Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday

Anthologies like these are usually hit or miss, but with Calvino as the editor, there was very little that could go wrong. There's a definite overlap here between the 1981 Italian anthology TV series The Devil's Game; Calvino must have been inspired by that in making this collection. The 19th century fantastic is really the origin point of the modern horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres, and these stories are classics for a good reason. But what's most interesting about this collection are the more obscure stories that Calvino included. There are the staples like Hoffmann's The Sandman (I recommend reading the Penguin Classics translation of this one, not the creaky Dover translation included here), which is probably the greatest show more horror story ever written, but then there's more unknown material like a psychological horror story by Turgenev (The Dream), or A Lasting Love (Vernon Lee). Calvino's choice to split the book into two sections at the mid-century, with the first half covering more overtly fantastic tales in the Hoffmann tradition, and the second covering tales of more psychological horror isn't always successful. There are a few stories which don't even really qualify as fantastic (A Shameless Rascal by Nikolai Leskov), but on the whole, this is an extremely successful collection.

CONTENTS:

The Story of Demoniac Pacheco by Jan Potocki

Autumn Sorcery by Josef von Eichendorff

The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Wandering Willie's Tale by Walter Scott

The Elixir of Life by Honoré de Balzac

The Eye with No Lid by Philarète Chasles

The Enchanted Hand by Gérard de Nerval

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Nose by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

The Beautiful Vampire by Théophile Gautier

The Venus of Ille by Prosper Mérimée

The Ghost and the Bonesetter by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen

The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens

The Dream by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

A Shameless Rascal by Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov

The Very Image by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

Night: A Nightmare by Guy de Maupassant

A Lasting Love by Vernon Lee

Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce

The Holes in the Mask by Jean Lorrain

The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Friends of the Friends by Henry James

The Bridge-Builders by Rudyard Kipling

The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells show less

A nice collection. The only thing that didn't work for me was the scholarly attempt to draw a thematic line between earlier, supposedly more magical ("visionary") stories and later, more psychological ("every day") ones. They were basically indistinguishable, whether or not the authors had had the opportunity to read Freud! Calvino himself said it was arbitrary, and that's always a giveaway that a scholar is reaching and feels obligated to indulge his or her own classifying impulse. What was great was to see the inclusion of some classics of social satire: Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Gogol's "The Nose," etc. Satire is too often overlooked as a dimension of fantastical works. Which is strange, as if Gulliver's Travels were the show more only book allowed in the club. show less

Italo Calvino, editor of this anthology, is himself one of the finest writers ever to grace the fantastic; not surprisingly, he has selected a delicious assortment of works--all 19th-century--in this important collection. From the (undeservedly) obscure Jan Potocki to Nikolai Gogol, from Scott to Balzac, we are entertained with "fantastical" tales by master writers. Calvino made the interesting choice to divide the tales into two classes: the "visionary" fantastic, and the "everyday" fantastic. That latter may seem an oxymoron, but--as many critics have observed over the decades--the art of seeing the fantastic in the everyday is a part of the fantasist's stock in trade (or at least the good fantasist). Curiously, the acme of the show more "mooreefoc" effect, G. K. Chesterton, is not represented--"mooreeffoc" being something Charles Dickens once observed, the ordinary word "coffeeroom" seen backwards, and thus at first seeming bizarre and inexplicable, because reflected in a shop window. And indeed Dickens himself is represented in the second class, along with Kipling and Wells and Stevenson and Poe and more of that sort. This is really an essential collection for anyone with even a passing interest in the literature of the fantastic. show less

Livros da ilha deserta #5.
Seleção literalmente fantástica (rá!), não à toa ao final daquele século Freud concebeu a psicanálise, esse apanhado aqui preconiza os saberes psicanalíticos como bem Freud afirmava os escritores saberem por intuição o que ele descobriu com muita pesquisa.

This is a great collection. I wouldn't expect otherwise from an author (Calvino) whose own work shows an acute appreciation of literature.

