A Soviet era fairytale

© C A Lovegrove

The Dragon:
A Satiric Fable in Three Acts
by Eugene Schwarz [1944]. 
Дракон. Пьеса в трех действиях translated from the Russian by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (1961),
introduction by Norris Houghton, 
production notes by Gillian Phillips.
Heinemann Educational Books, 1969.

In his introduction to Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood’s translation of Evgeny Schwartz’s play Norris Houghton outlines how Soviet-era authors often camouflaged their satire and closet criticism of Soviet policies by presenting them as fairytales, a practice with a long tradition in Russia.

And so it is with The Dragon: superficially a pantomime with comic characters, romance and a mythical beast, it nevertheless has a deadly serious purpose underlying the fun and games. Does the dragon get slain? The audience waits with baited breath to see if the hero fulfils his task and gets the girl or dies in the attempt.

But if the beast is indeed defeated, who or what will take its place, and will the replacement be an improvement or simply a repeat of what came before? And what would be the reaction of the townsfolk if the hero did succeed?

Mischiefs feed like beasts

Doorknocker © C A Lovegrove

Volpone,
[or The Foxe: A Comedie]
by Ben Jonson (1606-7).
Edited by Philip Brockbank.
New Mermaids: A & C Black / W W Norton & Company, 1989 (1969).

‘Riches, the dumb god, that giv’st all men tongues;
That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things.’ — Volpone.

I:1

Ben Jonson’s play, first performed around 1606 and published the year after, is set in Venice, a setting which Shakespeare had already used for The Merchant of Venice and for Othello and a city state which had a reputation for mendacity and duplicity.

Above all Venice represented the wealth that comes from extensive trading and banking, and which Tudor and Jacobean traders envied. But, as the First Avocatore or prosecutor declares (Act 5 scene xii) ‘These possess wealth, as sick men possess fevers, | Which, trulier, may be said to possess them.’

Here then is a story about possessions – possessing riches, being possessed by the desire to have riches, and faking possession by disease and by devils. It’s not a pretty story but it’s entertaining – and there’s a very moral ending.

Caterwauling time

Moomin Week @ LiteraryPotpourri.com and Calmgrove.wordpress.com

As we’re nearly a third of the way through the year I feel as though it’s a good moment for me to pause and not only consider what’s passed but also what’s to come – bookwise at any rate!

I started 2024 with the intention of making it my Year of Reading Randomly – but it’s not quite happened that way, what with #NordicFINDS, the Japanese Literature Challenge, Vintage SciFi Month, #ReadingIndies, #Dewithon, #Begorrathon, #MarchMagics, National Poetry Month, National Unicorn Day, Reading the Theatre, and the #1937Club . . .

But at least, with just one exception, I managed to restrict my reading – 26 books to date – to titles selected only from my personal Mount TBR or else borrowed from the local library, an achievement I’ve found extremely satisfying. So I wonder if with the events coming up I can continue whittling down the mountain? Time for a yowl of anticipation!

No cure for nostalgia: #1937Club

Gulácsy, Lajos (1882-1932): ‘Apparition’ 1903.

Journey by Moonlight (1937)
by Antal Szerb,
Utas és holdvilág
translated by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2000.

We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

XX

In the 1830s Franz Liszt began an affair with a married woman, spending time in Italy, out of which sprang the celebrated piano compositions entitled Années de pèlerinage, meditations which frequently referenced Italian themes.

A century later a fellow Hungarian, Mihály, embarks on a honeymoon in Italy with the former wife of Zoltán Pataki, Erzsi, travelling from the northeast of the country across the Apennines to the Eternal City; thereafter any parallels with Liszt become less obvious.

Much of Mihály’s pilgrimage, moreover, won’t be in the company of his wife; and much of it will involve an internal odyssey even while he follows a roundabout route to where all roads are said to lead. A strange journey it will be, full of coincidences, nostalgia, lethargy and near-death experiences.

Intrepidity personified: #1937Club

Detail from front cover design.

The Black Island (1937) by Hergé (Georges Remi).
L’île noire (1956) translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (1966).
Egmont, 2009.

Young reporter Tintin doesn’t find trouble; trouble finds him. As with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, say, he just happens to be on hand when dastardly deeds are being committed; yet despite setback after setback he remains intrepidity personified.

This is no more evident than when his efforts to help those in a stricken aircraft during a casual stroll in the Belgian countryside are viciously rebuffed, leading in time to an impromptu cross-channel trip to Sussex followed by a flight to Scotland.

And all the while we are left to wonder how a teenage newspaper reporter somehow always seems to be the subject of press reports but never the writer of them, and how the long arm of the law seems to always be grasping the wrong end of the stick.

Horrors! #1937Club

From Weird Tales 29/1 (1937): ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ by Virgil Finlay

The Thing on the Doorstep
by H P Lovecraft.
CreateSpace Publishing, 2017 (Weird Tales, 1937).

Written in 1933 but not published till 1937 – the year Lovecraft died – ‘The Thing on the Door-Step’ is typical of the author’s weird fiction with its overused adjectives implying horror too obscure, obscene and terrifying to be described, often expressed by an innocent narrator too appalled by what they’re witnessing to join up the dots until it’s too late.

On one level the writing is laughable, the familiar clichés piling Pelion upon Ossa in their determination to shock the reader, the repeated alien names, the constant references to prohibited arcane texts to imply ancient but forbidden knowledge.

On another level Lovecraft’s fiction is deeply uncomfortable to read, here as elsewhere, not for the horror (which by modern standards is tame enough) but for what I and other critics abhor, namely the misogyny, homophobia and racism implicit in the narratives.

A fearful thing: #ReadingTheTheatre

© C A Lovegrove.

Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson.
Also issued as The Reluctant Heiress (2009).
Young Picador, 2008 (1982).

‘I believed it. I believed it all,’ said Tessa. ‘That you served music, all of you, because it was above pettiness and rank. Because it makes everybody one: rich and poor, sick and well. Because it comes to us from God.’

Chapter 8

As the 1983 winner of the Romantic Novelists Association award for the year’s best romantic novel there’s little doubt that Magic Flutes fits all the criteria for that genre – girl meets boy but then events soon threaten a happy ending. Yet Ibbotson’s novel is so much more than the expected fairytale clichés.

Like Tessa believing in the power of great music to achieve good things I wanted to believe that the details of this story reflected truths about life, and that was because of the positive effect Ibbotson’s craft had on me. I wanted to believe that although I know bad things happen and bad people exist that wrongs could be righted and the balance of things could be restored.

As the title strongly hints, Magic Flutes is related to a single performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a performance which takes place in 1922 in an Austrian castle within sight of the Alps. And, as if to add resonance to Ibbotson’s story, much of the action of the story seems to echo details and characters from the opera – but not so closely that we can guess exactly how things will turn out!

Rooted in truth

‘Landscape with Psyche Outside the Palace of Cupid’ (‘The Enchanted Castle’): Claude Lorrain (1664).

The Little White Horse
by Elizabeth Goudge.
Lion Hudson, 2000 (1946).

“As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.” — Elizabeth Goudge, 1960.

When, as a founding member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Elizabeth Goudge wrote that fairytales are rooted in truth at the same time as she commended imagination and happy endings, she could equally have been giving a heartfelt justification for the optimism and positivity of her award-winning The Little White Horse.

For this postwar children’s fantasy has all the same hallmarks as any fairytale or medieval romance – hearty dollops of imaginative details, a satisfying serving of what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, and the recognisable quintessence which Charles Kingsley defined as a concept so beautiful it must be true.

Set in 1842, in a hidden valley that’s not in the outer world but partakes of Faërie, this novel may present as pure escapism but there’s no denying that it reminds us that there is goodness to be found in the world, that reconciliation is possible, and that spring is a time of hope and renewal.

The last visions

The flag of San Marino showing the three towers of Monte Titano

The Third Tower: journeys in Italy by Antal Szerb.
A harmadik torony translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix.
Pushkin Press, 2014 (1936).

I felt bereft when Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy stopped mid-sentence only in sight of Lyon. Mr Yorick was due to travel down western Italy via Turin, Milan, Florence and Rome as far as Naples but, unhappily for all, the full account was cut short by the small matter of the writer’s death.

Fortunately there was Antal Szerb’s The Third Tower recently published in English to console me, though the Hungarian’s travels were essentially down the east coast of Italy only as far south as San Marino.

But, just as with Sterne’s writings, this was as much — if not more — about the person than the places visited.

Outside falls away

© C A Lovegrove

Off the Shelf:
A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse
edited by Carol Ann Duffy.
Picador, 2016.

‘… You step aside

from the roar on the street to the door
of Strand Book Stall. Outside falls away.’

—Imtiaz Dharker: ‘Beware the books.’

It’s autumn 2016, and at the second Crickhowell Literary Festival I pick up a slim hardback promising a selection of poetic paeans in praise of bookshops. Dipping into the contents I see some thirty individual pieces – mostly filling one page, only one expanding to five pages – and discover that I like the two or three I pay close attention to.

So why has it taken me more than seven years to return to this thesaurus, this storehouse of exquisite treasures – no tawdry trinkets these – and give them the attention they deserve? Is it because I’ve been too busy living the bookish experiences they describe in so much detail, actually entering the sanctums where the faithful may find the joy of texts?

Well now, here am I finally fully appreciating the gems that have lain so long in store for this tardy reader, and hoping to share their virtues with you too.

Maudlin tears

‘The Legend of the Magdalene’, early 16th century, Netherlands (National Gallery, London)

The Tears of the Magdalene
by Dr Thalia Hilary. 
Vernal Books, 2020.

I do love a literary study that both informs and entertains, and this one by Dr Hilary (published, incidentally, by Vernal Books, part of a consortium of small presses)¹ is a real doozy. Her specialism is Chaucer, and she has for many years been focusing on a couple of fragments from one of over ninety manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales; at some stage the fragments were bound up with what appears to be a fragment of yet another text by the poet.

This last text seems to be a bit of Chaucer’s otherwise missing translation of a discourse by the Early Christian scholar Origen, usually referred to as Orygenes Upon the Maudeleyne (that is, ‘Origen’s [homily] on Mary Magdalene’).

Dr Hilary argues that one text throws light on the other, and that it’s no coincidence that the several fragments have long been bound together. What is their relationship, and what does it signify? Hang on tight, for it’s a real mystery tour we’re being taken on.

#MarchMagics2024 wrap-up

#MarchMagics2024 #DianaWynneJones #TerryPratchett

‘Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.’ — Terry Pratchett, in Night Watch.

So that’s it for this year! I hope you took advantage of this rebooted March Magics – an event originally conceived by Kristen Meston of WeBeReading.com – to read or reread some Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett titles, or at least to dip your toes into the writings of one or the other.

By the way, if you’ve been wondering what the meme image is supposed to represent, let me tell you that I used one of those dubious AI apps to generate a picture using, as one of the verbal stimuli, the word ‘magician’, and it came up with this rather ambiguous, even ambivalent, suggestion. Hope it wasn’t too weird and put you off!

Anyway, if you haven’t already, do feel free to add a link below to any review or discussion you’ve posted, whether on a blog, a book cataloguing site or social media. If your comment doesn’t immediately appear don’t worry, I’ll check if it happened to be consigned to purgatory by my spam filter and retrieve it in due course – and naturally I shall respond in suitably congratulatory, humorous or commiserating tones!

Corresponding with DWJ: #MarchMagics2024

Diana Wynne Jones, 1934–2011

I have a treasured letter from the writer Diana Wynne Jones in response to a missive from me, which I’d like to share with you as part of this year’s March Magics.

I’d sent her some copies of a magazine journal I used to edit, along with a covering note, and she was kind enough to respond. I subsequently drafted a letter back to her, but it was only a few months after her death in 2011 that I found the original in an envelope, awaiting a stamp, which to my great regret I hadn’t got round to sending.

But the route I took to this briefest of correspondence might be of interest to fans of Diana, and it involves another writer, one with whom I was in more regular correspondence, and I’d like to expand on the background to how I got to write to DWJ.

Never what it seems: #Begorrathon24

© C A Lovegrove

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods.
One More Chapter, 2024 (2023).

‘The thing about books,’ [Martha] said, ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.’ — Epilogue.

Hovering between magic realism and fantasy, romance and historical fiction, The Lost Bookshop slyly plays with the reader’s expectations of a straightforward narrative. How can a bookshop be lost? Who are Opaline, Martha and Henry, and how – and more to the point, why – are their lives fated to intersect?

A twisting intertwining plotline, like the roots and branches of a tree, takes in townhouses in Dublin and London, a famous Paris bookshop, an institution in Connacht, a dilapidated building in Italy and the First World War battlefields of Northern Europe, and involves births, deaths, liaisons, failed marriages and family secrets. We fairly accurately guess at some of the connections but others will elude our suspicions till the very end.

However, as Opaline tells us in Chapter 1, ‘A book is never what it seems,’ alerting us to the need to peer behind and beyond the words on the page; her words are unconsciously echoed by a tipsy Henry a few chapters later when he bombastically declares, ‘A book is so much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.’ What are we expected to glean from these portentous pronouncements?

Hayley and the Mythosphere: #MarchMagics2024

Comet impact on Jupiter, 1993

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones. Firebird Books, 2007.

The concept of the mythosphere is a wonderful thing, typical of Diana Wynne Jones and full of creative potential. It is the place we go to in dreams, the realm of the Collective Unconscious, the landscape where mythical archetypes roam and Jungian symbols are to be encountered, collected and treasured.

Young Hayley gets drawn into the mythosphere when she is sent by her grandparents to stay with relatives in Ireland, who have invented a pastime called The Game where they have to fetch back mythical objects against the clock. However, there are repercussions which not only put her in danger but also reveal who she really is and the nature of her large extended family.

A clue comes from her name which, as in many of Jones’ books, has a significance beyond it being a girl’s name chosen at random: it is a not-so-closet reference to Edmond Halley who identified the periodicity of the comet that bears his name and whose surname is popularly pronounced as in the girl’s forename. And in The Game Hayley, like the comet, has the capacity to blaze away in the heavens.