Последние издания книг Барона Корво

'If there be one place in all this orb of earth where a secret is a Secret, that place is a Roman Conclave'

Part novel, part daydream, part diatribe, this strange masterpiece tells the story of George Arthur Rose, a poor, frustrated writer who lives in a shabby bedsit, saving his cigarette ends and eating soup - until one day he is made Pope. As the first English pontiff in five centuries, he is a mass of contradictions: infallible and petulant, humble and despotic. Yet Hadrian the Seventh is really a knowing self-portrait of its flamboyant author Baron Corvo, a would-be priest with aristocratic pretensions, and one of the greatest eccentrics of English literature.

Избранные сочинения славившегося своими эксцентричными выходками Фредерика Роуфа (1860-1913), в том числе знаменитые «Венецианские письма», посвященные красоте каналов, гондол и юных гондольеров. Никто из английских художников не пишет молодых венецианцев, балансирующих на высокой корме гондолы, скользящей по бескрайним просторам лагуны в молочной белизне рассвета в тот час, когда все что ни есть на свете озарено лучистым сиянием матери всех жемчужин, высвечивающей своими яркими вспышками крепкую молодую плоть и зажигающей в их глазах блеск цвета морской лазури, красящей перламутром волосы их в переливистом, словно песня, белом свечении,…

Frederick Rolfe, who early in his career also published under the name "Baron Corvo," became famous for his Hadrian the Seventh (1904), in which an Englishman is unexpectedly elected Pope, and later became infamous for his writings on his love for Venetian boys. But it was with the "Toto" stories, first published in John Lane's fin de siecle literary journal The Yellow Book, that Corvo achieved his first and most widespread authorial success. In these tales, an Italian peasant youth ingenuously recounts to his English master six poignant and often funny stories dealing with Heaven, saints, morality, and religion. First published in volume form in 1898 and long out of print, Stories Toto Told Me remains one of the most remarkable achievements of one of the strangest and most talented of English writers. This edition includes a new introduction and extensive annotations by Edmund Miller.

One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares. "The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics. Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.