Saturday, February 23, 2013

Commonplace Book

'28th. To my Lord Lauderdale's, where we find some Scotch people at supper. Pretty odd company; though my Lord Brouncker tells me, my Lord Lauderdale is a man of mighty good reason and judgment. But at supper there played one of their servants upon the viallin some Scotch tunes only; several, and the best of their country, as they seemed to esteem them, by their praising and admiring them: but, Lord! the strangest ayre that ever I heard in my life, and all of one cast. But strange to hear my Lord Lauderdale say himself that he had rather hear a cat mew than the best musique in the world; and the better the musique, the more sick it makes him; and that of all the instruments, he hates the lute the most, and next to that, the baggpipe.'

from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Suitably Edited (July 28, 1666)

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Four Fates by Theophile Gautier (1848)

In the original French this was The Two Stars, so I'm very glad to see the English translator redub it, as it covers the shockwaves in two misdirected relationships, and, after all, the women were there too! It starts in a very Dumasian way in London, with foggy streets, murky tunnels, mysterious strangers: drab, wet, quiet, grey, and unsettling. We are led through quick strokes into two upper crust relationships which are heading toward marriage on the same day in the same church. Amabel Vyvyan and Benedict Arundell are untroubled and, despite the weather, excited about their upcoming nuptials. Edythe Harley and the swarthy Count de Volmerange are less well-starred, with Edythe's fall from grace with another disturbing her peace - she is not relishing telling him of it after their marriage. Amabel and Benedict are scheduled first, but just as they arrive a mysterious old friend of Benedict's gestures him aside down a side-street. Amabel never sees him again. She is still waiting in the vestibule, crying, when Edythe and the Count pass through and marry. Later, Edythe's parents hear a huge groan from their room, and they too are found to have disappeared. It turns out that Edythe has revealed her secret and the Count, in a rage beyond reason, has followed her frightened flight through the garden and then the city. He catches up with her on London Bridge, sweeps her up, and throws her into the raging river to drown. Unbeknown to him, she is collected by the crew of a passing strange boat, which is speeding downstream with a prisoner on it. The prisoner? Benedict Arundell, who has been kidnapped by his old friend to fulfil his secret society oath to be of help in a great purpose. Suffice it to say that this involves a long trip into the Atlantic and ends at St Helena, where a certain great personage is waiting to be sprung from his confines. Meantime, Count de Volmerange, destroyed by anger and what he has done, is approached by a stranger in Regent's Park, and conveyed to a meeting with Dakcha, a mysterious Indian who is planning a revolt in that country. It is revealed that Volmerange's Indian background means that he is next in line for the Indian Lunar Throne, which Dakcha wants to re-establish, and in doing so throw out the British. Volmerange also meets there Priyamvada, a hugely exotic Indian woman whose dark entrancing drug-like mystery he falls for. She is Dakcha's right-hand woman, and the two spirit him off to India to lead the revolution the way a 'royal' only can. The terrible thing is, after all this, neither exploit comes off. The Indian revolt is crushed, and Napoleon dies just as he could be freed. The odd juxtaposition of the foggy, grimy streets of London with the wild exoticism and big adventure of the later portions is very entertaining; the mysteries unfold very unwillingly, which is tantalising and great fun.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Commonplace Book

'"O my God! to live for so long a time in one idea, one hope - to consecrate one's life to it with a devotion the most absolute and an abnegation the most complete - to renounce for it love, friendship and family - to feed its flame with a holocaust of all human sentiment - to sacrifice to it one's genius - to put at its service the power of an inflexible will - and then at the moment of realization to be prevented from accomplishing it by some miserable obstacle! Yesterday an absurd tempest - this morning some trifling incident which I cannot imagine [...] no-one can foresee the thousand stupid resistances of things to ideas - of matter to spirit."'

from Four Fates by Theophile Gautier (Chapter XIX)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Commonplace Book

'...In the freezing snows of the world's solitude, a prudent man does not try to make himself happy, but he is less than a man if he allows others to make him wretched. The flesh has its discomfort: the spirit, however, has its illimitable conjectures. When all else fails me, I may still find solace in conjectures...'

from Robert Orange by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XX)

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Red Cockerel by Miodrag Bulatovic (1959)

I wasn't prepared for quite how affecting this book would be. Surrealism is usually 'blah' emotionally - it doesn't reach far. But the surrealism in this is only a portion of the mixture: it occasionally intrudes to bend and twist events into other shapes, but doesn't dominate the whole proceeding. The author is Montenegrin, and the story takes place in the north of Montenegro, nearby to the town of Bijelo Polje. It involves a small landscape including a farm and its owner, a wedding being celebrated raucously on that farm, a road that passes by it on which two tramps are walking and resting, and a Muslim cemetery nearby where two gravediggers are preparing to bury a woman. There is a folkloric underfeel to these situations, but this is overlaid with very physical heat, dust, self-loathing, misery, plaintiveness and dreaming. Ilja, the farm owner, is struggling with a massive turnaround in his attitudes as he passes from unreasoning violent abusiveness to some sort of caring. This is exemplified in his treatment of Muharem, a young crippled farm-worker, who is struggling himself with the idea of becoming a man in his compromised physical state. The wedding, which goes on in greater or lesser bursts of unruly dancing, unruly drunkenness, unruly music, unruly ugly mob-like behaviour all through the piece, grips Muharem's attention as the bride is Ivanka, by whom he is fascinated. She is big, sweaty in the blazing heat, and voluptuous. The bridegroom Kajica is tiny, frightened by her, not at all sure he wants this manhood thing which challenges out of her like a beam. He's constantly on the run from various guests trying to get him to take his wife. The conversation of the passing tramps and the drunk gravediggers highlights other angles of humanity, as they interact with these characters and each other. Over them all hovers Muharem's red cockerel, a symbol of either one's personal spirit, or the soul of people's hopes and dreams, or those perhaps of the nation. The cockerel is put through hell and high water (as is his master) as wedding guests try to catch it to eat it, people try to convince Muharem to give it up, he goes wandering with it, he loses it, burning, up into the sky. So this book is symbolist too - and I'm sure there are elements here which I've only barely understood. It's also a work of art, which is impressive and fascinating in its poetic looseness and contrary force.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Commonplace Book

'"...When I hear a sermon I feel an inclination always to say, 'My dear fellow, can't you put your case better?' I want good stuff about Divine and human nature - not this vagueness and platitude. Why don't they tell one something about the optimism of God, even before the spectacle of man's weakness? But, instead, we are told to moan about this vale of tears; we are promised chastisements, disappointments, woes, persecution. A philosophy of suffering makes men strong, but a philosophy of despair is bound to make a generation of pleasure-seekers."'

from Robert Orange by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XVI)