Multiple Reading Personalities

“un immense oiseau de nuit qui les regardait de ses yeux de braise, et qui semblait accroché aux cordes de la lyre d’Apollon!”
“an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo’s lyre (translation found at Classic Reader)

The Phantom as The Red Death — illustration from Castaigne

This week-end was near perfect: Chris and I went to Kentucky with our friends B and G, going from Bourbon distillery to horse racetrack (where I bet on the darkest horse I could find, in honor of The Black Stallion – and won!), from city to nature, and from activity to long breaks at the motel. I finished the Phantom of the Opera just before we went to visit the Lexington Cemetery, a peaceful place of nostalgic beauty. Its atmosphere is perhaps one of the reasons that the Phantom finally settled into my mind as a tragic figure rather than the monster he also is. There were interesting parallels to Frankenstein, in the “if only his creator – or men – had been a little more merciful”…  (“peut-être l’eût-il été [un ange] tout à fait si Dieu l’avait vêtu de beauté au lieu de l’habiller de pourriture” — “), though in Leroux’s work there seem to be a greater fascination for the links between pain and genius, where Shelley seemed to have less sympathy for her creation.

The novel is both simple in its dynamics (a love triangle, a mystery to be solved) and ornate in its details; it mixes tragic romance with comedy, murder mystery and tragedy. It however never felt disorienting or labored thanks to fast facing, frequent comedic touches and what impressed me most – Leroux’s complicity with his readers. He shamelessly cultivates it by not only addressing them directly, but also including them in spirited mockery of some characters such as Mme Giry or the extremely secondary “juge d’instruction Faure”. How infinitely wiser, smarter, and better informed we feel! And how I wish Gaston was one of my friends, or even better, a coworker with whom to grab coffee and make fun of everyone else. Knowing full well, of course, that he’s probably had a few laughs at your expense too.

The story itself is that of the mysterious events that happened at the Opera between the time a director is found murdered and that a diva disappears with a viscount. The diva is Christine Daae, a young woman whose least secret is how her voice miraculously became more beautiful than any other; the viscount is Raoul, who loves her with all the stubborn passion of a man who cannot imagine anything beyond him; in-between them stands the long shadow of the Phantom, a creature of many talents and macabre taste who lives under the Opera. I must confess to liking him much better than that brute of Raoul (who is initially depicted as naïve, childish man, and who, like a rotten kid, throws jealous tantrums at the slightest provocation). The Phantom himself borders on the homicidal, and acts with a staggering mix of greed and disdain for others, but with such grandeur and such style that it takes incredible efforts to remember that this guy is a murderer and a torturer… I’m afraid I failed at it most of the time, and kept wishing for his triumph.

All in all, the Phantom was just delightful. Everything felt just right, down to the varied and colorful characters, down to the unrealistically sarcastic dialogue (“D. – Vous êtes superstitieux ? R. – Non, monsieur, je suis croyant” — “are you supersticious?” “No sir, I believe in God”). Leroux stops at nothing to entertain, not even at lifting lines almost straight out of Victor Hugo (“C’était l’heure tranquille où les machinistes vont boire”, “The peaceful hour where thirsty stage managers pass” switching the original lions with a more urban type of beast). Works for me.

Oh, and that ends my participation in the R.I.P. Challenge IV, I think, as I prepare to immerse myself in Proust for a few weeks!

Doing my blog tour today, so many books appealed that I started scribbling down titles on a piece of paper. I wasn’t really thinking while doing so, but when I reviewed the list later, I was amused to see within a few lines of each other Black Milk (a Turkish novel from Elif Shafah, on women’s relations to creativity, located in one of my favorite cities in the world – Istanbul), Black Juice (from Margo Lanagan, a writer I’ve been meaning to discover) and the anthology Black Water (an 1984 collection of supernatural stories Audrey Niffeneger mentioned in her recent Goodreads interview).

