An Innocent Punished

Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor is introduced in https://derrickjknight.com/2024/09/02/the-ravages-of-vice/

This outspoken woman, centuries ahead of her time, on the very first page of this second story in my Folio Society selection, gives her view of the subservient position of women with “His will was always her will, and she loved and obeyed him as a father, so she accepted the offer [of marriage]”.

Maria has this to say about love, honour, and retribution: “despite the kindness she received at first from her husband”, the bride discovers that “Men are very accomplished at showing this in the early days of marriage, indeed it is my opinion that they are so generous with it then that they spend it all in the first year, after which, the springs of charity having dried up, they drive their wives to their graves from very lack of it. And….this is certainly the reason why wives, finding themselves disliked, become involved in infidelities which dishonour their husbands and cost they themselves their lives. What can a husband, or a father or a brother or, at its lowest level, a lover, expect from a woman except disaster if she finds herself disliked and deprived of the one thing she craves?”. Retribution is meted out by the nearest and dearest mentioned in this last sentence.

The author’s staunch Catholicism is featured several times in the story, and probably is the reason for “a great wizard and necromancer” being a Moor of the Muslim faith.

Deception, extreme cruelty, and torture, all play their typical parts in this fast moving story from an author who knows how to engage her readership.

Here is Eric Fraser’s faithful illustration to the tale.

Cloud-Filtered Light

On another warm, yet overcast day, we took a forest drive before lunch. At no time did the sun penetrate the clouds.

Even the heather and bracken in the landscapes flanking Holmsley Passage lacked colour. Wild life of the hoofed variety was in short supply, until we noticed distant

ponies and cattle along Forest Road on our way back home.

On the ancient banked verges of Charles’s Lane

stood the gnarled roots of deep-shaded trees,

while plants nestled atop a fencepost

along Braggers Lane.

As we sat on the patio with our pre-dinner drinks we could hear at least one magpie in the copper beech tree. Since they have cleaned out all our smaller birds I speculated that there must be a pigeon’s nest in that tree, because these large ones do mate all year round.

The afore-mentioned dinner consisted of breaded cod fish cakes; piquant cauliflower cheese; boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots; and moist spinach, with which I finished the Malbec.

Generally Gloomy

On the last two evenings before bed I watched the highlights of the third, then fourth days of the test match between England and Sri Lanka.

The generally gloomy overcast rainy day kept us indoors after a Tesco shopping trip during which the precipitation subsided temporarily to dreary drizzle. Later the slate grey canopy deprived us of a sight of the thunderous overhead aircraft departing from the Bournemouth air show’s final exhibitions.

Having begun reading a new book, I published

The Ravages Of Vice

This evening we dined on stuffed crust pepperoni pizza and plentiful fresh salad with which I drank more of the Malbec.

The Ravages Of Vice

María de Zayas y Sotomayor (born Sept. 12, 1590, Madrid [Spain]—died c. 1661) was one of the most important of the minor 17th-century Spanish novelists and one of the first women to publish prose fiction in the Castilian dialect.

Little is known of Zayas’ life except that she was born into a noble family in Madrid and may have lived in Zaragoza, where her work was published. It is not known whether she married or when and where she died.

Her novels about love and intrigue, which used melodramatic and frequently horrific elements, were widely read and very popular. Novelas amorosas y ejemplares (1637; “Novels of Romance and Exemplary Tales”) is a collection of short novels about the romantic complications of married life, ostensibly told one evening to amuse a sick woman. The stories are mostly about women who are mistreated by husbands or seducers. Novelas y saraos (1647; “Novels and Soirees”) and Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimientos honestos (1649; “Soiree Part Two and Decorous Amusements”) are sequels. In many of her stories Zayas accused Spanish society of leaving women without the information or emotional strength to resist seduction and abuse. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-de-Zayas-y-Sotomayor

In his introduction to

John Sturrock tells us that the author “was, by the standards of the time, an educated woman, and since women then received very little formal education she was presumably self-taught. She is very ready with an apt classical reference in her stories…..”

