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review 2014-03-08 14:26
Jean de Florette & Manon of the Springs (Two Novels) - Marcel Pagnol,W.E. van Heyningen

Jean de FloretteThe Water of the Hillspremière partie

Jean de Florette is the first part of Marcel Pagnol's moving, humorous, mournful, triumphant two-part novel titled The Water of the Hills. His story, set in the bucolic hillside of Provence, is a lesson in the power of nature- of the land in its capacity for sustaining life and destroying it; it represents the varying shades of human nature, determined resolve and resilience. Family, and the continuity of generations are also a significant aspect of the novel's theme.

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The provincial drama sets the sly, old peasant Cesar Soubeyran(aka Papet), and his dimwitted nephew, Ugolin(aka Galinette) against the cultured, refined hunchback from Crespin, Jean Cadoret, focusing on a plot of land that is fundamental to them all. 

On the deaths of his grandfather and his mother, Florette, Jean inherits a farm, Les Romarins, near the small town of Les Bastides. Being disgusted with city life in Crespin, he moves with his wife, Aimee and little daughter, Manon, devising grandiose plans to cultivate and live off the land. The Soubeyrans have their own schemes for the land--rich of soil, under which flows the eponymous natural springs--and deviously plot to sabotage Jean's endeavors.

The ill-treatment of Jean de Florette from the villagers of Les Bastides bears a slight resemblance to that of Victor Hugo's Notre Dame character, Quasimodo. He is looked upon as an unwelcomed stranger, an outsider, mistrusted, alienated, and even abused by a 'stray' boule. 

Jean's farming devices are successful when nature is kind, but eventually, he is dishearteningly defeated by its destructive wrath. His refusal to 'never give up' stems from the city life he left, where he was humiliated, also for his hunchback. The stubbornness and determination to forge on, despite the disastrous toll on his finances and health, not withstanding the devious actions of the Soubeyrans, lead to his tragic downfall, creating the opportunity for the Soubeyrans to takeover the coveted land.

Pagnol's dual tales were well rendered in film, but to read the novel version was a sheer delight. His literary style was easy flowing, his prose vivid. Many a well-turned phrase made me utter praise for the author and the translator.

Part One ends: ***weeps uncontrollably***
Jean's story, as anticipated, ends tragically but very compelling to catapult the reader head on to the next part. 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rDJXPiyvQfg ( Jean de Florette trailer, 1986)

**********

Manon of the SpringsThe Water of the Hillsdeuxième partie
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The story picks up a few years later. Papet, anxious for an heir to continue the Soubeyran bloodline, has only his not-too-sharp-thinking nephew, Ugolin, to consider. He justifies his family's lineage: "partly out of pride and partly not to be separated from their money, they intermarry, cousin to cousin, and even uncles and nieces... At the end of four or five generations you get a maniac like my grand uncle, Elzéar. Two maniacs and three suicides. And now there's the two of us, and I don't count anymore. Now this Soubeyran family is you!" 

Manon, now a teenaged beauty, educated, smart and a bit of a wildling shepherdess, is at the center of attention. The self-indulgent Ugolin choosing her for a wife and obsesses about her to an ever-climbing psychopathic degree: "I saw you when you were bathing in the rain pool... I looked at you for a long time, you were so beautiful I was afraid of committing a crime." (not a very gallant way to declare one's love, dimwit!)

Manon could hardly recognize him after four years, "but this person had played a large part in her past ...since her childhood he had inspired in her an irrational aversion, and since he had taken the farm from her, this aversion had turned to hate."

The stirrings of love enters Manon's heart for the first time, but they are for Bernard, the new schoolteacher in Les Bastides. Besides the tension of love-rivalry, Manon realizes the treacherous hand that Ugolin and his uncle played in her father's ultimate demise: 

"The long suffering of her father, his three years of heroic effort, had become almost ridiculous ...the little hunter had said that people had laughed at him. It was not the blind forces of nature, or the cruelty of fate, that he had fought for such a long time, but the tricks and hypocrisy of stupid peasants, sustained by the silence of a coalition of miserable wretches, whose spirit was as low as their feet. He was no longer a vanquished hero, but the pitiable victim of a monstrous farce, a weakling who had employed all his efforts for the amusement of an entire village."


