The Black Tulip

It is virtually impossible to grow a truly black tulip. Black tulips are never completely black but more of a deep purple or purplish-black hue. Yet, in the novel, “The Black Tulip”, by Alexandre Dumas, père, a tulip competition takes place to see who can create a jet black tulip which would be the first of its kind. Although the tale is more fiction than fact, it was inspired by ‘tulipmania’, a phenomenon that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century.

It was the golden age in Dutch history when its empire was the greatest power in Europe. It was also a time of prosperity when people indulged in luxury goods. They became fascinated with tulip bulbs and paid exorbitant sums for rare streaked and striped varieties. As the tulip market grew, people began speculating in tulip bulbs. The tulip bubble lasted for three years before the mania died abruptly and the market collapsed. With the backdrop of this event, Dumas recounts the story of Cornelius van Baerle, a horticulturist who dedicates his life to producing a black tulip. But before Dumas gets to the story of the tulip, he depicts another major historical event that took place in 1672- the lynching of the de Witt brothers in The Hague.

The first four chapters describe the horrific incident in gory detail. The de Witt brothers, the Dutch Grand Pensionary, Johan de Witt, and his brother Cornelis were much revered Republican statesmen who held influential political positions. Both England and France attacked the Dutch Republic and Johan de Witt was criticized for neglecting the army and relying solely on the naval strength of the nation. He was blamed for the ‘raampjar’, the invasion by Louis the 14^thin 1672. He escaped an assassination attempt while his brother Cornelis was arrested for allegedly conspiring against William the 3rd, the statholder. When Johan went to visit his brother in prison, a crowd who supported the Orangist monarchy, had gathered outside and savagely attacked the brothers and ripped them to pieces. There are accounts describing how parts of the cadavers were sold as souvenirs and even eaten by the frenzied bloodthirsty mob.

Although gruesome, the historical background is crucial to the understanding of the story. Fiction blends with history when we are introduced to the fictitious grandson and namesake of Cornelis de Witt, a certain Dr. Cornelius van Baerle who gets embroiled unwittingly in the political intrigue. The Orangists had accused the de Witt brothers of treason believing their correspondence to the French king to be incriminating evidence. The letters were entrusted in the care of Van Baerle and he keeps them safely unaware of the contents. Meanwhile the city of Haarlem offers a generous monetary prize of 100,000 guilders to the person who can grow a purely black tulip. 

Dr. Van Baerle is a tulip fancier who believes that ‘to despise flowers is to offend God’. The tulip fanciers of the time added their own specific embellishments to the aphorism:

“C’est offenser Dieu que mépriser les fleurs.La tulipe est la plus belle de toutes les fleurs.
Donc qui méprise la tulipe offense démesurément Dieu.”

“To despise flowers is to offend God.The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers.Therefore, the one who despises tulips offends God beyond measure.”

  Van Baerle works assiduously on cultivating the black tulip. It is on the verge of blooming when his jealous neighbor Isaac Boxtel, a fellow tulip grower who spies on him constantly, alerts the authorities and has him arrested for keeping the letters of the de Witt brothers. Boxtel covets the prize himself and resorts to all sorts of machinations to steal the bulbs and acquire fame and fortune for himself.

A distraught Cornelis manages to sneak in three cuttings of the tulip bulbs with him when he is arrested and continues to grow them in prison. Meanwhile he meets Rosa Gryphus, the guard’s beautiful daughter and the two fall in love. He teaches her to read and write and she helps him grow the black tulip secretly. Love blossoms too along with the tulip. The rest of the story is sappy and sentimental and different in tone from the first few chapters.

The black tulip needs the right amount of light and soil conditions to flourish. Love too will only develop with the right amount of nurturing and attention. Love faces challenges but never gives up and blooms in spite of all the hurdles in its way. The obstacles come in the form of Rosa’s own cruel and suspicious father and a mysterious visitor to the prison who takes more than a passing interest in Rosa and her tulips.

 The story lacks the depth of “The Count of Monte Cristo” or “The Three Musketeers”. The characters are portrayed with no nuance and belong to the distinct tropes of hero, villain or victim. My edition had notes on the historical details. Apparently Dumas got some of his facts mixed up. He confuses William the Silent with William the 3^rd and some of the chronology regarding the de Witt brothers does not match up. Also, there are inaccuracies in the research on tulips. Tulips came from Turkey and not from Ceylon ( Sri Lanka) as Dumas claims. The sources he followed were not always accurate. Reading the notes took away a little from my experience but I found the fictional aspects of the novel to be entertaining and was happy to read a lesser known work of Dumas. 

I enjoyed the delightful lovers’ tiffs between the two. Rosa is jealous of the tulip and claims that Van Baerle loves the flower more than her. Of course Rosa is named after a flower herself and one can say that he is caught between the tulip and the rose.

Will the black tulip bloom? Will love triumph in the end? We hope so for after the misfortunes endured by the protagonists, we wish them all the happiness in the world for, “On a quelquefois assez souffert pour avoir le droit de ne jamais dire : Je suis trop heureux.” “Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy”.

Notre Dame de Paris

Trigger Warning: Discussion of Sexual Assault

When in 2019, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was ravaged by a fire and suffered extensive damage, I became interested in learning about its history. I learned that Victor Hugo had played a pivotal role in the 19th century to revive interest in Gothic architecture and had inspired massive work on the medieval cathedral to restore it from its state of disrepair. Victor Hugo waxed eloquent about the cathedral, “a symphony in stone”, in his book, Notre Dame de Paris, more commonly known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I was curious to read the book that spurred an interest in Gothic revival and recounts the well known story of the unrequited love of a hideously deformed hunchback for an extraordinarily beautiful gypsy girl. You can read an earlier blog post about the cathedral here: https://literarygitane.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/notre-dame-de-paris-gypsies-gargoyles-and-grotesques/

The story is made for the performing arts and has been adapted countless times for the ballet, the opera, the theater and the screen. It is not surprising for it has a very Arabian Nights feel to it with a graceful and sensuous street dancer who pulls out the carpet to regale an audience, and a goat who performs tricks! Whereas Les Misérables remains Hugo’s chef d’oeuvre, Notre Dame de Paris has been eclipsed by its renderings which have become even more popular than the original book. I have seen the Disney film loosely based on the book. I say ‘loosely’ for the tone is entirely different. Notre Dame de Paris is no Disney fairy tale but a dark and disturbing story replete with abductions, murders, attempted murder, attempted rape, torture and executions. So much for a Disney style happily ever after! 

A Love Letter To A Cathedral

 The novel was written in 1830 but the plot is set in 1482. The cathedral is the center of the action and also serves as a moral compass over Paris. From the top you can get a view of the entire city as if it were keeping an eye on the inhabitants and their activities. Hugo loves rambling and there are detailed descriptions of the architecture and layout of this magnificent city which some readers might consider as digressions. The trope of “The Beauty and the Beast “is evident in the story as well as in the architecture. Quasimodo, the deaf ringer of the bells becomes part of the cathedral, representing a beast like the gargoyles while Esmeralda, the beauty, is like the stunning rose window of the edifice. Here’s a beautiful description of what the cathedral means to the hunchback:

“Et la cathédrale ne lui était pas seulement la société, mais encore l’univers, mais encore toute la nature. Il ne rêvait pas d’autres espaliers que les vitraux toujours en fleur, d’autre ombrage que celui de ces feuillages de pierre qui s’épanouissent chargés d’oiseaux dans la touffe des chapiteaux saxons, d’autres montagnes que les tours colossales de l’église, d’autre océan que Paris qui bruissait à leurs pieds.” 

Translation: And the cathedral was not only society for him but also the entire universe, and all of nature. He dreamed of no other trellises than the stained glass windows, always in flower; no other shade than that of the leaves of stone which burgeoned out, loaded with birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris, roaring at their feet.

I noticed the similarity between this book and The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, another French writer who was undoubtedly inspired by Hugo. Both portray physically deformed men living in a confined setting and in love with a beautiful woman. I wonder why it is always the man who is an ugly monster and the woman a stunning beauty who accepts and transforms him out of her kindness. Why is it never the other way around? There is something innately sexist about this trope but that’s a discussion for another time.

A Love Story…Not!

Four men are enamored of one woman but is there even one who loves her truly? Let’s look at these four men and their motivations. Pierre Gringoire, the aspiring poet and philosopher who is pedantic to the point of being ridiculous, follows ( er…stalks) the gypsy, La Esmeralda on the streets for no rhyme or reason. He later owes his life to Esmeralda’s appearance at the Court of Miracles. She marries him to save him from being executed but she rejects his advances on their wedding night making it clear that it was only a temporary marriage prompted by pity. He reconciles himself to the loveless marriage. He seems caring but he does not come to Esmeralda’s rescue when she needs it. He unwittingly helps Frollo kidnap her out of the cathedral where she has taken refuge and abandons the girl leaving her alone with the lascivious creep. He cares more for the goat Djali than for the woman who saved his life.

