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The History of Literature
777 T.S. Eliot's "Preludes" | "The Story of the Marquis de Cressy" by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (with Kate Deimling)
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
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Jack Wilson
Hello, Today on the podcast we look at T.S. eliot's famous poem of urban alienation. No, not that famous one you're thinking of, and no, not that other one, but a very good one nevertheless. A lesser known classic. And speaking of lesser known, we'll talk to scholar and translator Kate dimling about the 18th century French novelist Marie Jeanne Riccaboni, who was a best seller in her day and whose novel, the Story of the Marquis de Crecy, disappeared from the English speaking world for over 200 years. What was it like for Kate to rediscover and retranslate this work? We'll find out today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. T.S. eliot was not a famous poet. In 1910 he had not yet published the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which would give him some visibility, if not quite fame. That was still years away and he was not a Londoner. That would also come in a few short years. So who was he in 1910? Well, let's start at the beginning. He was born into privilege in 1889, a Boston Brahmin family with only a couple of caveats to that. To the Boston Brahmin part of that. His strand of the Elliotts had moved to St. Louis, which is where T.S. eliot spent the first 16 or so years of his life. He attended a tony prep school, to be sure, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek and French and German, among other topics. He was sent to another fancy school in Massachusetts for a final prep year before Going to Harvard, where he studied literature and fell in love with French symbolist poets. He had long been writing poetry himself for his high school paper and places like that. He worked for a year at Harvard as a philosophy assistant. Did I say he graduated in three years? That's what going to the finishing school can do for you. Graduate from Harvard in three years and then get a job as a philosophy assistant. And then he went to Paris to study philosophy. And this is when he started writing the poem that we're going to look at today. Preludes. Eliot cautioned against scanning a biography for a poem's origins, trying to match up this and that from the poet's life and apply it to the poem. And we're not doing that here. Exactly. There's a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is telling young Linus, I'm on a diversion. I should have announced it. The Peanuts cartoon. This came to mind where Lucy is telling young Linus, her little brother a bunch of things about leaves on trees and so on. And I actually looked this up. It was so vivid in my memory, but I wanted to make sure I got it right. The Internet is good at this. So here we go. I'm swerving into Charles Schulz for a moment because these Peanuts cartoons that I found are too good not to share. So, looking for a cartoon with a particular phrase. But on my way to that one, I found another one. Peanuts by Charles M. Schultz. This is a Sunday comic, one of the longer ones. First panel. Lucy and her younger brother Linus are looking at a fire hydrant. And Lucy says, these things seem to grow all over. Apparently, nobody knows how they get so much water out of such a small object. Second panel, she says, now look up in the sky. See those white things up there, Linus? Those are clouds. They make the wind blow. Now, if you'll step over here, I'll show you something else. And in this drawing, she points at a tree. This is an elm tree. Someday it will become a mighty oak. You can tell how old it is by counting the leaves. Now Charlie Brown shows up. And Lucy says, well, hi, Charlie Brown. I'm teaching Linus some little known facts of science. And Lucy and Linus both beam at Charlie Brown. And Charlie Brown says, if there's such little known facts, how come you know them? And Lucy crosses past Linus so she can hold up her hand to Charlie Brown's ear. I make him up, she confides. That's Lucy. Here's another one, Charlie Brown. Now, Lucy, I know that's wrong. Snow doesn't Come up. It comes down, Lucy. After it comes up, the wind blows it around so it looks like it's coming down, but actually it comes up out of the ground like grass. It comes up Charlie Brown. Snow comes up. Charlie Brown. Oh, good grief, Linus. Lucy, why is Charlie Brown banging his head against a tree? Lucy? To loosen the bark so the tree will grow faster. Come along, Linus. And here's one last one. Lucy is showing Linus leaves falling off a tree in the autumn. See these leaves, Linus? They're flying south for the winter. Then she justifies this to Charlie Brown, who's witnessed the exchange, by saying, when you look at a map, north is up and south is down, isn't it? Well, that's Lucy teaching Linus science. And the line I was thinking of, I couldn't actually find the actual comic, but the line I was thinking of is, in one of these. Charlie Brown says, poor Linus, he's going to need to go to school for 12 years just to unlearn everything Lucy is teaching him. And that popped into my head because that's where we are now with Elliot. I think before we can see, consider an early poem like Preludes, we have to unlearn what we know about Eliot. This is not yet Eliot, the banker who walks through London and is unhappily married. This is Eliot, the young man, not having been to London yet, mostly having been a student, soaked in an academic world in these fancy prep schools, but then tumbled out into Paris, still in an academic world, studying philosophers like Bergson, his head swirling with languages, but on the streets of Paris, chasing the ghosts of Verlaine and Rimbaud and Baudelaire, that's the city he's in. He's living in. He might have visited London, I guess, but he's living in Paris. And yet. And yet, it's a cityscape that Elliot so often turned to. But Preludes, it's right there in the title. That's a Wordsworthian word. It would almost be like calling a play Macbeth. It's a word already owned by another work. You might be alluding to it, paying homage, undermining it, but it's inescapable. If you call your poem preludes in 1910, Wordsworth is right there, and that's going to take us to the Lake District and the countryside and a pastoral landscape that's becoming more modern, romanticized. Elliot's playing off of that. He says, hey, hey. My nature is right here. The city. This is where the sun rises and sets for me. A grassy meadow for you might be a park for me. Or it might be the weeds coming up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Your daffodils might be for me. Flower pots in a windowsill. I mentioned another strand that we had to keep in mind when we thought about the young T.S. eliot. Then I didn't get around to it. This is the strand of Elliot being kind of like a Charlie Brown sort of figure. His marriage, when he got married, was terribly unhappy. His childhood had mostly been sickly. He was wealthy and from privilege. But we shouldn't think of him as some swashbuckling rich guy swaggering his way through the world, accepting dominance as his natural birthright. He was more of an outsider than that. It's why he's readable. Frankly, I have enough small town resentment in me that I'd probably hate Elliot if he was too posh and snooty. But his sadness and his searching always get me, even if I know he'd probably sneer at me sooner than shake my grimy rural hand. Whatever. Another thing to know about Elliot, our last bit of biography, I think, is that he loved the city. He felt at home there. Here's what he had to say about Oxford a few years later. He said, quote, I hate university towns and university people who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls. Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.
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Interviewer
End quote.
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Jack Wilson
London or Oxford? What type of person are you? Which do you like? I happen to love both. And guess what if you join us on the History of Literature podcast tour, the very first one ever, and maybe the only one we're ever going to do. We'll see. It's going to be this year in May, and you have two weeks to sign up. March 1st is your deadline, people. April is the cruelest month, Elliot told us, and so you will need to have something uncruel to look forward to, won't you? Why not join us on our romp through London and Oxford? We can compare the two, see if Elliot if we agree with Elliot or not, and then we'll throw Bath into the mix for good measure, visit the world of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, and our Oxford will take us to the lives and haunts of Tolkien and C.S.
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Interviewer
Lewis.