The way she settles her revenge is one of the book's bitter ironies that inspired a hearty: "You go, girl!" from this reader.

Pagnol portrayed the French pastoral life and small town idiosyncrasies with precise accuracy, down to the petty little squabbles, superstitions, jealousies, prejudices, and even the little secrets no-one claims to 'know' about:

"The 'band of unbelievers' (thus referred since they never went to mass) would often gather around the terrace of Philoxène's café for gossip, and so they talked about 'other people's business,' but by means of discreet allusions--for example, when the baker said one evening: "some families are really on good terms with each other," it was because Petoffi had just gone by and he was suspected of being the father of his sister-in-law's child."


On the lighter side, these characteristics of the townfolk are more amoral than fatalistic; mostly, they are humorously co-mingled with the community's bond of camaraderie, and general sense of good nature, once they get to know you. For, if called upon to dig a little deeper, they would put aside the pettiness for the sense of 'right and good conscience' to surface.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_sdSX4V9XAo (Manon of the Springs trailer, 1986)

Revenge, justice, well-conceived ironic twists, and the examination of earthly dark and lightness: melodramatically build the final part of this captivating, well-written novel of the forces of nature, both divine and humanistic; a fertile mixture of tears and laughs, which I could only highly recommend.

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review 2014-01-20 15:30
Frenchman's Creek - Daphne du Maurier

Lady Dona St. Columb, an 18th-century aristocrat married to a baronet, flees from an over-indulgent life in London, away from tedium of King Charles II's court, to the family's house in Cornwall.

 

Lady Dona is self-willed and obstinate, frustrated and unhappy with her life. Suffocated by her boring marriage and foppish husband, she seeks escape in reckless ways. By the time she meets the French pirate, Jean-Benoit Aubéry, she's ripe for adventure and passion.

 

The tale's romantic build-up is subtle; the reader is kept aware of the mounting attraction between the Lady (whose children came along on the retreat, btw) and the formidable, not -bad -to -look -at pirate thief. It's intriguing to see how moral standards would hold up in the story - Du Maurier keeps you in a slight quandary about that! More deeply, the reader follows the sorting-out of the heroine's self-identity. In this case, Dona is uncertain of her "woman's instincts". Her nurturing and domestic sides are in a challenging duel with the yearning for freedom, excitement and romance.

 

Du Maurier had a bit of fun with this character, dressing her in boy's breeches, ready to partake in some pirate-y mayhem like one of the crew of "La Mouette" - the Frenchman's ship anchored in the creek. The clandestine adventure changes as quickly as the wind and takes on a dangerous course for Dona . She would find her mettle in a pivotal point in the novel, changing her life forever. The long-awaited surge of energy happens like a roller coaster that plunges at breakneck speed after the painstaking slow rise to the top. Dona's newly discovered inner self bursts through in heart-pounding, edge -of -the -seat scenes to a very fitting climactic finish.

 

It only takes a handsome pirate - and a cry - to help put it all in perspective.

 

Not disappointing after all. This was actually a good read, not fluffy but compelling enough to finish in one sitting. The characters are well conceived, never boring. "Frenchman's Creek" may not be one of Du Maurier's better suspenseful, gothic noirs but its lightness was duly satisfying and enjoyable.

 

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review 2014-01-19 06:57
Camille - Alexandre Dumas


This is the tragic story of the life of a courtesan, Marguerite Gautier (dubbed Camille or Lady of the Camellias for her always carrying a bouquet of the flowers), who, by willing sacrifice that could never have rewarded her in kind, proved her purity of love. It is also a lamentable apologetic story told by Armand Duval, the man who sworn love for her but judged her too harshly, too unwisely, and painfully abandoned her.

In the opening of the story, the narrator chances upon the auctioning of Camille's possessions, a process which literally began over her freshly dead body. There were no mourners at her death, and now among the remainders of a kept-woman, there are only spectators and bargain hunters. Camille truly died alone. The narrator remarks that "Marguerite was a pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation enough, their death makes very little. Their death, when they die young, is heard of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends."

