The Virgin of the Seven Daggers
Vernon Lee: Unsere Liebe Frau der Sieben Dolche/ The Virgin of the Seven Daggers (Paperback, 2017, Calambac Verlag)
Paperback, 120 pages
Published Jan. 28, 2017 by Calambac Verlag.
Don Juan Gusmán del Pulgar, Count of Miramor, has made a pact with the Virgin of the Seven Daggers, also called Our Lady of Sorrows. He promises to proclaim forever her supreme beauty and asks that in return she save him from damnation. Emboldened by the deal and driven by insatiable greed, he embarks on one final necromantic and obscure escapade to an enchanted palace beneath the Alhambra, where he seeks to attain a hidden treasure and a long dead Moorish princess.
A collection of stories in the realm of the fantastic. Lee was a master of diversely sumptuous prose styles, though her pacing might be too leisurely for today’s taste. She had a sharp sense of irony, and a vivid and twisted imagination. The orientalism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, all common in her time, spoil parts of these stories now.
