I’m always telling my customers that one reason to read anthologies is that they are a great way to find new authors, and by gum, ain’t it the gospel truth. I’ve been reading the Dedalus Decadence series and have found, particularly in The Dedalus Book of German Decadence: Voices of the Abyss, a few cool authors that I wasn’t aware of and have been able to follow up on. There was an excerpt from one of Paul Leppin’s novels in there that made me want to read more, and I was pleased to discover that a groovy little publisher called Twisted Spoon Press have a couple of titles out by him with another to be reprinted soon. Leppin (1878-1945) was a German writer in Prague, the "uncrowned king of the Prague bohemians." The short story collection Others’ Paradise is an exquisite little string of jewels, but almost TOO brief and allusive (and hence elusive). It was his novel Sevrin’s Journey Into the Dark (1914) that really sent me. It’s a very decadent, wonderfully written, delicious piece of prose and I savored it like a Sacher-Masoch torte. It reminded me in many ways of a Munch painting.. Here’s a few of my favorite titbits:

More than ever he thirsted for a genuine life, one that bestowed flowers and terror and blew the daily round to pieces with its stormy jaws.

He wanted to ask her if it was possible to create an artificial life that was deceptively similar to the real one and could be mastered.

He looked into the shadows of the houses down below and saw his own form, wrapped in the riddles of death and love, restless in streets where thoughts of murder rose from the stony pavement and blinded his heart.

Through unrestrained dissonances, she had endowed the place with a strange and provocative beauty that suited her nature and that she did not want to live without.

Mylada understood his body. With the talented and clear-sighted depravity of her experienced youth she understood his essence and subjected herself to the caprices she discovered within it. She found the refuge of his desires and traced them to the roots of his nerves. She taught him the bizarre and licentious games of love, and their tenderness enthralled him. Her kisses were inventive and the happiness they prepared him for was a sinful and desperate diversion. Often, when she clung to his neck and a lascivious cloud veiled her eyes, he lost his memory of the present. The room where they tarried seemed unfamiliar and fantastic, and the lamp in front of his bed shone with a strange light. He saw the sparks under her eyelids dance and a golden wave extinguished the thoughts in his brain.

When, with cruelly trifling fingers, she undressed in front of him, he threw his destiny at her feet. He could no longer escape it, and it forced him to his knees. Sobbing, tantalized by an unearthly bliss, he touched his lips to her camisole.