Category Archives: fiction

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin
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Edouard Dujardin’s “The Bays are Sere”, first published in 1887, was the first novel written entirely in interior monologue or stream of consciousness. For a long time its impact was dormant, until James Joyce read it in 1903 and subsequently revealed its influence upon him. As a result it was republished to great acclaim in 1924, after which Dujardin wrote “Interior Monologue”, an essay on the origin of this style and how he came to adopt it. This book was freely translated into English by Joyce’s friend Stuart Gilbert and published in 1938 as “We’ll To The Woods No More”. The present completely new translation is faithful to the original and reproduces all Dujardin’s innovations. “Interior Monologue” is translated here for the first time. Edouard Dujardin (1861-1947) was editor of the “Revue Wagerienne”, one of the most influential literary journals in Paris in the 1885. He was a poet and playwright who also wrote on the history of religion. –from the publisher

Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949) was one of the early pioneers of the literary technique stream of consciousness, exemplified in his 1888 novel Les lauriers sont coupés (which remains in print into the 21st century). —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Dujardin [Oct 2006]

See also: French literature – stream of consciousness – 1888

Metamorphoses

Unknown engraving of Heliades turning into trees

Metamorphoses of any kind have always interested me because of their uncanniness. I recently re-viewed The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) by Roger Corman in which a plant becomes a carnivore, and after it has eaten a number of people, the last buds of the plant open and reveal the faces of the people it has eaten. Voilà, man is crossed with a flower –> metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is a frightening and intriguing concept which can take many forms: crosses between humans and plants, objects and humans, etc…

A particular variety of metamorphosis is people turning into furniture. So I found two stories in which humans transform into chairs: the French libertine novel Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) by Crébillon fils and Japanese short story The Human Chair (1925) by Edogawa Rampo. In both stories a man becomes a sofa, in the former quite literally so (by a curse), in the latter, a man hides in sofa to feel the persons who sit in him.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater

In search of the roots of Tales of the Dead.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater
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Image sourced here.

The fullest and most influential work on angels and ghosts in the sixteenth century was Das Gespensterbuch by Ludwig Lavater, first printed in Zurich in 1569. The work was quickly translated into German and then French, Spanish and Italian. The English translation appeared in 1572 with the title, Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by Nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes and sundry forewarninges.

In a conflicting account on Wikipedia, where Gespensterbuch redirects to Tales of the Dead, there is no reference to an anterior version of Gespensterbuch (and maybe there are no similarities, but just the title, I don’t know).

The collection had its origin in Gespensterbuch (lit. “ghost book”), a five-volume anthology of German language ghost stories. The original anthology was published in Leipzig between 1811 and 1815. The stories were compiled by Friedrich August Schulze (1770 – 1849), under the pen name Friedrich Laun, and Johann August Apel (September 17, 1771 – August 9, 1816).

The latter is the one that was used by Byron and company in 1816 to scare and inspire:

On the night of June 16, after Lord Byron, John Polidori and the Shelleys had read aloud from the Tales of the Dead, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale. [Aug 2006]

The Venus of Ille (1837) – Prosper Mérimée

In search of le fantastique in literature and pygmalionism

Cover of unidentified audio book

Prosper Mérimée is best known for writing the opera Carmen made famous by Bizet, which has also been adapted to film by Radley Metzger, is featured here with a short story/novella about a statue that comes to life, a fantastic story.

“The Venus of Ille” is about an old bronze statue unearthed in the town of Ille, in the French Pyrenees. It is unearthed in the yard of Monsieur de Peyrehorade, a “very learned antiquarian.” He is quite taken with it, and in fact thinks more about it than about the upcoming wedding of his son. The nameless narrator is visiting Peyrehorade simply to look at the ruins in the area, but on hearing about the statue he is intrigued. Before he gets a good look at the statue he sees two townies throw a stone at the statue (while it was being unearthed it fell on the leg of a workman and broke it) only to have the stone thrower cry out in pain and say that the statue threw the stone back at him. The narrator laughs this away, but on seeing the statue up close he isn’t so sanguine. The form and body are magnificent, but its face is…not so magnificent. —http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicv.html [Oct 20006]

The 1979 La Venere di Ille was made as part of a series of movies commissioned by the Italian TV station RaiDue focusing on the fantastic in 19th century literature. The texts were selected by the Italian author Italo Calvino. Mario Bava and his son Lamberto directed the film.

Excerpt

“Shortly afterwards, the door opened a second time, and some one came in who said, ‘Good evening, my little wife.’ Then the curtains were drawn back. She heard a stifled cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up apparently with extended arms. Then she turned her head and saw her husband, kneeling by the bed with his head on a level with the pillow, held close in the arms of a sort of greenish-colored giant. She says, and she repeated it to me twenty times, poor woman!- she says that she recognized- do you guess who?-the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue. Since it has been here every one dreams about it. But to continue the poor lunatic’s story. At this sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her mind. She cannot tell how long she remained in this condition. Returned to her sense she saw the phantom, or the statue as she insists on calling it, lying immovable, the legs and lower part of the body on the bed, the bust and arms extended forward, and between the arms her husband, quite motionless. A cock crew. Then the statue left the bed, let fall the body, and went out. Mme. Alphonse rushed to the bell, and you know the rest.”

