--- 'A Phantom Lover' has been one of my favourite ghost stories for a long time, but somehow I'd never read anything else by Lee. This newly published collection seemed like a good opportunity to put that right. I'd started reading Hauntings before and found it hard to get into, but that didn't happen with Dark Tales – perhaps because editor Mike Ashley places 'Winthrop's Adventure' first, and the more florid 'Amour Dure' (which opens Hauntings) comes later.
In fact, 'Amour Dure' ended up being one of my favourites from the book, with 'Winthrop's Adventure', 'The Legend of Madam Krasinka' and 'Sister Benvenuta and the Christ-Child' in close contention. Like Lee herself, many of the characters are deeply preoccupied with their appreciation of art and music; the stories are packed with densely detailed, vivid, heady descriptions, creating an intense atmosphere that is immediately recognisable as Lee's. There's not a dud among them, with only 'A Wicked Voice', which features diluted versions of themes from a couple of the others, appearing weaker. There are also surprises: I didn't expect to find myself laughing out loud, but 'Sister Benvenuta' is genuinely really funny.
'Winthrop's Adventure' originally went by the title 'A Culture-Ghost' – a phrase that could act as a subtitle to so many of Lee's supernatural stories, since 'culture' is always so present in her writing. I often find Victorian ghost stories underwhelming, and what I've got out of reading, for example, M.R. James, is more of a grounding in the formation of a genre than actual enjoyment. It's different with Vernon Lee's work. The stories are still fresh, so modern and unusual and beautiful. I could enthuse about them all day, but I'll just say that this collection is a brilliant introduction.
I received an advance review copy of A Phantom Lover and Other Dark Tales from Sublime Horror, courtesy of British Library Publishing.
‘White Nights’ (1848) is a wonderfully engaging, intense story in which a lonely young man – ‘the dreamer’ – meets a distraught young woman on one of ‘White Nights’ (1848) is a wonderfully engaging, intense story in which a lonely young man – ‘the dreamer’ – meets a distraught young woman on one of his nightly walks. Over the course of four nights, they get to know one another; he falls in love, but she’s pining for a former suitor. It’s all a bit hysterical, as 19th-century romances are wont to be, but so lucidly written; I loved every one of the dreamer’s observations, which often felt as though he was speaking, with urgency, directly to me.
And you ask yourself: Where are your dreams? And you shake your head and say: How quickly do the years fly by! And again you ask yourself: what have you done with your years? Where have you buried your best days? Did you live or not?
At just nine pages, ‘A Christmas Party and a Wedding’ (1848) is by far the shortest piece included here. It's a bit difficult to judge, really: its events – an old man assessing an 11-year-old girl as a potential future wife, since her family have set aside a large dowry – are distasteful to the narrator, but not deplorable, as they might seem to the modern reader.
‘A Nasty Business’ (1862) is a painful, hilarious tale in which an awkward young general chances upon a raucous event, realises it’s the wedding of a man who works beneath him, and decides to attend. He envisions astonished guests and a hero’s welcome. In fact, pretty much everything that can go wrong does, starting with him treading on a tray of food as he walks in. The story is hideously accurate about the disconnect between plans and reality caused by social anxiety. I winced (and smiled, sort of) all the way through.
I had been looking forward to reading The Gambler (1866); I was both surprised and disappointed to find it the least satisfying part of the book. The blurb and introduction for this edition make much of the fact that Dostoyevsky wrote it in 26 days in order to meet a deadline and pay off his real-life gambling debts, and the opening chapters impart some of that urgency, albeit to its detriment: the reader is not so much thrust into the action as left to flounder in a morass of indeterminably-connected characters, which is both confusing and, unfortunately, quite boring. The narrative picks up with the arrival of the formidable Grandmother, and the actual gambling scenes are certainly riveting, capturing the fevered dread of one in the grip of addiction. Still, the tangled relationships completely failed to interest me – something that didn’t happen with any of the shorter stories in the book, despite them all having less space to establish said relationships.
‘Bobok’ (1873) is a humorous fantasy in which a man, wandering through a graveyard, overhears the occupants of tombs conversing with one another. An amusing interlude, albeit not so effective as ‘A Nasty Business’ (and I actually found the opening lines funnier than anything else: ‘This time I’m submitting ‘The Notes of a Certain Person’. It is not I; it is by an altogether different person.’)
‘The Meek One’ (1876) is the only one of these stories I had read before, in a Penguin Little Black Classics edition (same translation – reviewed briefly here). It’s one of my favourite short stories (though, after reading this book, I think ‘White Nights’ may have overtaken it), another fierce and fervent narrative in which a man, eaten up by guilt, confesses his own role in his wife’s suicide.
In ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ (1877), we have another distressed narrator who makes typically bombastic, and false, proclamations (‘I would have helped a child without fail’, he says, moments after ignoring such a child pleading for help in the street). He has made up his mind to end his life, but an incredible vision forces him to question this choice. There are shades of A Christmas Carol to the plot, and the startlingly modern descriptions reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Sleep Has His House. In a vividly described sequence, the story seems to encapsulate the whole of creation in just a few pages. I know the stories are in chronological order; nevertheless, ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ seems perfectly placed at the end, with its memorable illusions and uncharacteristic message of hope.
If the name of this classic short story isn't familiar, the premise may be - it's about a legal copyist, the Bartleby of the title, who starts to refuIf the name of this classic short story isn't familiar, the premise may be - it's about a legal copyist, the Bartleby of the title, who starts to refuse work with the immortal words 'I would prefer not to'. I'm glad to be acquainted with the story, but I wouldn't say it's required reading....more
Reading Russian literature is a bit like listening to certain bands - now and again I do it for the first time in ages and wonder why I bother with anReading Russian literature is a bit like listening to certain bands - now and again I do it for the first time in ages and wonder why I bother with anything else. This short story is fantastic, a perfect recreation of its narrator's crazed, despairing state of mind. He's a pawnbroker (this little parallel with Crime & Punishment perhaps being one of the reasons why the story was chosen for a Little Black Classic edition), who quickly courts and marries a gullible girl, the meek one of the title, only then revealing the shame in his past. Obviously, it all ends in tragedy. The character's voice is wonderfully spot-on, drawing the reader irrevocably into his anguish. ...more
What better way to celebrate Halloween than to finally write a review of one of the most astonishing ghost stories I have ever read?
Vernon Lee was theWhat better way to celebrate Halloween than to finally write a review of one of the most astonishing ghost stories I have ever read?
Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of Violet Paget, a prolific writer who published novels, short stories and essays on topics including aesthetics, travel, music and the art of writing. A lesbian who, as her Wikipedia entry puts it, ‘always dressed à la garçonne’, she was a feminist, a pacifist, spoke four languages (and wrote in three), and is credited with introducing the concept of empathy – then a newly translated word – to the British Aesthetic Movement. Much of Lee’s work is concerned with ideas of beauty, art and aesthetic experience, but she is also known for her supernatural short fiction: ‘A Phantom Lover’, also known as ‘Oke of Okehurst’, was first published in 1886 and later formed part of the collection Hauntings (1890).
The story begins as many ghost stories do, with the narrator laying out an introduction to his tale, a strange thing he swears really happened to him. Yet the style is unusual, disconcerting. The narrator uses second person, apparently addressing another character, but as no character is evident, it can only be assumed he is talking directly to the reader. The introduction is related in a chatty manner and progresses as if not only conversation, but also physical interaction, is taking place between narrator and addressee.
Yes; I began the picture, but it was never finished. I did the husband first. I wonder who has his likeness now? Help me to move these pictures away from the wall. Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge wreck. I don't suppose you can make much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad.
The narrator is a portraitist, engaged by the Okehurst estate to paint William Oke and his wife Alice. (The character is reportedly based on John Singer Sargent, who painted a well-known portrait of Lee.) He arrives at Okehurst in a bad mood, convinced the place and its people will be dull. (William’s robust mediocrity infuriates him: ‘absolutely uninteresting from the crown of his head to the tip of his boots’.) Instead, he finds Okehurst surprisingly beautiful – ‘it seemed to me that I was being led through the palace of the Sleeping Beauty’ – and Alice fascinating, exquisite in a most unusual way.
It is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand years there may arise a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, a gesture, which is new, unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our desires for beauty and rareness?
It soon becomes clear that Alice is a singular woman in character as well as appearance. She is obsessed with an ancestor of hers, also named Alice, to whom she bears a strong physical resemblance. To the narrator she will speak only of this woman; she wears 17th-century clothes in order to emphasise the likeness. The narrator’s presence exacerbates this obsession, and William grows increasingly exasperated. The tension rises until it is unclear what is and isn’t real.
There was something heady and oppressive in this beautiful room; something, I thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me, suddenly, perverse and dangerous.
