#AmReading MAURICE GUEST by #HenryHandelRichardson, aka Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, born in Melbourne in 1870.
Started it this morning, but only read the first page. Loved the unfamiliar use of "tell off" & the alliteration in this bit: "and on descending the shallow steps, they told off into groups, where all talked at once, with lively gesticulation."
Just finished Ch 1 & would keep reading, but I've had a few beers & about to nod off. Excerpt from the end of the chapter follows:
Maurice not about to let his dream of a musical life be derailed by disapproving parents:
"What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones & idlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, to be bowled over like so many ninepins? When at length..he was mastered by a healthier spirit of self-assertion..he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to his aid all the strengthening egoism..latent in every more or less artistic nature." #AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Technically an #AustralianWriter, Henry Handel Richardson lived mainly in Europe. Bracketing writers by nationality got me thinking about what "Australian" writer #BrianCastro said:
“I think..one’s writing is far more identified with a style..with writers..you admire & who have gone before you than with a national, ethnic, or religious belonging. It’s not necessarily where you come from, it’s where you read from.”
Where do you read from?
What’s your textuality?
My #stencil of Brian from 2010
Maurice settles in to Leipzig & starts spilling & oversharing:
"An almost physical need of communication made itself felt in him; he spoke with a volubility that was foreign to him, began his sentences with a confidential 'You see', & said things at which he himself was amazed ... His companion looked at him curiously. She had expected a casual answer to her casual words, a surface frankness ... she did not care for people who gave themselves away at a word."
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Maurice fawns on young Ephie & gets off on the wrong foot with her fractious older sister, Johanna. Personally, I took a fancy to their mother, Mrs Cayhill, an "immoderate reader" for whom "all novels were fish to [her] net".
"Mrs Cayhill...fed on novels from morning till night, & slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was forever lost in the joys & sorrows of some fictitious person...for compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse."
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
#Books #Fiction
"'the best of things is the wishing for them. Once there, and they are nothing — only another delusion.'"
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
#Books #Bookstodon
Maurice is not amused to learn his music mentee Ephie has been "making use of his name" to her mother & sister to sneak off to see the object of her romantic fancy: violinist (& Lothario), Eugen Schilsky. Poor "absurdly happy" Ephie is building "high, top-heavy castles for the future". But he's not serious about her. Will Maurice stomp on her castles by revealing Schilsky is seeing Louise (the object of his own romantic fancy)?
The crazy machinations of young love.
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Maurice waxes philosophical on death & whether it matters what happens to the body afterwards:
He claims that "always to be brooding over death unfitted you for life...it was foolish to look upon your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, when sensation had left you - the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked to call it - did it matter what afterwards became of your body?..morbid to care so much how it was treated, just because it had once been your tenement."
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Maurice meets Avery Hill:
a "smoker"; "pretty" despite her "severe garb", which includes "a man's felt hat & closely buttoned ulster"; "ungirlish cold grey eyes" that lose their "cold assurance" when she plays the piano, which she plays very well - "with a firm, masculine touch & that inborn ease, that enviable appearance of being...one with the instrument."
Sketchy, but enough information for me to be sold on the character. Hope she plays a bigger part in the novel.
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Maurice learns that Louise, the object of his romantic fancy, may be leaving Leipzig. Dejected, the words of #Nietzsche's "Zarathustra's Rundgesang" run, like a thread, through his feverish sleep. Only, in my edition, they're in #untranslated German:
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht (etc.)
Common of novels at the time (1908), but unlikely today without a footnoted or parenthetical #translation.
Original with #Translations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarathustra%27s_roundelay
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
"Agility of finger equals softening of the brain."
A grain of truth in this for Maurice, who throws himself into playing the piano after things with Ephie & Louise reach a turbulent climax:
"the strenuous industry to which he now condemned himself, was something of a relaxation after the mental anxiety he had recently undergone; this striking of a black & white keyboard was a pleasant, thought-deadening employment, & could be got through, no matter what one's mood."
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
"They were dancing to the music of the 𝘞𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘵, most melancholy gay of waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward sweep of the violins says as plainly as in words that all is vanity."
https://archive.org/details/78_wiener-blut-vienna-blood-temprament-viennois_ilja-livschakoff-dance-orchestra_gbia7017413a/Wiener+Blut+(Vienna+blo+-+Ilja+Livschakoff+Dance+Orchestra.flac
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
Performer: Ilja Livschakoff Dance OrchestraWriter: Johann Strauß; CharmiléWaltz; Vienna blood; Tempérament viennois.Digitized at 78 revolutions per minute....
"Lighting a cigarette, he indulged in ironical reflections."
Is there a better aid/prop for bitter realisations?
Poor Maurice, aspiring pianist, who, after a year of studying music in Leipzig, "[finds himself] to rights as a mediocrity, when [he] had hoped with all [his] heart that [he was] something more... All he could do at the piano, hundreds of others could do better... 'The real something that makes the musician...is wanting in me.'"
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
#Books #Bookstodon
Troubled by Maurice's dark views:
"A sudden recognition of the uselessness of human striving grew up in him...Effort & work, ambition & success, alike led nowhere, were so many blind alleys: ambition ended in smoke; success was a fleeing phantom, which one sought in vain to grasp. To the great mass of mankind, it was more than immaterial whether one of its units toiled or no...It was only given to a few to achieve anything: the rest might stand aside early in the day."
#AmReading MAURICE GUEST
#FinishedReading MAURICE GUEST & it's left me an emotional wreck. A story of music & doomed, obsessive love. The final part of the novel was like watching a car accident in slow motion. Difficult to read, but couldn't stop myself from turning the pages.
I'm normally a chain reader, but I'll need the rest of the day to pull myself together before starting a new novel.
Contemplating reading the work of an Australian writer? Put #HenryHandelRichardson at the top of your list.
Paul Filev