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Ourigan, Oregon is a collection of poems, divided into two distinct groups, distinct in terms of time and temperament, but also wildly different in style, influence, and purpose. They were written by two different authors over two hundred years apart: William Clark of the Corps of Discovery, in 1804-1806, and an anonymous author, possibly posthumous, and seemingly from Portland, Oregon, in the years 2017-2019.Where the two meet is in the places and things found up and down and along either side of the Columbia River, the lifeblood of Oregon, from as far east as Dog River (modern-day Hood River) or even the Dalles, to the western shores of the U.S., where the Columbia River vomits sweet water into the brine of the "great Pacific Octean."To say that William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, wrote poetry in his journals sounds far-fetched: he wrote in a prose that is, however, highly poetic in places. These are the Ourigan poems, co-authored, or rather edited, by Richard Robinson. They are 95% pure Clark: misspellings, warts, poetry and all; and 5% Robinson: editing, meter, rhythm, and rhyme where it works.The anonymous poems - the Oregon poems - are written, seemingly, as recollections in tranquility by an author whose background and whereabouts are equally uncertain. The poems were written in the same places along the river that Clark visited. But their themes, although similar, are wildly different. There is, in addition, a very particular pinch of modernness to them, which some might call depravity.We leave it to the readers to judge for themselves whether this collection of poetry coheres, or abruptly falls apart and dies, like water over an edge, or like autumnal leaves dropping, one by one, into the river, as they quietly "mend their way south" and "keep far from the strand."

Style (Theory and History), written by Ernest Hello, and published in 1861, is a collection of essays on the subject of... style; it is page after page of keen psychological insight into men, minds, God, art, life, and other things.Helloʼs style itself, - contrary to what one might think from the rather boring title - runs the gamut from trenchant, mocking, playful, masterly, to brilliant. He takes a particular pleasure in laying into not a few of Franceʼs eighteenth century great luminaries - such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre - like a man with a pitchfork rushing at a pig. No one escapes the pen unscathed. They all scamper away bruised, bloodied, with their tails between their legs.His critical assessments of Greek poetry, prose, and drama are brilliant, invigorating, novel and worth the charge of admission on their own: "...in order to penetrate Greek tragedy, one must seize it at its source, in Homer. Greek tragedy is a comment on the Iliad..." From the Greeks he proceeds to Rome eventually: "Virgil was actually incapable of imitating Homer; he wrote a parody..." and "Tacitus is not only the greatest writer of the Latin language, he is the greatest writer of classical antiquity."Bloyians will see in Ernest Hello a germ that sprouted in his brain; he had a huge influence on Léon Bloyʼs style and thought, particularly as a critic, but also as an artist and as a Catholic writer. Take this for instance: "What does not kneel before God kneels before the devil." Sound like anyone we know? After you read Style (Theory and History) by Hello, go back and re-read Bloyʼs Je MʼAccuse and see if you canʼt hear the echoes from this book bouncing off its pages, as from a source.

On Huysmansʼ Tomb (Sur la tombe de Huysmans originally) is a collection of critical essays written by Léon Bloy about his erstwhile friend, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Written between 1884 and 1893, and published in book form in 1913, six years after Huysmansʼ death, it is an appraisal of Huysmans himself and his most important work at that time: À Rebours, En Rade, Là-Bas, - as nobody other than Léon Bloy could have written, with keen psychological insight into Huysmansʼ mind and personality, and providing first-hand information about the inception of those works, particularly Là-Bas, that satanic masterpiece of Huysmansʼ that originally was intended to look up (Là-Haut), rather than down."The intensity of a writer like Huysmans is, principally, in his contempt... The well-known author of À Rebours has not at all the ignivomitous allures of an imprecator, and the torrential flux of green bile is, in him, merely the literary illusion of some prickly vanity... Huysmans had finally divested himself of the pedagogic reminiscences of his art education, in order to enter upon certain originality, ... The synoptic pessimism of des Esseintes appeared to many as a stopping place or as a refuge, and the agonizing future of that anchorite of analysis excited the emulation of a large group of dreamers...""En Rade does not appear to be a work fated to modify the destiny of that reprobate [des Esseintes]. The pessimism of À Rebours has merely been strengthened and consolidated... No counterweight, from now on, to the deep despondency of souls. No pale brightness, no wan glimmer of the skies... Never has hope been so positively dismissed..."The appendix includes a review by Jules Barbey dʼAurevilly on À Rebours.

