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Nineteenth Century French Studies 31.1&2 (2002) 140-141



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Book Review

Mythes de la décadence


Montandon, Alain, ed. Mythes de la décadence. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Univer-sitaires Blaise Pascal, 2001. Pp. 375. ISBN 2-84516-148-4

A somewhat uneven collection of twenty-seven essays presented at a 1999 colloquium of the Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures Modernes et Contemporaines, Mythes de la décadence investigates the ways in which eternal, presumably hyper-determined myths get reinscribed, reorganized, and reinvested in the cynicism of the end of the nineteenth century. This is not a book that explores the boundaries of decadence, per se. Rather, these essays attempt collectively to chronicle the life and structure of decadent myths and chart their use by a loosely affiliated gang of interpreters. As a whole, this volume poses a series of interrelated questions: Why do traditional figures such as the vampire and the Sphinx, Salomé and Sappho, Venus and Faust all speak in varying degrees to the needs of decadent writers? Do traditional myths lend power to decadent values (to the degree that decadent values can be fortified at all), or do they play a more destabilizing and destructive role? Are permanent myths, in fact, plastic when they are incorporated into decadent literature, or does their reinscription belie a more parasitic and pathological quality? The essential thrust of the book is to ask how writers such as Louÿs, Wilde, Lorrain, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Remy de Gour-mont, and Swinburne all attribute new decadent meanings to the myths they espouse. The results, as we might expect from such a broad project, are inconclusive.

The book fails to satisfy completely in part because it lacks organization. As it stands, the volume saps the strength of its best individual essays by denying them any supportive context. For instance, Isabelle Cani's article on the myth of the Holy Grail - a smart essay centered on Wagner's influential Parsifal - is directly followed by Lola Bermúdez's study of the hermaphrodite in Francis Poictevin's Double. That essay, in turn, is followed by Sophie Minette's wonderfully centrifugal study of Dante's "La Pia" and her seduction of Gautier, France, Swinburne, and Barrès. All three essays are close readings and contribute to our understanding of certain myths that influenced late nineteenth-century artists. But they speak only tentatively to one another, if at all. The volume's editor unfortunately allows the essays to stand on their own, without introduction or elucidation; as a consequence, the themes and threads that might otherwise unite the various articles are left unacknowledged and unexplored.

Were these essays categorized by their subjects, the conclusions of the project could have been clearer. Laurence Porter has noted elsewhere that the most common mainspring of the plot in decadent fiction is the myth of woman as a base, unreasonable, instinctively destructive being. Sure enough, Mythes de la décadence is replete with pieces that justify Porter's claim. Sophie Jeddi, for example, discusses the emergence of a perverted, Christian Venus, while Pascale Auraix-Jonchière argues that Remy de Gourmont's Lilith perverts the Hebraic myth by portraying Lilith as a [End Page 140] vampiric and fertile "mother of Sterility." Nicole Albert, furthermore, demonstrates how a decadent Sappho, as both a historical and literary figure, conforms nicely to a style of writing preoccupied with fragmentation, manipulation, and reinterpretation. Évanghélia Stead's essay on Circé is a final example that highlights the misogynistic impulse of decadent writers. Had these efforts been assembled in a single chapter, they might have more actively fostered an appreciation for the privileged position of mythic women in decadent literature.

While the essays that address misogynistic imperatives account for a sizable portion of this collection, there is also a significant number of essays that discuss decadent fiction published outside France. These include studies by Annick Le Scoëzec-Masson on Spanish writers of the fin de siècle, Micéala Symington on Arthur Symons's use of Salomé, and Florence Godeau on Thomas Mann. Christopher Lloyd and Bernard Franco also contribute...

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