The Eternal Man

Ninety-Three 

by Victor Hugo

“History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.”  ― Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three






Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo is a glorious romantic imagining of an episode from the year 1793, during the French Revolution and the year of the Great Terror. The setting is Brittany where counter-revolutionary forces have risen up to oppose the Revolutionary leaders. The leader of this group, the aged Marquise de Lantenac, is a romantic hero in the grandest sense. A Breton noble, he disguises himself as a peasant after landing on the western coast. His mission, which he pursues with ruthless single-mindedness, is to act as a leader to the rebels, harness them to the royalist cause, and contrive an opportunity for an English military invasion.

His fate seems to be determined by the Revolutionary forces which are led by his grand-nephew, Gauvain. Pitted against Lantenac, Gauvain, formerly the Vicomte de Gauvain, has renounced his noble heritage and embraced the republican cause. Gauvain commands the republican troops allied with Marat and tasked with hunting down and killing Lantenac.

The third protagonist is Cimourdain, once a priest and Gauvain’s tutor, now a fervent revolutionary. It was from Cimourdain that Gauvain first learned the political ideals he has adopted. Cimourdain has a secret, the one weak spot in his ideological armour, for he loves Gauvain, has loved him since childhood, like the son he himself never had. Cimourdain is sent by the revolutionary leader, Marat, as a special agent to the Vendée to ensure that Gauvain does not waver in his loyalty, for Marat has heard disturbing rumors that Gauvain may be capable of mercy, and revolutionary leaders view this as a cardinal sin.

The tension of the story is provided not only by the action, which is fiercely exciting, but by ideas. At one point Gauvain says to Cimourdain:
"Louis XVI was a sheep thrown among lions. He tried to flee, to save himself . . . But not everyone can be a lion who wants to. His feeble attempt was regarded as a crime."
He asks Cimourdain, "lions? What are they?"
"This made Cimourdain think. He raised his head and said, 'Those lions are consciences. Those lions are ideas. Those lions are principles.'" (pp 197-98)

While Gauvain is a man of action, a revolutionary for the republic, he is also a thinker and it is his thoughts about the humanity of men that lead him to his ultimate actions. 
The grandeur of this novel is superb, while Hugo builds suspense in every section. Some scenes are so vivid that you are unlikely to forget them. One scene that is sometimes excerpted from the novel is the great cannon episode; depicting a loose cannon on a ship of anti-revolutionary French Royalists sailing towards Brittany, to aid the anti-revolutionary Chouannerie rebellion. 
The whole of the novel is like this, filled with one astonishing experience after another, keeping this reader spellbound.


Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo. Bantam Books, 1962 (1874)

The Spell of Love

Adolphe 

by Benjamin Constant

"How to depict the spell of love -- the conviction that we have found the one whom Nature destined for us; the sudden light shed on the mystery of life; the way that trifles gain a hidden meaning; the rapid hours . . . the certainty that the world can no longer harm us where we live, and a mutual understanding that guesses every thought and responds to every emotion -- ah, that spell; anyone who has felt it could never describe it." (p 91)





This is an unusual short novel. A story of a romance with virtually no context, however it suggests what Europe was like for a son of a wealthy family in the early 19th century. And, in one of the later chapters, Constant describes the physical geography of an area of Poland. But, beyond that, there's only Adolphe's emotions and his perceptions of Eleanor's. In its psychological approach it reminded me a bit of The Sorrows of Young Werther, but perhaps more closely resembles Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time.

The narrator, Adolphe, is an intelligent young man, given to analysis and raised in a household without much affection, who begins a relationship almost as an experiment – and also because he understands that this is what people are supposed to do. The woman is already the mistress of a Duke, and has two children with him but no real rights as acknowledged by society. He is young, 22 years old, and has just completed his studies at the University of Göttingen. He travels to a small town in Germany, where he becomes attached to the court of an enlightened Prince. During his stay he gains a reputation for an unpleasant wit. A friend inspires him to attempt the seduction of an older woman named Ellenore.

Eventually, the woman succumbs, and as far as the reader can tell she is entirely in earnest. She gives up everything for him. Rather quickly, Adolphe’s ardor entirely cools, but he feels unable to detach himself from her. He alternates between trying to be honest about his feelings and then, when he sees her getting more and more distraught, rapidly feigns emotions that he desperately wants to feel but no longer does. Adolphe becomes anxious as he realizes that he is sacrificing any potential future for the sake of Ellénore. She persuades him to extend his stay by six months, but they quarrel, and when she tends him after he is injured in a duel, he finds himself hopelessly indebted to her. He attempts to leave her only to have her follow him. The denouement leads Adolphe to return to a life of alienation more severe than that which he experienced before his affair.

I am not sure that I enjoyed this novel, but I certainly appreciated the approach - when, upon reflection, I realized the novelty of the psychological approach. It likely had a major impact on later "psychological" novels. According to a critic of Russian literature, Victor Terras, French literature of the nineteenth century influenced the major Russian writers, thus Dostoevsky likely was familiar with Constant. The fictional Adolphe is familiar with the things that he is supposed to say and how he is supposed to act, and in doing these things almost convinces himself that he is actually in love – for a short time, in fact, he might feel something similar to the real thing.

