Month: January 2025

The frolics of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

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The Frolics of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

Japanese fiction

Original title – Kemono no Tawamure

Translator Andrew Clare

Source – Personal copy

I’ve struggled with the books by Yukio Mishima over the time I have blogged. In that time I have read two books by him, the first is The Sailor Fell into the Sea, I really didn’t get on with the other, The Sound of the Waves I enjoyed slightly more, I have several books by him and could read another, but this is a shorter book by him, and also I do like the new penguin cover of the book it is pretty eye-catching. But I struggled with the structure of this book, which seemed very disjointed. I want to love it, and I like the cover of this book. But found it just a book I never felt fully connected to I see it was initially a part work when it came out I can see this as each chapter tens to be a little world in itself but also jumps from time to time. both of which in other books I have read I haven;t mind but just for me as a reader didn;t work in this book.

That summer’s day, which had begun with the assignation at the hospital – Yüko carrying her sky-blue parasol – and which had culminated in the incident at nine o’clock in the evening, took place some six months after Koji had first met Yüko. That is to say, it occurred after he had taken a shop delivery around to Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane, where he first made her acquaintance.

The more frequent their meetings, the more Koji felt driven to despair, right from the start of the days they were scheduled to meet. It was as if a cold torrent was beginning to flow clamor-ously in his innermost heart, and he hated himself more than he had done on any other morning. The request for a date would always come from him, and he would importune her before approval was eventually obtained. Moreover, Yuko would take him along only on shopping excursions, trips out for lunch, or else to a dance if he was lucky, and then she would promptly leave whenever it suited her.

Yuko time with Koji

 

The book takes. Noh play as the books origin. The book follows a trio of characters Yauko a woman that has captured the heart of two men and this is ahwat the book rdeals with is the outfalling of this the two men Koji he had attacked Yuko older husband Ippei  and this lead to him going to prison, So when Koji goes to live with the couple after his release too me just didn’t make sense and how Ippei a violent man that mistreats his wife is as a character. I get the fact the characters in a way have to be this as part of the Noh tradition the extreme nature of the characters. But for me it is a book with lots of violence that jumps around a bit and I just wasn’t grabbed by this book at all

Yüko was wearing a Java calico blouse and yellow slacks and, because of the rocky mountain paths ahead, had on a pair of flat-heeled Moroccan leather walking shoes. Ippei was in a state of disarray. He was attired in a white open-collared shirt and knickerbockers, checkered socks and slip-ons and a large straw hat. At his side he carried a stout stick. Naturally Köji, who wore jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carried the camera and the basket containing their lunch boxes and tea flasks. At normal walking speed, it ought to have taken them about thirty minutes to the waterfall, but going at Ippei’s pace, Koji estimated it would take at least an hour. In the end, it took some two hours.

Some of the decriptions I d like but that was about it

 

I think it rare I really don’t get on with a book some of this may be my view of the writer himself he was a character that had a very colourful life but was also very right wing and a number of his views are very against my own personal ideas. He wrote on his admiration of Hitler so I do wonder how many of his other books I may be bothered to read. I feel I had to read him as given the current state of the world with Nationaalist politics and right wing values and views seemingly taking over the world. Makes me a Leftist with my views of how we should all help one another and try make our world a little better. I will always struggle like other writers Celine etc , I will try from time to time but II do wonder without some telling me what is so great about his toerh books this will be my last Mishima for a good while. Have you a writer you struggle with due to them as a person and there views in there life ?

The Doctor’s Wife by Sawe=ako Ariyoshi

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The Doctor’s Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi

Japanese Fiction

Original Title: *Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma*

Translators: Wakako Hirinaka and Ann Silver Kostant

Source: Personal copy

 

I move on to the first of two Japanese classics I have read for this year, January in Japan. The first book is based on the true story of a Japanese doctor who was among the pioneers in using anesthetics in 18th century Japan. Sawako Ariyoshi was highly regarded in her time as a writer, and it’s refreshing to read a book by a female author known for addressing social issues that many other writers have avoided.

 

This book offers insight into a complex triangle of relationships: husband to wife, mother to son, and mother to daughter-in-law. We see these dynamics unfold through the life of Rae, the daughter-in-law and wife at the centre of the story. The life of Rae she is the daughter-in-law and wife at the centre of this book. Her view of the Mother in Law who she idolized before she married her son.

