The 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.