Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816696895
- eISBN:
- 9781452952369
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816696895.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense ...
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This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense and extreme in both subject matter and style, reflecting Barbey’s unique sensibility. The stories combine horror, comedy, and irony in disturbing and memorable ways, but they are also thematically probing, especially in their indictment of what Barbey saw as a soulless and oppressive modernity. Barbey evolved a richly poetic aesthetic to battle the modern bent toward scientism, positivism, and commodification. This translation seeks to find an analogue in English for Barbey’s complex style. Barbey blends elements associated with the oral tale-teller, something like Leskov, with the highly literary, allusive qualities of a more elite writer like Henry James. His sentences blend the qualities of the spoken word with suddenly labyrinthine structures, embeddings, and digressions. The style mirrors the man’s sensibility, and the translation endeavors to do both justice.Less
This new translation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, first published in 1874, aims to re-introduce Barbey to Anglophone readers. The six stories are highly dramatic, psychologically intense and extreme in both subject matter and style, reflecting Barbey’s unique sensibility. The stories combine horror, comedy, and irony in disturbing and memorable ways, but they are also thematically probing, especially in their indictment of what Barbey saw as a soulless and oppressive modernity. Barbey evolved a richly poetic aesthetic to battle the modern bent toward scientism, positivism, and commodification. This translation seeks to find an analogue in English for Barbey’s complex style. Barbey blends elements associated with the oral tale-teller, something like Leskov, with the highly literary, allusive qualities of a more elite writer like Henry James. His sentences blend the qualities of the spoken word with suddenly labyrinthine structures, embeddings, and digressions. The style mirrors the man’s sensibility, and the translation endeavors to do both justice.
Jules Barbey D’aurevilly
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816696895
- eISBN:
- 9781452952369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816696895.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This is the first of the stories that Barbey wrote, and it involves narrative frames within frames again, each frame in itself peopled with intriguing, often decadent characters. The story leads up ...
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This is the first of the stories that Barbey wrote, and it involves narrative frames within frames again, each frame in itself peopled with intriguing, often decadent characters. The story leads up to a horrific set of events involving mother-daughter rivalry and infanticide. As fencing was an obsession to the townspeople in “Happiness in Crime,” the obsession here is with the game of whist, a game played compulsively by a set of aristocrats whose time has passed. The story is set in post-Napoleonic Normandy again, among a set of nobles who have returned from their flight during the Revolution, and as such it is a glimpse into a class and a place and time rarely described, with the political situation and the moral one illuminating each other. This story is about nineteen thousand words in length.Less
This is the first of the stories that Barbey wrote, and it involves narrative frames within frames again, each frame in itself peopled with intriguing, often decadent characters. The story leads up to a horrific set of events involving mother-daughter rivalry and infanticide. As fencing was an obsession to the townspeople in “Happiness in Crime,” the obsession here is with the game of whist, a game played compulsively by a set of aristocrats whose time has passed. The story is set in post-Napoleonic Normandy again, among a set of nobles who have returned from their flight during the Revolution, and as such it is a glimpse into a class and a place and time rarely described, with the political situation and the moral one illuminating each other. This story is about nineteen thousand words in length.
Jules Barbey D’aurevilly
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816696895
- eISBN:
- 9781452952369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816696895.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This short story is set in Barbey’s native town of Valognes, which is located in Normandy, it takes place during the aftermath of Napoleon. It features a set of ex-soldiers of the Empire. This story, ...
More
This short story is set in Barbey’s native town of Valognes, which is located in Normandy, it takes place during the aftermath of Napoleon. It features a set of ex-soldiers of the Empire. This story, the longest one in the collection, is also the most vigorous, most direct protest against the smug and ugly modernity that Barbey (and his friend Charles Baudelaire) so detested. Its climax takes the horror of the preceding story up a very big notch, with a scene of grotesque mutilation, followed by years of expiation. This story is about twenty-six thousand words long.Less
This short story is set in Barbey’s native town of Valognes, which is located in Normandy, it takes place during the aftermath of Napoleon. It features a set of ex-soldiers of the Empire. This story, the longest one in the collection, is also the most vigorous, most direct protest against the smug and ugly modernity that Barbey (and his friend Charles Baudelaire) so detested. Its climax takes the horror of the preceding story up a very big notch, with a scene of grotesque mutilation, followed by years of expiation. This story is about twenty-six thousand words long.
