The Legend of the Sexes: Hysterical Poems

Haraucourt, Edmond, 1856-1941Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
79K words
Chapters
8

Tags

English Originals Modern Poetry Love EntanglementsAngst RomanceComplex HumanityPsychological InsightMoral DilemmaSelf-ReflectionTraditional Aesthetics

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La Légende des sexes: Poëmes hystériques by Edmond HaraucourtAuthor: Haraucourt, Edmond, 1856-1941,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 24, 2017

Editor's review

This is the poetry collection La Légende des sexes: Poëmes hystériques by the French poet Edmond Haraucourt, released by Project Gutenberg as a French-language eBook. The title and subtitle already indicate that its subject is sex and desire; the language is intense and the imagery dense, showing the tendency toward frank writing about the body and emotion in late nineteenth-century French literature. Its value lies in offering a sample of how French poetry of the period handled taboo themes; it is suitable for readers interested in French literary history, the poetic styles around Symbolism, and writing about gender. Note that both diction and theme are bold; read it in its historical context rather than judging it simply by contemporary standards. The French original demands some language ability; use annotations or introductory materials alongside it.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and prefatory poem first to grasp the thematic structure and tone.
  2. Read only two or three poems at a time, aloud, to feel the French verse rhythm.
  3. Use background materials on late nineteenth-century French literature to understand the period meaning of its diction.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8

FAQ

Can I read this book without any French? Reading the original directly is not advised. It is a French poetry collection with dense language and bold diction; beginners will struggle with vocabulary and syntax. If you are determined, first find annotated French materials or literary-historical introductions, understand the themes and period background, and then try the original.
How should “hystériques” in the title be understood? In late nineteenth-century literary and medical contexts, the word was often associated with intense expression of emotion and bodily desire, bearing the marks of its time. Read it within the linguistic habits of that period rather than applying today's everyday meaning.
Is this book suitable as French learning material? It suits learners who already have some French reading ability and an interest in poetry. Poetic language deviates from everyday expression, with dense unfamiliar words and rhetoric, so it is not ideal as a beginner's textbook; as advanced literary reading, however, it can train feel for language and imagery.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Haraucourt, Edmond, 1856-1941 Author

Edmond Haraucourt (1856–1941) was a French writer whose life and education are sparsely documented in public sources; he is known chiefly through his poetry and narrative works. Two of his works are held here: the poetry collection La Légende des sexes: Poëmes hystériques and Amis. The former, whose title means "The Legend of the Sexes," gathers poems subtitled "hysterical poems" that deal directly with relations between the sexes and with desire, in bold, symbolist-tinged language; it was notorious in late nineteenth-century French letters for its transgressive subject matter and stirred controversy. The latter, judging by its title, is a narrative work on the theme of friendship, written in a plainer style. Seen together, the two show an author equally capable of handling erotic subjects through intense imagery and of turning to human feeling. Haraucourt remains a marginal yet distinctive voice in late nineteenth-century French literature, valued more for the provocation of his themes and the experimental quality of his verse than for mainstream canonical standing.