Flowers of Bitumen (Fleurs du Bitume in French) is the first volume of poetry, published in 1878, by Émile Goudeau, who is best known as the founder the Hydropaths Club, a widely-successful literary club in Paris from 1878-1880, and subsequently as the influential editor-in-chief of the world-famous Chat Noir journal.Léon Bloy, his cousin, says this of him: he "is the lover, at first happy and successively distraught with each passing minute of his own existence, which makes him, at thirty-four years old, madly adored by fifteen million mistresses. When... Flowers of Bitumen [first appeared], I didnʼt understand anything in it... I noticed nothing at all of the extreme nascent superiority of that poetʼs rough outline that was teased out of his marble like Michelangeloʼs unfinished Slave. I called him Mohammad-Goudeau and I made him enter into Byzantium. I cried plaintively that that was decidedly the end of ends, and that the bitumen was going to gobble up the literary Pentapolis of the Occident. That bitumen has become the asphalt of Glory and we are certain to have a great poet hiding amongst us in the nineteenth century...." ("The Fifteenth Child of Niobe," Chat Noir journal, November 3, 1883).

Written and published in 1884, Léon Bloyʼs The Revealer of the Globe: Christopher Columbus and His Future Beatification is an attempt by the author to renew the Cause for Canonization of Christopher Columbus. This is part one of that work. It includes a preface by Jules Barbey dʼAurevilly. To read this book today feels sometimes like reading a book written only yesterday. Christopher Columbus represents the West and Western Civilization as no other person before him can or ever will. And everyone else, intra or extra muros, those who do not subscribe to that civilization but inherit all its benefits - they are the angry, ingrateful hordes some of whom, quite clearly, do not know what they do, nor what their actions imply. Léon Bloy says it best when he says: "The prejudice against Christopher Columbus is so tenacious and so strong that the greatest poet in the world, supposing him inspired by the most magnificent of all indignations, would never succeed in overcoming it.""Doubtless also, he had to believe that that captive world would not be handed over to him without a fight and his heroic soul counted on the God of the oppressed to decide his fortune. But the extraordinary injustice, the unprecedented ingratitude, the indefatigable persistence of misfortunes as he had never seen before and, above all, the supernatural, absolute, implacable insuccess of all his efforts - with the exception of the Discovery, - that there must have strangely astonished his soul, which was unique among the unique!"

Theresa the Philosopher, by the marquis d¿Argens (purportedly), was published in 1748, over 270 years ago - before the modern era, before the Napoleonic phenomenon, before the Directorate, before the French Revolution. It is a happy tale with a happy ending, with not a little bit of hanky-panky slapped in between. Compared to Samuel Richardson's Pamela, published in 1740, which was the first modern (albeit English) novel, whose characters are more than two-dimensional and whose story depends more on what happens inside the mind of the characters than, say, where a boat might go (like Robinson Crusoe for example) - Theresa the Philosopher is scandalous. Compared to the marquis de Sade's Justine, which was published in 1791, it may seem tame. According to the marquis de Sade, Theresa the Philosopher "achieved happy results from the combining of lust and impiety... [it] gave us an idea of what an immoral book could be."The Carmelite Extern Nun, written by Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon, and published one year earlier, in 1747, is another whopper. It is the "Amorous True Story [of Saint Nitouche], the Carmelite Extern Nun, Written by Herself, and Addressed to her Mother Superior." It is anticlericalism, antiestablishmentarianism, and eroticism - the three main pillars or themes, sometimes even agendas, of the 18th century libertine novel - all in one short, but fast-paced, scandalous sack.

