Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 8/04/2024
Apparently there has been a data breach on goodreads and my personal data have been compromised. You would think it was hardly worth anyone’s trouble. Nonetheless it seems I should delete my account and re-register. So this identity is about to disappear. A new contributor with similar interests may shortly join the group.
scarletnoir wrote: "We'll be off to France for a month tomorrow, which means saying goodbye to more than three months of endless problems with 'things' - they have been proving exceptionally intransigent of late - and..."enjoy your time in france scarlet!
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "every Zola i have read, i loved, not many more to read apart from the obscure ones, Dr Pascal might be next on my list.I may have been misled in my expectations before reading Zola. ..."
Taylor didnt seem happy with Nana either in his review!
The Earth, Germinal and The Debacle were my favourites, if i had to pick one of these as my no 1, it would be hard
I was just reading an article about Justice Stephen Breyer in the latest New Yorker and came across a single short paragraph that reinforced my idea that a taste for Proust requires some level of tolerance for, and knowledge about aristocratic titles: It’s true that Breyer has a professorial presentation. He is cosmopolitan and erudite. He travels to other countries and is interested in their legal systems; reporters like to drop the fact that he has read “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” in French, twice. He is also, for a judge, relatively wealthy. His wife, Joanna Hare, a clinical psychologist at Dana-Farber, is the daughter of an English viscount.
CCCubbon wrote: "I read more from Alice Roberts latest Crypt and found this interesting - the way that the Black Death spread from Asia into Europe in the fourteenth century. The fact that the Khan used the bodies ..."That reminds me of something I read in recently in Dominic Sellwood's Anatomy of a Nation, a history of Britain in 50 documents. Reading as I do on Kindle makes it easy to copy and paste text.
" In 1346 Jani Beg, the Mongol Khan, was besieging Caffa: a Genoese owned trading town later generations would rename Feodosiya. According to the Italian chronicler Gabriel of Mussis, Jani Beg’s Mongol forces suddenly began dying in large numbers, succumbing to a virulent illness that had originated in the steppes of Asia. The attacking army was soon so depleted that Beg could no longer maintain the siege. In desperation, he gave orders for batches of his men’s disease-riddled corpses to be loaded onto siege catapults and fired over the walls into Caffa in the hope the stench of the cadavers and their ruptured boils would hasten the city’s surrender. To his surprise, the effect of the corpse ballistics turned out to be far more dramatic than he had hoped. The Genoese residents of Caffa immediately began falling ill with the same fatal illness as his men, and rapidly took to their ships and headed home to Italy. Unknown to the fleeing colonists, however, when their vessels docked in Sicily, they unleashed the disease upon Europe, bringing to western Christendom the most destructive pandemic the world has ever seen.... "
The book is a very entertaining overview of 50 moments in British history, told through inscriptions and douments.
Bill wrote: "I was just reading an article about Justice Stephen Breyer in the latest New Yorker and came across a single short paragraph that reinforced my idea that a taste for Proust requires some level of t..."I just came across a phrase about Evelyn Waugh on some blog or other, "relentless in his veneration of the aristocracy" and I think that goes for Proust as well, or at least his alter ego, the narrator. Both snobbish himself and merciless in his mockery of the sobs and social climbers he writes about.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I read more from Alice Roberts latest Crypt and found this interesting - the way that the Black Death spread from Asia into Europe in the fourteenth century. The fact that the Khan..."That's done it, just ordered the book from AbeBooks. Thanks!
AB76 wrote: "Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never read two novels ..."I have read quite a few Zola novels, including the Sin of the Abbé Mouret, and enjoyed them all. But if the Sin of the Abbé Mouret is panned by critics, it's possibly because Zola makes a break with his usual "realism" . It starts off as a novel of small-town clerical intrigue, just like the previous novel, the Conquest of Plassans, and then it veers off into Symbolist territory. SPOILER ALERT
A large abandoned estate with a walled garden becomes a lost paradise, the innocent young man and woman who find themselves there are a new Adam and Eve, they play out the old Bible story all over again, there is even a serpent in human form, a priest, no less, waiting outside the garden wall. And it all ends in tears.
