Auguste Villiers de L’lsle-Adam (1838-1889), eccentric French literary figure par excellence, created dozens of innovative tales and novels, but none more innovative, more peculiar than his novella ‘The Vampire Soul (Claire Lenoir)’. Published by Black Coat Press and adopted by Brian Stableford, this collection includes several other short tales, but for the purpose of review, I will focus on the novella, the weirdest of the weird. And, fortunately, to better enable a reader to appreciate the novella’s various dimensions, Brian Stableford wrote a most informative 15-page introduction as well as extensive notes on the text.
Doctor Tribulat Bonhomet is the novella’s first-person narrator and a less reliable narrator is not to be found in all of literature. Bonhomet portrays himself as a brilliant, witty, dapper, highly refined and cultured man-of-the-world; in fact, he is exactly the opposite: insensitive, dim-witted, rude, coarse, smug, bourgeois, buffoonish. Since Villiers viewed most French readers of serialized stories published in the newspapers of the day as having similar traits as Bonhomet, he was hoping his novella (scheduled to be printed in installments) would initially draw readers into the story and then drive some readers mad and perhaps even send a few to the lunatic asylum. Brian Stableford's introduction notes how two leading French authors, Paul Verlaine and Remy de Gourmont, judged rightly when they observed that nothing like ‘The Vampire Soul (Claire Lenoir)’ had ever been written in the entire 19th century and that Villiers’ novella remains a bizarre literary landmark.
In Chapter One, Bonhomet describes his own physical characteristics in serious, excruciating detail that are laugh aloud hilarious for us as readers. Here is our puffed-up narrator describing one of his prominent features: “My nose is considerable in dimension – large, even. . . . The nose, you see, is the expression of the human capacity for reason; it is the organ that goes before, which enlightens, which proclaims one’s presence, which scents trouble and which points the way.” And then, “My voice is sometimes shrill and sometimes (especially when I speak to women) rich and profound – and it can go from one to the other seamlessly, as I please.” This quote provides us with our first glimpse of Bonhomet’s views on women: totally condescending and misogynist in the extreme, reminiscent of Arthur Schopenhauer, but in Bonhomet case, he has no more brains or capacity for philosophy than Mr. Bumble.
A good portion of the story takes place before, during and after dinner, at the home of Bonhomet’s best friends, Cesaire and Clair Lenoir. Much conversation transpires; many opinions are shared, including opinions on music and poetry, the nature of the mind and reality, the existence of God, the existence of soul and spirits along with a number of recent studies in the fields of medicine and natural science. One of my favorite parts is when Bonhomet reflects on Edgar Allan Poe. “Did I mention the American? That one appeared to me to be a hearty fellow with a nice line in colorful rhetoric. But one thing that struck me was the way he labeled his works. He called them, rather conceitedly, Unparalleled Stories or Extraordinary Tales or some such. I have read all these stories and have tried in vain to see anything extraordinary in what he relates. It is, in fact, the last word in banality-presented, it is true, in a bourgeois manner, but banal nevertheless. It sent me off to sleep many a time, in a delightful way. I can only conclude that the title was chosen by the editor to pique the curiosity of vulgar readers.”
Clair Lenoir has a keen sense of the supernatural in its many manifestations. For example, as she explains to Bonhonet, “”There are other beings,” she continued, softly, “who know the roads of life and are curious about the paths of death. Those, who must submit to the realm of the Spirit, disdain the years in order to possess Eternity. In the depths of their sacred eyes, they are alert to a gleam more precious than a million tangible solar systems like ours, from our equator to that of Neptune.” As we read on, the reality of other beings, savage and demonic, frightful and possessive, take center stage in the tale, a provocative twist in light of Bonhomet’s disdain and dismissal of Edgar Allan Poe.
And here is Bonhomet describing Clair’s husband, Cesaire. “He was a haunter of solitary places, a man of dark theories and a vindictive temperament. Something rudimentary had gone astray in his fundamental nature. He pretended, laughing under his South Sea Islander’s nose, that he had something in him of the hairy vampire. He was excessively fond of making jokes about cannibalism. It all seemed to be submerged within bourgeois innocence, but wherever he was carried away by his favorite themes – the form that the nervous fluid of a dead person might take; the physical and temporal power of the spirits of the dead over the living – his eyes burned with the flames of superstition.” And as the evening’s conversation progresses, Cesaire's views take on a progressively darker cast.
If all this sounds like an odd combination of philosophy, science, paranormal phenomenon and occult speculation, you are correct. And to add yet another twist, in the course of the evening’s conversation, as we listen to each of the three exchange feelings and opinions and passions, it becomes increasingly probable we are dealing with three unreliable narrators. I will stop here so as not to spoil the novella’s unexpected twists and turns right up to its shocking conclusion. Chances are, reading Villiers’ tale will not send you to the lunatic asylum; however, it might drive you a little mad, but in a good way.
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