All these dark liquids somehow reminded me that I didn’t review Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls — a vampire book I read under the pretense of the R.I.P. Challenge. To tell the truth I haven’t much to say about it. It is the story of a young vampire searching for his family; he will have to choose between kindred creative/ tortured souls and his blood kin – vampires lost in blood and sex lust. 

I’m not a prudish reader, but the abundance of incest/ pedophilia was a little ridiculous and just killed any eroticism. I wasn’t shocked so much as bored – the worst thing that can happen to a story. The problem was compounded by the fact that the two characters I was most interested in (Ghost, a “sensitive”, and Christian, an old vampire) did not gain the depth I was hoping for. I really wanted to get to know them, and was really curious how their stories would intertwine. I also wanted to see a female character that wasn’t a thinly veiled plot device… In the end however, I didn’t get any of my wishes. So while not exactly bad (after all, I wanted something to happen, so I had some interest), the novel just didn’t feel substantial. I have a feeling I’ll forget it entirely pretty soon.

“As her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking.”

Strike 3 for the R.I.P. Challenge! The most authentic gothic novel in my reading list, The Mysteries of Udolpho is book-ended by scenes of simple happiness in the Gascony house of the Saint-Aubert family; in between these, much travel, much adversity and many preposterous twists and turns sprawl on the pages of Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel. There’s good fun to be had in dark castles and secret passages, among mysterious voices and ghostly apparitions, but there’s also a quantity of unnecessary devices and digressions. If a modern editor were to travel back in time and inform Radcliffe that more is not always better – and if she also decided to put in a good word for consistency in point of view – I believe I would be a perfectly content reader.

When we first meet Emily Saint-Aubert, she seems to have the perfect life: loving and wise parents, a comfortable house with a well-stocked library, a lovely park. Emily is her parents’ only surviving child, having lost two brothers a few years back (an information given by Radcliffe with amusing  offhand brutality:  after describing a charming pastoral scene, she mentions that Emily’s father’s “first interruptions to the happiness […] since his retirement were occasioned by the death of his two sons”). This last is an example of unnecessary information. Nobody in the novel cares, neither therefore does the reader, and the fact has no bearing on the plot. Why bother?

The first seven chapters are similarly protracted, and I frankly felt that they belonged to the back-story, or at the very least should have been summarized in one chapter. In jest, Emily’s parents both die, leaving her in an embarrassed financial situation, and she meets a young man, Valancourt, whom she is attracted to. That’s it for the plot – the rest is all description of nature, gay peasant dances (I kid you not) and philosophical musings. One of these asides was about Emily’s education, in particular about teaching her to govern her sensitivity (Emily’s father teaches her that “sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions” and illustrates his point with the example of “persons [who] turn from the distressed […] because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated”). This type of moral education, so obvious until the 19^th century, seems to have gone out of fashion with the emergence of the ideas of “teaching by example”, “letting children become themselves”, and probably with the idea that human beings are born good (merci Rousseau!). I for one feel that I would have benefited to be taught what to do with excessive sensitivity – or with laziness, vanity, discouragement, etc. – but I’m not sure how other modern readers would enjoy these passages.

So back to the action: it picks up when the now-orphaned Emily is assigned to the care of her aunt, Mme Cheron. A silly, insensitive woman who delights in having power over others, she immediately indulges her petty impulses by coming between Emily and Valancourt. She also marries an Italian nobleman of suspicious character, and takes Emily away to Italy. There, amid enemies sly or brutal, Emily will have to fight for her virtue and her happiness in settings ranging from magnificent Venice palazzi to a ruined gothic fortress in the Apennines (and more – it is the rare chapter that doesn’t involve some change of setting). Bucolic promenades finally give way to treason and supernatural apparitions. The story from this point on is convoluted and coincidental to the point of absurdity, but with such lavish imagination, the only way to not enjoy oneself is to be impervious to the genre entirely. Of course, in the end, reason (if not probability) and courage will prevail, the worthy will be rewarded and villains will be punished.

