Fantastic Tales and Stories (Classics Vol. 6895) (French Edition)

This enriched edition (Preface, notes, chronology, and bibliography) evokes, through many traits, a German tavern of Hoffmann, with its disturbing monsters and screeching ghosts. Fables of vampires, stories of doppelgängers and spells are found within this collection. Indeed, the themes dear to the first Romantic generation are present, particularly its fascination with the fantastic from Scotland or the Rhineland. However, Théophile Gautier imprints his own mark on this troubled universe of human reverie: each tale receives an additional dose of anguish and the supernatural, reinforcing its fantastic dimension and adorning it with an extra layer of mystery.

One of Théophile Gautier's close acquaintances had affirmed that "it was an understatement to say he was superstitious; he was superstition itself..." These Contes et récits fantastiques (Fantastic Tales and Stories) are the perfect illustration of this. Behind the bon vivant hides a man tormented by the dark figures of the irrational. In his own way, perhaps, a precursor to Breton's Nadja, which denounces the vanity of "the conventional opposition of madness and reason that refuses to acknowledge the part of the irrational."

This volume includes: La Cafetière, Omphale, La Morte amoureuse, La Chaîne d'or ou l'Amant partagé, Une nuit de Cléoptre, La Toison d'or, Le Pied de momie, Le Roi Candaule, Arria Marcella, Avatar, and Jettatura.

This edition was established by Alain Buisine.

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