Richard et Cosima Wagner/Arthur Gobineau: correspondance 1880–1882 ed. by Eric Eugène (review)
2003; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 98; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2003.a827488
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoMLR, 98.1, 2003 207 on two or three characters in each story,exploring how perceived images (e.g. acting and the eye ofthe other in La Marquise, or the physical and social mirror in Mettella) relate to the psychological realization of the characters. However, what starts out as an insightful and promising argument turns into lengthy synopses accompanied by a mix of over-complicated claims and sometimes naive comment. In the reading of La Marquise, for example, the space of the theatre where the Marquise gazes at Lelio is equated mysteriously with a photographic image, which, explains Blair, 'is developed from reality,yet it is contrary to reality' (p. 25). Justas the reader is grappling with this analogy, Blair adds that 'the crossing of the one-way mirror creates a window where two people may carry on a sort of dialogueof perceptions' (ibid.). To be fair,Blair does at times provide perceptive comment and certainly offersa sensitive grasp of detail in her engagement with some of the texts. It is just a shame that these insights and inter? esting choicesof examples are not matched by a more spohisticated level of discussion. University of Nottingham Susan J.White Richard et Cosima Wagner/ArthurGobineau: correspondance 1880-1882. Ed. By Eric Eugene. Saint-Genouph: Nizet. 2000. 241pp. 180 F ISBN 2-7078-1258-7. The late friendship which Arthur Gobineau struck up with Richard and Cosima Wagner in October 1880 in Venice, subsequently cemented by Gobineau's two fiveweek visits to Wahnfried in May-June 1881 and 1882, provided the testy composer with intellectual stimulation and the ailing writer, all but forgotten in France, with the recognition he craved. Page after page of Cosima's diaries record Richard's unflagging warmth and sympathy towards the reputedly querulous misanthrope whom they both found 'unbedingt bedeutend und interessant' (entry for22 October 1880). Though Wagner himself wrote only once to Gobineau, it is her master's voice which speaks through Cosima's twenty-eight letters to her new confidant, only now pub? lished in full: 'pouvoir parler comme l'oiseau vole. Cela ne va qu'avec vous, cher comte!' (p. 135). The distinctive haute courtoisie of her native French matches that of her correspondent, whose forty-nine letters appear here for the firsttime. This was the writer to whom the Wagners now most often turned, who in the dy? ing MichelangeW s adieux?the final dramatic dialogue of La Renaissance?conjured up 'tout ce qu'il y a de sublime dans l'humanite [. . .] le heros, sous le jour de son immortalite et dans la bienheureuse transfigurationqui le rendit digne de l'adoration d'une femme incomparable' (p. 33): one can quite see what appealed to the sainted Cosima. Even their beloved Cervantes is on occasion found wanting, and Hoffmann quite eclipsed, in comparison with Gobineau's six Nouvelles asiatiques. With the vast Essaisur Vinegalitedes races humaines, however, Wagner's involvement is of a different order. His pleasure and interest in Gobineau's fatalistic doctrine of the decline of the Aryan race Tont detourne de sa partition. Parsifal a ete mis au rancart pour vous suivre', Cosima tells Gobineau on 27 March 1881 (p. 86)?as fine a compliment as he can ever have received. Fittingly,a line fromAmadis which prefiguresP<2rs//a/(though chronologically there can be no question of influence) runs as a leitmotif throughout Cosima's letters: 'le renoncement et les peines voulues' (p. 32; the penultimate lines of Book 1, stanza 6). But are the two men, as Eric Eugene insists in his copious, cross-referenced annotations , ultimately 'en total desaccord ideologique' (p. 197)? He himself finds Wagner's exposition, in Heldentum und Christentum, of Gobineau's ideas on miscegenation and decadence 'malheureusement bienveillante' (p. 13), while Wagner somewhat relativizes his own counter-ideas?on vegetarianism, colonization, and the power of Christ's blood to redeem all mankind?as 