Joys (Joies in French) is the fourth book of poetry written by Francis Vielé-Griffin (1864-1937). It was first published in 1889, when Griffin was 25 years old. Griffin was American by birth, born in Virginia. As a boy of seven or eight years old, he was sent to France by his father to attend school; he remained.Francis Vielé-Griffin was an adherent, and one of the principal and early practitioners, of the Symbolist movement in poetry, which grew out of the Decadent movement of poetry. An intimate friend of Stéphane Mallarmé, Griffin was also a great believer in free verse.In his own words, Griffin says this about Joys:"The verse is free verse; - which means nothing more than that the ¿old¿ Alexandrine with one or more ¿cæsura,¿ with or without ¿rejet¿ or ¿enjambment,¿ is abolished or put down; but - more generally - that no fixed form is considered as the necessary mold anymore for the expression of all poetic thought; that, from now on, but consciously free this time, the Poet will obey the personal rhythm that must be, without M. de Banville or any other ¿legislator of Parnassus¿ intervening; and that talent shall resplend in different ways than by the traditional or illusory ¿vanquished difficulties¿ of rhetorical poetics: - Art is not merely learnt, it recreates itself continually; it does not live by tradition, but by evolving."

The Good Song (originally La Bonne Chanson) was the third book of poetry written by French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). Originally published in 1870, The Good Song¿s theme is love. More particularly its theme is love for, and anticipation of marriage with, his future child-wife, Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville. It includes all the concomitant feelings one might expect from the poet: love, joy, elation, doubt, fear, nuptial desire or passion, to name only a few. Their romance took place with the Franco-Prussian War in the background. Having appeared during the war, it was according to Victor Hugo "a flower in a shell." It represented, according to Edmond Lepelletier, a "transformation," a "change in poetic matter" and "a transition piece... the passage from objective, descriptive, plastic, externalized poetry to personal expression, to a confession of the soul, to the notation of battles of the heart or excitations of the brain."Included with this translation, in the appendix, is an extant excerpt of chapter VII, "Marriage - The Good Song (1869-1871)" from Edmond Lepelletier¿s "official" biography of Paul Verlaine: Paul Verlaine: His Life, His Work.

Fêtes Galantes & Songs Without Words are the 2nd and 4th books of poetry by French poet and author Paul Verlaine.Fêtes Galantes (Fêtes Galantes in French) was originally published in 1869. A common theme running through these poems is the scenes, characters, and props of French comedy, semi-civilized pastorals, and commedia dell¿arte, - figures like Harlequin, Colombine, Pierrot, Leandre, the Innamorati, etc., against natural backdrops and dreamy Watteau-like landscapes, with all the appurtenances that one might expect: mandolins, lutes, masques, moonlight, prettily-clad women, moss-covered benches... - interfused with the poet¿s feelings, melancholy, amorous longings, joys, and regrets.Songs Without Words (Romances sans paroles in French) was originally published in 1874. The common theme in these poems is the amorous and sentimental love lost, found, and lost again between the poet and his childhood female cousin, or his child wife, or his new-found friend and fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud against a backdrop of the Ardennes, the Belgian countryside, Brussels, and London. It includes perhaps Verlaine¿s most famous poem: "Il pleure dans mon c¿ur..."

Blood of the Poor (originally Le Sang du pauvre), by Catholic writer Léon Bloy, is perhaps the hardest to read of Léon Bloy¿s writings, as it goes straight to the heart of the matter of what is wrong in the world. It is hard to read, emotively, because it gives the honest reader no room for cover, no space for shelter, no shadow of a tree to hide under. With avarice as its subject, it is a dark poem in prose, a sermon in the style of Savonarola, with the biting satire of a Jonathan Swift."The Blood and the Flesh of the Poor are the only aliments that can nourish, the substance of the rich being a poison and a putrefaction. It is therefore a necessity of hygiene that the poor be devoured by the rich who find that very good, and who ask for it again. Rich children are fortified by the juice of the poors¿ flesh, and the rich man¿s cuisine is endowed with concentrate of the poor.""You believe yourselves to be innocent because you have not slit somebody¿s throat, as yet, I want to believe; because you have not forced open somebody¿s door nor scaled his wall in order to despoil him of his possessions; because finally you have not transgressed human laws too visibly. You are so gross, so carnal, for you do not conceive of a crime that cannot be seen. But I say to you, my very dear brother, that you are a plant, and that that assassin is your flower.""It is true that there are refuges: drunkenness, prostitution of the body, suicide, or madness. Why would the dance not continue?"

