Category: Books

My reading, including illustrations

Sebastian

This fourth novel of Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon quintet is another celebration of his divine prose linking the patchwork of episodes containing his themes of love triangles; gnosticism; the Inquisition; sexuality; psychiatric conditions; suicide; murder; and rivalry, all involving the narrator and his invented characters as they assist the writer in bringing his work towards completion.

Durrell’s descriptive language, his insight into humanity, and the pace of his narrative carry the reader along at a sometimes exciting rate, although it is helpful to understand the metafiction genre that has become clear to me in working my way through the series.

I do not possess the next book in the series, and, although I determined about 15 years ago not to acquire any more books, I am tempted to break that resolution.

David Gentleman has once again provided the book jacket on the reverse of which appears an accurate blurb.

Constance

This third novel of Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon quincunx contains the very best of his splendidly lucid prose, and more. Set during the period of the Second World War, the author demonstrates an ability to sustain lengthy periods of activity with all his adverbial and adjectival prowess, carrying us along apace with him. The narrative flows enough throughout the central sequences for us to forget that this is metafiction. His themes include an understanding of motives and conflicts about wartime activities; of the herd instincts and imposed fear that cause people to follow without question; of the position of women in society which can take many years to shift, despite hard fought changes in legislation; of a deep understanding of the nature of sexuality in love, in lust, and in the psyche.

The underlying sexual thread running through the work reaches a crescendo midway, as does the aftermath of war in an occupied city in the closing chapters, perhaps the most powerful in a powerful book.

David Gentleman has once more provided the book jacket.

Livia

It is perhaps the former cruciverbalist in me that prompted me to take up the Finnegan’s Wake challenge when I read that it contained sextilingual puns; or to persevere with Lawrence Durrell’s quincunx, of which “Livia, or Buried Alive” is the second book.

I failed Joyce’s challenge, giving up after 200 pages.

I am however getting somewhere with Durrell. This is because I am beginning to understand how metafiction works. Just as there was no sense in approaching Finnegan’s Wake as a chronological narrative this is the wrong way to appreciate Durrell’s work, which opens with a conversation between the narrator and one of his creations on the subject of autobiography, which in itself has echoes of our author’s own life story.

Set in the decade building up to the Second World War, I rather see the work as a series of tales concerning imaginary people who are not actually present, even when narrator Blanford is conversing with them. We have difficult early years; nocturnal wanderings around Avignon; discussions of fears about the conflict to come; a privileged wealthy libertine; some unpleasantly sordid revels suggestive of child abuse – all with Durrell’s glorious poetic prose. It is not easy, but so far is worth the effort.

Once again the Book Jacket is illustrated by David Gentleman’.

“David William Gentleman RDI (born 11 March 1930) is an English artist. He studied art and painting at the Royal College of Art under Edward Bawdenand John Nash. He has worked in watercolour, lithography and wood engraving, at scales ranging from platform-length murals for Charing Cross Underground Station in London to postage stamps and logos.

His themes include paintings of landscape and environmental posters to drawings of street life and protest placards. He has written and illustrated many books, mostly about countries and cities. He also designed a number of British commemorative postage stamps.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gentleman

Slipped inside the front flap of this jacket is a browned cutting from The Times newspaper of 21st September 1978, on the basis of which I bought this first edition.

Monsieur

Although I wasn’t totally enamoured with Laurence Durrell’s novel Justine, https://derrickjknight.com/2023/05/12/justine/ I was so entranced by his splendidly fluid prose as to turn to the quincunx beginning with

This gave me a better understanding of the notebook quality of the first of the Alexandria quartet.

In one sense Durrell is using his writer characters to take us through the process of working on a novel – this one. We are shown how jotted ideas develop into a final work; and how the characters take their own control of the narrative. I now understand that this is a piece of metafiction: “a form of fiction that emphasises its own narrative structure in a way that continually reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts.[1]Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.[2]” (Wikipedia)

Once again the author sets his work in Mediterranean countries – essentially in Avignon. His themes include their history and the very structure and nature of the lands themselves. Conventional boundaries between sexual relationships are eschewed – triangular relationships including those of homosexual and bisexual nature are consistent undercurrents, reflecting the Gnostic triangle of two men and one woman, in the case of the main protagonists also involving incest. His exploration of the mythical sects, and in particular the downfall of the Knights Templar are engaging. Perhaps it is the writer’s fascination with gnosticism that evoked the theme of suicide or arranged time of death.

We never do quite know for certain which characters are real. The final section is both revealing and enigmatic.

The fluid prose remains sublime. Durrell’s apparently easily constructed elegant sentences, none of which displays corpulence, contain copious descriptive adjectives and adverbs, always enhancing his meaning.