—http://frenital.byu.edu/merimee/works/TheVenusofIlle.html [Oct 2006]

Prosper Mérimée (September 28, 1803–September 23, 1870) was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. One of his stories was the basis of the opera Carmen. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e [Oct 2006]

The Marquise von O (1808) – Heinrich von Kleist

The Marquise von O (1808) – Heinrich von Kleist
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The Marquise von O is an 1808 novella by Heinrich von Kleist which was adapted to film by Eric Rhomer in 1976.

The Marquise von O is a novella by Heinrich von Kleist. The story begins with a marvelous single sentence paragraph relating how in a prominent town in northern Italy the widow the Marquise von O. places an announcement in the newspapers to the efect that she is pregnant and wishes the father of her child to make himself known to her, in order that she can marry him. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Marquise_von_O [Oct 2006]

In search of plotlessness

Metafilter has an entry on plotlessness.

I love Raymond Carver’s short stories because they’re complete and perfect without much happening in them, in terms of action and plot development. What I’d like to find is some novels that are similarly “plotless”? Do they exist?

There are Carver stories which are so good you HAVE to finish them, even though all that happens is someone goes to bingo, sees someone else there, goes home, feels sad and goes to bed. I’m looking for novels where the prime reason you keep on reading isn’t to see “what happens” but because you want to spend more time with the characters or the writing itself; ideally books where very little “happens” at all… metafilter, March 8, 2005

And Wikipedia has an article on slice of life story, which reminds me of the boredom and realism of everyday life and the kitchen sink drama:

A slice of life story is a story which has no real plot. Often it has no exposition, no action, no conflict, and no denouement, but an open ending. It usually tries to depict the every-day life of ordinary people. The term slice of life is actually a (more or less) dead metaphor: it often seems as if the author had taken a knife and cut out a slice of the lives of some characters, apparently not bothering at all where the cuts were made.

It has also been defined as an “episode of actual experience represented realistically and with little alteration in a dramatic, fictional, or journalistic work.”. —Wikipedia

Her stupid questions …

“Her stupid questions, which once had seemed to me the happiest proof of her love; her voice, which had once been capable of exciting me physically; her touch which had ravished me, all had only one effect and influence over me now—to enervate me. She became jealous, or behaved as if she were; there was scene after scene. I realized that I should have been devastated, but all I could feel was torture. Then she would kiss my hand, beg for forgiveness, we would rest side by side, and I was consumed by boredom. I ate oranges and was annoyed by the thought that I would have to get up in the middle of the night and go home. And as I held her in my arms, I was thinking of any other woman, longing for any other woman, a prostitute for all I cared, if only I could have kissed other lips, heard other sighs…”

If Schnitzler was a master of the playboy type, he was even more famous for his depiction of the woman with whom the playboy was so often involved, das susses Madel, “the sweet girl.” She is socially inferior and sexually accessible; he can buy her company with modest gifts. Each of the parties in this relationship is subject to a characteristic illusion: the young man pretends that there may be a future for their affair; the young woman tries to pretend that she is content with its impermanence. The break, when it comes, is likely to be awkward for the young man, painful for the young woman. Far from being the femme fatale of the fin-de-siècle aesthetic imagination, she is fragile and vulnerable. –via http://media.ucsc.edu/classes/thompson/schnitzler.html [Oct 2006]

See also: Arthur Schnitzler (1862 – 1931)

Death and the maiden trope

Death and the Maiden (1512) – Niklaus Manuel Deutsch
Image sourced here.

In the frescoe of Berne, a skeleton kisses the virgin on her cheek and grabs her full breasts.
Image sourced here.

Death and Woman (1517) – Hans Baldung Grien

 

A maiden is a female virgin (though originally it referred to males as well), or to any young woman.

This theme [death and the maiden] has a multi-faceted past. It is rooted in very old mythological traditions: among the ancient Greeks, the abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades (Pluto), god of Hell, is a clear prefiguration of the clash between Eros and Thanatos. The young goddess gathered flowers in company of carefree nymphs when she saw a pretty narcissus and plucked it. At that moment, the ground opened; Hades came out of the underworld and abducted Persephone. — http://www.lamortdanslart.com/fille/maiden.htm

Counter-Clock World (1967) – Philip K. Dick

Counter-Clock World (1967) – Philip K. Dick
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While the 1991 Time’s Arrow is very much the best-known example of reverse chronology literature, the idea had been explored previously by Philip K. Dick’s 1967 Counter-Clock World. [Oct 2006]

“Dick’s best books always describe a future that is both entirely recognizable and utterly unimaginable.” –The New York Times Book Review

Counter-Clock World is a 1967 science fiction novel by author Phillip K. Dick, in which time has started to move in reverse, resulting in the dead reviving in their own graves, living their lives in reverse, eventually ending in returning to the womb, and splitting into an egg and a sperm during copulation between the receiving woman and a man. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World [Oct 2006]

See also: reverse chronology in fiction – 1967 – sf-literature