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This is the first of three volumes of translations of Antoine-Louis
Duclaux, Comte de L’Estoille (1835-1894). This book collects
his earlier works, including the Breton fantasy The Miller of Carnac
(1866), as well as a suite of Arabian Tales (1865), the prose poems of
Symphony (1867), the defiantly experimental Fusains (1868),
and the epic drama Vercingerorix (1868).
A few modern critics have allotted L’Estoille a significant
role in the development of the prose poem, between Bertrand’s Gaspard
de la Nuit and Baudelaire’s Spleen de Paris, but have
often neglected his significant contribution to the development of French
fantasy.
His works are especially important in mapping the gradual elaboration and transfiguration of the idea of fées from being seemingly human enchantresses to immaterial beings of symbolic significance. A genuinely innovative writer, L’Estoille was a precursor of the experimentation subsequently carried out by writers of the Symbolist Movement of the 1890s. His contribution to French fantasy has been drastically underestimated, and he was almost forgotten until his recent rediscovery.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
Haïcks and Burnooses: Arab Songs (1865)
The Forests of the Sahel
Fatma
The Sylph and the Rose
Thirst
Sensuality
The Woman and the Poet
The Palm Tree in the Desert
Aïchouna
Princess Mitidja
Sidi-Mohamed-ben-Abd-el-Rhaman
Sidi-Embareck
The Legend of Adam
Great is He who Shrinks
The Angel of Pain
The Yellow Plague
The Drop of Water
The Land of the Sun
The Daughter of Ouled-Aïad
Love Song
The Death of Ben-Mansour
Yamina
Bullets Don’t Kill
The Warm Spring
The Camel-Driver’s Song
The Janissary’s Song
The Palm Trees with the Heads of Angels
Desire
The Dark-Eyed Virgin
Attila, a Danish Tale (1866)
The Miller of Carnac (1866)
Folle-Avoine (1867)
Fusains (1868)
Symphony: Poems in Prose (1867):
Jephthah’s Daughter
The Song of Arthur
Rachel and Lia
Symphony
I: Rose-des-Eaux
II: Alona
Vercingetorix (1868)
Cover by Michel Borderie
Published by Black Coat Press in October 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64932-007-0