Naomichi was saying: “I assure you, Western medicine will be coming to our country very soon. It was predicted by my teacher, Iwanaga Bangen, when I was his student in Osaka. I think he was right. Because I learned Western methods with him, I can talk with confidence about Japan’s medical future, as if I were taking its pulse. In Edo, Dr. Yamawaki Toyo initiated the idea of dissecting the bodies of dead prisoners; the present teacher, Sugita Genpaku, has been pursuing certain Dutch methods which depend on a complete examination of a person’s body before a diagnosis is pronounced; this is different from the Chinese approach which relies heavily on the pulse. Ah! The human body is a creative masterpiece. Just look at our fingertips. What a composition of delicate nerve tissue and fluids! …

His use of herbs is a mix of tradtion and want to use a western technique in a way

As I said, the story follows Kae growing up and how Otsugithe, mother of Seishu, is considered a rare beauty, one of the most beautiful women in the provinces. We see Kae admiring this Ambitious woman. So when her family is approached by Otsugi to let Kae marry her son Seishu, it seems perfect until she then sees the other side of her now mother-in-law, her overbearing nature. She shows how they both help Seishu as he starts to try different herbs, such as a herbal Anthisesis. Some of this is hard to read when he uses Animals. On the other hand, it is interesting to see how far back it was that it was starting to be used or tried as a way to perform simple operations. One Seishu is trying is surgery to remove breast cancer. The two women in his life seem struck being rivals and get jealous of one another when he pays attention to the other one. As we see the young Kae try and take over from her mother-in-law in her husband’s life. But both have given up a lot to be at Seishu’s side as he tries to make a breakthrough.

The normal routine resumed the day atter the wedding.

Okatsu and Koriku did the cooking and laundry under their mother’s supervision while the maid cleaned and cared for the younger children. Shimomura Ryoan performed various duties for the doctor since the women and children were not allowed to so much as touch the drawers containing medical supplies.

Little time, however, was required to prepare the simple meals and straighten up the small house, so that most of the daily tasks were quickly completed. Now, the Hanaokas kept some looms on the veranda and a spinning wheel in a nearby storage area.

When their chores were done, the older girls, skilled at weav-ing, went off and worked at the looms without a break until dinner. Their special weave used dyed threads that Kae surmised must have come from the Matsumotos.

The normal world for a female in these times caught some what here

This book had been on my shelves for too long. I loved the interplay between the three main characters as the two women struggle to find their place and meaning in a male world. Add to that the cutting-edge nature of Seishu research and trying to get a herbal anthesis. The Progress he find will bring to help women with Breast Cancer. But this is at the cost of Animals and, in the end, family members as he tries to make a breakthrough. The moral nature of what he has to do to discover how he can save lives using his discovery.  It also tackles the role of females in Japanese society at the time it is set. Through the two women’s eyes and how they are treated in a male world. Have you read this or any other book based on a partly true story? Or another book by this writer ?

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov

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Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov

Russian fiction

Original title – Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda

Translator – Robert Chandler

Source – Personal copy

One of the aims of this year was to get more familiar with Russian Classics. I read War and Peace early on in the blog, and she and there have read a number of other books that have come from the likes of Pushkin Press when they have brought out a new collection of stories by a writer or a new Translation. However, this writer may not be as well-known as other writers on the same page. He was well-regarded among his fellow Russian writers but was never taken in the English-speaking world. This book is better known for being the basis of Shostakovich’s Opera, which is based around the book, and a few years ago, there was a film made of the novella as well. Leskov had a Harder upbringing than some of his fellow Russian writers. He worked as a clerk in the criminal court. He climbed and eventually was able to get a transfer to Kyiv. He ultimately went to work for a private company and got drawn into journalism and then to literary writing. He is known for his wordplay. There is an excellent LRB podcast about this book with Robert Chandler, the book’s translator.