“There are two great motive forces [in these] – love and honour. Love is seen, conventionally enough, as a blind and irresistible force which drives women to destruction, while honour is its severe and apparently inevitable concomitant; the second exists as the only way to check the ravages of the first. But it is in her attitude to the concept of sexual honour that Maria shows originality. The concept is essentially a masculine one of course. Men alone have honour; women have their chastity, a reputation even, but should they succumb and lose them then there is nothing they can do about it except wait for punishment. It is the husband, the brother or the father who is dishonoured when a wife, a sister or a daughter is seduced, and it is up to them to wipe out the stain with the blood of the guilty parties. Thus it is that a woman is quite liable to meet her death at the hands of her nearest and dearest. Maria … [says] that men are deceitful, they wreak their nefarious purposes on the weaker sex by duplicity, by making promises they have no intention of fulfilling. Then they subscribe to a double standard of morality, whereby their own infidelities are considered very dashing while those of their womenfolk are punishable by death.” (Sturrock)

As translator Sturrock claims that de Zayas’ prose style “would be impossible and probably undesirable to attempt to reproduce that too faithfully. She writes like a woman in a hurry, impatient often of the niceties of structure and balance. The translation then aims at simplification as much as fidelity, avoiding, at opposite ends of the spectrum, deliberate archaisms and obtrusive modern idioms.” One can only trust that he has been successful in his work.

There are stories in this Folio Society collection. I will feature these one at a time with minimal comment on the prose.

The first is “The Ravages of Vice”, in which we are told of carnage consequent upon deceitfully contrived alleged infidelity. The story races along with good action sequences and the occasional didactic element, such as parenthood where the step-child is loved at least equally as children of a couple: “This is how good married couples ought to behave if they want to live in peace, because a thousand quarrels and upsets arise out of the dislike husbands often feel for their wives’ children, and wives for their husbands’ children.”

Love, honour, deception, and retribution are all Maria de Sayas’s major themes featured in the tale.

Here is Eric Fraser’s faithful and powerful illustration to this story.

Sintram And His Companions

Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué (born February 12, 1777, Brandenburg—died January 23, 1843, Berlin) was a German novelist and playwright remembered chiefly as the author of the popular fairy tale Undine (1811).

Fouqué was a descendant of French aristocrats, an eager reader of English and Scandinavianliterature and Greek and Norse myths, and a military officer. He became a serious writer after he met scholar and critic August Wilhelm Schlegel. In his writings Fouqué expressed heroic ideals of chivalry designed to arouse a sense of German tradition and national character in his contemporaries during the Napoleonic era. His ideas, based on the view of linguistic development first conceived by the philosopher J.G. Fichte, stressed the influence of the mother tongue in shaping the mind.

(Read Sir Walter Scott’s 1824 Britannica essay on chivalry.)

A prolific writer, Fouqué gathered much of his material from Scandinavian sagas and myths. His dramatic trilogy, Der Held des Nordens (1808–10; “Hero of the North”), is the first modern dramatic treatment of the Nibelung story and a precedent for the later dramas of Friedrich Hebbel and the operas of Richard Wagner. His most lasting success, however, has been the story of Undine, a water sprite who marries the knight Huldbrand to acquire a soul and thus become human but who later loses this love to the treacheries of her uncle Kuhleborn and the lady Berthulda. Although Fouqué’s works were at first enthusiastically received, after 1820 they rapidly passed out of fashion. Fouqué died in poverty after belated recognition by Frederick William IV. (Brittanica.com)

I spent the day finishing my reading of

and preparing this review.

In his preface dated December 5, 1914 to the 1915 edition Fouqué discusses thoughts on the sources of a poet’s inspiration, focussing on the Durer drawing which was his source for this work: “A few years ago I found a fine copperplate engraving by Albrecht Durer among my birthday gifts< A knight in armour, with an old, worn face, riding a great horse and followed by his dog, is passing through a dreadful valley, where the clefts of rock and the tree roots distort themselves into hideous forms. The ground is thickly carpeted with poisonous toadstools, and evil serpents crawl in and out among them. Close beside the knight, on a small, lean horse, rides Death; behind, a demonlike shape claws after him with its long arm. Horse and dog look strange and unnatural, as though transformed by the ghastly surroundings, but the knight rides calmly onwards, carrying on his lance-point a transfixed salamander. In the far distance a fortress can. be seen, its fair hospitable ramparts looking down into the valley, whose contrasting desolation seems to sink all the more deeply into the soul.” D. E. Schober, in 1769 suggested “Durer must have taken the idea from some special event, or else he meant it to express figuratively a soldier’s career”.