My 1974 first edition bears the bookplate of John Retallack.

I had lined up ‘Doctor Zhivago’ for my next read. Pasternak will have to wait for my next Avignon read.

A Raw Youth

Today I finished reading ‘A Raw Youth’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the two volume Limited Editions Club set, no. 1124 of 2000, translated by Constance Garnett, with an introduction by Konstantin Mochulsky, and illustrated with wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg, whose signature it bears.

Mochulsky begins his introduction by saying that “Because of its structural flaws, ‘A Raw Youth’ has been dismissed by some critics as an inferior work of Dostoevsky’s”. I agree with his estimate that the work is important for the themes familiar to as today as they were to Mochulsky when this edition was published.

Charles Dickens would have identified with the early life of the narrator, the self-styled “raw youth”, who grew up with no knowledge of his father and spends his coming of age striving to know and to share love with the man he now knows to be him.

The family is just one aspect of fractured society. The consequences of illegitimate birth, of which there were many resulting from extramarital relationships, and how these differentiate from those resulting from the marriage; children reared by substitute parents in differing circumstances; poor health; questionable morals; gambling; the position of religion; competition; trust – these are issues occupying the minds of many today. (Roughly 50% of all marriages in England today end in divorce, with breakdown of home life for the children, and reconstituted families)

Dostoevsky’s descriptive powers and the natural fluidity of his dialogue; his insightful characterisation, dramatic pace and tight time scale are well conveyed. The secret letter is a good device to add a sense of mystery. The work builds nicely to its dramatic finale and ties all loose ends in its conclusion

One irritating aspect is the author’s repetitive statements about detail he would come to later, keeping me on the lookout for when that would be. I considered myself fortunate that I could understand the amount of French dialogue, but presume that this reflects intellectual backgrounds of the protagonists.

I was grateful for the comprehensive cast list, ‘The Chief Characters’ given at the beginning of each volume.

I found the informative introduction most useful, especially in putting this novel in the context of Dostoevsky’s more famous works.

Not knowing the Russian Language I cannot assess the accuracy of the translator, but credit for the easy flow of the prose with its English idioms must be given to “Constance Garnett, née Constance Clara Black, (born December 19, 1861, Brighton, East Sussex, England—died December 17, 1946, Edenbridge, Kent), English translator who made the great works of Russian literature available to English and American readers in the first half of the 20th century. In addition to being the first to render Dostoyevsky and Chekhov into English, she translated the complete works of Turgenev and Gogol and the major works of Tolstoy.” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Constance-Garnett)

The artist’s sculptural illustrations with their mastery of light and shade, characterisation, and emotional content are faithful to the text.

Each of the three parts has a frontispiece

The titles of these full page woodcuts appear in the gallery.

Dillon returned home this morning and was able to join us for his favourite dinner of superlative bangers and creamy mash; firm carrots, cauliflower and broccoli, and meaty gravy with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Malbec.

Justine

Some two hundred years before Lawrence Durrell offered readers a blank page to represent silence – perhaps inviting us to interpret that of Clea – Lawrence Sterne, in “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, invited us to paint on his a likeness of a chosen beautiful mistress.

Durrell’s page is followed by a list of Workpoints as perhaps for a notebook, which may explain my ambivalence about “Justine”, the first of his acclaimed Alexandria Quartet, to which I have returned after perhaps 40 years of forgetfulness.

The writer’s cornucopia of abundantly luscious prose exploring the nature of love and lust in the context of a portrait of a suffocating city is indeed engaging. The mistresses described by the anonymous narrator are as beautiful as those suggested by Sterne. His descriptions of the nature of Alexandria shortly before World War II are packed in verbally delightful, yet economical, sentences.

My problem is that for me the work itself reads like a notebook in which I seek to follow a narrative of the interwoven lives of a variety of very passionate protagonists unable ultimately to commit, over periods of time to those they truly love, and consequently seem doomed to remain unsatisfied. Durrell has maybe captured the experience of many of us.

I am pleased that I was prompted to revisit this work by https://shoreacres.wordpress.com/2023/01/30/the-threshold-of-imagination/

Linda is an intelligent, resourceful, respected blogger. She has put much more layers of thought into her review highlighted above than I have managed in mine, no doubt the result of her repeated returns to it. In the interests of reasonable balance I would recommend reading what she has to say.