Katerina Lvovna was not exactly a beauty, but there was something pleasing about her nevertheless. She was only in her twenty-fourth year; she was short but shapely, with a neck that could have been sculpted from marble; she had graceful shoulders and a firm bosom; her nose was straight and fine, her eyes black and lively, and she had a high white forehead and black, almost blue-black hair. Herself from Tuskar in the province of Kursk, she had been given in marriage to a local merchant by the name of Izmailov; she did not, however, love him or feel any attraction towards him – it was simply that he had asked for her hand and she, being poor, could not afford to be choosy. The Izmailov family was of no small importance in our town: they traded in white flour, rented a large mill in the district, and owned profitable orchards on the outskirts of town as well as a fine town house. In short, they were well-to-do. Moreover, they were not a large family: there was only the father-in-law, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov, a man of nearly eighty who had long been a widower; Katerina Lvovna’s husband, Zinovy Borisovich, who was a little over fifty; and Katerina Lvovna herself. That was all. Although Katerina Lvovna and Zinovy Borisovich had been married for five years, they still had no children.

The children or lack of is mentioned by her father in Law

This book is one of those books that, when you finish it, you go through all that happened in so few Pages. The book follows Katerina Lvovna, a wife of a much older man. By marriage, he is away working after the book’s opening, and we see how her husband’s father, Boris, wants children. He tells her how Zinovy has already been through a wife and is pushing his young wife for a child. But when a dam breaks on one of his properties, Katerina is left home alone. She has the house to herself, and as she is alone, she eventually starts a relationship with the Steward who has Left Sergei. She flirts with him, But she is told he is a womaniser. But when she is caught with Sergei in the bed with him by her father-in-law Boris. This one event sets her on a path of killing people and a series of events that change the whole course of her life and her connection over the years that follow. Sergei it shows a one-sided affair with a man who is more interested in Women than romance. But the knock-on effect on the woman that loves him. A Lady Macbeth indeed.

‘I know very well, master, where I’ve just been, and I advise you, Boris Timofeyevich, to listen to me and mark my words: what’s done can’t be undone, and it’s best not to bring shame on one’s own house. What do you want of me? What satistaction do you require?”

‘I want, you viper, to give you five hundred strokes of the lash, said Boris Timofeyevich.

I’m the culprit, you’re the judge. Tell me where I’m to go – and do as you wish. Drink the blood from my veins.’ Boris Timofeyevich led Sergei down to his stone storeroom and lashed him with a whip until the strength gave out in his arm. Sergei didn’t even let out a groan, though he chewed through half of his shirtsleeve.

When they get caught by Boris

I haven’t seen the opera or film of this book. I will be watching the film at some point. I have found it online. The title shows how rare it is for a woman to kill like Lady Macbeth, and here we see Katerina do it. We see a woman driven by the desire for both desire and freedom. But then the unravelling after what happens when they are caught by Boris, both her decision to kill him and also the long-term relationship between Katerina and Sergei. It shows how females struggle to break free of marriage when trapped in one. How by her father in law she is viewed as a baby-making machine. Then there is her relationship with Sergei, a womaniser, but she never quite sees it. She is blind to him until the end of the book!! I would be interested to see if Robert Chandler has done any more books by him. I like the other translations he has read over the years. Have you read Leskov?

Night Flight by Antoine De Saint -Exupéry

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Night Flight by Antoine De Saint -Exupéry

French fiction

Original title – Vol de Nuit

Translator – David Carter

Now, there is a writer you read when young and never really went back to reading when older. For me, it would be Saint-Exupery. I think a lot of kids of my generation, the Little Price was a book we all reread and loved. Still, I was always more of a fan when, in my teens of those books he wrote taken from his flying, I found an old penguin edition of Southern Mail. I discovered that he had written several books about his time flying the mail to various places worldwide. This was when the flight was just taking off, unlike now, which went from place to place. This was a time of smaller propeller planes that would struggle in certain weather conditions. We see how he captures those brave fliers and those around them.

AND SO THE THREE MAIL PLANES, trom Patagonia, Chile and Paraguay, returned from the south, the west and the north towards Buenos Aires. Their cargoes were awaited there in order for the Europe plane to leave around midnight.

Three pilots, each of them behind a hood which was as heavy as a barge, and lost in the night, were meditating on their flights and coming down slowly towards the enormous city from their stormy or peaceful sky, like strange peasants coming down from their mountains.

Rivière, who was responsible for the whole network, was walking to and fro on the airfield at Buenos Aires.