The Bird Girl

Green Mansions 
by William Henry Hudson



"I began to hear . . . a low strain of exquisite bird-melody, wonderfully pure and expressive, unlike any musical sound I had ever heard before."
Green Mansions Chapter II, W. H. Hudson




Green Mansions: a Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904) is an exotic romance by W. H. Hudson (1841-1922) about a traveler to the Guyana jungle of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest dwelling girl named Rima. Hudson was born in Argentina, son of settlers of U.S. origin.
He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English mingled with Spanish idioms. He settled in England during 1869. He produced a series of ornithological studies which helped foster the back-to-nature movement of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Hudson wrote more than three dozen books during his life but by far his best known novel is Green Mansions, and his best known non-fiction is a memoir, Far Away and Long Ago (1918).

When I began to reread Green Mansions recently I instantly remembered why it impressed me so much. More than most other authors Hudson is able to instill the sense of wonder through his protagonist Abel who, while living by the Orinoco river in Venezuela, is drawn to the forest lands by strange bird-like singing. There he discovers a young girl named Rima and it is her story that takes up much of the remainder of the novel. She is unspoiled and wild like the animals among whom she lives. She knows neither the evil nor guile common to most civilized humans. This gives her supernatural stature in the eyes of the worldly Abel, who falls passionately in love with her.


Hudson based Rima and her lost tribe on persistent rumors about a tribe of white people who lived in the mountains. Temple paintings often showed light-skinned people, and Spanish Conquistadors were at first thought to be gods. I first read this novel when I was in high school and the memory of its' evocative and lyrical prose has lingered over the intervening decades. With qualities of a striking and original sort it has an enchantment; its pages are haunted by an unearthly perception of beauty and a wonderment that stirs the imagination. The story is one of people who are almost in an original state of nature, a romantic, if flawed, view (perhaps inspired by Rousseau) that suggests their world may be better than civilization.

Green Mansions is one of the few novels ever to become an undisputed classic during the author's lifetime. It inspired a statue of Rima that you can find in Kensington Garden, London. It is a book I found to be truly enthralling and full of romantic magic making it a great read.


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Betrayed by His Passions

The Red and the Black 
by Stendhal


“Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”   ― Stendhal, The Red and the Black


I have enjoyed rereading Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) by Stendahl. It is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, published in 1830, that chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his lowly upbringing through a combination of intelligence, talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him. 

While the novel is usually classified as a bildungsroman or novel of education, in entitling it Le Rouge et le Noir: Chronique du XIXe siècle (The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century) Stendhal suggests a two-fold literary purpose as both a psychological portrait of the romantic protagonist, Julien Sorel, and an analytic, sociological satire of the French social order under the Bourbon Restoration. The title refers to the tension between the clerical (black) and secular (red) interests of the protagonist, which is a matter of some debate.

The story tells of a young man, Julien Sorel, whose provincial nature is inflamed with the passion of youth, a passion for the ideals of the Napoleonic age, but whose greatest passion is his ambition which, overwhelming any natural pudency, takes him to the heights and sets in motion his tragic fall. His passion is contrasted with his intellect which is strong enough to allow him to escape both his difficult home life and his lowly status. Stendhal is able to present his narrative with unmatched, for his time, psychological depth and realism. The love affairs of Julien and the political intrigues in which he participates are spellbinding for the reader even today. This novel truly presents a "mirror" of reality and provides an engaging challenge for the reader. The story presents a protagonist torn between his passion for the ideal of Napoleon represented by the red of the cavalry dragoons and the black of the bishops of the church. Ultimately he finds hypocrisy on all sides and turns upon one of his loves while rejecting his only true friend.

Stendhal repeatedly questions the possibility, and the desirability, of “sincerity”, because most of the characters, especially Julien Sorel, are acutely aware of having to play a role to gain social approval. In that 19th-century context, the word “hypocrisy” denoted the affectation of high religious sentiment; in The Red and the Black it connotes the contradiction between thinking and feeling. Le Rouge et le Noir is set in the latter years of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–30) and the days of the 1830 July Revolution that established the Kingdom of the French (1830–48). Stendhal was consciously writing a historical novel set in the present. The subtitle, "a chronicle of 1830," made his contemporary readers aware of not only the historical context of the novel but of their own lives as well. Julien's choice between the black of the Church and the red of the army was a decision that many of Stendhal's readers had to make themselves. His worldly ambitions are motivated by the emotional tensions, between his idealistic Republicanism (especially nostalgic allegiance to Napoleon), and the realistic politics of counter-revolutionary conspiracy, by Jesuit-supported legitimists, notably the Marquis de la Mole, whom Julien serves, for personal gain.  It is his first moments at the home of the Marquis de la Mole that I found most memorable (as a reader who loves books);  Julien rises with the help of Father Pirard to private secretary for Marquis de la Mole. His office is to be the library. ”A few minutes later, Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library; it was a delightful moment. So no one would come to him, excited as he was, he hid himself in a dark corner. From there, he looked out at the books’ glittering spines. ‘I could read every one of them,’ he told himself.”  

