The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (1844)

 

The Three Musketeers

As I finished reading Alexander Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers” on my way to my summer vacation three weeks ago, I have had plenty on time to think about what to say about it, now that I am back home again. I think time has mellowed my opinion a bit from a somewhat more critical position.

“The Three Musketeers” is one of the more famous works in the canon of nineteenth century literature. There are countless film and TV versions of the story, and I seem to recall an illustrated children’s version that I read as a child. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to me that the only elements I actually recognized, now that I read the book, are names of the four (not three!) musketeers, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan, and that it took place in seventeenth century France.

The original story was written as a serial and at great speed. This can be clearly felt in the organic development of the story that sort of forms itself as the story moves on. Dumas may have had some idea where the story should go, but clearly only in rough outline. There are threads started that are not or unsatisfactorily followed through and there are tangents that develops into major plot elements. Haphazard story development may be a bit harsh. Organic is a nicer term.

Our main character is a young man called D’Artagnan, who arrives in Paris from the province with the ambition to become a royal musketeer, an elite force committed to the protection of the royal person (Louis XIV). D’Artagnan is on friendly terms with the leader of the unit, Treville, and gets a position as a guard, but not quite musketeer (yet). D’Artagnan also quickly becomes friends with three (The Three) musketeers, Athos Porthos and Aramis. This happens when he challenges each of the three to a duel on swords on the same day...

Early on it becomes clear that there is a rivalry between the musketeers and the Cardinal Richelieu and his minions. Richelieu is described as an evil and cunning schemer who employs dodgy characters to promote his personal ambitions. The first adventure of the musketeers concerns some diamonds that the Queen (Queen Anne of Austria) has given to the love-struck English Duke of Buckingham. The diamonds need to be retrieved to avoid compromising the Queen. Following this, D’Artagnan falls in love with the pretty Madame Bonancieux, who then disappears, apparently abducted. He also gets involved with a mysterious woman, mostly known as Milady. As it turns out, she is a minion of the cardinal and the arch villain of the story. When D’Artagnan causes her some embarrassment she sets out to kill him.

When the musketeers are sent to La Rochelle to participate in the siege of this city, they demonstrate bravery against the enemy, but mostly they try to defend themselves from the murderous Milady. The story now takes a tangential direction, and we follow Milady on a mission to England to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham, her capture and following escape. For this section of the novel (around a hundred pages), the musketeers are not even mentioned. Finally, with Milady back in France we get a final and dramatic meetup of the characters.

The great strength of this novel, and likely the basis of its massive fame, is the extraordinary flow of the story. Dumas writes dialogue with a speed and fluidity I have not encountered in any novel prior to this one and it is a style massively imitated since. He writes like a modern action movie by wasting little time on descriptions but let the action and the plot drive the story. That has the pleasant effect of making this a page-turner novel that keeps you on edge and waiting for what happens on the next page. Employing this format, Dumas could have written on any topic and it would have been a great read.

When we get down to the actual story, things become a bit more problematic. Obviously, we are supposed to sympathize with the musketeers and think of them as great guys, but in reality, they are rash, violent and proud brutes. Maybe in the nineteenth century their qualities smacked of bravery and manliness, but in the twenty-first century, they are the type of people you do not want to meet on a night in town.

Then there is the conflict between the musketeers and the Cardinal Richelieu. I had a hard time understanding this conflict. Richelieu worked for the (in the story largely incompetent) king to secure and protect France. He drove an organization and centralization campaign we would consider modern and was not surpassed until the era of Napoleon. In a Europe dominated by the devastation of the thirty-year war, he was the glue that tied France together. When the musketeers are in opposition to him, they are largely supporting the enemies of France: Spain, Austria and particularly England. Doing this, amounts to treason and yet the musketeers are the heroes while the Cardinal is the villain.

The only way I can explain this is in the conflict between centralization and regional independence, between king and nobility, state and regions, unionism and federalism. This is a type of conflict that goes back to antiquity and still takes place today. The musketeers in this light represents the nobility who is losing power when Richelieu usurps it for the state. Whether this is a good or a bad cause, I will let the reader decide.

While I read the story, I was frustrated with the meandering storyline, especially the very long detour with Milady, but as the weeks have passed, I see it as less of a problem. Since the flow is never lost and the story remains interesting, it is simply something to accept and just flow with it. And that is the thing with this book: You are never bored by it. Perplexed and confused, yes, but never bored.

That is the best recommendation I can give a book.

 

  

The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allen Poe (1843)

 

The Pit and the Pendulum

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is another short story from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories I got. It is very short indeed, barely 20 pages and covers hardly more than a single scene, but what a scene it is.

The narrator is a prisoner by the Spanish Inquisition who wakes up in a dark cell. He has evidently sustained some sort of torture because even the simple act of gathering his senses is an ordeal. As he slowly comes to, he tries to orient himself, but collapses in the process.

When he wakes up, he realizes the cell is smaller than anticipated, but taller and at the centre of the cell there is a bottomless pit. This pit seems to be the only way out, but our narrator shrinks back from this place as a certain death sentence. Some food has been set out for him, and this has clearly been laced with a sedative because when he wakes up again, he is tied to a pallet. Only his one arm is free enough to reach some food and drink. Eventually he notices a pendulum swinging high above him. The bottom edge of is a razor-sharp blade. His sense of panic increases when he also notices that the pendulum is slowly descending. Over the next few pages, we follow this increase in panic until it reaches a crescendo when the swinging blade is low enough to cut him. Basically, his cell only holds two exits, both through death: the pit or the pendulum.

This is a very short story, but by sticking to describing the developing stages of the narrator’s panic and fear we get plenty of that. By using the first-person form, it is not just him, but us who are feeling the torture and the sense of impending death and doom. The helplessness and the inevitability are the worst of it. There is nothing he can do but wait and anticipate his own destruction. They say that in the last seconds before your death, your life passes before your eyes in summary, but not in this story. It is blind, white, all-consuming fear, you experience.

As I mentioned in my review of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe did not invent the gothic genre, but he shaped it into the form that we recognize. This is also true of “The Pit and the Pendulum”. It is a window into horror literature at least a century before this became a really big thing. Modern horror uses many of the same effects and these can also be found in the other short stories of the book. Not all are as good, but they all contain that eerie, weird feeling that something is not right.

I am not myself a fan of the horror genre, but I recognize the quality of these short stories and for fans of the genre I am certain this is essential reading. It is certainly easily accomplished.

 

  

Lost Illusions - Honore De Balzac (1843)

 

Lost Illusions

“Lost Illusions” is the third book on the List by Honoré de Balsac, a writer I am getting familiar with now. While his books are never happy, this is the most pessimistic book so far. There is a bitterness here that can only be personal.

In the provincial town of Angoulême, two young friends, David and Lucien are striking out in life. David, son of a printer, has inherited his miser of a father’s old printing house, but is more interested in inventing a new process for making paper manufacturing cheaper and so the business slides. He gets married to Lucien’s sister Eve, who tries but has trouble keeping the printing business afloat. While David is a virtuous person, whose only “fault” is his persistence in his research, Lucien is a flagrant type. He has aspirations of being a poet and has already a manuscript for a collection of poetry and a novel. This gets him invited to the salons of the local nobility and Madame de Bargeton starts flirting with him. This develops into an elopement, taking them to Paris.