He remained silent, for until the three airplanes had arrived it would continue to be a day of dread for him.

With every passing minute, as the telegrams reached him, Rivière was conscious of being able to snatch something from fate, of reducing the sum of what was unknown and of dragging his crews out of the night and ont the shore.

The way he has set up his buisness

 

The book follows a time when De Saint-Exupéry was a postal flyer in Argentina. In the novel, he follows the setting up of the services through the eyes of the man who runs the services. Rivière has decided it may help improve the service if the flyers do night flights. The book follows one night when Fabian, one of his pilots, is heading to [atagonika to deliver and collect mail, which will later be sent to Paris and then on a flight to Europe. But when Fabian said the weather was changing for the worse, we started questioning Rivière’s actions around the flight as we jumped between the Base in Buenos Aires and Fabian in his plane until he is finally caught in a cyclone and radio contact is cut. This hits home later when Fabian’s wife looks to discover what happened to her husband. Meanwhile, the other two night flights with Mail made it back to the base, and he set the flight with nMail to Paris.

THE SECRETARIES WERE DOZING in the Buenos Aires offices when Rivière went in. He had kept his coat and hat on and looked, as always, like an eternal traveller.

He passed through almost unnoticed, so little space did his small figure take up, and so well did his grey hair and anonymous clothes blend into every setting. And yet the men became animated with enthusiasm. The secretaries showed concern, the office manager went through the recent documents with a sense of urgency and the typewriters clattered.

The telephone operator was pushing his plugs into the switchboard and noting down the telegrams in a thick book.

Rivière sat down and read them.

I was struck how different things would be now with modern tech.

What isn’t to love in this book it captures Man’s struggles against Nature, so we see the young flyer Fabian struggle with a treacherous flight to the very southern part of Argentina Patagonia. We see how quickly the weather could change a night without modern equipment to see the cyclone coming which he ends up crashing because he hadn’t seen it coming.. It also captures the nature of those early years of Commercial flying and how Riviere has to make decisions that affect what happens to Fabian and his other pilots as he tries to make the service work quicker using the night flights. Which seems harsh, but it is also the nature of the business at that time. This was when the routes they were flying were new and untested at night. So that is something else that captures the pioneering spirit of these pilots; of course, this is taken from Saint-Expuery’s own experiences at the time. He flew these routes as a pilot. A book that captures a man who himself died flying in the war. Have you read any books he wrote about the early years of commercial flying?

 

Matlock book Haul

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Amanda and I head for a coffee to Matlock, which is a few miles from us but has an Oxfam Bookshop. This second-hand shop was open to Peak Dragon books, which I have always missed as it only opens a few days a week, so catching it today was a bonus as it was a little gold mine. So what follows is the books I brought today as they have a three for five-pound deal.

As though I haven’t enough Josef Škvorecki over the years, he is one of the writers I have accumulated several books, but this is the first work of nonfiction by him I have got a collection of essay. Also love the old Faber covers.

I brought this book thinking it was a book that had been missed by this writer. Svevo was championed by James Joyce with his books Zeno’s Conscience I Have That and A Tree Grows Older, so when I got home, I found this is actually that book with a different US title

I am now going try and buy every Balzac that comes my way. Harlot High and Low collected four pieces Balzac nad collected into a single book and was part of his more significant work, Human Comedy.

Miookse and Gripes had talked about doing Carr’s mopunth in the country as a readalong this year, so I thought I’d like to try some of his other books I have How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup on my tbr and this was his second novel. It jumped out as it was about Cricket, during the war and there are few novels about cricket. Plus, I remember the Backlisted show talking about how quirky he was on an episode.

I was vaguely aware of Emanuel Livintoff, the Jewish writer who came from Russia to the East End and wrote this book about his childhood in the East End and how the Jewish community was when he was growing up in the twenties in London as it seemed to go well with another book I have been sent recently from Noir books East Broiadway to Whitechapel which is by the writer David Katz the fact the books follow journey to the UK from The US and Russia appealed to me so I will be reviewing these books soon.

Old Tony, as Tony’s reading list, covered this as his first book of 2025, so to see it so soon after I was captured by his review of it was a real turn-up for the books. Endo is also a writer I would like to read more from; I have just covered just once on the blog over the years.

