Magic Lantern
Théodore de Banville
Translated by Brian Stableford
Magic Lantern by Théodore de Banville (1823-1891) was first published in book form in France in 1883, but the 120 vignettes which make up its contents had previously appeared a year earlier in the newspaper Gil Blas.
The volume, which is presented here for the first time in English, in a marvelous translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the early collections of poems in prose and also one of the most idiosyncratic products of a brief but important phase in the evolution of Parisian newspaper fiction.
Whether or not it is entitled to be considered as one of the classic collections of prose poems, alongside those by Bertrand, Baudelaire, Huysmans and Remy de Gourmont, is a matter of opinion, but it is certainly a serious contender for such inclusion.
About the Author
Théodore de Banville (1823-1891), the son of a naval captain, devoted himself to a career in letters as soon as he left school, and swiftly became a leading Romantic poet. Settling permanently in Paris after being sent to a lycée there from his birthplace—Moulins, in the Auvergnat department of Allier—he endured periods in which it was very difficult to publish his poetry, but he worked extensively for the theater and as a critic before eventually becoming a columnist for Gil Blas in 1880, where he routinely substituted short stories for his journalistic commentaries. An extremely disciplined writer, he adapted himself without difficulty to a regime of producing a story every week, eventually moving with Catulle Mendès and Armand Silvestre to the pages of the Écho de Paris. His employers dissuaded him from writing more contes after an experimental series collected as Contes féeriques (1882; tr. as Magical Tales), which included tales apparently first planned in 1861 and intended for the Revue fantaisiste, many of which have elements of prose poetry, but he contrived for a while thereafter to publish the more obvious poèmes en prose collected in La Lanterne magique (1883).
About the Translator
Brian Stableford has been writing for fifty years. His fiction includes include eleven novels and seven short story collections in a series of “tales of the biotech revolution”; a series of metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin, most recently Yesterday Never Dies (2012); and a series of supernatural mysteries set in an artist’s colony, most recently The Pool of Mnemosyne (2018). Recent novels independent of any series include Vampires of Atlantis (2016) and The Tangled Web of Time (2016). He also translates antique works from the French, with particular interests in the Symbolist and Decadent Movements, roman scientifique and the fantastique.
Paperback, 272 pages. Release date: October 15, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-159-0
Price: US$21.00
Forthcoming