Then there is Phoebus who is a self absorbed and arrogant philanderer. He is captivated by Esmeralda’s rare beauty but would rather be betrothed to another woman who is rich and belongs to his own class. Esmeralda remains pure for she has a superstitious belief that if she loses her virginity, she will never be reunited with her family again and therefore resists Phoebus’ advances although she has made it clear to him that she loves him. Of all the men who are interested in her, Esmeralda only reciprocates the feelings Phoebus has for her. But his feelings are insincere. He considers her as an exotic object and almost has his way with her in spite of her decision to remain chaste. Esmeralda is no less superficial for she knows nothing about Phoebus and develops a foolish infatuation for him solely based on his looks.

Frollo is the most complex character in the novel. I liked that Hugo didn’t portray him as evil incarnate from the beginning but allowed us to witness his inner struggles till his descent into madness becomes inevitable. As a Catholic priest, he is tied to the demands of his faith and has to remain a celibate. He represses his sexual urges and his latent desires manifest in unhealthy ways. He has a lust for knowledge and secretly dabbles in witchcraft and alchemy, dark arts forbidden by the Church. We know that he is capable of love -we see it in the love that he has for his good for nothing brother Jehan and in the compassion that made him accept Quasimodo who was rejected by the world, as his own. But his obsessive love for Esmeralda is terrifying. As he considers lust shameful, he experiences deep shame and anxiety for his immoral thoughts. He is aggressive and thinks he can force her to love him. He is insanely jealous of Phoebus. In his dark cell, he observes a fly caught in a web which is eventually eaten by the spider, a foreshadowing of how Esmeralda will be ensnared and destroyed in his web. He believes that all actions are predetermined and uses his fatalistic beliefs to justify his horrible behavior. Frollo made my hair stand on stand. He is a woman’s worst nightmare. Every woman has had such a type of interaction with a man who won’t take no for an answer. He is the one who pursues her relentlessly but views her as a Jezebel sent by Satan to tempt him. He does not care one bit for the woman he claims to love. He attempts to murder Phoebus and lets Esmeralda take the blame.

Only Quasimodo seems to love Esmeralda unconditionally. He is touched that she brought him water while he was being publicly tortured. He returns the favor by swinging down on a rope from the Notre Dame and carrying her back to the church to claim sanctuary for her just as she is about to be executed. Esmeralda sees two vases filled with flowers on her window, one is a beautiful and brilliant cracked crystal vase from where water escapes and the flowers are withered; the other is a coarse and plain earthenware pot which holds all the water and has fresh flowers. The two vases represent Phoebus and Quasimodo, respectively. Hugo may be emphasizing that inner beauty is more important but ironically the ugly Quasimodo is in love with a ravishingly beautiful woman. So it seems that looks matter even to Quasimodo. Or did he only fall in love with her for she showed him some kindness?

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

At first I thought Quasimodo’s love was pure and unselfish but I was quite disturbed by that scene when Claude Frollo attempts to rape Esmeralda and is prevented by Quasimodo’s arrival who attacks him without realizing who it is. As soon as he does, he backs off. The rape has been prevented but imagine if he had immediately guessed it was Frollo! Would he still have prevented the rape? What would he have done? Claude Frollo raised him when he was abandoned and it is understandable that he feels filial duty and devotion to him. But to such an extent as to be blinded to his faults and monstrous ones at that? 

Some people might find the ending romantic; Quasimodo literally follows Esmeralda to the grave. When she was alive, his very sight revolted her. She slowly warmed up to him but I doubt she would have wanted him by her side for eternity. So here’s a woman with no agency. The men who claim to love her and chase after her, watch her die and one of them does not leave her alone even in death. This is not a tale of romantic love but a tale of obsession. There is a passage describing Esmeralda’s feelings for Phoebus but it could apply to all the characters in the novel:

“C’est que l’amour est comme un arbre, il pousse de lui-même, jette profondément ses racines dans tout notre être, et continue souvent de verdoyer sur un cœur en ruines.   Et ce qu’il y a d’inexplicable, c’est que plus cette passion est aveugle, plus elle est tenace. Elle n’est jamais plus solide que lorsqu’elle n’a pas de raison en elle.”

Translation: Love is like a tree; it grows from itself, throws its roots out deeply through our whole being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins. And what is unfathomable is that the more blind this passion is, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it has no reason in it.

Medieval Torture

There are many interesting aspects to the novel that I have not explored keeping in mind the need to be succinct in a blog post. It is a satire of the church, of the monarchy under King Louis the 11th who punished and pardoned according to his whims, of the entitled aristocracy and of the farcical justice system. Hugo captures the prejudices of the medieval Parisians who treated the Romani people as outcasts. The Romani people are not portrayed in a flattering light. But there is a passage where Hugo says that the behavior of the public was no different from that of the vagabonds and that their system of justice was as brutal. I was shocked too to see how people delighted in watching spectacles of torture and hangings and enjoyed other people’s misery.

And then there is the sweet and compassionate Esmeralda! There are some exquisite descriptions in the novel including one where Esmeralda is compared to a lovely dragonfly to show the effect she has on the poet Gringoire. We might think that Hugo has portrayed a beautiful Romani girl but the child who is barely 15 or 16 is objectified and fetishized as the exotic woman by the male characters in the novel. In the end it turns out that she is French by birth, separated from her mother who has been pining for her all these years. She is a dark haired white girl who probably developed a tan because of her nomadic lifestyle. Gasp! At least the Disney film portrays Esmeralda as a true Romani.

The novel begins with the word ANAKH, the word carved into the wall of Notre-Dame, which means fate and the reader senses from the beginning that this is not going to end well. The book deals with rape culture, victim blaming and slut shaming which are new expressions of our time- the words are modern but the male control of female sexuality is as old as time. This is an unbearably sad book- one of the most heartbreaking I have ever read. But it is also a paean to a fine monument. I have visited the Notre Dame Cathedral thrice in my lifetime and climbed up the belfry twice. So the book was a very nostalgic read for me and in spite of the sadness it might evoke, it is a masterpiece of literature that I highly recommend.

• The translations are mine.

Madame Bovary, c’est nous!

“Madame Bovary” is the book I had to read as part of the Classics Club spin hosted by The Classics Club and I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it. https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/30/did-you-finish-your-spin-8/comment-page-1/#comment-18315

My review:

There was once a woman who was obsessed with the idea of love. She had a highly idealized image of romantic love thanks to the sentimental novels she read secretly during her girlhood in her convent school. She also suffered from enormous delusions of grandeur. That woman was Madame Bovary, the creation of Gustave Flaubert who was one of the pioneers of the Realist movement in literature. He is believed to have once declared: ” Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” though there is no actual proof of it in writing. Certainly Flaubert himself knew what it was to pine for someone, to indulge in excessive romantic ideals and to have your heart crushed. But he created a type of character and not just an individual.

Madame Bovary is a timeless character and could represent any woman or man dissatisfied with the cards he or she has been dealt with in life and pursues happiness only to realize that it is nothing but a chimera. In that sense, Madame Bovary could be anyone and everyone- Madame Bovary, c’est moi, c’est vous, c’est nous. She represents the loneliness of the modern soul who chases impossible ideals and fills his or her void with compulsive spending and the acquisition of materialistic things.

Flaubert was charged with blasphemy and obscenity when the novel was first published in serialized form in the ‘Revue de Paris’. The book may seem very tame today but it was revolutionary for the time for depicting a bored housewife who engages in adulterous liaisons. He was eventually acquitted and the novel became a classic that has withstood the test of time. Madame Bovary was the original desperate housewife, the precursor of an entire sisterhood of literary adulteresses.

The motherless Emma Roualt is a beautiful girl raised on a farm who yearns for all the finer things in life. She looks for an escape in marriage but her husband turns out to be a dull and unimaginative man. She also craves wealth and status but he is an unambitious and mediocre country doctor who is barely qualified to be one. He dotes on her but she is irritated by him:

“Avant qu’elle se mariât, elle avait cru avoir de l’amour; mais le bonheur qui aurait dû résulter de cet amour n’étant pas venu, il fallait qu’elle se fût trompée, songea-t-elle. Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres.” 

Before she got married, she had believed what she was experiencing to be love; but since the happiness that should have resulted from this love had not come, she must have been mistaken, she thought. And Emma tried to understand exactly what was meant in life by the words bliss, passion and intoxication which had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

She has a little girl but she is not the maternal sort and does not feel connected to her. At the Marquis d’Andervilliers’ estate where she secures an invitation to a ball, she realizes that her life is devoid of glamor and excitement. “…. sa vie était froide comme un grenier dont la lucarne est au nord, et l’ennui, araignée silencieuse, filait sa toile dans l’ombre à tous les coins de son coeur. ”  …..her life was as cold as an attic whose small window faces the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was spinning its web in the shadow in every nook and cranny of her heart. She is afflicted with ennui, that insidious bourgeois malady which makes her feel trapped in her limited life. She embarks on two adulterous affairs neither of which bring her lasting happiness. Emma Bovary is also a woman who lives beyond her means. She is extravagant and is quickly crippled by debts. She gets mixed up with L’ Heureux, a ruthless and scheming businessman who loans her sums of money and forces her to sign promissory notes. In the end, she is responsible for the financial ruin of her family.

