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| Constantin Guys, Demimondaines |
Contes cruels (
Cruel Tales, sometimes also translated as
Sardonic Tales) is a book that has been unexpectedly dear to my heart. I say "unexpectedly" because neither satire of bourgeois morality, nor horror in the style of Edgar Allan Poe have ever been among my favorite things, and this book
deals in both. Moreover, it delivers them in the guise of short stories, a literary form I'm not exactly fond of. And yet my memory of
Contes cruels is that of a book of exquisitely sharp and beautiful tales, a book that was a complete pleasure to read, made doubly so by the fact that it was
discovered completely by chance. To test this impression, I am returning to it now for o.'s
French February event (and I reading it in French for the first time, too). I will be writing here about the tales that strike me and I hope to find some time to discuss the author as well, Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste
WHAT-were-my-parents-thinking de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, who was a pretty interesting character in his own right.
When it comes to
Les demoiselles de Bienfilâtre, the first of the
Cruel Tales (French version available
here; English version available
here), there are two things I appreciated. One is a turn a phrase that was so nice I felt the need to
keep it - to write it down or memorize it, to carry it with me in some form. The other is the underhanded cleverness of its construction. Let me explain what I mean with this last point.
