Romans Et Contes
1863
Théophile Gautier, the supreme stylist of French Romanticism, here collects stories that pulse with an unsettling beauty. The centerpiece follows Octave de Saville, a young man whose body wastes away despite appearing perfectly healthy. Doctors fail him. Treatments fail him. Only Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau grasps the terrible truth: Octave suffers from a profound ennui, a spiritual exhaustion so deep it manifests as physical dissolution. His will to live has quietly abandoned him, and now his flesh follows suit. This is Gothic horror turned inward, where the monster is not some external evil but the soul's own retreat from existence. The other tales in this collection share this dark romanticism: love that borders on obsession, beauty that bleeds into the uncanny, and always that quintessential Gautier concern the unbearable distance between the ideal and the real. These are stories to read slowly, savoring each perfectly crafted sentence.
