If you love Gracq, get this. Working through his wartime traumas in Surrealist prose poems. A very intense glimpse of his artistry in transition, a foIf you love Gracq, get this. Working through his wartime traumas in Surrealist prose poems. A very intense glimpse of his artistry in transition, a foundation of imagery for The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. What a writer! And Wakefield Press - they bring the really good stuff....more
I like that Schwob applies dread with a very light touch, and that his speakers - almost all are out of their minds, or rather profoundly withdrawn inI like that Schwob applies dread with a very light touch, and that his speakers - almost all are out of their minds, or rather profoundly withdrawn into them - tell their tales with such beautiful clarity. It’s all very spooky. What’s also really effective is that the hermits, lepers and mendicants whose paths cross that of the seven thousand children marching in a betranced pilgrimage to annihilation, are themselves absolutely delirious with loneliness, suffering, or sanctity, and no less eloquent. The book is an atmosphere of quiet frenzy, of deliberate dreaming, in which only the powerless Pope seems worried, and the only people willing to intervene are the shipowners and slave traders who “end the madness” by making it serve their own.
They told us we would meet ogres and werewolves in the woods. Those were lies. No one has scared us; no one has hurt us. The lonely and the sick come out to watch us, and old women light lamps for us. They ring church bells for us. Peasants rise from their furrows to observe us. The beasts, too, watch us and never flee. And ever since we have been walking, the sun has grown hotter, and we no longer gather the same flowers. But all stems can be tressed in like form, and our crosses are always fresh. And we feel a great hope. And soon we shall see the blue sea. And at the end of the blue sea stands Jerusalem. And the Lord will let all the little children come to his tomb. And the white voices will be joyful in the night....more
I found this slightly less absorbing than Andriesse’s first volume, because Napoleon bores me and I prefer Chateaubriand the poet to the political memI found this slightly less absorbing than Andriesse’s first volume, because Napoleon bores me and I prefer Chateaubriand the poet to the political memoirist, however endowed he was in that role with aphoristic glamour and a ringside seat. So, I really enjoyed the last chapters, when the full-throated bard I love joins the politician in scorning the exhumation and return of Napoleon’s remains. The story was artistically complete at St Helena, he insists,
Lord Byron believed that the dictator of kings had abdicated his fame along with his sword and that he would die forgotten. The poet should have known Napoleon’s destiny was a Muse, like all lofty Destinies. This Muse was able to change an abortive conclusion into a tragedy that gave her hero new life. The solitude of Napoleon’s exile and tomb has added another layer of prestige to his brilliant memory. Alexander did not die under the eyes of the Greeks; he vanished into the faraway beauties of Babylon. Bonaparte did not die under the eyes of the French; he disappeared into the sumptuous horizons of the torrid zones. He sleeps like a hermit or a pariah in a valley, at the end of a deserted trail. The grandeur of the silence that presses in upon him is equal to the immensity of the noise that surrounded him. The nations are absent, their crowds gone.
A characteristic passage. Muse, Hero. Chateaubriand is imbued with the epics, especially Virgil, Aristo, and Milton, whom he translated. He continues: “The transit of Napoleon’s remains is an offense against fame. No sepulchre in Paris will ever be as good as the Slane Valley.” (When I recall the pseudo-antique biographical frieze around the base, I have to agree.) The reburial is also a political mistake, for “Napoleon’s bones will not reproduce his genius, they will teach his despotism to mediocre soldiers.” Ulysses Grant understood that and, visiting Paris after the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War, echoed Chateaubriand when he refused to enter Les Invalides, telling a reporter that the Bonapartes were vainglorious adventurers who had bled and abused France, and he would not pay them homage. Grant, like all West Pointers of his generation, knew Napoleon’s victorious campaigns down to the details; but as a republican and a statesman, he could not but deplore almost everything else.
Andriesse made an inspired choice of Julian Gracq for the Afterword. Gracq’s essay is of course brilliant; but I don't think Gracq fully understood Chateaubriand’s relationship with Napoleon.
The life of Napoleon is enshrined in the middle of his book not, as people spitefully say, to suggest a parallel but rather, I think, as his talisman. God knows he was aware of his powers, but he was also aware of his luck; he knew how much uniqueness the time in which he lived had added to his genius; he looked at mankind and the world from Bonaparte’s shoulders. Hence that unquestionable but hard-to-grasp prestige, that indescribable something that isolates him from all the romantics, a sort of intimate contact - a prestige in which his social and political career hardly signify but in which literature isn’t everything either. Whereas Benjamin Constant, who had much more to do with Bonaparte, derived from that no increased prestige, Chateaubriand, on almost every page, catches a glint of the Imperial sun. His genius sufficed to set him apart from his own generation, but thinking that perhaps he’d be submerged in those to follow, he knew he would be seen more clearly, and for a longer time, hoisted around Napoleon’s neck.
