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Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker |
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Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker |
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Nightmares of an Ether-Drinker by Jean Lorrain translated by Brian Stableford Ether was jean Lorrain's inspiration, but in the end it also killed him, horribly. Lorrain, already a leading figure in the French Decadent Movement of the 1880s and 90s, was well aware of the dangers of ether, but unlike many other psychotropic drugs ether is a stimulant, and it provided the already ailing author with the stamina as well as the inspiration, to write. We can only assume that he hoped for some kind of Faustian bargain whereby any physical damage incurred would he offset by originality gained. The drug certainly helped provide the feverish, nightmarish atmosphere of these wonderfully decadent and sophisticated tales, and many of the apparitions with which they are peopled. And, as he must have known it would be, Lorrain's fragile health was fatally undermined... Brian Stableford's superb translations represent the first appearance in English of Jean Lorrain's ether-inspired 'night- mares", originally collected as Sensations and Souvenirs in 1895. They include the highly influential 'L'Egregore' ethe Egregore', 1887). The later tales also translated here for the first time are in the tradition of the contes cruel, and in them the influence of ether-drinking is still very much apparent. In
his authoritative new Introduction Brian Stableford presents Lorrain
as one of the select band of literary figures "whose life and
art were bound together into the most seamless whole. He was the man
who embodied, more intimately and more inescapably than any other,
the absurdities, affectations, paradoxes and perversities of the Decadent
style and the Decadent world-view." Published in 2002 by Tartarus
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