Her first lover is the worldly but manipulative landowner Rodolphe. At first their clandestine trysts and the sentimental epistles they exchange are thrilling but soon everything becomes routine and Rodolphe breaks off the affair in a letter. She becomes ill and depressed, tries to take refuge briefly in religion and bounces back when Leon, a young law student who was infatuated with her and whose feelings she reciprocated during the early years of her marriage, reenters her life. He is more sincere than Rodolphe and seems to share her appreciation for literature and music. She meets him on a romantic rendezvous every Sunday in the nearby town of Rouen under the pretext of taking piano lessons. But this affair too runs its course. “Elle était aussi dégoûtée de lui qu’il était fatigué d’elle. Emma retrouvait dans l’adultère toutes les platitudes du mariage.” She was as fed up with him as he was tired of her. She had rediscovered in adultery all the banalities of marriage. I think these are my favorite lines from the novel and they summarize the plot succinctly. 🙂

Emma Bovary is considered to be one of the most unlikeable characters in literature. It is not only because she commits adultery and lacks a moral compass. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, another famous literary adulteress also lives according to the dictates of her heart but elicits more sympathy. Although flawed, she is a much more complex character who is more grounded in reality. You can see why it is easy to despise Emma Bovary. She is a narcissistic and selfish woman who puts her needs above everything and everyone else. At first you do see her in a sympathetic light. In the 19th century, a woman’s world revolved around her husband and children. What about those women who were not cut out for marriage and maternity? Besides what choices were there for a woman in a passionless marriage?

The very fact that she chooses to assert herself within the constraints imposed by the society of 19th century France is remarkable. The novel sows the seeds of later feminism by questioning gender expectations and recognizing that a woman can have sexual desires as well. She wants to be more like a man in other spheres of her life too and even starts taking care of the finances. The outcome is tragic nevertheless for women were not financially independent at the time and therefore incapable of escaping from the tedium of their everyday lives.

The title reinforces the fact that women had to efface their individuality. The eponymous heroine is not the only Madame Bovary. There are two Madame Bovarys that precede Emma; her mother in law and her husband’s deceased first wife. The first two Madame Bovarys were discontented with their lives but resigned themselves to their fates. Emma refuses to be circumscribed in the role of a devoted wife, mother and housekeeper. Although I admired Emma for her courage, what irked me personally about her was her inability to reflect and grow. Kitty Fane from Maugham’s The Painted Veil is a shallow and self absorbed woman who is also trapped in a loveless marriage and has an affair, but she shows the capacity for introspection and growth and by the end of the novel you actually start liking her when she finally matures. I wonder if Emma would garner more sympathy if she had a few redeeming features like being a good mother or financially sensible. One thing I don’t get is why adulteresses are almost always portrayed as lacking maternal instinct. Wouldn’t they be more human and fascinating if they were depicted with more nuance? My heart broke for Berthe, her little girl who clamors for her attention but is constantly pushed away.

Emma’s husband is a rather pitiful character. Not only does he turn a blind eye to her affairs, he encourages them inadvertently by his cluelessness. I hoped he wouldn’t find out about her indiscretions not because I cared about her image but I couldn’t bear to think of the heartache he would have to endure. Flaubert carefully chose a name that makes you think of ‘bovine’ for Charles Bovary is doltish and oblivious to everything around him. The story is a means for Flaubert to mock the vulgarity and pettiness of the bourgeois class and he does not spare anyone.

The secondary characters are equally interesting as the principal ones. Homais the pharmacist who lives next door is a deceitful and self -serving pseudo intellectual who encourages M. Bovary to perform an experimental club foot operation on Hippolyte, the stableman that ends up leaving him crippled. Homais shows no remorse but seeks to further his own interests. His bombastic language and the satirical retorts he exchanges with the sanctimonious priest Bournisien provide some comic relief. He reminded me at times of Moliere’s Sganarelle although he has a much more sinister role. He is also the male counterpart of Emma who dreams big like her but ends up achieving what he seeks which she as a woman fails to do.

Flaubert’s style of writing is objective, ironic and humorous. There is a scene where Emma starts feeling guilty for having an affair with Rodolphe. I was convinced she was thinking of her husband but as you keep reading you realize she feels guilty for cheating on Leon, her other lover. His superb use of irony is evident in a long scene at the local agricultural fair where the pompous speech on morality delivered by the councillor is juxtaposed with Rodolphe’s seduction of Emma. The insincere words of the councillor are no different from the insincere words of Rodolphe and before long their sentences cut into each other. Another scene vividly portrayed is the passionate carriage ride that Emma and Leon enjoy secretly through the streets of Rouen; the pace of the vehicle matches the lovemaking inside and the scene reaches its climax with Emma’s hand reaching out to throw scraps of paper she had crushed to the wind.

Flaubert was known for his meticulous attention to detail and the writing style is descriptive and lyrical.

L’amour, croyait-elle, devait arriver tout à coup, avec de grands éclats et des fulgurations, — ouragan des cieux qui tombe sur la vie, la bouleverse, arrache les volontés comme des feuilles et emporte à l’abîme le cœur entier. Elle ne savait pas que, sur la terrasse des maisons, la pluie fait des lacs quand les gouttières sont bouchées, et elle fût ainsi demeurée en sa sécurité, lorsqu’elle découvrit subitement une lézarde dans le mur.

Love, she believed, had to come, suddenly, with great bursts of thunder and lightning flashes, a hurricane from heaven that falls upon your life and turns it upside down, pulls out your will power like leaves and hurls your entire heart into the abyss. She did not know that up on the roof of the house, the rain will form pools if the gutters are blocked, and she would have stayed there feeling safe until she suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.

At the same time you also have amazing one liners: “Elle souhaitait à la fois mourir et habiter Paris.” She wanted to die, but at the same time she also wanted to live in Paris.

Emma’s mother in law believes the books she reads should be confiscated from her. Did literature ruin her life? She was probably reading potboilers and not brilliant books like the one penned by her creator. If she had read the book written about her, she would have probably viewed it as a cautionary tale and death could have been averted. Isn’t this the biggest Flaubertian irony of all? The end is inevitably tragic with a description of her long drawn out agony. Everyone knows that Madame Bovary dies. I am not revealing what happens next. All I can say is the ending and especially the last sentence of the book left an awful taste of arsenic in the mouth.

Was it worth it to pursue this ephemeral happiness even if it meant death was the price you pay for it or would it have been better to suffer a slow death in the stifling bourgeois life? The irony is that the woman looking for love is herself incapable of loving and the only person who genuinely loves her is the boring man she marries. Flaubert has portrayed a character who is devastatingly human in her inhumaneness even resulting in a new word in the dictionary called ‘bovarysm ‘ defined as ‘a conceited or romantic conception of one’s own importance.’ Yes, Madame Bovary is as contemporary as classic. Madame Bovary, c’est nous!

• The translations are all mine.

Autumn Song (My translation of Verlaine’s Chanson D’Automne)

I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth to experience autumn. So embedded is the season in the local psyche that over time I have become an autumn person. Not only do I revel in the glorious hues of changing foliage and savor the textures, sounds and smells of the season, I also experience the melancholy that goes with the time of the year. I slow down to contemplate and see my own fate and the fate of everyone else around me in the transience of leaves. Autumn is after all the season of melancholia and introspection, a mood captured so poignantly by poets.

As I was walking in the woods around my home in southern New Hampshire the other day, I noticed a pile of dead leaves. It was late autumn and the leaves were a sodden mess, withered, bleached of color, and in a state of decay, considerably different from the vibrant palette on the tree tops just a few weeks ago. I was face to face with my mortality as I picked up a ‘feuille morte’ and thought instinctively of the poem “Chanson d’automne” or ”Autumn Song” by Paul Verlaine, one of the leading French poets associated with the Symbolist movement.

I had first studied ” Chanson d’automne” in college and I can still recite it by heart. I had always loved the poem but now with the passing of the years the symbolism resonates more than ever and living in New England makes me understand autumn better. The poem is included in Verlaine’s first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866 and is part of the “Paysages tristes” or ” Sad landscapes” section of the collection. One interesting fact about this poem is that the BBC used a song recording of it to send secret messages to the French Resistance about the timing of the forthcoming invasion of Normandy during World War 2.

” Chanson d’automne” also happens to be one of the most translated poems of all time. Although it is written in simple French, it is difficult to translate it in English as it is a musical poem. “ De la musique avant toute chose’’ or ” Music before everything else” was after all Verlaine’s mantra and to retain the musicality of the poem along with conveying its melancholy is of utmost importance when rendering it from French into another language. But it is also such a brief and simple poem that it is best to keep the translation almost literal. You can see that translating the poem is no mean task. A lot of the translations extant stray too far from the meaning of the original in order to make the poem lyrical but I didn’t want to dilute the impact made by the French poem. I have tried my best to reconcile the two. So here is the original followed by my humble attempt at translation:

Chanson d’Automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

Autumn Song

The long sobs 
Of autumn violins
Make my heart throb
With chagrin
And a monotonous
Languor.

