Of Monasteries and Mountains

[selenak]

Having successfully mastered the art of the Peugeot driving - honestly, it wasn't the various gears per se, I did learn to drive that way, not on automatic, I am that old; it was the secret of the reverse! - I was set to chauffeur my mother around the island. Well, we planned various tours, and on Tuesday, we did the first. Which led us to Valdemosa, boasting of a Carthusian monastary where Chopin and George Sand spent a winter (which was the vacation from hell - it rained, they didn't get along with the locals, and their relationship was falling apart, but we did get one and a half books by G.S. and the Preludes out of it) as well as a charming small town, then to Port de Soller (lovely harbor) and then through spectacular mountain roads roughly following the outlines of the coast to Poncella, then back across the country so we could see some more blooming almonds to Santa Maria. En route, we also stopped by at Deia (where Robert Graves spent his last 30 years and is buried; he also made sure no bus is allowed to drive through or park there, but cars are okay, which was good for us) and Miramar (one of the Habsburg archdukes, Ludwig Salvator, nabbed a monastary and made it his home for the holidays; again, spectacular view).



The Carthusian Monastary of Valdemosa








Library








George Sand's manuscripts and no, not Chopin's piano, but one where concerts are played in his honour:





View of the village:





A bit from the village, and my mother:









Deia. Now English (And Scottish, and Welsh, and Irish) people on my list, isn't that where you'd go if you said "Goodbye To All That", too?





This reminds me. A while ago likeadeuce asked me whether I didn't think Robert Graves was something of a dick, and revealed Pat Barker's novel Regeneration as the source of that opinion. Well, quoth I, while the novel is indeed a great one, it IS a novel and the Graves parts (he's only a minor character in it anyway) struck me as very much what happens if a fanfic author has an OTP (in Barker's case Sassoon/Owen) and doesn't want anyone to be as important or shock, even more important and connected to one of her guys, so she bashes that annoying person TPTB Real Life provided. Mind you, not that Graves was without dickish behaviour in other circumstances, but talking about the WWI era, and specifically the part Regeneration deals with, no. The reason I went and visited his grave, though, was because I love some of his poems, adore I, Claudius and will always be grateful to him for writing it, and yes, was fascinated when reading Goodbye to all that.








Graves' house in Deia is actually open to visitors. Just not on the day I visited, because there was a complete electricity fallout. Curses!


And here we have Miramar. Ex monastary, as I said (founded by one of the two local clerical heroes, Ramon Lull, no less), and then reduced to a vacation spot for the Habsburgs. Ah, well.




But the view!



On to Port de Soller, which is a lovely harbour, obviousy.








And then it was mountain road time!










Lastly, because they just are so pretty, one more:

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Re: early gender-bending: have you ever read the Gustave "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" Flaubert/ George Sand correspondance? He addresses her as "chère Maitre" - which the German version makes into "liebe Meisterin", not being able to use the female adjective and the male noun, and the whole thing is just fun to read on every level - popular novelist versus ultra-artistic super critical novelist, vivacious old lady versus gloomy man who feels aged somewhere in his 30s, busy family woman (with her sons and grandchildren, and still writing novels, of course) versus hermit, and G.S. as something like the last surviving Romantic versus Flaubert the realist/naturalist.

"Pragmatic" is not a word I'd use for WWI era Robert Graves, is all. (Nor the later one, actually, though he was trying then - but any man who has the kind of crazy personal life he had during the 20s is seriously lacking in pragmatism.) For starters, he was as shell-shocked as Sassoon and Owen, though managed to keep himself out of a hospital. (In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.) Also, leave it to R.G. to think saying "I have hallucinations, too" makes him a credible witness when testifying for Sassoon. But Barker needed someone to play the "now do be sensible, Siegfried, we're not going to change anything anyway" role, and she didn't need another soldier-poet in an intense relationship with Sasson, hence the basically two Graves scenes we get and their content.

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

Re: early gender-bending: have you ever read the Gustave "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" Flaubert/ George Sand correspondance?

Nope. *puts on list* I believe to remember reading that she used to call Chopin her wife, more or less jokingly, but I may have made that up. They must have been quite an interesting pair, though.

ut Barker needed someone to play the "now do be sensible, Siegfried, we're not going to change anything anyway" role, and she didn't need another soldier-poet in an intense relationship with Sasson, hence the basically two Graves scenes we get and their content.

I confess that I interpreted these entirely different, namely as Graves being concerned about his friend and thus doing everything to get him into a hospital instead of prison...now, I'm also someone who doesn't think pragmatism is bad, so it could just be my interpretation merrily overriding authorial intend to my heart's delight. So far I also have the feeling that Prior is more of a main character than either Sassoon or Owen, but that might of course change.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Prior is; he's also the central character of the entire trilogy, and entirely fictional, which is why his characterisation is completely up to the author. *g*