Lee's concepts of aesthetics, empathy and art were closely entwined: in ‘Beauty and Ugliness’ (1897) she argued that one's physical responses to a work of art, in themselves, constituted the experience of beauty; in subsequent years she came to understand such physical responses as expressions of empathy. ‘A Phantom Lover’ seems to be balanced between her earlier involvement in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, and those later ideas, which expanded her definition of aesthetic experience beyond the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’. The unusual physical descriptions in the introduction predict her later focus on ‘bodily changes’; when the narrator dwells on the richness of Okehurst’s decor, I see echoes of the fervent, excessive style of the Decadents. The climax of ‘A Phantom Lover’ hinges on the idea that love can outlast a lover, and this too – this recognition of love as a broader, bigger force than the person feeling it – fits with Lee’s holistic approach to beauty and aesthetics.
It’s a fascinating work with many layers to pick apart, but that shouldn’t distract from the fact that it’s a wonderfully effective ghost story, or that it’s so modern and weird it feels like it was written yesterday. When I first found ‘A Phantom Lover’ I felt incredulous with joy at its brilliance: the remarkable narration, the decadent imagery, the vivid characters. A beautiful and eerie tale certain to induce, as the narrator himself puts it, a ‘delightful picturesque shudder’.
This is apparently a Christmas classic in Russia and the Ukraine, where it's traditionally read to children on Christmas Eve. For me it felt like the This is apparently a Christmas classic in Russia and the Ukraine, where it's traditionally read to children on Christmas Eve. For me it felt like the wrong combination of a very childlike story and quite adult humour. The translation also seemed odd, with quite a few phrases very incongruous for the time period in which the story was written and is presumably supposed to take place. Overall, I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I'd hoped I would, but at least it was a quick read....more
In the department of - but it is better not to mention the department.
It is not necessary to say much aboutI particularly loved the narration of this:
In the department of - but it is better not to mention the department.
It is not necessary to say much about this tailor; but, as it is the custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly defined, there is no help for it, so here is Petrovitch the tailor.
The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person....more
The Horla is a very short psychological horror story about a man who becomes convinced that an invisible being - seemingly ghost-like, but also comparThe Horla is a very short psychological horror story about a man who becomes convinced that an invisible being - seemingly ghost-like, but also compared within the narrative to a vampire - is quietly terrorising him, invading his bedroom at night, driving him mad. This creature, 'the Horla', drives him to increasingly irrational and extreme action as he seeks to destroy its hold over him. I saw a lot of parallels between this story and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, published five years later: both stories are written in first person and in diary format; both tell a story of escalating paranoia and fear and, congruently, a belief in something impossible; both build to a horrifying climax and end with a shock. And, of course, both authors suffered from mental health problems - Gilman from postnatal depression and de Maupassant from hallucinations caused by syphilis - and in both cases this influenced their writing. However, the fact that I couldn't help noticing these parallels meant my opinion of The Horla was adversely affected - it's simply not as powerful or frightening as The Yellow Wallpaper; it is effective, but doesn't stand out significantly when compared to other horror/supernatural tales of a similar period, and doesn't feel ahead of its time, unlike Gilman's story or J.S. le Fanu's Carmilla. I was led to de Maupassant by a recommendation from a friend, and still intend to read more of his stories - I'm intrigued by his reputation as 'one of the fathers of the short story', but this one, for me, was simply good, not great....more
Against Nature (or Against the Grain as it’s also known; I vastly prefer the former, the introduction makes the case for the latter), is famously ‘a nAgainst Nature (or Against the Grain as it’s also known; I vastly prefer the former, the introduction makes the case for the latter), is famously ‘a novel with only one character’. While that isn’t true in the literal sense, the reader certainly experiences little outside the perspective of Des Esseintes, a neurotic aristocrat who retreats to a small country house to focus on his passion for artificial luxury. Being trapped in this deliberately extreme, increasingly hysterical, almost solipsistic narrative produces an intense, claustrophobic effect, heightened by the sheer volume of description. Many of the chapters feel like self-contained segments ruminating on a topic (art, classical literature, modern literature, flowers, sex, etc), with only a couple of episodes making it feel like a ‘story’, notably a funny one in which Des Esseintes tries to go to London but ends up exhausting himself on food and alcohol in Paris instead. I’m glad I bought this edition: the introduction is enlightening and the contemporaneous reviews/critiques included at the end are, in parts, as good as anything in the novel itself (‘Read this majestically hopeless book, then bury your impossible illusions, drink fresh water, and start loving – anything, even a dog.’)