Fouqué took a good number of years to respond to his friend’s wish that he should write a romance on the theme. Rather than a romance he has written a novel set in his favourite Norwegian period reflecting the sagas of that era in a distinctly magical and satanic mood displaying all he has taken from Durer’s engraving.

His fine descriptive language, as in “the torchlight flickered drearily among the shadows of the vaulted roof” contains much alliteration, for example “still the silence continues. Single voices, in low uncertain tones, tried to renew their interrupted speech of a while since…..strange singing and sighing….”

He makes full use of the weather to set a scene and reflect a mood, harshly dramatic or softly calm.

The quality of the prose is further exemplified below.

I have paired these pages of prose with the exquisite engravings by E. J. Sullivan, demonstrating that both the artist and the author adhere faithfully to Durer’s work. All images can be enlarged in the gallery.

A. C. Farquharson, the translator, has produced a very readable version.

This evening we dined on belly of pork baked in chillis and peppers, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and cauliflower leaves.

Undine is featured in https://derrickjknight.com/2016/05/17/undine/

Still Taking It Easy

Last night before going to bed I watched the highlights of the second day of the second test match between England and Sri Lanka.

On this warm, gloomy-overcast day, to the accompaniment of a few neighbouring tweeting birds, largely silent bees, and an occasional distant barking dog, I toted my camera on two very short trips around the garden.

Along with her general pot refurbishment and general tidying

Jackie has planted up the bulbs bought yesterday;

her equipment bearing evidence of her labours. She suggests that the pig has moved itself towards the gate in readiness for the coming pannage season.

Beyond the recently planted iron urn extends the Gazebo and Brick Paths from Jackie’s weeded old well surround.

She has recently tracked down a replacement Summer Wine to replace one that died in the Rose Garden.

On Wednesday Martin worked hard clearing a space for it and planted it away from the original site because it is inadvisable to reposition one in the same spot.

Pink chrysanthemums; blue convolvuluses; white begonias, cyclamen, and antirrhinums are rivalled by the Nottingham Castle bench lichen.

We have all colours of Japanese anemone;

and dahlias;

other roses include Absolutely Fabulous and Lady Emma Hamilton.

The Rose Garden continues to flourish.

The rudbeckias sit well behind the pinkish peeling eucalyptus bark.

The Weeping Birch Bed leads through the cryptomeria to Florence sculpture on Fiveways.

More Japanese anemones photobomb the Brick Path and blend well with the iron urn’s pink petunias.

This evening we dined on succulent chicken Kiev; boiled new potatoes; firm carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli; and tender chopped cauliflower leaves with which I drank riserva privada Chilean Malbec 2022.

A Gander At Geese

This was the first time I had left the house since my catheter removal yesterday morning. I therefore stayed in the car throughout, yet rather longer than I would have wished.

After Jackie bought some tulip and daffodil bulbs at Otter Nurseries this afternoon we were thwarted in our intended forest drive by two factors. First our egress from Newbridge drive onto Christchurch Road was stalled by

a very recent crash site causing

a long tailback which had not been cleared when we returned home.

Our chosen route to the east was then closed for road repairs and we were forced down

Snooks Lane. Take a good look at this, because we were not the only ones at what is near enough our rush hour, trying to avoid the continuing blockage along the road on which we live. Snooks Lane wasn’t one of them, but there were other similar winding routes congested by others. Fortunately Jackie got us home.

A gathering of geese now monopolised Little Hatchet Pond as they floated among the water lilies, so we took a gander at them. Passing

walkers and a wagtail, we then made our sluggish way home.

This evening we dined at Rokali’s where I enjoyed Methi Goust and a chapati while Jackie’s choice was chicken biriani; I drank Kingfisher and Jackie drank Diet Coke. As always, the service was friendly and efficient, despite a gathering of customers from the Bournemouth air show.

Tapster’s Tapestry

Early this morning we attended Lymington Hospital for the removal of my catheter which was executed swiftly and painlessly. It took me so long to produce an adequate flow to confirm all was in order that I was sent off to the café downstairs for a mug of tea to add the necessary liquid fuel. I surprised myself by adding a Full English breakfast eaten with such relish matched only by yesterday’s Chinese takeaway – gusto I have not experienced since the first cystoscopy.

