Count D'Orgel's Ball (The Eridanos Library, 15) (English and French Edition) - Hardcover

Radiguet, Raymond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0941419312 ISBN 13: 9780941419314

Publisher: Eridanos Press, 1989

Synopsis

'perfectly chiseled diamond'(Cocteau), tr Cancogni

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) was the eldest of seven children born to a poor cartoonist. He left school at fifteen and was soon contributing articles to newspapers and journals in Paris, where he became the protégé and lover of Jean Cocteau. Radiguet published poems, criticism, and a play, The Pelican, as well as a highly successful novel, The Devil in the Flesh, while leading a wild and increasingly self-destructive life. He died of typhoid, contracted from eating oysters. The manuscript of his second novel, Count d’Orgel’s Ball, was prepared for posthumous publication by Cocteau.

From Publishers Weekly

Cocteau identifies Radiguet (1903-1923) as "the ageless author of a dateless book," but this French novel, first published in the U.S. in 1954 in another translation, is all the more remarkable in that Radiguet completed it at the age of 20. Envisioned as "a novel in which psychology alone is 'novelistic,' " the brief work scrutinizes the mechanisms of passion as it operates among a count, his wife and a young family friend who fancies himself in love with the countess. Radiguet uses this triangle--and the illicit attractions that are never played out--to critique romantic love as a theme in legend and literature, alluding, variously, to Tristan and Isolde, Sleeping Beauty, The Scarlet Letter , the oeuvre of Flaubert and more. Radiguet displays both the arresting insight and the easy cynicism of the young, conveying his tale through gnomic prose: " 'Besides, she is a saint,' people would inevitably conclude. Which simply meant that nature had not been too kind to her." A decidedly inferior story, "Denise," is appended here, published for the first time in English, and occasionally murky diction impedes an otherwise superior book.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Eridanos Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0941419312
• ISBN 13: 9780941419314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160