Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915)

`The Angels of Perversity' is a collection of 30 short tales by French philosopher/aesthetician/literary critic/fiction writer Remy de Gourmont (1858 - 1915), a leading voice of the fin-de-siècle decadent and symbolist schools who was heralded as the `critical conscience of a generation'. Although handsome as a young man, a skin disease ravaged his face when Gourmont was in his early 30s, prompting him to become a recluse and devote the next 25 years of his life to writing, enough writing to fill 50 thick volumes.

Back on his fiction, here is what translator Francis Amery aka Brian Stableford says about Gourmont in his 15 page introduction to the author's life and times: "His one and only subject matter was sex; he was deeply fascinated by the essential capriciousness of the sexual impulse, by the ill-effects of social and religious repression of sexuality, and by the intellectual strategies which might maximize the quasi-transcendental experience of sexual rapture." Thus, with this sexual repression and how men and women deal with their twisted sexual energy, we have the book's title. And to provide a more specific glimpse of what one will encounter in this provocative collection, I offer the following comments on three of the tales:

On the Threshold
An odd-ball tale where the narrator visits the gloomy, depressing French chateau of an old aristocrat. And what is really weird is there is a tame heron with the name of `Missionary' who stalks from room to room as if on a ominous mission. The narrator accidentally bumps into the heron and says, "Go on then, Remorse." This rebuke initially upsets the old marquis and then triggers him to disclose the sad story of his life.

When the men retire to his den, the marquis confesses to the narrator that he himself is like the heron: he never sleeps. He goes on, "My heart, at least, never sleeps. I am familiar with drowsiness, but I am a stranger to unconsciousness. My dreams are simply the continuation of my waking thoughts . . . And what do I dream about in this fashion, during all the interminable hours of my life? Of nothing - or rather of negation, of that which I have not done, that which I will not do, that which I could not do, even if my youth were given back to me. For that is my nature. I am one who has never been active, who has never lifted a finger in order to accomplish a desire or duty."

At this point, the marquis recounts his boyhood, where an orphan cousin was brought into his home, a beautiful blonde young girl of the same age. However, some years after, at the time when he became more rational, he had the experience that would define his life forever: he plucked a rose from his garden and saw that the rose faded and withered away within the hour. He concluded: no matter how much one yearns for roses, one must not pluck roses. He applied this principle to every aspect of life, including his relationship with his beautiful cousin. Indeed, although he lived side-by-side with his cousin for another 20 years and loved her with a burning intensity, he never `crossed the threshold', never acted on his feelings, never permitted himself to be subject to the disenchantment born of desire or action. And what of his beautiful cousin? She became weak and died of love for the marquis. And, so, he has lived alone for many years in his chateau called `Gallows-Tree House' with the black swans swimming among broken reeds and a heron clacking its beak and staring out of its cheerless and ironic eyes.

One can reflect on this tale in light of ongoing decadent themes: rotting civilization, moral transgression and emotional extremes. I wouldn't be surprised if Gourmont was inspired to write `On the Threshold' after ruminating on a famous aphorism of Arthur Schopenhauer, the favorite philosopher among decadent writers, "No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose."

The Faun
A young wife and mother returns from a Christmas Eve dinner nauseated by her husband's hypocritical show of affection and weary of the laughter of little children. Once her bedroom door is locked, she stands naked before her mirror and, rebelling against any memory of her youth and innocence, she turns her thoughts to sensuality. The author writes, "She gave herself up to a dream of sumptuous fornication, imagining she might sink into an unexpected stupor, a complaisant victim of desire, right there beside the fire with the fur about her . . . " But such intense pleasure doesn't last forever, for as Gourmont observes, society and religion have turned men and especially women against their own bodies and dreams of sensuality.