I enjoyed this a lot more than Sherlock Holmes #1, A Study in Scarlet, at least at the beginning. The unexpected shock of the drug use provides a neatI enjoyed this a lot more than Sherlock Holmes #1, A Study in Scarlet, at least at the beginning. The unexpected shock of the drug use provides a neatly subversive opening, and the mystery unfolds with such excitement and intrigue that throughout the first half, I couldn't put the book down. Unfortunately it's all a bit downhill from there; the resolution is too much telling and not enough showing, the implicit racism is impossible to avoid, and Watson's relationship with Mary develops too quickly for it to be relatable. I still intend to read later installments in the series, but I'm in no great hurry to do so....more
The Wild Ass's Skin - or The Magic Skin, as it's known in some editions (neither of those titles are particularly appealing, I know) - is a literary nThe Wild Ass's Skin - or The Magic Skin, as it's known in some editions (neither of those titles are particularly appealing, I know) - is a literary novel of magical realism. It's simultaneously a fantasy, a study of character, and a cautionary 'be careful what you wish for' tale. At the beginning we are introduced to a young man who seems deep in despair, gambling away his last coins and thereafter contemplating suicide. Delaying the hour of his impending death, Raphael (as we learn he's called) wanders into an antique shop, where he happens across a strange object which appears to be cut from the hide of an animal. This, the shopkeeper tells him, is a talisman, with the power to fulfil any wish made by the person who possesses it. The old man tries to warn Raphael that the wishes are granted at a terrible price, and extols the virtue of acquiring knowledge and wisdom instead, but Raphael has become fixated on the skin and immediately makes his first wish - for a decadent party - which does indeed come true, in fact as soon as he walks out of the shop, when he encounters some old friends who are on their way to a ball. What follows is partly an exploration of what happens when Raphael's wishes are fulfilled, and partly Raphael's backstory, much of which he tells to a friend in a lengthy monologue, giving the effect of another first-person narrative within the main narrative.
The main thing you need to know is that Raphael is completely and utterly awful. He is unbelievably selfish and self-obsessed throughout. He manages to complain of poverty and destitution when he owns an entire island (yes, an island). Great swathes of his own story are taken up with him whining and complaining about how women don't want him, and why not, when he's so handsome and such a genius (in his opinion) and so willing to devote himself to them? He is, in fact, a proto-Nice Guy through and through. He falls for a beautiful countess, Feodora, who rebuffs his advances but takes great pains to demonstrate that she values his friendship. He reacts by ignoring this and continuing his efforts to force her to love him, ranting about how he loves her enough to kill her, declaring his intention to have his revenge on women in general, and creepily following her around. Ultimately he goes to the extreme of sneaking into her house and spending a night in her bedroom, hiding behind a curtain, to watch her sleep. He goes on to gamble and drink away all his money and more besides, before eventually settling for the simpering Pauline (who's nearly as annoying as him) - although, rather conveniently, he doesn't realise how much he 'loves' her until she's attained money and something of a status in society.
It will be up to the individual reader to decide whether or not he or she can get past the unpleasantness of Raphael's character, and most of the other characters aren't particularly likeable either, although I did like Feodora, with her commitment to independence, and the fearsome Aquilina. Personally, I found the narrative so enjoyable to read that I could deal with this fairly easily - but, that said, my rating might have been five stars if I'd been able to root for Raphael. Although the language is rich and complex, this is a very readable novel, and that makes it more accessible than you might at first expect. The themes, especially with regards to relationships, are surprisingly modern and consequently much of the interaction between characters doesn't seem dated.
This is a banquet of a book. Its detail, description and depth demanded I slow my usual reading pace in order to appreciate and understand everything in it. Although the narrative is driven forward by an underlying plot, it often isn't really about the 'magic skin' and the wishes: for whole chapters it will go off on a tangent about parts of Raphael's past, or incidental characters will have long conversations about philosophy, history, art... It's funny too, with a great deal of dry humour and irony, and a dash of playfulness. I can't comment on how The Wild Ass's Skin compares to Balzac's other novels, this being the first thing I've read by the author, but I can say it's a good place to start. ...more
5 stars for Notes from Underground, 3 for The Double, so 4 overall.
Notes from Underground (1864) is sublimely misanthropic, dripping with scorn, blist5 stars for Notes from Underground, 3 for The Double, so 4 overall.