Constantinople and Byzantium by Léon Bloy (1846-1917) was originally published in book form in 1917, itself a "definitive re-printing of The Byzantine Epic and Gustave Schlumberger, published in 1906 by the Nouvelle Revue." This book is a summary and interpretation then, à la Bloy, of Schlumberger¿s "trilogy" with its focus on the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium from the middle of the tenth century to the middle of the eleventh. It covers the rise and fall of such warrior emperors as Nicephorus Phocas, John Tzimiskes, and Basil II, the "Bulgar Slayer," under whom the Eastern Roman Empire experienced a kind of Renaissance, after a long series of wars with Bulgars, Rus (Russians), Saracens, and later Normans, to name only a few peoples, in the years and decades immediately preceding the Crusades. The last chapter treats of the two Porphyrogenita ("born in the purple") empresses, Zoe and Theodora, "last branches of the Macedonian oak.""It is proven that God has no need of anyone¿s ¿day after,¿ and that his eternal today satisfies him. Pettiness is no less asked for than Greatness in the laboratory of prodigies. Disparate or desperate successions operate inexpressibly in a mysterious and adored way, in view of compensations or ineffable recuperations. So it is very simple that a series of mediocre or abject emperors should succeed a personage like the great Basil in order to destroy his work. Thirty years after his death, in 1055, his empire was ruined forever."

The first things that come to minds and lips, when thinking about Paul Verlaine¿s poetry, are music and nuance. It is through his heightened employment simultaneously and regularly of those two attributes, of those two mesmerizing attributes of his often absinthe-like poetry, that Paul Verlaine, the poet, really shines, - brightly, not incandescently, but fluorescently, like the greenish-blue polestar on a winter¿s night. But the poetry found in Songs for Her (1891) and Odes in Her Honor (1893) is somewhat contrary to the commonly held ideas of what Paul Verlaine¿s poetry is or "should be," in terms of nuance; it is just as musically virtuosic or experimental as his earlier poetry was, which we all know and love. Because these are poems of mostly physical love, but also emotional love, between a middle-aged man and a woman (two women actually, just not à trois) - there is arguably little need for, and little use of, nuance. They are paeans to physical love.Paul Verlaine didn¿t set out to be Petrarch in these two books of poetry. And neither Philomène, the tantalizing tart at least twenty years his junior, the "her" in Odes in Her Honor; nor Eugénie, his practical and good-hearted if not somewhat ugly and thick-necked bed partner, the "her" in Songs for Her, - neither of them, those two muses, are like Laura.

She Who Weeps (Our Lady of La Salette) by Léon Bloy (Celle qui pleure, in French) was originally published in 1908. This is an English translation of a work that is arguably a keystone of religious thought in Bloy¿s canon, given the author¿s strong belief in, and promotion of, not only Mariology but also Millenarianism, both which beliefs permeate his work. Originally begun in 1879, before his articles written as a scatalogical demolitionary pamphleteer for the Chat Noir journal, before his ground-breaking first novel, The Desperate Man, which was, by the author¿s own admission, the beginning of the "conspiration of silence" against him - She Who Weeps was surprisingly abandoned at first. It was only later when Pierre Termier, a lay "ambassador of Mary," and close friend of the author in his later years, approached Bloy about the work, that the latter, encouraged, and with rekindled interest, picked it up again and brought it to completion.It discusses the story of Mélanie Calvat, and also Maximin Giraud, two children-shepherds in the French Alps, witnesses to the Apparition of the Very Holy Virgin Mary on September 19, 1846, - twelve years before the more famous Marian Apparition at Lourdes - and the consequences that the event had on the lives of the two children - particularly Mélanie, who devoted her life to promoting the message."Pass it on to all my My People, the Mother of God had said to the Shepherds, having announced to them the Great News..."