All choked up 
And pale, when
The hour sounds,
I remember with a sigh
Days long gone
And I cry.

And I let myself go
With the ill winds that blow
Which carry me
Hither, thither
Similar
To a dead leaf. 

( Translated by Jayshree – Literary Gitane) *

My translation is pretty literal but I have made some accommodations to recreate the plodding rhythm of the original which follows the effect of a violin playing slowly with the use of stylistic techniques like rhymes, internal rhymes, alliteration and consonance. I could have translated ‘blessent mon coeur’ as ‘hurt my heart’ but I thought rhyming the word ‘violin’ with a word like ‘chagrin’ along with the use of the rhymes ‘long’, ‘sob’ and ‘throb’ would convey the effect of the pulsating sound of a heart beat and the rhythmic sound of a violin that I was looking for to accentuate the monotony and the melancholy of the lines. Similarly in the second verse I added ‘with a sigh’ to rhyme with ‘cry’ and the words ‘long gone’ to create the musicality with the internal rhyme and consonance. Throughout my translation, I have attempted the techniques of consonance and assonance to make the experience of the poem more auditory. In the concluding lines I was playing with ‘to and fro’ to rhyme with ‘blow’ but settled on ‘hither thither’ as I thought these two consonant sounds would best replace the words “Deçà, delà”.

This poem beautifully illustrates how an interior landscape corresponds with the exterior one. It employs the metaphor of autumn to bemoan a past that is irretrievably lost. It is interesting how it starts with the first person but by the end of the poem, the poet/ speaker becomes a dead object, one with the dead leaf, one with the season. “Autumn Dirge” would have been a more apt title to this poem, in my opinion, than “Autumn Song” but perhaps the poet either wished to be ironical or simply to emphasize the paradox of the sorrow triggered by the desolation of the season along with the calm of resignation and acceptance.

I hope you enjoyed the poem and my translation. 🙂

• Translation cannot be used without the permission of the author- Copyright- Literary Gitane

La Maison de Claudine

The fifteen year old Colette with her long braids…”long enough to lower a bucket down a well.”

It is believed that much of the nostalgia that a book evokes in us is due to the memory of reading it during our childhood or youth- that innocent or seemingly innocent stage of life. When I look back upon my college days, one of my cherished memories is reading Colette and especially her ‘Claudine’ books. My lackluster life is a far cry from the colorful and scandalous life the writer led. Yet I have felt a kinship with her and something about the lyrical and lush sensuousness of her writing has always resonated with me. I seized the opportunity during the pandemic to re-read a comforting Colette from my early years.

La Maison de Claudine published in 1922 and translated as My Mother’s House is not about the fictitious Claudine. Claudine doesn’t even make an appearance in the book despite the French title but as the protagonist- author duo of Claudine-Colette are virtually the same, even their names, interestingly, have become interchangeable. La Maison de Claudine is an autobiographical book about Colette’s childhood in the countryside with a warm and loving family that consisted of her mother and father, her brother, a half brother and a half sister and a host of cats and dogs who are as much a part of the family as the two legged creatures. Colette herself was Minet- Chéri or ‘Little Darling’,the youngest of the brood. 

There is no story as such. The book is a series of vignettes in the form of sentimental musings of Colette’s childhood and picturesque evocations of provincial life in Burgundy. The episodes are not in chronological order. Some are very short episodes and are barely a page or two long. Some of the chapters describe a later stage in her life when she was living in Paris with her second husband and daughter Bel- Gazou.

But most of the episodes are a charming and sensuous depiction of an idyllic childhood in a house overflowing with pets and books. Her father, the captain who lost a leg during the war, is an absent-minded and amusing man who adores his wife and flirts harmlessly with his neighbor saying that he would teach her the meaning of love for six pence and a packet of tobacco. Then there is Juliette, her recluse of a sister lost in her books and daydreams and her quirky and fun loving brothers- Achille the older brother who loves puttering with pieces of cloth and wire and glass tubes and who eventually becomes a doctor, and Leo, the amazing musician who plays by ear the tunes he hears on the street and has a morbid fascination with creating epitaphs for fun. This eccentric domestic domain is presided over imperiously by a formidable woman- – tender and kind yet resolute, strong willed and assertive- her beloved mother Sido. The entire book can be said to be a tribute to this strong and compassionate lady.

Sido is unconventional in many ways. She is far from religious and her irreverence is charming. She insists that the dog attend mass where she herself reads plays of Corneille hidden in the prayer book and dies of boredom if the sermon lasts longer than ten minutes. She retains her maid who is pregnant out of wedlock, ignoring the gossip of her neighbors. Above all she is this nurturing maternal figure, who, on hearing stories of kidnapping in the news, fears that her little Minet- Chéri will be a victim and sneaks her out of her bedroom at night and brings her close to her own bed, prompting the confused little one to shriek in the morning,” Maman! Come quick! I’ve been abducted.” When her estranged daughter Juliette goes into labor next door, she literally feels the pangs of pain as she hears her wail in agony. Even when age takes a toll on her, she is stubbornly independent and is caught chopping wood on a frosty morning in the backyard dressed only in a nightgown or moving a heavy walnut cupboard from the upper story to the ground floor.

I was amused by all the stories of Sido brushing her daughters’ long hair. Both girls had hair that nearly fell to their feet. Minet Chéri had to be woken up half an hour earlier than her schoolmates every morning just to get her hair ready for school. Her two long plaits were like horse whips. And Juliette needs four plaits – two springing from her temples and two from above the nape of her neck. It’s hilarious how Sido complains that her legs hurt just by standing to comb Juliette’s hair. Ah, braiding a daughter’s hair or getting a hair braided by a mother is one of those quotidian activities filled with pain and pleasure at the same time!  

The animals are part of the daily domestic dramas and their feline and canine adventures are as delightful as their names- Toutouque, Pati-Pati, Bâ-tou, Bellaude and Kamaralzaman aka Moumou. Their stories cracked me up although I suspect Colette may have slightly embellished the details for effect. A cat relishes the best strawberries in the garden with all the good taste of a gourmet, and a spider descends from the ceiling in the middle of the night, dangling from a thread to take sips of Sido’s hot chocolate simmering over a little oil lamp on the bedside table. Nonoche, the cat and her daughter Bijou are pregnant at the same time and deliver a day within each other. The daughter cat has a few kittens attached to her breasts but goes to suckle from her mother who has her own set to nurse. There are sad stories too. The neighbor’s cat is grieving her dead kittens and has a lot of milk and the Colette family kitten seeks her abandoning his own distraught mother whose milk dries up. You can tell that Colette has observed animals very closely like many countryside children. These minute details captured so vividly remind me of My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.

A qui vit aux champs et se sert de ses yeux, tout devient miraculeux et simple. Il y a beau temps que nous trouvions naturel qu’une lice nourrît un jeune chat, qu’une chatte choisît, pour dormir, le dessus de la cage où chantaient des serins verts confiants et qui, parfois, tiraient du bec, au profit de leur nid, quelques poils soyeux de la dormeuse.

“To anyone who lives in the fields and uses his or her eyes, everything becomes miraculous and simple.We had long since felt that it was quite natural that a she-hound would feed a kitten, that a female cat would choose as her sleeping place the top of a cage where trusting green canaries sang, and who sometimes with their beaks pulled out a few silky hairs from the sleeping animal to build their nests.“

Beneath this tranquil surface, there is something simmering that threatens to disturb the harmony. There is a sense of melancholy pervading the air although Colette doesn’t allude to it explicitly. There are hints of financial trouble. I was especially intrigued by the mysterious Juliette and her crowning glory- the girl who is such a bookworm that even when she is sick with typhoid and forbidden to read, she lights matchsticks at night or strains to read clandestinely with nothing but the help of moonlight. Her in laws are not satisfied with her dowry and forbid her from visiting her parents. What secret sorrows lurk behind the thick and dark veil of hair! Who will rescue this Rapunzel from her tower? And why is she referred to repeatedly as an ‘ingrate’ when she is avoiding her parents only because she is afraid of her in laws’ ire? When we write a memoir with the distance of years between us, it affects our objectivity and we tend to gloss over unpleasant or uncomfortable details. Colette doesn’t want to break the spell of those halcyon days of childhood.

We don’t want the spell to break either. Colette summons up a childhood paradise imbued with delight and magic. Yet from the beginning, we are aware of the transience of the house, the garden and the inhabitants. From the very first chapter entitled,” Where are the children?” where Sido is frantically trying to round up the children who are in the garden playing games or hiding on tree tops with their books, we know that they will be leaving the maternal Eden behind. And that eventually their mother will leave them too and they would be left wondering where their mother was just as she was anxious about them.