The Dress
A young man experiences an intense yearning for the fulfillment of his love-sick heart. To this end he searches out beautiful women strolling along the streets of Paris. But, wait - is the beauty he seeks in women? No, not at all, for we read, "A naked woman seemed to him to be an absurdity, an anomaly--something like a bald parrot or a plucked chicken." What his love-sick heart yearns to unite with is a beautiful dress. That's right - this young man has a dress fetish, a fetish leading to a warped and sick encounter with a young woman and ultimately leading to murder. One of the most memorable tales of sexual perversion you will ever read.

One final note: The cover photo with Bridget Bardot is completely inappropriate as noted by a Goodreads friend below. Dedalus Press made a mistake with such a cover.… (meer)

This fine collection of essays by Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) features one real gem, ‘Success and the Idea of Beauty’ --- the focus of my review. The author views beauty, pleasure and aesthetics in purely biological and evolutionary terms and anticipates the modern day examination of the world of art and aesthetics by neuroscience, neuropsychology and biology. Armed with the findings of biology and animal behavior, de Gourmont goes on the attack against high-brow artistic elites who have conceited notions about art and who look down their noses at artistic works having a measure of popular success.

The author asks: What’s wrong with a work of art being successful? After all, he says, success enables a work to reach many people and the whole purpose of art is to please, thus success gives art more of a chance to please as many people as possible. And, he continues, if anybody thinks success compromises the artwork, this view is simply wrong – the work of art is the work of art and success doesn’t alter it in any way.

And when it comes to the ‘average person’, success has a momentum of its own. As de Gourmont says, “The public obeys success as dogs obey the sound of a whistle.” And when it comes to the way the mass of humanity views beauty, the author thinks things couldn’t be more clear. He writes: “The crowd can say: that pleases me, hence it is beautiful. It cannot say: that pleases me, yet it is not beautiful, or: that displeases me, yet it is beautiful.” Ah, the clean, uncomplicated connection between beauty and that which pleases. De Gourmont outlines the biological foundations of why this connection is so strong and so direct.

Indeed, for de Gourmont biology is the key to understanding what is happening in our human perception of beauty. We read: “The idea of beauty has an emotional origin, connected with the idea of generation. . . . Beauty is so sexual that the only generally accepted works of art are those which show the human body in its nakedness.” Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration, but we now have a mountain of documented research on how human perception finds certain qualities of faces and bodies (things like symmetry and flawless skin) most appealing and pleasing. And de Gourmont goes further in stating: “Aesthetic emotion puts us in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.” Hard to deny, particularly since the entire advertising industry and fashion world revolve around this connection.

Turning now to that high-brow artistic elite, the author speaks of how things can get very convoluted and complex very quickly. Why? De Gourmont points out in what manner refined aesthetic judgments of literary experts, artistic cognoscente and cultural authorities add a second layer to the equation: intelligence. So we not only have the raw, direct, honest pleasures men and women experience via their sensations, we now have to deal with an unending stream of concepts and categories. But, the author notes, concepts and categories and artistic values change over time – what the 17th century French elite valued in art and what the 18th century French elite valued in art differs widely from each other and both differ from the art considered great by the present-day elite. Thus, artistic values and aesthetic judgments are anything but absolute,

This lack of an absolute in the realm of art and aesthetics leads de Gourmont to assert: ”Let us leave men to seek their pleasure freely. . . . That which moves us is beautiful, but we can be moved only in the measure of our emotional receptivity, and according to the state of our nervous system.” In other words, leave people alone. If people want to read popular fiction instead of Wordsworth or Nabokov, if they want to watch popular movies instead of Shakespeare plays or listen to rock music instead of string quartets, they should jolly well be given the opportunity to do so.

