Dedicated to classics and hits.

Friday, April 17, 2020

Eline Vere (1889) by Louis Couperus

Tuberculosis Became the Victorian Standard of Beauty
The consumptive look was very hot in 19th century.

Book Review
Eline Vere (1889)
by Louis Couperus

Replaces:  Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev

  Louis Couperus was a Dutch novelist in the 19th and early 20th century- incredibly prolific- who had a huge hit with his first big- Eline Vere- about a sad, rich,  young woman living in The Hague in the late 19th century.  Vere is the kind of girl who draws comparisons to Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary- the characters; and Couperus is compared to Tolstoy and Flaubert in the essay that accompanies the current edition of the English language translation.   I guess that is what a publisher would say, though the  Afterword by Paul Binding compares Vere to the Silver Fork novels- popular in the UK between 1820 and 1845- none of which have "made it."  Today, the only place a reader is likely to encounter that genre is in an introduction to Vanity Fair (1845), where the genre is commonly cited as influence on Thackeray's book.

    If you can read Eline Vere and give a fuck about Vere and her problems, you are a more attentive reader than I.   Rather, I drifted through it, perking up when she starts taking morphine for her consumptive cough-  I LOVE THE CONSUMPTIVE LOOK on women.  Little blood on the handkerchief.   530 pages- this book.  Worth noting. 

Monday, April 13, 2020

The Conquest of New Spain (1632) by Bernal Diaz del Castillo

The Life of Hernando Cortes
Map of Cortes' attacks on the Aztec empire- note the retreat and reconquest- an important theme in centuries in Latin American history.
Book Review
The Conquest of New Spain (1632)
 by Bernal Diaz del Castillo

Replaces: Ormond by Maria Edgeworth


   Bernal Diaz del Castillo was a member of Cortes' Aztec defeating expedition.  He wrote a memoir of his experiences in the 1570's and it was published in 1632, over forty years after he died.    Those expecting something unreadable will be pleasantly surprised, Castillo had an easy feel for prose despite writing in the 17th century and the translation by John Cohen- which itself is over half a century old now, stands up.    The key fact to grasp about Hernan Cortes and his exploits is that the Conquistadors were actually expelled from the Aztec capital and had to depart, under heavy duress, regroup and then return, where they were eventually victorious.

   Another takeaway from The Conquest of New Spain is that the Aztecs were not fondly thought of by their neighbors, and the Spaniards were seen by many local groups as being useful to the extent they could usurp the Aztec empire.    Beyond that, I mostly was following a prurient interest in the extent to which cannibalism was practiced in the new world.   Castillo makes several mentions of incidents he witnessed:

 Then after they had danced the papas laid them down on their backs on some narrow stones of sacrifice and, cutting open their chests, drew out their palpitating hearts which they offered to the idols before them. Then they kicked the bodies down the steps, and the Indian butchers who were waiting below cut off their arms and legs and flayed their faces, which they afterwards prepared like glove leather, with their beards on, and kept for their drunken festivals. Then they ate their flesh with a sauce of peppers and tomatoes. They sacrificed all our men in this way, eating their legs and arms, offering their hearts and blood to their idols as I have said, and throwing their trunks and entrails to the lions and tigers and serpents and snakes that they kept in the wild-beast houses I have described in an earlier chapter.

  Or here:

 They cooked more than three hundred plates of the food the great Montezuma was going to eat, and more than a thousand more for the guard. I have heard that they used to cook him the flesh of young boys. But as he had such a variety of dishes, made of so many different ingredients, we could not tell whether a dish was of human flesh or anything else, since every day they cooked fowls, turkeys, pheasants, local partridges, quail, tame and wild duck, venison, wild boar, marsh birds, pigeons, hares and rabbits, also many other kinds of birds and beasts native to their country, so numerous that I cannot quickly name them all.

  Or here:

 They strike open the wretched Indian’s chest with flint knives and hastily tear out the palpitating heart which, with the blood, they present to the idols in whose name they have performed the sacrifice. Then they cut off the arms, thighs, and head, eating the arms and thighs at their ceremonial banquets. The head they hang up on a beam, and the body of the sacrificed man is not eaten but given to the beasts of prey

   Personally, I feel like new world cannibalism has been hushed up , in the same way that the 20th century has generally seen the Conquistadors (justly) reviled and the indigenous empires celebrated (less justly).  The fact is, like it is in most parts of the world, one dictatorial power is replaced by another, and the normal people just keep on living their life. 

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