Antipodes Press

Reviving forgotten classics.

[antipodespress]

The People of the Abyss by Jack London

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“...simply too bizarre, too occult and obscure, too ‘rococo’ for the average reader...” – Amazon review ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Journey to the Orient, by Gérard de Nerval

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“There is a kind of lampyre of which both sexes are equally phosphorescent, one in the air, the male, the other on the ground where she awaits him. After coupling they fade as lamps when extinguished. This luminosity is, evidently, of an interest purely sexual. When the female sees the small flying star descend toward her, she gathers her wits, and prepares for hypocrite defence common to all her sex, she plays the belle and the bashful, exults in fear, trembles in joy. The fading light is symbolic of the destiny of nearly all insects, and of many animals also; coupling accomplished, their reason for being disappears and life vanishes from them.”

—Remy de Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love

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“…I shall demonstrate how this tiny sound within, this nothing, contains everything; and how, with the bacillary aid of a single sensation – always the same one, and deformed at that in its very origins – a brain isolated from the world can create a world for itself…” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Remy de Gourmont, Very Woman

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“No monument since the cathedrals, or perhaps since the pyramids, has moved the aesthetic sensibility of humanity as much as the Eiffel Tower. Confronted with all that scrap iron stacked on high, stupidity itself became lyrical, foolishness mediated, asininity dreamed. And from those heights showered down, as it were, a storm of emotions. Some tried to divert it, but it was too late. Success had arrived. The more a work is the object of admiration, the more beautiful it becomes to the mob. It becomes beautiful, and almost a living creature. It gives off emotional waves that come to break like surf on a drunken and gasping people. The entire organism celebrates; and, stupid and beautiful, the genius of the species smiles in the shadows.”

—Remy de Gourmont From the 1901 essay, “Success and the Idea of Beauty”, included in the book Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas, published by Antipodes Press.

Image: Robert Delaunay, Eiffel Tower (1911).

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The Fantômas Collection from Antipodes Press 🔪🎩☠️🇫🇷

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The Natural Philosophy of Love

The Natural Philosophy of Love is an exploration of the prodigious sexual mores of Nature’s creations. Translated with a postscript by Ezra Pound, Remy de Gourmont’s “essay on...

New reprint from Antipodes: A critique of morality via weird zoology, by Remy de Gourmont. (First published as Physique de l’amour in 1904)

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New from Antipodes: The Yellow Document, a spy thriller first published in 1919, by the author of Fantômas. https://antipodespress.com/books/the-yellow-document

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Fantômas’ henchmen in Fantômas se déchaîne (Fantômas Unleashed), released in 1965.

Fantômas on Film: The 1960s Trilogy

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Louis de Funès as Juve in the 1960s Fantômas trilogy.

Fantômas on Film: The 1960s Trilogy

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Louis de Funès in Fantômas (1964)

Fantômas on Film: The 1960s Trilogy

[antipodespress]

Fantômas on Film: The 1960s Trilogy

The three Fantômas movies directed by André Hunebelle in the 1960s diverge significantly from the novels. Inspector Juve—a famous detective whose deductive powers are...

Fantômas is reimagined as a comic caper in the 1960s trilogy starring Louis de Funès and Jean Marais.

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Bastille Day Author Portrait: Gerard de Nerval

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Bastille Day Author Portrait: Honore de Balzac

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Fantômas punishes a double-crossing henchman in The False Magistrate (1914).

Fantômas on Film: The Silent Serials (1913–1914)

[nyrbclassics]

Happy birthday Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born 200 years ago today. We are proud to have published a reader’s edition of his journal, edited by the indefatigable Damion Searls (the original text is two million words, ours is shorter). In recent years The Journal has come to be appreciated Thoreau’s life’s work and perhaps the best way to experience the writing of this American master. Here’s a sample:

May 6, 1854, 6 p.m.—To epigæa via Clamshell Hill     It matters not where or how far you travel,—the farther commonly the worse,—but how much alive you are. If it is possible to conceive of an event outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though it were the explosion of a planet. No mere willful activity whatever, whether in writing verses or collecting statistics, will produce true poetry or science. If you are really a sick man, it is indeed to be regretted, for you cannot accomplish so much as if you were well. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love,—to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities. It is a pity that this divine creature should ever suffer from cold feet; a still greater pity that the coldness so often reaches to his heart. I look over the report of the doings of a scientific association and am surprised that there is so little life to be reported; I am put off with a parcel of dry technical terms. Anything living is easily and naturally expressed in popular language. I cannot help suspecting that the life of these learned professors has been almost as inhuman and wooden as a rain-gauge or self-registering magnetic machine. They communicate no fact which rises to the temperature of blood-heat. It doesn’t all amount to one rhyme.       Dandelions, perhaps the first, yesterday. This flower makes a great show,—a sun itself in the grass. How emphatic it is! You cannot but observe it set in the liquid green grass even at a distance. I am surprised that the sight of it does not affect me more, but I look at it as unmoved as if but a day had elapsed since I saw it in the fall. 

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Fantômas stalks an unwitting victim in The Murderous Corpse (1913).

Fantômas on Film: The Silent Serials (1913–1914)