SPOILER ENDS
So, it is a bit of a weird one. Some of Zola's most beautiful writing, but unlike anything else he wrote (although the Dream has a similar atmosphere) and not what the reader expects when picking up a Zola novel. Imagine a gritty Wessex novel by Hardy with a sentimental rural idyll penned by Dickens sandwiched in the middle of it and you might get the idea.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I read more from Alice Roberts latest Crypt and found this interesting - the way that the Black Death spread from Asia into Europe in the fourteenth century. The fact that the Khan..."I had not read about this happening in Caffa before, the consequences meant death for millions. The chapter about plague in the book is most interesting - I wrote about it a little more fully on WWR if anyone is interested.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never rea..."interesting, thanks for that FA
FrustratedArtist wrote: "But if the Sin of the Abbé Mouret is panned by critics, it's possibly because Zola makes a break with his usual "realism" . It starts off as a novel of small-town clerical intrigue, just like the previous novel, the Conquest of Plassans, and then it veers off into Symbolist territory."Did you think Nana adhered to a strictly realist approach?
I certainly felt that Nana and her "victims" were at least as much symbols as individual characters. Indeed, since the issue was raised earlier in the thread, I was thinking that my memories of the novel are of the characters as kind of symbolic figures embodying a corrupt and decaying society rather than as imagined persons in their own right with idiosyncrasies and their own individual desires, ambitions, and flaws.
In what I saw as its symbolic thrust, in retrospect it reminded me more of something like The Faerie Queene than a novel like Esther Waters, which was supposedly inspired by Zola's "naturalism".
Bill wrote: "FrustratedArtist wrote: "But if the Sin of the Abbé Mouret is panned by critics, it's possibly because Zola makes a break with his usual "realism" . It starts off as a novel of small-town clerical ..."I don't see Zola as a realist novelist, though he did a lot of research to get the details right the plots are pretty melodramatic and often rather formulaic. And yes, he's concerned with big ideas of social injustice, corruption and his idee fixe of heredity. But he was seen as a "realist" (a euphanism most of the time for cynical grubby-minded muckraker) by his contemporaries.
The Faerie Queene, that's a big subject. 4 months of reading last year, with help from David Timson's superb recording. Beautiful, strange and just occasionally very funny.
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I can say authoritatively that “deleted user” post was not a scam, though the annoying personalized message that prompted the deletion might have been.
I have two Zolas left to go. Several were tremendous. None of them was less than enjoyable, apart from La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, which I myself thought was dreadful – he seemed to forget he was writing a novel and produced a tract instead. IMO, the few good moments in it would have made for a readable novella. As I approach the end of the cycle I have been flagging a bit, but am about to start on L’Argent.
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We'll have to remember your new name now!
Reading some more essays by Poe last night, i came accross one where he described his method of writing his famous poem The Raven. Having not read it for 30 years and intrigued by the essay, i read it and was really impressed by its style, meter and use of language. it could be easily fitted to modern rock music, a goth anthemn!how odd that i have a good memory but it was like reading the poem for the first time!
AB76 wrote: "Reading some more essays by Poe last night, i came accross one where he described his method of writing his famous poem The Raven."Poet Daniel Hoffman (in Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe) is more than skeptical that Poe's account of writing The Raven reflects the actual process of its composition, and I'm inclined to agree.
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Reading some more essays by Poe last night, i came accross one where he described his method of writing his famous poem The Raven."Poet Daniel Hoffman (in [book:Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe P..."
interesting, thanks bill, what is your thoughts on that Poe essay then? As a novice to his poetry and non fiction, having read all his prose except Nantucket, i am not too familiar with the essay or its relaibility
So sad he died so young too, found senseless outside a polling booth in Baltimore, dying the next day
FrustratedArtist wrote: "I don't see Zola as a realist novelist, though he did a lot of research to get the details right the plots are pretty melodramatic and often rather formulaic. And yes, he's concerned with big ideas of social injustice, corruption and his idee fixe of heredity. But he was seen as a "realist" (a euphanism most of the time for cynical grubby-minded muckraker) by his contemporaries."I guess that if I had understood this as the general consensus on Zola, I wouldn't have bothered to read anything by him.
He does pile on the details of his scenes, like an over-zealous set decorator, but unlike, say, Dickens, I don't recall that the details were ever used to provide the key to a scene or characterization.