In Paris Madame de Bargeton easily slides into the world of the fashionable, while Lucien is seen as an embarrassment. Left to dry, Lucien, after having squandered away the money generously donated by David, Eve and their mother, submits to an existence in poverty. His attempt at being a poet flounders amid the brutal reality of Paris, but gains him virtuous friends. A new world opens up for him when he encounters the journalist Lousteau and Lucien becomes a journalist himself. This is a world of absolute corruption, where articles are written for or against people on a whim or for political or economical gains. One day you support a person/play/book/party, the next you are against. Lucien with his talents and flossy moral is excellent at this job, but in the process, he loses his good friends in favour of less reliable friends in journalism. With his new-found power to make or break people he now gains access to also the nobility and even has aspirations to regain his maternal name of de Rubempré. This makes his interesting again to Madame de Bargeton, but Lucien prefers his actress girlfriend and the snuffed Bargeton as well as jealous journalist colleagues set in motion an avalanche of events to ruin and crush Lucien. It even gets so far that Lucien defrauds his friend David, sending him to the brink of ruin and into the arms of people who wants to steal his invention.

Lucien is obviously a flawed character. While he feels sincere remorse for the trouble he causes and seems to have some scruples on taking on questionable jobs, neither last very long. He is arrogant and ambitious enough to think he will get away with it, and it does not help that his good looks often clears the way for him. He gets plenty of admonitions on the right way of doing things, but always ends up taking the easy and fast way. During his time in Paris, his only virtuous act that he sees through is to stick to his girlfriend and even that brings him in trouble. Balzac half blames the weak character of Lucien and half the Paris society. Balzac had plenty of experience to match Lucien’s and the bitterness against to double crossings and cutthroat business of both the printing business and journalism in Paris is evident. Balzac will frequently insert a harangue against various elements of this world seemingly out of context with the story he is trying to tell, simply to vent his frustrations.

Lucien gets crushed, not so much because he deserves it as because this is what happens to naive talents in Paris. There is always somebody who wants to take advantage of you and if you step on somebody, their vanity knows no mercy. Lucien experiences this, but never seems to learn from it.

Back in Angoulême, it is the same story, but with finance and the legal system as the villains. The Cointet brothers of the rival printing house and the double-faced lawyer Petit-Claud are every bit as remorseless as the journalists and printers of Paris.

So, what is the morale of Balzac? What is the solution? His rather depressing conclusion is that either you become a monster yourself or you leave the game entirely and live as simple a life as possible. Anybody who sticks their nose out are asking for it.

Rather depressive, really. It took me a while to get through “Lost Illusions” as it kept knocking the wind out of me. If you care even a bit for the characters, you will feel distressed on every other page. At least with Lucien, I learned to write him off as a lost cause, but my heart bled for David and Eve. There is no doubt this is a well written book, it even has its moments of wry humour, and it is celebrated as one of Balzac’s best novels. Personally, I preferred “Old Man Goriot”, and I do not feel inclined to repeat the misery-feast parts of this novel, which is, honestly, the majority of it.

    

Happy New Year 2026

 

Happy New Year 2026

A new year is approaching, and it is time for my annual address to... whoever find their way to this blog.

2025 was not a particularly great year. It used to be a casual off-hand thing to say that the world is going crazy. In 2025 it felt as if it is really happening. I find myself increasingly shutting down on international affairs and while I know this ostrich mentality is not really doing any good, I find a lot of comfort in watching movies from the eighties and reading books from the nineteenth century.

I did slow down though on the movies. Only 45 reviews in 2025 of which 39 were List movies. That took me from 1985 to 1987, making this the shortest step so far on this mission. Some of this was due to some very long movies, but most of it was simply lack of time. I love the eighties and the movies have generally been great. Should I mention a particular movie that made an impression, it must be “Tampopo”, though watching “Shoah” with my wife felt very important.

On my book blog I managed 9 books which is pretty good. This took me from “Father Goriot”, 1835 to “Dead Souls”, 1842, a span of 7 years. Those have been very interesting books written some of the most famous classic authors. Maybe surprisingly, the best of them was “The Lion of Flanders” by a, to me, completely unknown author (Hendrik Conscience). This year also included the most difficult to find book-so-far, “Camera Obscura”, which I read in Google translated Dutch.

Anyway, I just want to wish everybody a happy New Year. May the Swartch be with you all (guess what movie is coming up...).

 

Camera Obscura - Hildebrand (1839)

 

Camera Obscura

This was the most difficult to find book on the List so far. “Camera Obscura” is a book by the Dutch writer Nicolaas Beets under the pseudonym Hildebrand. There is supposed to be an English translation out there and I asked my local bookshop to help me find it. This took them about half a year and several failed attempts to finally get it home... in Dutch. Resigned to this I used Goggle Lense to translate every page from old Dutch to English and painstakingly read through those haphazard translations. That was a weird and often confusing experience and one I am not particularly keen to repeat.

“Camera Obscura” is not a single story, but more of an anthology of short stories that have little if anything in common. The only recurring element is that the author often refer to himself. Some text appears to be letters to Hildebrand, others are essays on themes such as travelling, seeing friends from childhood and watching animals in menageries or at fairs. The longest and by far most interesting story is about Hildebrand spending some weeks with an uncle and aunt and particularly his cousin Pieter Stastok. Both are in this scenario students with Pieter an almost comically pedantic and helpless character. Hildebrand attempts to help him but whether it be al billiard or taking girls for an outing in a boat, Pieter Stastok manages to make a fool of himself.

While the individual stories are all quite different both in tone and topic, they all help to paint sceneries of daily life in The Netherland in the 1830’ies. We get portraits particularly of members of the middle class, but also glimpses of the serving class. We meet them in their homes and in their interactions with each other. We hear a lot about fairgrounds, about visiting farms, about travelling. I believe this is the first novel on the List to describe travel by railway, something entirely new and exotic at this time. All these scenes help explain the title of the novel. A camera obscure is used to project a view down on a flat surface to help a painter produce a rendition of the view. In the same way, the short stories project images to us of scenes in The Netherlands so that we can imagine them in the right perspective.

What are then the impressions we get? Mostly that people were in The Netherlands in the 1830’ies the same way as people are at any time in most of the places in the world. Some are pedantic, some think they are funny. Some are choleric and upset while others are embarrassed, either of themselves or their kin. The doctor who arrives on a blistering hot day in a small town to find his old friend from his student days, only to find that his family is a mess with unruly children and obstinate servants and after hardly an hour cannot wait to get away again. There is an essay on education of children that probably tells a lot about schools in those days and even a rant warning about trying to be amusing when you are not.

I am not entirely certain it is working for me though. Only the story of Pieter Stastok is long and detailed enough to make the scenes really come alive. To some extent I do blame to awkward reading process, but I did get enough out of it to catch the idea. There is something of interest in the short stories, but I do wish they would have been woven together in a coherent whole. Maybe you must be Dutch to really appreciate it.

