Some twenty plus short stories of diverse theme, genre, epoch and humour, bound by a link: the opaqueness. Masks pervade, literal and figurative: masks of conspirators, murderous brigades, buffoons, cult worshippers, sorceresses and hypocrites of societies both literal and fictional.
Developments characteristic of Edgar Poe, yet not devoid of exotic storytelling of Boccaccio or the Arabian Nights entertainment; likewise anticipating the satires of Cortazar.
Unlike much of the earlier Victorian/Romanticist oeuvre, the vulgar twist is hardly wanting, something I also found all throughout Schwob’s View Imaginaires. Despite the otherwise poetic prose, the tableaux, the tapestries: Schwob holds no scruples in plunging into the vulgar.
Like the symbolist writers I’m used to, Schwob emphasizes heavy descriptive language and dense narration over dialogue. Which ultimately makes this not an easy read. Referencing the dictionary more than ever, I couldn’t imagine reading this in anything but French. Though I gather even most natives would struggle unless seasoned in this type of read.
Some narratives follow the perspective of an in-story protagonist. I shouldn’t say protagonist. Rarely have I found the narrative voice likable; rarely to a sympathy inspiring extent. Others proceed from an even further detached lens of an almost alien species (per the subject meditated in the prologue), oblivious to our finer aspirational subtleties nor customs, describing events as might an astral traveller.
Before proceeding below, bear in mind, nearly all stories can be interpreted allegorically, irrespective of whether I state so explicitly or not.
Prologue - Like the prelude to Vies Imaginaires, stands in its own right as a solid philosophical fiction-essay that could easily derive of Poe’s imagination.
Le Roi au masque d'or - A lengthy allegory, folkloric parable, grotesque social satire, if you will, that most explicitly directs our attention at the mask, at all the masks.
La Morte d'Odjigh - an apocalyptic, pre-historic ice-age scenario continuing the somber mood set in the inaugurating tale. Pay attention to the recurring symbols, kennings and leitmotifs.
L'Incendie Terrestre - a biblical allegory and another apocalyptic thematic, which, however beautiful, I was hoping not to characterize the entire collection remainder. And it wouldn’t.
Les Embaumeuses - the orientalism narrative finally treads a pleasanter territory. Two Greeks err across the Libyan desert, ending up in a wicked city. Fantastic and grotesque events from thence. A mild pathos actually derived this time.
La Peste - A moral tale of both comedy and horror. Quintessential Poe. Italy, 1374, the plague having devastated much of the populace (particularly the chronicler’s native Florence), and political intrigue galore.
Les Faulx-Visaiges - one of my favourites and one of the most savage. Probably a pseudo-history. 1444. The Hundred-Years War. Medieval pillagers of ambiguous Anglo-Franco identity roam, violate and devastate the countryside. Masked figures again. Very detailed in the terminology: the attire, the ornaments, the medieval weaponry.
Les Eunuques - Another detailed poetic tableux of the lives of the lamentable eunuchs: the background, the enslavement, the disport. Poetic refrains. Like Les Faulx-Visaiges, abounds in the circumstantial terminology. Hardly an easy read.
Les Milésiennes - An exotic horror narrative. Maturing young women begin to hang themselves in the urban decays of Miletus of an ambiguous time period. Plenty of the subterranean, the sorcery and the catharsis.
52 et 53 Orfila - a grotesque satire rivaling two women at a retirement home/hospice. «Ce cimetière animé restait plus anonyme que le cimetière des morts»
Le Sabbat de Mofflaines - another of my favourite … satires, horrors, magic realism narratives? A Sabbath depiction in spirit with Goya’s Black Paintings, Bulgakov’s M&M, Poe’s King Pest and the like masterful fantasy imaginings. And evidently inspired by Macbeth. Hyperbolic, extensive descriptions of the occult ceremony, the feast, the guests. Cold, impartial narration with a dark sense of humour. As typical of Schwob, the ending plucks off the velvet to affront bleak reality.
La Machine a Parler - a philosophical science fiction. Probably the only story I felt indifferent to, having read too much of similar development in Poe.
Blanche la sanglante - A fairly vulgar depiction of a comically mismatched union. Gradual madness, conspiracy. No dialogue but the unreliable, distanced and conceivably averse narrator.
La Grande-Brière - a savage fiasco in a country setting. Much difficult to comprehend local patois that, however, reads beautifully once established the proper cadence.
Les Faux-Saulniers - a historical sea narrative of galley prisoners and salt contraband (a punishable crime in early 18th-century France). Heavy marine terminology.
La Flûte - a beautiful, melancholic sea fantasy of pillagers/pirates of an ambiguous epoch. Something of The Ancient Mariner. Something of Bateau Ivre. Unsurprisingly, something of Poe.
La Charrette - a subtle, macabre development of two charioteers. A nasty affair slowly unveils.
La Cité dormante - A fantasy/allegory and another of my favourites. A touch of orientalism if not a direct nod to 1001 nights. Symbolically pervasive. Much descriptive symmetry.
Le Pays bleu - A melancholic, Dickensian fantasy, I want to say. An unnamed narrator meets a poor girl with a housemate in a bleak, wintry city. Poverty, imagination, survival. A dream of a mythical place.
Le Retour au Bercail - a decadent sketch of a young pig-keeper woman caught in midst of the Parisian burlesque. Schwob (like Flaubert) expresses in prose the satirical buffooneries Baudelaire and Verlaine hyperbolize in verse.
Cruchette - two prisoners in the rocky regions of a prison colony. A woman in between. Something in the narrative reminded me of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men read a lifetime or two ago.
Bargette - A swampy, marshy, rustic marine backdrop with two men and a girl still within her innocence. The moral of this one still eludes me.
Questions, comments? Connect.