AB76 wrote: "interesting, thanks bill, what is your thoughts on that Poe essay then? As a novice to his poetry and non fiction, having read all his prose except Nantucket, i am not too familiar with the essay or its relaibilitySo sad he died so young too, found senseless outside a polling booth in Baltimore, dying the next day"
I think that the essay is intended primarily as a piece of self-promotion by Poe: he's more interested, as I recall, in pointing out its theme and structure than in the process of construction.
Poe's story "The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." gives an entertaining picture of literary life at the time and I suspect Poe was not above some of the shady reviewing practices he satirizes. The LOA collection of essays and reviews includes a review of Tales by Edgar Allan Poe which the notes say "was almost certainly written by Poe".
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "interesting, thanks bill, what is your thoughts on that Poe essay then? As a novice to his poetry and non fiction, having read all his prose except Nantucket, i am not too familiar wit..."A-ha, Poe reviewing his own work!
AB76 wrote: "So sad he died so young too, found senseless outside a polling booth in Baltimore, dying the next day"Apropos of this, I meant to add that I recall reading an "alternate history" story in which Poe, surviving into his 50s, is commissioned as an officer in the Confederate army.
Bill wrote: "I guess that if I had understood this as the general consensus on Zola, I wouldn't have bothered to read anything by him." I'd be sorry to put anyone off reading him! I'm pretty sure the general consensus now is that he was the outstanding novelist of his generation, at least in France. But he certainly had a lot of detractors during his lifetime, especially among the conservative Catholic sections of French society. His books were seen as obscene and anticlerical. In England his translator was prosecuted and served time in prison for translating his books. (They weren't actually put on the Vatican index of prohibited books, like his contemporary Anatole France's though*) . And his defence of Dreyfus irritated the haters even more. (An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris, that's a great read.) Someone hated him enough to block up his chimney, causing his death.
I've enjoyed everything I have read by him, about half the Rougon-Macquart series. You're right, he does pile on the detail, but for me that creates a vivid sense of place.
*Edit I was wrong about the Index. All his books were banned by the Catholic Church. That must be something of a badge of honour in itself.
I've noted a tendency in the NYRB this year to give some coverage to books that might be considered "Fortean", though all are published by university presses, which probably induced the editors to consider them in the first place. So far there's been reviews of Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science, They Flew: A History of the Impossible, and, in the current issue, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.
I imagine that readers who come to the journal for literature and / or politics might object to these, but I'm all for shining a spotlight on the fringier thinkers and topics in academia.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "I'd be sorry to put anyone off reading him! I'm pretty sure the general consensus now is that he was the outstanding novelist of his generation, at least in France."No worry - in my case, I'm afraid Zola himself did that. I think I'd need a greater interest in 19th century French history to be able to get into the series, though I'm interested enough in the art aspect that I will probably give The Masterpiece a try.
Re Zola: I’m lurking here, as also on WWR, but am finding actual reading quite difficult, partly time-wise but also because real life gets in the way. MrB says I’m doing too much but if family and deserving charities and lost cats and cars carved up by white vans take priority what can I do?But I must agree with Mr Brandon that Abbé Mouret, The Dream and Nana will never be re-read by me, nor for that matter The Masterpiece, A Love Story or Doctor Pascal. But I will always say I love Zola. Am I the only one who thinks La Joie de Vivre (The Bright Side of Life he calls it) is brilliant? I have read them all, in order (not sure whose order). It was some years ago but looking at them there’s at least half of the 20 which I’ve re-read and would read over again. His views on heredity etc may have been discredited, but the Rougon-Macquart series is a must-read. Just not in the Vizetelly English translation please.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "Bill wrote: "I guess that if I had understood this as the general consensus on Zola, I wouldn't have bothered to read anything by him." I'd be sorry to put anyone off reading him! I'm pretty sure..."
yes, anything the catholic church bans must be a good read!
