Dead Mother (1898) by Max Klinger
“May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not THERE – not in heaven – not perished – where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!“
That’s the end of Wuthering Heights‘ Heathcliff‘s tirade against his faithless lover Catherine who has just died in childbirth, a speech which begins in anger and blasphemy and ends in beseechment and pleading, which epitomizes the love hate relationship between the two characters.
Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë‘s only novel. The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this love hate relationship eventually destroys both themselves and many around them.
this makes me want to reread it immediately
I never have, and want to see the film. Any suggestions for a version?
parts of the book are funny, parodies of yorkshire stereotypes loom large, and i rarther think that emily bronte was ostentatiously taking the piss out of emotional blackmailers and grand passion at the same time as she was outdoing any rivals in the romance & passion business
Why the Max Klinger? Odd combo, Max and Emily…
I think calling her a “faithless lover” is rather harsh, taking the male point of view too easily, but perhaps my memory fails…
Two film treatments I know of – First, Laurence Olivier & Merle Oberon. Hollywood for sure, romantic, but wonderful actors. Soft pedals the demonic side of Heathcliff.
Luis Bunuel made a version during his Mexican period, The Abyss of Passion. (It’s all in Spanish – don’t know the original title.) As you can imagine, l’amour fou was the theme.
If you like the Gothic side of Wuthering Heights, you might like Confessios of a Justified Sinner (I Feel Justified on my blog) which has a protagonist that is like Heathcliff high on religion.
Dear Lichanos,
It seems odd I do not know your first name.
The link between the Klinger image and Wutherinig is “died in childbirth”, in a genre I have termed juxtapoetry (a term is seem to own Google-wise for the time being), and which seems unrecorded at this time in print.
Thanks for the film tips, I later looked it up and if given the choice I would go for Hurlevent by Jacques Rivette.
…I think calling her a “faithless lover” is rather harsh, taking the male point of view too easily, but perhaps my memory fails…
I’ve not read the book, but after posting this I thought about that H. is portrayed as a Byronic hero and C. as a faithless lover, which basically means that both sexes can identify, a bit as Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big in Sex and the City.
I know Justified and will check your entry. I must confess again that I’ve actually read not that much. I was an avid reader between my 16th and 20th and since then I’ve read during the holidays. The internet has come and made it possible to view and read snippets here and there; I’ve since largely lost interest in the “linear thing” and prefer short stories. Who was who said that the novel was a “padded short story”?
H. high on religion, I love your succinct description.
Yours
jan
Lichanos is my name, like Cher, Bono, you know. Besides, I must preserve my anonymity. This is a puritan country.
…and Mr. Big in Sex and the City.
From the ten minutes or so of Sex in the City I have seen, I would say that even if your analogy is true, WH is vastly more nuanced and interesting. Which is why I rarely watch more than an hour of TV a week – life is short, too many good books to read.
I wonder, why have you lost interest in the “linear thing?” Is surfing and snipping really as satisfying? I admit, I love to do it, but that’s because I have the time for both – if I were pressed for free time, I know what my choice would be. But then, that’s my personal history, an intense bookworm from day 1. As a teenager, it took me years to feel “comfortable” with film, and I still approach it with caution, wary of being taken in by some disreputable manipulator.
And then, if nobody reads, who will create the content on the Internet. Or shall our Internet knowledge network devolve according to the law of entropy into an increasingly trivial and diffuse blather of tidbits, video clips, and opinions? Ah, but the content is what it is…it’s the interpretation that counts. But what if the content is trivial? Cannot be, right? All content is equal, it’s what you make of it. Carrie Bradshaw equates to Catherine – they function the same, play the same role, so the ARE the same.
I think this point of view is simply what the right-wing gay-bashers call a lifestyle choice. It’s not really an intellectual stance or position. Is such a thing worth having? I think so. Why? I have old fashioned views that would render me insufferably boring – and bored – if I were to burden this post with them.
I apologize for ranting, but I think you will take it in the friendly spirit with which I offer it.
I am actually named after Heathcliff,it’s my first unused initial.
The film adaptation which stayed with me most,was the version with Timothy 007 Dalton playing Heathcliff with demonic zeal.
Regarding the novel vs the short story,I recently read The Tree Of Smoke by Denis Jonson and can honestly say it gave me no more pleasure than his short stories.
Isn’t the event novel a marketing construct ?
Individuals who read,tend to do so for pleasure and can access it in a well written short story,Richard Yates comes to mind.
This blog slays me, because it makes me buy art books.
Does anyone really remember what they read online?
I recall Jeanette Winterson saying that text from a screen is processed differently than text off a page. Is this true?
Watching a film in the cinema is a revelation compared to a tv/monitor .
Your rants make this blog a better place.
…And then, if nobody reads, who will create the content on the Internet.
I do not think that the readers are in general the writers too.
…Is surfing and snipping really as satisfying?
It’s addictive. But I try to keep track of my snippets, see to it that they do not vanish into thin air. And … so many books so little time, I once calculated that reading all the books in 1001 Books of an average of 250 pages per book at an average reading speed of 50 pages per hour would take 625 8 hour days. Seeing the same amount of films of 90 minutes would take a third of the time.
Hence my interest in thematic literary criticism and its relatives.
That is why I read lots of books on books, and I read them by the index, I love indices.
Jan
Scott,
What did you buy?
P. S. Thanks again for the Hercules thing.
Jan
The thing that gets me about this blog is that you keep blasting me from my past. Todorov, The Fantastic! I haven’t thought of that book in 30 years!! What the f**k was I doing then? And I’m not much older than you if I calculate right. It’s weird for me to see things that I devoured like drugs treated seriously or semi-seriously on the Internet.
I do not think that the readers are the writers too.
Seriously, that’s my point. Who ARE the writers?? Do we look forward to the day when there will be none, and everything will be off-the-cuff?
I assume that you don’t intend your book-film calculation to be taken seriously. After all, 1 book = 1 film is meaningless. Besides, if you take into account the fact that about 1/3 of the time you are staring at the screen that it is actually blank, or is 1/4, I forget the mechanics of film projection, it actually takes you less time to watch, or more time? Arrrgghh.
You like indices? You should make an anthology, or index of indices. I have some candidates for inclusion. I love a good index too, but only the old ones. Now it’s too easy to make an index, what with word processors. They have no soul!
“I do not think that the readers are the writers too.”
really? the writers I know are voracious readers as well. then again, I only know a handful so they might not be representational