Titus Groan is a tale riddled with an incomparable fantasy of an astounding encompassing imagination. Expansive but hardly ever trite. The Gormenghast castle is inhabited by the strangest, purest, sweetest, stupidest, funniest and most fascinating characters which are rare to find not only in daily life but in fiction as well. There is so much to be said about all of the impressive protagonists but I feel as if I’d start I’d never be able to end nor will I ever be able to astutely describe how wonderfully round and interesting they are. And funny. So funny.

Some quotes that I want to remember for reasons I shall never reveal :

At the mention of her father Fuschia closed her eyes.
She had herself searched – searched. She had grown far older during the last few weeks – older in that her heart has been taxed by greater strains of passion that it had held before. Fear of the unearthly, the ghastly – for she had been face to face with it – the fear of the madness and of violence she suspected. It had made her older, stiller, more apprehensive. She had known pain – the pain of desolation – of having been forsaken and of losing what little love there was.

‘Glorious’, said Steerpike, ‘is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you are glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sound that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.’

…also know as the best compliment ever to have uttered everywhere in the universe and possibly several other dimensions. I also enjoy the criticism of the dictionary and how it imprisons language, deadens and stunts it. I feel the same, Steerpike. Albeit not to compliment two annoying and dim-witted creepy sisters.

…accompanied by a tide of white cats.

1.Mervyn Peak’s own cover design 2. Fuschia 3. Steerpike & Fuschia 4. Steerpike via (& also see more)

Some bits I loved:

… to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her an dany man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful.

‘…To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion – a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.’
‘But you leave out the poems,’ said Dorothea. ‘I think they are wanted to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience. But I am sure I could never produce a poem.’
‘You are poem – and that is to be the best part of a poet – what makes up the poet consciousness in his best moods,’ said Will, showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the spring-time and other endless renewals.

Ik herinner me dat er werd gepraat over Hersenschimmen tijdens een klas Nederlands in een ver, ver verleden en ik meteen mijn oren heb opengesperd. Mentaal had ik het meteen op mijn boekenlijst gezet maar het was pas dit jaar dat ik eraan herinnerd werd in een tweedehands boekenwinkel. Het boek trok me aan door de experimentele structuur; de protagonist, Maarten Klein, is dementerende en aan de hand van het taalgebruik en de opbouw word dit merendeel duidelijk. Ik verwachtte me aan een interessant taalspel en dit kreeg ik ook maar wat ik niet verwachtte was het gevoelige taalgebruik. Aan de hand van dagelijkse gebeurtenissen, losse gedachten gemengd met oude herinneringen en treffend woordgebruik wrikt J. Bernlef met gemak gevoelens los. Ik was er niet ondersteboven van maar ik heb misschien, of misschien niet, mijn boek vaag nat gemaakt door kleine tranen. Ik vond het een memorabel talenspel maar misschien iets te droog om het in mijn boekenhart te sluiten. Toch heb ik een par passages die ik mooi vond:

“De opwinding om het onbekende heeft plaats gemaakt voor herkenning, het herkennen van Vera zoals ze is, zoals ik haar in de loop van de jaren heb zien worden. Bij de meeste vrouwen van haar leeftijd valt het jonge meisje dat ze toch eens geweest moeten zijn met geen mogelijkheid te reconstrueren. Ze zien eruit alsof ze altijd zo geweest zijn. Maar in Vera zijn trekken en gebaren van het jonge meisje bewaard gebleven. Als een soort onderschildering/ De roekelosze snelheid waarmee ze nog steeds gaat zitten, het uitgelaten gewuif wanneer ze ergens een bekende ziet, de van balletles overgehouden naar buiten draaiende voeten, de rechte hals, ondaks de rimpels nog even trots en nieuwsgierig ronddraaiend als die van een struisvogel.”

Een mooie beschrijven en roerende observatie net voor de langzame aftakeling van Maarten Klein.

“Ze sneed een brood. Ik zag dat. Plak voor plak. Een bruin brood was het. Dat was alles. Zulke dingen bedoel ik. Een ander ziet niets dan een huis, maar alles bevindt zich daar; alle geuren, alle woorden van mijn leven. Maar nu is het mis. Iedere dag verdwijnt er wel iets, iedere dag wel iets. Overal lekt het.”

