wednesday books would like fewer things to be on fire

[landofnowhere]

King Lear, Shakespeare. Read-aloud -- just the first half. I still don't particularly like any of the characters, but it is a well-plotted play and the language is very good. I like the fool's baffling prophecy that ends "This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time" and would like to see it used transformatively in fiction.

La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, George Sand. Sequel to Consuelo. I'm a bit over halfway through and OMG is this a trip! This starts a year after Consuelo, with Consuelo established as an opera singer in Berlin, which unfortunately she finds rather cold and depressing. The book starts with politics at Frederick the Great's court, where Consuelo quickly fits herself drawn in over her head. (It includes a couple cameos by Voltaire, and also George Sand wants us to know her opinion regarding Frederick the Great & Voltaire breakup. To rephrase her take in AITA terminology, she says that although biographers of her time consider Voltaire to be NTA, really ESH and in some ways Frederick acquitted himself better.) The result of all this intrigue is that Frederick the Great imprisons Consuelo in a tower and then forgets about her. Consuelo spends a few months of mostly-peaceful imprisonment (where she composes music, befriends a robin and the warden's neuroatypical teenage son -- this bit felt like it might have been an influence on Frances Hodgson Burnett), before her escape is arranged by a secret society of people who all wear masks.

At this point I had been getting disappointed that, despite George Sand's unconventional lifestyle, Consuelo is actually pretty conventional in morality -- her strength and purity is tied to her chastity. However! In the course of the daring escape, she wakes up to find herself snuggling with her masked rescuer, kisses him, and instantly falls in love despite never having heard him speak or seen him without his mask.

Since then she's been a guest of the mysterious secret society, trying to figure out WTF is going on while juggling her feelings for the stranger, her respect for her dead husband (to whom she was married for all of two hours before his apparent death), the possibility that he might not actually be dead (at the least he has a doppelganger running around), and her curiosity and desire to join the mysterious secret society (even as I'm going, "no, it's a cult, get out!"). And she may have escaped Frederick the Great, but she certainly hasn't escaped politics. I have no idea if this will stick the landing (so many loose threads) but it's wild!

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Is the masked stranger Consuelo's apparently dead husband?? That seems like too much AND YET...

I love your write-ups of Consuelo's adventures. They're such a trip!

[selenak]

To rephrase her take in AITA terminology, she says that although biographers of her time consider Voltaire to be NTA, really ESH and in some ways Frederick acquitted himself better.

I was going to ask you before and forgot: what do these acronyms mean? I mean, I can guess a bit from the context, but I would like to know the exact words.

Also, on the assumption that it means biographers of her time think of Voltaire was the more wronged one when it was really Frederick - that depends on which 19th century biographers of which nationality we're talking about. German-speaking historians who were all very uncritical Friedrich fanboys in most of the 19th century completely sided with him, and in the 18th century in their own life time the Germans found Voltaire ungrateful (since they thought Frederick was already doing him a big favour by having offered him a place at his court to begin with) and the French were offended that Voltaire was so unpatriotic as to go in the first place, though there was also the overwhelming sense that these two deserved each other among people not fannish for one or both. (And then partisans of either were stunned when they started to be pen pals again after all the trash talking of each other.)

Now, I'm very willing to believe French 19th century historians were whitewashing Voltaire and vilifying Frederick, and George Sand reacted against that. (Not having read the German historians who were whitewashing Frederick and vilifying Voltaire.) But for me, while both acted badly and hilariously in their epic breakup (and not only then), what it comes down to is this: only one of them was an absolute monarch who could and did abuse his power during said breakup. Frederick having Voltaire and his niece arrested in Frankfurt - which wasn't even part of his realm where he had the power to do so, so in addition to everything else, this was a diplomatic incident - in order to get his poems back was blatant power abuse. That he could have done even more without impunity because he had an army and Voltaire did not doesn't make it better but emphasizes that Voltaire, while anything but a saint, still was armed only with the power of trashtalking in that fight, so really: keep those zingers coming, Voltaire, he's earned them, and then some.

(Frederick's post-break up attitude towards Voltaire can be summed up by the scenes described by more than one witness from the 7 Years War where it's "Voltaire's the worst! Let me tell you the details of how he's the worst! OMG, what's this, a new Voltaire letter to me! Gimme! Must read! Must answer! Go away, leave me alone with my latest Voltaire letter!")