Maison et jardin vivent encore, je le sais, mais qu’importe si la magie les a quittés, si le secret est perdu qui ouvrait — lumière, odeurs, harmonie d’arbres et d’oiseaux, murmure de voix humaines qu’a déjà suspendu la mort — un monde dont j’ai cessé d’être digne?…

“The house and garden still exist, I know it, but of what use is that if their magic has left them and if their secret has been lost- the secret that once opened up a whole world to me- light, scents, the harmony of trees and birds, the murmur of human voices that death has already stilled…a world of which I have ceased to be worthy?”

The book describes three generations of people who even share names and nicknames. Colette’s full name has her mother’s name Sidonie in it and she took her father’s last name as her first name and passed it on to her own daughter along with her nickname Bel-Gazou. Even though homes and people vanish out of their lives, there is this continuity in retaining the names along with the memories through the generations of this particular family.

And yet, the most amazing part of the book is its universality: it transported me to my own childhood ,which, strangely, was nothing like Colette’s; it made me nostalgic for a place or state of mind that wasn’t even there or perhaps was there in fragments. I used to relate to Minet- Chéri, or the young Colette; now on re-reading the book, I wonder if I have been a mother like Sido to my children in some small way and if I have provided them with enough experiences for sweet reminiscences. All I know is that as they take wing, I am left to lament like her: ” Where are the children?”

* The translations are all mine.

 

Paternal Love in Le Père Goriot

Father Goriot on his deathbed- From a 19th century lithograph

 

Honoré de Balzac is renowned for his series of interconnected books written under the title of La Comédie Humaine or The Human Comedy.  In the ‘roman fleuve’ or novel stream format, each novel is complete in itself and the whole of the sprawling magnum opus consisting of over 90 published books along with many unfinished ones, portrays common themes, recurring characters and a panoramic view of early 19th century French society. The work represents a break with romanticism and launches the realist movement in literature, the purpose being to depict life as it is – in a word striving for the quality of verisimilitude. I have read some of the novels during college and graduate school days – Eugénie Grandet and La Cousine Bette to name a few but recently read Le Père Goriot, which would be a good introduction to La Comédie Humaine in general to anyone interested in getting a taste of Balzac but daunted by the colossal collection.

Le Père Goriot is set in a shabby Parisian boarding house run by a certain Mme.Vauquer. The lodging, is in effect, a small scale model of Parisian society with its social hierarchies. One of its inhabitants and the main protagonist, Eugène Rastignac, is a country boy recently planted into the city to attend law school. After visiting his aristocratic cousin, Mme de Beauséant, he gets a taste for Parisian life and tries to get an entrance into haute society through liaisons with upper class women. Also a resident of the boarding house, is the titular character, Père or Father Goriot who is the butt of ridicule among the pensionnaires. After being rebuffed by Father Goriot’s elder daughter, Rastignac eventually falls in love with the younger one and that is how their stories intersect.

To add to the colorful mix is the unscrupulous fellow boarder, Vautrin, an escaped convict who tries to lure Rastignac into a diabolical scheme involving a duel and death, ostensibly to help the latter advance in his ambitions, but in reality, to promote his own mercenary interests. For money is the driving force behind the action of each and every character. The novel highlights the deleterious impacts of social mobility and capitalism with the restoration of the Bourbons in the post Napoleonic era. Rastignac neglects his studies and falls into a lifestyle of debauchery.  His transformation from a naïve idealistic person to a cynic is the main plot of the novel which one can classify as a bildungsroman.

As fascinating as Rastignac’s story is, I was more intrigued by the story of Father Goriot. The role of the father or the father figure is central to many of the books of La Comédie Humaine. This story of paternal love immediately brings to mind the story of King Lear and his daughters but here we have no devoted Cordelia.

Father Goriot is a retired vermicelli maker who has squandered his fortune on his selfish daughters, the Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud and the Baronne Delphine de Nucingen, both married into the upper echelons of Parisian society. He paid for their excellent education, their massive dowries and elevated their social status by marrying them into rich families. He lives in penury so he can continue to support his daughters who would not even deign to visit him or to welcome him into their homes. He is not acknowledged by them in public either as they are ashamed to be seen with him.

He is rejected by the two and their husbands but is still involved in their lives as an observer, on the outside. He admires them in their carriages from afar. He funds their extravagant lifestyles and lives vicariously through them as he deprives himself of food, coffee and firewood. In his little room, there are no curtains, the walls are damp, the wall paper is peeling and even his blanket is made of Mme Vauquer’s old dresses. The contrast between his room and the luxury his daughters enjoy is staggering. His physical transition from a better area of the boarding house to an inferior one is symbolic of the old man moving from one level of self-sacrifice to another. He bankrupts himself in order to support his girls going as far as pawning his gold and silver to pay off their debts and their lovers’ debts too. The only link he has to them is to support their lavish lifestyles. Otherwise he would be disowned completely.

He is a paragon of fatherly virtue and I was heartbroken by his plight. When I read this passage where he explains his love for his daughters to Rastignac, I was moved to tears:

My very life resides in my two girls. As long as they are enjoying themselves and are happy, as long as they are well dressed and walk on carpets, what does it matter what clothes I wear or where I lie down to sleep? I am not cold as long as they are warm, I am not bored if they are laughing. I have no sorrows but theirs. When you become a father, and when on hearing the babble of your children’s voices, you say to yourself, ‘That has come from me!’,you will feel that those little ones are every drop of blood in your veins, that they are the delicate flower that issues forth, for that’s what they are; you will feel you are attached to them so closely that it will seem you feel every movement that they make. I hear their voices everywhere. A sad look from them congeals my blood. Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in their happiness than in your own. I cannot explain it to you, it is something within that sends a feeling of warmth all through you. In short, I live my life three times over. Shall I tell you something funny? Well, since I have been a father, I have come to understand God. He is everywhere and all around us, because the whole world comes from Him. And, Sir, it is just the same with my daughters. Only, I love my daughters better than God loves the world, for the world is not as beautiful as God Himself is, but my children are more beautiful than I am.

( The translation is mine)

Halfway through the book, I realized that he becomes more and more of a martyr in order to support his daughters which made me wonder if in fulfilling his duties as a father, he considers himself morally superior. Is he duplicitous too like the other characters in the novel? After all, he stands to gain from Rastignac’s relationship with Delphine and encourages their illicit liasion.

He is neglected in death as he was in life. The indifference of the two girls when he is in the throes of agony is appalling and one could even accuse them of parricide as their quarrel with each other brings on his stroke. Delphine would rather go to a ball to elevate her social status than visit her dying father. Reluctant at first, Anastasie arrives  eventually but a little too late. Rastignac takes on the role of a son by taking care of the ailing man. He attends to the bureaucratic formalities and pays for the funeral expenses and shows more filial piety towards the old man than the two girls ever did.

Father Goriot could never find fault with his daughters. But all his suppressed feelings come to the surface on his deathbed in the form of a melodramatic monologue full of gibberish and exaggerations where he shifts rapidly between extremes of hate and love. He calls his daughters criminals and accuses them of murdering him. He imagines himself to be a ghost cursing them at night but quickly withdraws his curse. In his delirium, he asks for the police, the government and the public prosecutor to force them to come.

The scene is heartrending but it slowly dawned on me that he was not a model of saintly love like I believed him to be initially but an overly protective parent. After his wife’s early death, he became both father and mother to his daughters. He transferred the love he felt for his wife towards them and became obsessed with them. Even after their weddings, he took on their husbands’ role of provider. There is something disturbing about his conduct bordering on the emotionally incestuous. There is a scene where he lies on the floor, kisses Delphine’s feet and rubs his head against her dress. He even says his girls live like mistresses of an old rich man. It is possible that his inappropriate impulses and overindulgence pushed his daughters away from him.

In current times, Father Goriot would be considered a classic example of an helicopter parent who swoops in to rescue his offspring at the first sign of trouble, creating a world for them where they never have to face struggle, conflict or disappointment and leaving them with a sense of entitlement.

In more ways than one, Le Père Goriot is as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century. The French economist Thomas Piketty who studies economic inequality was fascinated with this work and believes that we are returning to the patrimonial capitalism delineated in the novel. Even the name Rastignac has made its way into the French dictionary referring to a ruthless social climber and an arrivist. Le Père Goriot is also a cautionary tale for cosseting parents about the excesses of overparenting. No wonder then that the author declares on the first page itself: “This drama is neither a fiction nor a romance! All is true–so true, that each one of you may recognise its elements in his own family, perhaps in his own heart.”