Poems Saturnian by French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) is the first book of poetry that the "Prince of Poets" wrote. This is the book that launched his career. First published in 1866 under the title of Poèmes Saturniens, the influences are clearly Romantic and Parnassian: Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle principally, but also Théophile Gautier, Catulle Mendès, Théodore Banville, and Albert Glatigny even.The poetry speaks for itself.Memory, memory, what do you want from me?In the fall, thrushes fluttered through the atonal air,And the sun was shooting a monotonous arrowThrough the yellowing woods where the bise blared.We were alone, and we were walking while dreaming,Our hair and our thoughts to the wind, she and I.When, turning her face to me, she said, suddenly,"What was your finest day?" in a voice golden and lively.Her sweet and sonorous voice, with its angelic timber.A discreet smile of mine gave her the answer, andDevotedly, I kissed her pale white hand.- Ah! the first flowers, how sweetly scented they are!And what a charming sound the first "yes" makesWhen it exits the lips and mouth of the beloved!

Rhymes of Joy (Rimes de joie in French) was Belgian poet Théodore Hannon's second book of poetry. Originally published in 1881, the book has the distinction of containing a preface written by J.-K. Huysmans who, three years later, in his ground-breaking decadent novel, À Rebours, said this about Hannon¿s poetry:Its charming corruption corresponded fatally with the inclinations of Des Esseintes, who, on foggy days, on rainy days, locked himself up in the imagined hideaway of that poet and his eyes got intoxicated on the shimmering of his fabrics, on the incandescences of his stones, on his sumptuosities...As a painter, artist, scenarist, theatrical-parodist, and poet, Théodore Hannon (AD 1851-1916) was influential in the Belgian modernist artistic circles of his day. He helped found the influential progressive Belgian society La Chrysalide in 1875. And as the editor in chief of l'Artiste, a weekly literary review based in Brussels, he helped promote the then-fledgling French Naturalist movement. His good friend Félicien Rops contributed four illustrations and the frontispiece to the original publication of Rhymes of Joy.

Ten Years a Bohemian (Dix ans de bohème in French), first published in 1888, is the autobiographical account of a young man, Émile Goudeau, who moves to Paris from the French countryside in the mid- to late-1870s, with high ambitions of becoming a poet. Would that it were so easy! Whimsical and endearing, it tells the story of the Bohemian life of not just one young man, but countless other struggling artists in the Belle Epoque period of Paris, many of which artists are now famous (and more not) - a whös who of sculptors, painters, musicians, performers, poets, writers, and comedians, you name it - living, struggling, drinking, laughing, - somehow managing to survive, with stiff upper lips and on shoe-string budgets - in the Latin Quarter and Montmartre.Émile Goudeau, a recognized poet, is best known today as the founder the Hydropaths Club, a wildly-successful literary club in Paris from 1878-1880, and subsequently as the influential editor-in-chief of the Chat Noir journal, eponymous mouthpiece and vehicle for the world-famous cabaret, which he helped found with Rodolphe Salis. Rodolphe Salis, the "gentleman cabaret owner," often gets the credit for the idea of the Chat Noir journal and cabaret - but after one reads this story, one will quickly realize that the true genius behind both of them is probably... Émile Goudeau, poet, editor, journalist, novelist, and finally... shepherd, in Asnières.

Doctrines of Hatred, Part I: Anti-Semitism by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (AD 1842-1912) was originally published in 1902, under the French title of Les Doctrines de Haine: lʼanti-sémitisme, lʼanti-protestantisme, lʼanti-cléricalisme.Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu was a French historian and essayist. As a practicing Christian, he was in favor of the separation of Church and State. He was the last president of the National League Against Atheism, an association founded in 1886 initially to combat anti-clericalism and socialism. Politically a liberal, in addition to being a French patriot, Leroy-Beaulieu was opposed to anti-Semitism. Thus this book, which could have easily been entitled "What is Anti-Semitism?"Modern readers should approach this book less as a historical document from over 120 years ago, and more in the context of: a) anti-Semitism in France from the late 19th century, during and after the Dreyfus Affair (AD 1894-1906), when a political scandal rocked France and severely divided the French nation; in the wider context of b) anti-Semitism in Europe as a whole, since the middle ages, since perhaps the Crusades, if not earlier; in a still wider historical context, that of c) the plight of the Jews in the Middle East and Europe since the fall of the Second Temple ("Herodʼs Temple") in Jerusalem, in AD 70, the denouement of the First Roman-Jewish War, together with the resultant diaspora of the Jewish people; and finally, perhaps most importantly, in the context of d) anti-Semitism today, the Jewish peopleʼs plight in our own era, since the Holocaust, WWII, the Zionist movement and its concomitant establishment of the State of Israel in 1948; since also the Gaza-Israeli conflicts, from 2005, with the most recent Israel-Hamas War that erupted on October 7, 2023.