Vooral hou ik van Bernlef’s taalgebruik om de korte, krachtige en simpele zinnen, het dagelijks leven beschrijvend, die uiteindelijk worden afgewisseld met een lichte sentimentaliteit waarin de protagonist zijn lot betreurt. Een hoge goedkope sentimentaliteit zit alleszins niet in dit boek; alle kracht zit opgebold met een paar mooie beschrijvingen en treffende woorden.

I’ve promised myself to record all the books I’ve read and my thoughts on it on this blog but unsurprisingly I’m failing. Luckily, it’s not too late to catch up! I’ve only read two books of fiction since my last record so here I am. It’s been a while since I’ve finished To The Lighthouse but it’s still pretty fresh in my mind, as expected with a book of one of my favourite writers. This is a half re-read to be honest. When I first started reading this almost three years ago I’d been on a bout of pretty heavy insomnia and was unable to focus properly. Let alone the fact that I took it with me on a three-day music festival. I thought it very boring, possibly due to the fact that I was only able to focus on one paragraph at a time. I’m so glad that I picked it up again now because this time round I found it gorgeous.

I’m honestly always completely in awe of Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness and how she’s able to convey a myriad of emotions with a couple of complicated soliloquies. Being able to read the sometimes simple, sometimes dramatic but always highly personal thoughts is not only interesting in a purely theoretic literary sense but also fascinating for the inherent voyeurism in people. This time round I’ve come to the conclusion that To The Lighthouse is possibly the most successful stream of consciousness novel by Mrs Woolf aside from The Waves. I personally still prefer latter because the coming of age theme and the even more experimental nature. Still, To The Lighthouse is breathtakingly gorgeous and it has the most touching sense of familial life interlaced with themes of childhood I’ve ever read. Virginia Woolf loosely based this novel on childhood memories and that’s very much tangible as well in the language and themes described.

Here’s an excerpt I really loved:

“So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a pool at evening far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions – ‘Will you fade? Will you perish?’ – scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure inegrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain.”

(To The Lighthouse cover design by Vanessa Bell)

Camille Claudel was, voor ik dit boek opensloeg, een vaag enigma wiens persoonlijkheid en leven ik enkel kon inschatten door de passie die ik zag in haar beeldhouwkunst. Ik dacht dit mysterie eindelijk te doorbreken door Anne Delbée’s biografie wiens achterflap me al waarschuwde voor een hoog melodramatisch gehalte wat ik schaamteloos fantastisch vind want niks is leuker dan te huilen boven een boekje. Helaas vond ik Delbée’s schrijfstijl met momenten verschrikkelijk onduidelijk, iets wat ik niet meteen verwacht van een biografie. Het leek me of op de hoogtepunten van tristesse mevrouw Anne dacht dat een impressionistische stijl wel een leuke twist leek. Maar de feiten alleen van Camille Claudel’s leven zijn al zo extreem pakkend dat deze gekozen schrijfstijl mij enkel als een hindernis overkwam. Daarboven op werd het dan moeilijker om de feiten waar ik zo naar had uitgekeken te onderscheiden in een dom, klein poeltje van willekeurig gekozen woorden. Daarentegen had je wel realistische omschreven karakters die je meteen lieten meeslepen. Gelukkig was dat laatste punt meer aan orde en was het merendeel van het boek duidelijk maar aangrijpend geschreven zodat je mateloos kon genieten van Camille’s lust voor leven, kunst en vooral het beeldhouwen zelf. Beeldhouwen was bijna een obsessie voor haar en ze gaf alles wat ze in zich had er aan. Het hartbrekende aan haar verhaal zijn de talloze kleingeestige mensen die keer op keer Camille’s werk vergeleken met Rodin, of erger nog die beweerden dat ze zijn werk ronduit kopieerde. De man Rodin om wie ze waarschijnlijk evenveel gaf als haar beeldhouwen en aan wie ze al haar passie gaf, haar ideeën deelde maar Rodin die ook heimelijk jaloers was op Camille’s wilde talent en passie. Rodin die Camille’s hart brak door nooit volledig naast haar zijde stond en uiteindelijk koos voor zwakke en gedweeë partner, Rose Beuret. Haar leven lang is Camille met Rodin vergeleken en haar leven lang heeft ze moeten vechten voor haar kunst. Dit boek kan tegelijkertijd, vaag, irriterend en ietwat pretentieus overkomen maar tegelijkertijd heb je een uitgebreid en samenhangend levensverhaal van een van de meest inspirerende persoonlijkheden in de kunstwereld. In kort: je moet dit lezen als je van Camille Claudel houdt.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an irrevocable classic that I knew I’d appreciate yet I never expected I’d be so utterly fascinated and ultimately love it in its whole. It’s strangely contemporary still and focuses beautifully on characters brainwashed in a dystopia of chemically altered human behaviour. Their actions and feelings were written from a really interesting point of view and most of all written in a gorgeously flowing way.

