Description
Monada, by French man of letters Gabriel Mourey (1865-1943), is one of the great short story collections of the Decadent Movement. First published in 1894, and here presented for the first time in English, in an excellent translation by Shawn Garrett, the sixteen stories it contains range widely in theme, but are almost all marked by a melancholy mood—of things lost, of things missed.
From symbolist fables to bizarre vignettes, from contes cruels to aesthetic reveries, Monada presents the visions of an exceedingly rare talent whose fictional work, until now, has been denied the Anglophone reader.
The volume, long and undeservedly forgotten, is certainly worthy of a well-placed position in the Decadent canon.
Gabriel Mourey (1865-1943), was born in Marseille, the son of a druggist. In 1883 his first collection of poems, Voix éparses . . . , was published by the Librairie des bibliophiles, the lavish printing likely having been carried out at his own expense.
Closely associated with the Decadent and Symbolist movements, he was involved with many of the imminent writers of the day, and was a close friend of Jean Lorrain. He translated the Edgar Poe’s complete poetry into French, wrote extensively on art, most especially on the decorative arts, and numerous volumes of both poetry and fiction, one of the most striking of which is his collection of short stories, Monada (1894).
His other works of fiction include Les brisants (1896), and Cœurs en détresse (1898).
Translated By: Shawn Garrett