I got hold of a number of Jules Verne titles from his Extraordinary Voyages series which I am looking forward to reading. All of them are translated into Italian. The titles are:

1) La Stella del Sud (L’Étoile du sud) [The Southern Star]

2) Un prete nel 1839 (Un prête en 1839) [A Priest in 1839]

3) Borse di Viaggio (Bourses de voyage) [Travelling Bags]

4) Le avventure di Ettore Servadac, Attraverso il mondo solare (Hector Servadac, voyages et aventures a travers le monde solaire) [Hector Servadac, Voyages and Adventures around the Solar World]

5) César Cascabel

6) Racconti di ieri e di domani [Tales of Yesterday and Tomorrow]

7) Il superbo Orinoco (Le superbe Orénoque) [Superb Orénoque]

8 ) Il castello dei Carpazi (Le chateau des Carpathes) [The Castle in the Carpathians]

9) Claudius Bombarnac

10) Di fronte alla bandiera (Face au drapeau) [Facing the Flag]

Today I finally got hold of a book I have been looking for for years:

Gustave Kahn: La Principessa solare

He was an important French symbolist writer.

Here is another poem by Li Yu. This one was also translated by my friend Bo Jiang and myself and was also originally printed in the same anthology mentioned in my first Li Yu post:

The following is a brief bio of Li Yu and a poem he wrote. This was translated by my friend Bo Jiang and myself from the Chinese. It was originally published in an anthology called Literature of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Prentice Hall 1999).

Li Yu [937-978] was the sixth son of Li Jing. He was enthroned in 961 at the age of twenty-four and was emperor of South Tang for fifteen years. In 975 his country was invaded by the Sung and conquered, leaving him in the position of a mere titular noble. On July 7, 978 the emperor Shong Tai Chong compelled him to take poison and he died at the age of forty-two. Most of his famous poetry was written in the period after his fall from power when he was forced to sit idly by and watch his country ruled by another.

A poem:

Alone I ascended West Tiered Manor in silence,

While the moon appeared like a hook.

The cool fall was locked in this maple garden, calm and quiet;

This thing cannot be cut,

It gets more messy trying to straighten out.

A melancholy departure,

And a raw feeling in my heart.

A few months back I bought a book called Mysteries of the Court of London, by George M. Reynolds. Well, it is actually a book in ten volumes, each volume being about 500 pages. So, it is a 5,000 page novel essentially-which is about three times as long as War and Peace. Now, when I bought the set, I was perfectly aware that Reynolds had written a book titled Mysteries of London, but somehow imagined that it was part of Mysteries of the Court of London. Now, after seeing some of the text of the previously mentioned work, I have discovered that it is completely different, though equally as long! Apparently, the two works together are made up of 4.5 million words. As they were written over a twelve year period however, this averages about 1,100 words a day, or about four pages, which is quite a lot, but not phenomenal. What is phenomenal however, is that in this same period he completed another 11 series, including Mysteries of the Court of Naples and Mysteries of Old London. As these titles are very difficult to come  by however, I am uncertain about the lengths.

Here is a little taste from Mysteries of London:

Women press their little ones to their dried-up breasts in the agonies of despair; young delicate creatures waste their energies in toil from the dawn of day till long past the hour of midnight, perpetuating their unavailing labour from the hour of the brilliant sun to that when the dim candle sheds its light around the attic’s naked walls; and even the very pavement groans beneath the weight of grief which the poor are doomed to drag over the rough places of this city of sad contrasts.
    For in this city the daughter of the peer is nursed in enjoyments, and passes through an uninterrupted avenue of felicity from the cradle to the tomb; while the daughter of poverty opens her eyes at her birth upon destitution in all its most appalling shapes, and at length sells her virtue for a loaf of bread.
    There are but two words known in the moral alphabet of this great city; for all virtues are summed up in the one, and all vices in the other: and those words are
    WEALTH.    |    POVERTY.  

Ponson du Terrail has become one of my favourite authors. I plan to post a story of his here, once I can get it together. In the mean time, here is an incomplete catologue of the books of his that I have. The reason it is incomplete is a) I am not sure if I have counted all the books of his that I have, and b) I have not listed the copies I have of alternative titles (in the Rocambole series I have a number of these). All titles are in Italian, since that is the language I am reading Terrail in.