The Betrothed

This paragraph from https://viewfromtheback.com/2023/01/20/fridays-tall-tales-3/ by Sheree:

“Manzoni’s masterpiece, I promessi sposi, 3 vol. (1825–27), is a novel set in early 17th century Lombardy during the period of the Milanese insurrection, the Thirty Years’ War, and the plague. It is a sympathetic portrayal of the struggle of two peasant lovers whose wish to marry is thwarted by a vicious local tyrant and the cowardice of their parish priest. A courageous friar takes up the lovers’ cause and helps them through many adventures to safety and marriage. Manzoni’s resigned tolerance of the evils of life and his concept of religion as the ultimate comfort and inspiration of humanity give the novel its moral dimension.The novel brought Manzoni immediate fame and praise from all quarters, in Italy and elsewhere.”

took me back to my copy of this work, last read in 1969.

Enough time had passed for me to have entirely forgotten the book’s story, so I am grateful to have been prompted to revisit this work which is so much more than the echoes it bears of Scott, Thackeray and Dickens. The text contains by quotation an acknowledgement of his debt to Shakespeare whom he judges to be a master of feelings and the human heart.

Just as we, often too early, are expected to read and learn quotations from the Swan of Avon, so Italian children do the same with this novel. Just as gems from Shakespeare have entered our language and are often quoted without knowing the source, so it is with what we have translated as “The Betrothed”.

Considered as a linguistic influence on the Risorgimento, Manzoni died just before the reunification of the various states of the Italian peninsular.

As he set out on this project which was to occupy the central years of his life, the author expressed his aims and his reason for choosing the Counter Reformation period as his major focus, in a letter to a friend: “The memoirs we have from that period show a very extraordinary state of society; the most arbitrary government combined with feudal and popular anarchy; legislation that is amazing in the way it exposes a profound, ferocious, pretentious ignorance; classes with opposed interests and maxims; some little-known anecdotes, preserved in trustworthy documents; finally a plague which gave full rein to the most consummate and shameful excesses, to the most absurd prejudices, and to the most touching virtues.” This gives an example of his flowing prose, reflecting his passion, reason, and humanity.

He certainly resembles Shakespeare in his mastery of characterisation; his understanding of a wide range of human nature, its conflicts, its strengths, its weaknesses, and its capacity for tenderness, loyalty, and overcoming obstacles. His insight into the minds and emotional life of his persona is more complex than that of Dickens, whose grasp of history he matches.

In fact his research into the events of the period are so thorough as to make this central section somewhat tedious. He explains his purpose for its inclusion as offering essential insight into the life situations of his protagonists.

His subtle humour pervades the book. Either Manzoni himself or our translator favours simile over metaphor, as evidenced by plentiful examples in much excellent, at times poetic, detailed description of urban and rural life and contrasting environments; in particular the distressing effects of living and dying through famine, war, strikes, and plague. We are given insight into mob psychology, which the author gained from personal experience. This was a time of social disruption, violence, and turmoil.

The resilience of the betrothed pair is admirable in their circumstances, affected as they are by the conflict between church and state, and by blind faith, as well as staunch belief in each other.

Manzoni’s own struggle with Catholicism, to which he returned in later life, perhaps influenced the sudden change of heart and behaviour of the Unnamed, who forges a beneficial relationship with a revered Cardinal.

I hope I have not given away too much of the story to spoil it for any readers who may wish to follow my recommendation and pick up the book for themselves.

My 1969 edition is that of The Folio Society. The translator, who has provided a valuable and informative preface, is Archibald Colquhoun. I would be unable to read the original but this does seem to be a faithful rendition.

Here is the frontispiece and Title Page.

The sharply lined and detailed drawings by Eric Fraser have the incised quality of such as scraper board.

Droll Tales 30

By returning to the “Beautiful Imperia” whose tale introduces these stories, Honoré de Balzac has travelled full circle in the last, “The Married Life of Fair Imperia”, which tracks our heroine’s transformation from haughty beauty making the most from her charms, certainly not freely given, yet widely distributed among the rich, into a faithful wife in love for the very first time.

From continuous festivities she turns to staunch constancy with her equally devoted, much younger, husband who she does not wish to see her grow old, despite his conviction that, as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony’s friend Enobarbus, “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”.

I will say no more for fear of spoiling the author’s swansong.

Mervyn Peake has produced one drawing for the Folio Society edition;

and Gustave Doré provides his own veritable swansong for The Bibliophilist Society.

Further details of the publications are given in https://derrickjknight.com/2023/01/06/droll-tales-1/except that there are no pictures here by Jean de Bosschère as I do not have any of the third Decade by him.

Droll Tales 29

This, the shortest tale in the collection, occupying not much more than two pages of text, has no illustration in The Folio Society edition and just one small one in The Bibliophilist Society’s production.

It is, to my mind, the neatest gem with a play on two kinds of “Innocence”.

Here are the drawings of Gustave Doré for the second society above.

Further details of the publications are given in https://derrickjknight.com/2023/01/06/droll-tales-1/except that there are no pictures here by Jean de Bosschère as I do not have any of the third Decade by him.