossa literatura. Um destes deuses da poesia que nós, em suma, recentemente descobrimos.» A sua admiração é compreensível; porque Breton considerava a «estética decadente», com a sua «sensualidade mística e loucamente perturbadora», elemento essencial da poética surrealista. Mas O Senhor de Bougrelon também é, vendo-o menos complicado pelas suas alucinações, um transformador das realidades pungentes em nobreza, um esteta perverso e atormentado, um ser de hesitações entre a fealdade humana e o esplendor da arte; e tem um fogo interior que ele sopra para recusar o real. «A mais nobre insolência de Jean Lorrain», disse-o em 1887 Philippe Julien. Chamou-se Paul Duval em 1855, quando nasceu, e preferiu-se na literatura como Jean Lorrain. Em 1884 Jean Lorrain já era, na capital, um jornalista; um odiado jornalista, ora intelectual, ora mundano, de flechas envenenadas. A 30 de Junho de 1906 morreu; em Paris, inesperadamente, e com o cólon perfurado.

O Senhor de Bougrelon

El vicio errante

Charles Dickens

William James

H. G. Wells

Aleister Crowley

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Stephen Crane

Charles Baudelaire

Horacio Quiroga

Guy de Maupassant

Peter Mark Roget

Thomas de Quincey

Havelock Ellis

Marie Corelli

Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Greg Boyd

Maurice Level

Benjamin Paul Blood

Jean Richepin

Jordan Jones

Leo Tolstoy

Fred V. Williams

Ernest Dowson

Théophile Gautier

J. C. O’Day

Hendrik DeLeeuw

Harry Hubbell Kane

Claude Farrère

Santiago Dabove

Ahmad Mahmood

Sampurnanand

Eugenio Buona

Gaston Danville

Edward Levinstein

m. i. blue

Michael Stephans

From antiquity to the present, people have sought artificial paradise in the stimulations and insights afforded by the use of intoxicants. Famous literary figures have often been the first to experiment with little-known drugs, and to champion their unique fascination upon the human imagination. In this remarkable anthology, a dazzling array of authors, including H. G. Wells, Marie Corelli, Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Stephen Crane, Sadegh Hedayat, Santiago Dabove, Jean Cocteau, William James, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and a host of others from many cultures and historical periods, raids a pharmacopoeia containing ether, absinthe, morphine, hashish, opium, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, chloral hydrate, psilocybin, ayahuasca, carbon tetrachloride, LSD, amyl nitrate, ecstasy, and angel dust, in flights of descriptive prose of unparalleled suggestive power and visionary splendor.

The Drug Experience in Literature

Pipe Dreams

Monsieur de Phocas

This book ranks with 'A Rebours' as the summation of the French Decadent Movement. Modelled on 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray, ' it drips with evil and certainly would have been unpublishable in fin de siecle England.

Dans le Paris 1900, l'éther est une drogue à la mode et Jean Lorrain, écrivain et journaliste, succombe à sa puissance hallucinatoire. Publiés en 1895, ses Contes d'un buveur d'éther trouvent leurs racines dans ses visions cauchemardesques. Au carrefour de son délire d'éthéromane et de la sauvagerie des hommes, l'écrivain dévoile la réalité de l'âme humaine débarrassée du vernis social, une âme faite de pulsions, d'instincts débridés et de bestialité, dans des nouvelles inspirée du fantastique morbide d'Edgar Poe. C'est à l'invisible empli d'effroi que Jean Lorrain nous convie, à l'horreur rampante tenace comme un remord, oppressante comme un cauchemar, une horreur qui envoûte et fascine... « Et avec une exaltation de maniaque dont on flatte la manie, il s'embarquait dans d'invraisemblables histoires de sortilèges et de possessions. Il avait mis devant le feu une bouilloire d'argent où mijotait un punch de sa façon, dont, goguenardait-il, je lui donnerais des nouvelles, une recette du quinzième siècle retrouvée dans ses bouquins. Dehors la pluie tombait à verse, à nos pieds la bouilloire commençait à chanter, et, envahi par le bien-être, j'écoutais comme dans une espèce de rêve les moyennâgeuses divagations d'Allitof, et nous en étions, je crois, à un récit de mandragore, ingénieux et joli comme un vrai conte de fée, quand Serge s'arrêtait tout à coup de parler et, devenu en même temps d'une pâleur de linge, il se levait de sa chaise comme mu par un ressort. « Entends-tu ? » et sa voix horriblement changée était celle d'un autre, « on marche, on a marché, ils marchent dans l'épaisseur du mur. » J'écoutais en effet, un bruit de pas montait, très perceptible jusqu'à l'appartement, mais il venait du dehors, on marchait sous les fenêtres. Allitof était toujours debout, le cou tendu, en proie à une affreuse anxiété : « Tu entends ? » et c'était plus un frémissement des lèvres que des paroles balbutiées. « Certes oui, j'entends, mais te voilà dans un bel état pour un passant qui traverse la rue ; ces murailles sont étrangement sonores et voilà tout ». Je m'étais levé à mon tour, les pas s'étaient d'ailleurs éloignés, puis perdus dans la nuit. « Un passant dans la rue, ah ! tu crois cela, toi ! » Et Serge avait un équivoque sourire. Je m'étais approché d'une fenêtre et, écartant les rideaux, je plongeais maintenant sur la petite place : la pluie avait fait trêve, et deux gardiens de la paix encapuchonnés jusqu'aux yeux en arpentaient le trottoir : « Tiens, viens voir, les voilà, tes pas ! » Et quand Serge, le visage encore tout bouleversé, eut regardé comme moi, le même étrange sourire reparut sur ses lèvres : « Ah ! tu crois que ce sont eux, tu vois bien pourtant qu'on ne les entend pas. » Et en effet la promenade silencieuse des deux hommes ne faisait aucun bruit, on ne les entendait pas. »Contes d'un buveur d'éther de Jean Lorrain également disponible au format numérique.Édition annotée et illustrée (en noir et blanc pour la version imprimée).

