The impression I got from this volume is that French decadence is basically Edgar Allan Poe with sex added. I really enjoyed some of these stories, but some were too weird and grotesque, and some were just incomprehensible to me. My favourite author was Remy de Gourmont, whose very short stories perfectly combine sensuality, exquisite imagery, horror, and gorgeous style. Marcel Schwob will probably be responsible for several weeks' worth of nightmares, his stories were too horrific for me. I was really surprised at how frank the depictions of sex are for the mid to late nineteenth century, but then I am used to English Victorian literature. Unfortunately, the translation made all the styles too similar, and all kind of stilted. Interestingly, the story 'Perseus and Andromeda' by Jules Laforgue is extremely similar in its themes to Angela Carter's work, only vastly better in both style and substance and predating that supposedly original supposed genius by about eighty years. Overall, I wouldn't say I loved it, but I enjoyed it, and was suitably terrified by many of the stories.
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