Reviews for Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

The average rating for Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-08-27 00:00:00 M Allen TRANSLATED BY LOUIS RICH (From the original French "Le Calvaire") Produced by Dagny, Laura Natal and Marc D'Hooghe at (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) Illustration de Georges Jeanniot, 1902 Description: Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie. It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French society: from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims. Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age. The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid. Opening: I was born one evening in October at Saint-Michel-les-Hêtres, a small town in the department of Orne, and I was immediately christened by the name of Jean-François-Marie-Mintié. To celebrate in a fitting manner my coming into this world, my godfather, who was my uncle, distributed a lot of dainties, threw many coppers and other small coins to a crowd of country boys gathered on the church steps. One of them, while struggling with his comrades, fell so awkwardly on the sharp edge of a stone that he broke his neck and died the following day. As for my uncle, when he returned home he contracted typhoid fever and passed away a few weeks later. My governess, old Marie, often related these incidents to me with pride and admiration. He was an excellent man, very honest and very gentle,—with a mania for killing. He could not see a bird, a cat, an insect—anything at all that was alive—without being seized with a strange desire to kill it. He waged a relentless trapper's war on blackbirds, goldfinches, chaffinches and bullfinches. Oh dear! And it is not just the animals that are pointlessly wasted... He himself pointed out the most stalwart among the trees, those which grew up straight and spread out like the columns of a temple. It was an orgy of destruction, criminal and foolish; a shout of brutal joy went up every time a tree fell on top of another with a great noise. The old trees became less dense, one could say they were mowed down by some gigantic and supernatural scythe. Two men were killed by the fall of an oak tree. And the few trees which remained standing, austere in the midst of ruined trunks lying on the ground, and the twisted branches which rose up towards them like arms outstretched in supplication, were showing open wounds, deep and red gashes from which the sap was oozing, weeping as it were. Mirbeau/Mintie then decides to question the cruelty and degradation... What was this country, in whose name so many crimes were being committed, which had torn us—formerly so full of love—from the motherly bosom of nature, which had thrown us, now so full of hatred, famished and naked, upon this cruel land?... What was this country, personified to us by this rabid and pillaging general who gave vent to his madness on old people and trees, and by this surgeon who kicked the sick with his feet and maltreated poor old mothers bereaved of their sons?... What was this country every step on whose soil was marked by a grave, which had but to look at the tranquil waters of its streams to change them into blood, which was always frittering away its man power, digging here and there deep charnel vaults where the best children of men were rotting?... And I was astounded, when for the first time it dawned upon me that only those were the most glorious, the most acclaimed heroes of mankind who had pillaged the most, killed the most, burned the most. From this point onwards, now the setting is described and the backdrops are in place, the story veers to tell of an obsessional love for Juliette. Jean Mintie, our narrator, is led a fine (and expensive) dance by this woman: I realized that she loved me less than the last piece of cloth, that she would have sacrificed me for a cloak or a cravat or a pair of gloves. It is always painful to watch a mismatched pair, whether on the page or in real life. Twice I thought about abandoning this, yet ultimately, was pleased to have seen this through to the end. 2.5* □ □ □ □ □ □ □ From wiki: The Decadent movement was a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States. 3* The Diary of a Chambermaid 2.5* Empire of the Senses

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-11 00:00:00 Brian Geary An interesting study of obsession. I liked it much better than The Torture Garden, the only other book of his I've read.