These Possible Lives

New Directions is proud to present Fleur Jaeggys strange and mesmerizing essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob. A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quinceys early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb spoke of Lilliputian rabbits when eating frog fricassse; Henry Fuseli ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams; Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers; and Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke. In a book of blue devils and night visions, the Keats essay opens: In 1803, the guillotine was a common childs toy. And poor Schwobs end comes as he feels like a dog cut open alive: His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief. Fleur Jaeggys essaysor are they prose poems?smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.