Even though Stendhal does not directly refer to the 1830 Revolution, he highlights the political tensions and corruption that had reached a recent boiling point. But this emphasis on history also serves as a warning to readers: Julien's failure to succeed in French society and his betrayal by M. Valenod present a foreboding distrust of the victorious liberal bourgeoisie. Would the death of the aristocracy mark the death of French society? Stendhal's comparison of the gamble of revolution to the red and black of a roulette wheel, presents a harrowing glimpse of the volatility of French politics--a vision that still fascinates readers today. 

In his famous book of literary criticism, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, philosopher and critic René Girard identifies in Le Rouge et le Noir the triangular structure he denominates as “mimetic desire”, which reveals how a person’s desire for another is always mediated by a third party, i.e. one desires a person only when he or she is desired by someone else. Girard’s proposition accounts for the perversity of Julien's relationship with Mathilde, the daughter of the Marquis de la Mole. This becomes clear when he begins courting the widow Mme de Fervaques to pique Mathilde’s jealousy, but also for Julien’s fascination with and membership of the high society he simultaneously desires and despises.

To help achieve a literary effect, Stendhal headed each chapter with epigraphs—literary, poetic, historic quotations—that he attributed to others. The first book of the novel is headed with the following epigraph, "Truth, bitter truth." - Danton. This quote, presumably from the works of the famous revolutionary leader who was sent to the guillotine in 1794 by Robespierre is prescient in hindsight as we read of the rise and ultimate fall of young Julien. With its psychological insight, social criticism, and political intrigue this is still an exciting, even exhilarating read and truly a great book for all time.


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Romantic Masterpieces

Schubert   and   Schumann

Last night I attended a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that included two great romantic works, Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor and Franz Schubert's Great Symphony in C Major.  Sometimes considered his greatest work, the Great C Major, his  9th Symphony,  was never heard by the composer, because the Viennese musicians considered it unplayable; rather, it was premiered in a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert in 1839 under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn.

Schubert's Symphony No. 9 begins with a noble, reflective theme that reappears throughout the first movement. Well after Schubert's death, the theme's grandeur and sense of space, together with the sheer length of the Symphony, helped to earn it the nickname the "Great C Major".  Robert Schumann, who brought it to the attention of Mendelssohn, referred to its length as "heavenly" in the critical music revue which he edited.  In fact, the nickname was first applied by a music publisher to distinguish the work from Schubert's shorter and less ambitious 6th Symphony, the "Little C Major." But the name aptly describes both Schubert's evident intent in writing the work, and the stature of the final composition.

Schubert profoundly revered Beethoven. He may have paid the older composer a single visit, but generally he kept a humble distance, content with attending Beethoven's concerts including most probably the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth "Choral" Symphony in 1824. He served as one of Beethoven's pallbearers at the great man's funeral. Perhaps his greatest tribute to Beethoven was his resolve to write a grand symphony with the breadth and profundity of his predecessor's; and his Symphony No. 9 was the result.

It was a perfect vehicle to show off the strengths of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Riccardo Muti, and their success was rewarded by the enthusiastic response of the audience.  Earlier in the evening the reknowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida played the Schumann concerto with sublime style.  Her experience in this repetoire, she first played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra almost thirty years ago, provided her with the ability to share deep insights into this familiar concerto.  The concert was another triumph for one of the great orchestras of the world.

Historical Romance

Notre-Dame of Paris 

by Victor Hugo

“Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes it's roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to put forth green leaves over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable.”  ― Victor Hugo, The Huntchback of Notre Dame

Several years ago I both read this book and saw an adaptation of it for the stage as a musical! They were both great productions. The original began appearing in the bookshops of Paris on March 16, 1831 as a new novel from the pen of Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris. This novel, which is now popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", tells the emotionally exhausting tale of the penniless poet, Gringoire the demonic, lecherous priest, Frollo, the handsome, empty-headed, guardsman, Captain Phoebus, the deaf bell-ringer, Quasimodo, with his hump and his wart-obscured eye, and the beautiful gypsy girl they all fall in love with: Esmeralda, whose only friend in the world is her performing goat, Djali (the name Emma Bovary gives to her lap-dog twenty-six years later).
The epicenter of the novel is the Gothic cathedral. In the minds of progressive Parisians, it was a shabby relic of the barbarian past. Hugo himself explored the cathedral climbing the bell-towers and it is there that he discovered his inspiration for the story. The story is sited in 1482 at the historical crossroads when the modern world was struggling to be born and when the printed word began to dominate and annihilate that older form of writing--architecture. Hugo's own "basketful of rubble" is reminiscent of the Renaissance novelist whose tale, though gargantuan, was also thought by some to be no better than rubble (The opposite is true and the wise reader should explore the beauty of Rabelais if he has not already done so).
Hugo's novel is one of the great historical romances of all time with characters in the Hunchback Quasimodo, Esmeralda and Frollo who you will never forget. The City of Paris and the Cathedral of Notre Dame also come alive in Hugo's story and you see the power of love and loyalty that can persevere in the face of evil. The theme of justice also resounds in this novel almost as much as in Les Miserables. It is clear that this was an important concept for Hugo. For lovers of romantic historical literature this is a great read.

