Petrus Borel - Champavert was the archetypal collection of the French "contes cruels," and the book still remains among the cruellest of them all. It is also one of the greatest collections of short stories ever published

Pétrus Borel, Champavert: Immoral Tales. Tras. by Brian Stableford. Borgo Press, 2013. [1833.]                 

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Champavert was the archetypal collection of the French "contes cruels," and the book still remains among the cruellest of them all. It is also one of the greatest collections of short stories ever published; the only reason that it has never been translated before is that the job was so challenging that only an insane person would tackle it. Pétrus Borel the Lycanthrope (as he called himself) declared himself dead before the book was published, but not many people believed him, even though he was the most honest man in Paris. Here are seven classic tales of horror, fantasy, and the twistings of fate, including the final story, "Champavert, the Lycanthrope," translated from the French for the very first time by the well-known fantastist and critic, Brian Stableford.


Quick note on the quality of this published work: another reviewer noted all the errors, including on the cover. Perhaps Borgo press did a reprinting since these errors were removed from the copy I ordered on amazon recently.
At the time the fiery romantic literary artist Petrus Borel penned this collection of seven short stories he was a lycanthrope, that is, a human on the outside, a wolf on the inside. And as a man-wolf he was an extreme outsider to society and culture, to convention and rules, to comfort and routine, an outsider telling his tales as he viewed humans and human society through his wolfish eyes. And what he saw wasn't pretty: any beauty and purity life offers up is defiled by twisted, debased bipeds who thrive on vanity, greed, bigotry, lecherousness and pure evil. Is it any wonder what we encounter in these pages are `Immoral Tales', tales where Borel's characters act in ways miles removed from any sense of decency and a standard of right and wrong? And is it any wonder the reading public who encountered his tales of depravity and brutality triumphing from the first word of the first sentence to the last word of the last sentence despised his writing?
So what was man-wolf Petrus Borel's message? How did he compare to other 18th and 19th century authors writing as social outsiders? Did he see our retreat from society and human interactions leading us to spiritual inwardness as did the Danish existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; to aesthetic freedom and ascetic renunciation as did German pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; to a state of nature and goodness prior to society as did French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau? No, not at all. For Petrus Borel, society and human life is so poisoned, so diseased, so contaminated to its very core, there is only one way out: oblivion.
With this worldview of the man-wolf Petrus Borel, we turn to a few of the tales:
Monsieur De L'Argentiere, the Prosecutor
Two aristocratic men speak as friends as they partake of a meal together. We read, "They were leaning voraciously over the table, like two wolves disputing a carcass, but their dull interlocutions, muffled by the sonority of the hall, were like the grunting of pigs. One of them was less than a wolf; he was a Public Prosecutor. The other was more than a pig; he was a Perfect." As we follow the story we see just what friendship means here. The Pubic Prosecutor acts with such trickery, such lecherousness, such sheer evil, that friendship, innocence and love are trampled, while all along employing reason and logic in his role as Public Prosecutor. Friendship was one of the keys to a good life in the ancient Greek and Roman world, championed by such great philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero and Seneca. Petrus Borel shows us what friendship has been reduced to in 19th century Paris.
Don Andrea Vesalius, The Anatomist
A howling, frenzied mob stands at the gate of a palace, objecting to the wedding of a young girl to an old doctor who they see as nothing less than a torturer, a necromancer and a murderer. A handsome capped cavalier, the young girl's lover, leads the crowd in their attack on the palace. The attack brings on the king's mounted guard. The crowd is dispersed, the cavalier wounded. Since, as it turns out, the old doctor is too elderly and impotent to have relations with his young wife and bride, over the next four years she has separate rendezvous with three other lovers, including the capped cavalier, lovers who vanish when she awakes the following morning. And what happened to these three lovers? In the course of discovering the truth, we follow the doctor as he leads his young wife to his laboratory. We, along with his young wife, encounter the grittiest of scenes. The author writes, "The workbenches were laden with partly-dissected cadavers; there were shred of flesh and amputated limbs underfoot, and muscles and cartilage were crushed by the professor's sandals. A skeleton was hanging on the door, which, when it was agitated, rattled like those wooden candles that candle-makers hang up as their sign, when they are stirred by the wind." We find out just how far the old doctor will go to become a world-famous anatomist.
Champavert, The Lycanthrope
This tale begins with a letter written by Champavert, wherein we read, "I've often reminded you of that night, when, after having wandered for a long time in the forest, appreciating all things at their price, distilling, analyzing and dissecting life, passions, society, laws, the past and the future, breaking the deceptive optical glass and the artificial lamp illuminating it, we were sickened with disgust before so many lies and miseries." Oblivion, according to wolf Champavert is the only way out, but fortunately for lovers of great literature, on the way to oblivion Petrus Borel wrote these tales with richly poetic language and powerful emotions, tales that are (as stated boldly on the book's back cover) one of the greatest collections ever published. We are also fortunate Brian Stableford tackled the challenge to translate this collection into English and provided a 9 page introduction. - Glenn Russell 

