psmv5: Second impressions

This prompted by a chance viewing of the film at reference 1, offered to us by Prime. Perhaps picked up because back in 2014, at reference 2, I noticed the book by Thornton Wilder at reference 3.

A book which gets a lot of time from both Bing and Etsy, from which last I took the image above, to be found near the end of my copy of the book. The actress from the gutter in her second life as a grand lady. Engraved by Clare Leighton, a successful wood cutter who lived through most of the twentieth century. I do not much care for her work myself, despite still owning a copy of one of her better known illustrated books, 'Four Hedges' (reference 6).

At the front of the present book we get a list of a lot of impressions within a few years of first publication. I associated to seeing popular books from the same sort of time with lists of printings and impressions occupying whole pages. Presumably the publisher was trying to tell potential readers how good and how successful the book was.

The film of the book is a costume drama about life in 18th century Lima, and which BH liked rather more than I did. I suppose I was slightly irritated by how little of what little I had remembered of the book came across in the film - despite this last seeming to have lifted a lot of the dialogue directly from its text. I have now reread the book, an easy read of around 140 pages. Not so much longer than the average Maigret story.

Wikipedia talks of the book being a precursor to the disaster film genre which followed, but I was much more conscious of the cod-philosophical angle, of the meaning of lives which are so subject to the whims of chance. With us being told at the end of the book that one should value life for what it is at the time; that it is no good trying for permanence in our works, be they of the literary or any other variety.

I dare say that, at the time, not long after the carnage of the First World War and the flu epidemic which followed, people in the countries affected were rather into what was left of the meaning of life. With the spirits which find their way into the roughly contemporary stories of Agatha Christie being a similar sign of the times.

From where I associate to the warrior cultures of old, of say the Iliad or of Beowulf, in which the life of a warrior might well be very uncertain, but which might, if he was brave in battle, live on in the songs of minstrels. A story which it was good business for the minstrels to promote.

Wikipedia also tells me that while the costume drama side of the book is probably true enough, the plot was an invention. And while there was such a bridge, there was no such disaster - or burning at the stake afterwards. I allow the Inquisition, at least at the beginning of the century, if not by the end.

I am reminded of the great difference between the Spanish colonisation of the Americas and our own efforts. The Spaniards moved into and eventually assimilated into large aboriginal populations, with civilisations and cultures of their own. While we were either a thin and temporary layer on top - as in India - or we displaced - perhaps thinned out - the weak aboriginals - as in North America.

Time to look up what else Prime can offer about all this.

PS 1: Thornton is better known to me as the name of the estate between Girton and Cambridge where I spent most of my childhood. A name, memory says, the builder took from his natal Derbyshire.

PS 2: my (inherited) copy does not have its dust jacket, so I don't whether it is this cheap version, snapped here from Abebooks. But it does have a small woodcut pasted inside the front cover which may have been printed by the lady herself. And having said above that I do not much care for her work, turning these pages today, I find that I do like a lot of the woodcuts there after all, even some of those involving people. I had thought her rendition of these last rather heavy and clumsy.

A book which I was able to put my hand on fast enough, despite it being hidden behind an important tower of cardboard, recycled from a recent purchase of chairs. Somewhat held together by a generous application of brass - or brass effect - paper fasteners of the split pin variety; fasteners which BH was able to put her hand on fast enough when they were needed.

PS 3: at reference 2, I talk, in the context of woodcuts, of the creative tension between the medium and the subject. The tension between the need for food to both image well and taste well touched on at reference 7 does not seem to be quite the same. More thought needed.

PS 4: an important character in this book is the actress popularly called 'Perichole'. Inquiry suggests that Wilder lifted the name and some of his plot from the Offenbach opera of 1860 or so called 'La Périchole', itself based an earlier play by Prosper Mérimée. While the lady herself appears to be based on one Micaela Villegas who does not look to be the child of the streets of the book and who lived half a century later than the (fictitious) collapse of the bridge, the date of which (1714) is given on the first page.

Wikipedia suggests that '... The name "La Périchole" is a French adaptation of a Spanish-language epithet by which Amat [her posh lover], during a quarrel, referred to Villegas as a "perra chola" – "native bitch"...'. While 'pericolo' is Italian for danger, roughly the Spanish 'peligro'. Which I thought would be a very Latin way to describe a woman who was dangerously attractive.