Italy's master spinner of the wildly inventive, the incomparable Italo Calvino, includes twenty-six of his favorite imaginary tales in this excellent collection. And since each tale is worthy of its own review, I have chosen one of my personal favorites: The Holes in the Mask by French fin-de-siècle decadent writer Jean Lorrain (1855-1906). Below is a brief synopsis of Lorrain’s six-page gem along with my observations on how his tale relates to several themes of decadent literature:

During a night of carnival, bedecked in his domino cloak, velvet mask, satin beard, silk stockings and dancing shoes, our 1st person narrator watches two long white candles burn in his bachelor apartment as he awaits the arrival of his friend, De Jacquels. show more No sooner does De Jacquels arrive, similarly dressed, then both men are off, traveling through the dark streets of Paris in a horse-drawn carriage. The two friends arrive at a strange high ceilinged hall with a well-stocked wine and liquor bar and De Jacquels tells him to remain silent, since to speak would reveal their identities, which would mean trouble.

The hall is filled with men and women dressed in bizarre costumes and wearing masks, some of the masks truly ghastly. De Jacquels drags him back to a door closed off by a red curtain. ‘Entrance to the Dance’ is written above the door and a policeman stands guard, a policeman, the narrator realizes with horror and disgust when he touches one of his hand, made of wax. Once inside, the narrator finds more strangeness: this room is really an abandoned church and none of the maskers are dancing nor is there an orchestra.

After hours of roaming the hall, the narrator sees even more strangeness as he scrutinizes the maskers. We read, “There they remained, mute, motionless, as if withdrawn into mystery under long monk’s cowls . . . Now there were no more dominoes, no silk blouses, no Columbines, no Pierrots, no grotesque disguises. But all those masked people were alike, swathed in the same green suit, a discolored green rather like gold sulfite, with capacious black sleeves, and all in dark green hoods with two holes for their eyes in their silver cowls in the hollow of the cape.”

Feeling himself enveloped by the supernatural, at the point where he can no longer endure their silence, the narrator flings back the cloth covering the face of one of the maskers – and horror of horrors – there is nothing under the cloth! He uncovers another masker’s head – again nothing. Then he sees all hoods removed --- all are shadow and nothingness! He stands in front of a mirror and, seized with terror, removes his own mask. He lets out a loud shriek -- nothing is underneath -- he is dead. At this point in the story the narrator hears the voice of De Jacquel grumbling at him for drinking either again. Indeed he has. For he is lying on the floor of his apartment underneath his two white candles.

I don’t know about you, but for me this is one gripping, fascinating, unforgettable story. Again, here is my take on how this tale relates to four decadent themes:

Artificial Reality
The masked ball of this tale shares the same psychic and literary space as the sculptor’s studio, opera house, artist’s salon, theater, opium den and other interior and urban spaces used as setting for decadent tales. These fin-de-siècle decadent French authors had none of all that greenery and freshness of the great outdoors we find in such writers as Wordsworth or Thoreau.

Decay, the Bizarre and the Grotesque
Rotting corpses, aging flesh, serving meals with food exclusively the color black, encrusting the shell of a live tortoise with rare stones, focusing on degradation and torture – all contained within the pages of the decadents. Thus, in the same wicked spirit, we have Lorrain’s tale featuring velvet masks, satin beards, a wax manikin and ghastly, grotesque maskers beyond a red curtain.

Death and the experience of terror
The rationalist philosopher Rene Descartes famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.” By way of this and many other tales and novels, Jean Lorrain counters with, “I’m terrified, therefore I am.”, which is very much in keeping with the Lorrain epigraph, “The charm of horror only tempts the strong.” Indeed, terror is an ongoing theme for not only Jean Lorrain but other decadent writers, such as Octave Mirbeau, Joris-Karl Huysmans and Gabriel de Lautrec.

Altered states of consciousness
Similar to the tale’s narrator, Jean Lorrain was openly a drinker of either, which was very much in keeping with the decadent’s experimenting with hashish and opium. If you want to experience ‘unnatural states’ and distance yourself as far as possible from social positivism, scientific rationalism , historic ‘progress’ and respectable bourgeois society (what today we call the middle-class), what better way to do so than powerful drugs and stimulants? Or, if that doesn’t work, then defy society’s conventional morals by being openly gay, as was Jean Lorrain. show less