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Jack Wilson
Bookstores and houses and coffee shops and pubs and restaurants and hotels where these people ate and went to the theater and so on. And we will be the stars of this show, our small group of literature buffs, me and Emma and the good Folks at John Shores Travel, and you learn more@historyofliterature.com okay, where were we? Very pretty, said Eliot, but I don't like to be dead. Well, who does? Strong feelings about Oxford from Mr. Elliot. Let's hear how things were for him in a different place, the place of Preludes. Again, we don't have to see. Maybe this is Boston, maybe it's Paris. Maybe it's a little bit of St. Louis. I think it's probably mostly Paris, but it doesn't have to be as specific as, well, this is the plaza that Eliot walked through. Or when he wrote about this window, he was probably looking up at that window and that kind of thing. That's what Elliot didn't like. And we don't have to do that. We don't have to say, well, here's the flat he's renting in order for us to appreciate it. He's kind of universalizing it himself. Anyway, this is a guy who's saying, hey, hey, I get it, we all want to be shepherds. But the poets already told you the problem with that. In 1810, Wordsworth was all over it. And I'm telling you, things have changed even more here in 1910. Here's what life is, you wannabe shepherds. And in fact, while you in the old days might have had some flowing verse, mine is going to be full of stops and starts, rhymes and then not rhymes. This is the rhythm of a city. More syncopation and sudden excitement, followed by weariness and me, someone glad to be here and also aware of the filth and the concrete nature of the city. But here, at least, I am not dead. I am alive. This is a poem with four stanzas. Preludes 1. The winter evening settles down with smell of stakes in passageways. Six o', clock, the burnt out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet. And newspapers from vacant lots. The showers beat on broken blinds and chimney pots. And at the corner of the street a lonely cab, horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. Okay, that's the first stanza. Iambic tetrameter. Basically the Shakespearean line trimmed from five beats to four. What a beautiful start with smells that's underrated in a city. Good smells, not just foul ones. One of my favorite smells of all time is walking past Jimmy's Woodlawn tap on the south side of Chicago, feeling the blast of the grill so inviting. You think, oh man, I could go in there, get Warm. Have some fries, Maybe a burger. That's living here. It's the smell of steaks in passageways. At six o' clock. We know what six o' clock is in winter. Darkness that comes on suddenly. Six months from now, this darkness, thus this hour, six o', clock, it'll still be daylight. But now the city has darkened with lamps being lit. And some say that line, the lighting of the lamps is taking us from the outside on the street to inside where lamps are being lit. Maybe you see those lamps through the windows. I tend to think we're still gazing at these burnt out ends of smoky days. What a phrase that is. Burnt out ends of smoky days. That's why we read Eliot for phrases like this winter evening is settled down, settling down. Burnt out ends of smoky days. Have you thought of a day being burned before? Now it's used up, done like a cigarette in an ashtray or a stick that's charred in the fireplace. It's gone. Only a little bit remains. Smoke still visible from the burning day. I love this. Anyway, some say lamps being lit. Those are people indoors. I think we're out with the lamp lighters, guys walking around with long poles lighting the gas lamps. This was 1910. Electrification was happening. But there were still plenty of gas lamps too. Either way, either. Either type of light coming on. It's the light that comes on at night in a city from those street lights giving you yet another feeling of excitement. This is when the action happens, sort of. The office workers and people with day jobs have headed home. All that productivity is gone. But there's going to be a second day, sort of a day during the night. This is leisure time. It's entertainment time. A lot of activity now too. Or maybe he's not calling for that. Maybe this is one of those spots where the city winds down and disappears into slumber. Kind of a overnight hibernation that's also kind of cool and exciting. D.C. does that very good at that. Six o' clock and suddenly giant sidewalks that were filled with people all day are just vacant. Some restaurants don't even bother staying open past 5 o'.
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Interviewer
Clock.
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Jack Wilson
They were there to serve coffee and lunch to bureaucrats and now the bureaucrats are on the trains and in their cars heading home. They're going to scratch out some kind of dinner and collapse in their beds like insects stunned by a blow to the head. They might roll around a little bit dazed, but eventually they'll right themselves and come back on their little legs tomorrow and you can sell them coffee and lunch. Then wow, an office worker is an insect. What an image. Someone should write a whole story about that. Maybe a novella, maybe set it somewhere in Europe, like, I don't know, Prague. Or wait, someone did. His name was Franz Kafka and he started writing it one year after this poem. This is why we still read the Modernists, because bureaucrats are still bugs 100 plus years later. Two more things to talk about in this stanza. One we can save, which is the newspaper. We'll see that return and talk about it then. The other thing I want to mention is the rain here. The rain that is almost not rain. Nothing here is getting wet. You can still smell things. This rain. It's not called a downpour or a rainfall, is called a shower, a gusty shower. This almost seems more like wind that happens to have some moisture than anything like water coming down from the sky. There's a difference what happens with a hard rain. First of all, time stops. You don't stand around noticing things. You probably don't smell much besides the rain. You pause and then you either endure, pressing your way through the harshness of the rain. This is winter after all. Soaking you, making you cold, probably a period of discomfort. Or you wait it out under a tree or under an awning inside a door, when there will be. You wait for it to cease. And then there will be a rinsing feeling, a feeling of renewal. And you can keep going, walking through the puddles. This is not that kind of rain. This feels more like a color, a change in light more than weather. It changes things a little, but you're still you. The withered leaves come about your feet like grimy scraps. Maybe that's something that's a little wet from the rain. These aren't crusty, crispy, colorful leaves that bounce off your your legs and feet. These are dead leaves after they've been soaked. And they sort of have that film over them as if they're oozing something or some muck has coated them and they stick. They stick to your shoes. Now I just took 30 some words to say what Elliot says with two words, grimy scraps. And his two words are better than my 30 plus. Okay, newspapers come blowing by too. Save that thought. And then we see some broken blinds and chimney pots that are beat by the showers. Beat. And at the corner of the street. Remember, we're in a city, not out on some farm or. Or visiting some stable. We're on the street where a lonely cab horse steams and stamps. How vivid is that? A hot horse in the winter. You see, the steam could be the breath from the nostrils. It could be the steam rising from the back of a hot horse in cold weather and stamps, the horse is impatient. What am I doing here in the city? It's windy, it's raining. Why am I not in my stable? What is my purpose? Says the horse. And what, reader, is your purpose? You're out here, too. Is it to admire the smell of stakes and lighting of the lamps? The strange beauty and expectancy of a city coming to life in the dusk? Or is it to persist in spite of these gusty showers and grimy scraps? Is this fluid? Or are you trapped? Let's keep going. Stanza two. The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdust trampled street with all its muddy feet that press to early coffee stands with the other masquerades that time resumes. One thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms. Well, look at that. The bugs are back, just as we predicted. It's morning again. Their feet are muddy. Actually, I shouldn't say they. Because it's you. You are one of them. You tramp through sawdust, you head for coffee. Even in 1910, Elliot sees this is a populace fueled by coffee. And yet I love coffee. Sponsors, please take note. I don't see this as an accusation by Elliot. I don't see this as pathetic or an addiction. I see it as exciting. It's a new day. People are going to get some coffee. Elliot doesn't seem quite there with me. He sees dingy shades being raised and faint stale smells of beer and trampled sawdust. But guess what? The joke is on you, Mr. Elliot, because I like these aspects of the city. I like the grime and the sawdust and the trampling and even the dingy shades. I like wallowing in the muck with these people. My fellow citizens, there's a lot of excitement to this. Maybe that dingy shade had some love going on behind it last night, or a heated discussion or plans to, I don't know, rob a bank. Maybe it's someone. Maybe it's just someone quiet in a rocking chair reading some poetry, who I will never get to know. But every day she herself writes a poem like Emily Dickinson. Or maybe it's someone old who was once a great queen of some far off country or an empress of the theater. Maybe it's a young person about to make his or her mark on the world. But guess what? The joke is on you, Mr. Elliot. Except I suspect that Mr. Elliot might be in on the joke. I suspect he likes this too. This is Baudelaire's Paris. Take that over Oxford, where one is dead. One last thing to note. Eliot's poet zooms in on the hands. Did you see that? Did you catch that? This is like cinema, like your mind's eye being a camera in the hands of an accomplished director. He doesn't say, there are a lot of furnished rooms in this city, and they all have dingy shades. He says, one thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms. These rooms have people. These people have hands. We don't need to see their faces. We don't need their whole bodies outlined for us. Let's just zero in on the hands, just for a moment, and think about how amazing a hand is. Multiply it by a lot of people see something with a detail, something zoomed in so it doesn't fall across us with no power. But instead it's a detail that makes us sit at the edge of our chair mentally and notice something different or notice the same thing differently. Stanza 3. You tossed a blanket from the bed. You lay upon your back and waited. You dozed and watched the night, revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted. They flickered against the ceiling, and when all the world came back and the light crept up between the shutters and you heard the sparrows in the gutters, you had such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands, sitting along the bed's edge where you curled the papers from your hair or clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands. Hmm.
