Carlyle’s statue, Ecclefechan Scotiana 2004
Hi Janice ! How interesting your post about Carlyle! You know, I remember pretty well the quiet village of Ecclefechan, near the town of Moffat, having gone there in 2004 and 2006. We found Carlyle’s grave, with its two enigmatic dragon heads carved on the stone and also his statue dominating the area, a lonely figure forever sitting on its bronze armchair as if defying time and weather, but we never visited Carlyle’s birth cottage because we always arrived there after closing time. I would have liked to, however, because it might have added a human touch to the austere figure of the great Scottish writer.
In my library, I do have the English Everyman’s edition of Sartor Resartus you’ve inserted in your last post but though I have tried to read it several times I must confess I never managed to go very far. But you’ve aroused my curiosity again and when I did search the web to find more about Carlyle I fell on a recently published article of Le Matricule des Anges, a well-known French literary magazine, which mentioned that Sartor Resartus had just been translated into French and well introduced by Maxime Berrée, for the editions José Corti (Domaine romantique).
So what do you think I did yesterday when going to Bordeaux for Christmas shopping? I’m sure you’ve guessed! Yes, I entered Mollat, my favourite library, to buy Sartor Resartus.
Sartor Resartus, Thomas Carlyle, French traduction by Maxime Berrée, José Corti edition, Domaine Romantique, 2008
Here is my book, in its French version, with Carlyle’s face beautifully reproduced on the front cover. What an austere face! That man looks terrible on this picture ! Don’t you think he looks better in the portrait below? But we must not judge by appearances… so, let us try to know more about this great writer.
Thomas Carlyle portrait Source : Wikipedia
I’ve read in the introduction of Sartor Resartus that, though an internationally recognized genius, this writer has not always been a favourite in France, contrary to Walter Scott, his contemporary fellow-country man who, in a quite different genre, was extremely popular and widely read then. One must add that Carlyle didn’t like France very much, a country which he considered as frivolous and superficial. Is it really? As a matter of fact, Carlyle did prefer Germany … Anyway I’ve already read the first chapter of Sartor Resartus, and I must admit that I do like it. Sans rancune!. I will tell you more if I get to the end of the book and I’m sure I will, soon…
Rob Roy Walter Scott Folio edition 2001 Introduction by Allan Massie Wood engravings by George Tute
But let us go back now to Walter Scott’s Rob Roy. It’s with great pleasure that I open my Folio edition again, with its wood engravings so beautifully illustrating the story.
Sir Walter Scott's desk Abbotsford Scotiana 2001
Having visited Abbotsford several times and been so deeply touched in front of the great writer’s desk I can’t help imagining him writing Rob Roy.
Walter Scott's desk Abbotsford Scotiana 2001
The book was written between May and December 1817. Considering how busy Walter Scott’s life must have been then, what with his professional, social and family activities, what with the building of Abbotsford, no doubt such rhythm of writing must have been hard for him to sustain. Sir Walter had not yet to face the huge amount of debts which would oppress him later, day after day, after he and his fellow editors have gone bankrupt in their editing business, in 1826, but his health was not very good at the time either. So, in front of so many beautiful pages, I’m much more inclined to admire than criticize what I read, and I quite agree with Allan Massie, who so beautifully introduced the Folio edition of Rob Roy, when he writes :
Criticism dwells on themes, of which the reader on first encountering a fiction is likely to be only dimly, and scarcely consciously, aware. The experience of reading a novel is therefore very different from that of criticising it. We read, first, for pleasure; no one is, or should be, obliged to read a novel. A first reading is properly superficial. We read for the story, for the characters, for the scenes, for the pleasure of language vividly or engagingly used. It is only on reflection and at subsequent readings that more is revealed.
A great novel must satisfy both sorts of reading, and Rob Roy, for all its faults, does that. The story is gripping… There is comedy… The characters are richly varied, and as in all his best novels Scott displays here what Virginia Woolf called his ‘Shakespearean gift’ of allowing his people to reveal their natures by the words they speak. (…)
According to Henri Suhamy, one of his best French biographers, it took longer for Walter Scott to write Rob Roy than his other novels and it’s the only time one of them is written in the first person, like an autobiographical tale. The story begins : “You have requested me, my dear friend, to bestow some of that leisure with which Providence has blessed the decline of my life, in registering the hazards and difficulties which attended its commencement.” The ageing narrator, Frank Osbaldistone, is going to tell the story of his life to his friend. Amusingly enough, the beginning of the tale begins in Bordeaux 😉
Thinking things over now, instead of reading the book just for ourselves, why not read Rob Roy aloud for everybody, delighting together, page after page, in our reading.
Yes, why not ? Are you ready ? So, stay tuned for the audio podcast …
A bientôt.
Mairiuna
Oxford World's Classics 1998
Oxford World's Classics 2008
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