THE FANTOMAS PHENOMENON: THE FRENCH ELITE BELLE EPOCH AND ITS LITERARY CHOICE
The success of the novels by P.Sylvester and M. Allen about Fantomas is not only a literary but a social phenomenon. When the novels were published in France at the beginning of the 20 <sup>th</sup> century they became very popular among the French intellectuals. Writers and painters would collect the series (around 30 novels were published) and followed the adventures of the main characters with great enthusiasm. It is interesting to dwell on the reasons for the novels written in primitive language, full of inadequacies of different kind, so weak from the literal point of view, to become so popular among people who were really intelligent, and had very good taste. The French poets Appoliner and M. Jacob created the Society of Fantomas Friends, famous intellectuals like B.Sandrar, J.Cocteau, P.Valerie started to publish monthly bulletins. G. Appoliner wrote that « Novels about Fanomas <…> at present are very popular in the literary and artistic milieu. They are full of imagination, written in a terrible way, but very picturesque. <…> Such precise descriptions! Regarding the contemporary scene, they are a magnificent source of documentary chronicles (16 July 1914). Surrealists were also attracted by the novels and thought that the main character was really their hero. They also appreciated the fact that the novels were not written but transcribed, that is, they were the result of a constant flow of imagination, a method which served as a forerunner of the automatic writing. The Fantomas character was in all senses a contemporary one who used scientific methods and insanity machine for his crimes There is another reason for this genre of the Gothic novel to become so popular in France. The series about Fantomas might have been treated as a parody of the Gothic novel (the atmosphere of horror, numerous descriptions of strange mechanisms). Moreover, the cult of Fantomas might have been inspired by the films by L.Feyad (shot in the times of silent films) which brought a poetic and lyrical touch into the novels and made the characters more romantic.