By Jean Perrot
Getting to know Lamb condo in 1896, Henry James fell below the spell of the phrases of Biblical «Wisdom» written at the tower clock of Rye parochial church: «For our time is a really shadow that passeth away». From the younger bachelor’s «angry vow» to «live for himself and switch the foremost on his center» in Watch and Ward (1871) to the decisive The flip of the Screw (1898) and to the ultimate «turning the tables» on «an lousy agent» of the Apollo Gallery within the nightmare of A Small Boy and Others (1913), this subtle «ambassador» of yank letters, sharing many of the idiosyncrasies of Sacher Masoch and Gustave Flaubert - Jean-Paul Sartre’s «Idiot of the relatives» - waged a lovely struggle opposed to neurosis for the mastery of his craft. This research explores the «gems» that spangle the «carpet» of his prose. The latter tricks at a mystery christology and shines with the need to struggle in a different way the trendy Romains de l. a. decadence depicted in Thomas Couture’s recognized portray. the parable of the Twins encouraged by way of James’s dating along with his brother William finally led him to consider like «the inheritor of the entire ages». Burning a few letters to guard his privateness, the expatriate author (1843-1916) developed his œuvre to percentage the sky of the literary international Pleiades, and located everlasting leisure less than the vaults of Westminster Abbey
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66 H. James, The Golden Bowl 39. ” The economy that we see in the concentration of the The Golden Bowl’s plot compresses the narrative pattern that was dispersed throughout art galleries, collections, furniture, and the architecture of palaces in The Portrait of a Lady. The main theme centres on the trends of a society; a characteristic statement from Amerigo allows the narrator to consider the power of this general law. As he declares “Oh, if I’m a crystal I’m delighted that I’m a perfect one, for I believe that they sometimes have cracks and flaws – in which case they are to be had very cheap,” the following comment is made about him: Representative precious objects, great ancient pictures and other works of art, fine eminent “pieces” in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and appreciation, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the instinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector, 67 had fairly served as a basis for his acceptance of the Prince’s suit.
The long process of narration throughout the book’s six hundred pages thus constructs a perfect unity of the heroine’s emotional makeup. Unlike the countess of Gemini who “paid justice to Rome,” but not to the ruins or the catacombs, nor even to the monuments, Isabel – like Henry James who was captivated from his very first journey in 18691870 by the Roman columbaria and burial grounds – finds nothing more in the “Eternal City” than the confirmation of her gloomiest urges. It is not without irony that this process occurs under the ever-present eye of 30 H.
The scene described in chapter six, in which the narrator brings up Miss Tina’s “ecstasy,” when she is moved by the marvels of the Grand Canal (that she had forgotten all about after living confined in an old “dilapidated palace”), is a notable example. Venice turns out to be a “stifling” town, an obsessed town, whose magnificence is contrasted with the scourge that is rotting away its old palaces. But in the heart of this old city corrupted by money (tourists fiercely haggle for a discount on a gondola trip), there is a steadfast “centre,” a permanence embodied in the mystical cult of historic relics, which offers a final line of resistance to financial power.