Commonplace Book

'The naive painters are finished, done with. There is no longer a painter so ingenuous that he is unacquainted with the tricks of the naive trade. But by way of compensation we have naive collectors. Those who buy everything. It is well known that these collectors, for the most part people concerned with investing capital, are not content with the lesser figures, they want the best signatures, the best periods of such and such an artist. And they buy a little of everything, to make up for one painter's decline with the rise of another. In his pamphlet on Belgium, Baudelaire said: "Here, when they talk about prices, they believe they are talking about painting." Today the whole world is a Belgium, and Italy the worst. "What do you think of my Ottone Rosai?" my host asks me with a smug expression. And I don't know what to reply. He doesn't know that Ottone Rosai painted three thousand pictures, of which four thousand are in Rome.'

from a note in the 1969-1972 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Commonplace Book

'...There was here a rhythm which no flurry could disturb. The seasons ordained, and men lived close up against the rulings so prescribed, close up against the austere laws, at once the masters and the subjects of the land that served them and that they as loyally served. Chase perceived his mistake; he perceived it with surprise and a certain reverence. Because the laws were unalterable they were not necessarily stagnant. They were of a solemn order, not arbitrarily framed or admitting of variation according to the caprice of mankind. In the place of stagnation, he recognized stability...'

from The Heir by V. Sackville-West (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'"There is no denying," said Mark, "that the experience of one's married friends points to the conclusion that Purgatory is only Paradise in excess."'

from Place and Power by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Book II, Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'...There is a current idea that when men or women give up all for the sake of conscience, they are respectively warmed and cheered by the flames of their sacrifice and the light of their haloes; but experience teaches that this is rarely the case. When human beings have put aside their humanity for a moment and allowed the Divinity that is inherent in every man to settle their affairs for them, the humanity which they have temporarily suppressed is apt to take it out of them sooner or later; and in consequence there is considerable reaction, accompanied by no small amount of irritability. As least this is generally the case in modern times; and it is doubtful if even the martyrs of old - between the turns of the thumbscrew - were really pleasant company. In this world people are never all white or all black; we are most of us merely grey, or, at best, shepherd's plaid, so that there are both black and white places in us which come to the front in turn, unless we happen to be women - in which case we are made of a shot material, and so are actually both black and white at one and the same moment.'

from Place and Power by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Book II, Chapter VI)

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (1835)

At last I find out why Gautier has lasted. Anyone reading many or most of his other works would naturally wonder. They are supernaturally-tinted pieces of jewelled exquisitry; worthy, but reasonably light. This is not supernatural at all, and much more substantial, and makes one wonder why this first novel did not dictate the tone of much more of his ouevre. It begins appallingly, suppurating in the amorality of d'Albert's bleared and grisly attitude to love. It appears that Gautier approves. But then he introduces a new angle, that of Madelaine de Maupin herself, and all sorts of renewal results. She's much more of a believer. Their comedy of disguises moves through a variety of stages. She disguises herself as Theodore, in order to see men from the inside and know more surely who is worthy of being her lover. As Theodore, at a country house, she meets d'Albert. He is struck by Theodore, much more than he would like, and worriedly and disgustedly begins to think he may be homosexual. Of course, it's the 'real woman' in Theodore/Madelaine showing through! They become involved in a private performance of As You Like It, where Theodore must play Rosalind, and d'Albert his/her Orlando. Seeing her/him playing Rosalind, d'Albert suspects that he may be 'healthy': Theodore may be a woman after all! After a few more twists and turns, all is revealed as he suspects. Along the way, Theodore has charmed a mutual friend, Rosette, and inspired a passionate devotion in her, all unknowing. The playfulness of this is wrapped in Gautier's luxuriated prose, which can be a little windy. The difficulty of the main proposition that Madelaine would see d'Albert as a better choice than many other men is a major flaw. But this is still fascinating, and this sort of subject matter at this early date is pioneering.

Commonplace Book

'So, the Flaubertian method would have had to be applied by the adapters, not to yesterday's idiocies, but to those being spread about today as unshakeable truths. And in that case we would have had Bouvard and Pecuchet busy testing the truth of mass culture, of the cultural revolution, of liberated eroticism, of scientific delirium, of the collage as novel, of global confrontation, of the theater of the cruel, of total mechanization, of the space race, of the disalienation promised by the political parties, of art as therapy and therapy as art, etc. What a marvelous series of chapters and themes! And what a catalogue of unbearably chic ideas! Everybody do his thing.