Joseph-Pierre Borel d'Hauterive, known as Petrus Borel (26 June 1809 – 14 July 1859) was a French writer of the Romantic movement.
Born at Lyon, the twelfth of fourteen children of an ironmonger, he studied architecture in Paris but abandoned it for literature. Nicknamed le Lycanthrope ("wolfman"), and the center of the circle of Bohemians in Paris, he was noted for extravagant and eccentric writing, foreshadowing Surrealism. He was not commercially successful though, and eventually was found a minor civil service post by his friends, including Théophile Gautier. He's also considered as a Poète maudit, like Aloysius Bertrand, or Alice de Chambrier.
He died at Mostaganem in Algeria.
He was the subject of a biography by Enid Starkie, Petrus Borel: The Lycanthrope (1954) . - wikipedia

  
 
Petrus Borel - Le Lycanthrope (26 June 1809 – 14 July 1859) - leading figure in the Bouzingos/ les Jeunes France /Le petit-cénacle…a suggested inspiration for Bahorel, which is an interesting idea. He was known for wearing red waistcoats in some phases (unlike Gautier, who is mistakenly thought to have done so to the premiere of Hernani - his waistcoat was actually a deep rose colour), was an ardent Republican in the early 1830s and certainly loved shocking people in general, but otherwise I’m not too sure they correlate very precisely. I can certainly see Bahorel indulging in Borel’s notorious (and rather toxic) skull punch and enjoying premises in the rue d’enfer. He’d enjoy the Bouzingo’s more extravagent pranks, like wrapping up mannequins and carrying them through the streets claiming they were corpses. 
But I don’t see Bahorel really indulging in Borel’s more ostentatious displays of erudition (or perhaps that didn’t really bother Hugo - he might not have noticed, given his own delight in digressions). On the other hand, there’s a certain delight in iconoclasm in both - in Bahorel it’s more in physical violence and in Borel it’s more in shocking literary stances. Both loved making a sartorial impression, though, and there’s a certain anti-clericalism in the two.
It is intriguing that Borel and Nerval were the first significant Bouzingos to die - and it was after their deaths that Bahorel and Jehan were added to the drafts of Les Mis (the last Amis to make it into the text). The textual linking of these two is also rather suggestive, I feel - it’s not explicit, but there is a certain juxtapositioning of the two.
At any rate, he’s an inspiration for my interpretation of Bahorel, both physically and in certain behavioural traits. - edwarddespard.tumblr.com/post/26413800871/petrus-borel-le-lycanthrope-26-june-1809-14

Petrus Borel, the Lycanthrope by Enid Starkie (1954)

	Oeuvres complètes de Petrus Borel Le Lycanthrope (Volume 3) - Borel, Pétrus, 1809-1859 v.1. "Borel...sa vie et son oeuvre" -- v. 2. Rhapsodies; suivies de poésies diverses -- v. 3. Champavert, contes immaraux
	Oeuvres complètes de Petrus Borel Le Lycanthrope (Volume 2) - Borel, Pétrus, 1809-1859 v.1. "Borel...sa vie et son oeuvre" -- v. 2. Rhapsodies; suivies de poésies diverses -- v. 3. Champavert, contes immaraux
	Oeuvres complètes de Petrus Borel Le Lycanthrope (Volume 1) - Borel, Pétrus, 1809-1859 v.1. "Borel...sa vie et son oeuvre" -- v. 2. Rhapsodies; suivies de poésies diverses -- v. 3. Champavert, contes immaraux