My Fantoms (New York Review Books Classics)

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), one of the giants of 19th century French literature, author of novels, short stories, essays, plays and poetry was also a journalist who wrote reviews on literature, theater, dance and art, especially art since in his younger years was himself a painter, a background that served him well as his writing is visually stunning. This fine collection of seven Gautier tales includes Omphale (The Adolescent), Clairmonde (The Priest) and Gérard de Nerval (The Poet); however, for the purpose of this review and in order to share a taste of Gautier, I will focus on my favorite: The Opium Smoker.The story begins with the narrator paying a call to the home of his friend, one Alphonse Karr, who happens to be smoking a pipe of opium. Thinking nothing of the practice, the narrator accepts the pipe from Karr and, in turn, tales several puffs, inhaling the smoke into his lungs. After his brief relaxed visit with Karr, he goes home for dinner, then to the theater so he can write his obligatory newspaper review and finally returns for a well-deserved sleep.He has some sleep but the fantastic happens and our narrator relates the details of his vivid dream: He’s back at Karr’s apartment. Karr is on his bed smoking his opium pipe and all is similar to his afternoon visit but for one exception – a decided lack of sunlight. Repeating the sequence of events as if a mirror, the narrator smokes his opium and lies down to feel the effects. We read, “I was half-immersed in a heap of cushions, and lazily stretched back my head to watch the blue smoke-rings rise swirling through the air and dissolve after a moment or two into a diffused haze of cotton-wool. By degrees my gaze shifted upwards to the ebony-black ceiling with its design of golden arabesques. As I stared up at it with that ecstatic intensity that precedes visionary experience, I had the impression that the ceiling was now blue, a deep inky blue, like a strip torn out of the night sky.” Sidebar: this graphic passage exemplifies Gautier’s painterly background.He notes the ceiling’s change of color to his friend. Karr remarks such is the very nature of a ceiling, so very much like a woman, sheer caprice, wanting to change all the time. The narrator remains only half convinced by this line of reasoning and, with a tincture of unease, continues to closely observe the ceiling. As if in response to his scrutiny, the ceiling turns a deeper blue and stars began to appear, stars having delicate golden threads stretching down, filling the room with light, while, in the meantime, the entire house had become as clear and as transparent as glass.Slightly unsettled by such mystical transformations, the narrator wonders what his childhood friend, Esquiros the Magician, would have to say about this instant shapeshifting. No sooner does he have this reflection then to his stupefaction Esquiros is standing before him. Wow! He asks Karr how Esquiros entered the room since the door is closed, to which Karr explains magicians always walk through closed doors. The narrator takes such a well formulated statement to be an obvious example of sound logic.At this point, Esquiros’ eye become enormous, round and glowing and his body dissolves and turns into swirls of sparkling light, winding around the narrator’s body with a progressively tighter grip. In this restricted state, the narrator sees whiffs of rising white smoke taking humanlike form and hears a voice whisper in his ear that they are spirits. He also sees for the first time a beautiful young barefoot girl sitting up in the corner of the ceiling who tells those rising white smoke spirits that she does not want to join them but would rather live for another six months.The young beauty explains to the narrator that if he goes into town and give her a kiss on the lips of her dead body she will live for six more months and live for him alone. Upon hearing her promise, without the slightest hesitation, the narrator sets off in a carriage pulled by two magical black horses. During his travels, he relates, “We sped across a dark and dismal plain. There was a low leaded sky and an endless procession of small, spindly trees flying away on both sides of the road in the opposite direction to the coach, for all the world like a routed army of broomsticks. Nothing could have been more sinister than the huge, brooding greyness of that sky, scored by the black silhouettes of those skeletal flying trees.” Sidebar: this entire coach sequence has much in common with a similar opium induced coach ride in S'degh Hed'yat’s The Blind Owl.The opium dream continues, related in vintage Théophile Gautier vibrant language. And this tale is but one of seven. There is also an informative introduction by Richard Holes, who did a fine job translating from the French. Lastly, this New York Review Book edition has a striking detail of Théodore Chassériau’s Two Sisters on the cover. If you are a romantic at heart, this book is for you.

exactly as advertise

Fantom isn’t a made up word it’s an archaic spelling of phantom. I don’t know why Holmes used it but I don’t see anything particularly grating about it

The New York Review of Books publishers continue their great series of classics revivals with My Fantoms by Theophile Gautier. The short stories were published in France from 1832 to 1867 and are wonderfully introduced, translated, and updated by Richard Holmes. The stories involve the undead and unholy manipulating and interfering with the lives of adolescents, painters, clergy, journalists, actors, tourists, and poets.Gautier's style is romantic, humorous, and ironic and quickly involves the reader in the fantasies of the characters. These fantasies often occur in dreams that lead to temporary or permanent madness. They are worth the stress, though, because of the sexual ecstasy and obsessive love that often result.There is a fundamental tension in each story between the characters' rational work and irrational experiences. Holmes points out in the Introduction that the tension is somewhat autobiographical. Gautier was a hard working journalist who wrote a weekly column for a Paris publication for thirty years and also was a free spirited author of many works of fiction. My Fantoms' cover art represents the two beautiful Italian sisters Gautier loved: one was an opera singer who lived with him and shared his day to day routines, and the other was a dancer who traveled internationally frequently sending him love letters.Holmes writes in the Postscript that the seven stories are strange and mysterious implying they are somewhat difficult to interpret from a rational point of view. But, in the following passage from the story "The Painter," Gautier shows the reader how to understand the characters' experiences in all the stories. "...he was capable of becoming one of the greatest of our artists; but instead he only became one of the strangest of our madmen. He had questioned his own existence too closely and too curiously; almost invariably he injected everyday events with some grotesque element of his own fantasy."You can enter the realm of madness in a number of dimensions as you read the great collection of stories written by a master of the rational/irrational. Gautier will show you that the demons most threatening to sanity are the desires that dwell within our minds.