In any case, I cannot say I found reason enough for this book to be on the List. It is not a bad book, just not enough. From my movie list I have learned that if something is difficult to find, it is usually for a reason. So apparently it is with books.

    

Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol (1842)

 

Dead Souls

“Dead Souls” is the second novel by Nikolai Gogol on the List after “The Nose”. This time he toned down the absurdity, but only by a notch. Where most people will agree that a nose cannot just leave the owner, the characters of “Dead Souls” are just about plausible even if they are caricatures and for this reason it is a novel that works so much stronger than “The Nose”.

The novel consists of two parts which share little but the main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov. Chichikov is a man on a mission, which is to create wealth for himself, but every attempt of his eventually sours because it is just on the other side of the acceptable, either by social or by legal standards, yet ironically the palette of characters Chichikov encounters are practically all further on the wrong side of that boundary, but seems to get away with it.

The first book serves as a particular case. Chichikov arrives in a provincial town and manages to befriend all the gentility of the town with his friendly manner. Chichikov’s ploy to make money involves buying up “dead souls”, meaning peasants who have died, but are not yet registered as dead and so their owner, meaning the landowner of the village, still must pay their tax. I do not know exactly how that ploy works, but clearly the locals do not know either and so seeds of mistrust for Chichikov are being sown, despite Chichikov’s insistence that what he is offering actually helps them.

Every single one of the characters Chichikov meets are odd, in one way or another, and I suspect they each describe archetypes in caricature among the Russian gentility in the first half of the nineteenth century. They may be spendthrifts, drunkards, niggards, or outright corrupt or, in the case of the women, gossips, halfwits or primadonnas. By comparison Chichikov is a boy scout and he becomes our eyes experiencing this zoo of characters, which means that he becomes the hero we associate with and his reactions to these people largely reflect our own. Only rarely does his own oddities pop up, and when they do they appear harmless and innocent compared to those around him. When in the end he is run out of town, it is not because we see him as transgressing any boundaries of significance, but because everybody else make him up to be that transgressor.

The second book is a disjointed affair, partly because large sections are missing, including the ending and partly because it jumps around almost at random. We learn some of Chichikov’s backstory, placing him in a less flattering light then the first book and his transgressions also become more tangible. Still, they are peanuts compared to the characters around him who are all fools in different ways, even the hard working and outward sensible Konstanzhoglo.

While the second book continue to expose the odd characters of Russian gentility, it is more difficult to see the deeper point of this part. Chichikov does get in trouble, but this time not so much from the frenzy of the mob as from actual criminal actions that he really should not have done but have been led to by his own wish for fortune and the examples of all around him.

I much enjoyed the first book. It is amusing in its parody of Russian society, a parody we can understand even not being Russian because these traits are not exclusive to Russians. It is also coherent and realistic enough that I as reader get caught up in the story. The second book, however, often lost me. Every time I thought I had recentred the story, it took me somewhere else, leaving me disoriented and that meant getting disassociated from the story. I still enjoyed the characters, but they became vignettes rather than a coherent entity. This is a shame, and I think “Dead Souls” would have stood stronger had it only contained the first book.

I can only guess at what contemporary Russians may have thought of this satire of their society. The peasants would have been largely illiterate, so the readers would be the very same gentility Gogol was satirizing. Would they have found that amusing? And would it at all have been safe, given the repressiveness which have always pervaded Russian systems of any name? As an outsider it is hard to come to terms with people being the property of somebody else, but that element is never questioned by Gogol and that in itself leaves me baffled.

I have finally found a copy of “Camera Obscura”, an earlier book I have bypassed. It took the bookshop half a year to track it down, but now it is finally here... in Dutch. This will be a reading through Google Len

A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov (1840)

 

A Hero of Our Time

Most stories have a plot and the characters in them are serving the plot. “A Hero of Our Time” is the opposite. Whatever plot there is serve to portrait the lead character. The book is composed of a number of shorter stories that barely interlink, but has that in common that they tell of the character in focus, Pechorin, though from different viewpoints.

One is a story told to the main narrator of the book by Pechorin’s friend, Maxim Maximych, This is a story about a local girl, Bela, “captured” by Pechorin and then discarded. A second is the narrator and Maximych meeting with the actual Pechorin. A meeting greatly disappointing to Maximych. The rest are extracts from Pechorin’s diary “published” by the main narrator. In these parts, Pechorin is therefore himself the direct narrator and the perspective is his own. These three stories are in turn his stay in a Black Sea port where his interference in a smuggling operation leads to the doom of several locals. The second, and longest, of the stories concerns his stay in a resort town where Pechorin sabotage his friend’s, Grushnitsky’s, courtship to the aristocratic Princess Mary by making his own competing courtship, ending in a duel to the death with Grushnitsky. Finally, there is a short story where Pechorin meets an officer who believes in fatalism to the point of betting on it in a game of Russian Roulette.

The actual plots in these segments are, as mentioned, of less interest. What is of interest is how Pechorin appears in the different viewpoints.

I cannot say that I myself has made up my mind, neither of what I think of Pechorin myself, nor indeed what the various observers think of him. What remains after reading these different stories is a complex character who is neither good nor bad, but transcends that sort of simplistic categories.

The outside view is indeed puzzled. There is admiration for his skill and tenacity but also abhorrence for his inconstancy and disrespect. In the story about Bela, Pechorin seems to have gotten it into his mind to obtain the pretty daughter, Bela, of a local lord. In the process he ruins the lord’s son, a local warrior and Bela herself while Pechorin himself seems to tire of the game and discard it as uninteresting. In the same way, Maximych is discarded where he thought he was a friend with Pechorin’s confidence,

This nihilism is challenged when Pechorin himself tells his stories. While they would still appear to be about Pechorin ruining other people for kicks, there are some deeper layers at play. Pechorin is a victim himself, but in a complex manner. He navigates in the world both controlled by his feeling and searching desperately for feelings. He claims he cannot feel love, yet all he does, he does in a passion. The man without emotions is entirely guided, indeed commanded by his strong emotions.

I cannot find a good way to describe it. Pechorin is a character apparently without the loyalties and values the society around him expects of a man, but at the same time a man with clarity of insight on himself and integrity for himself that keeps him to a higher standard than most other people.

Pechorin is both alien, from a conventional point of view and very familiar from a human point of view and that makes him a fascinating character and one that i myself has not entirely decoded. The title, A Hero of Our Time” seems to indicate that he is a product of his time, of his society and by implication represents a typical character of this environment. In that case, this is not just a character study but a society study.

It could also be ironically meant. That Pechorin is hardly a hero and therefore this being a warning against a character type in the environment.

Either way, this is a fascinating read and one not like anything I have read before. “Citizen Kane” is probably the closest I can think of.

Recommended.

 

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe (1839)

 

The Fall of the House of Usher

It was a surprise to learn that “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not a novel but a short story, 27 pages in the collection I found. Considering its standing and that Netflix created an entire TV-series on it, let me to expect something... bigger. It is however not its volume that matters here but its quality, or perhaps rather ambience. A quality the world of literature is forever indebted to.

The story is told from a first person view of an unnamed narrator. He has been invited by his old friend Roderick Usher to the Usher estate. Things are not well with Roderick, though, and he is changed. There is a gloom and sense of doom to him, which extends to the entire manor house. It is described as dark, old and musty, with creaking strange sounds and is more of a mausoleum than a house to actually live in. Even the weather is grey, dark, windy and ominous.

The narrator catches a glimpse of Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, who is suffering from a wasting disease, and she dies shortly after. Her sickness and eventual death is partly the reason for Roderick’s poor state. They entomb her in a deep basement of the house and then the narrator set about trying to cheer up his old friend.

This attempt is largely unsuccessful. Instead, both seem to slide into madness where the storm, the house and the corpse merge into a final collapse.

It is a short story and for that reason, not a terribly lot is happening in the story. Instead, it is all about the ambience of the scene. Poe makes a lot out of painting the setting and manage to get the external setting to match up with the despair and gloom of the mental state of the characters of the story. The house itself, which appears like an old gothic castle the likes of which belong in Europe, not in nineteenth century America, is a reflection of the mind. It is a living thing that breathes, is getting old and tired and prepares to die.

In the climactic scene, Roderick and the narrator are reading from an old volume in a dark room with a storm raging outside, when they both hear and feel something terrible approaching. There is a blend here of reality and lunacy that transports both of them to a horrific place where the dead comes alive to ensnare them and drag them into their tomb.

In this single setting, Poe refines the gothic genre to its condensed essence. Poe did not invent the gothic novel, it was a popular genre even back in the eighteenth century and I have reviewed a few of them, but when we think gothic today, it is not “The Castle of Otranto” or “Melmoth the Wanderer” we think of. It is “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

I bought a collection of Poe’s short stories, which includes one of the later entries on the List, and sort of expected that all the stories would be gothic, but that is not at all the case. Poe wrote quite varied, even comedies, but what all the stories have in common is that they in relatively few pages manage to condense a single message into a clear picture that manages to stand alone, completed. I do not know the history of the short story, but my guess is that Poe’s contribution to that genre is as great as that of the Gothic novel.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short and rewarding read. My only reservation is that I would have loved to read an entire novel rather than a short story. That is just me being greedy.

The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal (1839)

 

The Charterhouse of Parma

We are in the process of moving to a new apartment so my blogging on movies is on hold for the moment. I did, though, have a chance to finish “The Charterhouse of Parma” so after a long and exhausting day of cleaning up our old place, I can relax with a bit of blogging on my book site.

“The Charterhouse of Parma” is the second novel by Stendhal on the List and it is quite a bit different from “The Red and the Black”, not least in its tone, which is blatantly irreverent and even satirical rather than understated as in “The Red and the Black”.

This is a big and sprawling story with the character Fabrice del Dongo at the centre. Fabrice is the second son of a Marquis and, being full of life and romantic ideas, is scorned by his father. Instead, he is attached to his aunt, Contessa Gina Pietranera, a similarly vibrant woman.

Much inspired by the glory of the French, the very young Fabrice endeavours to join in Napoleon’s final campaign at Waterloo. A combination of being Italian, very young and incredibly naive, his exploits in that battle are more comical than dramatic and when he returns to Italy at least he is a bit wiser.

Meanwhile, Gina, a widower, is getting attached to Count Mosca, the prime minster to the Prince of Parma and is relocating there as a way to keep the now wanted Fabrice out of the clutches of the Austrians. Parma is a tiny principality, led by an absolute ruler, where intrigues are rampant, but also very provincial and as a result often absurd and comical. The scheme is that Gina gets married to the old Duke of Sanseverina, who immediately moves abroad and shortly after dies, leaving his estate, title and fortune to Gina, Duchesse de Sanseverina. Count Mosca is her lover and companion from the outset and together they scheme the shit out of Parma.

From then on things get complicated. Mosca is in love with Gina. Gina is in love with Fabrice. Fabrice is in love with Clelia Conti and Clelia is promised to the wealthy Marquis de Crescenzi. Fabrice is arrested for killing a former rival to an actress, he was dallying with, though in truth the guy assaulted Fabrice and for that Fabrice is imprisoned in a fortress held by Clelia’s father.

Th story is in fact much more complicated than this and there are a dizzying number of characters coming in and out of the story and it is clear that Stendhal had a lot of fun with this story. He has placed it in Italy, allegedly because the Italians can and will act differently than the French, but just as likely, it is a way of creating a fable using imaginary characters in a far away place that are still easily recognizable for the French reader. With this move, Stendhal can attack absolutism, scheming nobility and various injustices at will. And that he does, big time.

Stendhal has a wonderful way of writing and in “the Charterhouse of Parma” he uses it more satirically than in his earlier book. There is a glee to his writing as if much of it was written on an inspiration and a need to prove a (or several) point(s). At times the story goes out on a tangent before being reigned in and while it indicates an unstructured flow of mind method of writing, it never becomes annoying though sometimes the story appears to have dead ends or vital people suddenly appear. I would not be surprised if the book is a first write through, but if so, it is mighty impressive.

The characters are always very much alive, although compared to his earlier work, in “The Charterhouse of Parma” there is an element of caricature to the characters. Where the characters of “The Red and the Black” felt like real human beings, the characters here are a little too fantastical for realism, but in return they are so much more entertaining. I understand it as Stendhal’s mockery of the upper classes and their silly intrigues.

I enjoyed reading “The Charterhouse of Parma”, it was fun and easy to read, but I do find “The Red and the Black” the better book. Probably it is that satirical bite which, fun as it is, also distance me as a reader from the story.

Still, definitely a recommendation from me.

 

The Lion of Flanders - Hendrik Conscience (1838)

 

The Lion of Flanders

One of the wonderful things about doing this list of books is that I get to learn about things that I knew nothing about. I have now learned that around 1300 there was an epic strife between Flanders and France that the Flemish won and which, at least for a while, earned them freedom from the rule of the French. This strife culminated in the “Battle of the Golden Spurs” at Kortrijk (or Courtrai) in 1302.

I also understand that it was this book, “The Lion of the Flanders”, by Hendrik Conscience which fuelled a renewed interest in this old conflict, exactly at a time when the state of Belgium was trying to carve out an existence on its own, squeezed in by the French and the Dutch. Whether the Walloons also take pride in the story, I have no idea.

The stage at opening is the ducal palace of Flanders. Flanders has lost a war to the French who has now come to occupy the land, led by the brother of the French king, Charles de Valois. He is a noble knight who convinces the old duke that if he and his nobles go visit the king and beg forgiveness, they will be reinstated as rulers of Flanders. Charles is convincing, but at the king’s court, the spiteful Queen Joanna of Navarra rules and she hates the Flemish. She makes the king take all the nobles hostage, including the son of the duke, Robert de Bethune, the renowned “Lion of Flanders”, a mighty hero.

The major nobility out of the way, Joanna sets out to destroy the Flemish, to begin with by imposing a rule of tyranny in the Flemish towns. The book focusses on Brugge, the most important town at the time and likely the richest in western Europe. Here the guilds holds sway, defending hard earned rights of freedom, and the leaders of the clothworkers, Deconinck, and the butchers, Breydel, set up a resistance. When Joanna’s lapdog, de Chatillon, moves in to crush the resistance, the French get their asses kicked and Flanders is in rebellion.

