bloodygranuaile (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodygranuaile) wrote2014-05-16 10:37 pm
bloodygranuaile) wrote2014-05-16 10:37 pm
"...And then he died, having become excessive fat."
Back in January, my Classics book club read La Princesse de Cleves, by Madame de La Fayette. I did not read it at the time, since the meeting was the same weekend as Arisia. Instead, I began reading it in Paris, on the train to Versailles. Sadly, my Kindle died during the plane ride home, so I had to take a break from reading it until I could buy Kyle’s old one off him (thanks, Kyle!). I have finally finished the damn thing.
La Princesse de Cleves (or, in English, The Princess of Cleves) is one of the great French romantic novels, and a very early specimen thereof, having been first published in 1678. It is one of the first, if not arguably the first, psychological novels, most of the page space being dedicated to recording the various characters’ thoughts and emotions, and occasionally dialogue. There is fairly little action, although people do die a lot, mostly of vague illnesses that seem to be brought on by strong emotions.
The story takes place about a hundred years before its publication, in the 1550s, during the reign of Henri II. The French royal court is still based squarely in Paris, at the Louvre. Historical figures such as Diana de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, and Mary Stuart run around, although it is frequently difficult to figure this out, since everybody is referred to only by their titles at all times, which is doubly confusing when people’s titles change (at one point, the king dies, and is succeeded by his son, the king). I couldn’t tell you what the hell Catherine de Medici actually does in this book because I can’t remember if she’s the Queen, the other Queen, or the Queen-Dauphin.
As a result… I can’t tell you what our protagonist’s name is. She starts off as the Mademoiselle de Chartres, a superlatively beautiful and sweet and witty young noblewoman in a France predictably full of beautiful sweet witty young noblewomen. (At least Madame de La Fayette doesn’t pull a Tolkien on us and individually introduce every female character as “the most beautiful and with the best hair” like that’s supposed to differentiate them from the others; she just introduces The Court as being a place full of fabulous attractive people, straight up.) Mademoiselle de Chartres catches the attention of pretty much everybody, but the person whose attention she catches first, and who is the only one who pursues her, is the Prince de Cleves. Since her mother had only brought the virginal innocent sixteen-year-old(!) Mademoiselle to the den of vice that (apparently) was the Court in order to make her an advantageous marriage, and since Mademoiselle has no experience fancying people at all and is a little vague on what it’s supposed to be like anyway, but like the Prince perfectly well enough as a friend and a person, the Prince’s suit is rewarded and Mademoiselle de Chartres becomes Madame de Cleves.
The Prince, who is passionately in love with his wife, keeps trying to Win Her Heart, and Madame keeps being like “Sorry? I like you just fine, honey, I’m sorry it’s not more… whatever you’re on about” but other than that things are great until the Duc de Nemours returns from wherever he’d been faffing about, probably something to do with the Italian war. The Duc de Nemours is apparently the ideal man, from French romantic perspective—in addition to being rich and titled and intelligent and brave and dashing and honored in battle, he is so terribly handsome that everybody falls in love with him, and so terribly kindhearted that he can’t help being kind and sweet and attentive to anybody that wants his attention, and is fond of pretty much everybody, and doesn’t have any macho douchy attitudes about women, instead genuinely liking their company and conversation, with the attendant result that he’s happily a giant slut. There’s enough Duc de Nemours for everybody! At least, there is until he meets his best friend the Prince de Cleves’ new wife.
