The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse

by Lodge, Kirsten

• ISBN13: 9781903517604
• ISBN10: 1903517605
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-15
• Publisher: Dedalus Ltd

Summary

The sensationalism and morbid pessimism that characterized French decadence in the late nineteenth century quickly attracted converts throughout Europe, including Russia. The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse brings together horrifying, dramatic and erotic short stories and poetry, most of which have never before been translated into English, by the most decadent Russian writers. It includes scandalous writings by the well-known authors Valery Briusov, Leonid Andreyev, Fedor Sologub and Zinaida Gippius and acquaints English-speaking readers with the forgotten writer Aleksandr Kondratiev. These writers explore the darkest depths of the unconscious, as their characters experience sadism, masochism, rape, murder, suicide, and, in a story by Gippius, even passionate love for the dead.Briusov, the self-proclaimed leader of the Russian decadent movement, describesrevolution or the spread of madness leading to the collapse of highly advanced butdecadent civilizations that indulge in refined pleasures and ritualized orgies as theyawait the final hour. Andreyev portrays the collapse of all moral values on a personal level in his famous story "The Abyss," which caused an uproar when itwas first published. Femmes fatales lure men to destruction, but the most seductive enchantress in the anthology is death itself, particularly in the work of Sologub, who is Russia's most decadent writer of all.This collection will certainly provide a reprieve from everyday life, with page after page of cruelty, corruption, sensuality, desperation and death.

Table of Contents

The last martyrs	p. 19
Oh, cover your pale legs!	p. 33
Presentiment	p. 34
Messalina	p. 35
Now that I'm awake	p. 37
For me alone my living dream ...	p. 46
The slave	p. 48
Because she hadn't studied hard ...	p. 50
The republic of the southern cross	p. 52
The coming Huns	p. 73
We are not used to bright colours ...	p. 75
Distinct lines of mountain peaks ...	p. 76
The sting of death	p. 77
O death! I am yours ...	p. 111
Since I fell in love with you ...	p. 112
Hymn of the order of liberators in the drama earth	p. 113
The poisoned garden	p. 114
With a secret joy I would die ...	p. 135
Follow me	p. 136
What makes you beautiful? ...	p. 137
Light and shadows	p. 138
My tedious lamp is alight ...	p. 164
Death and sleep, sister and brother ...	p. 165
You raised the veil of night ...	p. 166
The living and the dead (among the dead)	p. 167
O evil life, your gifts ...	p. 195
Everything around us	p. 196
The earth	p. 197
Moon ants	p. 199
To the window of my cell ...	p. 218
Song	p. 219
The last	p. 220
The abyss	p. 221
I am evil and weak ...	p. 236
Children of night	p. 237
Captive beasts	p. 238
In the fog	p. 239
What will take place in your heart and mind ...	p. 282
Her	p. 283
Calm	p. 284
The story of Sergey Petrovich	p. 286
On the eve of the twentieth century	p. 318
We are weary ...	p. 319
The moon may shine, but the night is dark ...	p. 320
Orpheus	p. 321
The doomed	p. 325
God's moon is high ...	p. 326
Pensive September luxuriously arrays ...	p. 328
In fog's embrace	p. 329
Rain	p. 334
The unknown woman	p. 335
Starting anew	p. 337
The white goat	p. 338
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.