1. Un paggio di Luigi XIV

2. Dragonne e Mignonne

3. Il nuovo maestro di scuola

4. Il secreto di Dottor Rousselle

5. Il romanzo d’una cospirazione

6. Le maschere rosse

7. Il grillo del mulino

8. L’Organetto

9. La fatta d’Auteuil

10. I cavalieri della notte

11. La regina delle gitane

12. Il re degli zingari

13. Il brigadiere la jeunesse

14. La Madre miracolo

15. L’Armajuolo di Milano

16. I bellimbusti

17. Memorie d’un gendarme

18. Rossignol il libro pensatore

19. Inglese e Cinese

20. Il capitano dei penitenti neri

21. Il castello del diavolo

22. La buca di Satana

23. Un delitto di gioventu’

24. La Bella argentiera

25. La favorita del Re di Navarra

26. Gli amori della bella Nancy

27. Le avventure del Fante di fiori

28. La notte di S. Bartolomeo

29. La Regina delle barricate

30. Il bel Galaor

31. La seconda gioventù di Re Enrico

32. L’eredita misteriosa

33. Il club di fanti di cuori

Anyone who has read my book The Translation of Father Torturo probably knows what a big fan I am of Baron Corvo.

A few posts back I mentioned a book I edited that never ended up getting released. One of the stories in the book, The Armed Hands, was by the Baron.

Below is a brief bio and the story itself:

Frederick William Rolfe, Baron Corvo (London 1860 – Venice 1913)

Undoubtedly one of the most eccentric authors of all time, Frederick Rolfe, often using the pseudonym of Baron Corvo, wrote numerous books and short stories, all of which, to varying degrees, have been condemned to obscurity. After a failed attempt at becoming a priest he lived in poverty, working sometimes as an artist, journalist or photographer, cultivating friends and turning them into enemies, and stubbornly writing masterpieces that would never sell. Some of his first literary productions appeared in The Yellow Book and were collected in Number Six in the Bodley Booklets and then with addition tales as In His Own Image (1900). Some of his other works are Stories Toto Told me (1898), Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901) and Don Tarquinio (1905). He spent his last years in Venice where, due to poverty, he was often forced to sleep in the bottom of his gondola. The book Hadrian the Seventh (1904) is commonly considered his masterpiece, though the novel Nicholas Crabbe certainly deserves re-evaluation.

The Armed Hands

Life is a grotesque series of magic-lantern pictures: at least, mine is. I am among a heavily-breathing intense mob, in the dark. Suddenly, the Showman flashes before me a brilliant disc of a picture quite unrelated to its surroundings. It stays, during a moment-I don’t know how. It means-I can’t think what. It vanishes-I don’t know where. And life is obscurely uninteresting as before-I haven’t a notion why.

For example: I saw three blazingly clear pictures at Oxford in Eights Week. I make a point of being up during Eights Week, because (as a physical epicure) I like to see how England’s most recent flesh is coming on. It (as you know) is on view daily, at 16.30 and 18 p.m., on the towing-path between the Osteria Iside and the barges.

On the first morning, Thursday, I went out for a dawdle before my coffee. I prowled, for no earthly reason, a little way up the Via Woodstochiana. Few people are abroad in Oxford at 7 o’clock of the morn, excepting on the paths which lead to Il Piacere de’ Parocchi. Anyhow, Campo Sant’ Egidio and that little bit of Via Woodstochiana were deserted at that particular moment. As the first of my three pictures was exhibited in this neighbourhood, it will be well to precise the spot.

On the left of the Via Woodstochiana, the shops ended with a sort of emporium. Then, there was an alley; and, on the other side of the alley, a fairly-sizeable plain house. The alley seemed quite an ordinary stone-paved little slipe. On its south side, was the side-wall of the dwelling pertaining to the emporium. On its north side, was the side-wall of the plain house. The front-doors of these two buildings were not in Via Woodstochiana but in the alley, one facing the other. In squinting up the alley, I fancied that it led to a third (but rather more embellished) building. I hope that this is all clear.

As I turned into the alley from motives of inquisitiveness, I saw a man approaching me. I did not particularly note him at the time, beyond the fact that his face wore the positively indescribable (but saliently recognisable) expression of one who has just prayed well. But he certainly did strike me as being as grey a man as I could wish to see. I don’t mean his hair: he was bare-headed, closely-clipped, and slightly bald on the tonsure. And I don’t mean his face: that was tanned and healthy enough, and quite in keeping with his slight (but rather broadbreasted) figure and his quietly agile gait. But I mean his perfect poise, and his sedate gravity, which were simply as grey as grey can be. And I mean his clothes. They seemed a symphony of dark-grey tones. Even his watch-chain and key-chain and scarf-pin and sleeve-links had the dark-grey gleam of platinum; and his neat slippers were of dark-grey suede. The white of his collar, the white of the silk-handkerchief in his sleeve and the black of his neck-tie, were just what was wanted to bind his colour-scheme beautifully together. I never in my life have seen a man looking so simply and calmly staid. Indeed, after passing him,-we met midway between the embellished edifice and the two side front-doors which I have mentioned,-I could not help looking back at him. And the, without the very slightest warning, the picture was flashed upon my brain.

