Matter Pools: Fluidity and Containment in French Decadent Literature: Essays in Honour of Robert E. Ziegler

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For discussions of the mirror, see Melchior-Bonnet (1994; ‘Rêverie élémentaire’ in Jean Pierrot's L’Imaginaire décadent (1880–1900) (1977); Michaud (1959). Ziegler explores narcissism as a mirror in ‘Narcissism as Theater in Jean Lorrain's Le Tréteau’ (2005).

2 In Les 21 jours d’un neurasthénique, Georges Vasseur describes the experience of being on the summit of a mountain as being ‘dans une prison, dans un caveau’ (Mirbeau, III, 2001: 49).

3 In a scene from Dans le ciel in which Lucien and Georges watch the reflections of lights on the Seine, the latter fails to perceive the visual analogies that offer themselves before his eyes. The bridge and quay lamps become stars on the water of ‘des ciels renversés’ in which appear ‘des silhouettes indécises, ombres sur de l’ombre’ on the ‘pâle firmament’ of the river (Mirbeau, II, 2001: 86–87). One can wonder if these indistinct shadows are virtual objects just waiting to emerge from the darkness to assume, according to object-oriented ontology, their own reality.

4 The authors of Le Roman célibataire identify ‘generic hybridization’ with the decadent novel, with its authors borrowing from poetry and ‘d’autres sous-genres (l’encyclopédie, le traité spécialisé, – d’histoire, de philosophie, de sciences, …  – l’essai critique, la science-fiction, la méditation, le récit de voyage, le journal intime, l’agenda, la correspondance, le livret d’opéra, le conte poétique, la nouvelle, la sotie)’ (Bertrand, et al., 1996: 46).

5 Le Jardin des supplices contains some of the most exhilarating and astonishing analogies: the reversing of one victim's peeled skin resembles an Inverness coat and that of another the torturer has transformed from male into female.