Diaboliques: Six Tales of Decadence
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Psychologically intense in substance and style, the stories of Diaboliques combine horror, comedy, and irony to explore the affairs and foibles of men and women whose aristocratic world offers neither comfort nor protection from romantic failure or sexual outrage. Conquest and seduction, adultery and revenge, prostitution and murderโall are within Barbey d'Aurevilly โs purview as he penetrates the darker recesses of the human heart. Raymond N. MacKenzie, whose deft translation captures the complex expression of the original with its unique blend of the literary high and low, also includes an extensive introduction and notes, along with the first-ever translation of Barbey d'Aurevillyโs late story โA Page from Historyโ and the important preface to his novel The Last Mistress.
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Jules Barbey dโAurevilly (1808โ1889) is one of the most notorious of decadent writers and the subject of a major critical and popular resurgence in France. His work has been adapted for film most recently by Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress) and in the fifties by Alexandre Astruc (The Crimson Curtain, also the subject of a film planned in the 1920s by Andrรฉ Breton).
Raymond N. MacKenzie is professor of English at the University of St. Thomas. His recent translation of Zolaโs Germinal was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, and his translation of Madame Bovary was included in the Norton Anthology of Western Literature.
