Read Online Anna Soror Collection Folio French Edition Marguerite Yourcenar 9782070383306 Books

Product details Series Collection Folio (Book 2230) Mass Market Paperback 114 pages Publisher French & European Pubns (February 1, 1991) Language French ISBN-10 207038330X

Anna Soror Collection Folio French Edition Marguerite Yourcenar 9782070383306 Books Reviews

• Wanting to sample something by Marguerite Yourcenar, the first woman elected to the Académie Française, I chose this historical novella, first written by her in 1925 when she was only 22, though subsequently edited. I read it in French, with no idea of her subject; one of the pleasures in reading was to gradually guess what she was getting at, then to see her taking it in a quite different direction, and then at the very end discover that I had been right all along. I rather imagine that most reviews will let the cat out of the bag, since you cannot really talk about the book otherwise. All the same, I will attempt to start mine (up to the section break) without doing so, and go into details only later.
  
  Born in 1575, the Anna of the title is the daughter of Don Alvaro, Marquis de la Cerna, the Spanish governor of Naples. The action begins in 1595, when she and her younger brother Miguel travel with their mother Donna Valentine to supervise the grape harvest on the family estates further south. Yourcenar gives an excellent portrayal of the pieties of a noble family in the Counter-Reformation era; on one level, this is a book about the soul. Both Anna and her mother spend much of their days in prayer. But piety is only the other side of the coin to belief in sorcery in this life and fear of hellfire in the life to come; both Miguel and his father turn out to be deeply susceptible. When Donna Valentine dies of a fever, the two young people are left alone, each tormented in their own way, and their previous camaraderie turns almost to hatred.
  
  It is not an entirely easy book to read, because of Yourcenar's rich language and the way she keeps juggling between brother and sister, not always in linear fashion, raising the tension page by page without giving the reader a clear idea of what she is building towards. But then on page 73, this part of the novel suddenly ends, to be followed by four short chapters tracing the lives of some of the characters over the next 40 years or so. Though much easier to understand, these chapters seem almost irrelevant -- until the very last of them suddenly clarifies what the main part of the story had been about. Much more than the soul, as it turns out.
  
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  [SPOILER ALERT] Yourcenar ends with a long essay written for the 1981 edition, in which she discusses the "hidden" theme of the book brother and sister incest. I found it almost as interesting as the story itself. She discusses other treatments of the theme in literature John Ford's 1627 play 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, Byron's MANFRED, Thomas Mann's story WÄLSUNGENBLUT, and CONFIDENCE AFRICAINE by Roger Martin du Gard. [These are of particular interest to me, since I must be one of the few people to have directed a production of the Ford, and I wrote an opera libretto based on the Mann.] She makes a convincing case for the literary fascination of this subject; I also recognize it as a young person's fantasy, especially if they do not have siblings of their own to bring it down to earth.
  
  What Yourcenar does so masterfully in the novella itself is to stagger towards incest, then move violently away. Miguel, for instance, opens a Bible at the story (2 Samuel 13) of Amnon's rape of his half-sister Tamar, but then recoils in horror. He is due to leave soon to take up a position at the Spanish court, and the tension becomes unbearable as the moment approaches. But when that moment comes, it is simplicity itself "Elle se pencha sur lui avec une compassion désolée. Ils s'étreignirent." [She leant towards him with desolate compassion. They embraced.] This could mean everything or nothing. Nothing, I thought, except mutual recognition of the impossible. For by the very next paragraph, they are each in their respective churches praying for each other, and five days later Miguel is gone. Only at the very end, when Anna is an old woman, does the author reveal the truth in a sentence of stunning simplicity "Cinq jours et cinq nuits d'un violent bonheur remplissaient de leurs échos et de leurs reflets tous les recoins de l'éternité." [Five days and five nights of violent happiness that, with their echoes and reflections, filled all the crannies of eternity.]
• A novel brimming with atmosphere--mysticism, the heavy presence of the Spanish in Italy in the late 16th century. A great read for an Intermediate to Advanced university literature class.
• I am sorry that this book is currently out of print. I think there is another edition in , but this is the one I have got. First of all I have to say is that this short book is , to me, the best she ever written. The story is about an incest. The subject is not easy and by the pen of another writer will be or something disgusting or something boring. But Yourcenair had a talent to express with words . She plays with the words like in a majestic zarabanda. We can feel the air of the city. The dark and fear of these two people.
  I encourage you to read it in French then you will not miss the musicality of her words. Believe me when I tell you that you will be not disapointed