Notre-Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo. Penguin Classics, 1978 (1831)

Multiplicity in Unity

Hector Berlioz

Today is the birthday of Hector Berlioz, who was born on this day in 1803. He is considered one of the masters, if not the founder, of musical romanticism. I have enjoyed his music by both performing and listening to them for almost fifty years.  He is best known for his large works including the Symphonie Fantastique, Harold in Italy (Concerto for Viola and Orchestra), Operas (Les Troyens and Beatrice et Benedict), and his works for Chorus and Orchestra including his Requiem and La Damnation de Faust. There have been few figures in the history of music with so fascinating, almost hypnotic, an appeal for the present-day listener as Berlioz. With his life span encompassing roughly the rise and fall of two French empires, he emerges as perhaps the first totally modern mind in music— the man of affairs as well as of notes, a great conductor, concert organizer, writer of distinction. 
Whatever he touched, in any medium, bore the mark of his volatile, yet strangely sober, personality. Unlike his predecessors Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, he was equipped to challenge the intellectual world on all fronts and make his charge across any field. This basic phase of Berlioz’s gift—its multiplicity in unity.  
Among composers, Berlioz shares a fascination with Goethe's Faust as this drama has served as the source for operas by Gounod, Spohr, Boito and Busoni among others. Berlioz wrote his "legende dramatique" for Orchestra and Chorus; first performed at the Opera-Comique, Paris, December 1846. It did not meet with critical acclaim, perhaps due to its halfway status between opera and cantata; the public was not impressed, and two performances (and a cancelled third) rendered a financial setback for Berlioz: "Nothing in my career as an artist wounded me more deeply than this unexpected indifference", he remembered. It was subsequently performed more successfully in Paris after his death (1877). The Metropolitan Opera premiered it first in concert (1896) and then on stage (1906). The Met revived the production on November 7, 2008 directed by Robert LePage, with innovative computer-generated stage imagery that responds to the voices of the performers.
Berlioz is known for the musical excesses of his compositions and some of his harmonies sound almost modern even today. One of the unique aspects of Berlioz compositional style resulted from his lack of piano training. Many of the great classical and romantic composers (think Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms) were also great pianists and composed "at the piano". Of the romantics, Brahms would preview his orchestral compositions in piano versions and Liszt (a friend of Berlioz) would transcribe symphonies and operas for piano. You can hear Berlioz lack of pianism in his abrupt chord changes and harmonics that seem otherworldly (some of this may have been drug-induced as well). It is worthwhile to remember this great Romantic on this day.

Haunting Romanticism

Victory: An Island Tale 

by Joseph Conrad

“The use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears.”  ― Joseph Conrad, Victory

I enjoyed this novel from the pen of Joseph Conrad - it may be my favorite of his works although Conrad has the knack for writing consistently good novels that makes it hard to rank them. Victory's most striking formal characteristic is its shifting narrative and temporal perspective with the first section from the viewpoint of a sailor, the second from omniscient perspective of Axel Heyst, the third from an interior perspective from Heyst, and the final section. I found the character of Axel interesting primarily due to his complexity. On a superficial level the novel reads like a melodrama more suited to a muddled opera libretto than a serious work of literature. But upon reflection the allegorical and psychological implications of the action, landscape and narrative structure redeem it as a modern novel worthy to be included with the best of Conrad. I am always more impressed when the author can make a serious work of literature appear on the surface, to be merely a "good story" (eg. Moby-Dick). The story line follows: through a business misadventure, the European Axel Heyst ends up living on an island in what is now Indonesia, with a Chinese assistant Wang. Heyst visits a nearby island when a female band is playing at a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg attempts to force himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma, later called Lena. She flees with Heyst back to his island and they become lovers. Schomberg seeks revenge by attempting to frame Heyst for the "murder" of a man who had died of natural causes and later by sending three desperadoes (Pedro, Martin Ricardo and Mr. Jones) to Heyst's island with a lie about treasure hidden on the island. The ensuing conflict does not end well and has been compared to the ending of an Elizabethan drama where the stage is littered with corpses. The robust romanticism of Axel and Lena's story continues to haunt the reader long after one puts the novel down.
Another of my favorite writers, Joan Didion, had this to say about Victory:
"I often reread Victory, which is maybe my favorite book in the world… The story is told thirdhand. It’s not a story the narrator even heard from someone who experienced it. The narrator seems to have heard it from people he runs into around the Malacca Strait. So there’s this fantastic distancing of the narrative, except that when you’re in the middle of it, it remains very immediate. It’s incredibly skillful. I have never started a novel — I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel — I’ve never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.” — From a 2006 interview in The Paris Review

Victory by Joseph Conrad.  The Modern Library, 2003 (1915).