I think it’s obvious that “literature” was, for Chateaubriand and for Napoleon, indeed “everything,” the source of prestige. Chateaubriand’s opposition mattered because of his spiritual authority as a poet. I think Chateaubriand did view Napoleon as a parallel power, rightly; an epic rival who had been able to arrogate part of France - its military “glory,” to which Chateaubriand was sensitive as a patriot and former soldier - but who had still to dispute with Catholicism, Legitimacy, and Republican Liberty as poetically enshrined for the French public in Chateaubriand’s books. Gracq reveals himself, in the Afterword, when he says that Russia’s poets did not summon a response to the consequences of their Revolution until…Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago (1957) !!! Gracq might have understood Chateaubriand’s stance a little better if he had known of Mandelstam or Akhmatova - his essay dates from 1960 - among other Russian poets who long before Zhivago challenged their tyrants and torturers and produced their own versions of “this voice suffering from heavy losses of blood, this pallor on the brow, these dead-leaf quaverings, this accent of chill, erratic, autumnal religiosity” that we find on every page of Chateaubriand....more
Desolation Island’s long arc of calamity and humiliation continues here, with a fire at sea, an open boat, and rescue by HMS Java, just in time for thDesolation Island’s long arc of calamity and humiliation continues here, with a fire at sea, an open boat, and rescue by HMS Java, just in time for that ship’s historic ass-whipping at the hands of USS Constitution. What follows is so intricately dire that I felt relief at their deliverance, expected as it was. And they’re not home yet - though home is never more than a respite, for these two....more
[Legrandin] was one of those men who, quite apart from a career in science in which they have been so brilliantly successful, possess an entirely diff[Legrandin] was one of those men who, quite apart from a career in science in which they have been so brilliantly successful, possess an entirely different culture, one that is literary, artistic, which their professional specialization does not make use of...[those men] imagine that the life they are leading is not the one that really suits them and they bring to their actual occupations either an indifference mingled with whimsy, or an application that is sustained and haughty, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.
Griboyedov, officially a diplomat, privately the author of the unpublished masterpiece Woe from Wit, moves through Tynyanov's novel in the sequence of Proust's description - indifferent and whimsical in the listless bureaus of Petersburg, he's haughty and scornful once he reaches Tehran, where he applies the harshest terms of the Treaty of Turkmenchay - the release of Christian captives from the Shah’s and other harems - with a sustained conscientiousness that offends elites and provokes the canaille to jihad.
It is trite to praise a historical novel for its “grand” or “epic” “sweep” – but I’ll use those clichés here. Following Griboyedov's fateful journey, you read a bitter Petersburg tale (nothing spectral like "The Bronze Horseman" or “The Queen of Spades” or “The Overcoat,” but still frightful, a monologue of regret and resentment, muttered over a wasted life); a tremendous evocation of Georgia, festive and sensuous, like an early Stravinsky score; then Tehran, hot, tense, with Shia penitents slashing themselves in mourning of Muharram, and desperate Russian deserters scheming the chaos by which they hope to evade repatriation....more
Benjamin’s constant quotation of Valéry and Proust, far more lucid and pungent critics of Baudelaire than he, made for an ambivalent reading experiencBenjamin’s constant quotation of Valéry and Proust, far more lucid and pungent critics of Baudelaire than he, made for an ambivalent reading experience. Still, his ponderousness has many charms. ...more
Not that I had tired of Maturin as a too-perfect savant, incredibly wise, subtle, and generous – physician among floggers, philosopher among the cantiNot that I had tired of Maturin as a too-perfect savant, incredibly wise, subtle, and generous – physician among floggers, philosopher among the canting, counselor-critic to confused lovers - but I thought it was about time he did something human, all too human, something stupid like killing a man over a woman who’s all wrong for him. He cornered her married sugar daddy, provoked him to insult, and shot him down in a duel. (Poor Canning, I liked him, and I wonder if, as the series stretched on, O’Brian regretted killing off such an interesting character so early. I’m convinced that Maturin descends, on his Spanish mother’s side, from sage and stealthy conversos, which might have given them much to discuss.) Does this form a pattern – does Maturin shoot it out with all rivals for Diana Villiers? Her latest lover is an American planter, a type touchy in matters of honor. Could happen. Reading Post Captain, the previous novel, I wondered at the apparent contrast of Maturin and my other favorite historical-fictional character, set down in the same period - Conan Doyle’s endearingly vain and boastful Brigadier Gerard of the Hussars of Conflans, exemplar of the furia francese in a First Empire style, the thickest head and the stoutest heart in all La Grande Armée. Turns out they aren’t so different. Maturin may sound in my head like Michael Gambon reading the letters of Henry James, but he’s still “a man of blood,” as the Marine lieutenant Macdonald observed after a practice bout. Blood and folly. Anyway, this is a fun series. The prose is a tight texture of jokes, jargon, raillery, commands, and aphorisms in small sapiential gardens....more
Contrary to the jacket flap summary, this isn’t a boys boarding school novel, thank god. The school is just a convenient mustering point, from which tContrary to the jacket flap summary, this isn’t a boys boarding school novel, thank god. The school is just a convenient mustering point, from which the serial narrators follow each other back to the traumas of Occupied Paris, and to even murkier places. It’s as much about the parents as the boys. Very elegant and spooky. Tragedies just out of frame. Few fathers, and stylish, though benumbed mothers. Grandeur “with a whiff of ruin.” Mood-mates: Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and Maxwell’s The Chateau....more