Review by Glenn Russell
Amazing, remarkable, wonderful, marvelous, mind-blowing stories,
December 12, 2013
Each of the 45 stories translated, annotated and introduced by author/French
literature expert Brian Stableford makes for fun reading, lots and lots
of fun reading, crazy, horrible fun reading – not that common in
the world of literary fiction. But then again, Jean Richepin (1849-1926)
was not a common author -- tall, with thick wild hair and a face covered
in a full beard, he was a larger-than-life flamboyant literary artist,
an outlandish 19th century top-hatted cross between, say, Salvador Dali
and Allen Ginsberg, who refused to belong to any one literary school.
These stories of his defy category; they contain elements of naturalism
but he was not a naturalist; they contain qualities of fin-de-siecle decadence
but he was not a decadent; they contain a touch of horror but he was not
a writer of horror fiction.
So, what can we say about his stories? Well, for one thing, the stories
collected here are short – with the exception of a 40 pager and a
13 pager, all the stories are about 5 pages in length. They all have a
dab of ghoulishness and cruelty and we can encounter, among other monstrosities,
madness, nightmares, fiends and witches. And also, they usually contain
an unexpected twist at the end. More could be said generally but I will
focus on a 4 pager entitled ‘The Enemy’ to give a more specific
taste of what a reader will find in this collection.
The first-person narrator of this story is a graphologist, that is, a
specialist in inferring character from handwriting. We read the opening
lines, “The name engraved on the visiting-card did not strike any
chord in my memory. On the other hand, the few lines traced after the
name in question immediately and irresistibly rendered me sympathetic
to the unknown visitor. Those lines, in fact, revealed on graphological
analysis, without the slightest possible hesitation, a noble, dolorous
and desperate soul. Without a doubt, the man who had written those lines
was not lying in affirming that he had come to ask for mental assistance
in a matter of life and death.” In a way, all of these Richepin tales
are about life and death. Hey, what do you expect from our larger-than-life
author?
The narrator/graphologist receives his visitor and sees from his gaze
that his is, indeed, noble, dolorous and despairing. The visitor goes
on to tell him how he is being persecuted by a most abominable enemy.
Through this interchange, the narrator listens to this gentleman’s
pleas of not being mad but concludes he is, in truth, definitely dealing
with a case of insanity, more specifically a case of insanity involving
delusions of persecution.
And why does he conclude thus? Because he sees this gentleman has the
wealth to effectively deal with any real flesh and blood persecutor and
the good-looks and noble bearing to deal with any female, ergo, his enemy
is purely imaginary. The gentleman instantly reads the narrator’s
thoughts and not only replies but insists the enemy haunting him is truly
human and made of flesh and blood. And when the narrator asks for more
specifics, the gentleman relates how his enemy underlines the faults of
his verse in pencil; his enemy renders odious the woman he loves; his
enemy spits on the food he eats.
Rather than saying anything further and possibly spoiling the ending
of this story, let me pause and note how there was one thinker much admired
by the French decadent fin-de-siecle writers, a thinker who held the imagination
of cultured, educated people of the time in his grip: German pessimistic
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, hater of ordinary work-a-day life and
spoiler of romantic love. It doesn’t take that much to see how the
gentleman in this story, who by nature wants to write romantic verse,
love women and enjoy the everyday round of life, is haunted and tortured
by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy.
This is but one modest take on one of these amazing, remarkable, wonderful,
marvelous, mind-blowing stories. Should I go on? I think not, as it should
be clear I highly, highly recommend this book by one-of-a-kind author,
Jean Richepin.
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