This was it. I was well up the alley and looking down it toward Via Woodstochiana. The Grey Man was in the alley between the door of the plain house and the door of the emporium. All of a sudden, both doors slid open inwardly and silently. A thick-set gentleman in glossy black oozed out of the plain house-door; and said something affably to the Grey Man. It seemed also to be civil: but the distance, of course, rendered it inaudible by me. It could not have been more than six words. The Grey Man, without halting, gave a courteously-negative gesture with his head. A burly red-bearded fellow slipped out of the open emporium-door; and began (with the glossy black gentleman) to butt and hustle the Grey Man toward the open door of the plain house. The Grey Man sprang, like a kitten, once pace backward; and instantly rebounded forward, launching a lightning-like right-and-left double-knock-ping-pang, pong-pung-across the two foreheads. Blood splashed out in the most extraordinary manner. I never before saw such gushings. I heard two swiftly-sucked-in breaths and a couple of stifled groans. The assailants, carrying their heads, staggered into their respective houses. The doors shut as noiselessly as they had opened. The Grey Man quite quietly went on his unruffled way.

All this happened while one could count nine. It blazed into vision for nine seconds; and, then, was not. It, indeed, was so amazing, that (for an instant) I believed myself to be the subject of an hallucination. So I stepped back to the mouth of the alley. There were puddles of fresh gore, on the pavement between the doorways. I looked out into the Via Woodstochiana. There, was the Grey Man demurely crossing Campo Sant’ Egidio by the cabmen’s shelter, and going in the direction of the Collegio di San Zanbatista. He went with easy swiftness, his hands in his trousers’ pockets. If I had not already noticed him, I certainly should have failed to do so, so accurately did he come with the landscape.        

It was excessively queer. I won’t deny that I stood and pondered the event, perhaps for a couple of minutes. For the life of me I couldn’t understand what I had seen. Still, it obviously was no affair of mine. I thought, however, that I might well postpone exploration of that alley and go home and have my coffee. So I did.

The fourth day after that was Sunday. In the evening I dined with old Sniffles at his house on Muro Lungo. That man’s collection of intagliate alexandroliths ought to fetch quite a quarter of a million when he turns up his toes. We spent the whole evening in pawing the gems.          

As I mounted my bicycle at his door, at last, a clock announced the half past 23; and all the other timepieces in the city corroborated the statement. Several spoke together, very discordantly: of course there were the usual laggards: but the gist of the testimony was fairly unanimous. As it was a fine night, I resolved to ride a little way before tucking up. The dark darkness of night suits my thinking apparatus better than the light darkness of day-the fat dismal unwieldly ordinary uneventful day. So I went up Via del Santo Pozzo into Via Larga; and turned the corner, intending to ride up Via Banburiana as far as Città Destate and back. Be it always and everywhere and by everyone remembered that I had no reason whatever for this choice of route. It just occurred to me to go that way; and I as simply went.

I suppose that, if the Oxford policemen read this, they will feel bound to lay a trap and run me in. The fact is that, instead of going by road round the fore-court of Collegio di San Zanbatista, I pedalled lazily through the posts and all along the pavement in front of the old college-buildings, just like an ordinary undergraduate at 10 a.m. Not a soul breathed near. Even after I had got through the second set of posts, I did not trouble to leave the pavement immediately, but rode along the façade of the new college-buildings, passing the first lamp-post, and only gliding into the road on reaching the second before the administrator’s office. And it was here that the second picture unexpectedly glared me in the face.  

You understand that I had the Uffiizio Amministrativo del Collegio di San Zanbatista on my right hand, and was about to pass the adjoining entry which leads to the college. Beyond this entry was a new-faced Casa Iacopesca joined to a pub which (in turn) attached itself to the row of houses before you come to the Allogio dei Giudici. On my left, stretched the great dim open width and length of Campo Sant’ Egidio with its leafy avenues. Before me, the pavement lay like a grey ribbon. There was a fair light on the foreground of it, a light shed by a third lamp-post which stood at the juncture of the Casa Iacopesca and the pub: but, beyond that, the middle distance faded gradually into the night.

Just when I was crawling by the Uffizio Amministrativo of the college, I recognized the Grey Man. He came toward me from the direction of Via Banburiana; and I spotted him as he came into the light of the third lamp-post. Quite instantaneously the double door of the Casa Iacopesca opened like a dumb mouth. Two small ghostly gentlemen pranced out. They both sported black trousers and peculiarly long black jackets agreeably slit up the rear. One was long-bodied and stumpy-legged: the other was grotesquely verdant-greeny: both wore snubbed noses and spectacles. And they, also, set themselves silently to butt and hustle the Grey Man into the blackness of their open door. Then followed the same two hideous crashes of fists upon foreheads, the same two spouting sheets of blood, the same suppressed squeals and unhesitating evanishments, the same slammed speechless door, and the same impassive invulnerable solitary figure pursuing its mysterious way.

Mind you-this time, I was not a couple of yards distant from the collision. The whole thing was begun and finished by the time I had pedalled four times. Nothing could have been smarter. I had not even time to dismount-much less to say something equivalent do ‘Ciò!’     

I gazed at the Casa Iacopesca. All the windows were blind. There was a glimmer in the bar of the pub beyond: but not a movement anywhere. I looked all round. No one was in sight, excepting the moth-grey figure passing through the posts of San Zanbatista. I very much wanted to run after him. But of course that was out of the question.

And, then, you must know something else. I really was seized (at the moment) with grave doubt concerning my quality of visibility. None of these gladiators seemed to have noticed me at all. They popped out, and did their trick, and scuttled back into their burrow (so to speak), just as though they were quite alone. It was most puzzling, not to say annoying. 

The only things which I could think of, to say, in this emergency were ‘Mariavergine!’ and ‘Ostreghette!’ I said them alternately to myself half-a-dozen times, observing uncanonical intervals, as I rode up Via Banburiana toward Città Destate; and derived immense relief. Furthermore, just by the Giardini di Norham, a motor-car blasphemed me for riding on the wrong side of the road. This was a vast consolation: for it certified me that I could still be seen.

Some people cannot look at pictures without worrying themselves about the artist’s meaning, and rot of that sort. (They are the kind of people who begin their criticisms with the formula ‘Ow! I down’t lyke the fyce.’) Now I always try to look at pictures with a sole purpose of taking my pleasure. But, I admit that the two last exhibitions tried me severely. It was irritating to feel, on the inaccessible back of one’s mind, the nipping flea of curiosity. However, I just blundered on toward my grave, through my normal state of mist, till the following Wednesday.

It was the last day of the Eights. The afternoon had been muggy, dully threatening rain. At 17.30 p.m. I took advantage of the interval between the two races to stroll down the towing-path. My idea was to find a place where I might observe the men-not the crews, but the men who run along the bank. I am not aware of any spot on this planet, excepting Venice, which offers a more exhaustive and instructive exhibition of vigorous physique, than this particular bit of Oxford at this particular moment. The show comprises several hundred specimens; and I solemnly aver that one in twenty is quite worth looking at twice. Why not? Athletam in ingenuum nasci tam facile est quam accedere huc.

The point, of getting below Ponti Lunghi for the purpose, is this. Shortly before 18 o’clock, the men come down, from the barges and elsewhere, to (say) the Osteria Iside whereby the boats are moored. When the starting-gun fires, they run back (along the towing-path) by the sides of their respective boats. To stand on the towing-path during the process, amounts to competing for being bunted (by roaring gladiators) into a fussy river. But, just below the Ponti Lunghi, the towing-path winds round the Budello; and there is a short cut across the grass from Ponti Lunghi to the point where the path follows the straightened course of the river. And it is possible to preserve one’s equilibrium on this grass, while taking leisured observations of the turmoil of the towing-path close by.     

So, I strolled down quite early, intending to study the human current coming and going. I was rather too early. There were but few people about as yet. Punts and steamers and motor-boats were edging-in backward: and there were the usual clots of screeching little boys messing about the river-brink. Now and then, a racing-crew paddled (or bucketed) down to its station. But athletes occurred only in scanty sprinklings. I walked on to the end of the grass.

Suddenly, men began to swarm down in crowds. I turned back; and made for the unoccupied middle of the grass-patch. There was quite a lot of flesh on view, not (perhaps) of the quality of ten years ago, when the okhlotesacy had not yet been permitted to forget its place, and before the Dylymyle had made the nation a chronic self-conscious hysteric. But still it was by no means sickening; and, here and there, Nature proved that she had not entirely lost the knack of modelling shrines for character.

The gun went off; and the race began. Up came the crowd again, firing revolvers, whirling plangent wooden rattles, bellowing through mastodonic megaphones. As I had been moving slowly toward Ponti Lunghi to see the faces of the gymnasts going down, I was now sauntering back toward Iffleja to see them coming up. In a few minutes they had passed me, and were rampaging far up stream, leaving me almost alone again. I did not turn to follow, knowing jolly well what a block there would be on the towing-path above the boat-house, and the utter impossibility of crossing to the Prato della Casa di Cristo till all the boats had reached their proper barges, and the perennial puntful of performers had been tipped-over for the diversion of the leek-shaped virgins who concealed their right eyes with tubs made of the pelts of sea-green lions decorated with the residuum of a massacre of condors and albatrosses on the barge-tops.    

I hope it is quite plain that I was not really seeing all these things which I describe-seeing them (I mean,) not with the two common or filmy eyes with which we keep our pipes alight and wink at the auctioneers and use for not avoiding temptation, but with that third transcendental esoteric clear-seeing eye hidden in the brain which gives the only vision worth while. Of course I saw the moving show, as heaps of other people saw it, as something all-of-a-sudden fuskily epileptic in a fog, something ephemeral, essentially irreproducible, obliterated utterly, gone and done with. But I don’t call that Seeing, simply because it is not Hearing.

