After-Dinner Conversation: The Diary of a DecadentUniversity of Texas Press, 2005 - 260 pages Lost in a shipwreck in 1895, rewritten before the author's suicide in 1896, and not published until 1925, José Asunción Silva's After-Dinner Conversation (De sobremesa) is one of Latin America's finest fin de siècle novels and the first one to be translated into English. Perhaps the single best work for understanding turn-of-the-twentieth-century writing in South America, After-Dinner Conversation is also cited as the continent's first psychological novel and an outstanding example of modernista fiction and the Decadent sensibility. Semi-autobiographical and more important for style than plot, After-Dinner Conversation is the diary of a Decadent sensation-collector in exile in Paris who undertakes a quest to find his beloved Helen, a vision whom his fevered imagination sees as his salvation. Along the way, he struggles with irreconcilable urges and temptations that pull him in every direction while he endures an environment indifferent or hostile to spiritual and intellectual pursuits, as did the modernista writers themselves. Kelly Washbourne's excellent translation preserves Silva's lush prose and experimental style. In the introduction, one of the most wide-ranging in Silva criticism, Washbourne places the life and work of Silva in their literary and historical contexts, including an extended discussion of how After-Dinner Conversation fits within Spanish American modernismo and the Decadent movement. Washbourne's perceptive comments and notes also make the novel accessible to general readers, who will find the work surprisingly fresh more than a century after its composition. |
From inside the book
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... asked Luis Cordovez , deep in thought . " Better than I expected , " replied the poet . " So then what stopped you , pray tell , what stopped you from doing what you could have been able to do , which was great , enor- mous ? " asked ...
... asked me , still smiling with a frank smile that arched his lips and revealed to me the potent animality of his body . " No , Doctor , I am perfectly calm , this conversation with you has relaxed me like a dose of bromide , " I ...
... asked me , laughing with de- lightful roguishness . " No , because I don't find them as beautiful as Nelly , " I replied , en- folding her in a gaze of mad desire . It had been eight months since I had given a kiss or received a caress ...
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After-Dinner Conversation: The Diary of a Decadent José Asunción Silva,Kelly Washbourne Limited preview - 2005 |