In Brugge we also find Robert the Bethune’s daughter Mathilda and the young knight, Adolf van Nieuwland and yes, a budding romance.

This is a very interesting story, and it has all the elements of an epic struggle. It is almost Star Wars in medieval times: The good versus the bad, the underdog against the giant and a struggle for freedom from the tyranny of an evil empire. It also holds all the right characters with the four mentioned representing the types we would like to follow. In other words, this is fundamentally a good story and was born to be made into a Hollywood movie.

Unfortunately, Conscience decided to write this in the tone of a medieval romance. This means declamatory speeches, one-dimensional characters and an emotional range that is always extreme. People are either ultra patriots (country before family) or treacherous cowards, heroic noble or base villains. Women laugh excitedly or swoon of sadness. There is no middle ground, and the characters easily get reduced to cartoonish characters. This is such a shame, and I would love to read a rewriting of this story in modern style. Or even the natural style of the 1830’ies.

This does not mean that I did not enjoy the book. For me, premise is a big thing and the premise here is awesome, but it was with increasing irritation as I got through it and I kept thinking what this could have been.

I have been to Brugge, and I would have loved to have known this story before I went. Instead, I recognize many of the landmarks as places you can still find today. Brugge is a very interesting town, and its history has gotten yet another layer for me with this book.

Nationalism can be an ugly thing and if you think about it too much, this book may go to some ugly places, I believe it should be read as a heroic epic and just leave it at that. In that light, I recommend it.

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1836)

 

Oliver Twist

Charles Dicken’s “Oliver Twist” is one of the best-known stories in this segment of nineteenth century literature. There are quite a few adaptations around and the main characters are well known by name among people who have never read the book or watched any of the adaptations. Until this time round, I belonged to that group of people.

I had my own pretty solid idea about what sort of story “Oliver Twist” was and I must say, it turned out to be quite different.

The basic plotline of “Oliver Twist” is that Oliver is an orphan who spends his early childhood in the care of the parish social services in provincial England, early nineteenth century. This means abuse in the extreme. Life in the parish workhouse is portrayed as very hard and with very little freedom and sustenance. It is written flat out that most children die so the parish can spend less money on the poor. Oliver’s chief crime at this time is, that, when the children are very hungry, he asks for more food. Oh horror! At this stage he is up against the tyrannic Mr. Bumble, the beadle.

At age 9, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker, but gets in trouble when he stands up against harassment from one of the other apprentices (Noah Claypole). Oliver runs away towards London where he meets Dawkins, also known as The Artful Dodger. The Artful brings him into Fagin’s gang in the underbelly of London. This is a gang of pickpockets and what other scams Fagin can come up with. Only when out on his first job does Oliver realize that he is supposed to be stealing and so he runs away. He is caught and brought before a magistrate, but the elderly man whom he was supposed to steal from, drops his charges and instead takes him in.

In the care of Mr. Brownlow, Oliver recovers and just as his life starts to look bright, he is kidnapped back into the gang. This time round is no fun at all, Oliver knows what the gang is up and when they take him along for a housebreaking, he sounds the alarm, and is shot at in the ensuing melee. Fortunately, the people in the house are the friendly Maylies and Oliver finds a new home there. Still, Oliver is not out trouble as Sikes, Monk and Fagin are up to more mischief.

There is a lot more going on in Oliver Twist than I thought. As a tale, there are many twists and turns and lots of drama and for that alone, the book is a page-turner. Here I thought this was about a boy living a dismal life with a gang of thieves, but there are so much more to the story. No wonder this was quite a bestseller back in the nineteenth century.

Beside the story itself, what really works in this book is when Dickens talk about life in the underworld of London. There are many details and the world has texture and smell and individuals fleshed out in details. You can follow them around on a map using the landmarks of London and you can visualise the warren of Saffron Hill with a pub like the Cripples. The pleasure Dickens had when describing these characters and their banter is very obvious and the unfortunate result is that I as a reader risks caring more for these characters, even the brutal Sikes, than the heroes of the story.

Dickens clearly had much less fun with the heroes. As characters they are surprisingly flat, with the main character trait being that they are GOOD, whatever that means and to the exclusivity of all else. They are so over the top virtuous that I frankly do not like then very much and that includes, unfortunately, Oliver Twist himself.

Another feature of the book that at first seems like an asset, but eventually becomes a problem is the comic exaggeration used by Dickens. Dickens wanted to highlight the absurd cruelty with which poor people were treated at the time and so uses a sort of comic exaggeration to describe the callousness of those in charge of poverty relief. I have no doubt that abuse and fraudulence at the expense of the poor was the order of the day, but in Dickens’ writing it becomes too easy to dismiss it as exaggeration and the loss of realism removes us, sadly, from the story. We do get some bitter-sweet laughs, but frankly, I think the price is too high for those. A character like Mr. Bumble belongs in a cartoon, not in anything resembling realism.

Then of course there is the very strong antisemitic trait. I am not certain what Dicken’s excuse was for that, but this is rather hard to swallow, and I am usually not so sensitive to that.

This all sounds like I was unhappy with Oliver Twist and that is not true at all. There is just so much good stuff here that the faults are so much more glaring for the missed opportunity.

I do recommend it, and I am surprising myself by looking forward to more from Charles Dickens.

  

The Nose - Nikolai Gogol (1836)

 

The Nose

“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is a bizarre concoction.

The first thing you notice is that it is remarkably short (which I guess is why it is labelled a “short story”) at just 38 pages with a very large font. It was very quick to get through.

The topic of the story is... strange. Major Kovaloff wakes up one day and discovers that his nose is gone. Where it used to be is just a flat piece of skin. Apparently, his nose has left him and gone on adventures. He recognizes it out in town posing as a State Councillor, a functionary several degrees above his own, which presents him with some problems in getting it back. The nose gets away and Kovaloff tries to insert an advertisement in a local newspaper for his nose. He is refused due to the absurdity of the request. The same happens at the police station.

He is busy accusing a lady-friend, who wants him to marry her daughter, for his lost nose, when a policeman shows up with his nose. Kovaloff’s barber found it in a piece of bread... Unfortunately, the doctor says it will not get back on, yet the next morning it is back in its place.

The story ends with the author exclaiming that he has no clue what this story was about, that it is totally absurd and that it is strange that authors can choose to write on such useless topics.

I must say, I am equally confused.

I do understand that this is an absurd story and that the absurdity makes it comedic. It is actually very funny. Major Kovaloff is a man very impressed with himself and his appearance so to suddenly find himself without a nose is a terrible hit to his pride. Add to that the humiliation that the nose has simply left him, posing as somebody else. Even without an intimate knowledge of the vanity of Russian officers in the 1830’ies, I can sense how this tickles him the wrong way.

What I am missing is the point of the story. While it must have been fun to write and certainly is fun to read, such a story does not get the fame it has unless there is a point. The closest I get (with the help of Wikipedia) is that this has to do with, yes, vanity. With the, absurd, obsession of physical appearance of officials in St. Petersburg.

It is fun, easy and not a little silly.

