Decadence: Obscure literature of the fin de siecle and Belle Epoque - and other literary obsession

Edgar Degas,  Dans un cafe , 1875-1876 As part of a self-assigned project (see last post), I read several Paul Alexis novellas in place of his contribution to the 1880 Naturalist anthology, Evenings at Médan . One of them was The End of Lucie Pellegrin (translator Richard Robinson, Snuggly Books), in which all the principal characters are sex workers. The novella reminded me of something I’d noticed a while ago: the focus on – even preoccupation with – sex workers in French literature of the fin de siècle.  Consider, in the same year Alexis released his novella, Naturalist leader Emile Zola published Nana , a novel peopled with prostitutes and courtesans. J.-K. Huysmans’ first novel was Marthe: The Story of a Whore (1876) which - maybe in hopes of a succès de scandale? - he’d rushed to publish before Edmond de Goncourt finished La Fille Elisa (1877). As for French Decadent authors, sex workers were common fixtures in their novels and stories about the demimonde throughout t...

My sub-assignment of reading J.-K. Huysmans’ novels in order of publication now takes me to Naturalist anthology Evenings at Médan (1880). Its six stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), a stunning defeat so embarrassing to France that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pales by comparison. Oddly, some cite the year of this defeat as the beginning of the Belle Epoque in which France’s culture and economy soared on a wave of optimism.  The authors collected in the anthology contributed one story each, and all are disciples of Emile Zola. Having read novels by half of them, I gave myself a sub-sub-assignment of seeking out translations of all six stories (the anthology itself is not available in an English volume). Huysmans’ contribution is “Knapsacks”, a satirical tale of ne’er-do-well Parisian Eugene Lejantel who is conscripted at the start of the war. Due to the army’s disorganization (a central cause of its humiliating defeat in reality), the conscripts immediately c...