The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

Perversity, Despair and Collapse

Kirsten Lodge, Margo Shohl Rosen, Grigory Dashevsky, Margo Shohl Rosen, Grigory Dashevsky

• Publisher: Dedalus
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781903517604
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909232006
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

The sensationalism and morbid pessimism that characterized French decadence in the late nineteenth century quickly attracted converts throughout Europe, including Russia. The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse brings together horrifying, dramatic and erotic short stories and poetry, most of which have never before been translated into English, by the most decadent Russian writers. It includes scandalous writings by the well-known authors Valery Briusov, Leonid Andreyev, Fedor Sologub and Zinaida Gippius and acquaints English-speaking readers with the forgotten writer Aleksandr Kondratiev. These writers explore the darkest depths of the unconscious, as their characters experience sadism, masochism, rape, murder, suicide, and, in a story by Gippius, even passionate love for the dead.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• About the Editor and Translators
• Disclaimer
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Last Martyrs
• Presentiment
• Messalina
• Now That I’m Awake
• The Slave
• The Republic of the Southern Cross
• The Coming Huns
• The Sting of Death
• The Poisoned Garden
• Follow Me
• Light and Shadows
• The Living and the Dead (Among the Dead)
• Everything Around Us
• The Earth
• Moon Ants
• Song
• The Last
• The Abyss
• Children of Night
• Captive Beasts
• In the Fog
• Her
• Calm
• The Story of Sergey Petrovich
• Orpheus
• The Doomed
• In Fog’s Embrace
• Rain
• The Unknown Woman
• Starting Anew
• The White Goat
• About the Authors
• Copyright