My Fantoms - Theophile Gautier

[Johnlprobert]

My Fantoms - Theophile Gautier (1811-1872) NYRB

Contents:

The Adolescent
The Priest
The Painter
The Opium Smoker
The Actor
The Tourist
The Poet

Time for some more classic Euro-horror I think and while M Gautier's tales wouldn't necessarily win any awards for blood and guts they do very nicely in the sex & weird categories which more than qualifies him for Vault inclusion in my book.

The Adolescent - An aging narrator tells of the time when he was 17 and had to sleep in a summer house on the wall of which hung a tapestry depicting Hercules and Omphale. In fact the lady is a rendition of the extremely sexy Marquise Antoinette de T--- who comes to life, steps out of the tapestry, and keeps our hero busy for a few nights until he's found out. A bouncy style to the translation keeps this one light and fun and it's a decent introduction to the volume

The Priest - This is Clarimonde by another name. The translation here is by Richard Holmes (as are all the stories) and while it's ok it can't compare with Lafcadio Hearn's translation that you can find in Fontana Ghost Stories 6, so stick with that one if you can.

[Johnlprobert]

The Painter - A LONG story in which Onuphrius (yes that's his name) a young painter slowly and steadily, possibly via a number of weird dreams, ends up going bonkers. David Lynch would like this one, I think

The Opium Smoker - Much shorter and basically details an opium dream, with Gautier's usual obsession of perfect women with unshod feet to the fore.

The Actor - Here's a more Vault-ish story with handsome young Heinrich ignoring his theological education and forsaking the priesthood for the stage. What's his first major part? The devil! Only he's not terribly good so guess who turns up to put him right on performance night? I suspect this one muct have been included in classic horror anthologies but I didn't recognise it.

The Tourist - Another LONG story replete with pages and pages of description of Pompeii before we get down to the good stuff, but oh my goodness it is good stuff when we finally get there. Octavian (why Gautier gives his leading men such odd names I'll never know. They can't have been popular at the time of writing can they?) travels with his friends to the South of Italy and becomes obsessed with the impression made in lava of a perfect pair of breasts. One night, after a long tour of Pompeii, he finds himself transported back to AD79 where he gets to meet the aforementioned bosom attached to a personable young lady who takes him home for a bit of afternoon fun. But then newly-converted-to-Christianity Dad turns up and delivers one of those terrific speeches telling her to 'go back to her filthy Greek lovers and let this young man go back to his own time!', before intoning the obligatory exorcism. Excellent stuff and worth the wait.

[Johnlprobert]

The Poet - And we end with what I think is non-fiction and quite possibly an obituary for one of Gautier's friends. Certainly this piece doesn't have any of the feel of conventional narrative to it and it appears to have originally been published in the newspaper quoted in the text. An odd piece to finish on and hugely anti-climactic considering some of the gems that have gone before.

OK that's enough of that for the moment - Sir Noose himself, Johnny Mains, has provided me with a copy of Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive so hopefully that will provide me with a bit of a change from classic 19th century French literature