Italy's master spinner of the wildly inventive, the incomparable Italo Calvino, includes twenty-six of his favorite imaginary tales in this excellent collection. And since each tale is worthy of its own review, I have chosen one of my personal favorites: The Holes in the Mask by French fin-de-siècle decadent writer Jean Lorrain (1855-1906). Below is a brief synopsis of Lorrain’s six-page gem along with my observations on how his tale relates to several themes of decadent literature:

During a night of carnival, bedecked in his domino cloak, velvet mask, satin beard, silk stockings and dancing shoes, our 1st person narrator watches two long white candles burn in his bachelor apartment as he awaits the arrival of his friend, De Jacquels. show more No sooner does De Jacquels arrive, similarly dressed, then both men are off, traveling through the dark streets of Paris in a horse-drawn carriage. The two friends arrive at a strange high ceilinged hall with a well-stocked wine and liquor bar and De Jacquels tells him to remain silent, since to speak would reveal their identities, which would mean trouble.

The hall is filled with men and women dressed in bizarre costumes and wearing masks, some of the masks truly ghastly. De Jacquels drags him back to a door closed off by a red curtain. ‘Entrance to the Dance’ is written above the door and a policeman stands guard, a policeman, the narrator realizes with horror and disgust when he touches one of his hand, made of wax. Once inside, the narrator finds more strangeness: this room is really an abandoned church and none of the maskers are dancing nor is there an orchestra.

After hours of roaming the hall, the narrator sees even more strangeness as he scrutinizes the maskers. We read, “There they remained, mute, motionless, as if withdrawn into mystery under long monk’s cowls . . . Now there were no more dominoes, no silk blouses, no Columbines, no Pierrots, no grotesque disguises. But all those masked people were alike, swathed in the same green suit, a discolored green rather like gold sulfite, with capacious black sleeves, and all in dark green hoods with two holes for their eyes in their silver cowls in the hollow of the cape.”

Feeling himself enveloped by the supernatural, at the point where he can no longer endure their silence, the narrator flings back the cloth covering the face of one of the maskers – and horror of horrors – there is nothing under the cloth! He uncovers another masker’s head – again nothing. Then he sees all hoods removed --- all are shadow and nothingness! He stands in front of a mirror and, seized with terror, removes his own mask. He lets out a loud shriek -- nothing is underneath -- he is dead. At this point in the story the narrator hears the voice of De Jacquel grumbling at him for drinking either again. Indeed he has. For he is lying on the floor of his apartment underneath his two white candles.

I don’t know about you, but for me this is one gripping, fascinating, unforgettable story. Again, here is my take on how this tale relates to four decadent themes:

Artificial Reality
The masked ball of this tale shares the same psychic and literary space as the sculptor’s studio, opera house, artist’s salon, theater, opium den and other interior and urban spaces used as setting for decadent tales. These fin-de-siècle decadent French authors had none of all that greenery and freshness of the great outdoors we find in such writers as Wordsworth or Thoreau.

Decay, the Bizarre and the Grotesque
Rotting corpses, aging flesh, serving meals with food exclusively the color black, encrusting the shell of a live tortoise with rare stones, focusing on degradation and torture – all contained within the pages of the decadents. Thus, in the same wicked spirit, we have Lorrain’s tale featuring velvet masks, satin beards, a wax manikin and ghastly, grotesque maskers beyond a red curtain.

Death and the experience of terror
The rationalist philosopher Rene Descartes famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.” By way of this and many other tales and novels, Jean Lorrain counters with, “I’m terrified, therefore I am.”, which is very much in keeping with the Lorrain epigraph, “The charm of horror only tempts the strong.” Indeed, terror is an ongoing theme for not only Jean Lorrain but other decadent writers, such as Octave Mirbeau, Joris-Karl Huysmans and Gabriel de Lautrec.

Altered states of consciousness
Similar to the tale’s narrator, Jean Lorrain was openly a drinker of either, which was very much in keeping with the decadent’s experimenting with hashish and opium. If you want to experience ‘unnatural states’ and distance yourself as far as possible from social positivism, scientific rationalism , historic ‘progress’ and respectable bourgeois society (what today we call the middle-class), what better way to do so than powerful drugs and stimulants? Or, if that doesn’t work, then defy society’s conventional morals by being openly gay, as was Jean Lorrain. show less