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Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé

1848-1910

This 19th-century French author served as a diplomat in Russia for five years and married an aristocratic Russian lady. He has a lengthy bibliography of novels and essays and is known for introducing famous Russian authors to French readers and authors.

“Joseph Olenin’s Coat” will surely intrigue readers with its prose style reminiscent of the Realistic era and such authors as Honoré de Balzac. The story itself recalls Nikolai Gogol’s “Shinel’” (1842; The Overcoat).

Vogüé’s story is quite comic: Joseph Olenin receives a woman’s coat in a mistaken exchange. He develops a fetish for the coat and begins to stuff it with pillows when he’s not wearing it himself. Returning the coat to its owner and accepting his own in return engenders a comedy of manners and reveals psychological problems worthy of the attention of Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé’s bio sketch can be found here.

The story is translated from the French, Le Manteau de Joseph Olenine, by Patricia Worth.