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Long after he was dead, French poet Charles Baudelaire inspired a Decadent Movement in France, which became definitive of fin de siecle sensibility. One of the historical and influential links between Baudelaire and the new Decadents was the Comte de Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who called the first of his own collections of Decadent prose Contes cruels, because they spurned conventional means of attaining literary closure by celebrating 'the irony of fate' -- the capacity that the course of events has for thwarting human ambition in a frankly mocking fashion.
"Because it became
so firmly linked to the notion of the fin de siecle, the Decadent
Movement did not survive the end of the nineteenth century in France
and Decadent literature became increasingly unfashionable thereafter
-- but it was, by definition, a literary species guaranteed to thrive
on its own unfashionability. The stories collected here have been
woefully unappreciated, even when they have succeeded in reaching
print -- as some have not until now -- but I have never been tempted
to abandon the production of such items, and am far fonder of them
than I am of many works that proved more economically viable."
-- from the author's Introduction.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
An Oasis of Horror
Justice
The Copper Cauldron
Nobody Else to Blame
Heartbeat
Upon the Gallows Tree
The Devil's Men
The Elixir of Youth
The Lamia's Soliloquy
And the Hunter Home from the Hill
The Riddle of the Sphinx
My Mother, the Hag
The Devil's Comedy
The Power of Prayer
Published by The Borgo Press
in January 2008
ISBN:1-4344-0201-0