I think it might read Radcliffe again in the future, but with a slightly different approach. As a writer, she is able of surgical wit, especially when criticizing fashionable society (for instance: “Madame Clairval, though a woman of fashion, was far less advanced than her friend in the art of deriving satisfaction from distinction and admiration, rather than from conscience”, or “the party continued to converse, and, as far as civility would permit, to torture each other by mutual boasts”); this ability to encapsulate realms of meaning in a short sentence sometimes even shines through without irony, an even rarer gift (for instance, when talking about the process of falling in love, she mentions “the danger of sympathy and silence”). She is unfortunately also inclined to great enthusiasm and lengthy descriptions for all things nature and heroines “full of timid sweetness” – not my cup of tea. I might just skip these passages in the future, as I skipped a majority of the poetry - editing as I read, in a way.

” Une goutte, rien qu’une petite goutte rouge, un rubis au bout de mon aiguille !… Puisque tu m’aimes encore, il ne faut pas que je meure… ”
“A drop, just a small little red drop, a ruby on the point of my needle! … Since you still love me, I cannot die…” (homemade translation)

Munch, Love and Pain

At the core of La Morte Amoureuse is the vision of Clarimonde, a light burning so bright it can never be looked at directly. Whoever dares to, like the narrator Romuald, risks never seeing anything else again. Various elements in the story show the impossibility of facing Clarimonde, most notably the chronology: the story is told by Romuald years after the facts; and at its most intense, their relation only ever happened in vivid dreams.

The warning against looking at Clarimonde can also be taken literally: the first time Romuald sees her, he is a young priest in the middle of being ordained. The moment his eyes fall on her, darkness engulfs everything – but her. Closing his eyes does not help: Clarimonde’s image just shines through his eyelids. From this moment on, Romuald is obsessed with her. He, who had never conceived greater happiness than being a priest, wants to renounce everything for her. He however proceeds mechanically with the ceremony, and soon after he is sent away to his new parish. His confessor, Sérapion, appears to suspect something and mentions Clarimonde as an immoral courtesan, exhorting Romuald to surmount his weakness.

Despite, or maybe because of the simplicity of his new life, Romuald cannot forget his obsession. One night, he is called to administer last rites to a woman – Clarimonde. He arrives too late to do anything for her soul – but as for her dead body, he calls it back to life with a kiss. Overcome by emotion, he loses consciousness.

When he wakes up, three days have passed and he is back in his priory. Soon after, his second life begins: a priest during the day, he dreams each night of an alternate life, in which he and Clarimonde have run away to Venice, and live a life of love and pleasures. After some time, Clarimonde starts to wither away, until Romuald accidently cuts his finger in her presence. Clarimonde is attracted to the blood and drinks a few drops of it, which restores her health. Soon after, Romuald realizes that she has taken to giving him a somniferous drink every evening so she can drink a few drops of his blood – but she is very careful never to exhaust him.

In Romuald’s day life however, things are coming to their denouement: Sérapion compels him to accompany to the tomb of Clarimonde. They exhume the perfectly preserved body and splash it with holy water, causing it to disintegrate immediately. She comes in a last dream  to say goodbye to Romuald and predict that he will miss her – as of course he does for the rest of his life.

A couple of passage reminded me of the Snow White myth (especially when Clarimonde is woken up with a kiss), but contrary to Neil Gaiman’s vampiric retelling (Snow, Glass, Apples), whether or not this story is that of an evil vampire remains open for discussion. Clarimonde might be evil: she is, after all, renowned for her extreme immorality, feeds on blood, and even before her death presented some disturbing characteristics, such as a skin “cold as a snake’s”. Her love however is incontestable: she is protective, faithful and generous to Romuald. Her physical beauty, sensual and overpowering, is described by Gautier with perceptible delight – and the glamour of it is never lifted, contrary to what usually happens to monsters in early vampire stories. In comparison, her adversary Sérapion represents a Church cold and hard as stones, and words such as “occult” and “sacrilege” are attached to some of his acts. It could be an effect of the charm Romuald is under – or it could be a vision of the Catholic religion as barren and against nature.

