Wicked Angels (Les Mauvais Anges)

by Éric Jourdan

Book Overview

'Wicked Angels' is the English translation of the classic 1955 French literary novel 'Les Mauvais Anges', banned for 30 years for whay was called its 'subversive' subject matter. It is the story of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0739468669
• ISBN13: 9780739468661
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Southern Tier Editions
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Summer Passion

This is the English translation of the French short novel (120 pages) about the passionate infatuation of two extremely beautiful adolescent boys with each other, who happen to be cousins, living with their fathers under the same roof after their mothers died. It is probably a very rare case in literature where the writer (who was seventeen years old when he wrote the novel), describes in an astonishingly beautiful, profound, and minute detail the complete, complex, and absolute love and emotion between two males, to the point that each one is striving to be totally absorbed by the other. Both quickly loose interest in anything and anybody else but themselves. Their lives before falling in love became meaningless and even forgotten. The company of others does not interest them any more, and they hate to be separated from one another. They are rebellious against their family, whose values they despise. The translation is excellent, conveying accurately the author's style and superbly beautiful descriptions and metaphors, using extremely subtle and unusual references to express the desires and feelings of the two boys. A drop of sweat, a turn of the arm or the neck, a breeze, a drop of light ... are turned in his words into amazingly romantic and erotic images and reactions. He exploits nature marvelously, setting the story in the countryside during a hot summer, thus allowing an atmosphere of languid laziness, most suitable for the lovers' walking and stretching in gardens and fields, or swimming in ponds and rivers, etc. His choice for the summer and the heat also allows him to heighten the erotic and sensual mood of the whole novel by portraying the two extremely beautiful boys naked, almost 90 percent of the time!! The sexual scenes are very romantic and erotic, almost discrete and never vulgar. This did not stop the sensors from banning the novel when it first appeared in the early 50s; a ban which lasted for some thirty years!! The focus of the writer is to concentrate on the thoughts and feelings of each boy towards the other, dividing the narrative into 2 parts, each being narrated by one of the boys. Therefore, there is practically no plot nor events, except towards the end of the second narrative at the end of the novel. The sever behavior of the fathers is hard to explain or to accept. For example: when one evening the seventeen-year old boys return home late, one of them is savagely slapped on his face, and they both are sent up to their rooms without dinner, and their doors are locked!! All this was before the fathers discovered the true nature of their friendship!! Despite their age, they have a female cousin who has been designated by the parents to act as their guardian!! One other negative part of the novel, in my view, was the extreme violence, either between the two lovers who play very violent sadomasochistic games among themselves, or, towards the end, the gang rape of one of them by a group of 5 boys. Furthermore, t

"The true color of love is blood"

'Wicked Angels' was first published in France in 1955, and was shortly thereafter banned until 1985. Given the viciously repressive times in which we live, it should no longer come as a surprise that such a incredibly beautiful work has been denied to us for so long. Fortunately, this outstanding novel - the only one of Eric Jourdan's to have been translated thus far - is now available to the English-speaking world, courtesy of this exquisite translation by Dr Thomas Armbrecht. Dr Armbrecht provides a fascinating and concise introduction to the novel, which readers might be advised to ponder at leisure after reading the the main work. Like the history of its publication, 'Wicked Angels' is a tragic tale; its relevancy is timeless and universal. A very difficult novel to categorise, it simultaneously combines the heartfelt longings of a Shakespearean sonnet with the crushing nihilism of....well, almost anything written by Dennis Cooper. It is the story of two young men of seventeen, cousins bound by circumstance upon the death of both their mothers. The prose is breathtaking in its portrayal of their fateful love for one another, narrated from each boy's point of view. It is a mark of the author's great talent that this novel was written when he himself was seventeen - who better to appreciate the tormented passion of first love? The tempestuousness of this love is evoked on every page, with the frequent allusion to the couple's surroundings invoking the capricious and cruel force of nature as the only adequate comparable. Thus, after a particularly violent episode between the boys, the wind rages, "filled with the smell of trees and the earth", and "all of nature was trembling". The novel is intensely erotic - as befits its subject-matter - without being obviously so; that is to say that the detailed descriptions, the choice of language, and its employment, vividly generate their own lavish images without the need for resorting to the more vulgar repetition of crudities devalued by over-use. This eroticism contrasts beautifully with frequent cruelties - bestowed mentally by society, and physically by the boys themselves; it becomes all too apparent "just how much more violent love can be than hate, and how the true color of love is blood". An unforgettable and stunning work capturing the self-destructiveness of true passion, finally available in print. Unmissable.

What price love?

This is an extraordinary book. I wish that I had the original French and the English translation side by side. In the introduction there is a suggestion that the book is ultimately homophobic since the two boys die - as if in punishment for what they did. I do not agree: I think that they had to die in the same way that Romeo and Juliet had to die. The boys' love for each other was so deep and so unearthly that they could not remain alive. What was to live for after what they had been through? A more interesting question is whether the love that the two boys had for each other could ever be realized in the "real" world. Probably, but too few of us will ever experience it. Read this book and you will have some idea of what is meant by "all-consuming love."

Historically Important Novel: A Superb Translation of A Great Love Story

Eric Jourdan's 'Les mauvais anges' was first published in 1955, in French, in France, and was censored and taken off the market until 1985. That a love story between two teenage boys would be considered taboo seems strange in today's light, but the superb translator, Thomas J.D. Armbrecht, of this volume WICKED ANGELS addresses those issues in a fine introduction, a fascinating history of censorship of literature in France, the list of those having been condemned for their writing includes Flaubert and Baudelaire and also Gide, Genet, Henry Miller, Jean Cocteau among others. These facts, well written and documented, are analyzed by Armbrecht. Apparently the censorship not only condemned gay love between adolescents, it also found the sadomasochistic elements of the story unprintable. So what of the novel? Is it worth exhuming, is it worth reading? For this reader the answer is a resounding 'Yes!'. The brief novel (a mere 120 pages) concerns a summer of love between two cousins - Pierre and Gerard - whose fathers' wives are gone and the families live together. The story is related in two versions: half the novel is 'Pierre's Story' and the other half is 'Gerard's Story'. Jourdan essentially relates a summer of love as perceived through the eyes of each of the lovers. And the variations are extremely important. Both lads are seventeen, both are beautiful, and are drawn to each other as their hormones mount. In exquisite prose, Jourdan creates atmospheres of lust and ecstasy, bringing the two young men together in secret trysts, trysts that grow from curious encounters to complete interdependence, a love that is palpably strong enough to withstand the forces against it - beatings from the fathers and from the neighboring cousins. As Pierre and Gerard walk in the ether of first passion their spectrum of physical exploration begins to include elements of sadomasochism: physical pain inflicted by each other is as intensely erotic as is gentle caressing. 'There was a wall of flesh erected between us in which love took refuge'. As this aspect of their affair emerges they begin to plan a way to flee their families and live their lives together on the run. At this point Jourdan changes course and begins 'Gerard's Story' which not only enhances the version of the affair as related by Pierre, but it also introduces some concepts and perceptions that alter the manner in which the story finds its end. 'Memory is a powerful magic that has the power to transform even the most painful moments.' This novel may not be for every reader: it is explicit, it is erotic, it is frank in its description of pain. But for those who follow the history of gay literature and its trials of acceptance, this little novel is essential reading. Jourdan is a gifted writer, though none of his other nine novels have been translated. Hopefully this excellent translation by Armbrecht will find enough readers that there will be a demand for further translations of Jourdan's