THE COLLECTED POEMS OF COUNT S.E. STENBOCK: LOVE, SLEEP & DREAMS / MYRTLE, RUE AND CYPRESS / THE SHADOW OF DEATH

by Count Stenbock

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

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

[John Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Count Erin Stenbock (12 March [O.S. 29 February) is one of the pale faces of Symbolist poetry, devoid of the fancy of a Maeterlinck or the playfulness of a pataphysician/symbolist-manque like Jarry. His inability to transcend his thirst for revelry and oblivion are given a beautiful turn in all three of the volumes contained herein: "Love, Sleep and Dreams", "Myrtle, Rue and Cypress", and "The Shadow of Death". Not included is Stenbock's "Studies of Death". Some of these poems have the ease of a daydream, others the casual desperation of a singularly conflicted and vice ridden man.

REQUIEM

RETHREN! I pray you of your charity
To pray for one who is not dead, but lives.
That God among the many gifts He gives,
May give some little gift to such as he—

Who is not dead, nor sleeping, but awake
That He might give some slight surcease of pain
To one who cannot render you again
Your spiritual alms for Jesus’ sake.

One drop of water just to cool his tongue
Ye that are old and seem too full of woe,
Because ’tis nearly time for you to go,
Oh pray for one who is not old but young.

But children mostly, ye that
have the light Of heaven
still upon your faces fair:

Oh pray for one who most may need your prayer,
Because your angels stand within God’s sight."

Though his prose work is better and reflects the more unconventional skill he possessed, these poems represent a too often ignored style of poetry which transmutes the dimmer thoughts we have during a fever or flu. Hardly over stylized or falsely hyped by his mystery, he is one of the greatest of his time.

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a poetry kind of guy, but I'm interested in this Stenbock chap, so I gave this a read. Fairly mopey stuff to be honest. Still though, very satisying to see a collection like this being published.