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "So sad he died so young too, found senseless outside a polling booth in Baltimore, dying the next day"Apropos of this, I meant to add that I recall reading an "alternate history" sto..."
the civil war could have ruined his reputation if he went full confederate couldnt it, if he lived? i would like to think he would have gone with the Union personally, northern stock, though spent most of his early life in Baltimore and Richmond
Bill wrote: "FrustratedArtist wrote: "I'd be sorry to put anyone off reading him! I'm pretty sure the general consensus now is that he was the outstanding novelist of his generation, at least in France."No wo..."
i'm a firm fan of his and i think you would enjoy many of his novels. I think The Debacle would be one for you....about the Franco-Prussian War
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Re Zola: I’m lurking here, as also on WWR, but am finding actual reading quite difficult, partly time-wise but also because real life gets in the way. MrB says I’m doing too much but if family and ..."German artist Käthe Kollwitz also found Zola fascinating. I am quoting here from an essay that I wrote many years ago. I am not sure what I really think about it now, as there is a bit of modern day voluntary 'slumming' about it, somehow, by Käthe, at least from my perspective, as judged in current times. As if she was witnessing the working classes as animals in a zoo, perhaps? At least it seems so from my quote.
"This very much fitted in with Kollwitz’s interests in the working-classes and her portrayal of socialist experiences and issues. Though from a bourgeois background herself, she had a lifelong fascination with working class people, and especially the experience of women. As Kollwitz said about herself:
“Originally pity and sympathy were only minor elements leading me to representation of proletarian life, I simply found it beautiful. As Zola or someone said ‘the beautiful is the ugly’.”
But it is very much a quotation from the past. There was an excellent Radio 4 drama series of 'Blood, Sex and Money', by Zola, starring Glenda Jackson, a while back, which I thought was wonderfully portrayed. I did love the 1993 film of 'Germinal' though... for a taste of Zola...
AB76 wrote: "Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "So sad he died so young too, found senseless outside a polling booth in Baltimore, dying the next day"Apropos of this, I meant to add that I recall reading an "alternate..."
I doubt that Poe would have been attracted to the Confederacy. He knew a disastrous state when he saw one.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "Someone hated (Zola) enough to block up his chimney, causing his death..."Fascinating - I had never heard that before. Sounds like a case for Sherlock Holmes! The method - blocking a chimney - was certainly unusual, and rather hit-and-miss, I'd have thought. Wikipedia reports "no evidence found at the time", but there were subsequent suspicions and there are accounts (hearsay accounts) of two 'confessions' - which of course are believed by biographers, Zola's family etc.
Although politically I think I'd find myself on Zola's side in his disputes (as far as I know anything about them), I'm not wholly convinced by this - surely, assassins would have used a more certain method? If an old-fashioned Scottish court had tried the suspects, I'd have voted for a verdict of "not proven". But this sounds like a classic case of:
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
(That quote in itself gives another example of fallible human memory and unreliability, as it exists in several versions. Here is an interesting attempt to clarify its origins and to distinguish its different versions:
https://sevencircumstances.com/2018/0... )
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Fascinating - I had never heard that before. Sounds like a case for Sherlock Holmes! The method ..."
I don't remember hearing that either. Here's an extract from L'Histoire:
For fifty years, the conclusions of the official investigation, citing a simple accident, an accumulation of soot due to street vibrations, wind and rain, remained accepted. This is no longer the case. Various studies have highlighted the inadequacies and contradictions of the investigation.
In the 1980s, Superintendent Marcel Leclère, former head of the criminal investigation department, heard evidence of a mistake made by the smoke engineers on the roof of the building: the Zolas' chimney flue was inadvertently blocked in place of a flue that had become useless. But perhaps the "mistake" was deliberate.
Two successive investigations, first by Libération journalist Jean Bedel, then by two Zola specialists, Alain Pagès and Owen Morgan , reconstructed the career of a man who had confessed in 1928 to having deliberately blocked the chimney flue and the very next day made all traces of his crime disappear: a smoke contractor named Henri Buronfosse, a member of the Ligue des patriotes in 1902 and a friend of the founder of the Ligue antisémitique, Jules Guérin.
The presumptions of a fanatical murder are now very strong. They should come as no surprise. Zola had received death threats, some of which were followed by attempted murder. If Buronfosse was telling the truth, then Zola belongs to the cohort of victims of their fight for truth, law and justice.
But all we have is an oral confession, passed on to Jean Bedel in 1953 by the person who received it. We lack the material evidence that would lead from probability to proof. We have to accept the idea that Zola's death, on the night of 28-29 September 1902, will remain one of the mysteries of history.
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One of the British Library Crime Classics, John Dickson Carr's The Black Spectacles is a tale of poison and a test set up to show the unreliability of witnesses, which doesn't end well.
The Comedians by Graham Greene(1966) has started well and luckily i have no memory it seems from being force fed for my A level englishHints of secrets, conversation that suggests a lot more than on the surface, the usual Greenesque narrator and the looming island of Hispaniola....
As for Coasting by Johnathan Raban, its an interesting mix of styles, anecdotes and personal history. it amused me that alongside his many books packed into his yacht, he pins a photo of a determined looking Maggie Thatcher as well...i didnt expect that, not for any pro-Maggie reasons ofc!
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I'm inclined to agree.
I read them all (? most of them?) years ago and while it was a satisfying experience, I don't feel an urge to re-visit.
Gpfr wrote: "We have to accept the idea that Zola's death, on the night of 28-29 September 1902, will remain one of the mysteries of history.."
I remembered reading about the confession, years later, of the man who claimed to have blocked up the chimney, but,as so often when we remember things, filtered out all the detail aand nuance. So, it's far from a cut and dried case, and the mystery will almost certainty never be solved.
Anyway, in his last decade Zola was a keen photograher, and this
https://flashbak.com/emile-zolas-phot...
article contains quite a few of his pictures, including a couple of Sydenham, where he lived while in exile as a result of writing J'Accuse! . Thr hotel where he stayed has a blue plaque on the wall, marking his stay there. He wisely travelled to England with his wife, leaving his mistress and children (in the linked article, photos
3 and 4 from the bottom) in France.
FrustratedArtist wrote: "Anyway, in his last decade Zola was a keen photograher, and this article contains quite a few of his pictures, including a couple of Sydenham, where he lived while in exile as a result of writing J'Accuse! ."Thanks for that - being better versed in French music than French literature, the picture captioned "The Zolas and Charpentiers in Medan" caught my attention.
I knew that Zola was acquainted with Cezanne, but I know nothing about his relationships with composers and musicians of the era. Do any of the Zola fans here know of other musicians in his circle?
New books on display at the Auburn library. Harold Holzer's "Brought Forth on This Continent" tries to examine the American Civil War through the lens of American Immigration. It is not a good fit, and not as helpful as the author, with his extensive research, intends.
Immigration was not a major issue in Lincoln's early career. On the other hand, William Seward, former Governor of New York State and later Lincoln's Secretary of State, was a strong advocate of immigrants' civil rights, had a great deal to say-- before the war. This is awkward, because the figure with the closest prewar connection to the immigration issue-- and to the even more ticklish status of fugitive slaves-- was not the central figure of the war, or the most critical problem.
Lincoln was no Lenin. That is, he did not aim to pile a factional war on top of the struggle to reunite the United States. If a Democrat came to Abe with an offer to raise troops to fight for the Union, he would gladly give his former political opponent a colonel's--or even a general's-- shoulder straps and set him to it.
When Lincoln met with former slave- and anti-slavery activist- Frederick Douglass, he urged Douglass to encourage black enlistment in the US Army-- a new thing in those days.
German-American and Irish-American political leaders were enlisted in the same way as Democratic Congressmen.
Of course, immigration-related problems-- like every other issue of the day-- wound up on Abe's desk at some point. Germans wanted praise for German generals. The Irish wanted to be treated as full citizens. Jewish immigrants--outraged by Grant's order expelling Jewish merchants from his area of operations- appeared in Lincoln's office, only to learn that he had already been warned, and that the order was being rescinded.
News that Lincoln told some stories with a mock-Irish accent doesn't add or subtract from his weight.
Alex Christofi's Dostoevsky in Love, another new book on the Auburn library's shelves, is unusual. Is it a biography of a writer, or a carefully researched historical novel? There are extensive quotations from Dostoevsky's letters, woven together with autobiographical passages from his novels. The story of Dostoevsky's mock execution is a good example of this technique, vividly told.
Reminiscences from Dostoevsky's contemporaries shape our author's modern commentaries. As Dostoevsky said himself, the violent turns in his life cut one period from another as cleanly as a pair of scissors. New faces, new male confidantes, new women--some proposed to after the briefest acquaintance-- appear, causing some confusion for this reader.
It is an interesting read-- and, given the Russian's chaotic love life, a puzzling one- but I've begun re-reading passages.
