Amore Dure - Passages From the Diary of Spiridion Trepka: With a Dedication by Amy Levy

By Vernon Lee and Amy Levy

“Amore Dure - Passages From the Diary of Spiridion Trepka” is an 1890 novel by Vernon Lee. Presented as the excerpts from the diary of one Spiridion Trepka, the novel recounts his journey to Urbanica in order to research renaissance Italy. However, a meeting with mysterious femme fatale Medea da Carpi threatens to lead him down a macabre path. A classic ghost story by a master of the genre not to be missed by fans and collectors of supernatural fiction. Violet Paget (1856–1935), also known under the pseudonym Vernon Lee, was a French-born British writer famous for her supernatural fiction and contributions to the field of aesthetics. She also wrote more than a dozen books on a variety of subjects ranging from music to travel, and today she is best remembered for her original ideas and amusing use of irony. Other notable works by this author include: “The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet Show in Narrative” (1883), “The Countess of Albany” (1884), and “Miss Brown” (1884). Fantasy and Horror Classics is proudly republishing this classic novel now in a new edition complete with a dedication by Amy Levy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fantasy and Horror Classics
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528791427

Vernon Lee

Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was the pen name of Violet Paget, a British author of supernatural fiction. Born in France to British expatriate parents, Paget spent most of her life in continental Europe. A committed feminist and pacifist, she joined the Union of Democratic Control during the First World War to express her opposition to British militarism. A lesbian, Paget had relationships with Mary Robinson, Amy Levy, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson throughout her life. Paget, a dedicated follower of Walter Pater’s Aesthetic movement, lived for many years in Florence, where she gained a reputation as a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance. In addition to her work in art history, Paget was a leading writer of short fiction featuring supernatural figures and themes. Among her best known works are Hauntings (1890), a collection of four chilling tales, and “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” a story which appeared in an 1895 issue of The Yellow Book, a controversial periodical that featured the works of Aubrey Beardsley, George Gissing, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. Although Paget was largely forgotten by the mid-twentieth century, feminist scholars have rekindled attention in her pioneering work as a leading proponent of Aestheticism.

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AMORE DURE

PASSAGES FROM THE

DIARY OF SPIRIDION TREPKA

By

VERNON LEE

WITH A DEDICATION

BY AMY LEVY

First published in 1890

Copyright © 2020 Fantasy and Horror Classics

This edition is published by Fantasy and Horror Classics,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

Vernon Lee

TO VERNON LEE

By Amy Levy

PART I

PART II

Vernon Lee

Violet Paget—who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Vernon Lee’—was born at Château St Leonard, Boulogne, France in 1856.

She spent most of her life in Continental Europe, although she published most of her work in Britain, and made many trips to London.

Lee’s literary output was hugely varied; covering nearly forty volumes, it ranged from music criticism and travelogues to novels and academic essays.

Her first major work was Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880), and at her peak she was considered a major authority on the Italian Renaissance. She also contributed much to the philosophical study of aesthetics. However, she is probably best-remembered for her supernatural short fiction, most notably her 1890 collection Hauntings.

Lee died in 1935.

TO VERNON LEE

By Amy Levy

ON Bellosguardo, when the year was young,

We wandered, seeking for the daffodil

And dark anemone, whose purples fill

The peasant’s plot, between the corn-shoots sprung.

Over the grey, low wall the olive flung

Her deeper greyness; far off, hill on hill

Sloped to the sky, which, pearly-pale and still,

Above the large and luminous landscape hung.

A snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach;

You broke a branch and gave it to me there;

I found for you a scarlet blossom rare.

Thereby ran on of Art and Life our speech;

And of the gifts the gods had given to each—

Hope unto you, and unto me Despair.

AMOUR DURE

PASSAGES FROM THE

DIARY OF SPIRIDION TREPKA

PART I

Urbania, August 20th, 1885.

I had longed, these years and years, to be in Italy, to come face to face with the Past; and was this Italy, was this the Past? I could have cried, yes cried, for disappointment when I first wandered about Rome, with an invitation to dine at the German Embassy in my pocket, and three or four Berlin and Munich Vandals at my heels, telling me where the best beer and sauerkraut could be had, and what the last article by Grimm or Mommsen was about.

Is this folly? Is it falsehood? Am I not myself a product of modern, northern civilization; is not my coming to Italy due to this very modern scientific vandalism, which has given me a traveling scholarship because I have written a book like all those other atrocious books of erudition and art-criticism? Nay, am I not here at Urbania on the express understanding that, in a certain number of months, I shall produce just another such book? Dost thou imagine, thou miserable Spiridion, thou Pole grown into the semblance of a German pedant, doctor of philosophy, professor even, author of a prize essay on the despots of the fifteenth century, dost thou imagine that thou, with thy ministerial letters and proof-sheets in thy black professorial coat-pocket, canst ever come in spirit into the presence of the Past?

Too true, alas! But let me forget it, at least, every now and then; as I forgot it this afternoon, while the white bullocks dragged my gig slowly winding along interminable valleys, crawling along interminable hill-sides, with the invisible droning torrent far below, and only the bare grey and reddish peaks all around, up to this town of Urbania, forgotten of mankind, towered and battlemented on the high Apennine ridge. Sigillo, Penna, Fossombrone, Mercatello, Montemurlo—each single village name, as the driver pointed it out, brought to my mind the recollection of some battle or some great act of treachery of former days. And as the