Carcanet signs complete translation of Borel's 'blistering' collection

Carcanet is to release a complete translation of Petrus Borel's 1831 collection Rhapsodies, translated by John Gallas and Kurt Gänzl.

The new edition, for which the press hold world rights, will be released under Carcanet Classics. The collection will be released in the UK on 24th February and on 28th February  in the US. 

Borel  was a French writer of the Romantic movement. Born Joseph-Pierre Borel d’Hauterive at Lyon, the 12th of 14 children of an ironmonger, he studied architecture in Paris but abandoned it for literature. He was noted for extravagant and eccentric writing, which is often credited with inspiring later Surrealist writers. He died at Mostaganem in Algeria.

"Nicknamed ‘The Lycanthrope’, Borel was bohemian, eccentric, and ‘poete maudit'," the synopsis explains. "Rhapsodies is a book of 24 poems from the borders of sadness and madness. After a blistering preface likening his poetry-making to the production of industrial slag, Borel moans, begs, postures, lets blood, tells tales, squeals and pontificates in gothic, beggarly, political and love-sick wise, producing a collection of almost hysterical brilliance that was to influence Baudelaire: and is, according to Enid Starkie ‘more interesting as an artist and more originally experimental than many of the greatest masters’."

Gallas' books are published by Cold Hub Press in New Zealand and Agraphia in Sweden. He is the editor of two books of translations – 52 Euros and The Song Atlas – also published by Carcanet, and is a fellow of the English Association. 

Gänzl launched his writing career in in 1986 with an award-winning two-volume history of British musical theatre. A further dozen volumes on theatre history have followed. His latest book is Gilbert & Sullivan: the Players and the Plays (State University of New York Press).