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The Languages of Love
Julia Grampion, 28 years old, has just been awarded her doctorate at London University, but life seems rather dismal: her engagement with Paul has ended because of religious complications. She drifts to another affair, learning a different and more changeable idiom of love, learning also how language disguises the shifting uncertainties of human relationships.
Set in a post-war cosmopolitan London,The Languages of Love features university departments, the Reading Room of the British Museum, espresso bars and little restaurants in Soho, the Serpentine Lido, the London Docks, publishers’ parties and a Bloomsbury "room of one’s own”, as well as a varied cast of characters including professors, students, philologists and mediaevalists, highbrow journalists and publishers:
Bernard, Julia’s lover after the break with Paul, is sensual, cultured, selfish, with a learned French wife, Nicolette; Paul, charming and devoted, unable or unwilling to transgress the laws of his church. The African student Hussein, simple, passionate, and intelligent, is prompt with the quotation of Sanuri proverbs, revealing a less complicated world than that of Bloomsbury. The language of his love for the exquisite Georgina is like a refreshing oasis in the dusty desert of London’s life, and his gift to her of a camel foal is a comic interlude never to be forgotten, in a first novel of wit and intelligence marking the out-of-the-ordinary talent of Christine Brooke-Rose.
Set in a post-war cosmopolitan London,The Languages of Love features university departments, the Reading Room of the British Museum, espresso bars and little restaurants in Soho, the Serpentine Lido, the London Docks, publishers’ parties and a Bloomsbury "room of one’s own”, as well as a varied cast of characters including professors, students, philologists and mediaevalists, highbrow journalists and publishers:
Bernard, Julia’s lover after the break with Paul, is sensual, cultured, selfish, with a learned French wife, Nicolette; Paul, charming and devoted, unable or unwilling to transgress the laws of his church. The African student Hussein, simple, passionate, and intelligent, is prompt with the quotation of Sanuri proverbs, revealing a less complicated world than that of Bloomsbury. The language of his love for the exquisite Georgina is like a refreshing oasis in the dusty desert of London’s life, and his gift to her of a camel foal is a comic interlude never to be forgotten, in a first novel of wit and intelligence marking the out-of-the-ordinary talent of Christine Brooke-Rose.
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
59 people want to read
About the author
Christine Brooke-Rose
42 books101 followersChristine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her later, experimental novels. Born in Geneva and educated at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London, she taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988 and lived for many years in the south of France.
She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966).
She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.
NYT obituary.
She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966).
She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.
NYT obituary.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 1, 2016
A little hindsight can be a dangerous thing.
When Christine Brooke-Rose published her first conventional novel, The Languages of Love, in 1957, she had already undertaken and successfully completed two phenomenally difficult writing tasks: the first was her PhD thesis, later published in 1965 as A Grammar of Metaphor (due to be republished by Verbivoracious Press this year), in which, via analysis of the poetry and prose of literary greats, she demonstrated how metaphor was contained within grammatical components. The second was the application of that analysis in the constraints used to write a piece of morally charged poetry modelled on the long poem Pearl (see Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume One: Christine Brooke-Rose for both her notes on Gold as well as its reproduction); constraints every bit as tortured and tenebrous as anything later imagined by the Oulipians (standing on the shoulders of the Olympians), although not concerned with the omission of grammatical components, which she pursued in her later, post-conventional novels from the 1960s onwards. She was already writing reviews for literary magazines in London by the mid 1950s, and was the anonymous reviewer of Ezra Pound’s poetry for the Times Literary Supplement.
