Theophile Gautier

Teresa Edgerton said:
Oh, Dracula has been in the house. My eldest daughter has, or had, the edition with illustrations by Greg Hildebrandt, but she's long since grown up and moved away, so I'd have to ask if she still has it. In fact, I may have read it after all, because thinking about it now, I seem to remember parts of it. (Something Van Helsing said sticks in my mind, after they staked one of the lady vampires and sent her to her final rest, something Victorian and sentimental to the effect that she was now with the stars? Or did I get that from one of the movies?) Maybe I just skimmed through it looking for a reference to ... something. It was a long time ago, in any case.
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Well you are possibly referring to the "killing" of Lucy, who becomes one of the undead. There is certainly references as I recall it in there to suggest that following her eventual "death" that she was in God's hands and effectively guaranteed eternal peace...so not quite "the stars". There may be other references in the text as it's a while since I've read the book or your recollection could be drawn from one of the various Dracula movies e.g the 1930s Hollywood version or the Hammer edn. of the 1950s. J.D. will almost certainly be able to answer that query I think....:) I have an illustrated edn. of Dracula as well as a straight text version but my edn. is much newer, featuring rather stylized illustrations by Jae Lee.

I would encourage you to revisit this text, which of course is available online in various guises.

@AE35Unit: Please report back once you have read it. It is always interesting to get new reader's perspectives on this work. I think I found Shelly's Frankenstein better than Stoker's Dracula though.

Apologies to Monsieur Gautier for sidetracking this most excellent thread...:rolleyes:
 
Stoker, unlikely, given the time frame. Le Fanu -- almost certainly not, as his works had never seen the sort of distribution they deserved, and once they went out of print were seldom reprinted until M. R. James reawakened interest in his work nearly 50 years later with his collection of Le Fanu tales, Madame Crowl's Ghost. In the interim, Le Fanu was a name known almost exclusively to a select few, with the possible exception of "Green Tea" or "Carmilla", which have always been among his most widely reprinted works. (In fact, Lovecraft was only able to come across that tale and his rambling The House by the Churchyard, along with an anthology which had "Dickon the Devil" in it... and was left largely unimpressed, though he did say that "Green Tea" was better than anything else by Le Fanu he'd read).

One last word on Dracula, however: it isn't all in the form a journal. It is done as a collection of different types of papers: journal entries, letters, transcriptions of dictaphone recordings, etc. I have even read a very good essay pointing out that it was, in part, this very disparity of types of records and methods which allowed the protagonists of the novel to finally defeat the undead Count....
 
Thanks JD. Funny I didnt think that much of Green Tea. Carmilla on the other hand....
And yea I just checked the dates-Gautier was dead years before Dracula was written! But Le Fan was really that obscure back then? And he was discovered by M. R. James-well thats cool!
 
Yes, to return to the topic: If you are looking for horror, not all of Gautier's supernatural stories are horrific. For instance, Spirit Love, although a ghost story of sorts, portrays the experience of being haunted as something sublime and spiritually uplifting.

Edit -- I found Dracula at Project Gutenberg and scrolled through until I found the section I was thinking about. Going through more slowly at that point, I found the line I remembered (emphasis mine of course):

But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To this I am willing, but is there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not, 'It was my hand that sent her to the stars. It was the hand of him that loved her best, the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?' Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?"
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Indeed...back on topic and to emphasize Teresa's last point I just purchased a copy of Gautier's most "controversial" and perhaps most acknowledged work....

Mademoiselle de Maupin - Theophile Gautier *Gautier's best known and controversial work now available in a penguin black classic edition. Blurb: Chevalier d’Albert fantasizes about his ideal lover, yet every woman he meets falls short of his exacting standards of female perfection. Embarking on an affair with the lovely Rosette to ease his boredom, he is thrown into tumultuous confusion when she receives a dashing young visitor. Exquisitely handsome, Théodore inspires passions d’Albert never believed he could feel for a man – and Rosette also seems to be in thrall to the charms of her guest. Does this bafflingly alluring person have a secret to hide? Subversive and seductive, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) draws readers into the bedrooms and boudoirs of a French château in a compelling exploration of desire and sexual intrigue.

@Teresa: AH, thank you for locating the passage and clarifying that previous point...:)
 
AE35Unit said:
Thanks JD. Funny I didnt think that much of Green Tea. Carmilla on the other hand....
And yea I just checked the dates-Gautier was dead years before Dracula was written! But Le Fan was really that obscure back then? And he was discovered by M. R. James-well thats cool!
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The problem is, in part, that many of the contributions to the magazines of the time were published anonymously, and it has taken much research to track down those which were not, for example, collected together in a book issued under the writer's name. (This was by no means always the case, but it was nonetheless a fairly frequent practice. Even many of Poe's essays, especially his criticism, was so published.) There is still some controversy over certain minor pieces whether they are by Le Fanu or not, as at times evidence to support or deny is scarce on the ground. Such evidence sometimes entails letters by or to that writer, or diary entries, records for a particular magazine indicating regular contributors an their contributions, etc.; and, of course, that last is extremely scarce, many such records having been destroyed over time.

E. F. Bleiler, for instance, in the introduction to his Ghost Stories and Mysteries by Le Fanu, cites "The Mysterious Lodger", which M. R. James attributed to Le Fanu, James stating: "I find the following stories which are undoubtedly by Le Fanu, though they do not bear his name", an opinion on which Bleiler disagreed. As I recall, general critical opinion tends to side with Bleiler on this issue, though the tale is nonetheless an interesting one.

At any rate, this being the case, much of a writer's work could thus be viewed as quite ephemeral, having one publication and then vanishing into obscurity or even total oblivion, were files of the magazine not kept or not complete.

*SPOILERS*

As for "Green Tea"... that's an odd one. I myself felt rather let down by it on first reading many, many years ago, but it has grown considerably on me since, to the point where I would rate it as among Le Fanu's best. In some ways, it sums up the horror of the worldview of his supernatural tales more succinctly than any other, by its very set-up and absurdity: the poor man is caught in this dilemma by nothing more than drinking green tea; the reasoning which Hesselius offers for this is questionable, at best; the haunting influence is a demonic monkey (or small ape) which, aside from being a metaphor for the bestial side of human nature, varies from a truly demonic power to sluggish, lassitudinous, and seemingly impotent; and Hesselius' cavalier treatment -- leaving without any way for anyone to get in touch with him after advising the man to contact him immediately should things worsen -- which virtually condemned his charge to an horrific death; all these exhibit the horrific absurdity and nonsensical, even mad, quality of the universe Le Fanu depicts. These turn what might be a stereotypical tale of a haunting into one where the reader's reaction is one of pity reinforcing the absolute terror and horror, the sheer ghastliness, of the situation. This is the very summation, it seems to me, of the sort of situation I described with Le Fanu's work -- there is no reason, no point, and no escape (because, even given that the supernatural in these tales does follow some sort of rules, those rules are obviously so foreign to us as to be beyond comprehension and therefore any ability on our part to devise a course of conduct to avoid such hauntings) for the unfortunates who become victims of this lunatic malignity. Once the wheels of that "vast machinery of hell" begin turning, there is no way to avoid being one of the damned.
 
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