Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Paris Never leaves You by Ellen Feldman

Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman is a quick reading page-turner filled with conflicted characters who are damaged survivors of WWII.

In occupied Paris, Charlotte runs her family's book shop. A war widow, she struggles to keep her baby daughter Vivi alive. A German army doctor visits the shop and takes an interest in her baby daughter, secreting in food and medicine. Charlotte reluctantly accepts his gifts and trust and friendship grow, putting them both at risk.

Years later, Charlotte's choices come back to haunt her in her new life in New York City where she works for a publishing house. Teenaged Vivi is pressing to know more about her father and heritage. Charlotte's boss, a paraplegic, knows that war destroyed the enlightened man he had been. Charlotte has been trashing the unopened letters from the German doctor.

I appreciated how Feldman incorporated less known WWII history, including the privations of occupied France and post-war retaliation against collaborators. Her handling of the character's moral struggles was of special interest to me. There are several strong romance stories that will appeal to readers of women's fiction.

Surviving the war brings guilt for having survived, their decisions and actions kept secret. Admitting their shameful truths brings healing and the possibility of a new life.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Paris Never Leaves You
by Ellen Feldman
St. Martin's Griffin
Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 9781250622778
PRICE: $16.99 (USD) trade paperback

Thursday, September 22, 2016

The Friendship of Auguste Rodin and Rainer Maria Rilke

I was excited to receive an ARC of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin by Rachel Corbett in the mail. I was clamouring to read it, entering give-a-ways and requesting it on Edelweiss, then it arrived unanounced in the mail. Thank you, W. W. Norton!

I was in my twenties and living in Philadelphia when browsing in a Center City bookstore I happened upon Letters to a Young Poet. Later I bought the Duino Elegies-which I read on vacation camping at Acadia National Park-and collected poems in several translations.

The Burghers of Calais by Rodin
I first encountered Rodin in a high school art history class, learning about The Burghers of Calais. Later we visited the marvelous Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.

Corbett's book follows the lives of both poet and artist, concentrating on their friendship and how Rodin influenced Rilke's view of the artistic life and appreciation of art, in context of their contemporary society and artist communities.

As a young man Rilke traveled to visit his idols but it was Rodin who took him into his home and confidence.

The poet served as Rodin's personal secretary, living with him at Meudon. In a writing slump, Rodin directed Rilke to the zoo to observe the animals, altering the trajectory of his work culminating in his famous poem The Panther.

Rilke took to heart Rodin's admonition that the artist must dedicate their life to their art; seeking solitude Rilke abandoned his wife and child to fend for themselves.

Rilke wrote a monograph on Rodin in which he wrote, "and he labors incessantly. His life is like a single workday" in which "therein lay a kind of renunciation of life." Rilke stressed Rodin as "solitary": "Rodin was solitary before his fame"; he lived "in the country solitude of his dwelling"; he learned his craft "alone within itself" until "Finally, after years of solitary labor, he attempted to come out with one of his works."  That work was rejected and he "locked himself away again for thirteen years."

Rilke's perception of the artist influenced his own artistic philosophy, evident in the letters he wrote to a young student, Franz Xaver Kappus, who published them in 1929 as Letters To A Young Poet. In the letters Rilke advises the aspiring poet that no outsider can affirm one's own artistic worth, that it must come from within. He tells Kappus to "look to Nature," the "little things that hardly anyone sees." Rilke praises solitude, "it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it."

Neither man was a paragon. Rodin lived with a commonlaw wife who had to tolerate his series of mistresses, including his art student Camille Claudel. He was sensitive and irascible and after nine months he threw Rilke out over a perceived breech of trust: in Rodin's absence Rilke had written a letter to a friend he'd introduced to Rodin, and Rodin had not approved his writing the letter.

The world in the early 20th c. was rapidly changing. Rodin's art became repetitive and was considered too representational. Rilke's work was in keeping with the new movements of Existentialism, Abstract Art, and Depth Psychology. Rilke's poetry continued to show growth during his brief 51 years, but Rodin, over twenty years older, in old age realized how serialized his work had become and felt the irony that only as he neared the end of his life did he realize the pupose of his work.

Toward the end of Rodin's life Rilke realized Rodin had failed to live up to his own advice, which Rilke had taken to heart: work, only work.

