Ramblings
My reading, including illustrations
With today’s weather mirroring yesterday’s we stayed indoors and I made further progress with Germinal.
Here are the sample pages from Part IV. Again, clicking on any image will access the gallery enabling enlargement.
This evening we all dined on Red Chilli’s excellent home delivery which always arrives on time. My main course was Naga Chilli chicken, with which I drank more of the Shiraz.
I was out of bed and downstairs as quickly as I could be this morning, but
just missed the pinkest dawn.
These were, however, the clearest skies of a grey but dry day on which I made more progress on Emile Zola’s ‘Germinal’,
and scanned sample illustrated pages from Part 3, which can be enlarged with a click on any image to access the gallery.
This evening we all dined on meaty sausages; creamy white and sweet potato mash; piquant cauliflower cheese; crunchy carrots; tender spring greens, peas, and Brussels sprouts, with which Jackie drank Baywood Summer Berries fruity rosé and I finished the fitou.
This afternoon I watched recordings of today’s Six Nations rugby matches between Ireland and Wales and between England and Scotland.
During intervals I finished the ironing backlog we had begun yesterday,
and drafted the illustrations and text samples of the next Part of Emile Zola’s ‘Germinal’.
This evening we all dined on tender roast duck; crisp roast potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli and Brussels sprouts; and flavoursome gravy followed by Jackie’s tasty gooseberry and apple crumble with which I drank les quatre vents fitou 2021.
Yesterday’s wind has dropped, but the incessant rain was much fiercer today. I therefore continued with Germinal.
This work by Emile Zola is widely acclaimed as one of the finest French novels.
There are 7 parts to the book. Because of the number of illustrations and their positions on the pages, offering the opportunity for readers to sample extracts from Zola’s sublime poetic prose as it frames the pictures, I am diverting from my normal practice and publishing these sheets as I work my way along my rereading, leaving my review until the end.
These are the leaves from Part One. As usual, clicking on any illustration will access the gallery facilitating enlargement.
Late this afternoon, although much colder, the skies cleared; the sun emerged to share the cerulean canopy with the moon, and set over the still water-laden Christchurch Road.
This evening we all dined on barbecue spare ribs, and Jackie’s colourful savoury rice with garlic; she drank Hoegaarden, Ian drank Erdinger weisbier, and I drank more of the Nero d’Avola.
Such was the critical outcry labelling the first serialisation of this novel entitled “Un Mariage d’amour” in L’Artiste between August and October 18th pornographic, that Zola provided a preface to the second, 1868, edition explaining his object and refuting the accusations. Certainly anyone seeking prurience would have been disappointed.
I finished reading my Folio Society edition of the work this morning.
Here are the front boards and spine;
and the title page and the frontispiece;
“The Passage du Pont-Neuf…” in which the story mostly takes place “is no place to go for a nice stroll”. “At night the arcade is lit by three gas jets in heavy square lanterns. These gas jets hang from the glass roof, on to which they cast up patches of lurid light, while they send down palely luminous circles that dance fitfully and now and again seem to disappear altogether. Then the arcade takes on the sinister look of a real cut-throat alley; great shadows creep along the paving stones and damp drafts blow in from the street until it seems like an underground gallery dimly lit by three funeral lamps. By way of lighting the shopkeepers make do with the feeble beams that these lanterns send through their windows, and inside the shop they merely light a shaded lamp and stand it on a corner of the counter, and then passers-by can make out what there is inside these burrows where in daytime there is nothing but darkness. The windows of a dealer in cardboard make a blaze of light against the row of dismal shop-fronts, for two shale-oil lamps pierce the gloom with their yellow flames. On the opposite side a candle in a lamp-glass fills the case of artificial jewellery with starry lights. The proprietress sits dozing in her cupboard with hands under her shawl.” Thus the author sets the scene reflecting the generally stifling mood that keeps the main protagonists trapped.
Thérèse has spent her childhood and adolescence suppressing any normal emotional and physical needs to the oppressive atmosphere created by her aunt and husband. Continuing into her young adulthood it is poignant that regular Thursday evening dominos with characterless acquaintances offers the only relief from crushing boredom and unconsummated marriage, until her passions are unlocked by the brutal advances of one who becomes her lover.
