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The Book Of Monelle (1901)

by Marcel Schwob(Favorite Author)

4.32 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0984115587 (ISBN13: 9780984115587)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Wakefield Press

review 1: Este es un libro que todo el mundo debería leer. Nunca había leído algo parecido. Es hermoso, muy hermoso. Es, como bien decía Apollinaire sobre Schwob, una poesía distinta. Y a la vez, no. Ni siquiera sé cómo describirlo. De él leí las Vidas imaginarias y recuerdo que quedé muy impresionada por su forma de narrar. En éste libro la narración forma parte de la construcción poética, no es una narración simple y llana, sino que está complementada por otros elementos que no alcanzo a comprender del todo. Siento que no puedo llegar a su fondo, que no puedo abrazar por completo el conocimiento que ofrece el libro. Pero sí reconozco su belleza y reconozco las cosas que me gustan. Como lo hace Schwob en Vidas imaginarias, la descripción es bella y precisa. Sin em... morebargo en éste libro a veces parece que estás viviendo un sueño. Tiene elementos de los cuentos de hadas y tiene partes en que parece como si leyeras la biblia. Se podría escribir un libro gordo sobre éste libro y dudo que aún así se puedan captar todos los matices de la prosa de Schwob.
review 2: The Book of Monelle is an achingly beautiful cornerstone of symbolist writing. I have an obvious weakness for symbolist art and literature but would have no problem suggesting this to those less inclined to investigate such unfashionable expressions. Schwob is probably the greatest symbolist writer and his restraint, intelligence and clarity is on full display here. The strength of symbolist art, for me at least, lies in the ability of the writer to supplant normal reality with symbols that require interpretation, thus engaging the reader in the creative process. What this sometimes means is a horribly dense and confusing mess of language that more often than not goes right over the head of the reader. See some of the less-known Jarry for example – the Garden of Priapus makes for a bewildering read that will appeal to nobody except the most sincere Jarry completists. Another such writer with limited appeal is Maurice Maeterlink. His symbolist classicism appealed to some of the greatest 20th-C composers and if not for them – his writing is otherwise too anachronistic to have any general appeal. Schwob transcends both of these great minds with relative ease due to not only his exhaustive knowledge of classical literature but his attention to contemporary literary conditions as well. He walks the line between Maeterlink and Huysmans with his insight and verbal prowess. It is not at all difficult to understand the symbolism that engages the reader throughout The Book of Monelle and anyone that reads John Erskine’s awesome preface will surely have no difficulty navigating the rutilant obfuscation that coaxes the reader to gently paw away the shimmering fog to understand Schwob with full clarity. I absolutely adored each page of this book and all non-Schwob thought stopped for the two days I spent with Monelle. Where Huysmans supplanted reality with the artificial in an overt challenge to life as we know it – Schwob seeks to subvert the rules of mortality by destroying reality through attacks on memory and desire. Non-permanence and non-desire should be immediately familiar to anyone that knows anything about Buddhist thought and Monelle reads something like a French symbolist Life of Milarepa. You can feel the intense love and suffering of Schwob for Monelle throughout. If Schwob could have self-trepanned Monelle out of his aching head we would have not been blessed by the ability to watch him drill the pain away through literature instead. There is great wisdom and passion throughout this shimmering and mysterious pavane for a dead lover. The Book of Monelle is one of the most arresting documents of deep love that I know and I can only hope when this gets re-released in the near future – the other works of Schwob are also brought back into print. “With us there is no suffering and no death; we say that those who know suffering and death are but striving to know sad truths which are not real and do not exist. Those who wish to know truth and reality stray from us and we abandon them. We have no faith in the realities of the world, for they but lead to sadness.” But I, the lucky reader, knows that creative acts of writers like Schwob deliver us from this sadness by the possibly collective understanding that the creative act, the focused memory, and will to learn can ameliorate this suffering as long as we obtain awareness. If Moreau was the visual example of Maeterlink, you needn’t look further than John Everett Millais’s Ophelia to understand Schwob. The jeweled tones of the soon dead Ophelia are the same colors that gently illuminate the world of Monelle. . I’d write more but I think my time would be better served circumambulating my first edition print of the Book of Monelle hoping to never have to learn my lessons again in the land of hungry ghosts. less

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