And this is R.I.P. IV Challenge book #2!

Today, finally, is a gothic day full of anguish!

Well, I mean this in a good way. For one thing, I’ve finally come to a place in Udolpho where there is action and drama to sink my teeth into, but more importantly – my lovely husband has soft-launched The Blood that Bonds, the website on which he offers his vampire novel as a free ebook.

 Now, you can’t expect me to be objective, but… I’m bursting with pride! The site is a wonderful mirror to his talents as a writer and a webdesigner, and more than that it reflects his generosity and his need to share. He poured love, time and effort on the site, and he took the opportunity to work with a great comic book artist. And and and… and it’s just FUN!

For all you vampire fiction fans out there, I hope you enjoy it!

“Maintenant vos volontés seront scrupuleusement satisfaites, mais au dépens de votre vie. Le cercle de vos jours, figuré par cette peau, se resserrera suivant la force et le nombre de vos souhaits, depuis le plus léger jusqu’au plus exorbitant.”

“Henceforward, your wishes will be accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant.” (all translations lifted from project Gutenberg’s online edition).

It must be the Eugénie effect — no sooner had I finished putting together my reading list for the RIP IV Challenge that I began reading La peau de chagrin, hungry for more Balzac. I know I read it as a child, but could not remember anything except the story’s basic premises and how much I love the French title (unfortunately translated either by The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass’s Skin in English – “Chagrin” has a double meaning in French, one shagreen – a rough, exotic type of leather that emphasizes the skin’s natural grain - the other grief, the French word chagrin being derived from shagreen via the sensation of the material’s roughness). Very poetic, and not giving away the true nature of the skin.

This famous skin comes to Raphaël de Valentin in a scene evocative of other literary pacts with the devil. His heart broken by the courtesan Feodora, his meager fortune dissipated in desesperate debauchery, the young man is on his way to throwing himself in the Seine when he stops in a curiosity shop to wait for the cover of the night. There, he is offered the talisman by an old man who sternly warns him against accepting it, explaining that for every wishes it grants, it will shrink, and so will Raphaël’s life.

The young man jokingly wishes for a feast and for wealth; however, he does not believe in the skin, and still intends to commit suicide. Leaving the shop, he runs into a few friends who have been looking for him all over Paris: Raphaël has been chosen to head a new magazine, and the launch party is about to start. The festivities are wild, and at their close, Raphaël miraculously finds out that he has inherited a fortune. His two wishes are granted. The skin has shrunk. Doubt is no longer possible.

From this moment, Raphaël’s motivations change drastically: he no longer wishes to obtain the love of his cruel mistress, he no longer tries to prove his genius, and most of all – he passionately wants to live. Is it because live is so much worthier when one is rich, is it the newly-perceived reality of death, is it a change wrought by the skin? The story does not explain, content with showing a rich Raphaël now living a life sheltered of any desire in a semi-retreat from the world. Love however will reach out to him again in the form of Pauline, the angelic girl Raphaël could not bring himself to love when they were both poor. Now also become fabulously rich, Pauline captures Raphaël’s heart. The two lovers are happy for a while, but passion soon means the end for Raphaël, who dies in the arms of his love.

