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selenakThe train route from Greifswald to Munich takes the entire day. You only have to switch once, in Berlin, but you really sit in the train from nine in the morning to seven in the evening. Consider me not just train-ed, but drained. (Why is it that travelling where one doesn't really move is that exhausting when I can walk through cities sightseeing and don't feel nearly as tired?) It does, however, offer reading opportunities, so you get some book related links and quotes.
A post about Lion Feuchtwanger's big bestseller from the 1920s, Jud Süss (and no, it's not the source for the Nazi film, but ended up burned and forbidden first thing in 1933, and Feuchtwanger himself exiled), and why it's still great to read today, here.
(My favourite trivia relating to that novel is one relating to its stage version by Ashley Dukes. The later was what 16-years-old Orson Welles gave his stage debut in, in Ireland at the Gate Theatre, playing the Duke (i.e. the next important role after the title role). It's also where he began his life long friendship (not without tensions and arguments and temporary break-ups, but hey, actors!) with the gay couple leading said theatre, Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir. MacLiammoir's description of Orson W. at age 16 auditioning for them and later playing the Duke, both affectionate and bitchy, is still one of the best and most vivid things written about Welles, as is the much later published journal of shooting Othello - where MacLiammoir played Iago - Put money in thy purse, which contains great takes on the mature (?) Orson.)
****
Speaking of descriptions: I see parts of my flist being delighted by a current series called Lost in Austen, and this reminds me of some of the most entertaining descriptions of Jane Austen by fellow writers. One is by Charlotte Bronte, who after the publication of Jane Eyre was advised by her publisher, George Lewes, to write less melodramatically and more like Jane Austen. This in Charlotte provoked the Bronte temper and the following outburst:
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley novels?
I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you. but I shall run the risk.
Now I can understand admiration of George Sand...she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.
Now I wish Jane and Charlotte had lived in livejournal times. Talk about kerfuffles. Charlotte wasn't just temperamental because her publisher had ticked her off, no. She later tried another Austen, and this resulted in the following quote to W.S. Williams:
I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works, Emma -- read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, or heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress.
A century later, W.H. Auden was definitely a Jane fan. In his very entertaining Letter to Lord Byron (which uses Byron's own witty style from Don Juan to great effect), there is a passage where he writes:
There is one other author in my pack:
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would be least likely to send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I had no right to,
and share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrave, and Mr. Yates. (...)
You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Besides her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of `brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
Seems someone didn't miss Lizzie Bennet changing her mind about Darcy when getting a good look at his really nice real estate. *g* And let me conclude with another quote from Letter to Lord Byron, this time on Byron himself, which should be read to everyone who just has the image of Byron as some sort of moping oversexed cliché:
I like your muse because she’s gay and witty,
Because she’s neither prostitute nor frump,
The daughter of a European City,
And country houses long before the slump;
I like her voice that does not make me jump:
And you I find sympatisch, a good townee,
Neither a preacher, ninny, bore, nor Brownie.
A poet, swimmer, peer, and man of action,
-It beats Roy Campbell’s record by a mile-
You offer every possible attraction.
By looking into your poetic style,
And love—life on the chance that both were vile,
Several have earned a decent livelihood,
Whose lives were uncreative but were good.
You’ve had your packet from time critics, though:
They grant you warmth of heart, but at your head
Their moral and aesthetic brickbats throw.
A ‘vulgar genius’ so George Eliot said,
Which doesn’t matter as George Eliot’s dead,
But T. S. Eliot, I am sad to find,
Damns you with: ‘an uninteresting mind’.
A statement which I must say I’m ashamed at;
A poet must be judged by his intention,
And serious thought you never said you aimed at.
I think a serious critic ought to mention
That one verse style was really your invention,
A style whose meaning does not need a spanner,
You are the master of the airy manner.
By all means let us touch our humble caps to
La poésie pure, the epic narrative;
But comedy shall get its round of claps, too.
According to his powers, each may give;
Only on varied diet can we live.
The pious fable and the dirty story
Share in the total literary glory.
There’s every mode of singing robe in stock,
From Shakespeare’s gorgeous fur coat, Spenser’s muff
Or Dryden’s lounge suit to my cotton frock,
And Wordsworth’s Harris tweed with leathern cuff.
Firbank, I think, wore just a just-enough;
I fancy Whitman in a reach-me-down,
But you, like Sherlock, in a dressing-gown.
