Love Sleep & Dreams

by Count Stenbock

Here, presented for the first time in paperback format, is an unabridged edition of Count Eric Stenbock’s first book of poetry, which was originally published in 1881, in a very limited number of copies, and which is now extremely scarce.

Genres: Poetry

87 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1881

About the author

Count Eric Stanislaus (or Stanislaus Eric) Stenbock was a Baltic German poet and writer of macabre fantastic fiction. He was a symbol of his age, poet, decadent, short story writer, a true member of the aristocracy who mixed with the Socialists and radicals of the late Nineteenth Century. In his time he was known as a 'drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men' a description which serves to confuse more than illuminate. Stenbock's life in Brighton, London and Estonia gives us a window on to the complicated worlds of literature, art and fashion which characterised the late Nineteenth Century.

Stenbock was the count of Bogesund and the heir to an estate near Kolga in Estonia. He was the son of Lucy Sophia Frerichs, a Manchester cotton heiress, and Count Erich Stenbock, of a distinguished Baltic German noble family with Swedish roots which rose to prominence in the service of Gustav Vasa. Stenbock's great-grandfather was Baron Friedrich von Stuart (1761–1842) from Courland. Immanuel Kant was great-great-granduncle of count Eric Stenbock.

During his lifetime the eccentric Count Eric Stenbock published a single collection of short stories, Studies of Death. These seven tales, at once feverish, morbid, and touching, are a key work of English decadence and the Yellow Nineties.

W.B. Yeats called Stenbock: "Scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men." Arthur Symons saw him as "bizarre, fantastic, feverish, eccentric, extravagant, morbid and perverse."

In a short life - (he died at 36 in 1895) - he so impressed himself upon his contemporaries that the legends they tell of him in memoirs and anecdotes far outstrip the attention given to his writings.

Studies of Death: Romantic Tales appeared in 1894, ornamented with a striking frontispiece by its author. The seven stories reveal an original imagination and a spry, urbane style quite removed from the melancholy murmurings of the Count's verse.

Towards the end, the Count was mentally as well as physically ill. At Withdeane Hall he terrified the domestic staff with his persecution complex and his delirium tremens. On his travels he had been escorted, and with him went a dog, a monkey and a life-size doll. He was convinced that the doll was his son and referred to it as 'le Petit comte'. Every day it had to be brought to him, and when it was not there he would ask for news of its health.

He was buried at the Brighton Catholic Cemetery. Before burial his heart was extracted and sent to Estonia & placed among the Stenbock monuments in the church at Kusal. It was preserved in some fluid in a glass urn in a cupboard built into the wall of the church. At the time of his death, his uncle and heir, far away in Esbia, saw an apparition of his tear-stained face at his study window.

On the day of his death the Count, drunk and furious, had tried to strike someone with a poker and toppled into a grate. -- R. B. Russell

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I had a vision of Love crucified —
Love crucified in feet, in hands, and heart;
I looked on the pierced side of Love,
I saw a wound upon the heart of Love,
From which flowed blood and roses: —
Wounded hast thou mine heart, my love, mine own;

Seest thou my life-blood trickling drop by drop,
Till the last vital drop hath flowed therefrom? —
But with my blood there are commingled roses —
For are not these my songs? as roses
Let them be planted on my grave.”
—
“My heart is pierced, my spirit breaketh,
My tears are salter than thy brine,
My soul with broken passion acheth,
Take me to thee, O Mother mine.

‘Poor stricken soul, what dost thou weeping?
Art thou then weary of thy life?
Would'st thou be as the dead that, sleeping,
Have passed from passion, pain and strife?’

Would that I could dissolve in tears,
If tears were given me to weep.
Have I not lived these many years —
And all that I long for now is sleep?

My life is blank, and dark, and dreary,
Undone is all that I desired,
Kiss me, for I am very weary,
Lay me to sleep, for I am tired.

'Tis a soft bed, a feathery pillow,
Oh, let me rest upon thy grave;
Lull me to sleep upon thy billow,
And let thy waters be my grave.”
—
“I am guilty before thee, I ask not for pardon,
For my sin is endlessly great;
I am punished enough, for the love once between us
Is slowly corroding to hate.

With Cain I will say, the deserved retribution
Is harder than I can bear;
Unshriven I live, I die unrepenting,
In terrible, utter despair.”
—
“A thousand arrows pierce my heart,
To see another sit beside thee;
A keener and a fiercer dart
Pierces my soul when others chide thee.

I think I could not have the heart
To speak thee harshly or reprove thee;
Heartless and worthless as thou art,
I cannot otherwise than love thee.”

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schopenhauer meets Edward Gorey in such poems as "The Song of the Unwept Tear" (not to be confused with "The Ballad of the Dead Sea Fruit") and "Cradle Song" (in which a mother hums to her baby a litany about why non-existence is better than life).

Here are two excerpts, the first from the "Unwept Tear": "I dreamed a dreadful dream, almost / Too terrible to tell; / I dreamed that you and I, my love, / Together were in hell."

The second from the "Cradle Song": "Sleep on, my poor child, sleep; / Why must thou wake again? / Thou are but born into a world of woe, / Of agony unending, deep, / Of long-protracted pain." . . . Create your own spoiler alert: Can you guess how the poem ends?

In keeping with the theme of Love, Sleep & Dreams, Count Stenbock self-selected himself out of the gene pool by age 35, "as a result of alcoholism and opium addiction."

[M.]

It's interesting to read poetry written by a gay man after his lovers' eventually throw aside their boyhood lusts and settle down with women.