Predictably, the Duc falls passionately in love with the Princess, and the Princess falls passionately in love with the Duc, which confuses her dreadfully and also makes her feel bad because she’s already married to a kind honorable man who is her very dear friend and who she genuinely holds in quite high esteem. The Duc keeps trying to find ways to see and speak to the Princesse without being obvious about it or compromising her virtue; the Princesse alternates between trying to find ways to see the Duc without being obvious either and deciding to stay away from him in order to get over him. Eventually she confessed to her husband that she’s in love with someone else and feels terrible about it and wants to stay away from Court, but she won’t tell him who it is. The Duc, who is HIDING IN THE GARDEN EAVESDROPPING BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL (apparently in the days before Facebook you had to actually stalk your unrequited crush in order to torture yourself mooning unproductively after their lovely visage, at least until you can steal a copy of their portrait, which you will actually do if you’re the Duc de Nemours), overhears this confession, and is so joyous (and so certain it’s about him) that he runs and wibbles about it to one of his friends, who tells somebody else because nobody in the French court can keep a secret (except Madame de Tournon, who has a subplot that starts with her death), and eventually it gets back to the Prince and Princess, each of whom thinks the other told the Duc. Then there’s some crazy business with a letter that was addressed to somebody other than the Duc but the other dude is trying to get the Duc to pretend it’s his so he doesn’t get into trouble with the Queen or the other Queen or the Queen-Dauphin, I don’t even know. ANYWAY. A bunch of stuff happens, the King dies in a joust, the Duc de Nemours blows off the opportunity to maybe marry Queen Elizabeth of England, one of the French ladies gives the world’s most fucking hilarious summary of the sage of Henry the Eighth and his wives I have ever heard in my life, and a lot of people fake being ill, mostly the Princesse de Cleves.
At some point, the Prince sends his manservant or somebody to follow the Duc de Nemours, and the dude follows the Duc right into the Prince’s garden outside Paris, where the Princess is shut up in an attempt to avoid Court and all its gallantries and nonsense, and to avoid the Duc. While in actuality the Duc is just hangin’ around in the gardens spying on Madame de Cleves like a creeper, the poor woobie Prince thinks that the Duc and the Princesse are sleeping together, and gets so jealous that he falls deathly ill. Madame de Cleves is distraught by this and is very attentive and stuff and eventually they actually talk out what the Prince thinks is going on and what was actually going on, but it’s too late, and the Prince dies. Of jealousy, apparently. The Princesse is still passionately in love with the Duc de Nemours, but also basically figures that he killed her husband by skulking about in the garden and causing jealousy, instead of keeping the fuck away from her like she’d been trying to keep the fuck away from him, so when the Duc shows up all declaring his love and proposing marriage, she declares her love back but declines the marriage, and moves out to the Pyrenees and joins a convent until she dies. THE END. No happy ending. Just guilt and virtue and overthinking the shit out of everything. The Princesse seriously needed some Captain Awkward in her life. The Duc probably did, too. And the Prince. And… the entire French court, really.
Predictably, I loved this novel. I always say I’m not super big on love stories, but I make an exception when the psychology is really good (i.e. spelled out every step from first principles for idiots like me who won’t understand it otherwise) and when there’s a shit-ton of drama and intrigue and ridiculousness. This book hits ALL those buttons. Much of it is genuinely moving, and a great psychological portrait of someone who has no idea what’s going on and no idea what to do except to refuse to get involved. It’s also just straight up wacky as hell. The Princess spends like half the book faking being ill and half of what’s left actually being ill, people talk in long involved paragraphs to the point where the conversations seem less like conversations and more like taking turns making speeches, random scandals pop up and have to be discussed in detail, except that everyone uses vague euphemistic terms for everything so it’s impossible to tell who’s having sex and who’s just making mutual cow eyes at each other. Madame de La Fayette’s method for describing people is the opposite of the modern laundry list of physical characteristics, nobody is ever given a hair or eye color or even so much as a height; they’re just comely and graceful and well-formed and other glittering generalities that tell you absolutely fuck-nothing about what anyone looks like except that you’d totally find them attractive, I promise. Also she tells us a billion times that the Duc de Nemours is a brilliant conversationalist but any time when she actually transcribes his words (like, in quotation marks and that sort of thing) it’s really not all that impressive.
My biggest beef with this book is some weird stuff about the translations; the titles are translated or not translated really haphazardly, so sometimes our protagonist is Madame de Cleves and sometimes the Princesse de Cleves and sometimes the Princess of Cleves, her husband is usually the Prince of Cleves but her love interest is usually the Duc (or Duke) de Nemours, and once I noticed it became really jarring. And there’s a lot of use of “you was,” which is just dated for English; I don’t care what the French was there, you done translated it wrong. This is supposed to be Court French, not gamin argot.