Sonnets from Petrarch

*

Three Sonnets of Petrarch

Pace non trovo

Benedetto sia'l giorno

I' vidi in terra angelici costumi

Composed between 1838-42; the sonnets from Petrarch by Franz Liszt were first published in Vienna by Haslinger in 1846.  Liszt actually transcribed a solo piano version and published it before the vocal one.  A revised piano transcription was published in 1858 as a part of Années II
He based his compositions on the sonnets 47, 104 and 123 of Petrarch (1304-1374)… (see below for translations).  Liszt is traditionally seen as a representative of the German, and perhaps New German, school of composition.  He can be seen as a Romantic and in his later years a precursor to the "Impressionism" of Debussy and others.  In fact, when Liszt's songs are discussed, scholars focus mostly on Liszt's lieder.  His best-known biographer, Alan Walker, finds in Liszt the "missing link" between Schumann and Mahler (Walker, Reflections on Liszt, p 150).  Liszt might have been influenced by the Italian style of composition many times throughout his life: with his father during his first world tour, watching opera in Paris, in addition to obviously traveling with Marie d'Agoult.  Over the course of his life Liszt constantly wrote bel canto works however most were not vocal pieces.  
The texts of the sonnets describe Petrarch's love for a woman named Laura; This Laura might have been a real person (Laura de Noves), or might possibly be a fictional character.  According to Petrarch Laura was a married woman; the poetry reflects this unattainable aspect of his love.   Commentators have noted that Petrarch's poetry, unlike the sylized poems of courtly love, is an original stylistic synthesis of intense, personal, and oftentimes conflicting emotions.
In general the text of the poetry inspires the music.  These works represent an entirely different, bel canto, aspect to Liszt's compositional style.  This is in contrast to works like the Mephisto Waltz.  Bel canto is usually described as "Music that requires 1) a display of virtuosity; 2) a large vocal range, and particularly for higher voices; 3) a lyric, legato, melodically-based line (rather than a more declamatory, text-driven, Germanic style); 4) regular phrase structure with a climax occurring in the third unit of a larger group of phrases; 5) written in the style of Italian opera composers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries Liszt writes 2 appropriate cadenzas.  Both the repetition of words (a feature not found in the poetry) and placing important words on very high notes heighten the dramatic sense and emphasize the "beauty of sound" and "brilliance of performance".  Melodic lines feature numerous nonharmonic tones, while occasional coloristic, almost word-painting effects.  
Liszt wrote program music throughout his life irrespective of whether he was specifically ‘portraying’ a chosen subject in his music. This applies to his whole life’s work, which cannot be divided up and categorized artificially with respect to programmatic composition. It applies as much to his sacred as to his secular music, to his instrumental as to his vocal settings, to the numerous genres in which he composed, and to the various phases of his stylistic development.  


Sonnet 47

Blest be the day, and blest the month, the year,
The spring, the hour, the very moment blest,
The lovely scene, the spot, where first oppress'd
I sunk, of two bright eyes the prisoner:
And blest the first soft pang, to me most dear,
Which thrill'd my heart, when Love became its guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which pierced my breast,
And even the wounds, which bosom'd thence I bear.
Blest too the strains which, pour'd through glade and grove,
Have made the woodlands echo with her name;
The sighs, the tears, the languishment, the love:
And blest those sonnets, sources of my fame;
And blest that thought—Oh! never to remove!
Which turns to her alone, from her alone which came.

Wrangham

Sonnet 104

I fynde no peace and all my warre is done,
I feare and hope, I bourne and freese lyke yse;
I flye above the wynde, yet cannot ryse;
And nought I have, yet all the worlde I season,
That looseth, nor lacketh, holdes me in pryson,
And holdes me not, yet can I escape no wyse.
Nor lets me leeve, nor die at my devyce,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Without eye I see, and without tongue I playne;
I desyre to perishe, yet aske I health;
I love another, and yet I hate my self;
I feede in sorrow and laughe in all my payne,
Lykewyse pleaseth me both death and lyf,
And my delight is cawser of my greif.

Wyatt

Sonnet 123

On earth reveal'd the beauties of the skies,
Angelic features, it was mine to hail;
Features, which wake my mingled joy and wail,
While all besides like dreams or shadows flies.
And fill'd with tears I saw those two bright eyes,
Which oft have turn'd the sun with envy pale;
And from those lips I heard—oh! such a tale,
As might awake brute Nature's sympathies!
Wit, pity, excellence, and grief, and love
With blended plaint so sweet a concert made,
As ne'er was given to mortal ear to prove:
And heaven itself such mute attention paid,
That not a breath disturb'd the listening grove—
Even æther's wildest gales the tuneful charm obey'd.

