Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-03-20 12:34 am
tenlittlebullets) wrote2009-03-20 12:34 am
I ♥ George Sand
Just finished Consuelo. (Which, BTW, I'm pretty sure is the only full-length novel I've read cover-to-cover in French. Novellas and plays? Yes. Most of Les Misérables? Yes, in fits and starts and terribly out of order. Started longer books without finishing? Yep. Finished anything over 150 pages? No, not really.)
I feel like I should say something deep about art and devotion and the redemption of humanity, and all those thoughts are rattling around loose in my brain, but the only thing I can pin down is: god damn, what is it with the Romantics and sepulchral wedding-nights. Seriously, you've got Quasimodo and Esmeralda crumbling into dust together, Hernani and Doña Sol poisoning each other before they can consummate their marriage, Albert dropping dead right after pronouncing his vows and Consuelo holding vigil over his corpse all night--not to mention, tangentially related, that lovely exhumation scene in La Dame aux Camélias. It's wonderfully morbid but good god it's getting repetitive.
I know, I know, trivial. I kvetch because secretly it makes my inner Romantic really happy. Or, well, not happy exactly but satisfied in that "O! Behold, the unity of the altar and the tomb opens up a pathway in my soul whose awe-inspiring passages have not been tread since the last time I read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage!" sort of way.
I feel like I should say something deep about art and devotion and the redemption of humanity, and all those thoughts are rattling around loose in my brain, but the only thing I can pin down is: god damn, what is it with the Romantics and sepulchral wedding-nights. Seriously, you've got Quasimodo and Esmeralda crumbling into dust together, Hernani and Doña Sol poisoning each other before they can consummate their marriage, Albert dropping dead right after pronouncing his vows and Consuelo holding vigil over his corpse all night--not to mention, tangentially related, that lovely exhumation scene in La Dame aux Camélias. It's wonderfully morbid but good god it's getting repetitive.
I know, I know, trivial. I kvetch because secretly it makes my inner Romantic really happy. Or, well, not happy exactly but satisfied in that "O! Behold, the unity of the altar and the tomb opens up a pathway in my soul whose awe-inspiring passages have not been tread since the last time I read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage!" sort of way.