Desirous of freedom to marry each other the adulterous pair devise a not unexpected solution, the setting of which offers far more pleasant bucolic descriptions along the banks of the Seine.
Zola’s narration of the deeply destructive effect that guilt and delusional experiences have on these main protagonists careers along at breakneck speed displaying deep understanding of complex characterisation, in particular the part played by thoughts of terrified minds in tune with each other. Locked together in violent passion they can no longer make love.
Two characters who light the way to the ultimate conclusion are the now paralysed aunt who has no speech and can only use her eyes; and the not uncommon device of a haunting painting.
Far from being pornographic this is a grim tale of selfish transgression and inexorable retribution with few personnel and minimal physical activity.
Leonard Tancock’s introduction is useful and informative;
and the lithographs by Janos Kass in a powerful contemporary style.
This evening we all dined on Jackie’s classic beef and onion pie; boiled potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm cauliflower and broccoli, and meaty gravy, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Cabernet Sauvignon.
This morning I finished reading Emile Zola’s masterpiece and later spent a good while scanning the illustrations and drafting this post.
It is 50 years since my previous enjoyment of the Folio Press edition of 1973, being a reprint of the Folio Society’s 1956 publication. I have not studied the original French, but Charles Duff’s translation is fluent and contains number of colloquial English phrases such as “kick the bucket” which suggests effort to render them intelligible to UK readers.
This is the title page and the frontispiece.
From the opening paragraphs depicting the feverish anticipation of the theatre-goers of a city waiting the opening of the new presentation of the Théâtre des Variétés and the first sight of The Blonde Venus to the intense excitement of the races Emile Zola carries the readers along at breakneck speed as if we are present in various venues, also including stately homes, bucolic environments, streets splendid and sordid; night and day, light and dark, playing their part in the narrative.
All senses, especially keenly that of smell, are engaged. The pungent, foetid scents, pervading the back rooms and corridors of the theatre, its windows closed against the cold outside in the depths of inadequately heated winter, assaulting the olfactory nerves which are enticed by sweeter scented warm flesh in a variety of bedrooms more or less savoury.
Nana, a young girl from poor, muddy, streets, by virtue of her generous nature and her gifted charms, rises to be the virtual Queen of Paris capable of attracting and bedding numerous wealthy men until she bleeds them dry and eventually discards them.
She places the child of her teenage pregnancy with an aunt; she visits when she can, though often neglects him; she occasionally falls in love, but usually uses her sexuality to earn wealth and admiration, otherwise indiscriminately. She also has a lasting lesbian affair.
Zola’s insightful characterisation shows how destructive obsessions can be, including almost modern text-book understanding of a lover’s compulsion to return to a physically abusive partner, or to tolerate constant insults and betrayal; being the source of self-destruction.
The fluent, poetically descriptive prose, so full of detail makes it hard to believe that this exploration of contemporary sexual norms comes from Ludovic Halévy’s having introduced him to an operetta at the above-mentioned Théâtre, and providing him with many supplementary stories about the star.
An early morning episode after a night on which Nana has no wish to sleep is just one of the many delightful paragraphs encompassing the author’s evocative skills: “She looked at the sky through the window panes, a livid sky across which soot-coloured skies were scudding. It was six o’clock. Opposite, on the other side of the Boulevard Haussmann, the still sleeping houses showed in sharp outline their moist rooftops in the morning twilight; and on the deserted roadway a troupe of street- sweepers passed by with a clattering of their clogs. And, contemplating this woebegone awakening of Paris, she found herself seized by the tender emotion of a young girl, by a need for the countryside, for the idyllic, for something gentle and white.”
The perhaps inevitable conclusion is beautifully told with an unexpected twist, and set in an historical context which puts it in an apt perspective.
The delicate etchings by Hungarian born Marcel Vertès exquisitely capture the essence of the period.
This evening we all dined on Jackie’s tasty lemon chicken; savoury rice with garlic and peas; sweet potato chips; and tender Broccoli stems, with which I drank Côtes du Rhône Villages 2022.
I spent a day on which incessant rains returned in earnest reading more of “Nana”.
Apparently Becky had plenty of time to seek out and set Jackie’s camera to catch me napping again.