 

Notre-Dame de Paris: Gypsies, Gargoyles and Grotesques

View of Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris from the Seine

My heart was ripped when flames ripped through the Notre Dame Cathedral a week ago. So many memories came flooding back as I helplessly watched images of smoke billowing over the city. As a medievalist and as an art history buff, I’ve never left Paris without visiting the Notre Dame. In fact it usually tends to be my first stop in the city. Standing as a beacon of hope and light on the banks of the Seine with the entire vista of Paris visible from its towers, it is undoubtedly the geographical and cultural center of this beautiful and historic city.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, West View

Notre Dame is also a place of pilgrimage in more than one sense of the word. Along with being a place of worship for millions of devout Catholics from around the world, it is also a sacred site for literary pilgrims where Victor Hugo’s novel Notre- Dame de Paris known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame comes alive. Not surprisingly, Hugo’s book has soared to the top of the bestseller list in the wake of the tragedy.

Published in 1831 but set in 1482, Notre -Dame de Paris is the melodramatic story of the extraordinarily beautiful gypsy Esmeralda who is pursued by several men including Quasimodo, the deformed and deaf hunchback and bell-ringer of the cathedral. It is a touching and tragic story about ill-fated love. Hugo was inspired by the Greek word ‘anatkh’ which he found inscribed on one of the walls of the cathedral and which means Fate. This is a novel with a social conscience like Les Misérables, which he wrote a few decades later. It evokes medieval life in Paris and portrays people from all strata of life from kings to vagabonds and beggars and focuses on the themes of class divisions, social inequality and justice.

Notre Dame Cathedral has been through tumultuous times and has been on the brink of destruction on several occasions throughout its history – it has suffered the ravages of weather and has endured floods, famine and even fire. It has survived rioting Huguenots in the 16^thcentury, The French revolution of 1789 and two World Wars which had all resulted in widespread desecration of its statues and relics. It was also the victim of changing fashion trends as from the Renaissance through the 18^thcentury, classical architecture was in vogue to the detriment of gothic art.

Notre Dame de Paris is a plea for the preservation of this Gothic architecture that had been subjected to vandalism and neglect over the centuries. According to Hugo, the cathedral is the cultural and political center of Paris and the symbol of the city and its glorious past. Hugo felt that the arrival of the printing press was going to mean the death of architecture while ensuring that the written word would be indestructible. But ironically it was Hugo’s writing that saved the cathedral from further damage.

Flying buttresses

The novel was instrumental in initiating a massive renovation project by the King in 1844 to restore the dilapidated cathedral to its formal glory with the help of architects Baptiste- Antoine Lassus and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. The project included rebuilding of

Gargoyles and Grotesques

the spire, the restitution of statues and the addition of gargoyles and grotesques which interestingly were not part of the original structure. The cathedral represents a 19th century vision of what medieval art is supposed to look like- spires, turrets, gargoyles, chimera and flying buttresses symbolizing ascent towards the heavens gave flight to the imaginations of architects and authors alike.

The English translation of the title doesn’t do justice to the novel.  This is not just the story of the hunchback Quasimodo’s unrequited love for Esmeralda but also the story of love for a cathedral. Chapters 1 and 2 of Book 3 are dedicated to the edifice and its architecture. Most of the action of the novel takes place in and around the structure and from the top of its towers. The cathedral sets the plot in motion and offers sanctuary and support to the pariahs of Parisian society including the orphaned Quasimodo:

After all, he turned his face towards men only with regret; his cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures,—kings, saints, bishops,—who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who looked upon him only with tranquility and benevolence. The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, harbored no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be sneering at other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and watched over him. So he was in intimate communication with them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade.

And the cathedral was not only society for him, but the universe, and all nature still. He dreamed of no other shrubs than the stained-glass windows, always in bloom , no other shade than that of the stone foliage which spread out, loaded with birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris, roaring at their feet.

The North Rose Window

 

Après tout, il ne tournait qu’à regret sa face du côté des hommes. Sa cathédrale lui suffisait. Elle était peuplée de figures de marbre, rois, saints, évêques, qui du moins ne lui éclataient pas de rire au nez et n’avaient pour lui qu’un regard tranquille et bienveillant. Les autres statues, celles des monstres et des démons, n’avaient pas de haine pour lui Quasimodo. Il leur ressemblait trop pour cela. Elles raillaient bien plutôt les autres hommes. Les saints étaient ses amis, et le bénissaient ; les monstres étaient ses amis, et le gardaient. Aussi avait-il de longs épanchements avec eux. Aussi passait-il quelquefois des heures entières, accroupi devant une de ces statues, à causer solitairement avec elle. Si quelqu’un survenait, il s’enfuyait comme un amant surpris dans sa sérénade.

Et la cathédrale ne lui était pas seulement la société, mais encore l’univers, mais encore toute la nature. Il ne rêvait pas d’autres espaliers que les vitraux toujours en fleur, d’autre ombrage que celui de ces feuillages de pierre qui s’épanouissent chargés d’oiseaux dans la touffe des chapiteaux saxons, d’autres montagnes que les tours colossales de l’église, d’autre océan que Paris qui bruissait à leurs pieds.

 

The cathedral holds a special place in my heart too as it instantly transports me to Hugo’s medieval world of gypsies, gargoyles and grotesques. Every time I saw gypsies outside the cathedral nursing their babies, playing with their children or accosting tourists for money, I was reminded of the captivating Esmeralda and I could visualize her dancing in the square or regaling her spectators with her tricks. And whenever I climbed the belfry, I could almost sense the presence of Quasimodo, the hunchback whose grotesqueness mirrors the cathedral’s own deformities. The hideous bell ringer whispered to the bells and caressed and loved them even though they had made him deaf for mothers often love best the child who has caused them the most suffering. (“les mères aiment souvent le mieux l’enfant qui les a fait le plus souffrir.”)

Stained glass windows inside the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

The Notre Dame Cathedral is not just a touristic spot or a literary haven but a working place of worship pulsating with spiritual energy. Even if you don’t entertain any religious beliefs you cannot help but be moved by the grace and serenity the space emanates. The majestic edifice was engulfed in flames during the most holy week for Christians. Although Hugo ends the book with the grim prediction that the church will disappear from the face of the earth, it is hard to overlook the Biblical symbolism. The miraculous preservation of the relics of the Passion and the Crown of thorns is a prophetic reminder of the resurrection. I sincerely hope that The ‘Grande Dame’ as the French affectionately call their beloved cathedral ,will, as she always has, rise from the ashes.

*The translations are mine.

*The photographs are from my personal collection.

 

 

 

 

What Cyrano de Bergerac Has Taught Me About Love!

A captivating classic which has withstood the test of time, Cyrano de Bergerac is manna for my romantic soul. The play set in Paris in 1640 during the reigns of Louis the 13th and Louis the 14th, but written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand is loosely based on a real person named Cyrano de Bergerac embellished freely in fiction. It has resulted in various adaptations on screen and on stage and it has never failed to tug at my heartstrings in any of its avatars. I recently saw the filmed version of the Comédie Française production which was aired in theaters across the US for just one show on the same day and at the same hour. I also read the original play in French and its translation in English last month and thought that a Valentine’s Day post on this story would be a fitting tribute to its creator for if there’s anything that can warm the most cynical of hearts, it’s this beautiful but heartrending love story.

Gérard Depardieu and Anne Brochet in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s 1990 film, “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

Cyrano de Bergerac was written in alexandrine verses. The French language lends itself beautifully to the poetic form and it’s difficult to capture the cadence and rhythm in English. If you must read a translation, stay away from the online public domain one which is quite awful. Also, do yourself a favor and watch the opulent 1990 production of Cyrano with Gérard Depardieu who gives a magnificent performance. He was born to play the part. To me Gérard Depardieu IS Cyrano.

Cyrano de Bergerac is a flamboyant, funny, witty, proud, short-tempered, courageous, brash and sentimental cadet of Gascony well versed in music, science, philosophy, literature and warfare. He has a penchant for poetry.  He is a larger than life character- a tad over the top and theatrical with a touch of Romeo and a shade of Don Quixote-the epitome of chivalry vanquishing enemies with ease- in short, a force to be reckoned with. This acclaimed swordsman and ingenious wordsmith sounds perfect, doesn’t he? Not quite for he has an enormous nose which makes him the butt of ridicule and is the bane of his existence. This phenomenally prominent proboscis also prevents him from declaring his love for his cousin Roxanne as he fears her rejection.

The fair Roxanne is in love with the handsome Christian de Neuvillette, a cadet in Cyrano’s own regiment who reciprocates her feelings but lacks the eloquence to woo her. So Cyrano becomes Christian’s voice and expresses his ardent love for Roxanne through the letters he pens under his name. The two team up together with their respective qualities of beauty and wit to seduce Roxanne. The balcony scene where Christian serenades Roxanne with Cyrano’s words displays Cyrano’s poetic prowess. Here’s an exquisite description of a kiss:

A kiss, when all said and done, what is it? An oath taken at close quarters, a more precise  promise, a confession that wishes to be confirmed, A rosy circle around the ‘o’ of the verb ‘to love’; It’s a secret which takes the lips for the ear, A moment of infinity buzzing like a bee, A communion with a flowery taste, A way of breathing in a little of the heart and tasting a little of the soul along the edges of the lips.