'Phantasiebilder eines Regenerationsversuches ' (see 'Religion und Kunst', part 3). Wagner's ever deepening pessimism in 208 Reviews Bismarck's Germany was by no means incompatible with Gobineau's unremitting nihilism ('nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons') and contempt for modernity (an erstwhile French ambassador, he now finds the French 'un peuple d'imbeciles [. . .] melanges de tous les sangs' (p. 157)). Eugene suggests Gobineau's half-hearted response to the anti-Jewish 'paranoia des Wagner' (p. 189) is probably 'pour faire plaisir aux Wagner' (p. 171) (similarly: 'je suis des votres, sauf l'humanite dont je ne suis pas du tout' (p. 131)). Only once does Gobineau risk direct confrontation : when Cosima's sister writes admiringly, yet 'sans partager sa foi dans la regeneration par la race des Germains' (p. 155), Gobineau is quick to correct a still common misapprehension: 'j'ai dit justement le contraire: que le monde, ai-je dit, n'est pas regenerable par les Germains parce qu'il en reste trop peu' (p. 155). (An Anglophile , he contends in the Essai that 'l'influence germanique [. . .] s'est transportee en Angleterre' (p. 161) with something of its old power.) Gobineau has been called a disciple of Schopenhauer (another Anglophile, unlike Wagner), but here he makes it clear he was unacquainted with the 'grand ouvrage de Schopenhauer' (p. 86), whose fate Cosima links with his own (indeed, Schopen? hauer had cited Gobineau approvingly in Parerga: '1'homme est l'animal mechant par excellence' (see Sdmtliche Werke, ed. by Arthur Hubscher, 3rd edn, 7 vols (Wiesbaden : Brockhaus, 1972), 11,229). But compassion was scarcely Gobineau's forte, while Cosima is 'resolument pour les vaincus' (pp. 62-3). In the full story,as yet unwritten , Nietzsche's is the missing voice. The present handsome volume, though its index is annoyingly out of sync, corrects previous transcription errors ('la baronne', not 'une bonne de Kunsberg'!) and tells a rather touching story. University of Leeds Fred Bridgham Guillaume Apollinaire 21: Apollinaire et leportrait. Ed. by Michel Decaudin. Paris: Revue des Lettres Modernes/Minard. 2001. 273 pp. ISBN 2-256-91026-1. Fourteen papers (plus a concluding tribute from Georges-Emmanuel Clancier), delivered at the 1999 Stavelot conference, focus on Apollinaire as a theoretician of portraiture, as a producer of poetic and fictional portraits and self-portraits, and as the inspiration forvisual and literaryportraits by his contemporaries. The book opens with a trio of studies of Apollinaire as a subject forhis painter friends. Mario Richter views de Chirico's incorporation and destabilization ofthe classical Orphic trope in his premonitory portrait of Thomme-cible' (1914) as an attempt to render the poet's dual commitment to lyric tradition and to an aesthetics of surprise. Turning to Delaunay (not to Duchamp as announced in the preface), Pascal Rousseau begins by comparing the painter's fracturing of the human form in his analytical cubist portrait of the poet (1912) with the dissection metaphorics of Les Peintres cubistes. Rousseau's discussion opens out to the problematics of 'ressemblance', the rival recuperations of anatomical discourse, and Apollinaire's definition of cubist sublimity. Peter Read analyses Picasso 's portrait ofthe poet for the frontispiece of Alcools, paying particular attention to the translation into cubist drawing of structural, material, and iconic elements from two photographic studies ofthe poet made in 1910. Ales Pohorsky and Philippe Rehage examine, respectively, Czech and German personal testimonies and literary portraits ofApollinaire. Claude Debon reconstructs the poet's physical characteristics from the multifarious, often competing, impressions of friends, lovers, rivals, collaborators , and commentators. But for her, the impossibility of stabilizing a definitive portrait of Apollinaire is less important than the tracking of the intertextual gener? ation and preservation of a myth. Anne Clancier reveals the death drive that impels Apollinaire to follow the ghost of his father as infantrycaptain. Jean-Louis Cornille ...
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