Delphi Fabrice - The Red Sorcerer (1910)

The Red Sorcerer is the third novel I’ve read by late-Decadent author Delphi Fabrice, and it presents some difficulty in interpretation. French Decadence is typically viewed as a fin de siècle phenomenon, which means that, literally, it ended on the last day of 1899. Literarily speaking, one can easily make a case for Decadence extending a few years into the 20th Century. The Red Sorcerer was published in 1910, well after either definition. So is it Decadent literature?

More fundamentally, is it literature? In his introduction, translator Brian Stableford reveals The Red Sorcerer was “published as a 64-part feuilleton serial in Le Journal”. The feuilleton was a lurid, cliffhanger-laden genre of French fiction presented in serial format by newspapers of the time. Its purpose was to hook readers into buying future editions of the newspaper to find out “what happens next”. As such, it’s hardly a genre that promises high culture.

There’s even good reason to question whether Fabrice himself approached the work as serious literature. After the fin de siècle he redefined himself as an author, gravitating to broadly popular genres such as adventure stories and what would now be called novelizations. A feuilleton written by him in 1910, therefore, could easily have been a boilerplate page-turner designed to shock and thrill, rather than a work of art with something to say.

In my opinion, The Red Sorcerer should be considered a Decadent novel if only because it works several motifs that are hallmarks of the movement. For example, the opening chapters take place in a rural landscape almost lost in time, filled with ancient folklore and magic, from which several characters are altered by the grim realities of modern Paris. References to the bucolic country are repeatedly used to underline the diseased nature of modern urban life.

As ever, Fabrice’s Paris is populated by a sordid rabble of hustlers, pimps, gigolos, and prostitutes. Unlike Fabrice’s other two translated novels, our entrée into these environs is through these characters as opposed to slumming aristocrats. Either way, their scams and schemes present us with murder, kidnapping, backstabbing, extortion, and human trafficking. Shocking traditional morality is a common Decadent motif that just happens to work well in the feuilleton genre.

What’s missing, however, is the thematic purpose such content typically serves in Decadent fiction: the decay of fin de siècle society. In 1910, such a theme would have been way past its sell-by date, and Fabrice hasn’t overtly replaced it with an alternative theme. I say overtly because what does emerge – and what feels different about The Red Sorcerer versus Flowers of Ether or The Red Spider – is its ontological pessimism about the role of good and evil.

I’m not convinced this viewpoint was a fully intentional theme, because Fabrice doesn’t really develop it. That said, it seems like an odd choice for a feuilleton. No matter how lurid the content, I’m guessing the genre typically ended with a moral ‘happily ever after’ (good characters rewarded, villains punished). In contrast, none of the primary characters in The Red Sorcerer achieve unalloyed victory or their just desserts. 

It's also rather telling that Fabrice ends his over-the-top narrative of sin and vice with an authorial pronouncement explaining why the novel ends the way it does. If the ending fit with reader expectations or the norms of the genre, it seems unlikely he would have bothered. His awareness of having done something that requires explication begs the question why he did it at all. If he chose to deviate, one suspects there was a purpose for doing so.

In any case, the ontological mindset pervading The Red Sorcerer reminded me very much of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Both paint an amoral and almost absurdly misanthropic universe, paired with a pervasive sense of human powerlessness. The latter is presented in The Red Sorcerer via Téte-Rouge’s control of Francoise, the key relationship of the novel, although many of his characters are similarly resigned to misfortune.

Now Decadence literature was by nature very pessimistic about society and man’s ability to sift any good out of the angst of the times. However, the decadent response to this was a dandified cynicism or black humor. Characters luxuriated in their disease or neurasthenia like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. By 1910, it was long since clear Paris wasn’t going to burn and whatever apocalypse the Decadents feared had clearly not happened. 

So how does a former-Decadent process his realization the world isn’t going to fall apart but will instead go on and on in a long drawn-out whimper? Perhaps by adopting deeper pessimism or even nihilism. These are what Céline presented and, in fact, much Modernist literature on one level or other addresses themes of a hostile - or at least amoral - universe and/or man’s powerlessness to shape it. 

The Red Sorcerer works very well as a feuilleton, but it’s not a critical Decedent read. It would also be overstretching to suggest Delphi Fabrice intended to or was capable of presenting Modernist themes in 1910. However, one can view The Red Sorcerer as an example of how Decadence formed an ontological steppingstone from fin de siècle angst to the broader pessimism and nihilism of Modernism. As such, it’s an interesting transitional work.

Note: I read the Snuggly Books’ edition of The Red Sorcerer, translated by Brian Stableford. It was a pleasing hardcover volume, typical of this publisher, and very readable. However, there are enough typos for one to notice, though it doesn’t really diminish enjoyment of the novel. I certainly don’t regret the purchase. However, Snuggly Books could use a more thorough proofreader.