These Possible Lives

by Fleur Jaeggy, Minna Zallman Proctor (Translator)

New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggy’s strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quincey’s early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb “spoke of ‘Lilliputian rabbits’ when eating frog fricassse”; Henry Fuseli “ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams”; “Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers”; and “Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke.” In a book of “blue devils” and night visions, the Keats essay opens: “In 1803, the guillotine was a common child’s toy.” And poor Schwob’s end comes as he feels “like a ‘dog cut open alive’”: “His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.” Fleur Jaeggy’s essays—or are they prose poems?—smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Biography, Italian Literature, Literature, 21st Century

34 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Fleur Jaeggy is a Swiss author, who writes in Italian. The Times Literary Supplement named Proleterka as a Best Book of the Year upon its US publication, and her Sweet Days of Discipline won the Premio Bagutta and the Premio Speciale Rapallo. As of 2021, six of her books have been translated into English.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This superbly concentrated book of creative nonfiction should not be knocked back like a shot, but rather sipped slowly like a good grappa. It consists of three hyper-brief biographies of writers: De Quincey, Keats, and Marcel Schwob. The lives herein are, as the original title has it, ‘congetturali’, and yet the moments of poetic speculation are few and serve only to highlight the accuracy of a certain mood and tone associated with each subject.

It took Andrew Motion more than six hundred pages to tell the story of Keats's life. Jaeggy boils it down to fewer than twenty-five. ‘Walking on the heath, Keats came across a being with a strange light in its eyes, a rumpled archangel—he recognized Coleridge. They walked together and spoke of nightingales and dreams.’ Later, in the depths of his illness: ‘They soothed him with currant jellies and compotes, some of which dripped onto a Ben Jonson first edition.’

Her skill is in the chaining-together of telling detail with no extraneous links between them, a life in a small series of close-up photographs. But the images seem to be infused with mystic significance, so perhaps not so much photographs as tarot cards. Evoking the literary circle around De Quincey, she gives us the following paragraph, full of exact specificities but veiled in mystery because of how they are catalogued:

Henry Fuseli ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams; Lamb spoke of “Lilliputian rabbits” when eating frog fricassee; and his sister Mary, wielding a knife, chased a little girl who was helping her in the kitchen and then stabbed her own mother through the heart; Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers; Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke. Coleridge, his head shrouded in a fog, read poetry badly and moaned gloomily. The dreams of Jean Paul, the crow that loved the storm, reverberated across the Lake District. This was TDQ's Western Passage.

One senses how iconic anyone's life can become when reduced to a litany of camera-flash incidents. When Marcel Schwob travels through the South Seas, she concertinas the voyage down to the following:

In Colombo he drowsily contemplated the babel of religion. There were cartloads of people praying in a cavern, a Tamil feast. He was always tired and it was hard to breathe; the hot wind blew at him and dust and flies stuck to his skin. The Australian landscape seemed sinister, long cadaverous beaches where the brush moved in the wind like the gnarled hair of dead people. In Samoa they called him Tulapla, the talk man, and kept him up late into the night telling stories. He shook the hand of King Mataafa, who looked like Bismarck.

The translation into American English, from Minna Zallman Proctor, is generally excellent, although there are a couple of minor solecisms that apparently come from unfamiliarity with the British context: she writes of something costing ‘three or four guinea’ and of climbing ‘the Ben Nevis’. But that aside, this heady alembication of lives is a stimulating, provocative experience, and Jaeggy's brevity does succeed in finding a kind of truth that doorstop biographies can only ever circle around.

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

These three, very short, essays are exquisite! Absolutely wonderfully odd little pieces!

There are three essays (as the publication describes them), on Thomas De Quincey, John Keats and Marcel Schwob. However Jaeggy’s prose is so wonderful they all read like fiction. Her writing is witty and sharp, but also has an almost hypnotic quality to it.

This is the first of Jaeggy’s work that I’ve read, and will now definitely be seeking out her other publications.

[Himanshu Karmacharya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry was “the only thing worth the attention of superior minds.

The most difficult part in writing a non-fiction book isn't the collection of the data, but making it interesting for the readers.

Here, Fleur Jaeggy writes about three different literary figures, Thomas De Quincey, John Keats and Marcel Schwob. Their short lives, although interesting ones, are beautifully portrayed in this short book.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 4 out of 5]

These three mini-biographies of Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob are really best thought of as prose-poems and demand slow, careful reading, preferably with a glass of white wine alongside. Each piece captures something essential about the personality it describes in the form of a series of images, each crafted like a pearl . . . and each, it seems to me, centering upon death.

