Soleil des loups

I read Clorinda in an anthology that introduced the story enticingly, which set me seeking rabbit-holes that I peeked in, then returned to after reading the story. Ultimately, the story itself was the less enjoyable part for me.

Clorinda

“Life for you is obviously a thing of the past; the days you now drag out are numbered.”
An omniscient narrator addresses the story to “you”, a man who clearly disgusts him. The man drinks away his memories, and slumbers among mementoes, including “on a strip of moss, a tiny iron helmet inlaid with red gold, no larger than a thimble”.

Thereafter, life can never live up to the encounter (if that’s what it was) that is then retold.

Removing armour from the tiny beauty is “like taking show more shrimp-meat out of its shell”.
She tries to run away. He ties her down.
“You knew… that she was begging you to free her. This made you wish to see her naked.”

He deserves his misery.
A 3* story for me.

Image: A woman on horseback in the woods, “The Blank Signature” by René Magritte (Source)

Background and sideground

de Mandiargues published this short story in 1960. He was a French writer who was previously associated with the Parisian Surrealists, and knowing that adds extra ways to interpret his story. You can read about him here.

This story is dedicated to Torquato Tasso, who wrote Jerusalem Delivered in 1581 - an epic poem I’d never heard of. In it, Tancredi, a Christian knight of the First Crusade, falls in love with a Saracen (Muslim) warrior, Clorinda. She does not return his love. Drama ensues. You can read more about the poem and its plot here.

It also features a sorceress called Armida who is sometimes conflated with Clorinda, but thought to be based on Homer’s Circe. You can read about Arminda here, and Circe here.

Tasso himself was widely celebrated, but suffered profound mental illness too. You can read about him here.

Manguel (translator and anthologist) links the story to Pygmalion, known to many of us via George Bernard Shaw’s play and the musical, “My Fair Lady”, but that was a modern spin on The Metamorphoses of Ovid, in which Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with one of his statues (dubbed Galatea in some later versions). You can read more about the poem and its plot here.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass and Gulliver’s Travels and Tom Thumb echo here too. And of course, Echo comes from Greek mythology. What a web and so on to Arachne!

For different reasons, I thought of JL Borges The Circular Ruins from The Garden of the Forking paths. See my review HERE.

And that brought Pinocchio to mind, and many others.

I enjoyed all those diversions and reminiscences enough to bump up the overall experience to 4*.

Image: Clorinda attacking Tancredi, by Paolo Domenico Finoglia (Source)

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

(I can’t find a legit online link to the story.)

You can join the group here. show less

L'écriture est virtuose, c'est un fait. Les descriptions hallucinantes qui mènent le lecteur de l'admiration à l'horreur ou au dégoût tiennent à la fois de Borges, de Poe, de Huysmans auxquels se serait joint un illustrateur de la force de Jérôme Bosch, lequel aurait sorti de sa plume une belle galerie de monstres et de farfadets hirsutes.

L'auteur de craint pas d'égarer le lecteur dans des digressions descriptives et fantastiques qui, si elles fascinent, n'en fatiguent pas moins l'attention. De ce recueil de six nouvelles, on peut retenir un formidable "archéologue" dont la partie se déroulant sur un lac gelé m'a procuré une belle émotion littéraire ; une "Clorinde" court qui oscille entre érotisme et horreur ; un "pain show more rouge" pour lequel on se demande ce qu'avait absorbé ou fumé l'auteur tant nous baignons dans un royaume de Lilliput bizzaroïde; une "étudiante" que j'ai trouvé illisible, un "opéra des falaises" parfaitement baroque et mystérieux où la raison vacille avec la vie du capitaine ; une "vision capitale" clôturant le recueil sur un cauchemar marquant une vie.

Dans l'ensemble, une composition virtuose au style étonnant et affirmé qui ne laisse pas indifférent. show less