- [25:19]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [25:20]
Jack Wilson
The rhymes here are so unexpected. They feel a little. Almost a little haywire. Our poet is marching along rhythmically, but also short circuiting. That's the. The feeling I get again. That's very city like. Have you experienced that? Oh, here we go. An apartment building where thousands of people are taking showers and pouring water into pots for their pasta. And, oh, man, one block over, there's a hydrant knocked over and water is spraying into the street. Right. Isn't that the city? Oh, this is nice. A bus sailing along unencumbered, making smooth progress. Oh, but look over here. There's a traffic jam, construction. Everything stopped, ground to a halt, horns honking, angry, inert chaos. The rhyme scheme in this stanza, if you can even call it that, goes A, then maybe B, or maybe A again, depending on if you count bed and weight ed as a rhyme, let's call it b. The rhyme scheme goes, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. No rhymes there, if you didn't notice. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. That's our first rhyme. I, J, K, K, I, J. Fantastic. Again, the rhyme scheme. That's like a city. Some of these people look familiar, some don't. Some are faces in the crowd. Oh, there's two people at once you recognize. Some stand out. Who cares? Go with it. It's how the world works. You had such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands. That's really getting into a dreamscape here, isn't it? We start with something like a dream. You're lying on your back and waiting. Waiting for what? Sleep. Or you've tossed a blanket from the bed and now you're waiting. Waiting for what? For sleep, I suppose. Or something you can't even define. Epiphany, maybe. Or just waiting for the morning when your purpose becomes a little more clear. You didn't really sleep. You dozed. And you watched those lights from the city. I'm guessing they were from the city as they threw shadows and images all over your ceiling. But what do you see on the ceiling in those images? Your soul. A thousand sorted images of your soul. And it's at times like this where I think, why am I doing anything in my life besides reading poems by T.S. eliot? But then I get pulled out of that thought by thinking, well, that would squander a life, wouldn't it? I mean, I have to read Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson, don't I? And Yeats and Keats and everyone else. And then I think, hang on here. That's kind of terrible. That's two terrible thoughts in a row. I do have other things in life. I like to. To eat and travel, and I'm a husband and a father of two. I have a job. You would think that if I was contemplating a life devoted solely to reading poems by T.S. eliot. The thing that would pull me out of that might be, well, when would I spend time with my family? Which, after all, is my favorite thing to do. But somehow I only think, well, hey, I might be here reading T.S. eliot, but at some point I've got to read some Chekhov, don't I, if I truly want to live? Okay, stanza three gets into some weird territory. Our life inside this furnished room has a long night of the soul staring at the ceiling. And then what light comes up through the shutters and sparrows in the gutters again? This is kind of a bizarro version of the pastoral. An urban wannabe Pastoral. We get a sunrise, but it's through the shutters. We get some birds chirping in the gutters. That's such a Baudelairian. Or maybe we can say Eliotian swerve and then you curled the papers from your hair. Or he's saying, hey, you, do you. You're in the privacy of your own home. He's got an or. Or you do you. You're the privacy. You're. This is behind these dingy shades. Maybe you're taking the papers from your hair, but I'm not going to be specific here, says Elliot. I'm just going to generalize. I know people do stuff like this. I'm going to give you a few images to have in your mind. But you had your night and your morning, didn't you? Maybe you were curling the papers from your hair. Or maybe. Maybe you grasp the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands. Those are your two options. Curled the papers from your hair or grasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands. Yellow soles of feet. What is that? A baby's feet? A baby with jaundice? Or are these your own feet? Your own feet because you have jaundice, maybe, or some other disease or sign of. Maybe you have the gout or sign of aging, or you're being destroyed by work and life, and your hands are soiled. What the heck? Haven't you been home all night? Didn't you wash your hands when you came home? How did they get soiled? But somehow that works. It reminds me a little of the feeling I got in New York, that I could never really get clean. Sometimes you just feel that. You just feel like, oh, I'm coated with grime. I just took a shower five minutes ago. I don't feel fresh even now. You rub your skin and look, you have little pebbles, little black pebbles on your fingertips. And you think, the city has coated me again. You go outside. You know, my parents used to visit when we lived in New York City. They came to see their little grandchild, and they came straight from small town Wisconsin to New York City. And they looked. So. You'd see them on the sidewalk, they'd look so bright and colorful. Their hair and their jackets and their hats and their clean faces. It was like they just popped. The colors just different. They didn't have that coating of city grime that turns every color a little dimmer, a little darker. Your face, even. That's how it feels in New York. I. I took a Shower. I know I'm. I know technically I'm clean. I just scrubbed with soap. But hey, not long from now my hands are going to feel soiled. It just happens. Things in this third stanza have gotten a little strange, but they will get even stranger in stanza four. In a certain way. You know how we've had you. We've been saying, you do this, you do this, you do that. Well, now we're going to get a he and an I. Where have they been? Where are they popping up now? Maybe Y isn't the question, but what effect does that have to introduce a he and an I? A poet, a speaker with an I at this point. Keep that in mind. Let's hear what. Let's hear the stanza and see what you think. Stanza 4. His soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind a city block. Or trampled by insistent feet at 4 and 5 and 6 o'. Clock. And short square fingers stuffing pipes and evening newspapers. And eyes assured of certain certainties. The conscience of a blackened street impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images and cling the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh. The worlds revolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots. Oh, man, this is like watching this. This section, section 4 is like watching a baseball player in warm ups when they. Like a home run derby. When they swing the bat seven times and they hit seven home runs again and again. The words are simple, the rhythms irregular but right. The rhymes just enough to poke us awake. And all of it images and ideas and words startling and fresh. There's no time for stasis to set in. There's nothing even close to a cliche. His soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind a city block. The sky. It's like the horse from Stanza 1. What is it doing here in the city? Doesn't it belong out on some pasture? This sky or hanging over the ocean? This place is man made. That's the feeling you get sometimes in the city. I remember feeling that a lot living in New York. You'd be outside at night and