Mademoiselle de Maupin French Edition Theophile Gautier 9781155134314 Books
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Extrait ...voulu être. Il avait la beauté de ma laideur, et à côté de lui j'avais l'air de son ébauche. Il était de ma taille, mais plus svelte et plus fort; sa tournure ressemblait à la mienne, mais avec une élégance et une noblesse que je n'ai pas. Ses yeux n'étaient pas d'une couleur autre que mes propres yeux, mais ils avaient un regard et un éclat que les miens n'auront jamais. Son nez avait été jeté au même moule que le mien, seulement il semblait avoir été retouché par le ciseau d'un statuaire habile; les narines en étaient plus ouvertes et plus passionnées, les méplats plus nettement accusés, et il avait quelque chose d'héroïque dont cette respectable partie de mon individu est totalement dénuée on eût dit que la nature se fût essayée en ma personne à faire ce moi- même perfectionné. - J'avais l'air d'être le brouillon raturé et informe de la pensée dont il était la copie en belle écriture moulée. Quand je le voyais marcher, s'arrêter, saluer les dames, s'asseoir et se coucher avec cette grâce parfaite qui résulte de la beauté des proportions, il me prenait des tristesses et des jalousies affreuses, et telles qu'en doit ressentir le modèle de terre glaise qui se sèche et se fendille obscurément dans un coin de l'atelier, tandis que l'orgueilleuse statue de marbre, qui sans lui n'existerait pas, se dresse fièrement sur son socle sculpté et attire l'attention et les éloges des visiteurs. Car enfin ce drôle, ce n'est que moi un peu mieux réussi et coulé avec un bronze moins rebelle et qui s'est insinué plus exactement dans les creux du moule. Je le trouve bien hardi de se pavaner ainsi avec ma forme et de faire l'insolent comme s'il était un type original il n'est, au bout du compte, que mon plagiaire, car je suis né avant lui, et sans moi la nature n'eût point eu l'idée de le faire ainsi. - Quand les femmes louaient ses bonnes façons et les agréments de sa personne, j'avais toutes les envies...
Mademoiselle de Maupin French Edition Theophile Gautier 9781155134314 Books
Mademoiselle de Maupin is a symphony of adjectives, in which the thematic material alternately suggests the most exquisite pleasures of the senses. It is an ineffably beautiful tableau, heady, intoxicating, Dionysiac, conceived in ecstasy. It is, indeed a "golden book" as close an approximation to painting in the realm of pure aesthetics as anything in words may be. It is a celebration of beauty and its mood is always that of delight. So rare is this the accomplishment of the novelist and so far away is it from the usual mingling of love with tragedy, sorrow, and disillusion, that were it nothing else, the novel should solicit our affection and the novelist deserve our gratitude. Such are the words of American literary critic Burton Rascoe characterizing this sumptuous, grand novel back in 1920.More specifically, the novel's main character and first person narrator Chevalier d'Albert is a supreme lover in the tradition of 19th century romanticism, loving his dreamy idealizations of women, rotating visions and intense yearnings for goddesses, wood nymphs, angels and female beauties in all shades and variations; loving the idea of being in love (ah, to be so dramatic and such a romantic you are swept away by loving love itself!); and, last but by no means least, in the first chapters of the novel, playing the part of a lover drunk on the beauty of a young woman, Rosette by name. All these passionate feelings and moods mix and mingle to create a festival of sensual splendor.
I have underlined a passage or two or three or more on each and every page. The language and images and metaphors take my breath away. If there ever was a novel where we should open ourselves to literary magic, Mademoiselle de Maupin is that novel. Reading Gautier's masterpiece, I'm reminded of the words and wisdom of Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of art par excellence: "Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first."
And , please, please, please, let this prince of a novel speak to you. Here is Gautier's lush, poetic prose, this sample from the narrator's pre-Rosette days, "I am waiting for heaven to open up and an angel to bring me a revelation, or for a revolution to break out and offer me a throne; for one of Raphael's virgins to step down from her canvas and embrace me; for non-existent relatives to die and leave me enough to allow my imagination to drift away on a river of gold, for a hippogriff to capture me and carry me off to an unknown country."