For today's truth Flaubert would either have rewritten his novel or forbidden the theatrical adapters to use it. For the simple reason that they don't believe in the improvement and incessant variation of stupidity. Which today is no longer so much bourgeois, rationalistic and Voltairean as it was in the time of the pharmacist Homais, as it is oriented towards the future, full of ideas. Today's idiot is full of ideas.'

from a note in the 1969-1972 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Commonplace Book

'...That which I demanded before all was not physical beauty, it was beauty of the soul, love; but love as I feel it is perhaps not in the human possibilities - and yet it appears to me that I must love thus and that I give more than I exact. What magnificent folly! What sublime prodigality! To deliver yourself entirely without caring anything for self, renouncing the possession of yourself and your freedom of will, placing it in the hands of another, to see no more with your eyes or hear with your ears, being one in two bodies, to melt and mingle your souls in such fashion that you would not know if you were yourself or the other being, now the sun, now the moon, to see all the world created in one being only, displacing the center of life, to be ready at all times for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute abnegation, to suffer in the bosom of the person loved as if it was your own, oh, wonder, to double yourself while giving yourself!..'

from Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (Chapter XV)

A Story of Doom and other poems by Jean Ingelow (1867)

Ingelow's reputation had virtually died even before her death in 1897. She is a classic of mid nineteenth-century poetry. This was her penultimate volume of verse, before abandoning it until later life in favour of fiction. Variety is the key. Much of the longer material here, the love-meditation of Laurance, the deepened Biblical re-telling of A Story of Doom itself, the comic and fantastical Gladys and Her Island, are in blank verse and tend to the tangential, with quite esoteric wandering. Rhymed verse ties her down somehow and the sense is of a tighter vision and more rousing sentiments - Winstanley, right at the end, about the seventeenth century builder of the first Eddystone lighthouse, is the finest example. There is also striking rhymed work in Songs of the Night Watches. Interestingly, at one point here she combines her two modes. Songs with Preludes are fascinating examinations of five states; wedlock, regret, lamentation, dominion and friendship, with broader blank introductions and tapered, concentrated rhymed bodies. In all her moods, and their myriad subjects, she is a thoughtful and rich-hearted poet.

Commonplace Book

'"...it's untried affection that lasts the longest, as the clothes wear the best that you never put on."'

from Place and Power by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Book I, Chapter VII)

A Song and Dance by PJ Kavanagh (1968)

This is to some extent a novel in Eastmancolor. There is a strong sense about it of yellowed sixties-ness. But where other novels with similar takes don't add a lot to that, and feel pretty flat, this one has a whole extra plane brought to it by Kavanagh's beautiful sense of poetic observation. This relatively simple story of a transgressive love affair which very soon reveals itself as a transformative experience for both partners is graced by the author's love of love, mordant and wry explication of life's puzzles, filmic sensibility and light touch. Though Beatrix and Colm's affair is illicit in the sense that it occurs outside her marriage, her honesty with her husband about it is both honourable and empathetic. These are civilised people without being stiffened by it. There are some great subsidiary characters - one in particular, Margaret, the wife of Colm's boss, is a fine study of an unconventional woman of great wisdom. I'm looking forward to seeing if his subsequent three novels can capture more in the way of freshness and immediacy - the slightly crackly soundtrack of this one is its only real failing.

Commonplace Book

'For, in its mythomania, the Crowd today only worships itself. It wants a Hero, but from him asks for a guarantee of absolute mediocrity. Hercules doesn't have to exert himself, nor does he have to prevail. Take a crowd and give it a toss, when it falls it will be in a circle, in order to worship whoever has landed in the center and who ipso facto represents it. Or it will settle down into a pyramid, acclaiming whomever chance has placed at its top...'

from a note in the 1956-1960 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis (1904)

This is a substantial late Victorian-Edwardian story, with many qualities of what used to be called the sensation novel - a frisson of the slightly dark, of the undercurrents beneath polite society. In this instance it is a sexless marriage and the illegitimate offspring born to it. There is nothing particularly unusual about that; what is unusual is that it is Sturgis who is its author. His published novels, now that I've read them all, fill me with suspicion. His first, the classic of hero-worship-bordering-on-homosexuality, Tim, and his second, the obscure and quite inconsequentially quiet All That Was Possible, were novels with forms of spareness in them and yet vastly different from each other. Now comes this fulsome, conservative, rich family tapestry, with echoes of grand tragedy ringing through it. In other words, if I didn't have the title pages to tell me, I would never believe that these three novels were by the same author. Now, the question is: was Sturgis an extraordinary mimic or chameleon? Did he shift perspective most absolutely with each effort, right down to style? Or are some of these books other people's work? If so, whose? His life-companion, William Haynes Smith? Was one or another of them heavily revised by one of his literary friends? Henry James or Edith Wharton? But, at the end of the day, this is a beautiful, sad book, and its main character a movingly flawed man brilliantly portrayed.

Commonplace Book

'Ah, if I were a poet, it is to those whose existence has been a failure, whose arrows have not reached their mark, who have died without uttering the words they had to say and without pressing the hand destined for them, to all who have loved without being loved, who have sufferred without being pitied, that I would consecrate my verses; it would be a noble task.'

from Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (Chapter II)

Commonplace Book

'The distress and suspicion normal persons give rise to in a world where only the Exceptional arouses interest, in all its varieties. Thus it comes about that in the upright man one is obliged to see the scoundrel of tomorrow, or a scoundrel who's concealing himself, while in the scoundrel of today one discovers inspiring qualities. Abel's brain is subjected to an autopsy, Cain is invited to write his memoirs.'

from a note in the 1956-1960 section of Occasional Notebooks, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano