Princesses d’ivoire et d’ivresse

In this collection of “fin de siècle” tales, Lorrain subverts the fairy tale into cruel tales: behind enchanted forests and sumptuous castles, princesses and princes of supernatural beauty reveal themselves to be narcissistic, cowardly and selfish. The book responds to modern disenchantment (industrialization, rationalism, social hierarchy) with a paradoxical escape: the promised magic frees nothing, the marvelous corrodes under decadent acid, and strangeness becomes the key to a world in which the author, while denouncing a castrating society, knowingly reproduces its forms.

Published four years before his death, Princesses d’ivoire et d’ivresse remains one of the major texts of late Decadence, in which the fairy tale turns into a merciless mirror of fin-de-siècle dreams.

A very fine copy, in a wonderful box by Julie Nadot reproducing the flamboyant cover of the volume.