Robert wrote: "New books on display at the Auburn library. Harold Holzer's "Brought Forth on This Continent" tries to examine the American Civil War through the lens of American Immigration. It is not a good fi..."
Viewing the 1860 census when i started some civil war reading 7-8 years ago suprised me in how the USA still reflected its 1776 origins as a strongly white anglo saxon protestant country. Catholics were a tiny minority, as were foreign protestants like Lutherans and non-British stock was small, especially in what became the Confederacy
The only thing that had significantly changed since 1776, and which i expected, was the fading of the Episcopal Church into minority status(even if its former heartlands like Virginia) Of course the census is pretty vague on the millions of enslaved people in the nation...
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I knew that Zola was acquainted with Cezanne, but I know nothing about his relationships with composers and musicians of the era. Do any of the Zola fans here know of other musicians in his circle?"
Are you sure it is Gustave Charpentier of Louise in the photo? Much more likely to be Georges Charpentier, Zola’s publisher.
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A picture of the drab Sydney suburbs, and a contrasting picture of a community on the coast 30 miles south where the strongest presence is the mighty ocean. Ubiquitous bungalows with corrugated zinc roofs. An interesting and plausible theme is the unrooted and directionless nature of Australian society.
The Lawrence figure, Lovatt, is a writer travelling with his wife. He finds himself in close contact with two prominent men who each wish to recruit him to their cause.
One is the Leader of a semi-clandestine group, mainly ex-army, who talk rebellion. (There are references to the state of post-war Germany and Italy.) He has intellect and wit, and expounds lavishly on his contempt for democracy, though the only idea that emerges with clarity is his desire to set everything in Australia ablaze.
Set up as a counterweight is a union boss who addresses public meetings with eloquence on the uselessness of the upper classes. It is strong and engaging, and yet the clashing ideas seem to belong to an age gone by, when there were working men in masses.
The Leader, known familiarly as Kangaroo, talks of love as the only inspirational force. Lovatt is drawn to him, but resists committing himself. He maintains that there is a different and more profound force, to be found in “the lower self, the dark self, the phallic self… a dark god at the lower threshold… it isn’t love… Love seems to me somehow a bondage.”
Lawrence does right by Lovatt’s wife, Harriett, who is given plenty of sharp words to say.
It’s hard to beat Lawrence for the sheer intensity of the writing – what it is to be truly a man, or a woman, how to feel truly alive. The answer he gives here is to shake off cloying humanity and be instead a fish, to be exultantly ice-cold, to surge with the passion of a sea-thing, solitary, cold, full of fish-cold energy. So at one point Lovatt throws off his clothes and rushes naked into the foaming surf. I’m not mocking, it’s just the way he writes to express his thought, and in its place it is not ridiculous.
There is much else in this longish novel, including the nightmare of the war years in England and the expulsion from Cornwall, the elation of being out in the bush and its great silence, and a comical passage on the perfect marriage. It was well worth reading. Thanks for the recommendation, AB.
Logger24 wrote: "Are you sure it is Gustave Charpentier of Louise in the photo? Much more likely to be Georges Charpentier, Zola’s publisher."Thanks. I'm sure you're right. Gustave would have been in his 30s or early 40s and the man in the photo would appear to be older. Given my musical tunnel vision of French culture, the composer was the only contemporary "Charpentier" I knew of and the presence of a mandolin reinforced the idea.
Did Zola take any interest in music? I wondered when reading Nana whether the opening scene was supposed to take place at the performance of an Offenbach operetta.
Logger24 wrote: "Kangaroo – DH Lawrence (1923)A picture of the drab Sydney suburbs, and a contrasting picture of a community on the coast 30 miles south where the strongest presence is the mighty ocean. Ubiquitou..."
glad you liked it, it is scandalously overlooked amid his british set novels of the 1910-1920 period, they are great novels but in Kangaroo, i believe Australia gets its best portrait as an emerging independent nation. I love travel books but i dont think anyone comes close to the pages where he describes Sydney and other locations in such a brilliant way. This was a time when it was quickly overtaking Melbourne as the largest city in Aus. But its not about celebration of a city, more the realist, british observations of these ever growing outposts of anglo-saxonia...