With such a pedigree, her first novel is closer to fulfilling the aspiration once whispered down the rabbit-hole “Hear me, oh Earth! I shall one day be a writer!” than in satisfying the expectations such ambitious first works might (have) generate(d). Ever the comic, Brooke-Rose intended The Languages of Love to be a light social satire reflecting the literary world of post-war London, in the vein of Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Jane Howard (the latter two with whom she was labelled “The Formidable Trio”). Instead, as she later acknowledged, the parody collapsed to the thing it parodied. Perhaps, and what was never intended when originally written in the conventional narrative style, is that its roman a clef nature would be exposed in the light of subsequent works (conventional, in particular The Middlemen, although The Dear Deceit is concerned with her father, and innovative, such as the bifographies Remake and Life, End of and the social commentaries Between and Amalgamemnon, also containing autobiographical elements). Mere speculation, no doubt, to suggest that the gag on all former RAF members who worked at Bletchley Park prompted her to reference that experience obliquely in her first novel, or take events and people personally and historically relevant to her as the basis for plot and characters in The Languages of Love, as if by fictionalising her past she could speak of it without fear of discovery, and despite later assertions that her novels were “less self-reflexive, less autobiographical, than others”. (Equally suspect, the individual of such alarming anally obsessive tendencies as to parse Brooke-Rose’s oeuvre looking for the evidence refuting her statement.) It is, however, her dexterity with presenting a fictionalised version of her life in her later novels, as well as her ability to infuse those novels with an ethical calculus and social commentary that resolves why The Languages of Love fails to remain true to its intent: the grammatical constraints Brooke-Rose employed served as distancing techniques preventing author from inhabiting (abusing/using) character; the lack of these in The Languages of Love results in the protagonist being rescued or excused at the height of folly, because the commentary injected in the novel is not meant to be satirised, representing, as it does, Brooke-Rose’ own value system. The novel stumbles only because of its intrusive sincerity, and what may seem, to some, a dated and clichéd characterisation of a former British colonial citizen.
At the level of language, Brooke-Rose’ comic genius is as much present in The Languages of Love as in her later work. Sly twists of phrase, neatly witty descriptions, puns, and word-play abound. So too makes the poet an appearance, in the unique and sometimes eccentric, but always vivid, metaphors most often appearing at the beginning of chapters as scene-setting and frequently as tongue-in-cheek and brief portrayals of event or character. If any criticism is to be made, it is that the artery-clogging conventions of 1950s British literature occasionally invade the text: after the advent of Beckett, these may grate on a contemporary ear.
It is, of course, already a novel in which nothing happens: a recent PhD graduate has an affair and finds a job. But that is the magic of Brooke-Rose’ narrative skill, that nothing happens and yet a whole story is told, equally prominent in her later works. Moreover, the novel serves as an evocative snapshot of a London that has been eclipsed by its own importance: Brooke-Rose’ mise en scene occurs on buses, in bars and restaurants, in the Reading Room of the British Museum, along the Thames and in the market, Hyde Park, in buildings once iconic but now nothing more than either a memory or a reference in a book, creating an eerily nostalgic atmosphere almost lamenting the pace of change in London’s urban landscape. The post-war literary and academic society of London, its values, mores, and preoccupations, is captured with startling and humorous accuracy as a moment in time, a testimony to its existence, perhaps less valued because of its proximity to the early 21st century, but no less historically significant in the decades to follow than previous centuries are and have been to this one.
Recommended for groupies and newbies alike, and/or Murdoch/Spark fans. As a gentle introduction to Christine Brooke-Rose, the intrepid but careful reader will be left with the stomach-gnawing sensation of wanting more; for those steeped in the lawful lore of her, Verbivoracious Press has plans to release a homage mouthily entitled The Logαλφαgeis of kLeubʰ: /la:f/; /lʌv/ by Chretine Broke-Prose (the first chapter of which appears in the Festschrift compiled in Brooke-Rose’ honour) next month. Pester that pesky MJ Nicholls for details.
Read an excerpt here.
When Christine Brooke-Rose published her first conventional novel, The Languages of Love, in 1957, she had already undertaken and successfully completed two phenomenally difficult writing tasks: the first was her PhD thesis, later published in 1965 as A Grammar of Metaphor (due to be republished by Verbivoracious Press this year), in which, via analysis of the poetry and prose of literary greats, she demonstrated how metaphor was contained within grammatical components. The second was the application of that analysis in the constraints used to write a piece of morally charged poetry modelled on the long poem Pearl (see Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume One: Christine Brooke-Rose for both her notes on Gold as well as its reproduction); constraints every bit as tortured and tenebrous as anything later imagined by the Oulipians (standing on the shoulders of the Olympians), although not concerned with the omission of grammatical components, which she pursued in her later, post-conventional novels from the 1960s onwards. She was already writing reviews for literary magazines in London by the mid 1950s, and was the anonymous reviewer of Ezra Pound’s poetry for the Times Literary Supplement.
