The Old Wives' Tale
“The manner of his life was of no importance. What affected her was that he had once been young. That he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to that. Everything came to that.” ― Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale is a good, but not great, novel about the lives led by two women from a small town in England. While he writes with both a high degree of realism and historical accuracy there are moments, especially in the opening chapters, that test the reader's patience. His devotion to the quotidian details of everyday life does not always rise to the level of interest, even when presented well by a master prose stylist. Our Lincoln Park Book Group discussed this novel this evening and concluded that Bennett succeeded in his attempt at realism and that the characters, particularly the two sisters, Sophia and Constance, had depth and believability.
Bennett's ability to successfully develop believable female characters with the protagonists is one of the best aspects of this novel. His realistic style compares favorably with William Dean Howells whose novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, also demonstrates a sensitive portrayal of women. I found that the novel became more interesting as each of the four sections unfolded, ultimately becoming a satisfying portrayal of small town life during the end of the Victorian era.
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett. Penguin Books, New York 1983 (1908).
Sacred and Profane Love
Titian, the greatest Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school, who was once described as “the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of the world,” died this day in 1576.
Titian's influence on later artists has been profound: he was supreme in every branch of painting and revolutionized the oil technique with his free and expressive brushwork. Vasari wrote of this aspect of his late works that they `are executed with bold, sweeping strokes, and in patches of color, with the result that they cannot be viewed from near by, but appear perfect at a distance... The method he used is judicious, beautiful, and astonishing, for it makes pictures appear alive and painted with great art, but it conceals the labor that has gone into them.'
Sacred and Profane Love (also called Venus and the Bride) is an oil painting by Titian, painted around 1513-1514. This painting, one of the best examples of his work, was commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten (so identified because his coat of arms appears on the sarcophagus or fountain in the centre of the image) to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. The work was bought in 1608 by the art patron Scipione Borghese and is currently housed with other works from the Borghese collection in the Galleria Borghese in Rome.
The novelists Arnold Bennett and Iris Murdoch both wrote novels with Sacred and Profane Love in the title (Sacred and Profane Love and The Sacred and Profane Love Machine).
