Imaginary Lives by Marcel Schwob & Introduction by Chris Clarke
Brand: Wakefield Press
Product Description
The art of the biographer consists specifically in choice. He is not meant to worry about speaking truth he must create human characteristics amidst the chaos.Marcel Schwob Imaginary Lives remains over 120 years since its original publication in French one of the secret keys to modern literature underrecognized yet a decisive influence on such writers as Apollinaire Borges Jarry and Artaud and more contemporary authors such as Roberto Bolao and Jean Echenoz. Drawing from historical influences such as Plutarch and Diogenes Lartius and authors more contemporary to him such as Thomas De Quincey and Walter Pater Schwob established the genre of fictional biography with this collection a form of narrative that championed the specificity of the individual over the generality of history and the memorable detail of a vice over the forgettable banality of a virtue. These 22 portraits present figures drawn from the margins of history from Empedocles the Supposed God and Clodia the Licentious Matron to the pirate Captain Kidd and the Scottish murderers Messrs. Burke and Hare. In his quest for unique lives Schwob also formulated an early conception of the antihero and discarded historical figures in favor of their shadows. These imaginary lives thus acquaint us with the Hateful Poet Cecco Angiolieri instead of his lifelong rival Dante Alighieri the wouldbe romantic pirate Major Stede Bonnet instead of the infamous Blackbeard who would lead him to the gallows the false confessor Nicolas Loyseleur rather than Joan of Arc whom he cruelly deceived or the actor Gabriel Spenser in place of the betterremembered Ben Jonson who ran a sword through his lung. Marcel Schwob 18671905 was a scholar of startling breadth and an incomparable storyteller. The secret influence on generations of writers Schwob was as versed in the street slang of medieval thieves as he was in the poetry of Walt Whitman whom he translated into French. show more
Condition : New
Author : Marcel Schwob Introduction By Chris Clarke
Weight : 400
Publisher : Wakefield Press
Language : English
EAN : 9781939663344
ISBN10 : 1939663342
Format : Paperback
Date of Publication : 20210501
Place of Publication : Cambridge United States
Pagination : NA
Dimensions : 120 X 180 X 15.24mm