But, when I came to the end of the grass, and stepped on to the towing-path, that third eye of mine promptly etched the last of my three pictures on my mind. Coming toward me from Iffleja and about fifty yards away, was the slight Grey Man. It was a clear vision of him, face to face, which I set myself intensely to study.

I find it nearly impossible to interpret his personality in words: it was so vivid, so serene, so supremely non-curant, so exclusively aloof and distinct from every other living thing on this orb of earth. This time, he was in white, bare-legged, bare-headed. His white jacket and socks were patterned with a fine grey line: but his shorts and his zephyr were plain. His shoes and belt were of grey suede. A dark-grey chain, slipped through the jacket buttonhole, held a watch in the left breast pocket. His key-chain and belt-buckle were of the same dull-gleaming platinum-coloured metal. A white silk-handkerchief hid in his left sleeve, round which a towel was twisted; and the last item (taken in conjunction with the quality of his skin and the direction of his approach) led me to conceive that he had been swimming all by himself in the Cataratta di Guadodisabbia. There was not a single discord-there was not even a harsh or feeble note, about him anywhere. He was noticeable simply and solely because he was so exquisitely simple and sole-so singularly and so pellucidly complete in himself, and apart. I suppose that he was about five feet seven inches high; and I surmised that he would strip at about ten stone. Whoever made him, evidently understood the business: but I suspect that he himself had a hand in the job.          

In judging a work of this sort, I always try to avoid the vulgar mobile’s error of over-estimating details. Of course, I note them, carefully, but only as the components of a unity. The well-shaped capable feet, the well-turned legs, the supple knees, the lithe reins, the generous breast, the delightful arms and shoulder and neck, the lively uniform tan of silky skin, were (I could see in a flash) the reason, the causa causans, the integral elements, of this perfectly-poised personality. His gait (which, as the Preacher says, shews what a man is,) was truly marvelous in the strength and delicacy of its inevitably inerrant equilibrium. Have you ever seen one of those slim young Nipponese acrobats pacing an almost invisible wire stretched over abysmal precipices? That was the mien of the Grey Man. Only, I was sensible that he went in no danger of falling and that he could keep up eternally. Ostreghete! How consummately artistic it was!

[I fear that I am keeping you waiting. My excuse is the cumbrous inadequacy of language to describe what I saw while I strolled perhaps ten steps forward.]

As he came nearer and nearer, I looked for his individuality in his face. It was a pale smooth oval face, tanned to the colour of honey. It had the very high broad brow of a student and thinker, crowned by short hair of a reddish chestnut slightly silvered. The nose was daring-straight, with sensitive nostrils. The mouth also was straight-thin and firm and recondite as to the upper lip, with a tinge of gentle tenderness lurking in the slightly fuller modelling of the lower. The eyes were dark-brown and rather long, limpidly bright in the pupils, and the white of a most wonderfully pure candour. A platinum-stepped monocle belonged in the left one. The eyebrows were darker brown, authoritatively drawn across the brow from temple to temple. The chin was the chin of a jesuitical machiavellian autocrat, like (say) Caesar Augustus, cloven and fine and compact. As for the expression-I hardly know what to say. It was the most amazingly distinct and unapproachable thing which I have yet seen. There was vivid serenity, gentleness and ruthless ferocity, quiet fastidious disdain, immense knowledge of good and of evil, fancy, wistfulness, extreme sensibility and ineffable indifference, indomitable tenacity, reserve, courage, enormous and inexhaustible force, all deliberately matured and mastered and governed by grave simple self-control. In short, it was the face of a man who has attained what Aristoteles quite luminously (and quite untranslateably) calls the Kyria Arete.

When he was about twenty paces away from me, his hands came out of his pockets, producing a tiny tobacco-pouch and a book of huge papers; and he began to roll a cigarette. They were well-formed hands, strong and brown and fine. There was a corn on the inner top joint of the right middle finger, caused (no doubt) by the habitual use of a pen. There were corns, also, on both thumb-joints, caused (no doubt) by use of the oar of a gondola-which was most strange, you know. And, finally, the hands were armed-there is no other suitable verb-armed, with four monstrous platinum-coloured rings.

He passed on my left; and so I could not quite make out the ring which was farthest away from me, on the third finger of his right hand. I only saw that it was a most massive band with a highly-projecting bezel in which a stone of sorts sparkled clearly from behind a grating. On his right first finger, however, was another rather-larger ring, the bezel of which seemed to be a section of a triangular cylinder pivoted to the points of a horse-shoe-shaped hoof. The base of the triangle clung to the finger: but its knife-edged apex projected outward; and the two visible sides appeared to be intagliate with inscriptions. It was the third and fourth fingers of the left hand which were similarly armed. This hand, of course, was quite near me; and I had no difficulty in making my inspection. The ring on the third finger had an oblong horizontal bezel quite an inch long: it was a signet, intagliate with what looked like an Eros Crucified. But the ring on the fourth finger was perhaps the most appallingly ferocious of the four. It was a plain heavy circle; and the bezel was the sharp-pointed revolving rowel of a spur.