The novel is also chock-full of whimsy, hilarity and baroque comedy. For example: here is d'Albert on painterly beauty after spending hours in front of a mirror musing on how his face falls short of his ideal, "You see so many beautiful faces in pictures! Why is none of them mine? So many lovely heads disappearing in the dust and smoke of time at the back of old galleries. Would it not be better if they jumped out of their frames and came to grace my shoulders? Would the reputation of Raphael suffer so very much if one of those angels thronging his ultramarine canvases were to let me borrow his features for thirty years" Yes, indeed, we do have a narrator-dreamer who can out-Narcissus Narcissus.
So far this is a tale of garden-fresh love and intense sensual pleasures between a man and a woman. But there comes a point, surprise, surprise - things change - intensity and freshness, no matter how intense and how fresh, fades. Alas, d'Albert tells us in so many words that he and Rosette are at the point where they have had enough of one another. What is needed is an infusion of energy to lift them to unexplored vistas of raw sensuality, passion and unspeakable beauty. And such an infusion arrives on the scene, a personage who turns out to be a triple dose of energy -- a supremely graceful, super-sexually-charged, a cross-dressing, gender-shifting, high-octane lad (a lass, really) on horseback -- Théodore aka Mademoiselle de Maupin.
Pure literary magic shinning with the brightness and heat of the midday sun. And this Penguin edition is a most readable translation along with an informative introduction, notes, footnotes and Gautier's famous preface expounding an `art for art sake' aesthetic in answer to the up-tight moralist hacks of his day. Indeed, art for art sake, reading for reading sake, dance for dance sake - as in Matisse's five joyous dancers - and with this book in hand the five dancers are: D'Albert, Rosette, Théodore, goddess Aphrodite, and you as reader. Joie de vivres.
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Mademoiselle de Maupin French Edition Theophile Gautier 9781155134314 Books Reviews
In this novel a young woman, Mademoiselle de Maupin, dresses as a man to find out what men are all about before she becomes committed to one in marriage. Not surprisingly it creates confusions for her. But, just to think of such a thing suggests some strange sexual chracteristics. What she finds out about men is not at all flattering. But the book is even-handed with some caustic comments about women also. Maupin rescues a girl about to become entrapped by one of the most unlikeable specimens of malehood. But how can she (still appearing to be a man) take under her wing a girl to care for her?
Gautier starts the book with a series of letters describing the confusion in the life of a young man, D'Albert. D'Albert takes a mistress, Rosette, because he is distressed about his own lack of fulfilment (what's wrong with him we may wonder?). But the mistress happens to have been disappointed in love because she had fallen in love with Maupin (apparently a man) who had to reject that love because .....
D'Albert has a fulfilling relationship with Rosette but someohow it is not satisfying. When Maupin returns - perhaps feeling guilty over how she had abandoned Rosette, perhaps even wanting to explain - D'Albert is captivated. He fears he must be homosexual, with all the horror or shock that entails as a realisation at the first instance. Perhaps we do accept homosexuality more readily these days, but it must still come as something of a shock to an individual. To me even the realisation of heterosexuality was something of a shock and I could only get used to the idea by thinking of biology and the 'normalness' of sex (why is it so hidden I wondered - and still do).
But D'Albert is profoundly heterosexual in his love for Maupin even though she still appears to be a man. The consummation of their love is both rewarding and disappointing to D'Albert. And in the end Gautier implies things about Maupin - and even Rosette - that are less clear.
This is a wonderful, evocative novel; erotic and sensual. Perhaps the plot stretches credibility a bit - if D'Albert had been a less unsettled man himself ..... But it doesn't matter if you are male or female, prepare yourself for some sharp observations on the behaviour of your own sex.
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This is one case in which the caution about an e-edition is justified. In this book the apostrophes, so important in French, are suppressed, and it becomes very hard to read. I gave up after the first page. This hasn't happened in any of the e-editions in French that I got so far. In general, they are excellent and I have enjoyed them and will continue getting them but I want to warn future readers of this book. A pity, because I had never read anything about this famous author and would have liked to.