So that was my ten-pound investment today, not a bad see; selection of books. I missed Oxfam but did call in the second chapter is a new bookshop in Matlock that has recently opened. They are the second shop to be opened by High Peak Bookshops. They also have a shop and Cafe in Buxton, which is worth a visit. They sell mainly remainder books, but there are always a few gems about, especially if you are into the more commercial fiction. I think it is a goldmine. But they also have a nice classics selection which I found this

A Gogol for this years classics reading. I hope to be back tot reviewing soon , I’ve just had a busy few weeks that has meant I am not reading a lot and also just had a number of things happening. I think I will go to the Oxfam bookshop next time as they are always a shop I tend to find books. Have you a local place with a few bookshops in it ?

 

 

Mozart’s Journey to Prague by Eduard Mörike

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Mozart’s Journey to Prague by Eduard Mörike

German Literature

Original title – Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag

Translator –Leopold von Loewenstein-Wertheim

Source – Personal copy

I moved away from France in my year of Classics and went to Germany for a short, quirky novel written by Eduard Mörike, a Lutherananutherinan priest who studied in Tübinghen when he passed his Theology degree, he became a Vicart in a rural parish, but over time his writing took over he was considered one of the best lyrical poets of his time,. This book ends with one of his poems and Imagines a Day in the Life of the composer Mozart as he heads to Prague for the premiere of his Opera Don Giovanni. Happens to steal a bitter orange off a tree. This book has been made into film and A radio play in Germany over the years.

Most Gracious Lady,

Here I sit, a wretch in your paradise, like Adam after he had eaten the apple. The damage has been done and I cannot even blame Eve, who at this very moment is innocently sleeping in a four-poster at the inn, with Cupids and Graces hovering around. Command me, your Ladyship, I am at your disposal to answer for my extraordinary misdeed.

In sincere confusion, your Ladyship’s humble servant,

W.A. Mozart,

on his way to Prague.

He handed the note rather clumsily folded to the uneasily waiting servant and told him to deliver it to the Countess.

The letter he wrote after getting caught having the orange

We see Mozart heading with his wife, Constance, from Vienna to Prague. When they stop at a country estate mid-route, and Mozart sees an Orange on a bitter orange tree, he takes it but is seen by the estate Gardener. He then writes them a letter of apology (I love that there is still a time when the written word is needed to make peace with the local gentry, sow ehn the countess invites them for the night to stop with them Mozart and his wife to spend the evening with them. The count is celebrating his Niece Eugenie’s engagement. So, as the couple fit in, Mastero is asked to play them a piece from his forthcoming opera, which he is happy to do. But as this happens, Eugenie sees something troubling in Mastero’s future. Will his Art finally eat him up? This leaves Mozart questioning his life and how entwined his life and music are!

“I feel,” whispered Eugenie with shining eyes, while everyone expressed their approval of what they had just heard, “that we have seen a whole symphony in colour, a perfect example of the spirit of Mozart in its gayest guise. Don’t we see the whole charm and gracefulness of Figaro in this?”

Her fiancé was about to convey this remark to Mozart when the latter continued:

“Seventeen years have now gone by since I last saw Italy,” he said, “but who, having once seen it, especially Naples, would not think of it for the rest of his life – even if he had been no more than a child as I was. But never before has the memory of that beautiful evening in the Gulf of Naples returned to me so vividly as today in your garden. When I shut my eyes – brilliant, distinct and clear, without the thinnest veil to obscure it – the divine landscape lay before me: the sea, the coast, the mountains, the city, the colourful crowds lining the shore and then that strange fantastic ball game over the water.

His music sparks the family he is playing for

I will hold my hand up I am not a substantial Classical fan I have tried over the years and am aware of Mozart and his career in parts. So, for me, this was one of those books that I had to turn to and have a deep dive into his music and the opera and how it all fitted in on his timeline, especially with Eugenie’s talk of Mozart dying and his life. Mörike actually mixes the facts of the events up in his novella. But at the book’s heart is the connection between the  Mastero’s life and music. A life we were all reading was short, but he didn’t know this until the small glimpse from Eugenie into his future. This book can be read in the evening. It is what Peirene calls a film book and can be read in a couple of hours. If you like classical music, you will get more out of it than I would. I do have DSenis Forman’s Night at the Opera, a book that I picked up, so when I need context around a work of Opera, I can see what he said. This was at the time after his last opera wasn’t well received in Vienna; he was now Prague’s golden boy. Have you read this fun little novella?