[Emily Laurent-Monaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

brief--in the sense that a razor's knife is brief! absolutely brilliant..........

[Mina Widding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mitt första möte (eller iaf läsning) av Jaeggy, och kanske inte den bästa ingången men ändå inte en dålig. Läste första minibiografin igår kväll, och drömde halva natten i den stämning som språket gav mig, mycket underligt och starkt, jag önskar att jag hade kunnat skriva ner det men drömmen smiter undan så fort jag försöker. Det är underligt och underbart med författare som lyckas skriva med en sån distinkt ton och stil, och jag måste givetvis läsa allt hon skrivit nu. Schwob är obekant för mig sedan tidigare, så måste kika lite på hans författarskap också.

[béla malina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. What can I say? Jaeggy is a sorceress…

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come. A tiny book with sharp mini biographies of De Qunicey, Keats and Marcel Schwob. Remarkable. My review of this with I Am the Brother of XX is now live at Numéro Cinq: http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2017/07...

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Fuseli ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams...There were others who helped themselves to dreams. Robert Southey experimented with laughing gas. Ann Radcliffe sought out huge quantities of indigestible food to reinforce her terrible night visions. Mrs. Leigh Hunt was proud to have produced an apocalyptic dream, which then appeared in a poem by Shelley. Coleridge, distracted by the scratching of his pen over the paper while transcribing his dream, forgot part of it. And Lamb complained about the derelict impoverishment of his dreams.

None of course could dream like De Quincey

[Tara Redd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this. It kind of reminded me of my true love Jean-Philippe Toussaint. It has that weird matter-of-factness and straightforwardness I really like. Like, just one sentence after another, without any justification or apparent motion, like slides demanding a narrative. But I don't know if that really does it justice either. I'm sucking at describing this, and it's less than 100 pages so you should just read it.

Honestly what I took away from this book, though, is that I'm about to read everything Marcel Schwob ever wrote.

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essa autora é foda demais.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This merited a brief mention in my newsletter, available here.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

um livro delicado sobre homens delicados. o ensaio sobre o keats é belíssimo.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jaeggy applies her trademark direct yet elusive prose to very brief nonfictional biographies of three writers: Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob.

About De Quincey: "Thomas De Quincey became a visionary in 1791 when he was six years old. His older brother William was looking for a way to walk on the ceiling upside down like a fly. Richard, who they called Pink, signed on to a whaling ship and had been captured by pirates. The other siblings were depressives. Thomas leafed listlessly through the pages of Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp. Every morning Mrs. De Quincey inspected the children, perfuming them with lavender or rose water."

About Keats: "From when Keats said that he was about to die, seven hours passed. His breath stopped. Fanny's last letters, never read by anyone, were sealed in his coffin. After the funeral service, the police took possession of the apartment on Piazza Spagna. They stripped the walls and floor and burned all of the furniture."

About Schwob: "His head was stuffed with names, words, and legends. By the time he was three he spoke French, German, and English. The house on Rue de l'Eglise in Chaville was a silent house. His mother climbed the stairs on tiptoe. Even when the Prussians stole wine from the cellar they took great care around the delicate child--he was too precocious, too intelligent, and he suffered from a brain fever."

[Daphne Zanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fleur Jaeggy I would follow you till the end of the universe 🥲

[Felipe Nobre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three very short essays / mini-biographies about De Quincey, Keats, and Marcel Schwob respectively. They feel like short stories at times, and it's fascinating to watch how Fleur Jaeggy builds an emotionally resonant narrative while often using details that wouldn't seem relevant at first. 

[La lettrice controcorrente · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vite congetturali di Fleur Jaeggy (Adelphi) è un mini libro che racconta le vite di tre artisti. Fa parte della biblioteca minima di Adelphi, ha in totale una cinquantina di pagine che scorrono via senza intoppi. Ad avermi colpito è stata la descrizione: "Le esistenze di De Quincey, Keats e Schwob raccontate come tre minuscoli romanzi". E se ci pensate è una descrizione strana per una mini, mini opera ma in effetti è proprio così: Jaeggy ci racconta nello spazio di pochissime righe le esistenze di queste tre personalità e noi abbiamo l'impressione di leggere un racconto di fantasia.
RECENSIONE COMPLETA http://www.lalettricecontrocorrente.i...

[John Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

These three strange and clever little essays about three great authors brought a sad smile to my face. I particularly found the piece about Keats quite poignant yet entertaining.

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short luminous book consists of three essays of these lives – Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. These writers, whose lives were brief, but perhaps full – each life ultimately centred on death by the author.

Jaeggy’s brevity shines on each page. She doesn’t find the need to ramble on about each of them – saying what she must, and does so with great simplicity, sometimes wit, straightforwardness, and for some maybe not enough, but worked beautifully for me.

