Frari
LIBRARY
In the modern world with everything moving so fast, it's good to remember the rich traditions of literature and knowledge to be found on the printed page. Here are a few recent discoveries:
Balzac 1: Physiology of Marriage
Balzac 2: SéraphÎta
Recently noted: the new Jacqueline Thomas website
A note on Calum Storrie's ‘The Delirious Museum’.
Bookshelf
Balzac the radical
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Honoré de Balzac 1
Physiology of Marriage :: Petty Worries of Conjugal Life
Caxton Edition, London 1900
Two well-dressed young men, whose slender bodies and rounded arms resemble a paver's beetle, and whose boots are of fashionable make, meet one morning on the boulevard at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.
Click the title page to enlarge.
Balzac's Physiology of Marriage is a little known study of matrimonial prerogatives, politics and «petty worries». The Caxton edition is in two volumes, the first comprised of meditations, axioms, anecdotes and advice addressed to husbands; the second continues in like fashion, with anecdotes on the marriage of Caroline and Adolfe, a semi-fictional couple struggling with the vicissitudes of marriage.
The Physiology of Marriage appears anti-feminist (if the term can be applied to a book originally published in 1830). But a literal reading obscures Balzac's irony, humour, and ultimately sympathetic portrayal of both men and women.
Physiology of Marriage (Gutenberg Project) | Balzac (Wikipedia)
Sample pages
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Honoré de Balzac 2
SéraphÎta
As the eye glances over a map of the coasts of Norway, can the imagination fail to marvel at their fantastic indentations and serrated edges, like a granite lace, against which the surges of the North Sea roar incessantly? Who has not dreamed of the majestic sights to be seen on those beachless shores, of that multitude of creeks and inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses?
SéraphÎta is a “philosophical study” representing the third and culminating volume of Balzac’s trilogy on the power of human will that begins with The Magic Skin and Louis Lambert. These three novels by Balzac deal profoundly with the advantages of strengthening and managing individual will to achieve specialized ends in and beyond ordinary life. Balzac's correspondence makes clear that he intended SéraphÎta to be his definitive statement about individual moral evolution.
SéraphÎta is a story about an androgynous youth (first called Séraphitus, later Séraphita) who possesses great spiritual and physical beauty, and dies, by ordinary interpretation, an untimely and unwarranted death voluntarily, quietly and fully self-aware.
[ The two preceeding paragraphs are from an essay by Professor John Haydock ]
I am currently preparing a dual language French-English edition of SéraphÎta, using the 1835 Werdet edition (Le Livre Mystique) and the 1896 Roberts edition with translation by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. The book will be illustrated by Zsi Gyetvai, whose preliminary sketches accompany this notice.
Jacqueline Thomas Books
Recently noted: the new Jacqueline Thomas website
Jacqueline creates hand-bound limited edition books. The subjects she chooses are derived from the study of the history of science and historical and contemporary scientific imagery, which she mixes with an unusual range of images to create her unique compositions.
Jacqueline has books in the British Library Contemporary Collection; the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, Goldsmiths, University of London; Kingston University, London; Stony Brook University, New York; and in private collections in the US and the UK.
The Delirious Museum
A perennial favourite: Calum Storrie's The Delirious Museum: A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas.
This remarkable, illuminating work presents an original view of the idea of the museum in the twenty-first century, re-imagining the possibilities for museums and their displays and re-examining the blurred boundaries between museums and the cities around them.
Storrie’s journey begins in the Louvre and continues through Paris, London, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He encounters on his way the museum architecture of John Soane, Carlo Scarpa and Daniel Libeskind, the exhibitions of El Lissitsky and of Frederick Kiesler, and the work of artists as varied as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Marcel Broodthaers, Sophie Calle and Mark Dion.
The Delirious Museum is available from Amazon. Click here.