Information
Paris, Chez Ponthieu, 1822. In 16°, 150 x 90 mm. Slight blooms, half green leather and cardboard.
Specialist Notes
THE ORIGIN OF FANTASY. The beginning of the Gothic novella in France, the text that precedes much English and French fantasy literature. A classic of supernatural of the late nineteenth century, very close in theme and setting to the contemporary works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Nodier published this prose poem on the theme of dreams and distress in 1821, but this second edition appears more corrected and revised. Embodies the ambivalences of an era still classic in taste but already Roman tic in temperament: his contes fantastiques graft fairy-tale, dreamlike, surreal elements onto the trunk of the noir novel. The nocturnal bestiary encountered there - demons, spirits, ghosts, vampires - belongs to the repertoire of the visionary and the macabre and is the reflection of the fears and traumas of a world that has been overwhelmed by the revolution: behind the monstrous figures of nightmares that crowd these stories emerges the memory of the blood shed in the years of Terror. Nodier, influenced by the German romantics (Jean-Paul, Novalis, Hoffmann), the dream is also a mysterious inspirer with surprising cognitive potential because by upsetting the ordinary laws of logic it causes the spark of creation to explode. in the absurd» declares the writer, in controversy with the positivist myths: a warning that the "disciple" Nerval, the pataphysicist Jarry, the surrealist Breton will do.
"Smarra is to bru tal story, extravagantly supernatural, with a stong sexual undercurrent." Times Literary Suppl. on the recent English edition. The first Italian translation dates back to 1890, published in the Fantastic tales with a discourse around the fantastic, Milan, Sonzogno Universal Library; the most recent is from 2008 in The demons of the night and other stories, Milan, Garzanti, translated by Tony Cavalca.
Nodier published this prose poem on the theme of dreams and distress in 1821, but this second edition appears more corrected and revised. Embodies the ambivalences of an era still classic in taste but already Roman tic in temperament: his contes fantastiques graft fairy-tale, dreamlike, surreal elements onto the trunk of the noir novel. The nocturnal bestiary encountered there - demons, spirits, ghosts, vampires - belongs to the repertoire of the visionary and the macabre and is the reflection of the fears and traumas of a world that has been overwhelmed by the revolution: behind the monstrous figures of nightmares that crowd these stories emerges the memory of the blood shed in the years of Terror. Nodier, influenced by the German romantics (Jean-Paul, Novalis, Hoffmann), the dream is also a mysterious inspirer with surprising cognitive potential because by upsetting the ordinary laws of logic it causes the spark of creation to explode. in the absurd» declares the writer, in controversy with the positivist myths: a warning that the "disciple" Nerval, the pataphysicist Jarry, the surrealist Breton will do.
"Smarra is to bru tal story, extravagantly supernatural, with a stong sexual undercurrent." Times Literary Suppl. on the recent English edition. The first Italian translation dates back to 1890, published in the Fantastic tales with a discourse around the fantastic, Milan, Sonzogno Universal Library; the most recent is from 2008 in The demons of the night and other stories, Milan, Garzanti, translated by Tony Cavalca.
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