The Solar Circus

Gustave Kahn’s novel "The Sunny Circus" (1899) is a lost pearl of French symbolism. Lorelei with golden hair from Heinrich Heine’s poem is tired of sitting on the rock where the boats of the sailors she enchanted wrecked. She sets out to conquer cities in the image of a star of a wandering circus. The novel tightly interweaves motifs of medieval legends and the poetry of symbolism, and the images of a beautiful lady and the decadent femme fatale merge into a love song by a troubadour—the bohemian count Franz.

Gustave Kahn (1859–1936) was a French symbolist poet, art critic, and literary scholar. He belonged to a literary circle close to Mallarmé and was known as the editor of the symbolist journal La Vogue (1896–1900). "The Sunny Circus" is published in Russian for the first time in a translation by Olga Panayottti.