 

 

Father Goriot - Honore De Balzac (1835)

 

Old Man Goriot

With “Old Man Goriot” (or "Father Goriot") we are getting another book by Honoré de Balzac, but where I was disappointed with “Eugenie Grandet”, I can finally see why Balzac is as big a star as he is. “Old Man Goriot” is an impressive book.

An instalment in Balzac’s “La Comédie humaine”, “Old Man Goriot” takes place in and around a boarding house in Paris in the year 1819. This is a boarding house in the lower price range and the boarders are generally out of their luck. There is the girl Victorine, whose very rich father has disowned her to avoid offering a dowry, there are the mysterious and booming Vautrin, full of schemes but the main characters are Old Man Goriot and the young student Rastignac.

Goriot moved in years before as a wealthy man, but has moved to cheaper and cheaper accommodation and now resides in the worst room of the house. Keeping to himself, he is generally ridiculed by the other boarders, and it is rumoured that he lost his money on high-end prostitutes. At least he is frequently seen with women much smarter than he is.

Rastignac is intent on enjoying the Belle Monde of Paris, but although of a noble family, he is very short of funds. The short cut seems to be to find a wealthy mistress and through his cousin Comtesse de Beauséant, he is introduced to this world. He learns that Madame de Restaud and Madame de Nucingen are actually Goriot’s daughters, Anastasie and Delphine. By starting a love affair with Delphine, Rastignac also befriends Goriot.

But not everything is as it seems...

There are a lot of things happening in “Old Man Goriot”. It is like a window into a complex world populated with real, though slightly extreme characters. There is a plotline where Vautrin wants Rastignac to marry Victorine, then get her brother “accidentally” killed in a duel, landing the inherence on her and by implication on Rastignac. In return, Vautrin would be setup up as a plantation owner in America. However, in my reading, I see two overriding themes.

One is the saintly father who gets abused for his love of his children. This is a variation on the King Lear story, though less bloody than in “Ran”. Goriot sacrifices everything for Delphine and Anastasie, but gets very little in return. They only need him when they need money and when he has no more to give, they need him no more. Is it the fault of the father to love (spoil) his children too much? Or is it the crime of his daughters and sons in law to not give the filial love he deserves? Or maybe it is simply the corruption of Paris.

The second theme is “the training of Rastignac”. Rastignac is the naive outsider, keen on getting involved in Parisian life. He presents outside eyes on his world and through his involvement with Vautrin and the other boarders of the boarding house, Madame de Beauséant and Goriot’s daughters, he (and we) is taught of the dark side of the Belle Monde. This is a world of wild luxury, but also of villainous behaviour, egocentrism and hidden tragedies. Rastignac is trained on how to successfully manoeuvre in this world, but he is also trained to see it for what it is and be disgusted in the process. What we do not know is whether this will make him a player or whether it will teach him to stay out of this game. I like to think it is the latter, but Balzac is ambiguous.

This is in fact a curious trait of Balzac’s writing in this book. He writes a lot about what the characters are and then makes them do or say things that are contrary to this description. As if his own characters have more integrity and are more real than his own narration. It takes a bit getting used to, but it is fascinating to experience.

In general, “Old Man Goriot” is a far more riveting and multifaceted story than “Eugenie Grandet” and although there is a real danger of getting lost in the details, they also add so much texture to the story that it becomes alive and relevant.

It also made me curios about the larger project of “La Comedie humaine” and I cannot rule out I will dive more into that at some point.

Highly recommended.

  

Happy New Year 2025

 

Happy New Year 2025

It is that time of the year again, 2025 is just around the corner. Another year is in the bag, for better or worse.

I know I usually give a small summary of the year in general, but as I would just be repeating myself, I would like instead to mention an observation. On a radio show I listened to recently, it was mentioned how apocalyptic movies and tv series are in vogue. It is not something that has just happened, it has been creeping up on us over the years, but I think it is very true. Screen through the Netflix program or any other streaming service, and dystopic, apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic titles are abundant. I used to like the genre, but lately I find it terribly oppressive and often a little too close to reality.

If I have one wish for 2025 it would be for a more positive vibe. Something a bit more hopeful.

A bit more like the eighties.

In 2024 I reviewed just 47 movies, making this the slowest year for me so far. 7 of these were off-List movies, leaving 40 movies on the List. This took me from 1982 to 1985.

The greatest movie experience of the year must have been watching the Talking Heads concert movie “Stop Making Sense” in a cinema full of fans (reviewed in September). This was an experience I can only recommend.

On my book blog I read and reviewed 8 titles, taking me from 1824 to 1833. This is good enough for me and there have been some very decent books among them. The best probably being “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal.

I wish everybody a happy new year and all the best for 2025.

Eugenie Grandet - Honore De Balzac (1833)

 Eugénie Grandet

Honoré de Balzac is an author I will get back to a few times on the List. As far as I can see he has three entries, but I may be missing some. “Eugénie Grandet” is his first entry.

The titular Eugénie Grandet is the daughter of a cooper, Grandet, turned winegrower turned landowner in provincial France. Grandet is elaborately characterized as a miser of the worst sort. Exceedingly good at making money and even better at not spending them, he and his family, Eugénie and her mother, live an extremely frugal life as if they were poor despite his wealth of millions.

Hovering around the Grandet family are the vultures in the form of the Cruchot and de Grassin families. They are themselves important families in the provincial town, but have their eyes on the wealth of Grandet. They are the only ones with an idea of how enormous his fortune is, as Cruchot, the lawyers, and de Grassin, the bankers, handle Grandet’s affairs. Both eye the prospect of marrying one of their family to Eugénie Grandet and thereby become sole heirs to the fortune.

Then arrive Grandet’s nephew, Charles Grandet, from Paris. He is a fob, used to an expensive lifestyle in Paris, but has been sent to his uncle by his father to get him out of the way before his bankruptcy and suicide. So, Charles arrives full of arrogance but soon to learn he is entirely penniless. Grandet sees him as a liability he must get rid of as soon as possible, and is arranging for shipping him to the colonies, while Eugénie falls completely in love with her cousin.

This causes a strife between father and daughter and although it eventually heals, her infatuation with Charles keeps her in a mental prison, especially as Charles turns out to be a scoundrel.

“Eugénie Grandet” was a part of a larger project of de Balzac called “La Comedie humaine”, which consists of scenes from different parts of life. In this sense “Eugénie Grandet” is supposed to represent something general, though I am struggling to see exactly what. Is it a portrait of a miser? Of how a miser can ruin a family? Is it the generational rebellion of a younger generation? Or even the rebellion of a woman against a father or a lifestyle? All these are intimated, but none of them seems satisfying. In fact, I am having problems working out what the point is with the book.

Balzac uses a lot of generalizations, constantly pointing out how this or that part of the story is representative of something general, both about misers and vultures circling around money, but especially on women. He appears to have some pretty deep-rooted ideas on what and how women are and most of these are prejudiced in the extreme. Therefore, it is clear to me that “Eugénie Grandet” must be read as representative of something general, as a scene that can be found as typical. But is this just to try to explain how people become what they are? Or is it a cynical portrait of people Balzac did not like? He was a spendthrift himself, constantly in debt, and it is very likely he wanted to see his creditors lampooned, but is that all this is?