He meets Armand Duval who, stricken by the death of Camille, recounts his possessive love affair with the famous courtesan and the circumstances that led to her early demise.

Dumas paints a vivid portrait of Paris life in 1847, of male patrons young and old whose keeping of mistresses was the norm, of the double standards and snobbery of "decent" society.
Camille or Lady of the Camillias is a love story that may be compared to Shakespeare's tragic story of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.

It is an autobiographical glimpse of Dumas' affair with Marie Duplessis, written four months after her death in 1847.
Throughout the story, one may easily assess the heavy guilt weighing the conscience of the famous author.

This might not be his usual adventure packed work but still it is a splendid taste of the romantic side of Alexandre Dumas, fils. It may be found free, printed in its entirety at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1608/1608-h/1608-h.htm

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review 2014-01-19 04:08
Masks - Enchi Fumiko

A man may try as hard as he likes but he'll never know what schemes a woman may be slowly and quietly carrying out behind his back

 

 The Tale of Enchi-

Fumiko Enchi started her career as a dramatist; she was influenced by Ibsen and Strindberg, and cultivated an interest in kabuki. She emerged in the early 50s as "a novelist of the fates of women both past and contemporary." Between 1967 and 1972 , she translated Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese. It is with this most enduring Japanese literary classic that Masks draws its parallels, supping on the perception of a woman's possession of a hidden supernatural energy.

 

Masks is the story of vindictiveness, passion, jealousy and vengeance, of women in solidarity aiming to achieve retribution against men, to perpetrate "a crime only women could commit." It is an exploration of class, sexual oppression and the suppression of women in a traditionally patriarchal society. Enchi brilliantly weaves a reinterpretation of the character Rokujō lady from The Tale of Genji with the vengeful spirit of the heroine Mieko, whose husband Togano Masatsugu, "believed to be descended from a powerful clan in line to become feudal lords" and who still adhered to dominating, misogynistic codes, had caused her severe and immeasurable humiliation and suffering throughout their marriage.

 

The novel is sectioned into three chapters, each named for Nō masks which metaphorically depict the novel's "cloaked" particulars, and in turn define its supernatural concerns.

 

The first chapter named Ryō no onna means 'spirit woman', the vengeful spirit of an older woman tormented by the bitterness of her life. Mieko's obsession with 'shamanism', spirit possession, and artful yet subtle manipulation become evident here.  In her scholarly treatise relating to The Tale of Genji, Mieko seems to sympathize and identify with the character Rokujō lady.  She writes : "As passion transforms the Rokujō lady into a living ghost, her spirit taking leave of her body again and again to attack and finally to kill Genji's wife Aoi, the commentators see in her tragic obsession a classic illustration of the evil karma attached to all womankind...the Rokujō lady turned unconsciously to spirit possession as the only available outlet for her strong will. The Rokujō lady is instead a Ryō no onna: one who chafes at her inability to sublimate her strong ego in deference to any man, but who can carry out her will by forcing it upon others and that indirectly, through the possessive capacity of her spirit." 

 

The second section of the novel is named for the Nō mask Masugami meaning "young madwoman," a woman as victim, a young woman in a state of frenzy . Each female character had at some point been reduced to a frenzied state: Aguri -the mistress, Mieko -the wife, Yasuko- the daughter in law, Harumé -the mentally handicapped daughter. Through Yasuko, Mieko controls the seduction of Ibuki (Yasuko's lover). He awakens to find Harumé in his bed; the treachery that he experiences is veiled in a dreamlike scenario. "Her heavily rouged, camellia-bright lips were ripe with sensuality, and her face was the face of Masugami - The mask of the young madwoman which he had seen at the home of Yorikata Yakushiji. It was all wrong...not knowing whether he might be drunk or dreaming, but sensing with faint vestiges of consciousness that rational thought lay for the time beyond his powers."

 

A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge - an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood flowing on from generation to generation.

