The Great Shadow: And Other Stories Book

Published in 1915, Mário de Sá-Carneiro's The Great Shadow is a strange little book indeed. This Portuguese writer who committed suicide at the age of 26 seems to represent a link of sorts between the Decadents and the Surrealists. There's even perhaps an anticipation of magic realism in some of the stories in this collection. The unhealthy sexual obsessions of the Decadents are much in evidence, but combined with bizarre fantastic visionary speculations and esoteric artistic theories. There's a poet whose poems requite no knowledge of the language they're written in, a book whose title is a colour and a piece of music, there's a man who kills himself because he can't bear to go on living in a world that contains no other colours beyond those that exist. A writer is working on a book of poems. When the work has reached perfection his poems will be free of gravity. And indeed, one day the poems simply float off the pages of the book and disappear into the air. There are obsessions with sex, death and murder, identity is a quality that is constantly mutable, and time can be made to do our bidding. There's also a fascination with speed and technology that suggests a kinship to the Futurists, but also a fascination with dreams and the world of the imagination. Reality is a very uncertain proposition. Most of the characters are artists, dancers or whores. The artists are a strange breed having little if anything in common with the general run of humanity. These stories are strange, beautiful and disturbing. Yet another fabulous book from Dedalus.