When I say that none of these rings projected less than a quarter-of-an-inch anywhere, while the prominent portions of them jutted out a good half-inch from the fingers, you will realise what terrifically trenchant weapons they really were. Given freedom, close-quarters, physical force and skill and promptitude behind them, and their cusped spines and sharp edges and snaggy corners and blunt weight furnished a complete apparatus for inflicting the whole gamut of (not necessarily mortal) mutilations, from bruising and scratching to gashing and slicing.

And that is all.

We passed each other on the towing-path, the incarnate enigma going toward Ponti Lunghi, while I blundered on toward the Osteria Iside for a much-needed drink. And that is all. I don’t know who the Grey Man is, or why extreme measures are used to secure his company, or why he punches and gashes people and blinds them with their blood on sight, or anything at all about him beyond what I have told you. And, on the whole, I don’t think that I want to know any more. I have received three sharp and violently interesting impressions, I would rather not see them worked up and coloured. They are perfectly satisfactory to me in outline.

[By the bye, lest I should be deemed guilty of the habit of staring, let me hasten to explain, first, that I carefully cultivate my senses of seeing and differentiating and selecting to help me in my mystery of painting, and, second, that (when out to observe) I wear black glasses and keep my head still to prevent objects from knowing how they are regarded.][1]               

[1] It should be noted that the description of ‘the Grey Man’ fits very well a description of Rolfe himself.

An author that I like very much is Iginio Ugo Tarchetti. I have read most of what he is written in Italian, and I know that a few of his books are available in English. I haven’t read these however, so can’t vouch for the quality of the translations.

Anyhow, here is a brief bio of his followed by a poem called Memento! which I translated, that was published a few years ago in a zine. It is very much in the vein of Poe:

Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1839-1869)

I. U. Tarchetti was an Italian writer, who after abandoning a career in the military, settled in Milan, in order to seek his fortune in literature. He wrote articles for diverse periodicals, poems, several novels, including the anti-military Una Nobile Follia (1867) and his masterpiece Fosca (1869, translated as Passion, 1994).  The translation of his book Fantastic Tales (1869, translated 1992) was nominated for a Bram Stoker award in 1992.

Memento!

          When I kiss your perfumed lips,

Dear girl, I cannot forget

That a white skull is concealed beneath.          

          When I press your pretty body to mine,

Forget I cannot, dear girl,

That a skeleton is hidden beneath.          

          And in that horrifying vision, I am absorbed,

Whenever you touch or kiss, or lay on me your hand . . .

I feel protruding the cold bones of death!                                                                    

                                                  [Originally published in 'Il Gazzetino', 30 November, 1867]

I have to say I have a deep love for cheap 19th century novels. There is a certain low-brow charm about them that is difficult to articulate. Anyhow, one of the books I am currently reading is by Xavier de Montépin and is called I Misteri dell’India. It is about a young English gentleman who goes to India and finds himself the amorous subject of an Indian princess who is fond of makings use of sleeping potions, large silent servants who keep their arms crossed and suppers in the recesses of abandoned temples in the jungle.

The sequel, which I haven’t begun yet, is titled Il Velo e l’Anello. These books were originally written in French, but I am reading the Italian translations. It is a shame that this author has never been put into English. Not that many people would read him even if he were. But it is still a shame.

De Montépin was a prolific author, hugely popular in his lifetime. I am not sure how many books he wrote, but I myself have a healthy stack and know of a huge number of titles that I have never had the opportunity to read. Here is a brief bio of the author, probably more complete than anything currently available in English on the internet: 

Xavier de Montépin – He was born in Apremont on March 18^th, 1824 and died in Paris on April 30^th, 1902. He began life as a journalist, and wrote in conjunction with the Marquis de Foudras the novels Les chevaliers du lansquenet (10 vols., 1847) and Les viveurs d’autrefois (4 vols., 1848), to which he added many others equally descriptive of the elegant demi-monde. He gained great notoriety by the suppression of his licentious Filles de platre (7 vols., 1855), but continued to produce other voluminous works of a similar character, including Le bigame, Le mari de Marguerite, Confessions de Tulla, Les drames de l’adultere, La comtesse de Nancey, etc. His most famous novel however was La Porteuse de pain. He also assisted the elder Dumas as a playwright.