Un baiser, mais à tout prendre, qu’est-ce?
Un serment fait d’un peu plus près, une promesse
Plus précise, un aveu qui veut se confirmer,
Un point rose qu’on met sur l’i du verbe aimer;
C’est un secret qui prend la bouche pour oreille,
Un instant d’infini qui fait un bruit d’abeille,
Une communion ayant un goût de fleur,
Une façon d’un peu se respirer le coeur,
Et d’un peu se goûter, au bord des lèvres, l’âme!

There is a third character, Comte de Guiche who is also in love with Roxanne and who tries to thwarts their attempts. In the end, the resourceful Roxanne outwits the Comte and succeeds in marrying Christian. Right after the wedding, Christian has to leave for the front even before their marriage has been consummated. Cyrano promises Roxane that Christian will write to her and he risks his life everyday by crossing enemy lines to deliver the letters he has penned himself under Christian’s name. Roxanne falls in love with the soul of the poet and declares to the troubled Christian that even if he were to turn ugly she would love him for his poetic ingenuity. Christian is willing to give up Roxanne on this discovery but fate has other plans for this love triangle.

What Cyrano de Bergerac has taught me about love:

Love is courage. If you love someone, say it. What is the worst that can happen? You’ll be rejected and it won’t be the end of the world. Besides, there is a possibility that the person may reciprocate your feelings. Give love a chance in spite of your feelings of inadequacy and in spite of your flaws, real or perceived. A love that expresses itself so eloquently is also a love that is tongue-tied! Poor Cyrano! When he finally summons the courage to reveal his feelings, fate denies him the opportunity when Christian is killed during the siege of Arras. Why did he remain silent for fourteen years after Christian’s death? Perhaps sometimes the courageous thing to do is to be quiet and love from the shadows. And if Cyrano had confessed his love for Roxanne, then we wouldn’t have had such a tragically beautiful love story and imbibed the other important lessons about love.

Love goes beyond appearances. While Cyrano exemplifies inner beauty, Christian with his dashing looks represents outer beauty. But isn’t Cyrano’s ability to craft words as superficial as Christian’s good looks? It seems that physical attractiveness and intellectual abilities are the traits cherished by the protagonists at the beginning of the play. Roxanne falls initially for Christian purely for his looks. And both men seek her out for her external beauty. Ironically, Cyrano himself who is so self-conscious about his deformity can’t help falling for a charming woman. Roxanne is not only a very beautiful woman but is also a ‘precieuse’ – an intellectual  woman with a refined literary taste. Roxanne falls in love with Christian’s looks and Cyrano’s wit but it’s only towards the end that she has a glimpse into the beautiful soul of the man and realizes that his integrity, honor and adherence to moral standards are what constitute his inner beauty. In fact the story is a reworking of The Beauty and the Beast and Cyrano himself refers to the fairy tale but he points out the painful fact that unlike the tale where the prince’s ugliness evaporates, his remains the same.

Love is loyal. Roxanne’s plight is as pitiable as Cyrano’s. In spite of being one of the most beautiful and sophisticated women in Paris, she loves no other and lives a life of a recluse in a convent, faithful to the memory of her deceased love. As darkness envelops the evening while Cyrano, in the throes of death, reads Christian’s letters out aloud, Roxanne realizes that he is reading from memory and the truth dawns on her. Her true love has always been right under her nose. ( I just couldn’t resist the pun! ) The realization that the mind and soul she was in love with belonged to Cyrano, leads her to this heartrending lament that always makes me dissolve into tears: I have loved but one man in my life and I’ve lost him twice.(“Je n’aimais qu’un seul être et je le perds deux fois!” ) Alas! Love is lost and love is found only to be lost again.

Another scene that never fails to bring a lump in my throat is when Cyrano describes his loneliness at never knowing a woman’s love :

I had never known a woman’s love.
Even my mother did not find me handsome:
I had no sister; and, later as a man,
I feared the mistress who would mock at me.
But at least I have had your friendship–thanks to you
A woman’s charm has crossed my path.

J’ignorais la douceur féminine. Ma mère
Ne m’a pas trouvé beau. Je n’ai pas eu de soeur.
Plus tard, j’ai redouté l’amante à l’oeil moqueur.
Je vous dois d’avoir eu, tout au moins, une amie.
Grâce à vous une robe a passé dans ma vie. 

Love is selfless. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from the play is that true love has no expectations and places no demands. Cyrano’s love for Roxanne is so deep that he is willing to encourage her romance with another man for her happiness. It’s also admirable that he was a good friend to Christian and helped him even after the latter mocked him for his grotesque deformity. His love is so pure and noble that even after Christian dies, he wants to preserve the image Roxanne has of him in her mind, albeit a false one. The closest we come to this ideal is the unconditional love a parent has for a child. It’s far more difficult to be self-sacrificing in a romantic relationship. And that’s definitely something we can learn from Cyrano. If you love someone truly you’ll care more about their happiness than your own. Cyrano has given up a lot but not his integrity. In the end, the swashbuckling poet leaves the world with what has always stayed with him-his panache. (Panache, incidentally, was a word introduced in the English language with the popularity of the play.)

In this modern age of casual encounters and fleeting relationships, one would think that this epic tale would be outdated but it has endured through the ages for Cyrano’s story is one we have all lived. We all hope that someone would love us like Cyrano and there’s also a little bit of Cyrano in all of us, n’est-ce pas, pining from afar for an unattainable love?

* The translations are all mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Claudine à L’École ( Claudine at School) : Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

The young Colette with luscious long braids!

Anonymous was often a woman, noted Virginia Woolf in her 1929 essay, A Room of One’s Own. In some cases she wasn’t anonymous but let a man take credit for her talent. And in one instance, the man and woman happened to be married to each other. The man was Henry- Gauthier-Villars who was more popularly known by his nom de plume “Willy” and the woman, Sidonie- Gabrielle Colette, one of the most eminent early 20^thcentury French writers whose accomplishments are manifold. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. She was also a grand officer of La Légion d’honneur, she was the first female member and eventually President of the prestigious Académie Goncourt and the first woman to receive a State funeral in France. However her most important contribution was that she was a trailblazer in the world of letters and in the world at large in issues of gender identity and sexuality.

Colette’s colorful and controversial life would be great material for a novel of its own and no wonder it provided plenty of fodder for a newly released eponymous biopic depicting her career during the Belle Époque and starring the enormously talented Dominic West as Willy and the stunning Keira Knightley who simply sizzles as Colette. Willy ,the bohemian libertine, springs a marriage proposal on the young and innocent Colette and whisks her away from her sleepy village in Burgundy to the Parisian world of scintillating salons and soirées. She is upset initially by his philandering lifestyle but gradually comes to terms with it and becomes a woman of the world herself engaging in lesbian liasons sometimes with the same woman her husband sleeps with. To say the couple led an unconventional married life would indeed be an understatement!

Willy is a mediocre writer who has a factory of ghostwriters who work for him but he realizes that he has a gifted one right at home whom he can enlist for free. He encourages Colette to write a novel about her school days and she comes up with the semi-autobiographical Claudine à l’École ( Claudine at School) recounting the delightful escapades of a 15 year old school girl and providing an insight into fin de siècle life in provincial France. The book, for a story about schoolgirls, contains a few shocking scenes  which can be explained by the fact that Colette wrote the book in her early twenties looking back on her school days through the lens of a slightly older woman. But here and there one can also detect Willy’s masculine influence in the writing especially in the salacious details.

The book published in 1900 under Willy’s name becomes a resounding success. Willy forces her to produce sequels going as far as locking her in her room so she can do nothing but write. Although she has the proverbial room of her own, of what use is it if you are someone’s literary slave writing in captivity?

Claudine becomes a household name and takes Paris by storm inspiring the fashion style of young women. Colette, in turn, on the urging of Willy, imitates her creation and cuts her hair and dresses like the theatrical adaptation of Claudine. Claudine becomes Colette and Colette becomes Claudine with art imitating life and life imitating art.  When novel after novel becomes a sensation, Colette argues for the right to be published under her own name and eventually separates from Willy. The movie apart from exploring the early career and marriage of Colette, depicts a woman who defies societal expectations and comes into her own be it in the form of her sexual awakening or finding her literary voice and independence.

First edition cover of Claudine à l’École with Willy credited as the author.

The movie made me nostalgic and I abandoned the book I was reading at the time to re-read the funny and delightful Claudine à l’École, a book I had read in my teens. I was enamored from the first line: “Je m’appelle Claudine, j’habite Montigny; j’y suis née en 1884; probablement je n’y mourrai pas.”(“My name is Claudine, I live in Montigny; I was born there in 1884; I shall probably not die there.).

Claudine is an intelligent, pretty and precocious 15 year old motherless girl who lives alone with her father in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. He is an indifferent parent who means well but is more interested in studying slugs than bothering with his growing girl. Her father has an extensive library at home and Claudine spends a lot of time reading. She also loves spending time in the woods immersed in nature, either alone or with her communion sister Clare. She is in the last year of school and hangs out with her friends Anaïs, Marie, Luce and the Joubert twins who don’t seem to share her intelligence or spirit. The girls are preparing for their board exams and looking forward to the end of the year school celebrations.

