Multiple Reading Personalities

” 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!

“After many trials, he was destined to face the end of his days in this mortal world; as was the dragon, for all his long leasehold on the treasure.”

Starting a note on Beowulf, even in this remote corner of the web, is a daunting endeavor – even though the poem itself was a captivating read, far from the dusty and obscure epic I was dreading. It certainly helped that I had encountered the story before, even in such inaccurate forms as in The Thirteenth Warrior and Zemeckis’s eponymous animated film.

The poem itself is not the culprit for my feeling intimidated: I cannot judge the merits of Seamus Heaney’s translation except for one thing – its ability to make the story feel close to the reader, lively and still pulsing with a sense of both excitement and loss. I am very aware, however, that I barely even scratched the surface of the work.

Set in Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) in the late 5th to mid-6th century, Beowulf tells the story of a Geat (Southern Sweden) warrior, a slayer of monsters: Beowulf. A man of extraordinary strength, courage, loyalty and generosity, Beowulf is the perfect embodiment of the Germanic code of honor. Searching for occasions of valor, he comes to the rescue of Hrothgar, a Danish king whose Great Hall is plagued by repeated incursions from Grendel, a monster jealous of men. Beowulf ambushes him and fights him without weapons, tearing a limb from the monster who flees to die in his lair. This first victory is greatly celebrated, but Grendel’s mother soon comes to avenge her son. This strikes me as in keeping with the blood-feud the men themselves wage (perhaps a condemnation of the primitive, unforgiving vendettas?), though it is not a comment I have come across elsewhere.

Beowulf does not shy from this new enemy, but increases his fame by pursuing her to her cave at the bottom of a monster-infested lake. He kills her in combat, and is greatly rewarded in honor and in gold. Returning to the Geats, he loyally passes on the gold to his king Hygelac, who rewards him in land and rings. The thane remains faithful when his king dies, refusing to take the throne as long as a legitimate heir lives. He will finally access it, and reign as a great ruler for many years, protecting his people from its enemies. His own end will come in the form a dragon (a wyrm!) awaken from his sleep and devastating the land. Beowulf will fight it and win with the help of Wiglaf, a young warrior, but victory is bitter: Beowulf dies from his wounds and most of his thanes deserted him in his hour of need, their cowardice hinting at a defenseless country who soon must fall.

Of course, the battles with fantastical creatures are no more factual than they need to be, but I imagine them to carry a great deal of symbolic truth: the age of men, meaning in this interpretation the age of Christianity, is coming. The old myths are dispatched by men still mostly pagans (and perhaps it is why their kingdoms must fall…). Additionally, much of the historical dimension of the poem (human wars, alliances and family trees) is supported by other findings (cultural, archeological, etc.).

Transition from one order to another, then? This is the interpretation I choose to favor, for in the poem I feel a mourning for the old world as well as a resignation to its unavoidable disappearance. Some scholars have argued that Beowulf is closer to an “ethnographic” rendition of Germanic mores for an English readership. I cannot judge the merits of these ideas, so I am going to go with my instincts here!

Another transition I am extrapolating from the raging debate on the origins of the epic (dated from the 8th to the 11th century, depending on whom you choose to trust) is that from the oral to the written: Beowulf is written in old English alliterative verses and contains traces of a wide variety of dialects, not to mention clear signs of having been (re?)-transcribed and edited by two different scribes. It has been argued to be anything from a mere transcription of oral tradition to an original, singular-author work, with  multiple intermediate interpretations (two authors, three authors and two scribes, etc.).  I could not pronounce myself on this, but the strong structure of the work (three battles interlaced with poet songs and reminiscences, two locations separated by a sea and many years, etc.) seem to speak to some level of intention.

I, for one, felt a strong cohesion in the work, with deep echoes from one part to the next, from one aging, falling king to the other. And I have to admit it moved me.

“What crime had they committed? The Earth had decreed that they were an offense on the land and must be destroyed. “

Nothing in Achebe’s novel is simplistic, and the quote I chose to illustrate it is a good example of this: far from describing the fate of the Igbo people, oppressed by white colonists ignorant of customs of the land, it applies to the traditional destiny of twins, abandoned at birth for being decreed “abominations” and left to die a horrendous death in the evil forest.

Things Fall Apart is full of complexities: written as a rebuke to the mid-twentieth century white vision of Africa and colonialism, it takes its title from an Irish poet (Yeats); a harsh indictment of Christian missionaries, it shows how their religion was an instrument of acceptance for outcasts of traditional society; a lament for tradition, it also highlights its shortcomings and violence. This sensitivity is the novel’s best trait, making it impossible to discount as partisan, and probably a very important argument for its immediate impact at release. I found it to also make the novel slightly less compelling from a story point of view, making empathy with the characters even more difficult than it already was from their distance to me (a woman from post-colonial France, an agnostic and a hater of conflicts). What remains is a thoughtful, intelligent discussion, and the memory of a writing more rhythmic and somewhat less melodic in language than I often associate with gifted novelist. That last point also is a clear intent from Achebe, in homage to the intrinsic beauty of the Igbo language, misunderstood as it was by colonists.

The story itself is that of Okonkwo, a man on a quest of strength and respectability. His entire life is built in opposition to that of his father, a man seen as weak for his lack of material ambition and leisurely tastes. In contrast, Ononkwo is hard-working and inflexible to the point of violence in his moral convictions. Both men however are victims of a contrary fate, dying alone and their bodies denied a clan burial, Okonkwo as punishment for his sin (in the Igbo tradition) of suicide, his father for dying of a taboo disease.

Okonkwo’s fate is perhaps even harder for the long struggle that has been his life. A hard worker, he is marked by ill luck from the start: the year he first attempts to make his fortune (by planting yams lent by a local strong man) is one of astounding adverse weather. Still Okonkwo perseveres, and soon makes a fortune sufficient to live comfortably with three wives. His status in the clan rising, he is asked to take care of a prisoner from another tribe. The young man, Ikemefuna, becomes a loved member of his family and a model for Okonkwo’s own son, the gentle Nwoye: tragedy strikes again when the clan orders the murder of Ikemefuna. Driven by fear of weakness, Okonkwo not only accepts, but also participates in the execution despite warnings not to – a treason he will pay the price of depression for.

As Okonkwo starts to get better, things sour again when he is the accidental cause of the death of one of his friend’s sons. A seven-year exile with his family ensues, and when finally they return to the clan, it is to find the village slowly infiltrated by white missionaries. As Nwoye joins the ranks of the converted and a series of skirmishes between old and new rules take place, Okonkwo’s anger mounts, until finally he tries to confront the white men despite the tribe’s reticence. Defeated, Okonkwo finally hangs himself before he can be executed, a final act of defiance that signs his definitive ostracism from the clan.

For a book closing on the death of its main character (and on the subsequent meditation of the European District Commissioner who, seemingly unaffected by the reality of the scene, dreams of a tamed Africa), Things Fall Apart ends with a singular feeling of unresolved questions. The Commissioner’s dreams of a quick and total “pacification” (how condescending!) of Africa are as doomed as Okonkwo’s dreams were. What does the future hold? The narrator does not seem to have any better answer than his creations.