This afternoon I dozed over

the third of my A.E. Coppard’s Golden Cockerel Cockerel books.

This work tilts at windmills as applicable today as they were in Coppard’s time of the first quarter of the twentieth century; bureaucracy, international relations, warfare, politics, and people management are all lampooned in this blend of satirical satire and realism, following in the steps of Jonathan Swift – the difference being that our author managed the feat in just 58 pages.

Three adventurous adolescents unite on a trip to discover whether the earth is flat or round. In all their perambulations they establish no certainty about this or anything else, eventually returning home. Perhaps with all life it is the journey that counts. They encounter a strange variety of peoples and their countries, briefly engaging in relationships with them. The writer’s insightful knowledge of people is apparent from the desire of all the freed captive humans to return to their cages.

In his title Coppard indulges his poet’s taste for alliteration, as along with rhyme, simile, and metaphor he does throughout the story. “It was the sort of poetry that dazed the mind; it crackled like elastic and smelt of the roll of a drum”; “Time, however, had drooled heavily by”.

His dry humour is also constantly evident, as in this piece of well executed dialogue: “‘Not a soul of them is caring about this grand question of the contour of the earth!’ / ‘They don’t seem to take an all-round view, that’s flat'”.

Further evidence of the fluent prose is given with these scans of Gwenda Morgan’s faithful engravings in the 1930s style. They can be enlarged in the gallery.

This evening I dined on left-overs from last night’s Chinese takeaway, while Jackie chose a bowl of mixed vegetables.

Count Stefan

I had begun reading

before going into hospital on 21st, and needed a little revision before continuing with it today. The frontispiece is by Robert Gibbings.

Here are the boards and spine; and the jacket which has protected them from two years short of a century. Perhaps the fact that four of the last few pages were partially uncut suggests the book has not been opened very often.

This tale, set in an Austrian guest house, during which one of the guests is writing a novel “all about an adventuress whom Miss James had invented, but whom she disliked with a fierce unpleasantness” and for whom she found a perfect model in one of the other residents. Coppard traces the interrelationships of the group brought together in this establishment as they jostle for position in the house; especially as they await the arrival of the constantly delayed eponymous Count. His absence fosters speculation, and consequent rivalry over his anticipated attractions, which, in the event, bear no relation to reality.

He is man with a problem at last arriving into the house with a doctor charged with curing him. Carinthia James, despite her better judgement, finds herself persuaded into becoming a key supporter and part of a similar group of recruits. There is a question of madness, eventually settling on one of the original residents. Couples pair off into their own exclusive relationships.

I have chosen to scan one particular page of Coppard’s descriptive scene-setting prose with clever little details.

Others are attached to illustrations by Robert Gibbings.

This evening we dined on small portions of chop suey and chow mein from Hordle Chinese Take Away.

A Beautiful Irony

Having been kept awake most of the night by the function of my catheter, I have decided to explain something about it. The purpose is to enable a free flow of urine in the affected body. I will spare my readers a scan of the explicit colourful drawing we are given; those more squeamish may wish to pass the following paragraph completely.

A plastic tube is inserted into the urethra travelling to the bladder. This remains in place until the medics are satisfied that there is a free flow devoid of blood clots. It is the stinging resulting from the passing of these clots that disturbed my night’s sleep; there has not been much of this during the day. The liquid is collected in an attached plastic bag the content of which requires regular emptying and flushing away. If successful my catheter is due to be removed in two days time.

By coincidence Ronan and Harvey of Tom Sutton Heating visited by appointment this morning having brought a machine for flushing out a blockage in pipes carrying water from the boiler. As I sat with my (concealed) catheter bag attached to my leg, it was impossible to ignore the beautiful irony of this juxtaposition.

Shelly visited this afternoon bringing love, care, well wishes, and enjoyable conversation.

Later Nick Hayter visited to touch up areas of painting on our west end gable wall which he had not been able to reach while the scaffolding was in place. We also took the opportunity of a pleasant catch up.

Today Jackie completed her tidying of the patio after yesterday’s gusting winds.

Readers may have wondered what were the strips of wood in this picture from yesterday.

They were bought to conceal the peeling blue paint on the butler sinks. I was much steadier stepping out to photograph this before dinner.

This evening we dined on Ashleigh battered cod and garden peas.