 

Fukai heads the third and final chapter, meaning "deep well or deep woman", depicting middle-aged women, a metaphor comparing "the heart of an older woman to the depths of a bottomless well-a well so deep that its water would seem totally without color."  Mieko finally defines herself in this mask. After the twist and anguish that comes full circle like karmic influence, Mieko is left bereft. She comes to understand the crime she has perpetrated, realizes the result of her revenge and its effect on herself and others. The final scene is so esoteric- the reader is mesmerized by Mieko's hypnotic kabuki -like pose: "In that moment, the mask dropped from her grasp as if struck down by an invisible hand. In a trance she reached out and covered the face on the mask with her hand, while her right arm, as if suddenly paralyzed, hung frozen, immobile, in space." 

 

For those who have read The Tale of Genji, Masks is a welcomed, very brief revisitation of the Murasaki classic. The supernaturalism is rendered in typical Japanese style- subtle, mysterious, illusory, poetic; it will utterly engage fans of Japanese fiction writers like Tanizaki and Kawabata.

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review 2013-12-28 04:12
Of Human Bondage
Works of W. Somerset Maugham - W. Somerset Maugham

It has sometimes seemed to me that if the author can in no way keep himself out of his work it might be better if he put in as much of himself as possible.
- William Somerset Maugham.

 

Of Human Bondage was written in 1915 following a philosophical theme that William Somerset Maugham was developing during his first novel. It is Maugham's semi-autobiographical novel.


Philip Carey, born with a physically deformed foot, is orphaned at a very young age. He is raised in the house of his stoic, rigid, unyielding preacher uncle whom he grows to resent. As an intelligent and educated young adult, he is harshly disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt to become an artist. Floundering, he eventually settles on a medical career, where his compassion and capacity to ease his patients' suffering seem natural, inborn. He meets an ill mannered waitress, Mildred Rogers, and falls in love. They are, from the start, undeniably unsuited - completely incompatible to one another. Their obsessive and irrational, back and forth relationship is based on Maugham's developed philosophy of "human bondage" and the novel's central theme of love and passion.

 

Maugham postulated in his book (he refused to call it an autobiography or a book of recollections) The Summing Up:
"I believed we were wretched puppets at the mercy of a ruthless fate; and that, bound by the inexorable laws of nature, we were doomed to take part in the ceaseless struggle for existence with nothing to look forward to but inevitable defeat. I learnt that men were moved by egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species, and I decided that, whatever aims men set themselves, they were deluded, for it was impossible for them to aim at anything but their own selfish pleasures." (The Summing Up, p.73)

 

Maugham's philosophy questioned the nature of human actions and their underlying motivations: If someone's choice of action is based on his rational will yet he is controlled by his very nature to follow a different action, then his rational will is not free. He is in psychological bondage.


The natural instincts of Maugham's characters are persistently scourged by unrelenting passion.  Fanny Price, for example, the failed artist who needily attaches herself to Philip in Paris, is in a kind of bondage to the passion to paint. Her desire is deep rooted and overwhelming. Disregarding time and again her instructors' humiliating assessments of her lack of skill, she is driven to frantic levels and eventual self destruction.

 

Mildred is described as "anemic", a woman not even generically attractive, a consideration which makes Philip's infatuation of her the more odd. She is stupid and common - her passions are essentially primal; she's more easily drawn to men who are as manipulative and undependable as herself. For a caring, concerned, vulnerable and likable man like Philip, whom she describes often as a "real gentleman", she could barely tolerate. She is, to some degree, also in bondage to her own passions.

 

Philip's personal binds are obvious, beginning with his early comprehension of his physical restrictions - the origins of the barrier to his psychological freedom. Philip looses faith in the religion which proclaims freedom of prerogative; he realizes he hasn't the skill to follow his desire to paint; he obsessively loves Mildred in spite of her loathsome conduct and her inability to love him back; he suffers dire poverty when finding work is impeded by his club foot. Until Philip finds power over his constraining desires, his progression as the novel's protagonist remain stymied.

 

Maugham clearly made his point with Philip and Mildred's relationship, although too often, too repetitively. Philip seemed to fall into the same trap over and over again, without learning from his past bad experiences with this she-devil. Many times I shouted at him and wanted to shake him (gently, of course) from sheer exasperation.

 

Of Human Bondage is a wonderful read, be prepared to holler at Philip but don't miss out on the basic human lessons. Highly recommended.

 

 

 

 

 

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