And on that happy image, I leave you and head for a nice relaxing batch and some more unpacking of my suitcase, in random order.
A post about Lion Feuchtwanger's big bestseller from the 1920s, Jud Süss (and no, it's not the source for the Nazi film, but ended up burned and forbidden first thing in 1933, and Feuchtwanger himself exiled), and why it's still great to read today, here.
(My favourite trivia relating to that novel is one relating to its stage version by Ashley Dukes. The later was what 16-years-old Orson Welles gave his stage debut in, in Ireland at the Gate Theatre, playing the Duke (i.e. the next important role after the title role). It's also where he began his life long friendship (not without tensions and arguments and temporary break-ups, but hey, actors!) with the gay couple leading said theatre, Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir. MacLiammoir's description of Orson W. at age 16 auditioning for them and later playing the Duke, both affectionate and bitchy, is still one of the best and most vivid things written about Welles, as is the much later published journal of shooting Othello - where MacLiammoir played Iago - Put money in thy purse, which contains great takes on the mature (?) Orson.)
****
Speaking of descriptions: I see parts of my flist being delighted by a current series called Lost in Austen, and this reminds me of some of the most entertaining descriptions of Jane Austen by fellow writers. One is by Charlotte Bronte, who after the publication of Jane Eyre was advised by her publisher, George Lewes, to write less melodramatically and more like Jane Austen. This in Charlotte provoked the Bronte temper and the following outburst:
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley novels?
I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you. but I shall run the risk.
Now I can understand admiration of George Sand...she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.
Now I wish Jane and Charlotte had lived in livejournal times. Talk about kerfuffles. Charlotte wasn't just temperamental because her publisher had ticked her off, no. She later tried another Austen, and this resulted in the following quote to W.S. Williams:
I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works, Emma -- read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable -- anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, or heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress.
A century later, W.H. Auden was definitely a Jane fan. In his very entertaining Letter to Lord Byron (which uses Byron's own witty style from Don Juan to great effect), there is a passage where he writes:
There is one other author in my pack:
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would be least likely to send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I had no right to,
and share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrave, and Mr. Yates. (...)
You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Besides her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of `brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
Seems someone didn't miss Lizzie Bennet changing her mind about Darcy when getting a good look at his really nice real estate. *g* And let me conclude with another quote from Letter to Lord Byron, this time on Byron himself, which should be read to everyone who just has the image of Byron as some sort of moping oversexed cliché:
I like your muse because she’s gay and witty,
Because she’s neither prostitute nor frump,
The daughter of a European City,
And country houses long before the slump;
I like her voice that does not make me jump:
And you I find sympatisch, a good townee,
Neither a preacher, ninny, bore, nor Brownie.
A poet, swimmer, peer, and man of action,
-It beats Roy Campbell’s record by a mile-
You offer every possible attraction.
By looking into your poetic style,
And love—life on the chance that both were vile,
Several have earned a decent livelihood,
Whose lives were uncreative but were good.
You’ve had your packet from time critics, though:
They grant you warmth of heart, but at your head
Their moral and aesthetic brickbats throw.
A ‘vulgar genius’ so George Eliot said,
Which doesn’t matter as George Eliot’s dead,
But T. S. Eliot, I am sad to find,
Damns you with: ‘an uninteresting mind’.
A statement which I must say I’m ashamed at;
A poet must be judged by his intention,
And serious thought you never said you aimed at.
I think a serious critic ought to mention
That one verse style was really your invention,
A style whose meaning does not need a spanner,
You are the master of the airy manner.
By all means let us touch our humble caps to
La poésie pure, the epic narrative;
But comedy shall get its round of claps, too.
According to his powers, each may give;
Only on varied diet can we live.
The pious fable and the dirty story
Share in the total literary glory.
There’s every mode of singing robe in stock,
From Shakespeare’s gorgeous fur coat, Spenser’s muff
Or Dryden’s lounge suit to my cotton frock,
And Wordsworth’s Harris tweed with leathern cuff.
Firbank, I think, wore just a just-enough;
I fancy Whitman in a reach-me-down,
But you, like Sherlock, in a dressing-gown.
And on that happy image, I leave you and head for a nice relaxing batch and some more unpacking of my suitcase, in random order.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:23 pm (UTC)Oooooh, it BURNS! Thank you lots for these, VERY cheering. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 12:07 am (UTC)Lizzie makes this point herself, doesn't she? In jest, of course, but in the Austenian form of jest that wouldn't be funny if it weren't a little true. None of Austen's heroines marry for mere money, but none of them marry for true love, either. Even Anne Elliot essentially regrets that she didn't have enough faith in Wentworth's material prospects. Her sin was not in ignoring practical considerations but in underestimating the Royal Navy!