This story was originally intended for an anthology of obscure and semi-obscure authors. The project was scrapped by the publisher, but obviously I still have the material. The translation is not mine, but the bio as well as one of the footnotes are.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895)

Austrian lawyer and writer, chevalier of the Legion of Honour, who published also under the pseudonyms Charlotte Arand and Zoë von Rodenbach. As a young man he taught at the University of Graz. In Leipzig he edited the review Auf der Hohe. He then moved to Paris where he pursued a strictly literary career. His grand scheme, probably modelled after Balzac’s Comedie Humaine, was to write a series of 36 novels under the title The Legacy of Caine, but he was only able to complete about a third of the work.  In 1873 he married Aurora von Rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of Wanda von Dunajew, which is also the name of the heroin of Sacher-Masoch’s novel of humiliation and suffering Venus in Furs, virtually the only novel of his which is still read today. The following story originally appeared in the Revue Des Deux Mondes.

The Letawitza

By Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Translated by Sarah Dean

It was an unlucky day for the chase: two hazel-hens and a big vulture comprised the whole booty. “It is the fault of that confounded sorceress!” exclaimed the gamekeeper, taking off his hat, and wiping the large drops of perspiration on his forehead on the puffed sleeves of his shirt; then he handed me some brandy in a gourd, yellow and chubby as a Barbary ape.

At dawn we had, it is true, in starting out on our expedition, met a little old woman, all withered up, who was searching for mushrooms in the brushwood; and now evening was falling, and there was nothing left for us but to return to the house. The sun was setting, red and angry, behind the huge blocks of granite that like great crumbling towers overhang the grey, jagged sides of the Carpathian Mountains. Nothing else was to be seen, unless it were an old stunted trunk, which, stretching out from the rubbish over the slippery declivity, seemed to reach towards us its long, gnarled arms. It stood projected against the sky, with its bent back, its hanging chevelure and mossy beard, absolutely like our Jew; but it clings, firm and immovable, to the rock, as he also knows how to hold on energetically to whatever his thin bony hands have once seized[1].

We descended rapidly by a path draped with bilberries and rhododendrons, our dog panting painfully behind us, and passed under the green canopy of pines. The subdued noise of a distant waterfall accompanied us. The tall, green, feathery tree-tops, which shot up toward heaven with solemn majesty, began to mingle with the golden, rosy horizon, while from their slender trunks escaped their amber-coloured resinous juice. Red and purple berries, with the large forest flowers, made designs like a many-coloured embroidery upon the velvety moss which spread among the interlacing roots; and deep shadows fell from above upon the branches, like black drops between the motionless needles.

A few minutes longer, little clouds hovered in the west, bathing themselves in the rosy sea; then a line of purple extended along the horizon. Above the ground the soft, tremulous air was filled with innumerable little flies transparent as spun glass, and vapours, that might have been taken for white veils of an impalpable material, ascended with brilliant reflections from the tranquil valley, already plunged in night. The bushes, the trees, the mountains, seemed to shoot up in the golden atmosphere and lose themselves in the infinite, while their shadows stretched out ever farther. In the west, a star glittered above the pines, which stood erect against the sky like black swords, or like iron pickets around a park. The songs of birds had ceased. Here and there, only, a whistling sound pierced the forest, and some affrighted animal fled among the branches. The pearly sky had become blue, and gradually darkened. The shadows closed around, and at last were inextricably mingled with the impenetrable mass of slowly thickening gloom. Having, at this moment, reached the foot of the wooded hill, we followed a narrow path which wound around between common pastures and potato-fields. Suddenly the dark space between two rocks towards the west was illuminated, and began to flame as if some village were on fire; then, after a moment, the moon unmasked her golden disk, suspended majestically in the obscurity of the heavens, and diffused over the country her mild, consoling light. A current of cool air passed over the stalks, the grasses, the leaves of the trees, and the dismal summits of the pine forest; everything began to swarm, to flutter, to murmur. Far in advance of us the lights of a village gleamed like glow-worms lying in the grass, and overhead the immense vault was strewn with innumerable stars, like the bivouac fires of a grand army. The moonlight lay along the branches like threads of silver, and all the hills, all the ravines, were swimming in this magical reverberating light, which produces in us at the same time such calm and such melancholy.

As we reached a little cluster of birches, a flashing rocket traversed the sky and disappeared in space. The gamekeeper crossed himself, and stopped short. “Too late, the evil has come,” said he.

“What evil?”

“Didn’t you see the star shoot?”

“Certainly.”

“It will be transformed into a letawitza.”

“How is that?”

“In every shooting star there lives a demon which falls upon the earth,” replied the gamekeeper in a troubled voice. “If at the instant when one perceives it he recites a certain formula, the witchcraft is conjured away, but if the star touches the earth it takes the form of a woman of great beauty, with long blonde hair which flows and glistens like stars. This beautiful creature is gifted with a strange power over every human soul. She draws young persons to her in the golden network falling over her white shoulders. At night, when all sleep, she bends over them and embraces them,-embraces them pitilessly, until they fall dead.”

