''Disagreeable Tales'' () is an 1894 short story collection by the French writer

Léon Bloy Léon Bloy (; 11 July 1846 – 3 November 1917) was a French Catholic novelist, essayist, pamphleteer (or lampoonist), and satirist, known additionally for his eventual (and passionate) defense of Catholicism and for his influence within Frenc ...

. It consists of thirty tales set in Paris, focusing on criminality, perversions, and other subject matters typical of the

Decadent movement The Decadent movement (from the French language, French ''décadence'', ) was a late 19th-century Art movement, artistic and literary movement, literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artif ...

. The common theme is the faith in God in a time of human spiritual crisis. The book is dedicated "To my dear friend Eugène Borrel, in devout remembrance of Our Lady of Ephesus, who places us so far away from contemporary garbage."

Stories

The English titles listed here are from the Wakefield Press edition. An edition held by the

Bibliothèque nationale A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a p ...

appears to contain two additional stories, "''L'appel du Gouffre''" and "''L'Ami des Bêtes''", though they are in fact excerpts from Bloy's novel '' The Woman Who Was Poor''. Both pieces appear in the Snuggly Books edition. Nearly all the stories in ''Histoires désobligeantes'' were originally published in ''

Gil Blas ''Gil Blas'' ( ) is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably by Tobias Smollett in 1748 as ''The Adventures of Gil Blas of S ...

''; the date given after the French title refers to the issue in which the work first appeared. # "Herbal Tea" ("''La Tisane''") # "The Old Man of the House" ("''Le Vieux de la Maison,''" 29 July 1893) # "The Religion of Monsieur Pleur" ("''La Religion de Monsieur Pleur''") # "The Parlor of Tarantulas" ("''Le Parloir des Tarentules,''" 12 August 1893) # "Draft for a Funeral Oration" ("''Projet d'Oraison funèbre,''" 25 August 1893) # "The Prisoners of Longjumeau" ("''Les Captifs de Longjumeau''") # "A Lousy Idea" ("''Une Idée médiocre,''" 8 September 1893) Four young men decide to live together, but when one of them marries, the other three continually harangue him for intimate details of his relations with his new wife (whom they also harass), until she is finally driven into the arms of a lover and makes her escape. # "Two Ghosts" ("''Deux Fantômes,''" 15 September 1893) # "A Dentist's Terrible Punishment" (''"Terrible Châtiment d'un Dentiste,"'' 22 September 1893) A dentist murders a love rival, but after marrying the woman he killed for, he fathers a child with her only to discover that it resembles his victim, and so he strangles the baby. # "The Awakening of Alain Chartier" ("''Le Réveil d'Alain Chartier''") # "The Stroker of Compassion" ("''Le frôleur compatissant,''" 6 October 1893) # "Monsieur's Past" ("''Le Passé du Monsieur''") # "Whatever You Want!" ("''Tout ce que tu voudras!''", 27 October 1893) Making his way home after a night of pleasure, a man encounters a prostitute who may be his sister. # "Well-Done" ("''La dernière cuite''", 3 November 1893) The son of a retired, well-to-do coffin bleacher ends up accidentally cremating his father before he is dead. # "The End of

Don Juan Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 play (''The Trickster of Seville and t ...

" ("''La Fin de don Juan''") During the reign of

Louis Philippe Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King". He abdicated from his throne ...

, the handsome Hector de la Tour de Pise sires hideously misshapen children, and in his old age licks the feet of a prostitute. # "A Martyr" ("''Une Martyre''") # "Suspicion" ("''Le Soupçon''") # "The Telephone of Calypso" ("''Le Téléphone de Calypso,''" 22 December 1893) # "A Recruit" ("''Une Recrue''") # "Botched Sacrilege" ("''Sacrilège raté''") # "It's Gonna Blow!" ("''Le Torchon brûle!''" 5 January 1894) A discussion about the forgivableness of the human soul degenerates into a confession of murder and arson. # "The Silver Lining" ("''La Taie d'argent''") # "A Well-Fed Man" ("''Un homme bien nourri''") # "The Lucky Bean" ("''La Fève''") # "Digestive Aids" ("''Propos digestifs''") # "The Reading Room" ("''Le Cabinet de lecture''") # "Nobody's Perfect" ("''On n'est pas parfait''") # "Let's Be Reasonable!" ("''Soyons raisonnables,''" 23 February 1893) # "

Jocasta In Greek mythology, Jocasta (), also rendered as Iocaste ( ) and EpicasteHomer, ''Odyssey'', Vol. XI11.271/ref> (; ), was Queen of Thebes through her marriages to Laius and her son, Oedipus. She is best known for her role in the myths surroundi ...

on the Streets" ("''Jocaste sur le trottoir,''" 16 March 1894) # "

Cain Cain is a biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions. He is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible. He was a farmer who gave an offering of his crops to God. How ...

's Luckiest Fine" ("''La plus belle Trouvaille de Caïn''")

English translations

''Histoires Désobligeantes'' has been translated into English twice, first by Erik Butler for Wakefield Press in 2015, and then by

Brian Stableford Brian Michael Stableford (25 July 1948 – 24 February 2024) was a British academic, critic and science fiction writer who published a hundred novels and over a hundred volumes of translations. His earlier books were published under the name Br ...

, with an introduction and footnotes, as ''The Tarantula's Parlor and Other Unkind Tales'' for Snuggly Books in 2016.

Reception

Erik Morse wrote for ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

'' in 2015, "What distinguishes Bloy's 'tales' from those written by

Villiers de L'Isle-Adam Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (7 November 1838 – 19 August 1889) was a French symbolist writer. His family called him Mathias while his friends called him Villiers; he would also use the name Auguste wh ...

, Poe, and Lautréamont is the marked absence of any sensualist or proto-

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

tone with its ecstatic invocations of the flesh, like those that characterize

Romantic literature In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several ...

since

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

. Rather, Bloy's bilious allusions to excrement ('ordure'), genitalia, rot, disease, and waste descend from a

negative theology Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness tha ...

, which extols a mystical, self-mortification ... For Bloy, all physical pleasures are diversion or, worst yet, satanic temptation, so it is only through intense suffering and punishment that his characters can expiate their sins." '' The Complete Review'' and ''The'' ''Pan Review'' both praise Butler's translation.

References

External links

"Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader"
by

Alberto Manguel Alberto Manguel (born March 13, 1948, in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine Canadian, Argentine-Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, editor, and a former director of the National Library of Argentina. He is a cosmopolitan and polyglo ...

at ''

Geist ''Geist'' () is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. ''Geist'' can be roughly translated into three English meanings: ghost (as in the supernatural entity), spirit (as in the Holy Spirit), and mind or int ...

'' {{Authority control 1894 short story collections Christian fiction French short story collections French-language books Short stories set in Paris Works by Léon Bloy