[ETA: an amendment; I should have said that none of them marry for pure love. It's not false, but it's not sufficient either.]
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 04:47 am (UTC)And thanks for pointing me to the Jud Süss review! have friended the poster not to miss her take on Felix Krull, my all-time favourite pastiche picaresque novel. This is Thomas Mann shedding effortlessly every contrivance and having fun, not something you often associate with him. I also can't forget (it touches me very much) that he got to know Lisbon because that's the port he left from to find refuge in America. What a wonderful way to exorcise that period!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 06:09 am (UTC)As for Charlotte Bronte, while I disagree with her on Jane Austen in general, if you force me to take a party as a reader (i.e. the lonely island, only a small number of books, either Bronte or Austen but not both situation), I'd go with the sisters three, as Arno Schmidt called them. Sorry.
Lisbon: there is a very moving description of it by Heinrich Mann (who left later, together with the Feuchtwangers and the Werfels and nephew Golo) - of the harbor, and saying goodbye to Europe. And Marta Feuchtwanger described it in her memoirs as well. The last sight, and embodying so much.
I told you my Felix Krull anecdote Thomas Mann's secretary related to me, didn't I?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 06:45 am (UTC)(And while the old Sand must have been interesting, the young Sand was pretty insufferable. I'll never forgive her showing up unannounced at Valençay with Chateaubriand to visit the old Talleyrand; both being exquisitely received with 18th-century manners; then coming back to Paris to write up their visit to the disgusting old monster in Le Mercure de France. Fatheads. That was after she did the dirty on poor Chopin.
I hate those of her books I've read, especially La Mare Au Diable. She's a kind of convoluted, downbeat Thomas Hardy, without the social observation.)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 08:06 am (UTC)George Sand: Err, "poor Chopin"? While they had their affair she played nurse more often than not. Then they broke up. It happens. What I love about younger George Sand is that aside from being her own woman, living from her writings in an age where few woman did or could, she also was the anti-doomed muse. You know, the female artist driven hopelessly in love with the male genius and ending up suicidal/dead/insane. Whether she had short tempestous relationships like with Musset or long term ones like her fifteen years long affair with that sculptor, they were on her terms, and she never bought into the feminine ideal of the day which would have obliged her to sacrifice herself for the male genius. She was just robustly alive.
As an old woman, looking back when talking to Flaubert:
Artists are spoiled children and the best are great egotists. You
say that I love them too well; I like them as I like the woods and
the fields, everything, everyone that I know a little and that I
study continually. I make my life in the midst of all that, and as I
like my life, I like all that nourishes it and renews it. (...) I know
that there are thorns in the hedges, but that does not prevent me
from putting out my hands and finding flowers there. If all are not
beautiful, all are interesting. The day you took me to the Abbey of
Saint-Georges I found the scrofularia borealis, a very rare plant in
France. I was enchanted; there was much----in the neighborhood where I gathered it. Such is life! And if one does not take life like that, one cannot take it in any way, and then how can one endure it? I find it amusing and interesting, and since I accept EVERYTHING, I am so much happier and more enthusiastic when I meet the beautiful and the good.
But my favourite old G.S. quote is when she protests against Flaubert's definition of writing:
I have heard you say, "I write for ten or twelve people only." One says in conversation, many things which are the result of the
impression of the moment; but you are not alone in saying that. It was the opinion of the Lundi or the thesis of that day. I protested inwardly. The twelve persons for whom you write, who appreciate you, are as good as you are or surpass you. You never had any need of reading the eleven others to be yourself. But, one writes for all the world, for all who need to be initiated; when one is not understood, one is resigned and recommences. When one is understood, one rejoices and continues. There lies the whole secret of our persevering labors and of our love of art. What is art without the hearts and minds on which one pours it? A sun which would not project rays and would give life to no one.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 04:52 pm (UTC)And for a brief, heartstopping moment I actually thought she meant to say that George Eliot was a lively writer. Which... just no.
As for Lost in Austen, can't say I'm impressed, despite wanting to run away with Bingley, Jane and basically the whole Bennet clan. Caroline is also very well cast. The rest is incredibly twee.