What I loved most of all was these characters that have been intensely brainwashed to be disgusted by basic human behaviour/patterns and continually take pills for chemically induced happiness and how they reacted to normal human behaviour. The confrontation of them with what a human being is/would be if they were free was one of the most fascinating things I’ve read in a long while. On one hand there was the obvious disgust and on the other the intrigue while later on when the interest faded away the outrage the public felt when the freely raised, John, refused to be a subject of entertainment and a freak.

Socially critic novels aren’t my favourite but it was interesting to read about the effect this chemically altered world without the usual set of human morals revolved and how people in it lived, thought, felt.

And now just a quick synopsis…

The book alternates the stories told by Spiegelman’s father Vladek Spiegelman about life in Poland before and during the Second World War with the contemporary life of Art, Vladek and their loved ones in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. The book recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec and Bielsko in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz as prisoner 175113.

Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman confronts his complex and often conflicted relationship with his father. For example, Vladek exhibits racial prejudice against blacks despite his own experiences of anti-Semitism. He is also presented as stingy and a person who makes life very difficult for those around him, including his first wife Anja (Art’s mother, who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala, themselves concentration camp survivors. The personality of the present day Vladek seems quite different from that of the man in the concentration camps, where he was resourceful and compassionate.

wikipedia

I suppose what fascinates me most is how real it is. Spiegelman draws his father’s story as it was and is. He choose not to make a hero out of him (as many other films and other forms of stories about the Holocaust do) and not to make the Germans The Bad Guy, Vladek’s story is shown in utmost honesty. For example, Vladek can be a real ass.

But (though Spiegelman didn’t intend this) you still empathize enormously with him.

Mostly it’s the absolute misery and people’s reactions to it that’s so gripping though.

Admittedly, I fall like a rock for stories of great passion, pain and drama. It is my own melancholy overpowering my thoughts perhaps (Drama! Passion! LIKE THIS, Eline!, shouts my insane mind). But really, how can one not worship this story? I understand that your prefernce are for happy ends and that you cannot feel for the charactars but… But! But! … I cannot explain it, words are pointless to describe my love for this story. Simply imagine tears gushing off my face but with a blissful smile.

(You can also read this story here. Which I highly recommend for my synopsis is quite dreadful!)

This is a wonderful story because of the great use of symbolism and language. Poe manages to create a very sensuous but macabre atmosphere by using precise words and detailed descriptions. He refers to future events in a most wonderful way, such as the short description of the fissure in the walls of the House of Usher which eventually leads to the house being cracked in two. The synchronisation of the story the narrator is reading to Usher and the sounds in the house etc. Etc. But what I really came to write about here, since it’s frustrating me immensely, is the interpretation of my literature professor of the bond between Madeline and Roderick. You see, he believes that the lines “[...] and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them.” refers, not to a spiritual bond, but to incest. He interprets this as a feeling of love that might or might not have been consummated (nevertheless there was a burning passion). Now! I tend to disagree! It would not surprise me that Poe might have meant this to be interpreted this way but I refuse to view this lovely story of unearthly mysticism this way! I quite like to think the relation between Madeline is of such devoted love to each other that it is completely intangible and incomprehensible for those who aren’t a twin that shares each other’s life. For Madeline and Roderick are one, that is true. It is because they are one person (Madeline is the body, Roderick the psyche) that they have a “scarcely intelligible” bond, not visceral love! But have this wonderful illustration by Beardsley instead of my frustrations:

“I listened as if in a dream.” by Aubrey Beardsley

But an opportunity came (to kill John the Baptist) when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the Baptizer.”
Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother.’ Mark 6:21-28

Artists as Carravaggio, Oscar Wilde and Strauss turned Salomé’s image around and made her into a seductress. I quite like to think everyone agrees with me that they did this for the better. J.K. Huysmans says it better than anyone why:

No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles,–a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning, like Helen of Troy of the old Classic fables, all who come near her, all who see her, all who touch her.