you look up and you think, what? The moon here? Right, I forgot. You get the new. You get the moon here too. The noon. The sun at noon. You get nature here too. Sometimes you forget that when you're in an urban landscape that there's actually wind. A soul stretched tight. That's what the he is doing in our poem. We don't see. He doesn't say, you're soul stretched tight. But his soul, it's whoever's soul it is, it's stretched tight. Unless it's being trampled underfoot. But being trampled, in this incredible description, trampled by insistent feet at 4 and 5 and 6 o'. Clock. We know what Elliot was thinking there. We know he found a phrase with perfect beats, those iambs that he found, 4 and 5 and 6 o'. Clock. He knew how that would sound, how it would march right across the line. We can't help but have that one etched into our brain at 4 and 5, at 6 o'. Clock. Surprising, but totally normal. We experience 4 and 5 and 6 o' clock every single day. Twice a day, actually, if you wake up early, like I do. We all know what these hours are. A kindergartner could get the concept. But we never think of time like this in a phrase like that. At 4 and 5 and 6 o', clock, we'd say between 4 and 6, or we'd say hour after hour at 4 and 5 and 6 o'. Clock. So that's startling enough to phrase it that way, but also it's the perfect way to talk about rush hour. Those insistent feet, they want to get somewhere, they want to go home. And they seem never ending. For a moment they're rushing. They start at four and then they keep going. They're still there at five, they're getting very busy. Then they're still stampeding home at 6 before they trickle out. You can't. But for those, for that passage of time, at 4 and 5 and 6 o' clock, you can't stop to catch your breath because it's a parade of commuters at 8 and 9 and 10 in the morning and in the afternoon at 4 and 5 and 6 o', clock, next line. And short square fingers stuffing pipes. Boy, I don't know what to tell you people if you can't hear the genius in a line like that. I mean, if that line doesn't make your heart Soar, then maybe T.S. eliot isn't the guy for you. And short square fingers stuffing pipes. The image of that. You can see those fingers, short and square, not how they're usually described, but perfect. And what are they doing? Stuffing pipes. You can see that. But the, the real, the beauty of the line is just the sound of it. And short square fingers stuffing pipes. Da da da da da da da da. You can imagine dancing to that line, can't you? Right. You put on your tuxedo or your gown.
- [38:09]
Interviewer
Kick.
- [38:13]
Jack Wilson
Ah, so good. We get the evening newspapers and eyes. The certain certainties. Newspapers again. The sign of civilization. Almost the emblem of a 20th century city. Those newspaper stands cranking out news in the morning and evening news rivaling other news headlines telling us what's important. A period of time, one day gathered and filtered for us in the great age of newspapers. You could say, hey, hey, I read the whole newspaper. The world had a pretty good day yesterday. Or oh, this was a bad day for the world. It's so different from what we have now. The 24 hour flow of news, the ceaseless scroll. There's no real perspective. A newspaper said, everything that happened yesterday in the world has been reported, processed, digested, selected, absorbed. And here you go. The day is done. It's in the books. Here's our first draft of what yesterday meant. I'll skip lightly over the next few lines. They also have gems. The conscience of a blackened street. That's pretty good. But wow. Listen to the end. This is a guy who could toss off lines like April. Sorry, April. He can toss them off. I can't say them. April is the cruelest month. Or this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. That has to be the easiest four lines to remember in the history of poetry. And they are sensational, unforgettable, life changing. Even whole philosophies can grow out of that seed that T.S. eliot planted. Whole versions of history, apocalyptic novels. Okay, here we have the poet, the eye, and what is happening in our poem Preludes. He's moved. He's moved by this. The whole scene, the griminess, the soiled, the life. These are the images and they move him. Them and the fancies that are curled around them. That's key. It isn't just the facts of this stuff. It's the facts operating on our imagination and the. The way our imagination curls around them and clings to these facts, to these images. Fancies is a little different from imagination. I said imagination. But T.S. eliot says fancies. Fancies to me suggests less control on our part, a little more desire, a lot more hope. Then what are fancies around these facts? Here's Eliot, the home run hitting poet. Another effortless swing. The notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing. That's the city for Elliot. City dwellers, all this humanity, they're infinitely suffering. Everywhere are humans and everywhere these humans are in pain. The suffering is infinite. But it's quiet, it's gentle. The noisy, bustling city with all its insistent feet and the Lamps being lit and the coffee stands buzzing with energy. But the suffering is here. It's infinite. And it's gentle, infinitely gentle. Wow. And we still have an astonishing close. We're back to the. You wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh. He says again. This, to me, is the city having its effect. It's going to make you feel grimy. You'll need to wipe your mouth, but you'll also feel full, sated, like you've just had a big meal and you're just laughing at the spectacle we've just seen quiet and infinite suffering. But we're laughing anyway, because that's what it means to be human. We all know we're going to die, and so will everyone we love. We know that. What a curse to have that knowledge. But in the meantime, we eat, we wipe our mouths with the back of our hand and we laugh. He's not describing something he sees. He's telling us what to do. And then he gives us this final philosophical vision. The worlds revolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots. So much is mashed together there. Vacant lots, what is that? Have to be abandoned parts of the city, right? Emptiness. Even here in the hustle and bustle, it happens. Cities break down and are decrepit sometimes, or even in successful cities. There are gaps. And women are there, gathering fuel. What would this be? Wood, maybe, or coal. Ancient women are here to gather it. We know how they look and how they move, don't we? Ancient because they're old, perhaps, and ancient because they're timeless, they're eternal. They've been here forever. They are here now. They will be here forever. They are more than timeless and eternal, though they are the world itself. This is the best view we have of what our worlds are like. They are like these women, dealing with human needs, the need for warmth, providing it to others. That's why it's women, the caretakers of the family, the caretakers of the planet. Even if they're alone, they are caretaking themselves. That's why women are the best. And they don't stay still, they revolve. The world doesn't stay still either. The sun will come up again, the seasons will change. We all revolve all the time. Oh, it's enough to make you wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh, and enough to make you want to read literature and learn more about it. So let's hear from our guest. We will stay in France along with Eliot, but travel from the early 20th century back to the 18th, the run up to the French Revolution, where a woman was writing early bestsellers. Kate Dimling after this.
- [44:51]
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- [46:05]
Interviewer
Okay. Joining me now is Kate Daimling, a poet and translator who also holds a PhD in French literature from Columbia University.
- [46:13]
Jack Wilson
She's here today to discuss the story.
- [46:15]
Interviewer
Of the Marquis de Crecy, an 18th century novel by Marie Jean Riccoboni, which Kate edited and translated. Kate Daimeling, welcome to the history of literature.
- [46:26]
Kate Daimling
Thanks, Jack.
- [46:28]
Interviewer
So let's start with the author.
- [46:29]
Jack Wilson
She was one of the best selling.
- [46:31]
Interviewer
Novelists of 18th century France and until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of her. Who was Marie Jeanne Ricoboni?
- [46:39]
Kate Daimling
Yeah, well, you're not the only one who hadn't heard of her. She has kind of been forgotten but deserves to come back to life, I believe. And she a difficult life. So she was a Parisian, born and bred, lived her whole life in Paris and when she was just an infant, her father was revealed to be a bigamist and Marie Jeanne's mother was his second marriage and his therefore his illegal marriage and he had to go back to his first wife. So she was declared an illegitimate child and her mother had very little money, put her in a convent. So she had most of her childhood spent in a convent and her mother wanted her to become a nun. But Marie Jeanne had no vocation and so she came back to live with her mother at age 14 and her mother was bitter, not very happy having to deal with this teenage daughter. So they had a very fraught relationship which then led Marie Jeanne to get Married at age 20 to Antoine Francois Riccobony, who was an actor in the Comedie Italienne which was a theater troupe that his father directed. And this was then an unhappy marriage. So her writing was also a way of becoming financially independent. And she kind of got into the family business of the theater by marrying this man. So she acted with him in the Comedie Italienne, but she really wanted to act in tragic plays, and they only did comedies, and he wouldn't allow her to change and go to another theater troupe. So she did manage to separate from him, because in France, in the old regime, divorce was illegal. So if you really wanted to, you could separate from your husband. It was an unusual step to take, but she managed to do it and to live independently, to move out. And becoming an author was a way that she was able to support herself financially and become independent. And interestingly, she actually earned enough money that she continued to support her husband and even helped support her aging mother. So she was helping others at the same time that she was managing to.
- [49:04]
Interviewer
Live on her own and probably increasing her independence, because those would be the two people who might have some kind of claim on her or some kind of reach that could reach her if she were struggling financially.
- [49:19]
Kate Daimling
Definitely.
- [49:21]
Interviewer
So how old was she when she published her first novel? I have in my notes, I learned from your introduction that she was revising plays and that that kind of paved the way for her writing. But when did she make that jump to go from the theater to publishing a novel?
- [49:40]
Kate Daimling
So she was 44 when she published her first novel. So not young by any means.
- [49:45]
Interviewer
Yeah, and I don't think we've given the dates yet, but she was born in 1713, so I guess she started publishing novels in the 1750s.
- [49:54]
Kate Daimling
Exactly.
- [49:55]
Interviewer
Okay. And she used a pseudonym initially. Was she doing that to pose as a male author, or why was she using it, and then why did she drop it?
- [50:08]
Kate Daimling
Well, what she did at first. So with this novel, for instance, with the story of the Marquis de Crecy, she actually presented it as a translation. She pretended that it was a translation from English into French, and she gave an anonymous translator's name. She said it was translated by Madame de Three Asterisks. And this was not as unusual as it might sound. Actually, a lot of writers in 18th century France would pretend that a novel was translated from English, because English novels were really popular and trendy. So this was a way to kind of market your novel and get readers attention. Now, also calling it a translation is also something that authors did sometimes to let themselves kind of test the waters a bit, especially an emerging author, so they could kind of wait and see what the reception was. And if the novel did well, then they could kind of claim, you know, authorship. And if not, they could kind of, you know, be glad that their name, you know, wasn't on there. And even more so, I think for a woman author, because women's full participation in the public sphere was often challenged. So it was maybe a more comfortable position to not put yourself out there and to kind of, you know, wait and judge the reception before you tried to take credit for anything.
- [51:35]
Interviewer
And were her works immediately well received by. I guess we could talk about the public and also the critics. What was the response when she started publishing?
- [51:45]
Kate Daimling
Yeah, she actually had a really good response. So when she started, you know, it took her a while, but when she started, she, you know, she really kept at it. She published a novel every year for three years. And this one, the Marquis de Crecy, was the second one. They were all well received. And actually the third novel, Letters of Milady Juliet Catesby, is one of the two top selling French novels of the entire century, the other being Rousseau's Julie la Nouvelle. Yeah. And it was after that third one that she was able to permanently leave the theater behind and become a full time writer.
- [52:27]
Interviewer
Right. And what was the critical response? Were people viewing these as pot boilers or were they taking them seriously and writing reviews and essays and so on about her books?
- [52:41]
Kate Daimling
Well, I think they were taking them as seriously as novels were taken at the time. I mean, the novel had kind of an unstable kind of status in the 18th century where everyone read novels, everyone loved them. And some people said, you know, novels are a great way to learn about human nature and society, but they weren't really high literature. You know, the way we think of today, we. What we think of is more, you know, kind of the, the development the novel underwent starting in the 19th century, where novels were about serious ideas. Right. And the novel is kind of a more illegitimate genre in a way, in the 18th century. At the same time, though, she did get positive responses and both to her style. Critics said that her style was very elegant and that her plots were tightly constructed, her narratives were interesting. And Diderot, for instance, said that her works were full of genius, honesty, delicacy and grace. So she did encounter a lot of appreciation for what she was doing.
- [53:48]
Interviewer
Right. So they weren't just kind of snootily saying, oh, she knows how to, to titillate or she knows how to entertain or something, but they're, they're giving her the kind of credit that any novelist would want to hear. Adam Smith is another one who rated her highly and said she's one of the five writers who best paint the delicacies of love and friendship and of.
- [54:10]
Jack Wilson
All other private and domestic affections.
- [54:13]
Interviewer
It's quite high praise from him. He's categorizing her with Racine and Voltaire and Samuel Richardson. And there's a rumor that Marie Antoinette.
- [54:24]
Jack Wilson
Was a fan and had kind of.
- [54:26]
Interviewer
An unusual way of perhaps reading her books.
- [54:31]
Kate Daimling
That's right. They say that Marie Antoinette actually had one of Riccoboni's novels bound to resemble a prayer book, and then she would take it to Mass, and when she was supposed to be listening to the priest, she would secretly read this novel while in church.
- [54:50]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay. So we have all of this success.
- [54:54]
Interviewer
And both popular and critical success. What happened to her works?
- [55:00]
Jack Wilson
Why did they fall out of favor?
- [55:03]
Kate Daimling
Well, partly, she's kind of a victim of the way that literary history was written after the French Revolution because there was this tendency to See the whole 18th century in France as this age of reason and to read everything through the lens of arriving at the French Revolution. Right. This narrative of increasing political liberation. And in the midst of all this, then sentimental novels or domestic themes that are often treated by women are somewhat kind of pushed aside, as, you know, not being serious enough. And I think that this was actually a big misapprehension of understanding the period, because the 18th century in France is not only an age of reason, but it's also an age of pathos and sensibility and passion, and not just in women's writing, but in men's writing too, also in Diderot and Voltaire and Rousseau. It's all there, too. So things were a little bit kind of pushed into this narrative that didn't really tell the whole story. And then Riccaboni and a lot of other women writers kind of fell by the wayside.
- [56:11]
Interviewer
And then once she's not in the canon, once she's not assigned in school classrooms and reprinted as part of anthologies or as part of publishers putting out a series of 18th century novels or something, then she just gets lost.
- [56:30]
Kate Daimling
Exactly.
- [56:32]
Interviewer
Okay, we haven't talked much about what is in her books, but let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back with more from Kate Daimling.
- [56:55]
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- [57:54]
Interviewer
We heard you.
- [57:55]
Jack Wilson
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- [58:19]
Interviewer
Okay, we're back.
- [58:20]
Jack Wilson
So, Kate, let's start with, I guess.
- [58:22]
Interviewer
Themes in Riccaboni's writing. Are we able to categorize them in some way? Is there some kind of recurring pattern or anything that we can apply to her novels?
- [58:35]
Kate Daimling
Well, they're often stories of emotion and betrayal, and that's definitely true of this novel. And she's taking kind of a skeptical look at men's place in society and men's and women's relationships. So Rico Boni is consistently critical throughout all of her writing of men's status in society and the fact that men seem to hold all the cards, but this is a status that they haven't really earned. And she's often turning the tables and trying to show that women might be accused of vanity or fickleness or flightiness, but it's really men who are vain and fickle and flighty. So she brings that out a lot in in her narratives.
- [59:23]
Interviewer
Would you say these are feminist or proto feminist?
- [59:28]
Kate Daimling
Definitely. I think that, you know, strictly speaking, the term would be proto feminist just because feminism, the word did not exist at the time. But looking back at what strong statements Riccaboni is is making for women, she's in this novel, for instance, lots of phrases that can kind of be plucked out of the narrative as maxims where she's speaking for women and using a lot of irony, too, saying like, one sign of the superiority of men's soul over ours is that men can so easily quell the remorse they feel when they hurt a woman. Right. And of course, this is highly ironic. And reading all that, I think that as a modern reader, I can't help but look at her and say, you know, she's making a feminist statement. Even if, strictly speaking, there was no feminist movement at the time. I think that she looks like a feminist writer to us today.
- [60:26]
Interviewer
Now it's interesting because from her life and her life story, you can see how it would be odd for her to be anything but a feminist, where she's got this husband and his father who are pushing her one way and then she goes on her own and she succeeded, succeeds, you know, is determined to do so and then does so. But it also raises the question for me if she's drawing upon her real life experience like that, what did she think of love and sentiment? Do you get the sense in her books that she's looking for something that she didn't herself have in her life? Or is she cynical about relationships and the relationships between men and women in particular?
- [61:08]
Kate Daimling
Well, that's a great question. And I think that love and sentiment are always a double edged sword for her. I think that on the one hand, she sees them as very dangerous for women. And the women in her narratives often make bad choices and end up in trouble because of the men that they're drawn to. At the same time, she still sees sentiment as the highest kind of goal that a person can reach for women and men alike. Though she really associates it. She kind of, I think she sees it as acting more strongly in women's personalities. So there's something that the characters are continuing to strive for, even while she seems to acknowledge how difficult it is to ever end up with a truly happy hearing without some kind of failure on the part, usually on the part of the male partner, or without society standing in the way in some way. So it's a very problematic theme.
- [62:05]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [62:05]
Interviewer
And just to remind people, when we use the word sentiment or sentimental, we're really talking about novels that are structured where readers are put in the position of rooting for virtue to be rewarded and sinfulness to be punished. And it, it's kind of fallen out of favor among literary fiction that you might read today. I think it probably lives on in some genre fiction, but it really was like a. A legitimate category at the time and was something that theorists of novels, such as they were, would advocate for it and promote it and would criticize books that didn't quite live up to that.
- [62:45]
Kate Daimling
Exactly. And any theorists who were praising novels were praising them because they thought they would encourage good behavior and virtue. And that's part of the reason that novels were felt to be problematic, because the other novels, the libertine novels, they're creating stories that are degrading and they're depicting debauchery and they're encouraging lewd behavior. And so there's always that. That danger that novels are going to make people. They're going to fray the social fabric as readers make bad choices. So sentimental novels could be praised for the lessons that they might have to offer.
- [63:22]
Interviewer
Now, Jane Austen is sort of one generation behind, and it's. I think, if I'm doing the math right, Jane Austen would have been 17 or 18 when Riccabone died, and her first novel wasn't published until she was 35. So there's no chance that Riccoboni could have read Jane Austen. And I have to say, as I was going through the story of the Marquis de Crecy, I kind of missed that. I kind of wished that Jane Austen had come first, because there is a type of writing style that Jane Austen was kind of an innovator of that I think would have worked really well for Riccoboni, the free and direct style. But setting that aside, do we know whether Jane Austen might have read Riccaboni? Do we know if she did for sure? And is it possible? I mean, were there translations that made it to England by the time Jane Austen was reading and writing?
- [64:13]
Kate Daimling
It's very likely that Jane Austen did read Riccaboni. We know that one of Riccaboni's novels, the Letters of Milady Juliet Catesby in English translation, was in the library of Jane Austen's brother on his estate, where she spent a lot of time. And knowing what an avid reader she was, and knowing that she spent a lot of time there and knowing the kind of writer that she was and the theme she was interested in, it seems very, very likely that she read that book while she was there. She certainly had access to it. And also I've read that Jane Austen also read French. So it's possible that if other novels fell into her hands, if the original French was available, she might have read those as well.
- [64:56]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [64:57]
Interviewer
And how close are the characters or the protagonists or the heroines to the ones that we find in Jane Austen? Is Rico Boni kind of setting out some templates that Jane Austen might have borrowed from and maybe advanced a little bit?
- [65:16]
Kate Daimling
I think there are a lot of overlaps between Riccoboni and Jane Austen. First off, you know, I have to acknowledge There are also a lot of differences that they're writing in very different worlds. Right. And in this novel, for instance, Riccaboni is describing this very closed off, aristocratic Parisian society, whereas Jane Austen is so tied to English life. Right. And all of its peculiarities and the countryside and the estates and the ministers and all these very English phenomena that would be very foreign to Riccoboni's world. And Riccoboni can also be more kind of dark and tragic. There's more humor in Jane Austen, though Rico Boni does have some humor more in her epistolary novels. So there is some of that too. At the same time, I think that there are a lot of overlaps in terms of the concern with how deceptive appearances can be. I mean, that's a major theme, I think, for the characters in both writers work. For instance, there's a quote in the Marquis de Crecy that goes, we see the actions of others but rarely understand their motives. And there are many occasions in life when wickedness and malice easily take on the appearance of justice and integrity. And I think that misunderstanding people's motives, that's also a major theme in Jane Austen. And I would even say that there's some similarities between the Marquis de Crecy and a character like Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, for instance. So it's really interesting to see those resemblances.
- [66:50]
Interviewer
Yeah. Because that's an interesting insight into human nature that we often misunderstand people and misread situations and miss signals and so on. But also in the hands of J. Dawson, it's also like a built in plot that that misunderstanding can. Can power a novel. So do we see that in Riccoboni as well?
- [67:12]
Kate Daimling
Well, we see the misunderstandings advancing the plot and I guess you could say it also powers the novel. In the Marquis de Crecy, the Marquis has deceived people. He's deceived the woman whom he eventually mar, what kind of a person he is. And in that respect, the novel kind of hinges on how much she's going to discover the true character of the man she's married. So yes, I think it does kind of drive the plot forward.
- [67:43]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [67:44]
Interviewer
Okay, so let's talk more about the novel. How did you come to be involved with it? This is the first English translation in how long? A century or so. Right.
- [67:54]
Jack Wilson
Or more.
- [67:55]
Kate Daimling
More, more. It hasn't been translated since shortly after it was published. It was translated into English in 1765.
- [68:01]
Interviewer
Right. So you know, often at this point when I'm talking to translators, I'll ask the question of why was it thought that we needed a new translation of so and so?
- [68:11]
Jack Wilson
This is basically, you had to do.
- [68:14]
Interviewer
It, or people reading English weren't going.
- [68:16]
Jack Wilson
To read this book.
- [68:17]
Kate Daimling
Exactly.
- [68:18]
Interviewer
Did you read it knowing that you were going to translate it, or is this a book you've been aware of because of your PhD in French literature and so on that you've had on.
- [68:27]
Jack Wilson
Your radar for a while?
- [68:29]
Kate Daimling
I only read it fairly recently, actually. I must have read it in 2019 or 2020, because it was reissued in France in a couple different paperback editions. So that's how I found out about it. And I'd heard of Riccaboni, but even though I wrote my dissertation on 18th century French novels, I'd never actually read anything by her. So I took this opportunity to read it, and I was really impressed with how tightly constructed it was and how the narrative moved forward and her style. And I was kind of keeping my eyes open for something to translate that I could kind of bring to a new audience if I could find something that needed a translator from the past that wasn't available in English. And so this seemed like the perfect choice.
- [69:16]
Interviewer
Okay, well, what is the novel about?
- [69:19]
Kate Daimling
So the novel is about two women who are in love with the same man, the Marquis de Crecy, and various twists in the plot keep them from finding out about each other. He's kind of toying with one of them, and meanwhile, he's trying to make a wealthy marriage. His goal is to marry a wealthy woman and acquire status and success. So he's trying to play his cards very carefully in terms of his romantic relationships. And at a deeper level, it's kind of about this social order in which men have more freedom and power than women, and it's about the vanity of men and the emotions of women. Even though the Marquis de Crecy is not entirely bad, he is also kind of weak, and he has these good impulses, but then he's pulled in another direction. And so various events in the plot kind of keep him from living up to his better nature.
- [70:16]
Interviewer
Hmm, right. And how does it compare with the other 18th century novels that you had been studying? Did it immediately jump out at you as being different in some way, or did you think, oh, here's one that fits right in with the tradition, and you were surprised you had never heard of it before?
- [70:35]
Kate Daimling
Well, part of the reason I was interested in it is because it did feel different. It felt like a novel where you weren't quite sure which direction it was going to go. In if it was going to be more of a libertine novel and he's going to be seducing women, or is it more a sentimental novel and he's going to mend his ways and there'll be a happy ending. She really kind of walks this fine line and keeps you guessing as to which direction the narrative is going to move in. And I thought that was really fascinating.
- [71:12]
Interviewer
If people are thinking of 18th century novels and Richardson and so on and thinking, well, you know, it sounds interesting, but I don't know if I have time for an 800 page book. It's quite short. It really is short and it moves very fast.
- [71:25]
Kate Daimling
It does. I mean, I think my translation with pretty big print is only. It's around 100 pages or something. So, yeah, it's a little bit, you know, the style of an 18th century novel. It doesn't have the concrete details that readers today are used to, which can be a little bit strange at first. So, for instance, we read about these characters and we don't know their physical appearance. We just know that they're elegantly dressed and they have pleasant dispositions and they have a great deal of charm. But we don't have anything kind of physical to kind of hang on while we're reading it. So there is a little bit of an adjustment in terms of that. But I think that once you're kind of in the flow of it, I think the narrative actually moves along at a pretty good clip.
- [72:12]
Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, it's true. It's not Balzac. You know, we're not going to get this sort of opening that he'll give with the sweep of where you are and what's the water that's running down the gutters of the streets of Paris and so on, and. And kind of take you through all of that. On the other hand, often those are the passages that I sometimes get kind of impatient with.
- [72:34]
Kate Daimling
Exactly.
- [72:34]
Interviewer
So it's almost like an abridged version of Balzac.
- [72:40]
Kate Daimling
Yeah. Yep.
- [72:41]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay.
- [72:42]
Interviewer
So how did you feel translating something in English for the first time in 250 years? Was that exciting for you or did it feel kind of daunting? I don't know how often translators will look at their predecessors in order to check to see how different translators handled different passages. Or on the other hand, maybe it's.
- [73:06]
Jack Wilson
Liberating to feel like, well, I have.
- [73:08]
Interviewer
A blank slate here and I don't have to worry about not living up.
- [73:12]
Jack Wilson
To so and so's translation.
- [73:14]
Kate Daimling
Well, it was very exciting. It felt really Exciting to kind of rediscover something and to think, you know, I'm going to be the one that's going to let other people experience this novel. And that was really great. And it's true. I think when classics that have already been translated get retranslated, there's always the feeling that, why does this need to be retranslated? You need to kind of stand apart a little bit from your predecessors in some way, kind of justify what you're doing. And here I felt like, well, this is really something that. Yeah, I mean, this book is simply not accessible in English. I also did feel a big responsibility to kind of get it right because it was going to be the first time in so long. And because Riccabone has been kind of forgotten, I really wanted to do justice to her and to her novel.
- [74:00]
Interviewer
Right. And your background with French, I believe you grew up in New Orleans. Did you grow up with French, or when did you start to learn it?
- [74:09]
Kate Daimling
So I didn't learn it as part of living in New Orleans. People often think that it would be a little more vibrant in New Orleans than it is. It's a little bit more a part of the history than a part of the lived experience. Unfortunately, though, there are small towns, you know, in Louisiana where people speak Cajun French, but of course, that's a little bit different. So I learned it in high school and. Yeah. And then just kept on studying French and studied abroad and have just stuck with it ever since.
- [74:35]
Interviewer
Right.
- [74:36]
Jack Wilson
Okay. So let's pitch the book to readers.
- [74:39]
Interviewer
What should they expect to find, and who do you think the book would most appeal to?
- [74:44]
Kate Daimling
Well, I think that it's a dramatic narrative. Even if there aren't a lot of physical details, there are a lot of scenes that are staged almost theatrically. And I think that, in a way, Riccoboni, drawing on her theater experience, is kind of visualizing how the characters are gesturing to each other, how they're interacting. And so that is something that you can kind of visualize as you're reading. That kind of brings. It makes it very vivid.
- [75:11]
Interviewer
Right. And the idea of we're going to need to see these two people hashing.
- [75:16]
Jack Wilson
This out face to face.
- [75:18]
Kate Daimling
Exactly, exactly. And because it does have a sentimental vein to it, there's the crying and the, you know, grabbing the woman's hands and falling on your knees.
- [75:28]
Interviewer
Right.
- [75:28]
Kate Daimling
So it's. When, you know, when I say dramatic, it's dramatic. But so I know. I think it'll appeal to readers also who are interested in the history of Women writers who are interested in gender studies. I think it does a lot to show how a woman writer could carve out a successful path for herself at a time when it wasn't so obvious to be able to do that. And I think anyone who enjoys kind of psychological and analytical novels, because that's really kind of what's at stake here, is kind of like the psychology of the characters and the narrator's understanding of kind of analyzing the events and the motivations behind them.
- [76:09]
Interviewer
And you get to judge people and put yourself in their shoes and say, is this how I would have responded to this?
- [76:16]
Kate Daimling
Right.
- [76:17]
Interviewer
Okay, so what kind of a personality was Marie Jeanne Riccoboni? I mean, does she feel ahead of her time? Do you think she would fit into the 21st century, or was she rooted in her era?
- [76:33]
Kate Daimling
Well, I think we're all rooted in our era, maybe. Whether we realize it or not. Maybe. And of course, that's one thing too, saying that it's a feminist novel. I mean, she's a feminist writer insofar as she's speaking up for women and she sees injustice around her in society. She's not calling for an overthrow of anything. I don't think that was on her radar screen. And you could even say the same thing about lots of writers, that people weren't calling for political overthrows either, in general. Right. That wasn't really something that in old regime France, most people thought was possible. They weren't really. That wasn't really on their radar screen. So she's not advocating for kind of massive change. Maybe she's advocating for individual change. I think she might have been hoping that her novels would make an impression on male readers who would think, oh, here are some of the consequences of men's careless behavior, and I should mend my ways, and, you know, I shouldn't act this way. So I think in that respect, maybe she. She saw writing as a possibility to. To create a conversation on kind of a more personal level. So I think she was of her time. She was ahead of her time in some ways in speaking out so strongly for women and not being afraid to do that. Because I often think, you know, she's trying to make a living as a writer, so there would be a real temptation to kind of write books that you think everyone will just like and accept that are kind of middle of the road and novels. And she's not really doing that. She's taking a lot of creative risks. And even if her novels are receiving a lot of positive press, there are times when, like, the ending of the story of the Marquis de Crecy caused a lot of people to. A lot of people objected to the ending and they felt that it was, well, I don't want to give anything away, but they felt that it was not right or that it was not in keeping with the characters. And so she did get some flack sometimes for kind of making, which I think is really bold when you're actually trying to. Not just to write for pleasure or for fun, but you're actually writing in order to make a living.
- [78:46]
Interviewer
So how did things go for her? She lived until 1792, so she was almost 80. Was she starting to be forgotten toward the end of her life or was she successful the whole time and wealthy and so on, or what happened to her?
- [79:05]
Kate Daimling
Well, she got a pension from the king after having written most of her novels. She was awarded a pension and this was kind of a reward for being, you know, an important writer in the kingdom of France. Right. And so she apparently didn't expect this and it was a very nice thing to get and it allowed her to live comfortably. And she didn't write quite as much after getting the pension. She only wrote a little more. So maybe she didn't feel that financial pressure as much. Maybe it's a little bit of a disservice to readers today that maybe she would have written more if she had to pay the bills. But that was, you know, that was definitely a sign also of official acceptance, right, that she received this pension and she continued to have pretty enjoyable life, it seems. And then when the revolution happens, well, then everyone is kind of irrelevant, right, who was writing during the old regime and everyone had to reinvent themselves. And of course she was not really at an age or in a position to go off and reinvent herself in the French revolutions. So when she dies in 1792 and the Revolution is still ongoing and transforming, that pension has now been cancelled. And so she dies not really being remembered and not in the best financial situation anymore. So there is kind of a decline in those last few years.
- [80:27]
Interviewer
She probably would have been surprised to hear that it was going to take 250 years for her to come back into prominence, especially if we're. I mean, that's the amount of years, if we're talking about the English translation. But even in France she was kind of overlooked and forgotten for a long time. And that probably would have surprised her based on her success that she had.
- [80:48]
Jack Wilson
In the 18th century, I'm guessing.
- [80:50]
Kate Daimling
Well, I wonder what she would have thought about it because she often said things like, oh, you know, I don't think anyone in her. In her letters or when asked for comments, you know, she would say, oh, I don't think anyone will be interested in a writer like me, or, you know, I'll be forgotten in 20. But I think that's also kind of a position of modesty. And so I think that she felt that she needed to take that kind of modest position in her heart of hearts. I don't know what she would have thought. I don't know how much of that is kind of a pose that she had to have for kind of her public Persona and how much she thought in her heart that that was really true. I mean, I think to some extent she was surprised by her success and I think gratified by it. And there's actually a great story that before she started using her name, talked about the, you know, the anonymous publication. And then she starts using her name because she's successful enough that it's actually a selling point for the books. And before this happened, she was at a social gathering once, and some man was kind of holding forth about, you know, a book that he had read, and it was one of her books, and he was saying, oh, I read this wonderful book, and he's going on and on about it, and Riccoboni is just standing there, you know, saying, oh, yes, you know, it's very interesting. And she doesn't say anything. And her friend is next to her, and finally her friends, this man is just going on and on. And finally her friend says, well, she's the one who wrote it. So she maybe would have let him just go on and on forever. I don't know. Except that her friend felt compelled to intervene.
- [82:19]
Interviewer
Right? Well, we are lucky to have the book available to us now. It's called the Story of the Marquis de Crecy. Kate Daimling, thank you so much for.
- [82:27]
Jack Wilson
Joining me on the History of Literature.
- [82:29]
Kate Daimling
Thanks so much, Jack. It was great speaking with you.
- [82:36]
Interviewer
Okay, that's going to do it for.
- [82:38]
Jack Wilson
This episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Kate Daimling, who waited so patiently while I droned on about T.S. eliot's preludes. What can I say? I get carried away sometimes. We'll be back soon with more literary goodness. Oh, this is a fun one. A history of aphorisms with a man who has been collecting them for decades and who owes them many of the good things in his life. We will hear that story on Monday. Two more weeks to sign up for the History of Literature. Tour people. A quick reminder. Our tour through Literary England is going to be in May of this year and the deadline for sign up closes March 1st. I'm Jack Wilson. You can learn more at history of literature.com if you're interested in that. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [84:09]
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