Hesperus Published Books as Diversions

The pile of books to read is now quite numerous if not tall and threatening to topple. Simply because, the selections published by Hesperus tend to be slender paperbacks of around 100 pages of either a collection of short stories or a novella. Two I polished off last night are Emile Zola's For a Night of Love and Luigi Pirandello's Loveless Love. (Notice a mini-theme here?)

This small edition contains the title story, a second Nantas, and a really short story called Fasting which theme-wise has nothing to do with fated love but deals with the religious/quasi-sexual ecstasy induced by a zealous Catholic priest as he raves about repentance and denial of the body in his sermons to a largely female audience while himself then visiting each duchess, marquise, and lady for lavish glutinous dinners. A nice little contemplative diatribe against the sham and pretense of ritual over faith.

Putting that filler piece aside, the two other stories are magnificent. I can only paraphrase the foreword to echo Zola's talent as being his depiction of the world in hyper-focus; his layering on of minute details in his characters' lives and appearance. He outlines the male characters so thoroughly before the real action takes place that their responses to stimuli and opportunities are natural and fully understandable. But his females! Ah, what predators. Written in 1876, almost 20 years ahead of Thomas Hardy's Tess, these "love affairs" pulse with longing, frustration, no, emotional abuse. Wow what writing.

Pirandello in contrast, although writing 20 years later, while depicting weaker males, cannot make the females into femme fatales, and according, the stories are blase. The mismatches and thwarted loves could be infused with Shakespearean twists; but Pirandello, maybe given his time approaching the 20th century, has his characters blind to their motives and emotions. A nice couple of stories to read about the frustrations of life but neither a quick, exciting read nor a cast of memorable lovers.