Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess

by Alfred de Musset

Book Overview

"' What a picture ' She shivered, making her breasts quiver, and I realized that this confession, far from horrifying her, was feeding her lust. You'll send the devil back into our flesh.' "

Considered one of the truly great French writers of the nineteenth century, famed poet and novelist Alfred de Musset once decided (as great French writers are wont to do) to try his hand at erotic fiction. The glorious result was Gamiani, a classic tale...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061237248
• ISBN13: 9780061237249
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.6" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

dedoxical empiricism

Les Caprices de Marianne was written by Alfred de Musset in 1833 and followed by "Rolla", authorially subtitled "a symptom of the maladie du siècle". The poem, a grotesque, pathetic languorous sentient Wertherian whirl was written at the beginning of Musset's liaison with George Sand. In 1833 there appeared in Paris a "blisteringly erotic and sacrilegious novelette" called Gamiani, or the two nights of excess. The rights were pseudonymously, if by a feeble veil of anonymity, accorded to a Baron Alcide de Mxxx, but the erotic tale went unnoticed by the upper circles of Parisian salon society or it would have been but an easy effort to devise the genius behind the devilry. The narrative is all the more lush in character and flush of interest because it explicitly fictionalizes the psychological corruption that besotted the last great French Romantic. George Sand, a glamorous Sapphic literary heroine renowned for both her gender-bending transgressions and for her seductive ways rendered myth by her contemporary social circle and the jurisdiction of Historical reprises. Sand has been the subject of a couple of Hollywood dramas, particularly respecting her relationship with Frederic Chopin, wherein she is blithely imputed to having acted as the spurring whip that defined Chopin's break from Liszt's serenading style, the experience however was at the expense of his health, stability and innocence. Likewise, undeniably, the rupture of the liaison that is foreshadowed in Gamiani, both passionate and lascivious, resulted to affect the playwright of Fantasio in a most destructive way. Arguably even his art was changed for the worst, but the hereon demise of his health and his moral character's depression does not allow for much debate. The story of the Italian journey and its results are told under the guise of fiction from two points of view in the two volumes called respectively Elle et lui by George Sand, and Lui et elle by Paul de Musset. As to the permanent effect on Alfred de Musset, whose irresponsible gaiety was killed by the breaking off of the connection, there can be no doubt. But what about this erotic masterpiece. It is genuinely breathtaking. A novella that entertains and surmises the sublime mawkish dandyism of a voyeuristic slant as it evolves and culminates in a fashionably irreverent and fascinating sensual exploitation. The beauty however transpires irrespective of the lewd character of the sensationalism because of the language and the depictions that vacillate between excesses of despair and effusions of ecstasy. With in between but the expression of the most intimate and poetic diction erotic literature has ever encountered. It will seduce you from the first few pages. The psychology of sex is here seen to animate a desire that throttles and tantalizes as it suffers the ardor of a sexual initiation. Here is a sample of the lyrical precision of the tale: A hidden door opened and a monk , clad in a costume like ours, approached