"You must change your life" is the last line in Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo which I first read translated by Stephen Mitchell. Rilke responds to a sculpture of the god Apollo, sans head, arms, and legs, but which still holds a transformative power so that "you must change your life" upon encountering it.

Read about a newly published translation of Rilke by Ruth Spiers here
Read about Rilke's influence on me here

I received an ARC from W. W. Norton in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

You Must Change Your Life
Rachel Corbett
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Sept. 2016
$26.95 hard cover
ISBN: 978-0-393-24505-9

Friday, July 18, 2014

The Mysterous Joan


A search for female warriors from history will always include Joan of Arc, or Joan the Maid (La Pucelle) as she called herself. She also appears on the lists of canonized saints in the Roman Catholic Church. There are plays and movies about her life and numerous paintings. We have her trial records and the retrial records. And yet we understand nothing of her. Joan does not fit into any of our expected categories: a saint who lead armies into battle then cried over the dead; a "simple" uneducated provincial girl who answered interrogators with cogent and intelligent answers; a teenager who believed she was the instrument of God's will but was burned at the stake as a witch; a virgin who bivouacked with her soldiers who saw her undress and felt no carnality at her beauty.

Kathryn Harrison's new book Joan of Arc, A Life Transfigured uses every lens possible to endeavor to understand her. Literature and cinema interpretations are offered side-by-side with historical account; the myth and legend appears next to the flesh-and-blood girl.

First throw out any ideas of Joan being simple, ignorant, delusional, unstable or pure fiction. Her folks were pretty important people, and Joan could sign her name. She definitely knew her religion and faith. If  her visions were a side effect of illness, how could she have been so cogent and well spoken?  You can read the trial of Joan here. This is not fiction.

Harrison goes to great length to compare Joan to the Synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus. It is sometimes disturbing, leaving me wonder if we are to think that Joan, a product of the Medieval church, knew the Gospel so well she could purposefully imitate Jesus? Is Joan's story redacted to appear more like that of the Christ? Can we twist any history through a lens and see what we want to see? I leave that up to you to decide.

What we can know is that Joan inspired the common soldier to do things he would never have done without her, pushed a reluctant Dauphin to claim the throne of France, and routed the English from Orleans. Then the king and leaders found no more use for her. Joan was left aimless without an army or battle to fight, eager to finish routing the English off the continent. Her love of male finery was her undoing: a soldier grabbed her fine cloth of gold cloak and pulled her off her horse. She was imprisoned for a year before her death at age 19, the man she gave his crown unable or unwilling to raise ransom money. For a Catholic who expected a bodily resurrection, the destruction of her body by burning upset her more than death itself.

Joan grew up wearing a homespun russet gown that laced up the front. When she responded to her voice's call to lead France against the Brits she bobbed her hair and adopted male attire. This was against Biblical law. Joan became quite foppish. A fashion explosion was going on in Europe, one only the upper crust could legally indulge in. Rich new fabrics and style innovations abounded. At at time when available virgins flaunted their hair, Joan's short cut was at once a requirement for war but also a statement that she was not available.

Part of her insistence on men's wear may have been the chastity belt aspect: Joan's tight leggings were attached to the short puffy pants with forty cords that were triple threaded through holes. Inconvenient for a women's needs, but also for a would-be assaulter. Virginity was part of her power and mystic, a requirement to live up to the old Lorraine legend of a maid rescuing France, and a statement of not being an evil sexual woman. Females, after all, were known to be the devil's tool to bring down virtuous men. The worst thing Joan's accusers could do was call her a wanton slut.

She wore armor, sometimes for days, and her soldiers were impressed that she could stand it. She had a quilted and padded top under the armor, but still it weighted a lot, and sleeping in a metal shell meant aches and bruises. But unlike the paintings you find, she had no long partial skirt under her armor.

Joan's cloak of gold had to have been a remarkable gift, as the fabric was worn by high church officials and kings and queens. See an example of a cloth of gold dress, made between 1403 and 1403, and worn by Queen Margaret here.

For centuries we have been fascinated by Joan. We don't get answers in this book. We see what we want to see in Joan. Then perhaps it is Joan's very mysteriousness that keeps us fascinated generation after generation.

Joan of Arc, A Life Transformed
by Kathryn Harrison
Publication date: October 28, 2014
Doubleday
$14.99
ISBN 9780385531221