There is no dearth of words to describe our captivating Claudine -plucky, saucy, mischievous, mean, manipulative, bold, bossy, willful, outspoken, wicked, spunky, rebellious, over-confident are some of the adjectives to describe this spitfire of a gamine but yet she is adorable and you can overlook her flaws as she is comfortable in her own skin and doesn’t take herself or others too seriously. All the students and teachers think she is crazy. She talks to the teachers on an equal footing and at times is even disrespectful and impertinent. She gets away with her behavior as she is the star student who would bring prestige to their village school by doing well in the final exams.  There’s no doubt that her parents would have been called to school for her bullying in today’s environment. But one can’t help admiring how self-assured she is for her age when she peremptorily declares: “…on ne peut pas contenter tout le monde et soi-même. J’aime mieux me contenter d’abord… (… you can’t please everyone and yourself as well. I prefer to please myself first of all…’’).

I first read Claudine à l’École as a teenager and enjoyed the antics of the 15 year old just as I had enjoyed reading about other school series like Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and the Twins at St. Clare’s. I didn’t quite pay attention to the homoerotic subtext. Claudine has a crush on Aimée Lanthenay, the new assistant teacher who appears to reciprocate her feelings but the school  head mistress, Miss Sergent wants Aimée for herself and comes in the way of their budding relationship. Aimée drops Claudine like a hot brick and shifts her attention to her superior. Aimée’s sister Luce has a crush on Claudine but the latter tortures the poor lamb and only bribes her with candy or lets her copy from her exercise book to extract information from her. The foolish girl still dotes on her.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave!

Maybe I was naïve or I didn’t think too much of how often the girls “s’embrassent’  and dismissed their kisses as chaste kisses or perhaps I considered the school girl crushes as a natural part of growing up and adolescent development when it is not uncommon to idolize someone of the same gender older to you. Now re-reading it as an adult, the homoeroticism is very apparent. In fact the text is unapologetically Sapphic. The crushes the girls have for each other or for their teachers are treated as the most natural thing on earth and are innocently portrayed without judgement, guilt or shame. Today the book would be listed under LGBQT or feminist studies genres. It was written before the time when such labels were de rigueur and it is remarkable that there is no awkwardness or euphemistic language in describing the feelings the girls have for each other. No one has to stay in the closet. To me this is such a refreshing aspect of the story and so quintessentially and unrepentantly French unlike Forster’s Maurice across the pond published a few years later which was also a coming of age school story dealing with same sex love but one fraught with tension and anxiety.

However there is a disturbing scene in the book which would be considered highly inappropriate behavior in our times. The superintendent of the school district is a lascivious creep who constantly eyes the young women of the school. He has a soft spot for Claudine and forcibly tries to kiss her when she is alone with him in a room. She manages to thwart his advances but not before he has planted a little kiss near the corner of her mouth. Although she is upset with him, she regains her composure and can’t help being flattered that he finds her pretty. And they quietly move on with their lives.

Colette beautifully captures the confusion and awkwardness of girls at the threshold of womanhood.  On the one hand, they are typical schoolgirls who giggle, blush, make faces, spill ink pots, chew pencils and even taste snowballs. They play games and pinch and punch each other, have pillow fights, cheat during exams, attach ribbons on their dresses, try to get ‘curl clouds’ in their hair and flout the dress code when possible. On the other hand, they are budding women oozing with sensuality. They check out boys from their dorm windows and make sure they are being checked out in turn. They flirt with both boys and other girls and with adults. They put on coquettish airs and use their beauty to get what they want. There is a lot of sexual tension between the girls, between the teachers and between the teachers and the girls.

I can’t help  getting sentimental about Colette. I spent a lot of time in my teens and twenties devouring her books. Moreover the sensual lyricism in her descriptions of both nature and human nature has inspired my own style of writing. I also found the book endearingly amusing. Whether Claudine is describing teachers making out in front of the students, or the state of her beloved cat Fanchette in heat, or boys from the neighboring school examining their lingerie display during a needlework exhibition, or Miss Sergent’s humiliation at the hands of her mother, her cynical and wry quips made me chuckle on practically every page. Claudine à l’École, the first of the Claudine novels was a nostalgic read for me. And it has left me hungry for more. And now I move on to Claudine à Paris to continue delighting in the antics of this irreverent but charming teenager!

 

 

 

 

A Book About Books

Chinese Propaganda Poster- “Scatter the old world, build the new.”

Could you picture a world devoid of books, a world where books are forbidden and where free expression in the arts and literature is restricted? We take the freedom of the written word for granted. Yet, there are places around the globe where books have been banned in the past and sadly still are subject to censorship in our present day world. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress ( Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise) by Dai Sijie is a book about books and a beautiful ode to literature. It’s a tender story of friendship and survival through the transformative power of literature, set in a very somber period in Chinese history and loosely based on the author’s own life.

The year is 1971 and we are in the mountainous countryside of China during the cultural revolution. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a movement initiated in the sixties by Mao Zedong to implement Communism and to eliminate capitalist influences and also to root out China’s ancient cultural heritage and the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits , old ideas. To achieve this objective, places of worship and of historic interest were vandalized and ancient artifacts and relics which were once treasured, ruthlessly destroyed. Needless to say, it was a period of great unrest, turmoil and violence. Rapes, murders and suicides were commonplace. The young children of bourgeois intellectuals were banished from urban centers to rural areas in order to be purged of western ideas and to be re- educated by the peasants. The youngsters or China’s ‘lost generation’ were deprived not only of educational opportunities but also the right to live with their families and they experienced feelings of alienation brought on by the sudden exile.

In this tumultuous era, two young boys, a nameless narrator and his friend Lou, both sons of doctors, are sent for re- education to Phoenix Mountain in China. They are separated from their educated and well- off families and forced into agricultural labor. Their tasks include working in dangerous coal mines and carrying buckets filled with excrement on tortuous and slippery trails. They hope that they would be one among the three in a thousand to be sent back to the city despite their parents being deemed enemies of the people. They have to use their ingenuity and wit to get the better of the villagers and the village headman. They meet the little seamstress, a local girl who has not been exposed to books, music or the western way of life and both fall head over heels in love with her although it is Luo who manages to catch her attention. The boys discover that one of their friends from the city, Four Eyes, who has been sent to a neighboring village for re-education has a suitcase of forbidden books in his possession. They succeed in getting him to lend them a translation of a book by Balzac in exchange for a favor and once they have had a taste of the formidable French author, they have an insatiable thirst to read more.

“Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology, and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, of all the subjects that had, until then, been hidden from me.”

When Four Eyes becomes the lucky one to get the opportunity to leave Phoenix Mountain, Luo and the narrator devise a plan to steal his suitcase of hidden books before his departure. They succeed by means of their cunning and resourcefulness and their lives are changed forever. The books have a profound effect on them and on the little seamstress too for the boys enact scenes from the books to her. So just as the boys are being re-educated to the ways of the peasants, the little seamstress is re-educated, in turn, by them in this Pygmalion like story.

I admire the author’s skill in managing to weave an enchanting tale interspersed with moments of comedy in spite of portraying a very grim period in history. The book is told from the perspective of the narrator except for the last few chapters where the point of view shifts. I don’t understand the rationale behind the change in structure as it disrupts the flow of the text. I was also a little disappointed by the conclusion. The romantic in me would have preferred a fairy tale ending for a story which reads like a fairy tale but on reflection, I can see why the ending is what it is and why it would not have been as impactful otherwise. I was a little taken aback by one sacrilegious act which seemed to negate the premise of the book. But I will not reveal anything more and risk ruining the plot for future readers.

The book transported me to a time and place foreign to me and gave me an insight into the political and cultural upheaval in the China of that period. I firmly believe that the best way to understand history is through travel or literature rather than following a bland textbook. But I mostly enjoyed the story for celebrating three pursuits close to my heart – storytelling, translating and reading. Luo and the narrator entertain the villagers by enacting stories of films they’ve watched and embellish their performances with the aid of their fertile imaginations. Luo laments the inevitable demise of this art form as people have moved beyond the age of The Arabian Nights. The art of storytelling is even more threatened in our modern digital world. The book is also a tribute to the art of translation. First of all, this book is itself a translation and the translator, Ina Rilke, has beautifully rendered the translation from the original French to English with her richly descriptive and evocative language. Secondly, the boys devour books by Flaubert, Gogol, Balzac and Dumas translated into Chinese in spite of the cultural differences, reinforcing the universal appeal of literature. I was reminded of my college days in India when my friends and I read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Camus and other authors in translation. I am grateful to translators for making an entirely different canon of literature available to readers all over the world.

Finally, it’s a book celebrating the love of books. Books allow us to escape and make life more bearable. The narrator, moved by Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe declares:

“I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.”

I could say the same about Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. It’s an unforgettable book that stays with you forever and rekindles your love of reading.