Other than the translation issues, it was glorious. It was everything I love about overwritten old novels. And everything I love about over-everything ancien regime France. I recommend it highly.
La Princesse de Cleves (or, in English, The Princess of Cleves) is one of the great French romantic novels, and a very early specimen thereof, having been first published in 1678. It is one of the first, if not arguably the first, psychological novels, most of the page space being dedicated to recording the various characters’ thoughts and emotions, and occasionally dialogue. There is fairly little action, although people do die a lot, mostly of vague illnesses that seem to be brought on by strong emotions.
The story takes place about a hundred years before its publication, in the 1550s, during the reign of Henri II. The French royal court is still based squarely in Paris, at the Louvre. Historical figures such as Diana de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, and Mary Stuart run around, although it is frequently difficult to figure this out, since everybody is referred to only by their titles at all times, which is doubly confusing when people’s titles change (at one point, the king dies, and is succeeded by his son, the king). I couldn’t tell you what the hell Catherine de Medici actually does in this book because I can’t remember if she’s the Queen, the other Queen, or the Queen-Dauphin.
As a result… I can’t tell you what our protagonist’s name is. She starts off as the Mademoiselle de Chartres, a superlatively beautiful and sweet and witty young noblewoman in a France predictably full of beautiful sweet witty young noblewomen. (At least Madame de La Fayette doesn’t pull a Tolkien on us and individually introduce every female character as “the most beautiful and with the best hair” like that’s supposed to differentiate them from the others; she just introduces The Court as being a place full of fabulous attractive people, straight up.) Mademoiselle de Chartres catches the attention of pretty much everybody, but the person whose attention she catches first, and who is the only one who pursues her, is the Prince de Cleves. Since her mother had only brought the virginal innocent sixteen-year-old(!) Mademoiselle to the den of vice that (apparently) was the Court in order to make her an advantageous marriage, and since Mademoiselle has no experience fancying people at all and is a little vague on what it’s supposed to be like anyway, but like the Prince perfectly well enough as a friend and a person, the Prince’s suit is rewarded and Mademoiselle de Chartres becomes Madame de Cleves.
The Prince, who is passionately in love with his wife, keeps trying to Win Her Heart, and Madame keeps being like “Sorry? I like you just fine, honey, I’m sorry it’s not more… whatever you’re on about” but other than that things are great until the Duc de Nemours returns from wherever he’d been faffing about, probably something to do with the Italian war. The Duc de Nemours is apparently the ideal man, from French romantic perspective—in addition to being rich and titled and intelligent and brave and dashing and honored in battle, he is so terribly handsome that everybody falls in love with him, and so terribly kindhearted that he can’t help being kind and sweet and attentive to anybody that wants his attention, and is fond of pretty much everybody, and doesn’t have any macho douchy attitudes about women, instead genuinely liking their company and conversation, with the attendant result that he’s happily a giant slut. There’s enough Duc de Nemours for everybody! At least, there is until he meets his best friend the Prince de Cleves’ new wife.
Predictably, the Duc falls passionately in love with the Princess, and the Princess falls passionately in love with the Duc, which confuses her dreadfully and also makes her feel bad because she’s already married to a kind honorable man who is her very dear friend and who she genuinely holds in quite high esteem. The Duc keeps trying to find ways to see and speak to the Princesse without being obvious about it or compromising her virtue; the Princesse alternates between trying to find ways to see the Duc without being obvious either and deciding to stay away from him in order to get over him. Eventually she confessed to her husband that she’s in love with someone else and feels terrible about it and wants to stay away from Court, but she won’t tell him who it is. The Duc, who is HIDING IN THE GARDEN EAVESDROPPING BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL (apparently in the days before Facebook you had to actually stalk your unrequited crush in order to torture yourself mooning unproductively after their lovely visage, at least until you can steal a copy of their portrait, which you will actually do if you’re the Duc de Nemours), overhears this confession, and is so joyous (and so certain it’s about him) that he runs and wibbles about it to one of his friends, who tells somebody else because nobody in the French court can keep a secret (except Madame de Tournon, who has a subplot that starts with her death), and eventually it gets back to the Prince and Princess, each of whom thinks the other told the Duc. Then there’s some crazy business with a letter that was addressed to somebody other than the Duc but the other dude is trying to get the Duc to pretend it’s his so he doesn’t get into trouble with the Queen or the other Queen or the Queen-Dauphin, I don’t even know. ANYWAY. A bunch of stuff happens, the King dies in a joust, the Duc de Nemours blows off the opportunity to maybe marry Queen Elizabeth of England, one of the French ladies gives the world’s most fucking hilarious summary of the sage of Henry the Eighth and his wives I have ever heard in my life, and a lot of people fake being ill, mostly the Princesse de Cleves.
