These Possible Lives
by Fleur Jaeggy
2020-12-30 00:58:17
Brief in the way a razorâs slice is brief, remarkable essays by a peerless stylist New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggyâs strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renown...
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Brief in the way a razorâs slice is brief, remarkable essays by a peerless stylist New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggyâs strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quinceyâs early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb âspoke of âLilliputian rabbitsâ when eating frog fricassseâ; Henry Fuseli âate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreamsâ; âHazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxersâ; and âWordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke.â In a book of âblue devilsâ and night visions, the Keats essay opens: âIn 1803, the guillotine was a common childâs toy.â And poor Schwobâs end comes as he feels âlike a âdog cut open aliveââ: âHis face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.â Fleur Jaeggyâs essaysâor are they prose poems?âsmoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.
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