Pybrac: Recueil de quatrains érotiques

by Pierre Louÿs

Une série de quatrains faussement moralisateurs, dont l'obscénité et l'inventivité érotique sont sans limite.

POUR UN PUBLIC AVERTI. Le titre de cette œuvre est emprunté au nom d'un magistrat et poète toulousain, Guy de Faur de Pibrac, auteur d'un recueil de quatrains moralisateurs (forme poétique en vogue au XVIe siècle). Pierre Louÿs détourne l'original en quatre poèmes, composés de 313 quatrains érotiques : il donne ainsi naissance aux quatrains immoraux. Commençant tous par « Je n’aime pas » – un bon début pour une leçon de morale – , les quatrains explicites sont tous plus drôles les uns que les autres et finissent par sonner comme des incantations érotiques.

Un recueil dans la veine humoristique de l'auteur qui, malgré la crudité du propos, ne se départit jamais de la plus grande virtuosité métrique.

À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR

Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), né à Gand et mort à Paris, est un poète et romancier français, également illustre sous les noms de plume Chrysis, Peter Lewys et Pibrac. Il fonde en 1891 la revue littéraire La Conque , où sont publiées les œuvres d'auteurs parnassiens et symbolistes, parmi lesquels Mallarmé, Moréas, Verlaine ou encore Leconte de Lisle. Outre Aphrodite , La Femme et le pantin ou encore Les Aventures du Roi Pausole , Pierre Louÿs a rédigé de nombreux romans érotiques, peu à peu révélés à titre posthume.

À PROPOS DE LA COLLECTION

Retrouvez les plus grands noms de la littérature érotique dans notre collection Grands classiques érotiques .
Autrefois poussés à la clandestinité et relégués dans « l'Enfer des bibliothèques », les auteurs de ces œuvres incontournables du genre sont aujourd'hui reconnus mondialement.
Du Marquis de Sade à Alphonse Momas et ses multiples pseudonymes, en passant par le lyrique Alfred de Musset ou la féministe Renée Dunan, les Grands classiques érotiques proposent un catalogue complet et varié qui contentera tant les novices que les connaisseurs.

Genres: Poetry, France

50 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who sought to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection". He was made first a Chevalier and then an Officer of the Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French literature.

Born in Belgium, in 1870, but moved to France where he would spend the rest of his life. He was a friend of authors André Gide and Oscar Wilde, and of composer Claude Debussy.

Reviews

[B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Still obscene by modern standards, and a few amusing moments because of the subversive absurdity, but I just felt that it grew tiresome fairly quickly. Not just in terms of content, but also because of the invariability of the form.

Wakefield Press did a good job on this, however. It’s a bilingual edition and includes several erotic drawings by the great surrealist Toyen whom I adore.



Oh well, at least my French vocab is now good enough to tackle Bataille and De Sade in the original.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

No-holes-barred debauchery described across 300+ quatrains (of an original 2,000), for which Louÿs provides endless permutations of place, manner, and means, limited only by the number of serviceable orifices in the human body. (The remaining quatrains unpublished here were auctioned off in 1936, and haven't been seen since.) Not for the squeamish or self-righteous. Brilliantly devoid of redeeming social value.

[V · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cross between a book of basely-thematically related poetry and the kind of cumpendium found wedged beneath the floorboards of a rickety treehouse long-abandoned about a twenty-minutes' walk heartwards into the forest of some east-coast suburban backyard.

You want to wait on each poem a moment because it is an isolated experience and it deserves your meditation, but really, it's pornish, so you're flicking through looking for "a good one". In the end: Pybrac more resembles the latter (re: above (cumpendium))- or one of those softcore photo sets I used to look at in the early teen years before I figured out that there were videos out there. (WOW) Maybe you save a couple shots to your "Physics Homework" folder; maybe you reread a coupl'a the quatrains, but the bulk you sorta gloss over because they're not really that titillating.

Anyhow here's a colorful one:

I do not like Irma, who answers her granny:
"Do I like buggery? Of course, don't be absurd!
I'll shit come in your face: spread open my fanny
And you'll see lots of sauce drizzled over my turd."

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

i mean. yeah. there’s no real way to rate this. funny and obscene even by today’s standards. and the wakefield press edition is absolutely GORGEOUS

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had it's moments.