Commonplace Book

'...When one is young, he may be in love from afar, through letters, thoughts, or pure exaltation, perhaps because he feels life before him, perhaps also because passion calls more vehemently than the heart; at my age, on the contrary, love has become the habit of an invalid; it is a binding up of the soul, which, almost done for, takes less frequent flights into the ideal. The heart rises no more in ecstasies, but speaks in selfish exigencies...'

from Fort Comme La Mort by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter VI)

The Second Lady Delcombe by Mrs Arthur Kennard (1900)

Though she lived on until the 1920s, this was Nina Kennard's last novel. I can only presume that either she didn't feel strongly enough inspired to carry on, or that her previous novels had not sold well and she couldn't find a publisher for anything subsequently. This has all the hallmarks of a novel of this period and style - aristocratic cast, wit, inheritance and money, a smidgin of politics, and a bit of love of course. It follows her others, though, in the sense of being slightly off-centre. It's Catholic; the prejudice against the Irish in the second half is very strongly put; the main characters elude us for a few important chapters each, and are both absent at the end. It's the story of a mariage de convenance contracted in Paris between a penniless English lord and a wealthy young American. They set up pretty happily, and as they are thinking, with no illusions. But because there is this unavoidable distance between them, Filiol and Rita begin to feel uncomfortable with one another - a coolness descends, and an unwillingness to broach difficult matters. His teenage only son by his first marriage, whom Rita gets along with splendidly as she's so much younger, dies in a riding accident. Heartbreak and further awkwardness frosts their relations. All this while they have both begun to realise independently that they care for each other a great deal more than simply conveniently - their mutual but islanded admiration grows. Filiol slowly comes to a change of heart about his flippant, clubbed, gambling life and decides he'll need to start making a contribution. Having degraded estates in Ireland, he decides to go there and begin a process of individual reform of them, in order to show his mettle with difficult territory - who knows what might come of this in time in terms of political service and leadership? Rita stays in England and continues her unobtrusive charitable work. But tact has never been Filiol's strong point. He takes with him an old family friend, the glamorously flirty Eva Ellison, as she has Catholic background and Irish experience, as well as organisational skills. Unfortunately there's something else in her pack - a very long-established liking for Filiol. He also handles his retainers at Balnahown with what can only be called disdain. So he's juggling not only his own foolish lack of empathy, but also Eva's unwanted interest, all the while estranged from Rita. When Rita visits, an affair has blown up from Eva's flirtiness which she 'manages' with all her duplicitous might in order not to be exposed, giving Rita the idea privately that she and Filiol are a great deal closer than was understood. Rita, with her growing but stymied feelings for her husband, is devastated and coldly leaves; Filiol is puzzled but none the wiser. Eva's marriage blows up later in London and she becomes persona non grata in her former circles, having become so already with Filiol. Rita hears express from Ireland that Filiol has been shot by a disgruntled retainer, and races there to be with him - he thankfully survives with a mashed arm, and the impression is that the air will finally clear. Around and behind all of this is a big cast of varying morality and slouchy wit, encompassing all shades from bitchy moralists to unbothered rakes to florid hunters and louche city types. All in all, a knowing, yet idealistic, if not completely balanced, patchwork made in vivid hues.

Commonplace Book

'...Then came to her the sense of the impotence of anguish, the feeling that comes to us all when we have touched the utmost limits of human suffering. The aeons will pass, the universe grind round, gulfs will wash us down to some unknown future. Our individual loves, our sufferings, what are they? We are helpless to save, helpless to comfort those whom we love the best.'

from The Second Lady Delcombe by Mrs Arthur Kennard (Chapter XXXIII)

Books: A Living History by Martyn Lyons (2011)

There's a bit of an excuse which can accompany books of this kind, which goes something like "Oh, well, after all, it's a coffee table book...". I have to say I don't think that holds a lot of water ultimately, though I'll give it a bit of distance on that account. The text is the text, really, regardless of whether or not it is illustrated, when it comes down to it. First to the good stuff: and that is a load of interesting facts. All sorts of stuff from what a codex is to new discoveries of genres like emblem books. And because my knowledge of the early era of bookmaking is patchy, I was an easy, though wary, convert. The illustrations are gloriously clear and rich with impact, as one would expect from such serious practitioners as Thames and Hudson. There were a couple of little causes for concern early on - a tendency to generalisation that suited the flow of the text, despite being not particularly accurate, and an example of a confidence-denting malapropism: such-and-such was the provenance of a particular group, rather than their province. As the book progressed the sweeping statements continued quietly and I got used to them, employing the doubtful coffee table book reasoning. But the progress of time also brought on the modern era, which I know a bit more about. To hear mentioned that 'Pearson' brought out cheap paperback fiction in the wake of Penguin was a bit much I have to say. I've no doubt that C. Arthur Pearson, small publisher of mainly practical handbooks and scouting and guiding material, may have dribbled out a couple of sixpence novels at some point or other, but back then is a far cry from the subsequent multi-conglomerated goliath that Pearson became, and I'm sure they barely caused a ripple in publishing circles. So, not untrue probably, but almost definitely overstated. And on a different level, to hear that 'Young people...when they do read books they often listen to music at the same time' is actually very funny and delightfully dufferish, and serves to illustrate the kind of generalisations that are peppered throughout. I wonder what the real percentage is of young people who do that? Along with a miscaptioned illustration, some questionable sociological extrapolations, and a redundant word in the title (Living in what sense?), these sum up the bad stuff. The good wins out, overall; not absolutely convincingly, but sometimes it takes a while to fully sink in - I may yet realise how many small fascinating facts are now at my fingertips courtesy of Mr Lyons.