Eugéine Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

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Eugéine Gandet by Honoré de Balzac

French fiction

Origninal title – Eugéine Grandet

Translator – Slyvia Raphael

Source – Personal copy

In my first book of the year, I covered a relationship between cousins, and this is my second book of 2025. Another French book has that in part of one of the storylines; this was rewritten by Blazac after he wrote the original version so it would fit in with his grand plan of Human comedy. This fits in part about rural life and is set in a small village in the Loire near the town where Balzac grew up as a young man. So, for me, some of the characters may have been based on people he knew in that village when he was growing up.

In certain provincial towns, there are houses whose appearance arouses a melancholy as great as that of the gloomiest cloisters, the most desolate moorland, or the saddest ruins.There is, perhaps, in these houses, a combination of the silence of the cloister, the desolation of moorlands and the sepulchral gloom of ruins. In them life is so still and uneventful that a stranger would think them uninhabited, if his eye did not suddenly meet the pale, cold look of a motionless figure whose almost monk-like face appears above the window-ledge at the sound of an unknown step. These melancholy characteristics are to be found in the appearance of a house in Saumur, at the end of the steep street which leads to the château through the upper part of the town. This street, not much used nowadays, is hot in summer, cold in winter, and dark in parts; it is noteworthy for the resonance of its little cobbled roadway, which is always clean and dry, for the narrowness of its winding path, and for the peace of its houses that are part of the old town and are dominated by the ramparts.Dwellings there, three hundred years old, though built of wood, are still sound, and their varied exteriors contribute to the unusual appearance which commends this part of Saumur to the attention of antiquaries and artist

The opening of the book

The book focuses on the Grandet Family, who in the small town of Saumur, have become very wealthy. Still, the head of the household, Felix, is almost a Scrooge-like figure, a man who has, over the years, built up wealth from his wife’s estate. To start with, he married her. She was the daughter of a timber owner. Over the years, Felix built up the funds the family hands. But as he has done this, he has become cut off from everyone around him. So yes, he has money, but he only allows six people into his home. He has a daughter, Eugenie. She has many men in the village who want to take her hand, but Felix makes the house live on only a few francs a week as he gets tenants to pay him with produce. Enter to this is the dashing Charles, a cousin from Paris. When Eugenie gives him some gold coins, Felix overreacts and locks her up and sets out to get money from Charles. Along the way, Felix is told that Eugenie should inherit his wife’s money if anything happens to her. She and Charles stay connected after Felix strips him of money. We see how she becomes a woman wanted to be married by many men when she finally has her money.

Only six of the townsfolk had the right of entry into Grandet’s house. Of the first three of these, the most important was Monsieur Cruchot’s nephew. Ever since he had been appointed president of the county court at Saumur, this young man had added the name of Bonfons to that of Cruchot and had been working hard to make Bonfons supersede Cruchot. He already signed himself

C. de Bonfons. If any litigant was ill-advised enough to call him Monsieur Cruchot, he soon became aware of his blunder in court. The magistrate favoured those who called him ‘Monsieur le Président’ but he bestowed his most generous smiles on the flatterers who said ‘Monsieur de Bonfons’. Monsieur le Président was thirty-three years old and owned the estate of Bonfons (Boni Fontis), which brought in an income of seven thousand livres a year.

How Felix makes the money from his wives estate

This is the story of a girl crushed by her father. She is generous and lovely, but she is crushed by Felix and his decisions over the years. Balzac captures the stifling nature of being trapped in a small village that happens to Eugenie and her mother before her. It is hard to avoid comparing this to Dickens. There is a feeling Felix is the Anit Scrooge in a way. He is a miser like Scrooge, but unlike Scrooge, we see what happens when someone so focused on control of his family’s wealth, But there is also a way he could be compared to Miss Havisham as he goes through life his world shrinks like Miss Havisham. Eugenie isn’t like any Dickens character. She is crushed by her father. The generous soul she is is at every turn blocked and tried to be broken by her father. But like Dickens, it is a long look at how wealth has now dropped from the landowners to the merchants and how greed can cause men to act a certain way. Felix could have come from a Dickens novel in a way. He has touched on Mr Murdstone (I’m just rereading David Copperfield for later this month ). Have you read this or any other books by Balzac that may have influenced Dickens as both saw how greed can influence people to act.

