The Opium Gates

Mayer André Marcel Schwob was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 23rd August 1867 into a cultivated Jewish family. As a child he devoured the works of Poe and Stevenson in French and then again in English. His attachment to the bizarre and dark was already forming.His education at the Lycée of Nantes earned him the 1st Prize for Excellence. In 1881, he was in Paris with his maternal uncle to study at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Schwob quickly developed his multilingual abilities and then studied philology and Sanscrit at the École pratique des hautes études before completing his military service in Vannes with the artillery.After completing a Bachelor of Arts in 1888 he became a professional journalist and worked for the Phare de la Loire, the Événement and L'Écho de Paris.The 1890’s marked his establishment as a brilliant writer with the publication of six short story collections. He fell ill in 1896 with a chronic, incurable intestinal disorder. He also suffered recurring bouts of influenza and pneumonia. Intestinal surgery was given several times, at first with success but, by 1900, after two more surgeries, he was told that nothing more could be done for him. Schwob now existed on kefir and fermented milk.By the turn of the century, despite failing health, and often too ill to write, he embarked on several long travels, including to Vailima in the South Pacific where his literary hero Stevenson had died. Schwob was regarded as a symbolist writer and a ‘precursor of Surrealism’. He wrote over a hundred short stories, journalistic articles, essays, biographies, literary reviews and analysis, translations and plays. Marcel Schwob died on 26th February 1905 of Pneumonia. He was 37.