Wrangham

(The Sonnets, courtesy of Project Gutenberg)

* Petrarch and Laura

Berlioz - Book and Performance

Berlioz and His Century 

by Jacques Barzun

“Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love” - Hector Berlioz


There have been few figures in the history of music with so fascinating, almost hypnotic, an appeal for the present-day reader as Berlioz. With his life span encompassing roughly the rise and fall of two French empires, he emerges as perhaps the first totally modern mind in music— the man of affairs as well as of notes, a great conductor, concert organizer, writer of distinction. 
Whatever he touched, in any medium, bore the mark of his volatile, yet strangely sober, personality. Unlike his predecessors Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, he was equipped to challenge the intellectual world on all fronts and make his charge across any field. This basic phase of Berlioz’s gift—its multiplicity in unity—has been admirably detailed by Jacques Barzun in this book. Barzun is one of the great teachers and thinkers of the our era. In his seminal work on Romanticism and the importance of Berlioz in the movement the author reveals Hector Berlioz in the perspective of his relationship to the other outstanding Romantics of his time, establishing the composer as the fountainhead of all that has come after him in virtually every sphere of symphonic and operatic music. As this long recital draws to a close the magnificence of the creator’s personality comes clearly into focus, the figures surrounding him emerge with warmth and humanity. The book, while having been surpassed by more recent scholarship, is still worthy of consideration due to its unique approach to Berlioz and his legacy. Mr. Barzun, treating a subject obviously congenial to him, commands an impressive range of scholarship and eloquence of style. Whether you love music or ideas or both this book is essential for you.


Berlioz and His Century by Jacques Barzun. University of Chicago Press. 1982 (1956)

______________________________________________________________

Berlioz, Byron, 

and Shakespeare

Yesterday evening I attended a concert presenting selected works by Hector Berlioz performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Mark Elder.  The concert began with The Corsair Overture, Op. 21, a brilliant overture whose title references the work of Lord Byron, one of several literary muses who inspired Berlioz.  
Following this introduction the orchestra played two excerpts from his dramatic symphony, Romeo and Juliet, Op. 17, selected by Mr. Elder.  In addition to the sublime music two actors from Chicago Shakespeare Theater read  excerpts from the text of the original play.  In 1827 Berlioz attended performances of both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in Paris.  He was immediately struck by the poetic beauty of Shakespeare's work and subsequently created works including this symphony and a later opera.  Following the interval the orchestra performed Harold in Italy, Op. 16, a "symphony in four parts with solo viola".  The viola solo was performed with gusto by Lawrence Power, a violist who has performed extensively throughout Europe and America. The unique concerto in symphonic form was well-suited to the talents of the orchestra and soloist.  The evening was filled with romantic music from one of the leading composers of that movement presented with the inimitable style of our own CSO.

A Romantic Fable

Cyrano De Bergerac 

by Edmond Rostand

"Oh! We have our pockets full, 

We poets, of love-letters, writ to Chloes, 

Daphnes — creations of our noddle-heads. 

Our lady-loves — phantasms of our brains 

— Dream-fancies blown into soap-bubbles! 

Take it, and change feigned love-words into true; I breathed my sighs and moans haphazard-wise; 

Call all these wandering love-birds home to nest. 

You'll see that I was in these lettered lines 

— Eloquent all the more, the less sincere! 

— Take it, and make an end! "

—Cyrano de Bergerac, giving his first Roxanne letter to Christian; 

Edmund Rostand's play opened in Paris on this day in 1897.  While most know the story of this famous play, I will refresh your memory. Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted poet and is also shown to be a musician. However, he has an extremely large nose, which is a target for his own self-doubt. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful Roxane, as he believes that his ugliness forbids him to "dream of being loved by even an ugly woman."

I consider this among my favorite plays for both its romantic air of the grand opera and the poetic monologues of its eponymous hero. An unconventional love story, it is more a fable for the importance of virtue, loyalty and friendship. What more magnanimous man in literature is there than Cyrano de Bergerac? I am sure that I will return to this play again and again as it reminds me of the best that is possible for man and mankind. I read and reread the famous Brian Hooker translation which I would heartily recommend.

A Fire in Her Soul

Mistress to an Age: 
A Life of Madame de Stael 

by J. Christopher Herold

"The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas."


This is a marvelous introduction to an amazing woman who participated in the beginnings of Romanticism. Madame Germaine de Stael charmed the intellectuals of her age with her salon. This book, called by Dame Rebecca West 'a cornucopia of good reading," is above all the biography of a great woman. Madame de Stael was courageous and prolific in her contacts with important personages of her age. A prolific letter writer, she also wrote novels and drama. In the 1790s she established a salon at Coppet in Switzerland, and there gathered round her a considerable number of friends and fellow-refugees, beginning the salon which at intervals during the next 25 years made the place so famous. However, in 1793 she made a long visit to England, and established a connection with other emigrants: Talleyrand, Narbonne, Montmorency, Jaucourt and others. 
 The most brilliant period of her career began in 1794, when she returned to Paris after the Reign of Terror; her salon, known for its literary and intellectual figures, flourished, and she published political and literary essays, notably A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations (1796), an important document of European Romanticism. In 1803 Napoleon, who resented her opposition, had her banished from Paris, and she made the family residence in Coppet her headquarters. 
 She would also travel to Germany in part as a result of this exile from Paris by Napoleon. I found her liaisons, which were legion, fascinating and of particular interest her connections with the classical liberal philosopher and novelist Benjamin Constant. This is an excellent introduction to the age and to a vibrant woman who helped make the age more memorable. Probably her most important work is Germany (1810), a serious study of German manners, literature and art, philosophy and morals, and religion. Her other writings include novels, plays, moral essays, history, and memoirs.  


