Sentimental, condescending, and dismissive, Lamartine’s fictionalized memoirs have aged badly.
A new translation describes the erotic awakening of a young Frenchman.
In 1849, Lamartine, the Romantic poet and French statesman, began publishing his memoirs, in serial form, in the newspaper La Presse. One section of those memoirs became so popular that Lamartine eventually published it as a short book. It told the story of a love affair between the 18-year-old Lamartine and an Italian fisherman’s daughter named Graziella. Almost every detail of the story has since been proven fictional. Still, the book remains a cornerstone of French Romanticism. In a new translation and with contextual notes and an introduction by MacKenzie, Lamartine’s story comes to us afresh. According to his tale, he met Graziella while on tour in Naples. He and a friend had been slumming as fishermen when they fell in with her family. He ended up staying with them for months, and, even though he and Graziella were both attractive and roughly the same age, the family suspected no foul play. Things go awry when Graziella acquires a rather unfortunate suitor (Lamartine describes him as “misshapen and limping”) who, nonetheless, would have made an excellent match. Unfortunately, the book hasn’t aged well. Lamartine’s depictions of the poor fisherman’s family come across as simultaneously idealized and condescending. Worse is the way the figure of Graziella is used to depict the young Lamartine’s erotic awakening. Once she has served her purpose, she is cast aside.
Sentimental, condescending, and dismissive, Lamartine’s fictionalized memoirs have aged badly.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0248-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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