GLR March-April 2023

L to R: Fig. 2. Temptation . Caricature by Moliss and A.R. Caption reads: “The Indiscreet: ‘Why tempt me? You want to turn me into a man like any other?’” Fig. 3. Caricature by Bac. Feb. 1897. Fig. 4. Caricature of Sem, a friend of Lorrain.

Proust’s Baron de Charlus. As a writer of fiction, Lorrain spanned the fin de siècle spec trum, from Zola’s squalid naturalism to Maeterlinck’s other worldly fantasies, but with no sense of proportion or taste. His works are a compendium of the faddish tropes of the period: Flo rence and Venice; Medusa and Ophelia (“the charm of a virgin and a perverse boy,” Sur un portrait de Botticelli ); gems and pop pies (“a breast-plate studded with amethyst grips his torso and he wears a huge crown of enormous purplish poppies,” in Coins de Byzance [ Byzantine Corners ], 1902); melancholy lilies and irises “which revealed to me my infamous and chaste dishonor,” in La forêt bleue [ The Blue Forest ], 1883); barbarians and Byzantium (“Yes, let them come, let them burn all that is here; let them empty my coffers, let them crush my pearls, let them crucify the steward, let them rape my mother,” in Coins de Byzance ); the decorative and esoteric paintings of Gustave Moreau, Jan Toorop, and James Ensor; the actress Sarah Bernhardt, for whom he wrote unproduced plays; the music-hall singer Yvette Guilbert, for whom he composed scabrous ditties; Wagnerian opera and Arthurian legend; grimacing masks and necrophiliac orgies; erotic delirium and odors “of sex, of cosmetics, of sweat.” All this is described in a lapidary style, an indigestible mixture of recondite vocabulary and the latest slang (Figure 5). Lorrain’s fiction is misogynistic, ruled by women whose morbid and perverse psychology is expressed in furnishings, wardrobes, and scents. Madame Litvinoff in Très Russe ( Very Russian , 1886), with the “unsettling smile of the Mona Lisa,” dominates effeminate men, “gentle as a child,” and practices chastity as an erotic refinement. Another of Lorrain’s heroines concentrates on making half-naked acrobats fall from their tra pezes and tightropes. The anemic virgin in Âmes d’automne ( Autumnal Souls, 1898) wants to warm her chilled extremities inside (literally) the bosom of a stable-boy. Depravity is com monplace in courtesans like the “pianist” whose virtuosic fin gers can rouse enfeebled dotards or the twelve-year-old “graveyard hooker” who plays schoolgirl for elderly pedophiles. Lorrain’s overheated imagination revels in extremes. In

Monsieur de Bougrelon (1897), a starving dandy recounts sto ries of grotesque passion. There is the Mexican dancer, raped fifteen times, who has fifteen rubies embedded in her flesh. Les Norontsoff (1902) tells of a fabulously wealthy Russian prince who, among other extravagances, serves his guests three naked tattooed men on a platter and eventually commits suicide to con summate the desires of his delirious fantasies. Another hyper 3'( +'"'0/' &;/(+ 3*57,8" 0#!-,827*,15 *1 .$28-:57,1%5 $: ):2- )2*19,' ), *'5$5%14/,)44#/.-4 ( & 2 '

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March–April 2023

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