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Giselle 

The marriage of technology and art provided a real treat for a Chicago audience of ballet aficionados today. We attended a performance of the ballet Giselle as produced by the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg Russia and shown in 3D. The ballet stars were Natalia Osipova as Giselle and Leonid Sarafanov as Count Albert. Sometimes they seemed almost too perfect in their performance but both were outstanding and their ballet skills combined with Adam's music managed to bring tears of joy to my eyes. This is the epitome of Romantic ballet with music and story that touches your heart.


Giselle is the age-old story of a prince who has disguised himself as a peasant, and gains the love of a simple village girl. This fairytale love story falls to pieces when the tale turns to that of betrayal and heartbreak. Giselle joins the vengeful Wilis to bring revenge upon her beloved prince, but ultimately her deep love transcends even death and she grants forgiveness upon her lover. The second act is particularly eerie with the corps de ballet covered with white costumes against the dark background of the setting beside the grave of Giselle.  


The pervasive atmosphere of the ballet was indebted to the works of Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, and the ballet critic Théophile Gautier. The librettist Verney de Saint-Georges had first been attracted to Hugo's Orientales with its evocation of a ballroom where dancers were condemned to dance all night, and to Heine's De l'Allemagne and its depiction of the Wilis, Slavonic supernatural beings who lured young men to death by dancing. I had seen the ballet performed once before by the American Ballet Theatre in a live performance at the Civic Opera House. The Mariinsky's 3D extravaganza was even better.

Passionate Love

      

 Indiana 

by George Sand

"So all Indiana's reflections, all her activities, all her sorrows, were linked to nature's terrible, great struggle against civilization.  If the island's deserted mountains had been able to hide her for long, she would certainly have taken refuge there on the day she was assaulted. " (p 210) 


George Sand was among those nineteenth century female authors who chose to use a male pseudonym for her writing. Born Aurore Dupin, she chose the nom de plume of George sand for this her first novel and subsequent work. In this work Sand creates an entertaining romance built around a dysfunctional family. Around the heroine Indiana she adds a trio of men whose rivalry for Indiana propel the novel. The novel transcends the simple romance with resonance of Balzac-like depiction of social class structure and imbuement of the rival characters with abstract ideals. Thus we have a novel of ideas as well romance and Sand has joined the ranks of those authors who demonstrate their worth with strong debut novels. Another aspect of the novel that I enjoyed was the contrast of the Bourbon island setting with the simple manor house in Brie. This creates and aura that, overlaid with dreams of more exotic locales, gives us a romance that successfully mixes the ideal with the real, the allegorical with the everyday in presenting the story a young French woman.






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Lohengrin

The Search for Redemption

The opera begins with a prelude and an  ethereal theme that represents the divine figure of the knight Lohengrin.  The story is above all that of the humanization of Lohengrin's divinity.  The first act centers on the falsely accused Elsa, the evil Friedrich of Telramund and the divine knight, Lohengrin, inspired by the innocence of Elsa.  This is Lohengrin's chance to experience human happiness, love and with that love to suffer and experience fear, but it depends on Elsa's vow to not question Lohengrin about his origin or name.  In his action for her, defeating Friedrich, Lohengrin seeks redemption through Elsa, but she does not realize what he is asking.  In the second act we begin to see her lack of understanding as Ortrud warns her that she could lose the knight just as quickly as he appeared.  As Elsa does not develop understanding even in marriage she does not trust him enough to obey him and by asking the forbidden questions loses him.  What seems, at the close of the first act to be a celebratory work becomes in the end a tragedy of loss of love and innocence.  The ending leaves Elsa to face life without Lohengrin who must return to his divine realm.  


Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of this gem, that Roger Pines describes in the program notes as "Wagner's Bel Canto opera",  is effective from the orchestra under the directing of Sir Andrew Davis to the singers led by  Emily Magee (Elsa), Lohengrin (Johan Botha) and Ortrud (Michaela Schuster), and the chorus.  The set combined with the ethereal and lyrical music becomes ineffable.  With this opera Wagner reached a level of musicianship that would soon lead to Tristan and the other great masterpieces of his final years. 

