The Venus of Ille (1837) – Prosper Mérimée

In search of le fantastique in literature and pygmalionism

Cover of unidentified audio book

Prosper Mérimée is best known for writing the opera Carmen made famous by Bizet, which has also been adapted to film by Radley Metzger, is featured here with a short story/novella about a statue that comes to life, a fantastic story.

“The Venus of Ille” is about an old bronze statue unearthed in the town of Ille, in the French Pyrenees. It is unearthed in the yard of Monsieur de Peyrehorade, a “very learned antiquarian.” He is quite taken with it, and in fact thinks more about it than about the upcoming wedding of his son. The nameless narrator is visiting Peyrehorade simply to look at the ruins in the area, but on hearing about the statue he is intrigued. Before he gets a good look at the statue he sees two townies throw a stone at the statue (while it was being unearthed it fell on the leg of a workman and broke it) only to have the stone thrower cry out in pain and say that the statue threw the stone back at him. The narrator laughs this away, but on seeing the statue up close he isn’t so sanguine. The form and body are magnificent, but its face is…not so magnificent. —http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicv.html [Oct 20006]

The 1979 La Venere di Ille was made as part of a series of movies commissioned by the Italian TV station RaiDue focusing on the fantastic in 19th century literature. The texts were selected by the Italian author Italo Calvino. Mario Bava and his son Lamberto directed the film.

Excerpt

“Shortly afterwards, the door opened a second time, and some one came in who said, ‘Good evening, my little wife.’ Then the curtains were drawn back. She heard a stifled cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up apparently with extended arms. Then she turned her head and saw her husband, kneeling by the bed with his head on a level with the pillow, held close in the arms of a sort of greenish-colored giant. She says, and she repeated it to me twenty times, poor woman!- she says that she recognized- do you guess who?-the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue. Since it has been here every one dreams about it. But to continue the poor lunatic’s story. At this sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her mind. She cannot tell how long she remained in this condition. Returned to her sense she saw the phantom, or the statue as she insists on calling it, lying immovable, the legs and lower part of the body on the bed, the bust and arms extended forward, and between the arms her husband, quite motionless. A cock crew. Then the statue left the bed, let fall the body, and went out. Mme. Alphonse rushed to the bell, and you know the rest.”

—http://frenital.byu.edu/merimee/works/TheVenusofIlle.html [Oct 2006]

Prosper Mérimée (September 28, 1803–September 23, 1870) was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. One of his stories was the basis of the opera Carmen. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e [Oct 2006]

The Marquise von O (1808) – Heinrich von Kleist

The Marquise von O (1808) – Heinrich von Kleist
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The Marquise von O is an 1808 novella by Heinrich von Kleist which was adapted to film by Eric Rhomer in 1976.

The Marquise von O is a novella by Heinrich von Kleist. The story begins with a marvelous single sentence paragraph relating how in a prominent town in northern Italy the widow the Marquise von O. places an announcement in the newspapers to the efect that she is pregnant and wishes the father of her child to make himself known to her, in order that she can marry him. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Marquise_von_O [Oct 2006]

The best British, Irish or Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005

Via Conversational Reading:

A recent poll in the New York Times named Toni Morrison’s Beloved as the greatest work of American fiction in the past 25 years. But what about over here? On the eve of this year’s Booker Prize, we asked 150 literary luminaries to vote for the best British, Irish or Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005: —Observer.Guardian.UK

Disgrace (1999) – JM Coetzee

Money (1984) – Martin Amis

Earthly Powers (1980) – Anthony Burgess

Atonement (2001) – Ian McEwan

The Blue Flower (1995) – Penelope Fitzgerald

The Unconsoled (1995) – Kazuo Ishiguro

Midnight’s Children (1981) – Salman Rushdie

The Remains of the Day (1989) – Kazuo IshiguroAmongst Women (1990) – John McGahern

That They May Face the Rising Sun (2001) – John McGahern

Hawksmoor (1985) Peter AckroydThe Old Devils (1986) Kingsley Amis

Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995) Kate Atkinson

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Margaret Atwood

An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) Beryl Bainbridge

The Wasp Factory (1984) Iain Banks

The Untouchable (1997) John Banville

The Regeneration Trilogy (1991-95) Pat Barker

Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) Julian Barnes

A Long, Long Way (2005) Sebastian Barry

Ill Seen Ill Said (1981) Samuel Beckett

Possession: A Romance (1990) AS Byatt

True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) Peter Carey

A Perfect Spy (1986) John le Carre

Nights at the Circus (1984), Wise Children (1991) Angela Carter

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Age of Iron (1990), Masters of Petersburg (1994) JM Coetzee

The Barrytown Trilogy (1987-91) Roddy Doyle

Gwendolen (1989) Buchi Emecheta

Birdsong (1993) Sebastian Faulks

The Beginning of Spring (1988) Penelope Fitzgerald

To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy (1980-89) William Golding

Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983), 1982, Janine (1984) Alasdair Gray

Transit of Venus (1981) Shirley Hazzard

Ridley Walker (1980) Russell Hoban

The Line of Beauty (2004) Alan Hollinghurst

Never Let Me Go (2005) Kazuo Ishiguro

A Disaffection (1989), How Late It Was, How Late (1994) James Kelman

The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) Hanif Kureishi

English Passengers (2004) Matthew Kneale

The Life of Pi (2002) Yann Martel

As Meat Loves Salt (2001) Maria McCann

The Comfort of Strangers (1981), Enduring Love (1997) Ian McEwan

No Great Mischief (1999) Alistair MacLeod

Fugitive Pieces (1996) Anne Michaels

The Restraint of Beasts (1998) Magnus Mills

A Fine Balance (1995) Rohinton Mistry

Mother London (1988) Michael Moorcock

The Enigma of Arrival (1987) VS Naipaul

After You’d Gone (2000) Maggie O’Farrell

His Dark Materials Trilogy (1995-2000) Philip Pullman

I Was Dora Suarez (1990) Derek Raymond

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2005) JK Rowling

The God of Small Things (1997) Arundhati Roy

A Suitable Boy (1993) Vikram Seth

Hotel World (2001) Ali Smith

A Far Cry From Kensington (1988) Muriel Spark

The White Hotel (1981) DM Thomas

Restoration (1989) Sacred Country (1992) Rose Tremain

Omeros (1990) Derek Walcott

The Passion (1987) Jeanette Winterson

In search of plotlessness

Metafilter has an entry on plotlessness.

I love Raymond Carver’s short stories because they’re complete and perfect without much happening in them, in terms of action and plot development. What I’d like to find is some novels that are similarly “plotless”? Do they exist?

There are Carver stories which are so good you HAVE to finish them, even though all that happens is someone goes to bingo, sees someone else there, goes home, feels sad and goes to bed. I’m looking for novels where the prime reason you keep on reading isn’t to see “what happens” but because you want to spend more time with the characters or the writing itself; ideally books where very little “happens” at all… metafilter, March 8, 2005

And Wikipedia has an article on slice of life story, which reminds me of the boredom and realism of everyday life and the kitchen sink drama:

A slice of life story is a story which has no real plot. Often it has no exposition, no action, no conflict, and no denouement, but an open ending. It usually tries to depict the every-day life of ordinary people. The term slice of life is actually a (more or less) dead metaphor: it often seems as if the author had taken a knife and cut out a slice of the lives of some characters, apparently not bothering at all where the cuts were made.

It has also been defined as an “episode of actual experience represented realistically and with little alteration in a dramatic, fictional, or journalistic work.”. —Wikipedia

Her stupid questions …

“Her stupid questions, which once had seemed to me the happiest proof of her love; her voice, which had once been capable of exciting me physically; her touch which had ravished me, all had only one effect and influence over me now—to enervate me. She became jealous, or behaved as if she were; there was scene after scene. I realized that I should have been devastated, but all I could feel was torture. Then she would kiss my hand, beg for forgiveness, we would rest side by side, and I was consumed by boredom. I ate oranges and was annoyed by the thought that I would have to get up in the middle of the night and go home. And as I held her in my arms, I was thinking of any other woman, longing for any other woman, a prostitute for all I cared, if only I could have kissed other lips, heard other sighs…”

If Schnitzler was a master of the playboy type, he was even more famous for his depiction of the woman with whom the playboy was so often involved, das susses Madel, “the sweet girl.” She is socially inferior and sexually accessible; he can buy her company with modest gifts. Each of the parties in this relationship is subject to a characteristic illusion: the young man pretends that there may be a future for their affair; the young woman tries to pretend that she is content with its impermanence. The break, when it comes, is likely to be awkward for the young man, painful for the young woman. Far from being the femme fatale of the fin-de-siècle aesthetic imagination, she is fragile and vulnerable. –via http://media.ucsc.edu/classes/thompson/schnitzler.html [Oct 2006]

See also: Arthur Schnitzler (1862 – 1931)

Death and the maiden trope

Death and the Maiden (1512) – Niklaus Manuel Deutsch
Image sourced here.

In the frescoe of Berne, a skeleton kisses the virgin on her cheek and grabs her full breasts.
Image sourced here.

Death and Woman (1517) – Hans Baldung Grien

 

A maiden is a female virgin (though originally it referred to males as well), or to any young woman.

This theme [death and the maiden] has a multi-faceted past. It is rooted in very old mythological traditions: among the ancient Greeks, the abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades (Pluto), god of Hell, is a clear prefiguration of the clash between Eros and Thanatos. The young goddess gathered flowers in company of carefree nymphs when she saw a pretty narcissus and plucked it. At that moment, the ground opened; Hades came out of the underworld and abducted Persephone. — http://www.lamortdanslart.com/fille/maiden.htm