The biographies (if I can call them that) extend themselves most naturally to the subjects’ habits, physicality, to their friends, their lives, and finally leading all to death. There is so much going on in these essays, using history, masculinity, the violence, and melancholy that runs throughout. Proctor’s translation makes it even more lyrical, though fragmented, disjointed, and surreal – reading as prose poems more than anything.

They draw you in, and I am sure I will read more about these lives in days to come. These Possible Lives is a short treat for readers – meditative and emotional.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Walking on the heath, Keats came across a being with a strange light in its eyes, a rumpled archangel—he recognized Coleridge. They walked together and spoke of nightingales and dreams.

"That drop of blood is my death-warrant. I must die," pronounced Keats calmly on the third of February 1820. He seemed intoxicated. His future was not predicted by a Sibyl, but by the medical student himself, the poet whose verses describe beauty flooded by a mortal estuary.'

(from 'John Keats', p40)

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the writing may be as good as the jacket blurbs say, there is not enough of it here (60 small pages with big margins and large type) to generate more than a "well, that was nice." Given that brevity is Jaeggy's forte, I may only be able to appreciate her works taken together, not than individual examples of it.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too minimal, no context, but nice little snippet vignettes.

[Óscar Brox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ante la prosa de Fleur Jaeggy, uno siempre tiene la obligación de continuar como lector el mismo proceso meticuloso de escritura que ha culminado en el texto; más, sobre todo, si se trata de una obra tan breve, tan concentrada y al mismo tiempo delicada, como Vidas conjeturales. Para entender el aliento evocador que Jaeggy insufla a sus relatos sobre Thomas De Quincey, John Keats y Marcel Schwob, no basta con atravesar sus apuntes biográficos. Hace falta vivirlos, sumergirnos en el estado emocional que su autora reconstruye minuciosamente. Fiel a su estilo literario, entre el detalle y la ficción, Enrique Vila-Matas describía el viaje que llevó a Schwob tras la pista de Robert Louis Stevenson, muerto en Samoa en 1894, como una travesía en la que hallar finalmente la tumba de las aventuras. Más que un lugar o un cuerpo, Schwob encontraría un sentimiento, un estado anímico del que nunca volvería a despegarse. Tras esta pequeña anécdota, una intuición: más que un autor o una obra, el lector que se acerque a las Vidas conjeturales encontrará un ánimo esculpido pacientemente por las palabras de Jaeggy.

En Keats, autor de Endymion, Jaeggy construye un tratado sobre el alma y las pasiones que surcan el espíritu del poeta, una miniatura que parece escrita desde la violencia de los estímulos que animaban cada bandazo de su vida. Keats, un bárbaro dulce, tan visceral como afectuoso, aparece dibujado por el pincel de su amigo pintor: «advirtió la intensidad de la mirada, que al parecer debía de pasar de accesos de fuego a la intemperie, al sereno brillo de un lago y a un oscuro y frío letargo». Bastan unas pocas hojas para intuir la muerte, la pasión desbocada que concluirá en Roma con tan solo veinticinco años, cuando el espíritu venza a un cuerpo demasiado humano para soportar sus arrebatos. Keats es un bárbaro capaz de poner en verso un mundo clásico que su poco conocimiento del griego le lleva a imaginar, a desencriptar con un furor insólito, con la misma curiosidad con que observa como estudiante de medicina los cuerpos abiertos que por tres guineas le sirven los ladrones de cadáveres. Un hombre en el que no cabe tanta vida, podríamos decir, como una presa condenada a desbordar su caudal.

La de Thomas De Quincey podría ser la evocación del relato de un niño que despierta de sus pesadillas una vez adulto para sumirse en un nuevo sueño. Con mimo y precisión, Jaeggy desgrana una infancia atrapada entre internados y muertes familiares que desemboca en una huida inevitable. Al niño Thomas le roban sus sueños, luego es justo que el maduro De Quincey los restituya. Así descubrirá el opio. Jaeggy narra la vida de De Quincey y sus contemporáneos como la búsqueda de un sueño del que nace la literatura, la pintura o el arte. Así, mientras Coleridge gime lúgubremente su poesía, Füssli come carne cruda que alimenta sus sueños fabulosos, ese raro fulgor que enciende el espíritu de una generación. Como en toda ensoñación, los años pasan y De Quincey forma una familia mientras el tiempo se consume como volutas de humo. El cansancio aplaca el fuego interior, los hijos mueren y los coetáneos de Thomas se dejan llevar por la fantasía. En menos de veinte hojas, el pequeño De Quincey es ya un anciano de organismo extenuado. Fleur Jaeggy escribe «se le veló el rostro de una apariencia de juventud». Esa es otra manera de declarar que el sueño llega a su fin.