The Last Master, 

Passion and Anger  

by John Suchet

"The redemption theme of Prometheus* floated into his mind. Just the music. His music. No noises. No whistling. or rushing, or buzzing, or pain." (p 609)




The first volume of John Suchet's trilogy, a novel based on the life of Beethoven, takes his life from birth through his famous Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, Beethoven's acknowledgement of the incurability of his growing deafness. We read of his beginnings where the prodigy emerges from the shadow of his father's thwarted ambitions to develop his own unique place in the musical life of the European capital of music, Vienna. By the end of this part of his life, Napoleon was on the precipice overlooking the rest of Europe and Beethoven was on the verge of greatness. The author deftly weaves important moments in young Ludwig's life into a narrative that rivals other fictional musical bildungsromans. I am reminded of Jean-Christophe, a novel about a German composer by Romain Rolland who adored Beethoven. The composer Beethoven was influenced not only by family relationships but by the musical world around him, including the devastation of Mozart's death. In it all we see the development of his personality, his vision, and his genius.


* Beethoven composed music for The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, the same year he composed his Op. 27, no. 2 Piano Sonata, "quasi una fantasia,"Moonlight".




The Last Master, Volume 1 by John Suchet. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. 1996




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William Tell

Legend says that the Swiss hero William Tell shot the apple from his son’s head on this day in 1307. Tell is a hero in Switzerland, and the tale is oft-told (some variant tellings pre-dating the Tell legend), but not as P. G. Wodehouse tells it in William Tell Told Again:
Once upon a time, more years ago than anybody can remember, before the first hotel had been built or the first Englishman had taken a photograph of Mont Blanc and brought it home to be pasted in an album and shown after tea to his envious friends, Switzerland belonged to the Emperor of Austria, to do what he liked with….
William Tell Told Again (1904) is a collaboration, the prose telling by Wodehouse accompanied by a second telling in verse by John W. Houghton, and a third in color illustrations by Philip Dadd. Below, Houghton’s lines describing the key moment when Tell explains to the tyrannous Austrian Governor, Hermann Gessler (the “G.” of line 2) why he had pulled not one but two arrows from his quiver:

But, as the arrow cleft the core,
Cried G. with indignation,
"What was the second arrow for?
Come, no e-quiver-cation!
You had a second in your fist."
Said Tell, the missile grippin',
"This shaft (had I that apple missed)
Was meant for you, my pippin!"

Source: Today in Literature

Wordsworth & Coleridge

"an experiment, which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted. . ." (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800)

The first edition of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads was published on this day in 1798. A historic moment in poetry, it is the high-water mark of perhaps the most famous collaboration and friendship in literary history. The two remained close for another decade, but the fault lines were by then well established. Dorothy Wordsworth took up much of her brother’s emotional life, and after Wordsworth married (on this day in 1802) there was even less room for Coleridge. This became especially clear when Coleridge attempted to live in the same house with the other three, while maintaining his old, opium-fueled pattern of wild plans and dark moods. The poetic record shows the strain: in 1807, while Coleridge was publicly proclaiming his love and need for “O Friend! My comforter and guide! / Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!” (lines from “To William Wordsworth”), Wordsworth was penning:

A Complaint

There is a change—and I am poor;

Your love hath been, nor long ago,

A fountain at my fond heart's door,

Whose only business was to flow;

And flow it did; not taking heed

Of its own bounty, or my need.

What happy moments did I count!

Blest was I then all bliss above!

Now, for that consecrated fount

Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,

What have I? shall I dare to tell?

A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love—it may be deep—

I trust it is,—and never dry:

What matter? if the waters sleep

In silence and obscurity.

—Such change, and at the very door

Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

King Solomon's Mines

I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels - for sometimes I like to read a novel.

- H. Rider Haggard, Allan Quatermain's preface to King Solomon's Mines

Having enjoyed the novels of Robert Louis Stevenson my whole life it was with some pleasure that I found a resonance with his novel Treasure Island when I bean to read the novel King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. Only after reading the novel did I find out that Rider Haggard was inspired to write his novel after having read Stevenson's. H. Rider Haggard was a prolific English writer, who published colorful novels set in unknown regions and lost kingdoms of Africa, or some other corner of the world: Iceland, Constantinople, Mexico, Ancient Egypt. His best-known work is the romantic adventure tale King Solomon's Mines.

I found the adventure tale a tremendously enjoyable read with an appealing narrator in Allan Quatermain. It is a story of a group of treasure hunters searching legendary diamond mine in a lost land. In the story the veteran hunter Allan Quatermain with his friends Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good, accompanied by Umbopa, their native servant, set off to reveal the fate of Curtis's missing brother - he has gone to look for the treasure of King Solomon in the land of Kukuanas. They cross imposing deserts, nearly freeze in the mountains, and after a long journey they reach their destination. Umbopa turns out to be a king of the Kukuanas and, with the help of Quatermain and his friends, he defeats the villainous King Twala, who dies in the combat with Curtis. The adventurers find Solomon's mines, but are left to die in an underground vault by Gagool, a mysterious witch-doctor. After an escape, with a few handfuls of diamonds, they find Curtis's brother and return to the civilization. Suspense abounds and the story reads like a precursor to some of the adventures of "Indiana Jones". They are Rider Haggard originals, however, and merely serve as the models for many adventurers who followed them in literature and film. Reading this book reminded me of my early love of the wonder I found in the adventure tales of Robert Louis Stevenson.

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. Folio Society, London. 1995 (1885)