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    Clarimonde: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    Clarimonde: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    Clarimonde: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    Ebook54 pages50 minutes

    Clarimonde: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

    By Théophile Gautier and Varla Ventura

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    About this ebook

    Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic.

    In dark Baudelairean tradition, Théophile Gautier weaves his characteristic Romantic prose into this disturbing 1836 tale of a devout priest lured victim by the wiles of beautiful and enigmatic Clarimonde.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel Weiser
    Release dateApr 1, 2012
    ISBN9781619400610
    Clarimonde: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    Author

    Théophile Gautier

    Jules Pierre Théophile Gautier, né à Tarbes le 30 août 1811 et mort à Neuilly-sur-Seine le 23 octobre 1872, est un poète, romancier et critique d'art français.

    Read more from Théophile Gautier

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      Book preview

      Clarimonde - Théophile Gautier

      Clarimonde

      Théophile Gautier

      Varla Ventura

      Magical Creatures

      A Weiser Books Collection

      This ebook edition first published in 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

      With offices at:

      665 Third Street, Suite 400

      San Francisco, CA 94107

      www.redwheelweiser.com

      Copyright © 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser LLC. All rights reserved.

      Originally published as La Morte Amoureuse in La Chronique de Paris, 1836. Translated by Lafcadio Hearn, 1908.

      eISBN: 978-1-61940-061-0

      Cover design by Jim Warner

      Beauty and the Priest

      I have been reliving the late ’90s lately by watching episodes of the delightfully Irish show Ballykissangel. Set in a fictional village in Ireland, the main characters include a beautiful bartender and a handsome young priest. (It's brilliant because you never have to worry about plot holes! Between these two central characters everyone's secrets are revealed.) In the first three seasons there is an undeniable connection and attraction between the bartender, Assumpta Fitzgerald, and the priest, Father Clifford. So when I curled up with the story of Clarimonde one late, rainy evening, I couldn't help but think of Bally-K (as its townspeople call it) and this love affair (or desire for one) between woman and priest.

      Théophile Gautier, who wrote this story in the early 1800s (this particular version was translated from the French in 1908, see the next paragraph), was best known for his work writing plays, ballets, and poetry along with historical romance novels. A native to southwestern France, he was a friend of Victor Hugo and spent a good deal of his life as a journalist.

      All records seem to indicate that this story was translated in 1908 by one Lafcadio Hearn. However, it appears that Hearn died in 1904. Though he was born in the Greek Ionian islands in 1850, Hearn wrote frequently about Japan, Japanese culture, and Japanese ghost stories under the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. As far as I can tell, it makes sense that he translated this version of Gautier's story, but it remains unexplained what the exact year was or if this was the same Lafcadio (could there have been more than one?). He lived for many years in New Orleans where he wrote for the local paper and used his words to demonstrate to the rest of the country the colorful daily life of New Orleans, which means it stands to reason that he could speak and read French. He also dabbled in voodoo. Perhaps he translated it posthumously? After all, both he and Gautier seemed to have a good deal of familiarity with the supernatural.

      The somewhat racy subject matter (I'll just go ahead and say it—there is a necromantic scene) must have turned a few heads in Edwardian England and America when it was translated into English in 1908, but in the lusty setting of 1836 Paris, this was no doubt a run-of-the mill form of eroticism.

      Clarimonde remains a seminal work in the vampire lexicon and a delicious read. Gautier's descriptions of the vampire, the woman named Clarimonde, put Stephenie Meyer to shame. He writes:

      She was rather tall, with a form and bearing of a goddess. Her hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back over her temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademed queen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy.

      And he hasn't even gotten to her lips yet! Some may say this story is a lesson in temptation, other in making the correct choices in life, others in true love. I say this is a lesson in straight-up supernatural sex. The birds, the bees, and the bats in the belfry!

      IN STARTLING FREAKITUDE,

      VARLA VENTURA

      SAN FRANCISCO & PARIS 2012

      Clarimonde

      Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange and terrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age, I scarcely dare even now to disturb the ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse nothing; but I should not relate such a tale

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