With such a pedigree, her first novel is closer to fulfilling the aspiration once whispered down the rabbit-hole “Hear me, oh Earth! I shall one day be a writer!” than in satisfying the expectations such ambitious first works might (have) generate(d). Ever the comic, Brooke-Rose intended The Languages of Love to be a light social satire reflecting the literary world of post-war London, in the vein of Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Jane Howard (the latter two with whom she was labelled “The Formidable Trio”). Instead, as she later acknowledged, the parody collapsed to the thing it parodied. Perhaps, and what was never intended when originally written in the conventional narrative style, is that its roman a clef nature would be exposed in the light of subsequent works (conventional, in particular The Middlemen, although The Dear Deceit is concerned with her father, and innovative, such as the bifographies Remake and Life, End of and the social commentaries Between and Amalgamemnon, also containing autobiographical elements). Mere speculation, no doubt, to suggest that the gag on all former RAF members who worked at Bletchley Park prompted her to reference that experience obliquely in her first novel, or take events and people personally and historically relevant to her as the basis for plot and characters in The Languages of Love, as if by fictionalising her past she could speak of it without fear of discovery, and despite later assertions that her novels were “less self-reflexive, less autobiographical, than others”. (Equally suspect, the individual of such alarming anally obsessive tendencies as to parse Brooke-Rose’s oeuvre looking for the evidence refuting her statement.) It is, however, her dexterity with presenting a fictionalised version of her life in her later novels, as well as her ability to infuse those novels with an ethical calculus and social commentary that resolves why The Languages of Love fails to remain true to its intent: the grammatical constraints Brooke-Rose employed served as distancing techniques preventing author from inhabiting (abusing/using) character; the lack of these in The Languages of Love results in the protagonist being rescued or excused at the height of folly, because the commentary injected in the novel is not meant to be satirised, representing, as it does, Brooke-Rose’ own value system. The novel stumbles only because of its intrusive sincerity, and what may seem, to some, a dated and clichéd characterisation of a former British colonial citizen.
At the level of language, Brooke-Rose’ comic genius is as much present in The Languages of Love as in her later work. Sly twists of phrase, neatly witty descriptions, puns, and word-play abound. So too makes the poet an appearance, in the unique and sometimes eccentric, but always vivid, metaphors most often appearing at the beginning of chapters as scene-setting and frequently as tongue-in-cheek and brief portrayals of event or character. If any criticism is to be made, it is that the artery-clogging conventions of 1950s British literature occasionally invade the text: after the advent of Beckett, these may grate on a contemporary ear.
It is, of course, already a novel in which nothing happens: a recent PhD graduate has an affair and finds a job. But that is the magic of Brooke-Rose’ narrative skill, that nothing happens and yet a whole story is told, equally prominent in her later works. Moreover, the novel serves as an evocative snapshot of a London that has been eclipsed by its own importance: Brooke-Rose’ mise en scene occurs on buses, in bars and restaurants, in the Reading Room of the British Museum, along the Thames and in the market, Hyde Park, in buildings once iconic but now nothing more than either a memory or a reference in a book, creating an eerily nostalgic atmosphere almost lamenting the pace of change in London’s urban landscape. The post-war literary and academic society of London, its values, mores, and preoccupations, is captured with startling and humorous accuracy as a moment in time, a testimony to its existence, perhaps less valued because of its proximity to the early 21st century, but no less historically significant in the decades to follow than previous centuries are and have been to this one.
Recommended for groupies and newbies alike, and/or Murdoch/Spark fans. As a gentle introduction to Christine Brooke-Rose, the intrepid but careful reader will be left with the stomach-gnawing sensation of wanting more; for those steeped in the lawful lore of her, Verbivoracious Press has plans to release a homage mouthily entitled The Logαλφαgeis of kLeubʰ: /la:f/; /lʌv/ by Chretine Broke-Prose (the first chapter of which appears in the Festschrift compiled in Brooke-Rose’ honour) next month. Pester that pesky MJ Nicholls for details.
Read an excerpt here.
May 24, 2013
Discovering a new writer’s work, experiencing all those fluttery feelings of romance and newness, is a singular pleasure for committed bookworms. Like with “real people” in “real relationships,” things can take two turns: a period of blissful pleasure, where no faults can possibly be found or can be dismissed as charming eccentricities, leading to a lifelong adoration, or a slow realisation that nothing will recapture that one-off encounter, and all further meetings simply highlight the limitations and failure to recapture that perfect experience, leading to desperate, clinging disappointments and eventual resentment. My affair with Martin Amis, at once tempestuous and passionate, now relies on fond memories of books past and hopeful attempts at frottaging the oeuvre, hoping to recreate that lust in The Information and London Fields. My steady marriages to Gilbert, Kurt, Ali, Flann, Charles, David and others remain unflagging and fun-filled and hot in the bedroom.