Italian Nationalism is a series of talks given by Enrico Corradini between 1908 and 1914 on the subject of Italian nationalism. But nationalism did not exist in a vacuum then, or now, - it coexisted and competed with other political, economic, and social movements and ideas, including socialism, liberalism, democracy, to be sure, but also imperialism, internationalism, European plutocracy, monarchy, and even (later) fascism.Originally published in 1914, in Italian, under the title of Il nazionalismo italiano, it is Enrico Corradini¿s contribution to the sometimes contentious, ever and ongoing conversation about the place, duties, and responsibilities (not just the rights or "freedoms") of the individual in the larger construct of the state or nation. And the nation¿s place, duties, and responsibilities in the world.Enrico Corradini (AD 1865-1931) was an Italian journalist, novelist, editor, and senator. He was the founder and leader of the Italian Nationalist Association (L'Associazione Nazionalista Italiana), 1910-1923, an important Italian political party that later merged with the National Fascist Party in 1923.... democracy is the insurance policy that is paid in public for one¿s private use.All contemporary democracy has a criminal nature... [it is] a political display of altruistic, popular... progressive and civil character, as a cover up... [for] its true nature which is made up of selfishness and egotistical exploitation.

A Silver-Grey Death (¿¿¿¿¿ in Chinese) and Drowning (¿¿), both by Yu Dafu (¿¿¿), are short stories written and published in 1920 and 1921 respectively. Both tell the story of a young man, a Chinese national, living and studying in Japan in the early 20th century. Both are based (in part) on experiences in the author¿s life.Yu Dafu is perhaps unique, among Chinese writers of the period, as an author of decadence - in the literary sense, and in ways that should interest (if not please) Western readers. In both stories are themes of loneliness, desire (for the opposite sex), frustration, heavy drinking, and (in at least one of the stories, if not both): death. Both are succinct in their descriptions and both are beautifully written, sometimes hauntingly so. The narratives move at a clip.Drowning is hands-down Yu Dafüs best-known work (in the West and in the East). It is the story of a young Chinese national who leaves his motherland, China, to study abroad in Japan. A loner by temperament, he soon finds himself "feeling pitifully lonely..." A self-styled poet, he recurs to nature, taking long walks in the countryside outside Nagoya. But dwelling frequently in nature and reading books all alone only go so far for a young man who regularly practices onanism in his room, immediately regrets it, fantasizes about his landlord¿s daughter, and is sexually attracted to just about every girl he meets. It is only a matter of time before he finds himself in a Japanese "tavern" where a young Geisha girl with bad breath serves him too much sake. You can imagine the rest, or you can read the story.

It is difficult to describe the woman, girl, or child I was before meeting Him. She is a distant form of myself. She is like someone I once knew but will never know again and will never forget; which is why I poetically write about her in the third person. Her sadness came from the deepest wells of despair. The blankness of her stare could not touch the bottomless pit of nothingness which was all she could feel. Moments that felt kike lifetimes would come crashing in on her mind as she desperately tried to stop herself from drowning out the pain of her past with the pain of her present. She had carried her abusers from her childhood into her bedroom and died daily, to the black whole that had become her soul. I am a survivor. I know at times you'll read this in first, second, and third person, but this is my story and often times that is exactly how I felt. This is the journey of a little girl who had a terrible start at life, being raised by addicts, neglected, abandoned, and abused in the worst ways. I was confronted with every moment in my life that brought immeasurable pain to the forefront of my heart as I traveled across country escaping the abusive hands of my capture. When I left New Jersey with one bag in tow I had no idea I was embarking on a quest that would take a lifetime to finish. This book started out as a mission to save me from my abuser and ended up a mission to save me from myself. Along the way, I realized life is bigger than I ever imagined it could be and discovered a truth that transformed my soul. The road less traveled took me from the depths of depression to a life full of abundant Joy, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. It is a living testament of a "Truth" that surpasses all understanding and a Love worth dying for. The Something Shiney Journey will compel you to examine how you perceive your world, as it promises to "rip the veil off of the world's perception of who God is..."

