Fortnightly Book, March 9

 Maurice LeBlanc (1864-1941) was born to a wealthy business family, but he left behind a secure factory career in order to pursue a career in writing. He struggled for a while, but then in 1905 he received a commission to write a story that was intended to be in the gentleman-thief genre that had recently become popular due to the A. J. Raffles stories of E. W. Hornung (the brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). The short story, "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin", was a smashing success, and LeBlanc began turning out several other stories about the gentleman thief, imagining him to be a French version of the very British Raffles, and to be Sherlock Holmes's equal-and-opposite in the thieving world. The latter would eventually get LeBlanc in some legal trouble from the Doyle estate; unperturbed, LeBlanc just started calling the equal-and-opposite of Lupin in the detective world, 'Herlock Sholmes'. Ironically, LeBlanc would soon have the same problems with Arsène Lupin that Doyle had with Sherlock Holmes. The character was difficult to write convincingly and it was impossible to keep up with the demand for new stories; so, like Doyle, LeBlanc would eventually try to kill off his character and yet, like Doyle, find that when a character reaches a certain level of popularity, the author no longer has complete say on whether they stay killed. Nonetheless, LeBlanc seems to have reconciled to this more easily than Doyle, buying a house and calling it "Clos Lupin". He lived his last years as World War II began to ramp up, leaving Clos Lupin out of worries of German invasion, and died of pneumonia in 1941.

I've previously done all the Sherlock Holmes stories for the Fortnightly Book, and I have wanted to do all the Lupin stories as well. I read the first one, I think, a very long time ago, and a few years ago, I listened to several of them on audiobook, and ever since they have been on the list, and I have had the box set of the first ten sitting on my to-do pile, and I have just not gotten around to them. So let's start remedying that; the next Fortnightly Book is Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar, the collection of nine short stories that started the character's career.

A Poem Draft and a Poem Re-Draft

 Carcosa

Carcosa, city sorrow-tossed,
the glory once and always lost,
in dreadful gray and dying dusk
sends up half-towers like a husk,

and here, where elsewhere gardens grow,
the trees are rotting with a glow
like ghostly phantoms dripping fear;
the grave alone can blossom here.

And all the graves there ever be
Carcossa holds like waves on sea,
including yours, which sadly states
your name and those two burning dates,

and no one walks here save the mad,
in rhythms echoing and sad,
and those who come here fade like frost,
all but these tombstones ever-lost,

for in Carcosa, far away,
and yet too near, the sunsets stay,
and time without a future sighs,
reflecting on the past that dies.

Extreme Unction 

Reminiscent,
as with some ancient memory,
but of what is above as well as what is behind,
a recollection of serenity,
too often lost,
yet always there,
descends with soothing scent,
a holy and confirming scent;
the flesh pants like a hart,
yearning for living water,
yearning to love,
with kiss on crucifix.
The heart is sick in God's presence,
sickness a distance from God,
a distance as upon a cross,
an aching distance,
a burning gap,
a purifying as if by fire.
Upon the head which knows,
upon the hands which do,
upon the body and its means,
the Spirit is given,
the oil is given,
and like the penitent thief,
stealing into paradise,
the soul shares the Passion
(its mortality the Passion),
and the spirit overflows,
redounding in splendid glory,
that the body be made
sign of its own resurrection,
the beginning of resurrection.