Jean Lorrain

... Couch s, assis du c t de l'ombre, tous les hommes sont l , les gar ons surtout, venus pour voir les filles la sortie de la messe. Ils devisent entre eux sous le feutre larges bords, en lourds souliers ferr s, le b ton la main, et attendent patiemment le passage des femmes. Quelques-uns grattent des guitares. Le parapet de pierre, qui domine le ravin, a t respectueusement laiss aux vieillards. Toute une bande de vieux, tr s Bellacoscia d'aspect, y prennent le frais ; l'un d'eux a quatre-vingt-douze ans, et est p re de douze enfants, il est l avec cinq de ses fils, dont le plus jeune a vingt ans et l'a n soixante-six. C'est vous dire la verdeur corse. Fils il est vrai de diff rentes femmes. Cet tonnant g n rateur en a eu quatre. Je l'examine avec stupeur...

Jean Lorrain, later famous as the author of such Decadent masterpieces as Nightmares of an Ether Drinker and Errant Vice, began his literary career in 1882 with the book of poems titled The Blood of the Gods-sending a sophisticated shudder through the caf s of Montmartre. In this volume, presented here for the first time in English, in a translation by Jacob Rabinowitz, Lorrain, the self-proclaimed "ambassador from Sodom," gives exquisite expression to Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite themes, expanding them, with defiant pride, to include unambiguous accounts of male homosexuality. Only now, more than a century later, can we fully appreciate the courage and the suffering behind his brilliant and sardonic self-expression.

The Turkish Lady, written in 1898, a semi-fictional travel piece by Jean Lorrain, is here presented in accompaniment with two other items of his: The Last Days of Venice, which is another travel piece, and a decadent fairy tale titled The Princess of the Geese.

When Jean Lorrain (1855-1906) was recruited to the stable of writers assembled by Catulle Mend s to supply L' cho de Paris with material on a weekly basis, in July 1890, he joined in readily with the experimental spirit of that enterprise, exploring various narrative strategies that could be employed in fitting work to slots that varied in length between 1,000 and 2,000 words. The contributions to the paper that he signed with his own name were soon outnumbered by the items that he signed "Raitif de la Bretonne," in honor of the prolifically innovative Nicolas-Edm Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), most of whose publications had appeared without the royal warrant necessary prior to the 1789 Revolution for works to be printed and sold legally. Presented here, for the first time in English or any other language, are sixteen of the pieces Lorrain wrote under the "Raitif de la Bretonne," by-line, collected and translated by Brian Stableford, the contents of the present volume partaking in the same meticulously perverse point of view that were the author's unique literary hallmark, thus performing the valuable function of offering readers an eccentric sampling of the his heretofore "lost" work.

Monsieur de Bougrelon, which originally appeared in serial form in Le Journal between 20 January and 10 May 1897, is here presented in English in a wonderful and fully annotated translation by Brian Stableford. This literary masterpiece, the eponymous "hero" of which is an extraordinary invention, remarkably exotic even by the standards of an era in which the intersection of neo-Naturalist and Symbolist Movements had created an intense interested in abnormal psychologies, is, for all its calculated eccentricity a strangely poignant work. It is not surprising that Monsieur de Bougrelon continued to haunt the author long after he had completed its composition and, as literary revenants go, the character is one of those most likely to make a liminal but profound impression even in today's world. In addition to the title novella, the present volume includes nine delightful stories from Lorrain's later period, which have never before appeared in English.