Ian returned home to Southbourne late this morning, and was therefore unable to join the rest of us in our evening meal from Oliver Chinese Take Away’s excellent food, with which I drank Mighty Murray Shiraz and Jackie drank Hoegaarden
This last in the Folio Society collection of Turgenev’s stories, ultimately keeps us guessing, with “What did it mean? Could it be …”
The author’s descriptive skills, replicated by the lithograph of Elisa Trimby’s, are exemplified in “First of all Muzzio [on his Indian violin] played several melancholy – as he called them – folk songs, strange and even savage to Italian ears; the sound of the metallic strings was mournful and feeble. But when Muzzio played the final song, this very sound suddenly grew stronger and quivered resonantly and powerfully; a passionate melody poured out from beneath the broad sweeps of the bow, poured out in beautiful sinuous coils like that very snake whose skin covered the top of the violin; and the melody burned with such fire, was radiant with such triumphant joy….”
Almost reflecting the tempo of this passage Fabio and Valeria, the as yet childless couple whose home this was, gradually, initially imperceptibly, became beset by disturbing dreams suggesting mysterious sorcery. It was as if their very essence had been subjected to the influence of two uninvited guests.
The author’s device for narrating this story of a sixteenth century tale was an historic manuscript which ended with the question quoted in my first paragraph. Was this prompted in Valeria by her “first trembling signs of a new life about to be born”?.
In this fifth story of the Folio Society’s collection of Ivan Turgenev’s stories, the author, with his usual descriptive detail, has in essence, translated Shakespeare’s tragic king to his own time and place, with the identity of the massively strong giant landowner, Harlov, brought down by the response of his two daughters to his generosity prompted by confronting thoughts of his eventual death.
There is no Cordelia to remain loyal to Harlov and to die in his arms; this hero has only two daughters, one of whom does at least repent for taking advantage of the old man’s division of his wealth and household, possibly, as suggested by the narrator, to the end of her days.
Driven mad by the self-interested isolation and suppression of his personal needs by his family the larger than life owner of a number of serfs to whom he is not himself kind, brings about his own early death, in this way earning their sympathy and disapprobation towards the family.
In bringing his conclusion to an increasing crescendo our author has deviated quite a bit from Shakespeare’s own ending.
As usual, Turgenev’s exquisite, simply and fully detailed characterisation; pictures of the changing landscape, the weather and its effects, clearly sets the scene and carries along the narrative.
Elisa Trimby has produced faithful, ultimately dramatic, illustrations.
In addition to reviewing this book, this morning I watched a recording of last nights Six Nations rugby match between France and Ireland; and this afternoon, today’s matches between England and Italy and between Scotland and Wales.
This evening we all dined on Jackie’s classic cottage pie; crisp carrots; and firm Brussels sprouts, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Carménère.
Based largely on Turgenev’s own experience, this story uses the device of three friends undertaking to recount theirs. The first to take on this task chose to write his history and read it out – no doubt because it was ultimately so fraught.
Perhaps no-one forgets their first love; although many are temporary in nature they are brought to a close with more or less pain through disillusionment, through other interests or developments, or through developing maturity. Grief may take some time to pass through.
So it was with our narrator, a boy of 16 falling for a young woman of 21. The bitter-sweet story of a romantic, unfulfilled, attachment is beautifully portrayed with deep understanding of the minds and emotions of the couple; the young man idealising his coquettish loved one who plays forfeits with several rivals. Zinaida loves Vladimir, but without the passion of the lad who”could feel a kind of effervescence in [his] blood and a set of aching in [his] heart….. [whose] imaginings played and darted continually like martins at twilight around a bell-tower”, and who could to this day recall her physical charms.
Slowly it dawns on the boy that his chosen one is probably in love with someone else, and, unless we pick up the one nebulous clue, we share his angst as he speculates about who it could be – in fact I did understand who the rival must be, but i still eagerly anticipated confirmation.
The eventual discovery is a catastrophic bombshell scattering destructive shrapnel.
This is Turgenev’s acknowledged masterpiece in the genre,
faithfully illustrated by Elisa Trimby,
This evening we all dined on more of Jackie’s chicken and vegetable stewp with fresh bread and butter.