As a novel, I was not particularly impressed with this story or its style. There is a build up to a crisis, and strife between father and daughter, but it never really explodes, but merely fizzles. This may of course be my 21st century self expecting more than a 19th century author would deliver, but I do believe “Eugénie Grandet” can be compared to the novels of Jane Austen where every one of them had deeper crisis’s and far more interesting resolutions than is the case for “Eugénie Grandet”. I would not go so far as to say it is boring, but it is very much a lost opportunity for something far better.

The only excuse would be to serve some point, and it is this point I am missing. As “Eugénie Grandet” is a highly celebrated novel, it is likely just me being dense.

I already mentioned the style of Balzac to use generalizations and prejudices and even when I try to think like a 19th century reader, this grinds badly on me. He comes through as a bigot who does not care much for his characters and even his protagonist comes through weak and miserable.

I cannot honestly call this an enjoyable novel, and the only real blessing is that it was short. Other readers may disagree.

 

 

Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin (1833)

 

Eugene Onegin

Alexander Pushkin is apparently a big thing in Russia and even I have heard the name mentioned, though I have never read anything from him before. As I understand it, he primarily wrote in verse and “Eugene Onegin” is his attempt at writing a novel in that format.

The main character of “Eugene Onegin” is the title character. Eugene is a dandy and a playboy who lives a dissipated life. When he inherits an estate he gets into serious money, but also relocates to the countryside. Here he meets a number of people. Lensky is a young poet, he befriends. Olga is a pretty, airheaded girl whom Lensky intends to marry, and Tatyana is Olga’s more bookish sister.

Tatyana is infatuated with Eugene, but when she spills her heart to him, he gently, but firmly, rebuffs her. She is severely shaken by that. Eugene is upset with Lensky for pressing him into boring company and takes his revenge by showing excessive attention on Olga. This upsets Lensky who challenges Eugene to a duel. Lensky looses, Olga quickly marries someone else, and Eugene disappears.

Years later, Tatyana, seemingly gotten over the affair, marries a general or prince or something like that and then meets Eugene Onegin again. Now he realizes what he has lost, but that door is now closed and there is no way he can get her back.

For a story written in verse, this is reasonably tangible and accessible. It has an actual plot! Not perhaps the most exciting plot, it does lean heavily into romantic clichés, but quite lucid considering the format.

I have never entirely understood the idea of poetry or fully appreciated it. Poetry seems suited to express small, profound truths or emotions, such as haiku poetry, or intimate sensibilities, such as streams of thought, but that also seems to be more modern use of the format. Traditionally, the rhymes and strict rhythmic syntax are useful for singing and proclamation, i.e. an oral presentation of the text and therefore practical more than arty.

Pushkin seems to place himself in between these positions. He wants to tell a story as a novel, but rather than using the far more flexible standard prose form, he restricts himself to the rules of the verse. It is difficult for me not to see this as an affectation. An ambition of writing a Homerian story, suitable for declamation or to present the story in the more elegant and charming format of verse.

Personally, I am not charmed by verse. It looks restrictive and makes expressing the story far more challenging, but maybe that is the point; to show he can do that. In which case it becomes a self-gratifying project. Well, what do I know, I do not understand poetry.

I understand that for Russian speakers, Pushkin’s work should be quite an experience, taking the language to another level. I do not speak Russian and therefore read an English translation, so I am simply impressed that the translator managed to find suitable rhymes and stick to the format even in translation. That cannot have been easy. Unfortunately, I am not getting any big revelation of use of language or what can be done in verse. That part went over my head.

The book is surprisingly easy to get through. The verse form at least has the advantage that the reading becomes rhythmic and makes reading an almost automatic exercise. The lack of obscurity in the text also made for an easy read and I am grateful for that.

This is not stuff that roams through my mind for a long time. Rather, it was a book to get through and I happy it was easy. Poetry buffs may have a different opinion, but that is their issue.

 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo (1831)

 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a favourite for adaptation. Wikipedia lists 16 cinema adaptations alone with numerous television and stage plays to boot, including several ballets. Curiously, I do not think I ever watched any of them, not even the Disney version, but you must have lived under a rock to not at least get the gist of it.

Victor Hugo’s novel is a sprawling piece of work. He happily changes lead characters throughout, to leave former leads out of the picture for hundreds of pages. Sometimes he even has entire chapters without any characters.

One of his characters is Pierre Gringoire, a poet and philosopher. His stage play tanks so with nothing to his name but the cloths he wears, he joins the homeless outcasts of Paris. A gypsy girl by the name Esmeralda saves his life by formally marrying him (though not in spirit). Gringoire will appear a few times, mostly as a witness, but a few times as an agent.

Esmeralda is a young woman, presumably a gypsy (Roma, would be the modern term) who earns her living by dancing and singing on the street and performing tricks with her pet goat. Esmeralda is deeply infatuated with a captain of the guard, Phoebus.

Phoebus is a vain libertine of a character. He is officially betrothed to a wealthy (though insipid) girl, but that does not stop him from trying to get into the pants of Esmeralda, especially since she seems willing. When that goes horribly wrong and Esmeralda is accused of stabbing him, he renounces her and returns to his betrothed.

It was not Esmeralda who stabbed him though, but a priest at the Notre Dame cathedral, Claude Frollo, who had been following Esmeralda. Despite his wows, he is deeply infatuated with the girl, sort of a love/hate relationship. When Phoebus is about to take Esmeralda’s virginity, it is he who jumps forward to stab him. Not for Esmeralda’s sake, but because nobody else can have her. He even tries to kidnap her using his pet cripple, Quasimodo, but that also fails.

Quasimodo is the eponymous hunchback of Notre Dame. He is deformed and deaf, supposedly a halfwit, but very strong. When Frollo’s abduction scheme fails, Quasimodo is blamed. In the stockade, the only one showing mercy and offering him water is Esmeralda, earning her his eternal fealty.

The overriding theme seems to be that everybody wants somebody else, so nobody gets what they want. Frollo and Quasimodo wants Esmeralda. Esmeralda wants Phoebus and Phoebus does not care about anybody but himself. Only Gringoire seems to accept his lot and is the only one coming out of this on top.

The astounding thing to me is how moronic the principal characters are. The argument would be that it is love that messes with people’s brains, but seriously, it is a hard call who of these characters is most stupid. The amount of self-sabotage and recklessness all round is incredible. Granted, without it there would be very little story, but it bothers me when the drama hinges on people making idiotic decisions.

Put a gun to my head, Esmeralda would be the worst. Not for staying principled when standing her ground against Frollo, but for assigning so much faith in the worthless Phoebus, who has literally nothing to his credit but a handsome uniform. Her empty headed idiocy would be a good match for the moronic Phoebus, but it is also what ultimately costs her her life and she never realizes that.

The failure of finding relatable characters, with the possible exception of Gringoire, makes it a disappointing read. You can only spend so much time with idiots. I also find Hugo’s narrative style problematic. The novel does not feel planned, at least not structurally, but evolves from spur of the moment decisions. My impression is of a writer who writes about what he feels like today, with little care of what went before or whether it fits into a general narrative. Tying such a sprawling narrative into a whole would be challenging and I do not think Hugo is altogether successful there.