Christine Brooke-Rose has arrived with her outstanding introduction (to me), Amalgamemnon and followed this up with an utterly other type of novel from her comedies-of-manners period—all these books are terminally unavailable—and now poses a new dilemma for me. She is playing hard to get, literally. A romance is impossible between us, because her books lurk in university libraries and archives, making attainability difficult (since I no longer reside in Edinburgh, where all the books in Scotland live). But tortured, knotty relationships are the norm among us young and indecisive and perpetually uncertain misfits, are they not? Pining and yearning and hoping and moaning are the sounds of modern love, in an age too confused to define itself, and that would only spurn the definition anyway, if it hit upon a truth. And this funny and witty comedy underlines my paragraph brilliantly: the undulations and heart-throbs of this newness and confusion, with an eventual afterglow of calm delusional bliss.
Christine Brooke-Rose has arrived with her outstanding introduction (to me), Amalgamemnon and followed this up with an utterly other type of novel from her comedies-of-manners period—all these books are terminally unavailable—and now poses a new dilemma for me. She is playing hard to get, literally. A romance is impossible between us, because her books lurk in university libraries and archives, making attainability difficult (since I no longer reside in Edinburgh, where all the books in Scotland live). But tortured, knotty relationships are the norm among us young and indecisive and perpetually uncertain misfits, are they not? Pining and yearning and hoping and moaning are the sounds of modern love, in an age too confused to define itself, and that would only spurn the definition anyway, if it hit upon a truth. And this funny and witty comedy underlines my paragraph brilliantly: the undulations and heart-throbs of this newness and confusion, with an eventual afterglow of calm delusional bliss.
August 20, 2014
This chic and svelte edition from Verbivoracious Press delivers a much-needed reprint of British avant-gardist Christine Brooke-Rose’s freshman outing, The Languages of Love. Set in the yesteryear of England circa 1950’s - back when everyone smoked cigarettes, drank martinis and cocktails constantly and said “darling” in every sentence - this novel is an Altman-esque panoramic of young and attractive academics who behave like petulant brats when it comes to the subject of love. CBR uses her cast of hapless academics to not only satirize the complete lack of practicality having an esoteric knowledge of a niche subject within linguistics offers when it comes to situations like actually interacting with other people and their emotions, but to also turn her novelistic eye onto the less-than harmonious shift in the 20th century towards more liberal outlooks on matters such as gender, race and religion. The novel moves at a breezy pace and CBR does well to keep the dialogue firmly in the realm of tongue-in-cheek as her characters bare their intellectual hearts to whomever's pants he or she is currently trying to jump into. This is a charming first novel and I look forward to the eventual reprint of her sophomore offering, The Sycamore Tree, courtesy of Verbivoracious Press.
March 15, 2015
CB-R's first novel, published in 1957. Like all her work prior to "Out" (1964), it's fairly conventional in structure. The plot comes straight out of her own life at the time: Julia Grampion has just finished a PhD on medieval poetry at London University, and is hanging around Bloomsbury trying to decide what to do with her life. There's lots of acid about Eng.Lit. academia of the 50s, in which philology and history dominated and "theory" barely existed. The contemporary literary world gets satirised, with publishers, critics and established novelists made fun of. Avant-garde poetry readings and the intelligentsia's new-found excitement for trad jazz get a mention, along with problems of religious faith, both Catholic and "Moslem". The latter is represented by an East African character enrolled to assist with linguistic studies, and who joins in the romantic involvements. "Orientalist" occurs here in a non-pejorative use, but we can see a trace of the attitudes later identified with it. There is an underlying sense of dissatisfaction at the inequality that classes women as "battleaxes" if they desire to be more than a reflecting mirror for the male ego, but that doesn't lead to a feminist breakout. The main occupation is with an educated 20something not sure where to go next. The weak point is the finale, which tries to create a moral life-lesson, quite unconvincingly.
March 21, 2017
A solid 3.5/5... just getting warmed up.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews