Mary Cassatt's Show Woman

Mary Cassatt was an independent woman at a time when it was very difficult to achieve such a position. She lived for most of her life in France, where independent women were more able to be part of society without attracting the wrong kind of attention.



Many of her canvases portray mothers with their children, and while the Medieval and Renaissance religious theme of mother and child was virtually a given throughout Europe, in the 19th century the portrait of an ordinary mother with her child was almost a novelty. And it was rarely taken seriously in an age in which huge canvases picturing the accomplishments of men in and out of wars were the norm at the Academy both in the United States and abroad. Yet, we find her portraits very touching because in our time the public tastes have altered. Rather than the epic, we prefer the intimate, the emotionally recognizable and the local.

Her painting Woman with a Pearl Necklace in the loge of the Opera Comique is similar to another of her paintings of a woman alone in a box in the theater. But instead of wearing black and preferring to be unnoticed, this Woman is brilliantly dressed in a radiantly emotional color, showing decollete highlighted by her pearl necklace.

She is a woman on exhibition and because of her beauty and the way in which she engages her audience, including us, she is a refreshing, intimate presence. She radiates beauty and confidence. Like Mary Cassatt, she is an independent woman. The difference is that Mary Cassatt is not, like this lovely woman, seen; she is showing us what is to be seen. Like the showman behind the curtain, Casssatt is the showwoman behind the canvas.  The Woman with the Pearl Necklace is showing herself in her setting, not looking at the stage, but around herself as if there is someone, a man perhaps?, by whom she wishes to be seen. She is in fact there to be seen, to be appreciated, just as the painting itself is designed to be seen and to be appreciated.  But what is the reflection behind her and what does it imply?

THE INDEPENDENT PRESS

In a recent interview, I was asked about the advantages of publishing through Hammonasset House Books, an Independent Press set up by several writers to publish their books.  First, I pointed out that all the writers involved with Hammonasset House Books had been widely published by commercial presses.  One writer has published more than 20 books by conventional commercial presses.  Another, a member of the Writer's Guild, has published and produced more than a dozen screenplays, yet another published several dozen articles in magazines.  A fourth is a Television writer, member of the Writer's Guild, and the founder of an ongoing theater group in which he has been honored for the year's best work.

So, I answered the question by saying that the Independent Press approach gives us extraordinary control over our books, from the control over copyright, to design, and certainly to editorial content.  This model would not necessarily work well for writers who have not yet published book length works, but for highly experienced writers it offers a freedom that has been earned in the world of commercial publishing.

The Indie Press has control, too, over the means of publicizing and maintaining the life of the book.  Commercial presses are well known for publishing a book, giving it a little push if the author is not a celebrity or a best-seller, then letting it languish.  The sales rankings on Barnes and Noble and Amazon tell that tale clearly.  The Independent Press, with fewer titles, is able to keep pushing the book as long as it wishes.  True, it may not have the distribution potential of the commercial press, but that potential works best only in the first 6 months of a book's life.  With online outlets like Amazon, the Indie Press can promote a book for life.

PROUST'S THE PRISONER

Proust's THE PRISONER in the new translation by Carol Clark ( or The Captive in other translations) is a study in the power of jealousy to make love especially intense. This is a remarkable vision of the passion Marcel feels for Albertine, but it is also a profound psychological analysis of the way in which he understands love. The last hundred pages are especially marvelous to read, especially following the section on Marcel's visit to the Verdurins. Some wonderful pithy sentences: “Love is space and time made apprehensible to the heart” (356); “we love only what we do not possess” (355); “we can find everything in our memory: it is a kind of pharmacy or chemical laboratory, where one's hand may fall at any moment on a sedative drug or a dangerous poison.” (361). Then there are those lovely passages about the Fortuny dresses that Marcel wants Albertine to have – partly because they are associated in his mind with Venice.  Here is one from the 1920s:

I particularly found the analysis of art (347ff) to be remarkable for his insights into Vermeer, Hardy, and Dostoevsky, starting of course from the music of Vinteuil, which echoes through the entire latter half of the book. Ironically at the end of the volume Marcel and Albertine visit Versailles, not Venice, whose architecture and gondoliers have haunted him throughout.

The opening pages of the book set an interesting theme in motion. Marcel meditates on the instability of one's own personality, establishing that we are many “people” in different circumstances, and that it is not a simple matter to know or understand one another. I suspect this concern of his is indebted to Freud's insights into the unconscious, although it is inherent in earlier psychological thought, as evidenced in R.L.S.'s Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde and in the work of Conrad and others who explore the idea of the double. Frequently in this volume, Proust points to the multiplicity of persons within a single character.

The extensive visit to the Verdurins, which Marcel makes alone, without Albertine, parallels the salon of the Duchess de Guermantes, where the subtext revolved around the Dreyfus affair. At the Verdurins Charlus is compromised without an expected passionate defensive response. Mme. Verdurin attempts to separate Morel from Charlus, and each offer Morel impressive “gifts” for him to reject one and accept the other. It is perhaps not precisely a subtext in this section, but certainly a profound concern in these pages is Charlus' homosexuality and Morel's bisexuality. These issues are explored in remarkable depth in the Verdurins' salon, with most characters offering views of both acceptance and rejection.

Another impressive theme running through the book is the question of repetition as a necessary ingredient in art. Repetition implies memory, which implies the recollection of past events, central to the entire book, and Marcel begins with the seven note melody from Vinteuil, which Morel plays at the Verdurins.. He them speculates on repetition in Venetian architecture, in the works of Hardy, which he sees as utterly repetitive from novel to novel, and on to Vermeer, whose work he interprets as repeating the same motifs again and again.

And of course, we see in this volume a great deal of repetition, not only within the volume, but repetitive of events in earlier volumes. Nothing could make the painfulness of Albertine's bedtime kisses in the last pages more intense than our memory of the significance of the bedtime kiss of Marcel's mother in Swann's Way. These kinds of repetitions – and many more than I can mention here – act as armatures for the novel as a whole, and they help us interpret its inner meanings and show us how events take on meaning partly through their very return into our consciousness. It is part of the ineffable beauty of this volume.

THERESE RAQUIN by EMILE ZOLA

THERESE RAQUIN by Emile Zola is a dark and somber tale of a woman born illegitimately of an Algerian mother and a French father, then abandoned by her father and put into the hands of his sister. Therese is thus an Africanized Frenchwoman living in a household with her aunt and her aunt's son Camille. Mme. Raquin is a haberdasher and operates a shop outside of Paris for a time. But soon Camille and Therese begin to grow up, and eventually they decide to marry, although there is no passion between them.


Camille is a sickly man and had been a sickly boy. But he got a job in civil service when Mme. Raquin, with an invested fortune of 40,000 francs, moves her shop to a dark but serviceable passageway street near the Seine. At first the marriage is workable, although Therese is by no means satisfied. Then, Camille brings home a fellow who works with him and who had come from the same village they had lived in. Laurent is a dilatory fellow who imagines himself a painter, although his work is a scribble. He visits the Raquins frequently and one day when no one is there to see them, Laurent seizes Therese and they make passionate, violent love in the rooms above the shop. Zola is impressive here because of the level of passion in their embrace and their relationship, implying subtly that Therese's African blood supplies what the cold and weak French blood cannot.

Their affair continues unabated for a while and the two of them cannot get enough of each other, although no one seems to notice what they are doing. Laurent takes afternoon strolls and sneaks in the back door of the shop and goes up to Therese's room and makes love to her day after day until they realize they cannot go on as they are. Therese is fed up with the sickly Camille, and when they are out on an afternoon picnic the three of them go out in a rickety boat on a lake. Camille is frightened to begin with but he goes along and Therese and Laurent determine to drown him. Camille fights, bites Laurent on the neck, but ultimately drowns.

Guilt begins to rise almost immediately in Laurent's heart, and for days he visits the morgue near the Seine to look at all the drowned victims, most of whom are horribly bloated, with their skin peeling from their faces. These are great scenes – his constant visitations are like scenes from a horror film. Ultimately, Camille appears on one of the slabs, and at least now Laurent knows he is dead, but instead of reassuring him, the sight of Camille unnerves him. The face of Camille is burned into his imagination. The crime that he and Therese have committed is perfect in that no one suspects them. Witnesses among the boaters at the scene back up Laurent's story that Camille stood up in the boat when he should not have done.


So the genius of the novel is that no one can implicate them in the crime except themselves. And once that is clear the novel takes on an intense psychological cast, with all the “action” taking place inside the minds of the criminals. Mme. Raquin becomes paralyzed and thinks they love her, but learns, because of the angry outbursts of the two who now hate one another because of their own guilt over the crime, that they are murderers. She is tormented beyond measure, but cannot communicate what she knows. Therese and Laurent cannot touch one another sexually because their nightmares and their growing guilt poison their relationship. What they wanted they now have – freedom to enjoy their sexual fantasies – but guilt makes all that impossible.

Eventually, Laurent beats Therese and their hatred for each other grows. She meanwhile, pretends that her aunt has forgiven her, which disgusts Laurent. Yet nothing satisfies them, and ultimately their guilt and their hatred for each other drive them to suicide with prussic acid. What makes this such a compelling novel is the intensity with which Zola explores the psychological effects first of passion, then guilt. A television series was made of this book, but the qualities that make Zola's book distinct are not those that lend themselves to visual portrayal. The plot is simple and direct, while the language is fulsome and sensual in ways that films can rarely capture. What the TV series may have revealed is the passion of the characters, and that would make it worth seeing. But the book is a 19th century artifact and, while nodding at the stage, especially in the morgue scenes, it remains a tale told rather than a tale shown.

The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope's remarkable novel, The Way We Live Now, is 825 pages in my 1950 Alfred A. Knopf edition. I might mention that my book smells slightly old, and slightly damp. I found it, of course, on a shelf in a basement of a second hand store and when I saw it I realized that I had wanted to read it for many years and now had my chance.

To get the most obvious question out of the way first, the answer is yes, that in so many ways this book, which was published in parts in an American magazine beginning in 1874, is very much up to date and describes much of the way we live now. He is said to have written the book in response to the several large financial scandals of the 1870s. I presume they somewhat parallel the scandals of the first decade of our own century.

Trollope curiously includes a character, Mrs. Carbury who resembles his own scribbling mother, a woman author who does not get much encouragement from the publishing fellows in her immediate society. The problems of publication are quite different today, but the fright of trying to make a living as a writer is doubtless much the same if we go by Mrs. Carbury's experience.

But most striking for our time is the intense emphasis on money throughout the book. At its center is Augustus Melmotte, a master financial wizard who takes London by storm, is reckoned to be the wealthiest man in town, but who is suspected of being a rogue on the run from the continent. Melmotte has no manners whatever, and his bluntness is a blight on his immediate circle. He actually manages to be elected to Parliament from Westminster by virtue of plowing cash in the appropriate circles. . . does this ring a contemporary bell? And in Parliament he speaks to members as if they were waiters, and they do not approve.

Naturally, he turns out to be a con man of the dimension of our modern Mr. Madoff, wrecking the lives of many, losing a fortune, and unlike modern con men, commits suicide with prussic acid, not a pleasant way to go. But before he goes, he takes in a number of upper class but impecunious gentlemen and lords with his scheme for a Mexican railway to Vera Cruz. He sells shares at a high rate, and might have continued to flourish if it had not been for his hasty dealings with a piece of property whose bill of sale he casually forged. Once that was out he was out.

There are several romantic subplots, with Hetta Carbury refusing her cousin and preferring his friend, whose own situation is questionable. Marie Melmotte who, it turns out, has her own money, is refused by several adventurers hoping for her fortune but who assumed once Melmotte was dead that there was none. She, as a last resort, heads to America.  Even Mrs. Carbury ends the novel with the hope of a happy relationship with the editor of a local paper.

I have not seen the TV special that was done in 2001, but I think I will make an effort. I found the novel most interesting and assume the televised version, with David Suchet as Melmotte, would be quite worth seeing.

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

Visiting the Great Wall has been a tourist “must” for centuries, and it has to be admitted that the experience is unforgettable. Apart from the fact that the wall can be seen from deep space and that it is possibly the most massive thing built by man, it has in its way a kind of beauty that grows on one.



Seeing it recently right after the heaviest snow that Beijing had seen in sixty years, we found it especially beautiful. The snow intensified its massiveness and outlined it against its background of mountains stretching on for miles. On the wall itself, where we all tried to walk uphill, the snow was treacherous enough to make us wish for ropes to hold on to or boots that dug deeply into the crust. Yet everywhere we looked, the scenery exalted the vision of the wall winding toward the horizon.


Several things impressed us. First, the wall was filled with tourists, but not primarily western tourists. Far and away the largest number of tourists was local or consisting of groups of workers, all wearing red baseball hats, or groups of citizens with their families and their children. We were amazed when some of them came and photographed us, then placed their wives next to us for another photograph. They placed their children between us and took our photograph. Then I began taking their photograph and giving them my camera to have them photograph us with their wives and children, usually with their arms around us or holding hands. Young couples insisted on having their photographs taken with us and then older couples came and followed suit. I don't remember anything like this happening in an American tourist spot.

We shook hands with many people who simply smiled and spoke a few words. Almost none were in English. But I had the impression that there was genuine good feeling between the Chinese tourists and us American tourists. Everywhere I looked there were smiles and good cheer. It was encouraging on many levels.  For some reason it made me think of Samuel Johnson.  In his home in London there is a large brick supposedly taken from the Great Wall and given to him as a remembrance.  I suppose a good photograph is something like a good brick.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

This month and last I spent an agreeable time reading the entirety of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Penguin, tr. Gerald E. Bevan, 860 pp.).

Naturally, I had read segments in abbreviated editions, but this was the first time I had read the entire book from beginning to end. The experience was enormously rewarding. His understanding of the effect of equality in a new nation was profound, and he saw in the death of the old aristocracy the wave of the future. He also found it difficult to fully understand the nature of government in America, since it seemed to him that there was little or none. He saw that people were independent, free, and beholden to no one. He saw that the primary impulse in America was the love of money, and thus that individualism (he is among the first to use the term) was a power to reckon with. This was in 1830, and clearly little has changed.

He also thought that the real power in America was in the individual states and not in the federal government. Even with Andrew Jackson, a potential "tyrant," in position of president–the man Tocqueville says, "is supposed to be working for the institution of a dictatorship in the United States" (461) has actually very little power to force any state, especially South Carolina, to his will. He has little regard for Jackson ("a man of a violent disposition and mediocre ability" [324]), and he deduces that the federal government's power will probably never soon compete with the power of the 24 confederated states of the union.

He has much to say about the possibility of civil war in the democracy of the United States, and concludes that it is virtually unthinkable. And he concludes this after the 1830sTariff incident in which South Carolina armed its militia in a threat to leave the union over perceived damages to its economy. Jackson backed down and the militia returned home. Twenty five years later the brutal Civil War was begun, Lincoln prevailed, and federalism became the power that forced the states to adhere to law.

De Tocqueville's is one of the most important books in American political history, so, for me, reading it was a really important experience, especially in light of the 2010 State of the Union speech by president Obama. Unlike many politicians he did not quote from de Tocqueville, but he was aware of some of the same stresses in political opinion as are expressed in Democracy in America.

In a moment of intense irony, the Governor of Virginia gave the rebuttal for the Republican party. He stood in the Capitol rotunda of Richmond, the center of the Confederacy where Jefferson Davis spoke, in a building designed by Jefferson and built by slaves--a truly symbolic act on his part--and what he did, by quoting Jefferson's comment that local government was the best government, was to reopen the dispute between strong federal government and strong states rights governments, the very things that de Tocqueville focuses on for more than 500 pages. I was amazed.

The Governor ignored the Civil War and the result of Lincoln's decisions to make the federal government strong enough to enforce laws in rebel states. The ignorance of the governor appalled me. But I know he was following an ideology that insists that the federal government be reigned in. Of course, that ideology also forgets that in the 1960s, a hundred years after Fort Sumter, we had to send our young people south to enforce federal rules regarding segregation. If we go back to the states rights version of government, we'll have subtle Jim Crow laws and much other undemocratic legislation designed to restrict abortion, gay rights, and free speech. If that happens, Alexis de Tocqueville would surely recognize the nation he saw in 1830 and feel that his prophecy of a possible tyranny of the majority could come true.

Negotiating With the Dead

Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing is a hymn to literature itself. This is not a self-help book, or a how-to book, but a smart introduction to the meditations that absorb every serious writer. And the word "serious" there implies only that the writer must be serious about his or herself because writers are, as Atwood makes very clear, in a complex relationship with the past and with the dead writers who have established the terrain and clarified the game of writing.

She covers everything one might expect, including the important question of who the writer's audience must be. She almost comes close to saying that the dead may be among the writer's audience, but of course she holds back and reflects upon the possibility that the writer may have only an audience of one--in which case there may be some difficulties. The book is after all the messenger that communicates the message. It is not the writer who does so. Once the book is gone from the writer's hand time moves on and the writer is no longer the person who wrote the book.

These are the Empson lectures at Cambridge and they allude indirectly to the ambiguities that are central to Empson's most famous book, Seven Types of Ambiguity. In one fascinating chapter she addresses the ambiguity implied in the multiple identities of the writer writing. One identity is as a person, another as the poet. The poet is most unpoetical as a person, and that alone creates a curious situation for our contemplation.

In general, this book sweeps through literature from Gilgamesh to Yeats, Delillo, and beyond, and while something short of a book of literary criticism, it is a book of literary discussion and literary communion. So many writers, famous and obscure, are addressed and quoted in these pages that one soon realizes there is a sub-text here that cannot be ignored. Writers must be readers. Such a simple observation may seem unnecssary to the "serious" writer, but the facts are very simple. Many people who think they are going to be writers neglect the most important thing of all: a literary education. Even James Patterson reads Joyce (except for Finnegans Wake). What Atwood does here is create a hymn for the love of literature.

THE PEKING OPERA

Even in winter, China was at times a vibrant place. I spent three weeks this November in China, during the coldest winter since 1949, the year of Mao's Long March. In general, I have to say that China was gray and sometimes grim because of the weather–no sun, considerable cold, dampness, and eventually lots of snow. It surprised the natives, but as a New Englander, we were prepared. The Peking Opera was a nice surprise. Not only was there an interesting and socially significant libretto, but the visuals were often stunning. The opera was a welcome contrast to the out of doors in several ways. For one, the warmth and colors were lovely and delightful. But the contrast with the outdoor vendors, most of whom were hard working and serious about their business, but who were also desperate and obviously poor, was considerable. China is amazing in many ways, and one of the most remarkable is in the contrasts one sees all around the major cities.

Of course, the size of the cities is overwhelming for most of us. These days almost every city is marked by a plethora of cranes high in the skyline, building condos and business landmarks everywhere. Rarely is there fewer than three to seven visible cranes in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. In the region of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze, one sees cities built for the displaced people whose homes are now below almost 300 meters of water.

People are mixed in their reactions to this gigantic project. Some naturally lament the loss of their ancestral homes, but others revel in the fact that they now have their own condo with indoor plumbing and separate bedrooms. What impresses me as an outsider is the fact that China is rebuilding itself while we are waging war and resisting serious investment in our own infrastructure.

Beijing's National Stadium, The Bird's Nest

The National Stadium, the Bird’s Nest, in Beijing is one of the most photogenic of modern buildings. It appears its best at night, like many dazzling women. It is the product of a Swiss architectural firm that employed a Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, to help them keep the project in line in terms of its indebtedness to Chinese designs. Weiwei introduced the concept of great Chinese ceramics in part because any great stadium, is in part a bowl. But the use of such dramatic steel trusses crossing everywhere throughout the building gives the impression of a bird’s nest more than that of a bowl.

The Chinese had taken to the building right away, and the dramatic photographs that circulated in the Western media made it a darling of magazines and newspapers. The reviews of the building were almost uniformly positive, and the anticipation of being within it sparked all the tourists who went to see the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics. It was a great success in providing the space for the track and field and gymnastic events as well as for the general ceremonious uses to which it was put. It pleased almost everyone.

Today, a year after the Olympics, the fate of the building is in some doubt. The plans were designed so that the building would house shopping malls and also become an 80,000 seat entertainment center. As of now, relatively few large entertainments have taken advantage of the space, and in some places, according to commentators, the building is flaking and not being well maintained.

We hope to see the Bird's Nest for ourselves in November. Perhaps we can see it at night, with its “makeup” on.