Misty Thule

Adolphe Rettés Misty Thule originally published in 1891 and here translated into English for the first time by Brian Stable-ford is one of the key documents of the Symbolist Movement and one of the most extreme illustrations of its philosophy. Deliberately breaking the usually-imposed boundaries of poetry and prose sensation and fantasy stories and chapters syntax and punctuation it can be seen at once as a collection in the tradition of Charles Baudelaires unfinished Spleen de Paris an avant-garde novel and a work of Surrealism avant la lettre reaching toward an immediacy of raw representation that attempts to gag the censor of rationalization and liberate the anarchic thrust of the unconscious as a hidden participant in the processes of perception and mental response.Although Retté repudiated the book in later life on religious grounds Misty Thule remains the most remarkable work that he produced--and indeed one of the most remarkable that anyone produced under the aegis of Symbolism.