Marcel Schwob

Mayer André Marcel Schwob, known as Marcel Schwob (23 August 1867 – 26 February 1905), was a French symbolist writer best known for his short stories and his literary influence on authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonso Reyes, Roberto Bolaño and Patricio Pron. He has been called a "precursor of Surrealism". In addition to over a hundred short stories, he wrote journalistic articles, essays, biographies, literary reviews and analysis, translations and plays. He was extremely well known and respected during his life and notably befriended a great number of intellectuals and artists of the time.

Early life (1867–89)

He was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867 into a cultivated Jewish family. His father, George Schwob, was a friend of Théodore de Banville and Théophile Gautier. His mother, Mathilde Cahun, came from a family of intellectuals from Alsace. He was the brother of Maurice Schwob and uncle of Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob).

His family had just returned from Egypt, where his father had headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for ten years. When the French Third Republic began, the Schwob family lived in Tours, where George became the director of the newspaper ''Le Républicain d'Indre-et-Loire''. In 1876, he moved to Nantes to direct the Republican daily ''Le Phare de la Loire''; after he died in 1892, his eldest son Maurice, born in 1859, took his place.

At age 11 he discovered the work of Edgar Allan Poe translated by Charles Baudelaire. He then read the original versions of his tales in English and they proved to be a lifelong influence in his writing. In 1878–79, he studied at the ''Lycée'' of Nantes where he won the 1st Prize for Excellence. In 1881, he was sent to Paris to live with his maternal uncle Léon Cahun, Chief Librarian of the ''Mazarine Library'', and continue his studies at the ''Lycée Louis-le-Grand'', where he became friends with Léon Daudet and Paul Claudel. He developed a gift for languages and quickly became multilingual. In 1884, he discovered Robert Louis Stevenson, who was to become one of his friends and role models. He studied philology and Sanscrit under Ferdinand de Saussure at the '' École pratique des hautes études'' in 1883–84. He then completed his military service in Vannes, joining the artillery.

He failed his entrance exams for the ''École normale supérieure'', but he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1888. He became a professional journalist, collaborating in the ''Phare de la Loire'', the ''Événement'' and '' L'Écho de Paris''.

Early work (1890–1897)

He had a passion for French slang, and in particular for the language of the Coquillards used by Villon in his ''Ballads in Jargon'': unlike the widespread opinion at the time (developed by Victor Hugo in '' Les Misérables''), Schwob considered that slang is not a language that is created spontaneously, but that it is actually an artificial language in code.

For eight years he wrote short stories that were collected in six books: '' Cœur double'' ("Double Heart", 1891), ''Le roi au masque d'or'' ("The King in the Golden Mask", 1892), ''Mimes'' (1893), ''Le livre de Monelle'' ("The Book of Monelle", 1894), ''La croisade des enfants'' ("The Children's Crusade", 1896) and ''Vies imaginaires'' (" Imaginary Lives", 1896). His last short story, "''L'étoile de bois''," is the longest one he wrote and was published in 1897. Two large reprint collections of his stories were published during his lifetime: ''La porte des rêves'' (''The Gate of Dreams'', 1899), illustrated by Georges de Feure, and ''La lampe de Psyché'' (''Psyche's Lamp'', 1903).

Along with Stuart Merrill, Adolphe Retté and Pierre Louÿs, Marcel Schwob worked on Oscar Wilde's play ''Salome'', which was written in French to avoid a British law forbidding the depiction of Bible characters on stage. Wilde struggled with his French, and the play was proofread and corrected by Marcel Schwob for its first performance in Paris in 1896.

Late work (1898–1905)

In the last eight years of his life Schwob was often too sick to work, but he managed to complete a number of projects, although with the exception of the play ''Jane Shore'', and "Dialogues d'Utopie" (written in 1905), he never wrote any more original fiction. He did write articles, introductions and essays, adapted and translated several plays, and planned or began numerous projects that remained unfinished when he died.

Travels

Ting Tse-Ying was a young Chinese scholar from Saint-Louis, Senegal, fluent in English, whom Schwob had met at the Chinese pavilion at the closing of Paris's Exposition Universelle and hired as a domestic servant, personal assistant and travelling companion. Ting later worked for explorer Paul Pelliot, whom he accompanied to Turkestan.

In 1901, assisted by Ting, he travelled first to Jersey, where he stayed for several weeks, and then to Uriage, trying to improve his health. He then began the biggest voyage of his life, traveling to Samoa, like his hero Stevenson, in search of his tomb. Leaving from Marseille, he stopped in Port Said, Djibouti, Aden, toured Sri Lanka, Sydney and finally Vailima, where Stevenson had lived. There, he met people who had known Stevenson. He stayed for a little less than a month. He became very sick in the island, lost a lot of weight and was forced to return to Paris in a hurry without having visited the tomb. Because of regional racism, Ting was arrested on several occasions and prevented from accompanying Schwob in some parts of the trip. Schwob complained about this in his letters to Moreno.

In 1904, at the invitation of Francis Marion Crawford and accompanied by Ting, he took a boat trip to Naples, stopping in Porto, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseille and finally Naples. He stayed for two weeks in Crawford's villa in Sant'Agnello in Sorrento. Bored, he left for France, stopping in Aix-les-Bains in Switzerland, the Plombières in Belgium and finally Carnac, where Moreno, once again, joined him. His health had further worsened and they returned to Paris.

Personal life

Friendships

Throughout his life, Schwob associated with or befriended a great number of notables from the worlds of art and literature. They include Léon Daudet, Alphonse Daudet, Paul Claudel, Anatole France

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