I haven’t read all that much written about Salomé so I cannot say ‘this or this is my favourite version’ but I truly love Oscar Wilde’s! What stuck with me of his play is Salomé’s adoration for Jokanaan’s looks:

It is his eyes above all that are terrible. They are like the black holes burned by torches in a Tyrian tapestry. They are like black caverns where dragons dwell. They are like the black caverns of Egypt in which the dragons make their lairs. They are like black lakes troubled by fantastic moons…

Thy mouth is like a branch of coral that fishers have found in the twilight of the sea, the coral that they keep for the kings…! It is like the vermilion that the Moabites find in the mines of Moab, the vermilion that the kings take from them. It is like the bow of the King of the Persians, that is painted with vermilion, and is tipped with coral. There is nothing so red as thy mouth… Let me kiss thy mouth.

Perhaps I am merely fascinated by these lines because I’m obsessed with finding a boy that is so beautiful that I can worship him simply because of his appearance (and yes, nothing more). I want to be like a man and fall in love with looks only and write divine elegies when he has broken my heart! But what gripped me most are the last words of Salomé, after she has been given Jokanaan’s head on a silver platter.

Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I said it; did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now . . . . But wherefore dost thou not look at me, Iokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut? Open thine eyes! Lift up thine eyelids, Iokanaan! Wherefore dost thou not look at me? Art thou afraid of me, Iokanaan, that thou wilt not look at me? . . . And thy tongue, that was like a red snake darting poison, it moves no more, it speaks no words, Iokanaan, that scarlet viper that spat its venom upon me. It is strange, is it not? How is it that the red viper stirs no longer?. . .Thou wouldst have none of me, Iokanaan. Thou rejectedst me. Thou didst speak evil words against me. Thou didst bear thyself toward me as to a harlot, as to a woman that is a wanton, to me, Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa! Well, I still live, but thou art dead, and thy head belongs to me. I can do with it what I will. I can throw it to the dogs and to the birds of the air. That which the dogs leave, the birds of the air shall devour . . . . Ah, Iokanaan, Iokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among men! All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Iokanaan? With the cloak of thine hands, and with the cloak of thy blasphemies thou didst hide thy face. Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him who would see his God. Well, thou hast seen thy God, Iokanaan, but me, me, thou didst never see. If thou hadst seen me thou hadst loved me. I saw thee, and I loved thee. Oh, how I loved thee! I love thee yet, Iokanaan. I love only thee . . . . I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor apples can appease my desire. What shall I do now, Iokanaan? Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion. I was a princess, and thou didst scorn me. I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. I was chaste, and thou didst fill my veins with fire . . . . Ah! ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of Love is greater than the mystery of Death.

And her last words after the kiss:

Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan. I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood…? But perchance it was the taste of love… They say that love hath a bitter taste… but what of that? What of that? I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan.

Well, I cannot quote Wilde’s Salomé without including one of Beardsley’s illustrations!

The climax is Beardsley’s most well-know illustration for Salomé but I think I prefer The Dancer’s Reward!
I adore Salomé’s eyes in this one. I’m rather upset about Jokanaan’s because Oscar clearly described the sense of peace in his eyes but his look scares me in Beardsley’s version!

Furthermore I am in absolute awe of this version of Gustave Moreau:

And these two, somewhat more obscure paintings, which might even be my absolute favourites:

Salomé by Georges-Olivier Desvallières

Salomé by Véra Willoughby

Quite poor reproductions because I could not find them on the web and not only is my digital camera of utterly abominable quality but my hands are perpetually shaking!

And last but not least I found some versions on YouTube of Salomé by Richard Strauss recently. I still haven’t decided which version I like best.

By the Swarowsky Wiwnwe Philharmoniker in 1960

by l’Orchestre de l’Opéra National Paris in 2003

(Click the videos to see the rest of the opera’s)