Contes d'un Buveur D'éther

Monsieur de Phocas ranks with A Rebours as the summation of the French Decadent Movement. Modelled on The Portrait of Dorian Gray, it drips with evil and certainly would have unpublishable in fin-de-siecle England. 'With Ethel's friends, grotesque, ageing decadents, Phocas for the first time tastes opium. He experiences the pleasure of absolute degradation, and the double pleasure of being both observer and observed, dominant subject and passive object. As the opium takes effect, the naked Javanese dancers at the orgy vanish in a swirling cloud, to be replaced by a dark lamplit street where two thieves carefully saw at a woman's throat with a delicate knifeblade. From this cruel vision, Phocas soars into dizzy flight from which, suddenly, he plunges to destruction, into oozing depths where clinging vampires suck his blood, until he almost swoons into spasms. The mysterious, vicious double is on the threshold of existence: Phocas sees himself as Giles de Retz in the forest of Tiffauges, haunted by obscene desires.' Jennifer Birkett in Sins of the Fathers

L'ombre ardente: poesies / Jean LorrainDate de l'edition originale: 1897Ce livre est la reproduction fidele d'une oeuvre publiee avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande editee par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliotheque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunite d'acceder a des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette collection ont ete numerisees par la BnF et sont presentes sur Gallica, sa bibliotheque numerique.En entreprenant de redonner vie a ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilite de rencontrer un public elargi et participons a la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.Nous avons cherche a concilier la reproduction fidele d'un livre ancien a partir de sa version numerisee avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous esperons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entiere satisfaction.Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.frhttp: //gallica.bnf.fr/ark: /12148/bpt6k81610t

L'Ombre Ardente: Poesies (Ed.1897)

George Sand

Henri De Regnier

Eugénie Foa

Charles Edmond Chojecki

George Sand, Charles Edmond Chojecki, Eugénie Foa, Jean Lorrain y Henri de Régnier nos sumergen en la Venecia mítica con unos personajes que rezuman magia y encanto: una mujer enmascarada, un viejo coleccionista armenio, la familia de los Tintoretto en el siglo XVI, el enamorado de una princesa, un interno del manicomio de San Servolo y un joven pintor.

En Venecia

Stories to Read by Candlelight contains eight stories first published in the 1890s by the French author, Jean Lorrain, translated here into English by Patricia Worth. Jean draws the reader back in time to his provincial childhood when his grandmother’s seamstress would tell him stories that gave him goose bumps and made him jump under the covers. Here he recounts these same stories, or invents new half-lived half-dreamed stories born of objects found in an attic or an old house. The characters have a mythical quality, whether they be fantastical beings who long to be real, like the embroidered Princess Mandosiane, or real people like Madame Gorgibus, accused of being a wicked fairy. The stories fall between legends and fairy tales, a genre favoured by a few Decadent authors protesting against realism and regretting technological progress.

Stories to Read by Candlelight

Jean Lorrain

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