Masks in the Tapestry

Lorrain (1855–1906), poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, and satirist, is today known best to English speakers for once having fought a duel with Marcel Proust, and has been very little translated. Snuggly Books publisher Stableford is systematically rectifying this, and already produced versions of Lorrain’s most critically acclaimed pieces in Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker and The Soul-Drinker and Other Decadent Fantasies. The stories in this collection have a slight air of being left over, and there are no spectacular individual works, but their overall effect is rich, strange, and gorgeous. Symbolist works, such as “The Prince in the Forest,” contain spectacular visual imagery that represents philosophical meaning without ever lapsing into simple allegory. The several fairy tale retellings pall eventually, but Lorrain’s version of the French legend of Melusine is quite fine. “Oriane Vanquished” even manages to bear up under an inevitable comparison to Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Unfortunately, the subtly bawdy “The Old Duke’s Daughters” is marred by anti-Roma prejudice that’s nasty even for its time period. This is a minor but engaging addition to the library of decadents and symbolists in English. (July)