It is true as other readers have indicated, all of the apostrophes are missing! There are accents, but that's it! I cannot recommend the edition for this reason. Reader beware!
Terrific book! So much that was true when it first was published and so much true now, and even more relevant than ever, with issues of love and passion and life.
Mademoiselle de Maupin is a symphony of adjectives, in which the thematic material alternately suggests the most exquisite pleasures of the senses. It is an ineffably beautiful tableau, heady, intoxicating, Dionysiac, conceived in ecstasy. It is, indeed a "golden book" as close an approximation to painting in the realm of pure aesthetics as anything in words may be. It is a celebration of beauty and its mood is always that of delight. So rare is this the accomplishment of the novelist and so far away is it from the usual mingling of love with tragedy, sorrow, and disillusion, that were it nothing else, the novel should solicit our affection and the novelist deserve our gratitude. Such are the words of American literary critic Burton Rascoe characterizing this sumptuous, grand novel back in 1920.
More specifically, the novel's main character and first person narrator Chevalier d'Albert is a supreme lover in the tradition of 19th century romanticism, loving his dreamy idealizations of women, rotating visions and intense yearnings for goddesses, wood nymphs, angels and female beauties in all shades and variations; loving the idea of being in love (ah, to be so dramatic and such a romantic you are swept away by loving love itself!); and, last but by no means least, in the first chapters of the novel, playing the part of a lover drunk on the beauty of a young woman, Rosette by name. All these passionate feelings and moods mix and mingle to create a festival of sensual splendor.
I have underlined a passage or two or three or more on each and every page. The language and images and metaphors take my breath away. If there ever was a novel where we should open ourselves to literary magic, Mademoiselle de Maupin is that novel. Reading Gautier's masterpiece, I'm reminded of the words and wisdom of Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of art par excellence "Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first."
And , please, please, please, let this prince of a novel speak to you. Here is Gautier's lush, poetic prose, this sample from the narrator's pre-Rosette days, "I am waiting for heaven to open up and an angel to bring me a revelation, or for a revolution to break out and offer me a throne; for one of Raphael's virgins to step down from her canvas and embrace me; for non-existent relatives to die and leave me enough to allow my imagination to drift away on a river of gold, for a hippogriff to capture me and carry me off to an unknown country."
The novel is also chock-full of whimsy, hilarity and baroque comedy. For example here is d'Albert on painterly beauty after spending hours in front of a mirror musing on how his face falls short of his ideal, "You see so many beautiful faces in pictures! Why is none of them mine? So many lovely heads disappearing in the dust and smoke of time at the back of old galleries. Would it not be better if they jumped out of their frames and came to grace my shoulders? Would the reputation of Raphael suffer so very much if one of those angels thronging his ultramarine canvases were to let me borrow his features for thirty years" Yes, indeed, we do have a narrator-dreamer who can out-Narcissus Narcissus.
So far this is a tale of garden-fresh love and intense sensual pleasures between a man and a woman. But there comes a point, surprise, surprise - things change - intensity and freshness, no matter how intense and how fresh, fades. Alas, d'Albert tells us in so many words that he and Rosette are at the point where they have had enough of one another. What is needed is an infusion of energy to lift them to unexplored vistas of raw sensuality, passion and unspeakable beauty. And such an infusion arrives on the scene, a personage who turns out to be a triple dose of energy -- a supremely graceful, super-sexually-charged, a cross-dressing, gender-shifting, high-octane lad (a lass, really) on horseback -- Théodore aka Mademoiselle de Maupin.
Pure literary magic shinning with the brightness and heat of the midday sun. And this Penguin edition is a most readable translation along with an informative introduction, notes, footnotes and Gautier's famous preface expounding an `art for art sake' aesthetic in answer to the up-tight moralist hacks of his day. Indeed, art for art sake, reading for reading sake, dance for dance sake - as in Matisse's five joyous dancers - and with this book in hand the five dancers are D'Albert, Rosette, Théodore, goddess Aphrodite, and you as reader. Joie de vivres.
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