The Cornish interlude is possibly the best Lawrence writing on WW1 too
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Thanks. I'm sure you're right... Did Zola take any interest in music? I wondered when reading Nana whether the opening scene was supposed to take place at the performance of an Offenbach operetta."
That scene from Nana is the only one I can think of anywhere in the cycle that prominently features music, and actually I remember the scene more as a burlesque than an operetta, because Nana doesn’t have any kind of a singing voice and in the end it is her physical presence on stage (unclothed under a veil) that excites the audience.
I have a faint recollection that the two lovers in La Fortune des Rougon sing to each other while wandering the provençal countryside, but that will not be the kind of music you are thinking of.
Logger24 wrote: "I remember the scene more as a burlesque than an operetta, because Nana doesn’t have any kind of a singing voice and in the end it is her physical presence on stage (unclothed under a veil) that excites the audience."Thanks again. To refresh my memory, I looked at the synopsis of Nana on Wikipedia. Its description of the opening scene is:
Nana opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés in April 1867 just after the Exposition Universelle has opened. Nana is 18 years old, but she would have been 15 according to the family tree of the Rougon-Macquarts Zola had published years before starting work on this novel. Zola describes in detail the performance of La blonde Vénus, a fictional operetta modeled after Offenbach's La belle Hélène, in which Nana is cast as the lead.I recall now making the association with Offenbach because one of the songs in La belle Hélène includes the refrain, “Ecoute-nous, Vénus, Vénus la blonde.”
I note that Alistair Horne's excellent book on the Franco-Prussian War, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71, also opens at the Exposition Universelle and also refers to an Offenbach operetta, but in his case it's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.
Bill wrote: "Did Zola take any interest in music?"My first thought was "no" and it turns out that I'm completely wrong. In fact in the 1890s he worked closely with bearded pince-nez wearing composer Alfred Bruneau, who, inspired by Wagner (who rejected songs or arias in favour of sung prose dialogue) wanted to bring more realism into opera. Bruneau wrote operas based on The Dream, the Attack on the Mill, and several other Zola works, continuing after Zola's death.
To quote from Alan Schom's biography of Zola,
"At the time of meeting Zola, Bruneau was working as a proofreader for the prestigious Hartman Company (Massenet’s publisher), and thus he approached the great man rather diffidently. He had come to ask if he would permit him to compose an opera based on his early novel, La Faute de l’abbé Mouret. Zola informed him that Massenet had obtained the musical rights to that work years before. Questioning Massenet about this, Bruneau quickly learnt that his former teacher had not yet begun work on that text, but would not relinquish it in his favour. Accordingly, Bruneau wrote to Zola informing him of this. On 31 March 1888, Bruneau received a note from Zola asking him to call, and to his surprise Zola offered him a book he was still writing but would not complete for several months — Le Rêve. Bruneau was delighted, but informed him of his disastrous first attempt at opera, Kérim; needless to say, Bruneau was rather startled to be told that Zola had himself seen and liked the production. So began the long, mutually fulfilling relationship between the two men. Bruneau quickly became devoted to Zola and remained so even decades after Zola’s death."
I had never heard of Alfred Bruneau, and there are just a few of his pieces on YouTube. I am off to find out more about this forgotten composer. I am loving this thread, it is opening door after door.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AFc5aPC...
FrustratedArtist wrote: "Bruneau wrote operas based on The Dream, the Attack on the Mill, and several other Zola works, continuing after Zola's death."Thanks for the information. Bruneau is a new name for me as well, though I see there are a few recordings: most of them, like your link, are single tracks on collections of French songs and arias. There's also a Requiem, a tone poem on Sleeping Beauty, and a suite from The Attack on the Mill.
I can't say that that excerpt made me think of Wagner (more of Puccini, mainly because of the big tenor climaxes).
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
A Clockwork Orange (other topics)The Devil Prefers Mozart: On Music and Musicians, 1962-1993 (other topics)
Waltz into Darkness (other topics)
Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (other topics)
Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Deryck Cooke (other topics)Cornell Woolrich (other topics)
Stieg Larsson (other topics)
Jim Thompson (other topics)
Margaret Atwood (other topics)
Thanks. We start at around 5.30am for a 250 mile drive - the first half - in time taken - on 'proper roads' (I don't th..."
I hope you have a good journey and then that all goes well with les travaux.