The Dedalus Book of German Decadence: Voices From the Abyss
Ray Furness, Mike Mitchell
Language: English
Pages: 199
ISBN: 2:00089599
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Brockhaus encyclopedia of 1896 referred to the decadent literary movement as "a symptom of today's nervous, senile, fragmented society which is impervious to anything healthy and natural" -- and which is primarily French. But beneath the brash and pompous exterior of the German Empire, decadent literature thrived, fueled by the music of Wagner, the paradoxes of Nietzsche, and the writings of Thomas Mann, the movement's self-styled chronicler and analyst. This analogy collects works by Sacher-Masoch, Trakl, Leppin, Przybyszewski, Mann, and other, demonstrating that Berlin, Vienna and Prague served equally with Paris as hosts for this provocative European cultural movement.
stamps upon, but he continued to beat me, to whip me mercilessly, and she kept on laughing, mercilessly, as she closed the packed suitcases and slipped into her travelling furs; she was still laughing as she went down the stairs on his arm and got into the carriage. Then it was still for a moment. I listened, breathless. The carriage door slammed shut, the horses started, the wheels rolled – then all was silent. Extracts from Venus im Pelz. Mit einer Studie über den Masochismus von Gilles
longer than from any other earthly pabulum … In a trance he compared the room in which he was now unquestionably standing with a room miles from here which he had glimpsed in a dream one July night, and piece by piece he recognised it all again and within this implausible reality there was that word Desiderata, a word he had seen the day before in a Latin textbook and from which, like a calyx in a dream, this whole miraculous world had blossomed. […] This is what it was! Sebastian had found it.
away my soul with the acid of desire and wild, lustful dreams, and you then have crucified me. Her voice was shrieking in panting lubriciousness. Do you remember how your eunuchs pressed golden nails into the white lilies of my arms, blood was squirting in steaming spurts, and I scorned you, I spat curses and vituperation into your face, I bit into your soul with the poison of my jaws … Come, come you poor slave of the blood, blood which you have whipped into a raving madness, come into my
embrace which you have never tasted, come into the hell and the perversion which you have awakened within me; you have crucified me, and are rolling in the dust before me … Creep closer, closer! Lick my feet, that they should twist in the febrile ardour of your lips, oh!, more!, more fervently, stronger! He was creeping up to her … And there was a hideous scream: ‘O Ashtaroth, Ashtaroth! Mother of hell and lust!’ But at that moment his brow was touched by a breath, an eternal, pure, holy
that’s too common. I want to have Galeotto, my mannikin.’ ‘What did you call it?’ ‘Galeotto!’ she replied. ‘Was it not he who brought us together? Now let him hang there, and keep watch through the nights.’ […] They lay naked under the scarlet Pyrrhus: their bodies, which had been fused during hot midday hours, fell apart. Their caresses lay broken and trampled, their embraces, their tender words. Like the flowers and the gentle grasses across which the storm of their passion had passed.