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OPTION 2: A Bornsteinian Consideration of Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
(1890)
Marie Corelli’s Wormwood (1890) contains elements associated with ‘highbrow’ art, such as
decadent themes and poetic prose, and popular elements, such as romantic, melodramatic plot
lines. Victoria Stewart describes Corelli as a middlebrow ‘proto-best seller’ novelist, associated
with neither ‘high modernism [n]or genre fiction’.1 Wormwood’s popularity may be attributed
to its ambiguous status between ‘high’ and ‘low’. Methuen’s 1921 publication of the novel
establishes the text as ‘middlebrow’ by reflecting this popularity, presenting it as disposable
and emphasising its best seller status, whilst also including ‘highbrow’ elements. Contrastingly,
Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse include text from Wormwood in their industrial
music album Absinthe – La Folie Verte (2002), transforming it into an obscure musical form.
These representations of Wormwood reflect the contexts they were created in, because the
Methuen novel emphasises the contemporary fin-de-siècle popularity of the text, while Blood
Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse reinvent Corelli as a great decadent poet, using her text to
create specialist, collectable art within the industrial music genre, borne of the digital age. In
the different contexts Wormwood is transformed from popular versions into transgressive
material to be appreciated by an elite.
Methuen’s 1921 edition of Wormwood is a generic version of a popular text geared
towards a ‘middlebrow’ audience. It is a 23rd edition, reflecting the longstanding popularity of
the text, because it has been republished many times since its original publication. It has been
printed cheaply, on thin paper which is roughly cut (Figure 1), reflecting the disposable quality
of the edition. It bears the standardised series cover (Figures 2 and 3) for ‘Methuen’s Two-
1 Stewart, Victoria, ‘The Woman Writer in Mid-Twentieth Century Middlebrow Fiction:
Conceptualizing Creativity’, in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol.35:1 (October 2011), pp.
21-36, p. 22.
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Shilling Library: Cheap Editions of many of the most Popular Novels of the day’ (Figure 4), a
series that included other writers typically considered ‘middlebrow’, such as H.G. Wells
(Figure 5), emphasising the generic nature of the edition, not warranting its own specialised
cover. This grounds the text as accessible in terms of cost and content; it is not a precious article
which would mark the reader out as cultured. The inside page lists ‘Marie Corelli’s Romances’
(Figure 6) establishing Wormwood as a romance novel, foregrounding the popular adventure,
fantasy, and sensational plots over the decadent endorsement of absinthe. While ‘middlebrow’
art often contains popular elements, another characteristic is attempts at ‘highbrow’ art. The
second page bears an epigraph in French (Figure 7) assuming a bi/multi-lingual reader.
However, it foregrounds the tragedy of the absinthe plot patriotically, labelling absintheurs as
‘braggarts of vice which are the shame and despair of their country’, rather than glamorising it
like decadent poetry. The next page bears a quote from Revelation about wormwood (Figure
8), and a translation into French. The biblical reference highlights the popular, moralistic
meaning, framing the text within a Christian understanding of value, and the archaic font is an
excessive attempt to ground the text in historic importance. This edition of Wormwood is
represented in its generic, popular form, foregrounding the popular aspects of the text which
gained it its best seller status.
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Figure 1: Cheap, thin paper which is not cut neatly/properly.
Figure 2: Three examples of Corelli texts published as part of Methuen’s Two-Shilling
Library with a standardised cover: The Sorrows of Satan (1920), God’s Good Man: A Simple
Love Story (1922) and Thelma: A Norwegian Princess (1921).
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Figure 3: Wormwood (1921) as part of Methuen’s Two-Shilling Library with a standardised
cover.
Figure 4: Corelli in Methuen’s Two-Shilling Library.
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Figure 5: Corelli appearing in Methuen’s Two-Shilling Novels series with other
‘middlebrow’ authors, such as H. G. Wells.
Figure 6: List of ‘Marie Corelli’s Romances’ in the front page of the book.
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Figure 7: Epigraph in French.
Figure 8: Quote from Revelations about wormwood, with a translation into French, in
Gothic/medieval font.
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Contrastingly, Absinthe - La Folie Verte uses Wormwood’s ‘highbrow’ elements,
recreating the text within the intentionally obscure form of industrial music. Industrial music
is a subcultural genre, consisting of marginal aspects, such as transgressive lyrics and white
noise, making it inaccessible to the masses and creating a specialist audience. The song
‘Symphonie verte’, for example, consists entirely of white noise and synthesised organ music,
with no lyrics or melody. In the age of digitisation, during an acute overall sense of modernity,
as the rise of inventions such as the internet irreversibly change the way people interact with
the world, industrial music uses technology to reject traditional musical conventions, setting
apart an elite audience who understand its subversive significance. S. Alexander Reed explains
that the main function of industrial music is ‘affirming or suggesting identity traits […] to
listeners […] like “cool”, “misunderstood”, “cultured”’.2 Absinthe - La Folie Verte is a
collaborative project between Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse. Justin Massa
discusses Blood Axis as part of the racist skinhead subcultural movement, explaining how they
use their music to ‘push the cultural envelope, using the cultural trappings of hatred’, creating
‘“experimental” or “noise”’ music, existing in a marginal space in the music scene.3 Les
Joyaux De La Princesse are a little known band, whose music is usually released in small
numbers, alongside physical, intricate album art – itself becoming rarer in the digital age – as
collector's items to its intentionally elite audience. The record label which released Absinthe -
La Folie Verte, Athanor, reemphasises the niche market of the album, being a small
independent label mainly releasing music with dark, anti-Christian themes, contrasting against
Methuen’s conventional Christian framework. Both bands create intentionally enigmatic
2 S. Alexander Reed, Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2013), p. 14. 3Justin Massa, ‘Turning Down the Sounds of HATE: Young People Stand up Against White
Power Music’, in Fellowship, Volume 67 (Apr 30, 2001), p 14.
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music, attracting small audiences, and elevate Wormwood in their use of its text to an elitist
form.
Absinthe - La Folie Verte places Corelli alongside Ernest Dowson and Charles Gros
(Figure 9), recreating her as a decadent poet, rather than a ‘middlebrow’ romantic fiction writer.
Blood Axis frequently use ‘highbrow’ modernist literature in their music, contributing to their
exclusionary audience attraction, assuming their listeners have knowledge of modernist literary
forms; for example, they use a recording of Ezra Pound reading from his Cantos in their song
‘The Voyage (Canto I)’ (1996). Their adoption of Corelli elevates her to a higher literary status
as Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse make no distinction between her and other
‘highbrow’ poets. Transforming Corelli’s text into lyrics brings it closer to poetry, as an oral
performance, with the ability to use tempo, emphasis and sound, rather than simple narrative.
The bands select sections of the novel which concentrate on decadent themes, omitting any
popular elements, such as romantic, melodramatic plot lines. For example, in the song ‘Venus
& Cupid’, they use text from the artist Gessonex’s speech to Gaston in Chapter 12, before
Gaston tastes absinthe for the first time. The adaptation of the decadent artist’s speech, into a
monologue accompanied by music, emphasises the ‘highbrow’ artistic elements of the text.
The first 70 seconds of the song consist of a man repeatedly singing the same line of opera
music, overlaid by a repeated riff of tinkling bells. The monologue starts simultaneously with
synthesised organ music, devoid of melody, obscuring the words so that they are barely audible.
The last 100 seconds of the song consist of white noise, intermittently overlaid by accordion
music. Selecting a speech performed by Wormwood’s figure of the artist, presenting it
independently from its original narrative function, and framing it amongst disorientating,
unconventional music, shapes the text for a more obscure, exclusive audience.
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Figure 9: Text from Corelli’s Wormwood placed amongst decadent poetry in the liner notes
of the album.
The endorsement of absinthe was a suitable theme for Corelli’s contemporary decadent
poets, as a transgressive, anti-religion, and therefore ‘highbrow’, topic. Industrial music’s
similar aims make decadent pro-absinthe poetry an attractive form, and the inclusion of text
from Wormwood, amongst the glamorising album artwork, reimagines popular Corelli as a
‘highbrow’ decadent. The album artwork foregrounds Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la
Princesse’s project as a homage to absinthe, combining various absinthe related materials, such
as advertisements and anti-absinthe propaganda. This use of ‘lowbrow’ art is a common
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‘highbrow’ technique, creating the everyday as unique and collectable.4 Furthermore, the use
of ‘lowbrow’ material which is now archival, lends a stylish, postmodern quality that elevates
the album’s cultural status. The intricate artwork, and unique amalgamation of historical
materials, makes the physical album attractive to collectors. This aesthetic appeal is intensified
as the album had limited release, making it rare. The front of the digipack (Figure 10) – itself
a rare, frail and therefore precious, form of CD packaging – depicts a decadently dressed
woman enjoying a glass of absinthe. The woman is depicted as sexually attractive, sitting in a
provocative position, with her back arched and face turned upwards, in exaggerated colours
with bright orange hair, and pale white skin. This image of pleasure and beauty is framed by a
golden border, creating it as a piece of art and spectacle. Therefore, the physical embodiment
of the music foregrounds decadent endorsement of absinthe, highlighting Wormwood’s
‘highbrow’ characteristics.
4 This relationship between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’, as a rejection of the ‘middlebrow’, is
set up by Virginia Woolf in her writing on the ‘middlebrow’ – Virginia Woolf,
‘Middlebrow’, Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1966). We can
assume, from Blood Axis’s knowledge of other modernists, such as Ezra Pound, that they
may have been aware of such critical prescription when creating their ‘highbrow’ art.
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Figure 10: The front of the digipack.
Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse take a historically popular text and recreate
it for their industrial, elitist purposes. They appeal to a small audience, giving their work
specialist status by elevating the ‘highbrow’ characteristics of Wormwood to promote absinthe,
and anti-Christian messages, in contrast to Methuen’s biblical reference which highlights the
text’s didacticism. While Methuen’s 1921 edition of the text emphasises its popularity, as an
accessible and disposable novel to be enjoyed by the masses, Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la
Princesse targets, and validates their audience as “cool”, “misunderstood” and “cultured”.
Word count: 1571
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I hereby certify that this submission is wholly my own work, and that all quotations from
primary or secondary sources have been acknowledged. I have read the section on Plagiarism
in the School Style Guide / my Stage & Degree Manual and understand that plagiarism and
other unacknowledged debts will be penalised and may lead to failure in the whole examination
or degree.
Bibliography
Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse, Absinthe – La Folie Verte (France, Athanor, 2002)
Corelli, Marie, Wormwood (London: Methuen, 1921)
Massa, Justin, ‘Turning Down the Sounds of HATE: Young People Stand up Against White
Power Music’, in Fellowship, Volume 67 (Apr 30, 2001)
Reed, S. Alexander, Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2013)
Stewart, Victoria, ‘The Woman Writer in Mid-Twentieth Century Middlebrow Fiction:
Conceptualizing Creativity’, in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol.35:1 (October 2011), 21-36
Woolf, Virginia, ‘Middlebrow’, Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press,
1966)