The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France [Paperback]

Asti Hustvedt (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1890951072 | ISBN-13: 978-1890951078 | Publication Date: November 18, 1998

In France at the end of the nineteenth century, progress and material prosperity coincided with widespread alarm about disease and decay. The obsessions of our own culture as the twentieth century came to a close resonate strikingly with those of the last fin-de-siècle: crime, pollution, sexually transmitted diseases, gender confusion, moral depravity, alcoholism, and tobacco and drug use were topics of popular discussion then as now.The Decadent Reader is a collection of novels and stories from fin-de-siècle France that celebrate decline, aestheticize decay, and take pleasure in perversity. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy, and the deviant, the decadent writers attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived to be the chief enemy of art. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, Guy de Maupassant, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Catulle Mendès, Rachilde, Jean Moréas, Octave Mirbeau, Joséphin Péladan, and Remy de Gourmont looted the riches of their culture for their own purposes. In an age of medicine, they borrowed its occult mysteries rather than its positivism. From its social Darwinism, they found their monsters: sadists, murderers, transvestites, fetishists, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs, and hysterics. And they reveled in them, completely upending the conventions of romance and sentimentality. The Decadent Reader, which includes critical essays on all of the authors, many novels and stories that have never before appeared in English, and familiar works set in a new context, offers a compelling portrait of fin-de-siècle France.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The end of the 20th century has renewed an interest in the end of the 19th century, in particular the aesthetes and fin-de-siecle writers of France who influenced writers like Oscar Wilde and pointed toward modernists such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Coined by Baudelaire to describe Edgar Allan Poe, Decadence represented an aesthetic/aristocratic attack on bourgeois culture, exploring themes of art, deviance, perversion, and marginalization. Editor Hustvedt has collected translations of 12 short novels or selections by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Remy de Gourmont, and six others. Each selection includes an introduction by the translator. Hustvedt has performed a valuable service by providing this rich assortment of materials not otherwise readily available. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah,
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English
Original Language: French --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1088 pages
• Publisher: Zone (November 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890951072
• ISBN-13: 978-1890951078
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate decadent sourcebook, January 19, 2001

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V. Holt - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France (Paperback)

I spent several months reading this fantastic collection of many previously hard-to-find texts, finally brought together in one nicely packaged volume. It's by far the best of its kind that I've seen yet, and there aren't many decadent collections out there -- Dedalus usually has the market cornered for that type of thing. For me, the highlight was "The Future Eve" by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a book I've been trying to get for ages. Finding a translation of this obscure, science fiction-decadent novel at all was a delight. Villiers writes of a fictional Thomas Edison who constucts an android for a young lord who finds that his lady love's soul doesn't match her beautiful exterior. However, the marvellously constructed and realistic android (which makes me think of Metropolis, but this was written 40 years earlier!) proves to be almost too 'real' for him as well...the decadent ideal for a woman, in this and other works, is always unobtainable; corpses and statues are easier to deal with.

Each book or collection of stories in this volume is prefaced by an informative, scholarly essay on topics ranging from fetishism to hysteria, including historical information revelant to the texts. Disease, murder, necrophilia, incest, decay, obsession, prostitution, occultism, cruel women, corrupted innocence...J.K. Huysmans remarked that the end of every century is the same, and as we watch another century turn these are all still relevant ideas that have the ability to shock and disturb. Although presented here in translation, the lush, ornate language is preserved -- I like that kind of thing, but if you prefer your literature spare and unadorned, the decadents probably seem very ridiculous.

One of the best things about this book is that it could serve as both as introduction to the genre, or a sourcebook for the completist who has read all the classics and wants to dig a little deeper into the dark world of decadence. If you've read Huysmans, Baudelaire, Mirbeau or any of the other writers whose works are usually still in print and want more...this is the book for you. If you've never heard of any of these writers, but the description sounds interesting -- this is the place to start!

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ever wonder how deranged a human mind can get ? Read this., September 7, 2000

By 

John McCormack (Mahopac, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France (Paperback)

This book is a fantastic buy, it's huge and many of the stories are rare and unlikely to be found anywhere else. Perhaps the best collection of pure evil literature, full of incest, drug addiction, criminals, murder, sexual deviants, perverts, and lots of mind-bending, disturbing imagery, it has it all. Following where Baudelaire left off, these writer's plunge deep down into pure, horrific perversity ; sinking to the very bottom, searching out the morbid, hidden depthes of the tormented soul ; and then, instead of shrieking hystericaly and running away, they actually embrace the diseased mind, and use depravity as the ideal weapon for fighting conformity and the upper-classes. They took pleasure in sickness. Anything un-natural and therefore different could be used as an antidote against the bourgeois position of complete homogenity. The ideas and subject matter is much like that found in Huysmans's novel 'Against Nature' , long considered the decadent bible, and in fact includes an excellent, little known novel by him - 'A Haven'. Be warned though, this is dangerous, subversive writeing at it's best ; as you read these stories your own mind might start to decay and fall off in putrid, foul smelling chunks. It also has contributions by Guy de Maupassant, Jean Lorrain, Octave Mirbeau, and many other important writer's. A MUST for any fan of great literature, reading these feverish, degenerate stories will test your sanity, and perhaps even pollute some soul's with it's depravity...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic collection of works from the 19th Century, December 28, 2003

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France (Paperback)

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, the theme of decadence, decay and perversion permeated the literature. Was it a reflection of a society gone soft, or were artists commenting on a deeper, more insidious type of rot? Thomas Mann used a tuberculosis sanitorium as a setting for a novel that symbolized a moribund society soon to be wracked by the death throes of the Great War. In England, Oscar Wilde celebrated the perverse and in the US, Poe explored the world of death and excessive mourning, rather like our current "goth" fad.

In France, a number of writers used the same themes of decay and decadence to comment on the world. In this collection of 12 novellas and short stories, editor Asti Hustvedt collects significant but minor works that illustrate the obsessions of the Fin-de-Siècle. Some of the works are obscure but worthy, and a few are stunning in their craft. Each work is introduced by the translator, with notes and commentary.

In particular, I found two of the works in this volume absolutely compelling. "Monsieur Vènus" written by Rachilde (pseudonym of Marguérite Eymery) is an exploration of sexual reversal, perversion and hints at BDSM. The fact it was written by a woman, one extremely young, is a shocking look into a mind formed with definite and individualistic sexual ideas in youth. The end is shocking.

J-K Huysmans is better-known. The editor includes a minor work of great artist skill "The Haven" explores decadent naturalism. The setting is a country chateau, and the main characters a Parisian couple, who are evading creditors and their peasant relations who offer then the haven at the farm and chateau while they regroup. But the wife is suffering from what is obviously later-stage syphilis and the hearty peasants make a living as parasites off the inept Parisians. While the superficial world is one of cattle, rustic café brawls and mud, the inner world is explored in a series of vivid nightmares, mixing sexual and necrophilic imagery. The internal state of mind of the main character is explored with amazing psychological detail and the end, though mundane and flat, leaves the reader wondering what horrors lie ahead for the hapless couple. The volume is worth having for this work alone.