While I choose this story for the fantastic element, the supernatural is not what will stay with me. There’s indeed a central mystical element, and it stubbornly resists scientific explanation: the skin is at some point brought by Raphaël to famous scientists, but they fail to understand anything about it. Later, the doctors who examine Raphaël also fail him – but their failure is a more familiar one (they come across as learned charlatans Molière would be proud of). Balzac even leaves the dubitative reader a way to deny the supernatural entirely: Raphaël falls asleep just before the skin is given to him, making it a possibility that everything that follows is a dream. Much as in a dream, echoes of his former life are woven through the rest of the narrative: a small example is that of a fanciful prediction made by Pauline’s mother, which is realized to T; a more significant one is that the whole question at stake in Raphaël’s life with the magic skin is that of the will – precisely the subject on which he had written his philosophy masterpiece. That would furthermore explain his otherwise mysterious change of life goals after obtaining the skin.

Also substracting from the skin’s interest is its unimpressive appearance and lack of “special effects”. Balzac is an author with incredible descriptive abilities, and he revels in them: his light touch with the skin has to be deliberate. It comes across a pure narrative device, the touch of a writer still learning his craft.

What does come across with incredible force is the fascination of the material world: the accumulation of exotic objects in the shop, the banquet scene, the tiny details of Raphaël’s life as a rich men are just fascinating. They can at times get overwhelming, but the sensuality of things through Balzac’s eyes has incredible power. It also stands in stark contrast to this Hemingway-esque observation at the beginning of the book: “Où trouverez-vous, dans l’océan des littératures, un livre surnageant qui puisse lutter de génie avec ces lignes: Hier, à quatre heures, une jeune femme s’est jetée dans la Seine du haut du Pont-des-Arts.” (Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare with this paragraph: “Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the Seine from the Pont des Arts.”) Brevity is not what Balzac made his name with – and from me, that is not a complaint!

(and since we’re on the subject of the fantastic: for the francophones out there, Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance on France Culture has a recent podcast on anguish in Maupassant. The guest speaker seems to overventilate with excitement at several points in the show, but aside from this minor complaint, it is well worth listening to.)

Well, let this be a cautionary tale of what happens when you decide of a book to buy based on the fact that it is available for the Kindle: it might be pretty terrible.

While I haven’t read too many fantasy books recently, they usually are a steady part of my diet. I love supernatural creatures and twisted parallel universes, and while not every author is a Tolkien or a Gaiman, I usually enjoy myself a lot more with an average fantasy book than with an average novel. I guess I am much more forgiving to weaknesses in the story or the writing when I have dragons to make up for it.

I have however had a run of bad luck recently: my random selections were mostly mediocre, and even in one case atrocious. That decided me to go with a recommended book this time; my original pick was The Birthgrave (also from Tanith Lee), based on an enticing review in Coilhouse.

But The Birthgrace wasn’t available for Kindle. Neither was The Silver Metal Lover, also highly recommended (in the tearjerker category – I am also a sucker for those). That disappointed me, as I prefer my “light” books (the ones I am not terribly likely to re-read or reference) in electronic format: they are much easier to carry with you when you move, and I enjoy the reduced price that fits the reduced usage. I foolishly solved my dilemma by deciding to go with any Tanith Lee that would go on my Kindle, thinking something glib like well a good author is a good author, right?

Hm. What a disappointment. I guess I’ll use the library next time I’m feeling cheap, something I should do more often anyway.

Metallic Love is the story of Loren, who warns us from the start that we won’t like her much — giving us to guess that it is because she’s not overly romantic. Well, thought I, I do actually like a tough gal; we’ll go along just fine. Then she proceeded to mope, whine and exhibit all the sign of teenage passion (i.e. talk about her undying love while it’s obvious that 1) she knows nothing about her lover, and 2) there is no sense of joy in their story). She act depressed and impotent for the rest of the book. My dislike of Loren, together with the fact that the central story was a fancy SF version of ”prince sleeps with peasant girl/ princess in hiding” , pushed all my annoyance buttons, making it impossible for me to root for the the girl.

A couple things about the universe were interesting – living under the threat of a poorly-stabilized asteroid and the religious deviancies it feeds, the class differences, etc. – and I have no complaints with the writing, so I might indeed try another Tanith Lee sometime. In the meantime, the hunt for decent fantasy continues!