You can try to force people into museums, concert hall or poetry readings, but ultimately such force-feeding will not help and could quite possible cause harm (Actually, nowadays this force-feeding comes not from high culture but from popular culture and the mass media). For, as Remy de Gourmont states, “Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.” I couldn’t agree more. In the end, we all want to engage with the art that we love.… (meer)

`The Angels of Perversity' is a collection of 30 short tales by French philosopher/aesthetician/literary critic/fiction writer Remy de Gourmont (1858 - 1915), a leading voice of the fin-de-siècle decadent and symbolist schools who was heralded as the `critical conscience of a generation'. Although handsome as a young man, a skin disease ravaged his face when Gourmont was in his early 30s, prompting him to become a recluse and devote the next 25 years of his life to writing, enough writing to fill 50 thick volumes.

Back on his fiction, here is what translator Francis Amery aka Brian Stableford says about Gourmont in his 15 page introduction to the author's life and times: "His one and only subject matter was sex; he was deeply fascinated by the essential capriciousness of the sexual impulse, by the ill-effects of social and religious repression of sexuality, and by the intellectual strategies which might maximize the quasi-transcendental experience of sexual rapture." Thus, with this sexual repression and how men and women deal with their twisted sexual energy, we have the book's title. And to provide a more specific glimpse of what one will encounter in this provocative collection, I offer the following comments on three of the tales:

On the Threshold
An odd-ball tale where the narrator visits the gloomy, depressing French chateau of an old aristocrat. And what is really weird is there is a tame heron with the name of `Missionary' who stalks from room to room as if on a ominous mission. The narrator accidentally bumps into the heron and says, "Go on then, Remorse." This rebuke initially upsets the old marquis and then triggers him to disclose the sad story of his life.

When the men retire to his den, the marquis confesses to the narrator that he himself is like the heron: he never sleeps. He goes on, "My heart, at least, never sleeps. I am familiar with drowsiness, but I am a stranger to unconsciousness. My dreams are simply the continuation of my waking thoughts . . . And what do I dream about in this fashion, during all the interminable hours of my life? Of nothing - or rather of negation, of that which I have not done, that which I will not do, that which I could not do, even if my youth were given back to me. For that is my nature. I am one who has never been active, who has never lifted a finger in order to accomplish a desire or duty."

At this point, the marquis recounts his boyhood, where an orphan cousin was brought into his home, a beautiful blonde young girl of the same age. However, some years after, at the time when he became more rational, he had the experience that would define his life forever: he plucked a rose from his garden and saw that the rose faded and withered away within the hour. He concluded: no matter how much one yearns for roses, one must not pluck roses. He applied this principle to every aspect of life, including his relationship with his beautiful cousin. Indeed, although he lived side-by-side with his cousin for another 20 years and loved her with a burning intensity, he never `crossed the threshold', never acted on his feelings, never permitted himself to be subject to the disenchantment born of desire or action. And what of his beautiful cousin? She became weak and died of love for the marquis. And, so, he has lived alone for many years in his chateau called `Gallows-Tree House' with the black swans swimming among broken reeds and a heron clacking its beak and staring out of its cheerless and ironic eyes.

One can reflect on this tale in light of ongoing decadent themes: rotting civilization, moral transgression and emotional extremes. I wouldn't be surprised if Gourmont was inspired to write `On the Threshold' after ruminating on a famous aphorism of Arthur Schopenhauer, the favorite philosopher among decadent writers, "No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose."

The Faun
A young wife and mother returns from a Christmas Eve dinner nauseated by her husband's hypocritical show of affection and weary of the laughter of little children. Once her bedroom door is locked, she stands naked before her mirror and, rebelling against any memory of her youth and innocence, she turns her thoughts to sensuality. The author writes, "She gave herself up to a dream of sumptuous fornication, imagining she might sink into an unexpected stupor, a complaisant victim of desire, right there beside the fire with the fur about her . . . " But such intense pleasure doesn't last forever, for as Gourmont observes, society and religion have turned men and especially women against their own bodies and dreams of sensuality.