Notes from Underground (1864) is sublimely misanthropic, dripping with scorn, blisteringly horrible. Its narrator is the anonymous 'underground man', whose voice and attitude make him seem a practice run for Crime and Punishment's Raskolnikov. In the first part of the book, he lays out his personal philosophy, a bitter attack on – well, just about everything, including himself. In the second, 'The Story of the Falling Sleet', he relates a sequence of events that acts as an illustration of his paranoia, rage and self-loathing, starting with his obsessive quest to humiliate an officer he hates, and ending with his cruel rejection of a prostitute, Liza, whom he both loves and despises. Despite a lapse into sentimentality when the narrator first encounters Liza, the tone remains acrid throughout, resigned to shame and misery. It's quite exhilarating.
The Double is a much earlier novella (1846). The plot sees a fawning government clerk, Golyadkin, tormented by a man who appears to be his exact double. There is undeniably a dark comedy to its events, but it's much lighter in tone and much more conventional in style; it feels very 19th-century, where Notes from Underground (and Crime and Punishment) have that disconcertingly modern/timeless flavour that makes them so effective. The Double drags, and while he's entertaining in small doses, Golyadkin is neither hero nor antihero, just a supremely irritating character.
I wish the order of the novellas had been swapped, or I'd thought to read The Double first. Reading it after Notes from Underground felt like eating a meal in the wrong order – a perfectly adequate main course after a spectacular dessert. According to the blurb, they're grouped together because both are 'masterly studies of the human consciousness', but they're so very different that seems like a reach. My advice is to skip The Double and read Notes from Underground on its own.
--- Some favourite quotes from Notes from Underground...
At last comes the act itself, the revenge. The wretched mouse has by this time accumulated, in addition to the original nastiness, so many other nastinesses in the shape of questions and doubts... Nothing remains for it to do but shrug the whole thing off and creep shamefacedly into its hole with a smile of contempt in which it doesn't even believe itself. There in its nasty stinking cellar our offended, browbeaten and derided mouse sinks at once into cold, venomous, and above all undying resentment. It will sit there for forty years together remembering the insult in the minutest and most shameful detail and constantly adding even more shameful details of its own invention, tormenting and fretting itself with its own imagination. It will be ashamed of its fantasies, but all the same it will always be remembering them and turning them over in its mind, inventing things that never happened because they might have done so, and forgiving nothing. – p21-22
Needless to say, I hated all the members of my department from first to last, and despised them, and yet somehow feared them as well. At times I would even rate them above myself. This quite often happened to me at that time; at one moment I despised them, at the next I felt they were superior to me. – p48
Sometimes, on holidays, I would go to the Nevsky Prospect in the afternoon and enjoy a walk along the sunny side. That is, I didn't actually enjoy my walk at all: I experienced an endless series of torments, crushing humiliations and attacks of spleen... It was an agonising torment, a never-ending unbearable humiliation, caused by the suspicion, constantly growing into clear-cut certainty, that compared to them I was a fly, a nasty obscene fly – cleverer, better educated, nobler than any of them, that goes without saying – but a fly, always getting out of everybody's way, humiliated and slighted by everybody. – p55
I passionately wanted to show all these 'nobodies' that, on the contrary, I was not nearly so much of a poltroon as I imagined. Moreover in the very worst paroxysms of my fever of cowardice I still dreamed of coming out on top, winning them over, making them like me, if only for my 'elevated ideas and undeniable wit'. – p70
In the next room, two of the hotel guests, gloomy, angry-looking, silent, were dining at separate tables. There was a great deal of noise in one of the other rooms, further away; some shouting, even, the noisy laughter of a whole mob of people, and some nasty French-sounding screams; 'ladies' were being entertained. In short, everything was sickening. – p71
'I'd like to sling a bottle at the lot of them this minute,' I thought, taking up a bottle and – pouring myself a full glass. – p77...more
Very short but exceptionally powerful, this story is a masterclass in psychological horror. Written as the secret journal of a 'nervous' woman confineVery short but exceptionally powerful, this story is a masterclass in psychological horror. Written as the secret journal of a 'nervous' woman confined to an attic room on the insistence of her husband and doctor, it leads the reader through a quick - yet extremely tense - chronicle of the decline of the character's sanity. It's set up so you assume at first she is is perfectly fine and suffering unnecessary incarceration by her husband, who appears to be a sinister figure, but as she becomes increasingly fixated on the wallpaper in her room, it becomes more and more obvious her madness is real and her account cannot be trusted. My only complaint about this memorable, vivid story is that it could easily have been longer, and could have been fleshed out into an excellent novella. I'll certainly be seeking out more of the author's work....more