At some point, the Prince sends his manservant or somebody to follow the Duc de Nemours, and the dude follows the Duc right into the Prince’s garden outside Paris, where the Princess is shut up in an attempt to avoid Court and all its gallantries and nonsense, and to avoid the Duc. While in actuality the Duc is just hangin’ around in the gardens spying on Madame de Cleves like a creeper, the poor woobie Prince thinks that the Duc and the Princesse are sleeping together, and gets so jealous that he falls deathly ill. Madame de Cleves is distraught by this and is very attentive and stuff and eventually they actually talk out what the Prince thinks is going on and what was actually going on, but it’s too late, and the Prince dies. Of jealousy, apparently. The Princesse is still passionately in love with the Duc de Nemours, but also basically figures that he killed her husband by skulking about in the garden and causing jealousy, instead of keeping the fuck away from her like she’d been trying to keep the fuck away from him, so when the Duc shows up all declaring his love and proposing marriage, she declares her love back but declines the marriage, and moves out to the Pyrenees and joins a convent until she dies. THE END. No happy ending. Just guilt and virtue and overthinking the shit out of everything. The Princesse seriously needed some Captain Awkward in her life. The Duc probably did, too. And the Prince. And… the entire French court, really.
Predictably, I loved this novel. I always say I’m not super big on love stories, but I make an exception when the psychology is really good (i.e. spelled out every step from first principles for idiots like me who won’t understand it otherwise) and when there’s a shit-ton of drama and intrigue and ridiculousness. This book hits ALL those buttons. Much of it is genuinely moving, and a great psychological portrait of someone who has no idea what’s going on and no idea what to do except to refuse to get involved. It’s also just straight up wacky as hell. The Princess spends like half the book faking being ill and half of what’s left actually being ill, people talk in long involved paragraphs to the point where the conversations seem less like conversations and more like taking turns making speeches, random scandals pop up and have to be discussed in detail, except that everyone uses vague euphemistic terms for everything so it’s impossible to tell who’s having sex and who’s just making mutual cow eyes at each other. Madame de La Fayette’s method for describing people is the opposite of the modern laundry list of physical characteristics, nobody is ever given a hair or eye color or even so much as a height; they’re just comely and graceful and well-formed and other glittering generalities that tell you absolutely fuck-nothing about what anyone looks like except that you’d totally find them attractive, I promise. Also she tells us a billion times that the Duc de Nemours is a brilliant conversationalist but any time when she actually transcribes his words (like, in quotation marks and that sort of thing) it’s really not all that impressive.
My biggest beef with this book is some weird stuff about the translations; the titles are translated or not translated really haphazardly, so sometimes our protagonist is Madame de Cleves and sometimes the Princesse de Cleves and sometimes the Princess of Cleves, her husband is usually the Prince of Cleves but her love interest is usually the Duc (or Duke) de Nemours, and once I noticed it became really jarring. And there’s a lot of use of “you was,” which is just dated for English; I don’t care what the French was there, you done translated it wrong. This is supposed to be Court French, not gamin argot.
Other than the translation issues, it was glorious. It was everything I love about overwritten old novels. And everything I love about over-everything ancien regime France. I recommend it highly.