Susan Sontag\u27s The Volcano Lover (1992) is a fiction about Chimera, narrated in Chimera-like form and style. Chimera is a symbol of volcano and the term signifies multiplicity and hybridity, as it is described in the Greek mythology as a gybrid blaze-breathing monster compound of a lion, a goat and a serpent. Relevance of the term Chimera to The Volcano Lover lies in the multiple nature of its subject, form, and style of the narrative, which is many-faced, many-side, and many-voiced at the same time. The subject of the work is "the trio" or the notorious menage a trois of the English envoy Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma, and Admiral Horatio Nelson under the effects of the French Revolutionary Wars in Naples and Europe. The form of the work is designated as "a romance," which is indicated in its subtitle. As highly imaginative genre of fiction in the Hawthornesque tradition, the label romance separates the work from an ordinary realism- bound novel. It also points to the passions of Sir Hamilton as a connoisseur, collector and volcanologist, to be followed by his romance with Emma, as she becomes the embodiment of beauty he has adored in art and Mt.Vesuvius. The composite style of thenarrative is mostly predicted in the Prologue, with its proximity of the past and the present, smooth shift among personal pronouns, permeation of the represented speech and juxtaposition of the inserted observations, intellectual speculations and encyclopedic details of incidents, along with the story of the trio. Such Chimera-like qualities in the subject, form and style of the narrative make The Volcano Lover a piece of fiction where moral values are kept open to readers