The gamekeeper had not finished his recital when we seemed to hear afar off, as it were, a deep sigh. This wail burst upon the solemn silence which hung over this sombre copse in the midst of the birches with their perpetually agitated leaves, whose trunks, white as the dead in their winding-sheets, seemed to stand upright around us, mute, and pointing their fingers at us.

“What was that?” I asked.

“An undine, or possibly a roussalka[2]; perhaps even the letawitza.”         

“I thought it was a bittern, rather.”

“Well, call it so, it is a bittern,” returned the gamekeeper with a sort of pity. “In any case we’d better continue our course.”

We had taken but a few steps when a flame about the height of a man rose up beside us in a thicket of dwarf alders. It waved to us, bowed down to the earth, and then began to leap before us as if it had a mind to accompany us.”

“A will-o’-the wisp!”

“The lord grant it may only be a will-o’-the wisp!” said the gamekeeper in a low tone; “but I’m afraid the day will not end well.”

“Are there some marshes near here?”

“Yes, certainly. There is even a pond. It must be off here to our right.”

Reaching the end of our path, we saw, through the thicket, what seemed a mirror reflecting the light of tapers. I went towards it.

“You are not going to expose your soul to such danger?” groaned the gamekeeper.

Without replying to him, I parted the branches and opened for myself a way to the edge of the pool. The will-o’-the wisp had disappeared, but the bittern renewed its melancholy cry. The gamekeeper recited his conjuration aloud. We stood upon the border of a large sheet of water, which, lighted by the moon, stretched out at our feet. Some alder-bushes, erect among the brambles, were mirrored mysteriously in the lake. Their roots bathed in it, their long branches trailed in it like floating hair. It was both sad and impressive.

Suddenly, a childish laughter burst forth, pure, clear, and mocking like the tinkling of a silver bell. Bubbles rose to the surface of the water. Luminous little waves agitated it, a thousand sparkles played about each other on the pool, and, in the midst of a whirl of foam, we saw come forth a young woman of strange beauty. Her thick blonde hair, overflowing her marble shoulders, diffused itself in a starry shower. She fixed upon us two large black eyes, radiant and full of mockery.

“God have mercy on my poor soul!” cried the gamekeeper. “Shut your eyes!” and he drew me along. “We must fly!” repeated he in a trembling voice, “fly! or it is all up with us.”

A second burst of laughter, yet more Satanic than the first, resounded harshly in our ears.

I followed the gamekeeper. An unknown power, which I could not explain to myself, gave me wings. We traversed, always running, thickets, marshes, meadows. Arrived at orchard, we arrested our course to take a breath.

“You are nothing but an ass!” said I, by way of conclusion.

“Much better be an ass than be damned.”

“Fly before a pretty woman!”

“Ah, yes! she was pretty,” returned the gamekeeper; “but she does not belong to the earth. It is the letawitza, the shooting star which has assumed a human form. You did not, then, observe her hair? Wouldn’t you have called it a trail of stars floating on the surface of the water?”    

“I am going back down there! I must see that woman.”

“Are you, then, possessed by a devil?” said the gamekeeper, petrified; “if you laid before me a hundred ducats, if you offered me the whole world, I would not stir an inch from here.”

“But, if I offered you a glass of brandy, would you accompany me?”

“Brandy? what brandy? not rye brandy, I hope.”

“Some slivowitz, if you like.”

The good man heaved a sigh, whistled to his dog, and slowly directed his course towards the pond. I followed in his path, several steps to the rear. A gold-coloured will-o’-the-wisp accompanied us, as if to lighten our way. While we followed the fantastic flamelet, which passed sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, whirling under the branches, lengthening itself out on the moss like a snake, or hovering in the air above us, we found ourselves up to the knees in the swamp.

The moon was hidden behind a cloud, as if she were in a conspiracy with the elves to mystify us. The alders, until now motionless and silent, rocked with a dull, rustling sound. The jarring cry of the bittern struck harshly on the ear. Then the water plashed almost over us. It was the dog, which plunged in and with sturdy barks announced to us that we had reached the end. I leaped precipitately over the thick branches, and found myself on the edge of the lake, where the moon, smiling and disentangled from her veils, seemed to contemplate its peaceful face.

The woman with golden hair had disappeared. We saw her neither in the waves where just before she had glittered like a star, nor on the shore, where her white form had stood in relief like a luminary against the blackness of the alders. Now all reposed in mournful silence: not a ripple upon the water, not a breath among the leaves. And in the middle of the pool rose majestically towards heaven a pale water-lily, mounting upward like a white flame.

The gamekeeper drew a long breath.

“God has protected us,” murmured he, “but let no one say now that it was not the letawitza.”

[1] The imagery in this passage is blatantly anti-semetic. Unfortunately at the time this story was written, racism was all too common, even amongst otherwise intelligent men and women.[2] The siren of the Ruthenians.