The Dress
A young man experiences an intense yearning for the fulfillment of his love-sick heart. To this end he searches out beautiful women strolling along the streets of Paris. But, wait - is the beauty he seeks in women? No, not at all, for we read, "A naked woman seemed to him to be an absurdity, an anomaly--something like a bald parrot or a plucked chicken." What his love-sick heart yearns to unite with is a beautiful dress. That's right - this young man has a dress fetish, a fetish leading to a warped and sick encounter with a young woman and ultimately leading to murder. One of the most memorable tales of sexual perversion you will ever read.

One final note: The cover photo with Bridget Bardot is completely inappropriate as noted by a Goodreads friend below. Dedalus Press made a mistake with such a cover.… (meer)

This fine collection of essays by Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) features one real gem, ‘Success and the Idea of Beauty’ --- the focus of my review. The author views beauty, pleasure and aesthetics in purely biological and evolutionary terms and anticipates the modern day examination of the world of art and aesthetics by neuroscience, neuropsychology and biology. Armed with the findings of biology and animal behavior, de Gourmont goes on the attack against high-brow artistic elites who have conceited notions about art and who look down their noses at artistic works having a measure of popular success.

The author asks: What’s wrong with a work of art being successful? After all, he says, success enables a work to reach many people and the whole purpose of art is to please, thus success gives art more of a chance to please as many people as possible. And, he continues, if anybody thinks success compromises the artwork, this view is simply wrong – the work of art is the work of art and success doesn’t alter it in any way.

And when it comes to the ‘average person’, success has a momentum of its own. As de Gourmont says, “The public obeys success as dogs obey the sound of a whistle.” And when it comes to the way the mass of humanity views beauty, the author thinks things couldn’t be more clear. He writes: “The crowd can say: that pleases me, hence it is beautiful. It cannot say: that pleases me, yet it is not beautiful, or: that displeases me, yet it is beautiful.” Ah, the clean, uncomplicated connection between beauty and that which pleases. De Gourmont outlines the biological foundations of why this connection is so strong and so direct.

Indeed, for de Gourmont biology is the key to understanding what is happening in our human perception of beauty. We read: “The idea of beauty has an emotional origin, connected with the idea of generation. . . . Beauty is so sexual that the only generally accepted works of art are those which show the human body in its nakedness.” Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration, but we now have a mountain of documented research on how human perception finds certain qualities of faces and bodies (things like symmetry and flawless skin) most appealing and pleasing. And de Gourmont goes further in stating: “Aesthetic emotion puts us in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.” Hard to deny, particularly since the entire advertising industry and fashion world revolve around this connection.

Turning now to that high-brow artistic elite, the author speaks of how things can get very convoluted and complex very quickly. Why? De Gourmont points out in what manner refined aesthetic judgments of literary experts, artistic cognoscente and cultural authorities add a second layer to the equation: intelligence. So we not only have the raw, direct, honest pleasures men and women experience via their sensations, we now have to deal with an unending stream of concepts and categories. But, the author notes, concepts and categories and artistic values change over time – what the 17th century French elite valued in art and what the 18th century French elite valued in art differs widely from each other and both differ from the art considered great by the present-day elite. Thus, artistic values and aesthetic judgments are anything but absolute,

This lack of an absolute in the realm of art and aesthetics leads de Gourmont to assert: ”Let us leave men to seek their pleasure freely. . . . That which moves us is beautiful, but we can be moved only in the measure of our emotional receptivity, and according to the state of our nervous system.” In other words, leave people alone. If people want to read popular fiction instead of Wordsworth or Nabokov, if they want to watch popular movies instead of Shakespeare plays or listen to rock music instead of string quartets, they should jolly well be given the opportunity to do so.

You can try to force people into museums, concert hall or poetry readings, but ultimately such force-feeding will not help and could quite possible cause harm (Actually, nowadays this force-feeding comes not from high culture but from popular culture and the mass media). For, as Remy de Gourmont states, “Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.” I couldn’t agree more. In the end, we all want to engage with the art that we love.… (meer)