Cuando uno lee Viaje a Samoa, aprecia en la escritura de Marcel Schwob la pulsación por lo infraordinario, por anotar cada vaivén del barco que le conduce hacia su destino o por dar cuenta del malestar físico que embarga un viaje por aguas revueltas. Sin embargo, cada palabra parece empeñada en cifrar el espíritu de la aventura, de la persecución incansable del rastro de Robert Louis Stevenson. A diferencia de sus dos compañeros de libro, el retrato de Schwob podría ser una historia de fantasmas. Todo comenzaría con un joven Marcel, durante su época de estudiante en la escuela superior. Allí conoce a Georges Guieysse, otro ser melancólico, y empiezan a trabajar juntos. Un buen día, Georges, presa del spleen, se disparará un tiro en el corazón. Esa muerte no aplacará el temperamento del escritor, que una noche de lluvia encontrará en la calle a una muchacha obrera consumida por la tuberculosis. Louise, se llamará. Como su amigo Georges, morirá demasiado pronto. Pero lo que para algunos es demasiado pronto, para Marcel será tarde: al mirarse en el espejo, reconocerá la vejez, la caída del pelo y, en fin, de la vida. Llegará la morfina y un dolor que solo puede localizarse en lo más profundo de nuestro ser. Marcel se casará con una actriz, pero para entonces la suya ya será una historia de fantasmas, los de Georges y Louise, sí, pero también el fantasma de no haber vivido lo suficiente. Quizá ese terror cerval le conducirá a embarcarse en un viaje imposible, aquel que le llevará hasta el fantasma de Stevenson perdido en Samoa. Uno no puede dar esquinazo a sus miedos. Y Jaeggy hará de la vida de Schwob una hermosa miniatura sobre los sentimientos que se escapan tras cada bocanada de aire, como ideas fugitivas que nunca sabemos cómo capturar; como fantasmas que atormentan nuestra existencia hasta que finalmente visitamos su tumba.

El valor de Vidas conjeturales reside en su extraordinaria, por paciente y sensible, manera de dibujar los perfiles de tres escritores cuyas obras elevan sus respectivas vidas. Jaeggy deja que sus palabras compongan minúsculas cápsulas de poesía allí donde la biografía del autor no sabe cómo continuar explicando sus vicisitudes. Pero, también, el valor de este pequeño texto excelentemente editado por Alpha Decay reside en su papel de carta de introducción para una autora a la que conviene leer con calma, anotando cada palabra y descripción, cada temblor y cada imagen que transmite su lectura. Vidas conjeturales es, en definitiva, no solo una hermosa reflexión sobre la potencia literaria, sino también ella misma un ejemplo de su potencia. La clase de escrito que, a media voz y como un susurro en el oído, nos dice que antes de morir vivamos sus relatos.

Escrito en Détour

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

as if she read the wikipedia pages of old famous writers and then crafted the abject into them. this kind of mixture of nonfiction and fiction is true imaginative reality of history. ideally i could've read this in a couple of hours. but instead i kept it in my tote bag and read sporadically throughout two months, like some kind of messed up reoccurring dream. this book is kind of terrifying in the most restrained way.

[Mohamed AMRAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear descendant of Marcel Schwob's Vies imaginaires with its ethereal, fragmentary, biographical-fiction style. The poetic-essay form is becoming my favorite form. Fleur Jaeggy writes with a razor, like some press articles describe it... but nevertheless manages to fill each sentence with oceans of emotion. I was very excited for the essay on Marcel Schwob and although it was not disappointing (in fact i thought it gave his character ample justice) yet it left a hole in my heart. Perhaps it's a combination of his works not being all translated yet, plus the fact that he never wrote the rest of them. He is amongst what Poe once described as the "mute and inglorious" minds of humanity. This book is heartbreakingly short.

[Abhiraj Ranjan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn the literary life

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Borgesian Gothic triptych on morphine.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

nobody does brevity like jaeggy
i’m in awe

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful sentences 💔

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

i so enjoy little books like this one... reminded me of Evan S. Connell's "Notes From a Bottle...", just interesting and inconsequential facts and observations about historical figures of note, at least two of them anyway... never read anything by Jaeggy before, but if this is any indication of her style, i will likely seek out further books... each mini-bio has a ghostly feel, or maybe it's more shadowy, as in 'written by their shadow', since the passages are of things quite personal or so innocuously random that who but their shadow would have noticed, recalled... a fun book, by any reading, and shows great talent and imagination and oddity...