Sylvie and The Chimeras are two of French author Gérard de Nerval (AD 1808-1855)¿s best-known works.Sylvie, a novella, is by all accounts his masterpiece; it was first published in July 1853 in the Revue des Deux-Mondes, a periodical. It is a Romantic tale of the love of a young man from Paris for two women, one a childhood sweetheart from Valois, and the other a stage actress in Paris. It is a tale of longing, misgiving, and nostalgia for the past, with the dreamy landscape of Valois as the backdrop. Immediately before having written the novella, Nerval had suffered several bouts of mental illness. After its publication, he was again seized, but more seriously this time, rushed off to the nearest hospital, and put into a straitjacket. In 1854, Sylvie was published in book format, in the collection entitled Les Filles du Feu.The Chimeras is a collection of poems, all in sonnet format. They were written over the course of several years, from as early as 1843 and as late as 1854, a year before the author passed away. Of them "El Desdichado" and "Christ in the Garden of Olives" (itself a collection of five sonnets) are the most famous. Although some of the poems were published in magazines previously, the entirety of them were published as part of Les Filles du Feu.In the appendix is a short excerpt from the biography by Henri Strentz, published in 1911, which includes a discussion of the events leading up to Nerval¿s mental illnesses, his writing of Sylvie, and the squalid details surrounding his death by hanging by his own hand.

The Ride of Yeldis & Other Poems by Francis Vielé-Griffin (AD 1864-1937) was originally published in 1893 in France (under the title of Le chevauchée d¿Yeldis et autres poèmes). This is the first English-language edition of the work, by the pre-eminent French Symbolist poet, whose dreamy style recollects Rimbaud, and also, strangely, Wallace Stevens. Griffin was born in the U.S., but emigrated with his mother to France at the age of seven or eight, not long after the Civil War ended.The poetry speaks for itself:The turrets that covered Her with their shadowRose like organ pipes against the sky,Those evenings in June, with countless voices;And, really, all the musicThat vibrated on the terraces rich in honey,Throughout that slow, sun-drenched June,Was like one long canticle,Of many voices, filled with wonder...* * *In an odor of tossed hay,In a murmur of the rustic ford,Through the diaphanous shade,Come: oblique shadow,The hay smells of love,The water¿s song is tender, silent, graveLike a distant canticle- The year has made its round.

The Desperate Man (first published in 1887) is arguably the French decadent novel par excellence of the 19th century. It is also Léon Bloy¿s first novel and a seminal work which, as such, planted the seeds of just about every other important theme or topic that the author would later develop in subsequent works throughout his life and career. Life is rain water for talented writers; and habitual poverty for Bloy acted as the mulch.There is in The Desperate Man the seed of satire, which was actually a small tree by the time The Desperate Man came out, the seed having been sprouted earlier in his career, in the articles for newspapers, predominantly the Chat Noir journal, - such satire as to rival Jonathan Swift¿s; there is also the seed of apocalyptic Catholicism in The Desperate Man, and the nuts of the exegeses of commonplaces, not to mention the germs of the blood of the poor; there is the kernel of the constant attack on contemporaneous clergy and Bloy¿s self-professed fondness for cenobitism. There is the spore of the eulogy for sainthood, and the embryo of the denunciation of the proxenetism of the press, Parisian high-society and the bourgeoisie. There are the negative grains of anti-Republicanism, and anti-German sentiment. There are the positive grains of pro-conservativism, pro-Medievalism, pro-Monarchy, and pro-Merovingian French Dynasty.