Obviously, I am in the minority here. The stature of this story demonstrates that beyond a doubt. You do not make 16 movies on a novel people do not like. I just wonder if anybody actually read the novel or simply base their opinion on various sanitized versions of it.

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” does not rank very high for me and I am not rushing out to watch any of the 16 movies. There are a few more novels by Victor Hugo on the List, so he will get another chance to convince me of his claim to fame.

   

The Red and the Black: A Novel of Post-Napoleonic France - Stendhal (1830)

 

The Red and the Black

Stendhal’s (with the civilian name Henti Marie Beyle) book, “The Red and the Black” is a satirical portrait of France in the late 1820’ies, during the restoration after Napoleon and immediately before the revolution of 1830. Stendhal’s France is divided into the haves and the haves-not, the conservatives (ultras) and the liberals and the capital versus the province. Despite the revolution, it is still a playground for the rich and ripe with nepotism and corruption. To navigate this France is more about knowing the right people than merit.

Here we find our protagonist, Julien Sorel, a poor son of a carpenter from a small town in the province of Franche-Comté. Julien is ambitious and dreams of greatness. His big hero is Napoleon whom he tries to emulate in everything he does. As a possible way out of his current straits and towards greatness, he is being trained by the local priest. This training amounts to learning Latin and entire passages of the bible by heart and less so the actual religious doctrines. Form rather than content. This skill however lands him a job as a tutor for the children of the local Mayor, M De Renal and, more importantly Mme de Renal.

Julien is at heart a good person, his instincts are right, but he is convinced that he must emulate his hero and be Machiavellian and manipulative in his actions to get anywhere in life. Because of this doctrine he must seduce Mme de Renal. To do that will be a great victory, but exactly what to do with that victory, he has not really considered. As it happens, Mme de Renal is taken by this young man and despite himself Julien falls in love with her, something that is difficult for him to admit to himself. My guess is that Julien falls in love with her because Mme de Renal is the only honest character in the entire book.

Eventually this affair becomes public, and Julien is forced to leave. He takes a degree in theology in Besancon and when the head of the seminary leaves for Paris he brings along Julien. Julien becomes the secretary of Marquise de la Mole and through this becomes a witness to high society life in Paris. Torn between his innate integrity and his Machiavellian doctrine, he manages to become indispensable to the Marquise and seduce his daughter.

Stendahl uses Julien Sorel both as a witness to the France he is presenting and as a personification of the dilemmas and absurdity of getting along in various circles of this country. The motivation of honour and greatness sometimes works for Julien, but at other times leads him into trouble, more often than not of a ridiculous sort. There is a very high level of hypocrisy everywhere, and many of the characters act more according to how they think their actions are perceived, than what is genuinely in their own best interest. Julien is trained as a priest, but I cannot recall him ever having a pious thought. Mathilde de la Mole is more in love with romantic passion than any of her suitors and M De Renal arranges his entire life to impress those around him, oblivious that he is becoming a public cuckold.

Stendahl’s writing is incredibly witty, and his observations are knife-sharp, but his satire never becomes unrealistic, and he is never mean to his characters. It is the realism that keeps everything grounded and, which I love, functions as a window into life in France at this time. It is also because of this realism the comedy works here. Stendhal’s characters stop short of being clowns or caricatures but are character types we would recognize. We are not quite laughing at them but smile with amusement.

This makes “The Red and the Black” a very amusing read and I love the way Stendhal writes. He could have produced an unlikable protagonist with that doctrine of his, but there is a sympathy, a sense that underneath Julien has good instincts, that allows us to identify with him and we do not reject him. At least not entirely.  Julien is France in 1830. Misled, confused, a hypocrite, but at heart good.

“The Red and the Black” is in my top-5 of the books I have read so far on the List. Highly recommended.

 

The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni (1827)

 

The Betrothed

I am not accustomed to Italian novels on this list, but this one, “The Betrothed”, is apparently one of the most famous Italian novels and hence included on the List.

We follow a young couple from a village outside of Milan in the seventeenth century. He is Lorenzo, a young silk weaver, and she is Lucy, a bashful young girl. They want to get married, but the curate, Don Abbodio, refuses to wed them because he has been threatened by thugs not to do so. The thugs belong to the local noble, Don Roderick, who wants the girl for himself. An attempt to capture her by force fails but sends the young couple on the run and thus starts an adventure.

They get help from a Capuchin friar called Christopher who sends Lucy to one and Lorenzo to another monastery in Milan. Both end up in trouble, Lucy betrayed by a nun and kidnapped by a gangster and Lorenzo gets unintendedly involved in an uprising and accused of treason, causing him to hide out in Bergamo. Their adventures are many and through them we get introduced to many aspects of life in seventeenth century Italy.

There is the food shortage and ensuing riots in Milan, the havoc of war when passing soldiers of various origin plunder everything they can get their hands on and send the local population fleeing, seriously deepening the food shortage crisis into a shortage of anything but misery and finally the plague, killing left and right, high and low. Throughout, the authorities tasked with handling these crisis’s are completely inept or corrupt, deepening rather then alleviating the disasters with either lack of or self-serving actions. The only authority that effectively deal the string of disasters is the church and that is mainly driven by a few energetic characters.

While the apparent story of Lucy and Lorenzo is both interesting and touching, “The Betrothed” can be read as an allegory of Italy in the nineteenth century. I can definitely see that. In a very direct way, the author goes to great pains to describe the situation around the various crisis’s, more than is strictly necessary for the story of Lucy and Lorenzo, but in order to make us understand what is going on. This insight is interesting in itself but it also helps us to understand some social and political dynamics with relevance to the nineteenth century.

I am thinking that the allegory can be taken a lot further. Lucy and Lorenzo may represent the Italian people who wants to be united but is not allowed because out outside agents. Greedy nobles (Roderick) who stops at nothing, self-serving politicians, outside powers, in the book Spanish, German and French soldiers, in the nineteenth century, French and Austrian troops battling it out in Italy and keeping the place occupied. The role of the plague as an allegory is a bit mystifying, but may represent disasters outside human control, but to which we can respond irresponsibly or sensibly. A clear message it is that much of the trouble is unnecessary as they are created by irresponsible or self-serving people or are aggravated by the same. Probably a good picture of the fragmented Italy in 1827 and in many ways even today.

Lucy and Lorenzo do get each other, it is that kind of story, and so the author promises that also the Italians will get each other and hopefully learn by the mistakes of the past.

As a reading experience, “The Betrothed” was an interesting book to read. The adventures of Lucy and Lorenzo sometimes loses a bit of momentum when the narrative turns tangential, but these tangents may actually be the best part of the book as they provide so much insight. Especially the section about the plague in Milan was gripping and interesting. Since our own experience with the pandemic, there is so much to recognize here. The powerlessness in the face of an indiscriminate killer, the draconian steps to curtail the contagion, the strange conspiracies springing up, especially to blame somebody for the disaster or refuse to accept it for what it is. We have so recent been exactly there. When I read about the Lazaretto in Milan, the picture I saw were those of the over-crowded hospitals in Bergamo in March 2020.

“The Betrothed” is a recommended read and one I understand Italians will insist is essential.