| Bruges-La-Morte Contributor(s): Rodenbach, Georges (Author), Mitchell, Mike (Translator), Hollinghurst, Alan (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1912868067 ISBN-13: 9781912868063 Publisher: Dedalus OUR PRICE: $12.59 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Romance - General - Fiction | Psychological |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Series: Dedalus European Classics |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 4.9" W x 7.7" (0.30 lbs) 166 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Bruges-la-Morte, which first appeared in 1892, concerns the fate of Hugues Viane, a widower who has turned to the melancholy, decaying city of Bruges as the ideal location in which to mourn his wife and as a suitable haven for the narcissistic perambulations of his inexorably disturbed spirit. Bruges, the 'dead city', becomes the image of his dead wife and thus allows him to endure, to manage the unbearable loss by systematically following its mournful labyrinth of streets and canals in a cyclical promenade of reflection and allusion. The story itself centres around Hugues' obsession with a young dancer whom he believes is the double of his beloved wife. The consequent drama leads Hugues onto a plank walk of psychological torment and humiliation, culminating in a deranged murder. This is a poet's novel and is therefore metaphorically dense and visionary in style. It is the ultimate evocation of Rodenbach's lifelong love affair with the enduring mystery and haunting mortuary atmosphere of Bruges. 'This is one of the greatest novels ever written about grief, loneliness and isolation; and such subjects are, alas, always relevant these days. (Those suffering similar personal circumstances will find it remarkably consoling.) It is the kind of book, I kept thinking, that should have been turned into an opera by Debussy, along the lines of what he did with Pell as et M lisande, by Rodenbach's contemporary and fellow-townsman Maeterlinck. As it turns out, Erich Korngold did such a thing in 1920, but the Nazis banned it, and I'm not sure that he would have had the right musical attitude. If Debussy hadn't done it, Alban Berg would have been ideal. I keep thinking about music so much because so much music resides in the words, even in (the very able) translation. This is a book which is not only richly, almost oppressively, atmospheric: it is about atmosphere, about how a city can be a state of mind as well as a geographical entity. It has its shocks and its melodrama: but it is a haunting, and a haunted work. Congratulations to Dedalus for reviving it.' Nick Lezard's paperback of the week in The Guardian |
Contributor Bio(s): Rodenbach, Georges: - Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898) born in Tournai, spent most of his time in Ghent and later Paris where like his childhood friend and Flemish compatriot Emile Verhaeren, he rubbed shoulders with all the main players of the symbolist fin de siecle. But Rodenbach is forever associated with Bruges, the location for his most celebrated and enduring work. He also wrote a number of collections of poetry of which 'Le Règne du silence' from 1891 in many ways prefigures Bruges-La-Morte. A further novel 'Le Carilloneur' 1897 (translated by Dedalus as The Bells of Bruges) is also set in Bruges.Mitchell, Mike: - He has published over eighty translations from German.. His translation of Rosendorfer's Letters Back to Ancient China won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize after he had been shortlisted in previous years for his translations of Stephanie by Herbert Rosendorfer and The Golem by Gustav Meyrink. His translations have been shortlisted four times for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize: Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen in 1999, The Other Side by Alfred Kubin in 2000, The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach in 2008 and The Lairds of Cromarty by Jean Pierre Ohl in 2013.Hollinghurst, Alan: - Alan Hollinghurst is the author of four novels, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell and The Line of Beauty. He has received the Somerset Maugham Award and the James Tait Black Memorial for Fiction, and he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994 and won the prize in 2004. |