 

Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide

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Strait at the Gate by Andre Gide

French Fiction

Original title -La Porte Étroite

Translator Dorothy Bussy

Source – Personal Copy

I pondered where to start this year, and I looked. Among those writers, I have the most books from is Andre Gide, but it had been too long since I picked him up and read a book by him . Then I thought I hadn’t seen his books around as much as you would twenty years ago. He seemed the perfect first choice for this year of reading classics and modern classics.  Gide won the Nobel in 1947 and was a hugely influential writer. When he wrote openly gay, he challenged the religious view of the timehe was brought up in. a strict religious background and a lot of his writing is him kicking against this view this book is an example of that.

My whole life was decided by that moment: even to this day I cannot recall it without a pang of anguish. Doubtless I understood very imperfectly the cause of Alissa’s wretchedness, but I felt intensely that that wretchedness was far too strong for her little quivering soul, for her fragile body, shaken with sobs.

I remained standing beside her, while she remained on her knees. I could express nothing of the unfamiliar transport of my breast, but I pressed her head against my heart, and I pressed my lips to her forehead, while my whole soul came flooding through them. Drunken with love, with pity, with an indistinguishable mixture of enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice, of virtue, Iappealed to God with all my strength – I offered myself up to Him, unable to conceive that existence could have any other object than to shelter this child from fear, from evil, from life.

I knelt down at last, my whole being full of prayer. I gathered her to me; vaguely I heard her say:

“Jerome! They didn’t see you, did they? Oh! go away quickly. They mustn’t see you.’

Not long after he arricves this connection happens

What happens when cousins live under the same roof when they are just at that age when we notice the other sex? This is what happens in the book we see Aiissa and Jerome. When Jerome comes to live with Alissa and her family on the northern coast of France. These events mirrored some events in Gides’s life when he was this age and drawn to a family member. They are drawn to each other, but at the same time, Alissa’s mother is having an affair. Add to this, ALissa is being brought up in a strict religious education. It all becomes too much for other young girls, and she seeks to escape from human connection and the world through religion and turns towards being without love. The book follows the years after this and the fact that Alissa’s sister is actually in love with Jerome, but he never notices it until much later. She carries his torch for him. Life takes twists and turns, most told through letters and meetings over time.

Was I alone to feel the spur of emulation? I do not think that Alissa was touched by it, or that she did anything for my sake or for me, though all my efforts were only for her. Everything in her unaffected and artless soul was of the most natural beauty. Her virtue seemed like relaxation, so much there was in it of ease and grace. The gravity of her look was made charming by her childlike smile; I recall that gently and tenderly inquiring look, as she raised her eyes, and can understand how my uncle, in his distress, sought support and counsel and comfort from his elder daughter. In the summer that followed I often saw him talking to her. His grief had greatly aged him; he spoke little at meals, or sometimes displayed a kind of forced gaiety which was more painful than his silence.

He remained smoking in his study until the hour of the evening when Alissa would go to fetch him.

the aftermath of her mothers affair have a knock on effect

What I found odd about this when I read it was that it mirrored Evelyn Waugh’s religious guilt of unrequited love traits in his books. I also thought of those triangles of connections in Brideshead, with love drifting between family members over the years or unseen. I wonder if Waugh had read this book?  It captures those years when you can see a connection with distant family members or classmates just before you hit high school. Those first sowings of love can often run deep or, like here, cause a knock-on effect. He is showing the effect religion can have on people, the leprosy of it all. I can also see how Waugh and Gide are at different ends of the spectrum. Unrequited love and religion can give writers at opposite sides of the divide a lot to write about. I did look to see if they were connected and found Waugh hated Giude. Still, for me, the parallels within a family can be seen, especially the other sister’s love for Jerome echos the scenes in Brideshead where Charles and Julia are drawn close, but then the other sister turns to religion but also seems to have a flame for Charles. This shows how my mind can connect two books together in a way. What do you think? I think I will return to Gide and may have a call with Waugh before the year is out !!