Mr. Antiphilos, satyr by Remy de Gourmont

"Mr. Antiphilos, satyr" by Remy de Gourmont is a novel written in the late 19th century. It follows an immortal satyr who narrates his wanderings and love affairs through elegant, ironic letters that pit instinct and pagan joy against the constraints of modern society. The story centers on Antiphilos’s encounters with women and artists as he tests the borders between nature and civilization. The opening of the book sets the stage with an introduction praising Gourmont’s aristocratic individualism and art-for-art’s-sake credo, followed by a dedication “To the Amazon” that frames the satyr as pure instinct confronting moralized society. Antiphilos then writes from the outskirts of Paris to protest the press calling human criminals “satyrs,” recounting his mythic origins (son of Hermes and a Dryad), his travels with Dionysus, and his shift from Greece to Italy as a “Faun,” surviving peasants and Christian suspicion. He tells of La Fosca and the painter Allegri (Correggio), whose sketching of the satyr and his lover becomes the famed image later mislabeled “Jupiter and Antiope,” after which La Fosca departs. At the start of his modern story he winters on the Riviera, then meets Cydalise, a verse-reciter who teaches him to read, loves him in a grotto, and dresses him for city life; in Toulon he feels tamed and confined, startles at a schoolyard incident where a crowd shouts “The satyr!”, and begins frequenting cafés, flirting shyly while drinking milk instead of fennel-scented spirits. As Cydalise travels to perform, he takes up with a brunette nicknamed Erebus and befriends an aging letter-writer he calls Diogenes; the section closes with the hint of a new adventure involving a Greek girl, Déidamie. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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About this eBook

Author Gourmont, Remy de, 1858-1915
Translator Howard, John, 1893-
Translator Lozowick, Louis, 1892-1973
Title Mr. Antiphilos, satyr
Original Publication New York: Lieber & Lewis, 1922.
Note Includes Three stories from Colors, translated by L. Lozowick, with separate title-page.
Note Translator of Mr. Antiphilos, satyr (John Howard) and author of introduction (Jack Lewis) appear to be same person.
Contents Mr. Antiphilos, satyr, translated by John Howard -- Three stories from Colors, translated by Louis Lozowick: Blue. Zinzoline. White.
Credits Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Language English
LoC Class PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Subject Short stories, French -- Translations into English
Subject French fiction -- Translations into English
Subject Satire, French -- Translations into English
Category Text
EBook-No. 78206
Release Date
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
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