Commonplace Book

'...Like so many who do not confess it, he had been awaiting always the meeting with that impossible person, that rare, unique, poetic, and passionate affection, the dream of which hovers over our hearts. Had he not almost grasped it? Might not she have given him that well-nigh impossible happiness? Wherefore is it, then, that nothing is realized? Why can we seize nothing of that which we pursue, or only snatches which render still more grievous this chase after illusions?'

from Fort Comme La Mort by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter I)

The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil (1906)

This may be an Expressionist novel; it very doubtfully might, in some very oblique way, prefigure Nazism as some have suggested; what it really is is much more bland sounding, but much more searching - it's a psychological novel. And the key word of the title is Confusions. It's quite a specific scenario that Musil is investigating. The school which the adolescent Torless attends is a high-walled forbidding place in a relatively lonely spot. Musil makes it clear in the first few pages that Torless is in some respects abandoned to the mercies and emotional privations of this place, contrasting the muddy warmth of his family who have just finished a visit. One can assume that some sort of similar emotional effect resounds in all the boys. His close associates are three, and again they don't appear to be particular symbols of anything wider, other than in the most general sense. Reiting is a charmer with a tough, manipulative element, likely to travel pretty well in the bleached school environment; Beineberg is a savant, who has a fascination with eastern philosophy, and is revealed to have psychopathic tendencies as the action progresses - he's also likely to do well in the school while his manipulations are accepted, but it's scary to think what could occur if he felt thwarted; Bassini is a weaker sensualist with some of the same manipulative urges, but a more slippery character. Torless himself is less manipulative, more of a wonderer, engaged and taken up by these three, but nervously intense about them at the same time. When Reiting and Beineberg discover that Bassini has been stealing money from others, they have their pretext for action. And this is where a difficulty arises for me - there is asserted by Musil in all four of these boys some element of sadism and masochism, not in what might be called the typically undercurrent human way, but instead in a pronounced way, as a fairly fully formed character element. I don't quite believe it. So, up in the attics of the tall dark building, in a very warm side storeroom, Reiting and Beineberg begin the humiliation of Bassini, which includes beatings and sexual "services". Torless is fascinated and repelled by it all. He is going through a period of intense personal reflection, and the savagery and ritual concatenates through his mind, sending ripples in all directions. The way this is written about by Musil, entering the boys' minds and describing in deep detail their patterns of thought, down to profound contrarieties which they haven't yet plumbed or concluded, is fascinating, though I'm sure to some it will seem hopelessly over-intellectualised. I don't find it that, but I don't necessarily believe all of it - not everything rings true. And we can't forget that this is over a hundred years ago in super-philosophically charged Germany, where this kind of thought was much closer to the surface, especially among the elite classes Musil is describing. True to the schematics of its psychological theme, Torless emerges at the end, once Bassini has been exposed and expelled through the twistings of Reiting and Beineberg (Torless too has had moments of involvement with Bassini, independently of them), as having come through a cloud of unknowing and brought himself up to the light, of not needing these fellows any more. The old impossibility of a 'true' psychological novel then reasserts itself - the result feels very slightly compromised, as well as absolutely intriguing.

Commonplace Book

'Because thoughts are something special. Often they are nothing more than accidents that pass away without leaving a trace, and thoughts, too, have their times to live and to die. We can have a flash of insight, and then, slowly, it fades beneath our touch like a flower. The form remains, but the colours, the scent are missing. We remember them word for word, and the logic of the sentence is completely unimpaired, and yet it drifts ceaselessly around on the surface of our minds and we feel none the richer for it. Until - perhaps several years later - all of a sudden another moment comes when we see that in the meantime we have known nothing of it, although logically we knew everything.'

from The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil