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The Golden Bowl
Shy Maggie Verver, a young American heiress, shares an uncommonly close bond with her father. Widower Adam Verver, a financier and art connoisseur, has bought everything he wants, including a titled husband for his daughter. Maggie is charmed by Prince Amerigo, an Italian nobleman of reduced means. Wishing to provide her father with companionship, she persuades him to marry her best friend, Charlotte Stant. But unbeknownst to Maggie and Adam, Charlotte and the Prince are concealing a guilty secret that will strike at the foundations of both marriages.
Henry James explores his favorite themes in this novel — money, class, desire, and the collision of European and American cultures.
Excerpt:
He handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. "My Golden Bowl," he observed--and it sounded on his lips as if it said everything. He left the important object--for as "important" it did somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. Simple but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. It might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height.
Henry James explores his favorite themes in this novel — money, class, desire, and the collision of European and American cultures.
Excerpt:
He handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. "My Golden Bowl," he observed--and it sounded on his lips as if it said everything. He left the important object--for as "important" it did somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. Simple but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. It might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height.
591 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 1904
About the author
Henry James
3,862 books3,656 followersHenry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
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February 16, 2017Henry James is funny.
I see already the raised eyebrows inspired by that statement. 'Fun' might well be the last quality that anyone has ever associated with Henry James, but as I read this book, I began to have the impression that the author had a lot of fun writing it. I certainly had fun reading it.
The fun was in the characters, who they were and how they spoke. It was in the shifting points of view, which revealed so many things to the reader and hid just as many more. It was in the constant play between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsaid. It was in the cool acknowledgement that the coincidence at the centre of the plot was the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels. It was in the clever way in which the golden bowl, in a story about collecting beautiful things, becomes a symbol of the failure of the power of purchase. But the best fun for me was in the way the author seemed to insert himself, and the reader alongside him, into the heart of the story.
I could examine all those claims one by one, slowly and carefully, but the examination would very likely take as long as the book itself so I'll just focus on the last point: how I felt Henry James inserted himself and the reader into the novel.
From early on, two characters stood out for me, Mrs Assingham and her husband Bob, otherwise known as Fanny and the Colonel. Fanny and the Colonel are not main characters, the story might easily have been told without them, but I'm choosing to imagine that Henry James created them to inject exactly the element of fun he himself needed while writing, and which he wanted to offer the reader as a kind of bonus.
The book is divided into two parts, the first more or less written from the point of view of a handsome but impoverished Italian called Amerigo who marries an American heiress called Maggie whose father collects art objects of every kind. The second part is mostly from the point of view of Maggie.
In both parts, Fanny Assingham is given special treatment: a chapter every so often in which the narrative centers entirely on her and the Colonel. During these sections, Fanny analyses the thoughts and actions of all the other characters as if she were the author and had created them all and understood all their motives, even the most hidden. Her analysis takes the form of a series of hilarious dialogues with the Colonel in which she mostly speaks and the more humble Colonel mostly listens. In fact Henry James calls her the Sphinx at one point, and the Colonel is some old pilgrim in the desert, camping at the foot of that monument.
As her theories get more and more cryptic, the Colonel reacts like a typical reader, raising an eyebrow here, wincing visibly there, and sometimes showing such an exhausted patience with his wife's circling of the other characters' motives that indulgent despair was generally at the best his note. At other times, he keeps up with the complex logic of her theories remarkably well, this was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel did his best, and he occasionally asks the kind of irritable question we the readers may silently put to the author, "Are you saying that…?”
But the Colonel is mostly patient in spite of the labyrinthine intricacies of Fanny's thought, he’d adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. So the Colonel reacts exactly like a reader of Henry James; after all, which reader of his longer books has not felt that indulgent despair from time to time.
In spite of all the serious analysis Fanny indulges in, there's still a lot of humour in her exchanges with the Colonel. They are playing a game together which they both enjoy. When she broods about the punishment the other characters may have to endure, he teasingly asks what his own punishment will be. 'Nothing - you're not worthy of any,' she replies, like a magnificent monarch. When she's not being regal, she's being tragic, it had still been their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic, and even if the Colonel pretends to be long-suffering, his cigar invariably gives him away. Many of their exchanges are punctuated by reference to the Colonel's pleasure in smoking his cigar or his pipe as he listens to his wife being tragic.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull on his pipe….
After a long contemplative smoke…
His cigar in short once more alone could express it.…
The Colonel smoked on it.…
'But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.…
He listened to his companion tonight, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling.…
The Colonel's pleasure from smoking is so constantly underlined that I began to see other meanings in it. At one point he is described, on taking his pipe from his mouth, as 'ejaculating' his response, after which, the Colonel sat back at his ease, an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and as perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade.
Putting all that together, alongside the names Henry James chose for these two characters, Fanny and Assingham, I felt there had to be something salacious in his intentions with regard to the provocative pair. I may be hilariously wrong but I reserve the right to analyze and interpret things in my own way, just as Fanny Assingham does. You are free to raise an eyebrow, and even wince - like the Colonel.
……………………………………………………………
When I finished this book and turned to the Appendix, I found a passage in which Henry James speaks of the pleasure he got from writing the book. Addressing us, the readers, he says, It all comes back to that, to my and your ‘fun’ - if we but allow the term its full extension; to the production of which no humblest question involved, even to that of the shade of a cadence, is not richly pertinent...
Just as Fanny relies on the Colonel to listen to her analysis and see her through, Henry James relies on us, and engages to come out at the right end if we will have sufficient patience.
I very much feel he did in this book, and that I did too.
I see already the raised eyebrows inspired by that statement. 'Fun' might well be the last quality that anyone has ever associated with Henry James, but as I read this book, I began to have the impression that the author had a lot of fun writing it. I certainly had fun reading it.
The fun was in the characters, who they were and how they spoke. It was in the shifting points of view, which revealed so many things to the reader and hid just as many more. It was in the constant play between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsaid. It was in the cool acknowledgement that the coincidence at the centre of the plot was the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels. It was in the clever way in which the golden bowl, in a story about collecting beautiful things, becomes a symbol of the failure of the power of purchase. But the best fun for me was in the way the author seemed to insert himself, and the reader alongside him, into the heart of the story.
I could examine all those claims one by one, slowly and carefully, but the examination would very likely take as long as the book itself so I'll just focus on the last point: how I felt Henry James inserted himself and the reader into the novel.
From early on, two characters stood out for me, Mrs Assingham and her husband Bob, otherwise known as Fanny and the Colonel. Fanny and the Colonel are not main characters, the story might easily have been told without them, but I'm choosing to imagine that Henry James created them to inject exactly the element of fun he himself needed while writing, and which he wanted to offer the reader as a kind of bonus.
The book is divided into two parts, the first more or less written from the point of view of a handsome but impoverished Italian called Amerigo who marries an American heiress called Maggie whose father collects art objects of every kind. The second part is mostly from the point of view of Maggie.
In both parts, Fanny Assingham is given special treatment: a chapter every so often in which the narrative centers entirely on her and the Colonel. During these sections, Fanny analyses the thoughts and actions of all the other characters as if she were the author and had created them all and understood all their motives, even the most hidden. Her analysis takes the form of a series of hilarious dialogues with the Colonel in which she mostly speaks and the more humble Colonel mostly listens. In fact Henry James calls her the Sphinx at one point, and the Colonel is some old pilgrim in the desert, camping at the foot of that monument.
As her theories get more and more cryptic, the Colonel reacts like a typical reader, raising an eyebrow here, wincing visibly there, and sometimes showing such an exhausted patience with his wife's circling of the other characters' motives that indulgent despair was generally at the best his note. At other times, he keeps up with the complex logic of her theories remarkably well, this was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel did his best, and he occasionally asks the kind of irritable question we the readers may silently put to the author, "Are you saying that…?”
But the Colonel is mostly patient in spite of the labyrinthine intricacies of Fanny's thought, he’d adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. So the Colonel reacts exactly like a reader of Henry James; after all, which reader of his longer books has not felt that indulgent despair from time to time.
In spite of all the serious analysis Fanny indulges in, there's still a lot of humour in her exchanges with the Colonel. They are playing a game together which they both enjoy. When she broods about the punishment the other characters may have to endure, he teasingly asks what his own punishment will be. 'Nothing - you're not worthy of any,' she replies, like a magnificent monarch. When she's not being regal, she's being tragic, it had still been their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic, and even if the Colonel pretends to be long-suffering, his cigar invariably gives him away. Many of their exchanges are punctuated by reference to the Colonel's pleasure in smoking his cigar or his pipe as he listens to his wife being tragic.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull on his pipe….
After a long contemplative smoke…
His cigar in short once more alone could express it.…
The Colonel smoked on it.…
'But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.…
He listened to his companion tonight, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling.…
The Colonel's pleasure from smoking is so constantly underlined that I began to see other meanings in it. At one point he is described, on taking his pipe from his mouth, as 'ejaculating' his response, after which, the Colonel sat back at his ease, an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and as perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade.
Putting all that together, alongside the names Henry James chose for these two characters, Fanny and Assingham, I felt there had to be something salacious in his intentions with regard to the provocative pair. I may be hilariously wrong but I reserve the right to analyze and interpret things in my own way, just as Fanny Assingham does. You are free to raise an eyebrow, and even wince - like the Colonel.
……………………………………………………………
When I finished this book and turned to the Appendix, I found a passage in which Henry James speaks of the pleasure he got from writing the book. Addressing us, the readers, he says, It all comes back to that, to my and your ‘fun’ - if we but allow the term its full extension; to the production of which no humblest question involved, even to that of the shade of a cadence, is not richly pertinent...
Just as Fanny relies on the Colonel to listen to her analysis and see her through, Henry James relies on us, and engages to come out at the right end if we will have sufficient patience.
I very much feel he did in this book, and that I did too.
July 10, 2017
The Golden Bowl
is a wonderful novel. Through his usual beautiful but convoluted and sinuous prose that swims around itself again and again, Henry James tells us the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. These two marriages, whose essence holds secrets and truths, is the heart of its plot. Yes, it seems a simple enough plot and it revolves around the most basic human shortcoming that is adultery; and the relationships that are instigated by these four individuals.
Adam Verver, a very wealthy American art collector without scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. However, he then makes his most important purchase, a husband for his daughter Maggie. And in Prince Amerigo, he finds the perfect candidate: impoverished royalty. He can provide what Mr. Verver most wishes for Maggie, a title. And Maggie is delighted with her father’s plans:
However, this marriage upsets the harmonious balance in the father and daughter relationship. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry. So, to alleviate her guilty for having married, Maggie will suggest that her father marries her school friend Charlotte Stant – vivacious, smart and likewise poor American – unsuspecting her prior romantic relationship with Amerigo himself. So begins the play of love and marriage. And so the shrewd stage is set, and we readers are only left to enjoy its sinuosity.
Four people, two marriages and their infidelities…
As we read we glimpse the roots of The Golden Bowl’s plot, as it probes deeply into the complicated issue of fidelity not only in Amerigo and Maggie’s relationship but also between the widowed father and his steadily devoted daughter. Between Adam and Charlotte; between him and Prince Amerigo; and between Princess Maggie and her young childhood playmate, Charlotte. And we discover, through a dialogue between Fanny – the matchmaker – and her husband, that this plot is not simple at all but deeply complex:
Where lies the guilt of all these infidelities, or where does it all begin? Even after both marriages the millionaire father and his daughter remain so devoted to each other that their two sposi are left for themselves. The father and daughter relationship seem dominant while the others are abandoned to their company. What complicates this unbalance is the fact that father and daughter encourage Charlotte and Prince Amerigo’s to entertain each other, which is further muddled by their previous affair.
Charlotte and Amerigo discuss exactly that:
As might be expected, consequences arise. Therefore, part of the blame must lie with Adam and Maggie who are so involved with each other and so involved in each other’s lives that they fail to notice the underlying problems in their marriages.
Henry James’ ethereal writing style…
The Golden Bowl might seem simpler than his other novels, but Henry James is still loyal to himself. The book is filled with ambiguity: nothing is black and white, good or bad. Nuances and innuendos are plenty in his prose. He gives nothing away, but lets the readers learn and discover for themselves about the people and their relationships; we have to learn as we usually do in normal life, by paying attention to dialogues and inferring our understanding of it all. So, we are left to our own conclusions, and so its reading is much more enjoyable for those that brave it.
As we read a dialogue between Fanny and the prince, we are exposed to James's powerful and ethereal writing, where the symbols are not always effortless:
But the beauty of his prose conquers the most attentive reader:
And the author confesses his ambiguity:
Through a prose that is highly introspective, a kind of interior monolog that overwhelms the reader and prefers to sail upon a vast ocean of impressions that we never know where is leading us; and a style of dialogue, to which James is committed, that has the virtue of realism but does not define. I would imagine that James uses Fanny frequently in these conversations, for she is the most neutral character, through whom he can explore the main character's consciousness. As we can read in a dialogue between Maggie and Fanny, that infers but fails to define:
The metaphor of the golden bowl itself is most fitting to develop the author’s characteristic symbolic prose: it is the bowl itself that leads Maggie to the startling realization that both her husband and her friend have been deceiving her, and James prose and plot are amply fulfilled here:
Through his vague dialogues and perplexing prose, James leads the reader to discover by himself or herself the family dynamics, the sacrifices made; he leads the readers to judge each character and to determine where and if there is any sin being committed. James’ clear deep understanding of the human condition, and of how humans interacted, is enthralling and drives the plot to its ultimate resolution.
Why I prefer Portrait of a Lady and why a lower rating for The Golden Bowl
The Golden Bowl is a fascinating book, but I have to make it clear that my favorite Henry James remains The Portrait of a Lady. I hope to be able to explain my preference by the end of this review.
Since The Portrait of a Lady is the only other Henry James novel I read, it is my only parameter. Compared to this book, I found The Golden Bowl more direct in format and thus easier to follow. It’s focused on the characters, their communications and somewhat less on their personal feelings and influence of the scenes. I don't think the prose is quite as tortuous as it is in The Portrait of a Lady, and the plot straighter forward, and James here seems to require less of the reader.
While The Portrait of a Lady concerns the internal anguish of Isabel Archer, here we are facing two characters, Prince Amerigo and Maggie Verver, or possibly three, if we include Charlotte Stant. While reading The Golden Bowl, I could not wholly sympathize with its most compelling character, Maggie, for her role as the betrayed is in part the result of her actions. While in The Portrait of a Lady, I felt earnestly for Isabel Archer, despite her naiveté. Thus, I was much more involved in the reading of the latter.
It seems fair to say that Maggie asserts herself; she did not appear to become a victim if we consider her marriage. But to the end, she believes that she and her father have lost the most. So, what option did she have but to choose her marriage, could she have chosen her father in detriment of that? Not in her time. Thus, in a sense, she resigns herself to her fate much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady. Of course, Maggie's actions are what will define how The Golden Bowl ends, as Isabel Archer likewise leads her novel to its closing. Their choices, regardless if we agree with or dislike them. Isabel’s decision we could say was more moral, and Maggie’s more expedient.
I hope to have explained fairly well my choice here, but deep down it is a question of preference, and I liked Isabel Archer better and enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady more. Despite its 4-star rating, I relished reading The Golden Bowl, and strongly recommend it.
_____
Adam Verver, a very wealthy American art collector without scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. However, he then makes his most important purchase, a husband for his daughter Maggie. And in Prince Amerigo, he finds the perfect candidate: impoverished royalty. He can provide what Mr. Verver most wishes for Maggie, a title. And Maggie is delighted with her father’s plans:
“…You are at any rate a part of his collection,” she had explained— “one of the things that can only be got over here. You’re a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of price. You’re perhaps absolutely unique, but you’re so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you—you belong to a class about which everything is unknown. You’re what they call a morceau de musee.”
“I see. I have the great sign of it,” he had risked— “that I cost a lot of money.”
However, this marriage upsets the harmonious balance in the father and daughter relationship. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry. So, to alleviate her guilty for having married, Maggie will suggest that her father marries her school friend Charlotte Stant – vivacious, smart and likewise poor American – unsuspecting her prior romantic relationship with Amerigo himself. So begins the play of love and marriage. And so the shrewd stage is set, and we readers are only left to enjoy its sinuosity.
Four people, two marriages and their infidelities…
As we read we glimpse the roots of The Golden Bowl’s plot, as it probes deeply into the complicated issue of fidelity not only in Amerigo and Maggie’s relationship but also between the widowed father and his steadily devoted daughter. Between Adam and Charlotte; between him and Prince Amerigo; and between Princess Maggie and her young childhood playmate, Charlotte. And we discover, through a dialogue between Fanny – the matchmaker – and her husband, that this plot is not simple at all but deeply complex:
"Well are you trying to make out that I’ve said you have? All their case wants, at any rate,” Bob Assingham declared, “is that you should leave it well alone. It’s theirs now; they’ve bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours.
"Of which case," she asked, "are you speaking?"
He smoked a minute: then with a groan:" Lord, are there so many?"
"There's Maggie's and the Prince's, and there's the Prince's and Charlotte's."
"Oh yes; and then," the Colonel scoffed, "there's Charlotte's and the Prince's."
"There's Maggie's and Charlotte's," she went on—"and there's also Maggie's and mine. I think too that there's Charlotte's and mine. Yes," she mused, "Charlotte’s and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see, there are plenty. But I mean,” she said, “to keep my head.”
Where lies the guilt of all these infidelities, or where does it all begin? Even after both marriages the millionaire father and his daughter remain so devoted to each other that their two sposi are left for themselves. The father and daughter relationship seem dominant while the others are abandoned to their company. What complicates this unbalance is the fact that father and daughter encourage Charlotte and Prince Amerigo’s to entertain each other, which is further muddled by their previous affair.
Charlotte and Amerigo discuss exactly that:
"But things turn out—! And it leaves us"—she made the point—"more alone."
He seemed to wonder. "It leaves you more alone."
"Oh," she again returned, "don’t put it all on me! Maggie would have given herself to his child. I’m sure, scarcely less than he gives himself to yours. it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could I have had them—to keep our sposi apart." She smiled as for the breadth of the image, but, as she seemed to take it, in spite of this, she then spoke gravely enough. "It's as strange as you like, but we're immensely alone."
As might be expected, consequences arise. Therefore, part of the blame must lie with Adam and Maggie who are so involved with each other and so involved in each other’s lives that they fail to notice the underlying problems in their marriages.
Henry James’ ethereal writing style…
The Golden Bowl might seem simpler than his other novels, but Henry James is still loyal to himself. The book is filled with ambiguity: nothing is black and white, good or bad. Nuances and innuendos are plenty in his prose. He gives nothing away, but lets the readers learn and discover for themselves about the people and their relationships; we have to learn as we usually do in normal life, by paying attention to dialogues and inferring our understanding of it all. So, we are left to our own conclusions, and so its reading is much more enjoyable for those that brave it.
As we read a dialogue between Fanny and the prince, we are exposed to James's powerful and ethereal writing, where the symbols are not always effortless:
The 'boat,' you see"—the Prince explained no less considerably and lucidly—"is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like, out in the stream. I have to jump out from time to time to stretch my legs, and you'll probably perceive, if you give it your attention, that Charlotte really can't help occasionally doing the same. It isn't even a question, sometimes, of one's getting to the dock—one has to take a header and splash about in the water. Call our having remained here together tonight, call the accident of my having put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my companion’s track—for I grant you this as a practical result of our combination—call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off the deck, inevitable to each of us. Why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable—and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? We shan’t drown, we shan’t sink—at least I can answer for myself. Mrs. Verver too, moreover—do her justice—visibly knows how to swim.
But the beauty of his prose conquers the most attentive reader:
They learned fairly to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister circular passages.
And the author confesses his ambiguity:
Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation.
Through a prose that is highly introspective, a kind of interior monolog that overwhelms the reader and prefers to sail upon a vast ocean of impressions that we never know where is leading us; and a style of dialogue, to which James is committed, that has the virtue of realism but does not define. I would imagine that James uses Fanny frequently in these conversations, for she is the most neutral character, through whom he can explore the main character's consciousness. As we can read in a dialogue between Maggie and Fanny, that infers but fails to define:
"My dear child, you're amazing."
"Amazing—?"
"You're terrible."
Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. "No; I'm not terrible, and you don't think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt—but surprisingly mild. Because—don't you see?—I AM mild. I can bear anything."
"Oh, 'bear'!" Mrs. Assingham fluted.
"For love," said the Princess.
Fanny hesitated. "Of your father?"
"For love," Maggie repeated.
"Of your husband?"
"For love," Maggie said again."
The metaphor of the golden bowl itself is most fitting to develop the author’s characteristic symbolic prose: it is the bowl itself that leads Maggie to the startling realization that both her husband and her friend have been deceiving her, and James prose and plot are amply fulfilled here:
"Well, what I want. I want happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger."
"A brilliant, perfect surface—to begin with at least. I see."
"The golden bowl—as it WAS to have been." And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. "The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack."
Through his vague dialogues and perplexing prose, James leads the reader to discover by himself or herself the family dynamics, the sacrifices made; he leads the readers to judge each character and to determine where and if there is any sin being committed. James’ clear deep understanding of the human condition, and of how humans interacted, is enthralling and drives the plot to its ultimate resolution.
Fanny Assingham took in deeper—… “He’s splendid then.”
“Ah, that as much as you please!”
Maggie said this and left it, but the tone had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. "You think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. But it's what will have saved you."
"Oh," Maggie returned, "it's what—from the moment they discovered we could think at all—will have saved THEM. For they're the ones who are saved," she went on. "We're the ones who are lost."
"Lost—?"
"Lost to each other—father and I." And then as her friend appeared to demur. “Oh, yes,” Maggie quite lucidly declared, “lost to each other much more, really, than Amerigo and Charlotte are; since for them it’s just, it’s right, it’s deserved, while for us it’s only sad and strange and not caused by our fault.”
Why I prefer Portrait of a Lady and why a lower rating for The Golden Bowl
The Golden Bowl is a fascinating book, but I have to make it clear that my favorite Henry James remains The Portrait of a Lady. I hope to be able to explain my preference by the end of this review.
Since The Portrait of a Lady is the only other Henry James novel I read, it is my only parameter. Compared to this book, I found The Golden Bowl more direct in format and thus easier to follow. It’s focused on the characters, their communications and somewhat less on their personal feelings and influence of the scenes. I don't think the prose is quite as tortuous as it is in The Portrait of a Lady, and the plot straighter forward, and James here seems to require less of the reader.
While The Portrait of a Lady concerns the internal anguish of Isabel Archer, here we are facing two characters, Prince Amerigo and Maggie Verver, or possibly three, if we include Charlotte Stant. While reading The Golden Bowl, I could not wholly sympathize with its most compelling character, Maggie, for her role as the betrayed is in part the result of her actions. While in The Portrait of a Lady, I felt earnestly for Isabel Archer, despite her naiveté. Thus, I was much more involved in the reading of the latter.
It seems fair to say that Maggie asserts herself; she did not appear to become a victim if we consider her marriage. But to the end, she believes that she and her father have lost the most. So, what option did she have but to choose her marriage, could she have chosen her father in detriment of that? Not in her time. Thus, in a sense, she resigns herself to her fate much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady. Of course, Maggie's actions are what will define how The Golden Bowl ends, as Isabel Archer likewise leads her novel to its closing. Their choices, regardless if we agree with or dislike them. Isabel’s decision we could say was more moral, and Maggie’s more expedient.
I hope to have explained fairly well my choice here, but deep down it is a question of preference, and I liked Isabel Archer better and enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady more. Despite its 4-star rating, I relished reading The Golden Bowl, and strongly recommend it.
_____
August 11, 2017
Book Review
It is difficult to give a low review to one of your favorite authors. And I've read this book twice. But it barely changed me upon a second read. Somewhere between a 2 and a 3, this book has many great moments; however, it's also very disconnected, almost as those there are several stories consolidated in a single book with at unmatched effort made to weave them together properly. The language -- great and consistent. The characters -- strong and memorable. The plot -- confused and confusing. The theme and lesson -- uncertain where it is trying to go. If I separated the stories, they'd each get a 3+, but when I look at this as a whole, as characters in a charade, or people in love... it's time period seems inaccurate. I am considering reading this a third time, as it's been a good 15 years since the last read. And I do adore him as a write, but this one was a miss.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
It is difficult to give a low review to one of your favorite authors. And I've read this book twice. But it barely changed me upon a second read. Somewhere between a 2 and a 3, this book has many great moments; however, it's also very disconnected, almost as those there are several stories consolidated in a single book with at unmatched effort made to weave them together properly. The language -- great and consistent. The characters -- strong and memorable. The plot -- confused and confusing. The theme and lesson -- uncertain where it is trying to go. If I separated the stories, they'd each get a 3+, but when I look at this as a whole, as characters in a charade, or people in love... it's time period seems inaccurate. I am considering reading this a third time, as it's been a good 15 years since the last read. And I do adore him as a write, but this one was a miss.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
July 24, 2023
ETA:
Well, Henry James was either a freaking genius totally beyond the praise or criticism of lowly, unworthy readers, like yours truly
OR
a self-indulgent, pompous ass and I, for one, am still yearning for a chance to be able to travel back in time and throw this book at his self-indulgent, pompous head!
Even though I am presented with the subconscious of the characters to an almost painfully detailed degree, yet I feel totally detached from them. Whether it is the language or the literary technique or my misguided attempt to "bond" with the characters on some level to be able to care for them or at least to understand them a little, I find it impossible.
It's like looking at a grand, gorgeous aquarium with splendid, majestic, colourful fishes swimming around, but even though you try to take in & delight in all the details, you have to realise that you just can't, because the water is muddled or the glass containing them somehow magnifies & distorts your view and you get a splitting headache by looking through it too long.
Let it be said that this time, HJ did not irritate the hell out of me, which is a huge improvement!
Original review:
Dear Henry James,
after all these years I still cannot decide if it's just me or you or the both of us (aka the fault in our stars).
Maybe we met in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe there will come a time when a possible reunion ends in desperate hugs and tears & the question of "why did we waste all those precious years?" arises.
I don't know ... Let's give our relationship another try in 2019.
Yours in obfuscation,
Melinda
Well, Henry James was either a freaking genius totally beyond the praise or criticism of lowly, unworthy readers, like yours truly
OR
a self-indulgent, pompous ass and I, for one, am still yearning for a chance to be able to travel back in time and throw this book at his self-indulgent, pompous head!
Even though I am presented with the subconscious of the characters to an almost painfully detailed degree, yet I feel totally detached from them. Whether it is the language or the literary technique or my misguided attempt to "bond" with the characters on some level to be able to care for them or at least to understand them a little, I find it impossible.
It's like looking at a grand, gorgeous aquarium with splendid, majestic, colourful fishes swimming around, but even though you try to take in & delight in all the details, you have to realise that you just can't, because the water is muddled or the glass containing them somehow magnifies & distorts your view and you get a splitting headache by looking through it too long.
Let it be said that this time, HJ did not irritate the hell out of me, which is a huge improvement!
Original review:
Dear Henry James,
after all these years I still cannot decide if it's just me or you or the both of us (aka the fault in our stars).
Maybe we met in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe there will come a time when a possible reunion ends in desperate hugs and tears & the question of "why did we waste all those precious years?" arises.
I don't know ... Let's give our relationship another try in 2019.
Yours in obfuscation,
Melinda
September 18, 2011
Good Lord, do I hate this book.
This is very, very late Henry James, when he was hopped up on painkillers and "writing" his novels via dictaphone. Consequently, the entire book reads like a very, very long, barely edited transcript of a dying Victorian intellectual rambling incoherently for hours in turn of the century English, because that's exactly what it is. The narrative is simplistic, is buried underneath clouds of irrelevant and soporific detail, and frankly isn't very interesting to begin with. The characters are wooden and uninteresting. The entire book is less about actual storytelling and more about talking at great length about arcane Victorian traditions without actually getting to the point. For all of the thousands of words in this book, very few of them actually have meaning. This book adds nothing to either literature in general or to James's reputation, and only came to be because he was delirious and lonely at the end of his life and wanted to write one last epic novel despite being physically incapable of doing so. Even so, he should have let it die when it became obvious he couldn't do it properly. Actually publishing this turgid mess as a novel was a crime against humanity. Avoid this one at all costs unless you're a very, very, very patient masochist, or you're too pretentious to realize how absolutely awful this book really is.
This is very, very late Henry James, when he was hopped up on painkillers and "writing" his novels via dictaphone. Consequently, the entire book reads like a very, very long, barely edited transcript of a dying Victorian intellectual rambling incoherently for hours in turn of the century English, because that's exactly what it is. The narrative is simplistic, is buried underneath clouds of irrelevant and soporific detail, and frankly isn't very interesting to begin with. The characters are wooden and uninteresting. The entire book is less about actual storytelling and more about talking at great length about arcane Victorian traditions without actually getting to the point. For all of the thousands of words in this book, very few of them actually have meaning. This book adds nothing to either literature in general or to James's reputation, and only came to be because he was delirious and lonely at the end of his life and wanted to write one last epic novel despite being physically incapable of doing so. Even so, he should have let it die when it became obvious he couldn't do it properly. Actually publishing this turgid mess as a novel was a crime against humanity. Avoid this one at all costs unless you're a very, very, very patient masochist, or you're too pretentious to realize how absolutely awful this book really is.
January 26, 2024
Modern Library 100 Best Novels
(32/100)
At the end of May, I was chatting to a good friend of mine when suddenly an idea came to my mind, and then, as if in hesitation, I asked: "how about reading The Golden Bowl together?" Well, it was not as though this suggestion came completely out of the blue, as we were talking about our previous reading experiences that had been challenging for us; I said, "Henry James has been a challenging author for me, yet he is my favorite American-English author ... so let's do a buddy-read, are you in?"
My friend had only read a few novels by James, such as The American, Washington Square, and maybe another one that I'm missing, and so had I. Thus, The Golden Bowl turned into a last-minute plan, without knowing what this novel would be about, or even if it would be more challenging than our previous experiences reading a Henry James novel.
It turns out that The Golden Bowl is the most difficult, challenging, confusing, ambiguous, at times frustrating and not-to-the-point book I've ever read in English, and probably of my life.
Now, let's be honest here: did I like it?
If you want the short answer, "yes, I loved it and it has become an all-time favorite, it will definitely be on my top 12 of 2022."
The long answer, well, let's see if I can explain why I did love it and why I would never recommend this book to anyone.
1. The book has no plot. That means almost the whole novel—600 or so pages—is happening in the characters' minds. There are only 6 characters in the entire novel, probably 10 if we consider those three or four extra characters who are mentioned once or twice in the entire book. There is also a pattern here: the novel is divided into 2 volumes, and every volume into 3 books each, which means we have 6 books and 6 characters; what I could tell is that every character becomes the main character in a particular book, having a crucial, very important part into that specific book. Maybe I'm wrong here, but that was my impression while I read the novel at some point.
2. The novel depicts perfectly and in detail two main topics: marriage and adultery. Throughout the story, we’ll see how two marriages and an adulterous relationship are thoroughly described, however, we actually ‘never’ see that happening. As I said, there is no plot since James is using an early-modernism stream of consciousness in the entire book in order to describe this situation—how adultery may affect on marriage, to say the least—its consequences and its possible solutions (if they are necessary for the sake of the characters involved). In addition, there are other topics that are part of the novel and are also important, for instance, people's and mainly women's role in society—James is also depicting the contrast between American and European societies, a typical topic in many of his works—and the strong and genuine bond between a father and his daughter.
3. If I say I wouldn't recommend this book it's because I know many people are not fond of James' writing style, and I can really see why. I wouldn't say his prose is difficult to read—it was difficult for me, though this is not implicit in his narrative—but really ambiguous. Sometimes even the characters don't know what is going on or what the other characters are saying, and for the record, it is kind of funny to see that happening. Most of the dialogues are a series of question-answer thing—I don't know how to describe it—that is also confusing; let me show you an example of a common dialogue in the novel, so you can see it:
'And that’s just it – that he doesn’t?’
‘That’s just it,’ said the Princess profoundly.
On which Mrs Assingham reflected. ‘Then how is Charlotte so held?’
‘Just by that.’
‘By her ignorance?’
‘By her ignorance.’
Fanny wondered. ‘A torment –?’
‘A torment,’ said Maggie with tears in her eyes.
Her companion a moment watched them. ‘But the Prince then –?’
‘How he’s held?’ Maggie asked.
‘How he’s held.’
‘Oh I can’t tell you that'
Kind of confusing, huh?
4. Overall, I couldn't explain why I love reading Henry James books quite a bit. Perhaps his fundamental themes that are depicted deeply and thoroughly, maybe his prose or the fact that even when I don't make out what he is trying to say, I'm still enjoying it; I am not sure. One day, I just found myself gravitating towards his novels and I have read about 14 works (novels/novellas/short stories) by him so far, the reason? Again, I don't know, but I like them, I love them. What I know is that The Golden Bowl is absolutely the whole essence of Henry James; just to mention one example: in volume two, book fourth, there is a whole chapter where a woman, who has found out her marriage is a lie and her husband has an affair with her friend, is wondering how that could have happened; paragraph by paragraph, you can feel her pain, her sadness, her distress; you can tell how her life will change from that moment on, when her whole world seems to be bleak, dark; in other words, something finally opened her eyes to the truth and she needs to make up her mind on this soon. "What must I do?" "How can I do it?" "Who else will know about this?" and so on, and so on. I believe I never read such a thing before, not even in a novel whose main topic is adultery; such descriptions, such thoughts in the middle of something that might change your life forever, just when the whole truth is finally out in the open. I was impressed, and I'm still impressed even many days after having finish my reading.
5. My friend sent me a message about one week after we started the book, so I'd like to quote him: "I have started book 2 that begins with Adam Verver... that is some challenging reading for sure (I don't know what I read but I liked it)." Then that's it, I got the same feeling while I read not only book 2, but the whole novel. If my friend, being a native English speaker, wasn't always able to make out what the author was saying—perhaps he missed a few things in some chapters—how could someone expect I am going to understand more than him? Impossible! I was even more confused than him about this reading, a labyrinth with no way out. All in all, I think if you very much enjoyed reading a novel, and yet you don't find a way to explain why you loved it, that's totally fine, just let your feelings be out in the open; in short, 'live' the story and make it a part of you. Actually, when I was in the middle of the book, more or less, I felt really overwhelmed by the amount of facts I was not understanding (I'm not talking about the language, word by word, but how the author builds his novel, so to speak); I felt as though I were trapped inside an elevator—I really fear enclosed spaces—and due to this scary feeling, I had to stop reading, for instance, in the middle of one paragraph and come back to it afterwards. That being said, I still love it.
6. Finally, the ending of The Golden Bowl is completely Jamesian, and again, if you have read at least one novel by this author, you know what kind of ending this will be. It is a happy(?) ending though, or at least an optimistic one, despite the fact that I had expected it to be more realistic (my first assumption was indeed completely different to what the ending really is in the end, but at least this positive 'change' was interesting and quite symbolic). Once I put the book down, I was still amazed to see that James was capable of writing a long novel with only six characters, which was something completely new for me; I'm still trying to remember a book that I had read before with such characteristics, but so far nothing is coming to my mind.
In conclusion, The Golden Bowl definitely lived up to my expectations, notwithstanding its flaws and its peculiar narrative. I'm not recommending this book though, you already know the reasons why. If you want to start reading this author, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl; if you already read your first James, and it wasn't your thing, yet you still want to try anything else, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl; if you liked any of his first novels—such as Washington Square that is more like a traditional novel—and then you want to try anything similar to them, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl.
Now, if you want to give it a go, I will be very happy to share my thoughts on the novel with you. I wholeheartedly hope this book—that is an all-time favorite for me—may fulfill your expectations, and also that you can eventually find yourself loving it.
Just for the record, I thought I would be reading The Ambassadors very soon, the only book of the final 'Jamesian trilogy' I haven't read thus far—I read The Wings of the Dove in March and I also liked it—however, I prefer to read some of his short novels and tales first, before diving into James favorite novel, probably at the end of this year or in 2023. Enough ambiguity for today. We'll see.
Favorite quotes (I have highlighted like 50 remarkable quotes, so I had to choose only 9 among all of them – it has been a hard decision, as you can imagine):
[T]hey smiled in emulation, vaguely, as if speech failed them through their having passed too far: she would have begun to wonder the next minute if it were reserved to them, for the last stage, to find their contact, like that of old friends reunited too much on the theory of the unchanged, subject to shy lapses.
'You don’t know what it is to have been loved and broken with. You haven’t been broken with, because in your relation what can there have been worth speaking of to break? Ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was I myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame – oh the golden flame! – a mere handful of black ashes?'
'My idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous – or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – why then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.'
'Take it, take it, take all you need of it; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be at any rate least distorted and disfigured. Only see, see that I see, and make up your mind on this new basis at your convenience. Wait – it won’t be long – till you can confer again with [her], for you’ll do it much better then, more easily to both of us. Above all don’t show me, till you’ve got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority.'
'I’ve strayed away, I’ve fancied myself free, given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because I thought you were different – different from what I now see. But it was only, only, because I didn’t know – and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my mistake; to which I confess, for which I’ll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, I too beautifully feel, to get completely over.'
One beautiful woman – and one beautiful fortune. That’s what a creature of pure virtue exposes herself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her disinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry her too far.
'If I’m unhappy I’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you at least I’m not afraid of the word. If I’m jealous, don’t you see? I’m tormented,’ she went on – ‘and all the more if I’m helpless. And if I’m both helpless and tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can’t keep it longer; I’ve pulled it out and here I am fairly screaming at you.'
She knew more and more – every lapsing minute taught her – how he might by a single rightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles removed from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist of his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy inconsequence. ‘Come away with me somewhere, you – and then we needn’t think, we needn’t even talk, of anything, of any one else’: five words like that would answer her, would break her utterly down.
She was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and as she couldn’t cry out her eyes swam in her silence. With them, all the same, through the square opening beside her, through the grey panorama of the London night, she achieved the feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped and protected her by being able to be gay.
At the end of May, I was chatting to a good friend of mine when suddenly an idea came to my mind, and then, as if in hesitation, I asked: "how about reading The Golden Bowl together?" Well, it was not as though this suggestion came completely out of the blue, as we were talking about our previous reading experiences that had been challenging for us; I said, "Henry James has been a challenging author for me, yet he is my favorite American-English author ... so let's do a buddy-read, are you in?"
My friend had only read a few novels by James, such as The American, Washington Square, and maybe another one that I'm missing, and so had I. Thus, The Golden Bowl turned into a last-minute plan, without knowing what this novel would be about, or even if it would be more challenging than our previous experiences reading a Henry James novel.
It turns out that The Golden Bowl is the most difficult, challenging, confusing, ambiguous, at times frustrating and not-to-the-point book I've ever read in English, and probably of my life.
Now, let's be honest here: did I like it?
If you want the short answer, "yes, I loved it and it has become an all-time favorite, it will definitely be on my top 12 of 2022."
The long answer, well, let's see if I can explain why I did love it and why I would never recommend this book to anyone.
1. The book has no plot. That means almost the whole novel—600 or so pages—is happening in the characters' minds. There are only 6 characters in the entire novel, probably 10 if we consider those three or four extra characters who are mentioned once or twice in the entire book. There is also a pattern here: the novel is divided into 2 volumes, and every volume into 3 books each, which means we have 6 books and 6 characters; what I could tell is that every character becomes the main character in a particular book, having a crucial, very important part into that specific book. Maybe I'm wrong here, but that was my impression while I read the novel at some point.
2. The novel depicts perfectly and in detail two main topics: marriage and adultery. Throughout the story, we’ll see how two marriages and an adulterous relationship are thoroughly described, however, we actually ‘never’ see that happening. As I said, there is no plot since James is using an early-modernism stream of consciousness in the entire book in order to describe this situation—how adultery may affect on marriage, to say the least—its consequences and its possible solutions (if they are necessary for the sake of the characters involved). In addition, there are other topics that are part of the novel and are also important, for instance, people's and mainly women's role in society—James is also depicting the contrast between American and European societies, a typical topic in many of his works—and the strong and genuine bond between a father and his daughter.
3. If I say I wouldn't recommend this book it's because I know many people are not fond of James' writing style, and I can really see why. I wouldn't say his prose is difficult to read—it was difficult for me, though this is not implicit in his narrative—but really ambiguous. Sometimes even the characters don't know what is going on or what the other characters are saying, and for the record, it is kind of funny to see that happening. Most of the dialogues are a series of question-answer thing—I don't know how to describe it—that is also confusing; let me show you an example of a common dialogue in the novel, so you can see it:
'And that’s just it – that he doesn’t?’
‘That’s just it,’ said the Princess profoundly.
On which Mrs Assingham reflected. ‘Then how is Charlotte so held?’
‘Just by that.’
‘By her ignorance?’
‘By her ignorance.’
Fanny wondered. ‘A torment –?’
‘A torment,’ said Maggie with tears in her eyes.
Her companion a moment watched them. ‘But the Prince then –?’
‘How he’s held?’ Maggie asked.
‘How he’s held.’
‘Oh I can’t tell you that'
Kind of confusing, huh?
4. Overall, I couldn't explain why I love reading Henry James books quite a bit. Perhaps his fundamental themes that are depicted deeply and thoroughly, maybe his prose or the fact that even when I don't make out what he is trying to say, I'm still enjoying it; I am not sure. One day, I just found myself gravitating towards his novels and I have read about 14 works (novels/novellas/short stories) by him so far, the reason? Again, I don't know, but I like them, I love them. What I know is that The Golden Bowl is absolutely the whole essence of Henry James; just to mention one example: in volume two, book fourth, there is a whole chapter where a woman, who has found out her marriage is a lie and her husband has an affair with her friend, is wondering how that could have happened; paragraph by paragraph, you can feel her pain, her sadness, her distress; you can tell how her life will change from that moment on, when her whole world seems to be bleak, dark; in other words, something finally opened her eyes to the truth and she needs to make up her mind on this soon. "What must I do?" "How can I do it?" "Who else will know about this?" and so on, and so on. I believe I never read such a thing before, not even in a novel whose main topic is adultery; such descriptions, such thoughts in the middle of something that might change your life forever, just when the whole truth is finally out in the open. I was impressed, and I'm still impressed even many days after having finish my reading.
5. My friend sent me a message about one week after we started the book, so I'd like to quote him: "I have started book 2 that begins with Adam Verver... that is some challenging reading for sure (I don't know what I read but I liked it)." Then that's it, I got the same feeling while I read not only book 2, but the whole novel. If my friend, being a native English speaker, wasn't always able to make out what the author was saying—perhaps he missed a few things in some chapters—how could someone expect I am going to understand more than him? Impossible! I was even more confused than him about this reading, a labyrinth with no way out. All in all, I think if you very much enjoyed reading a novel, and yet you don't find a way to explain why you loved it, that's totally fine, just let your feelings be out in the open; in short, 'live' the story and make it a part of you. Actually, when I was in the middle of the book, more or less, I felt really overwhelmed by the amount of facts I was not understanding (I'm not talking about the language, word by word, but how the author builds his novel, so to speak); I felt as though I were trapped inside an elevator—I really fear enclosed spaces—and due to this scary feeling, I had to stop reading, for instance, in the middle of one paragraph and come back to it afterwards. That being said, I still love it.
6. Finally, the ending of The Golden Bowl is completely Jamesian, and again, if you have read at least one novel by this author, you know what kind of ending this will be. It is a happy(?) ending though, or at least an optimistic one, despite the fact that I had expected it to be more realistic (my first assumption was indeed completely different to what the ending really is in the end, but at least this positive 'change' was interesting and quite symbolic). Once I put the book down, I was still amazed to see that James was capable of writing a long novel with only six characters, which was something completely new for me; I'm still trying to remember a book that I had read before with such characteristics, but so far nothing is coming to my mind.
In conclusion, The Golden Bowl definitely lived up to my expectations, notwithstanding its flaws and its peculiar narrative. I'm not recommending this book though, you already know the reasons why. If you want to start reading this author, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl; if you already read your first James, and it wasn't your thing, yet you still want to try anything else, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl; if you liked any of his first novels—such as Washington Square that is more like a traditional novel—and then you want to try anything similar to them, please don't pick up The Golden Bowl.
Now, if you want to give it a go, I will be very happy to share my thoughts on the novel with you. I wholeheartedly hope this book—that is an all-time favorite for me—may fulfill your expectations, and also that you can eventually find yourself loving it.
Just for the record, I thought I would be reading The Ambassadors very soon, the only book of the final 'Jamesian trilogy' I haven't read thus far—I read The Wings of the Dove in March and I also liked it—however, I prefer to read some of his short novels and tales first, before diving into James favorite novel, probably at the end of this year or in 2023. Enough ambiguity for today. We'll see.
Favorite quotes (I have highlighted like 50 remarkable quotes, so I had to choose only 9 among all of them – it has been a hard decision, as you can imagine):
[T]hey smiled in emulation, vaguely, as if speech failed them through their having passed too far: she would have begun to wonder the next minute if it were reserved to them, for the last stage, to find their contact, like that of old friends reunited too much on the theory of the unchanged, subject to shy lapses.
'You don’t know what it is to have been loved and broken with. You haven’t been broken with, because in your relation what can there have been worth speaking of to break? Ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was I myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame – oh the golden flame! – a mere handful of black ashes?'
'My idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous – or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – why then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.'
'Take it, take it, take all you need of it; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be at any rate least distorted and disfigured. Only see, see that I see, and make up your mind on this new basis at your convenience. Wait – it won’t be long – till you can confer again with [her], for you’ll do it much better then, more easily to both of us. Above all don’t show me, till you’ve got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority.'
'I’ve strayed away, I’ve fancied myself free, given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because I thought you were different – different from what I now see. But it was only, only, because I didn’t know – and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my mistake; to which I confess, for which I’ll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, I too beautifully feel, to get completely over.'
One beautiful woman – and one beautiful fortune. That’s what a creature of pure virtue exposes herself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her disinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry her too far.
'If I’m unhappy I’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you at least I’m not afraid of the word. If I’m jealous, don’t you see? I’m tormented,’ she went on – ‘and all the more if I’m helpless. And if I’m both helpless and tormented I stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, I keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. Only now, with you, at last, I can’t keep it longer; I’ve pulled it out and here I am fairly screaming at you.'
She knew more and more – every lapsing minute taught her – how he might by a single rightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles removed from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist of his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy inconsequence. ‘Come away with me somewhere, you – and then we needn’t think, we needn’t even talk, of anything, of any one else’: five words like that would answer her, would break her utterly down.
She was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and as she couldn’t cry out her eyes swam in her silence. With them, all the same, through the square opening beside her, through the grey panorama of the London night, she achieved the feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped and protected her by being able to be gay.
December 4, 2016
Henry, I love you, but get to the freakin’ point!
I like a long, baroque, convoluted, labyrinthine sentence as much as the next guy and usually enjoy unpacking the types of twisty phrases and syntax James is known for, along with coaxing out the meaning of said sentences that illustrate complex characters and their even more complex relationships.
I've enjoyed several other Henry James novels quite a bit, especially The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove. But the writing in this one seemed to take his style one unnecessary step further, rendering the untangling of the prose so strenuous it practically made me cross-eyed. The main trouble was, I could see enough of the story to know I wanted to understand it thoroughly, but the opacity of the prose got in the way of my comprehension. What I did get out of this was that the nuanced relationships, motivations, communications and/or obfuscations were part of an intriguing psychological drama, but I kept feeling that I was missing parts of the meaning. After two or three readings of some sentences, I would resolve to cut my losses, move on, and hope it all became clearer in context further on. Sometimes it did, but much remained hazy behind the whirly-gig of words.
This was James’ last novel and one Goodreads reviewer who also had problems with the prose speculated that perhaps old age and ill health were taking their toll on Mr. James’ brain cells and style. I don’t know if that could be true, given this novel’s general reputation and high acclaim from many quarters. It may be my own brain cells to blame, which are not as spry as they used to be.
I’m certainly going to give The Ambassadors a try in the future, but after more than three months of The Golden Bowl, it may be next year or even 2018 before that happens. For now I think I’m going to binge on much shorter, lighter fare for a while.
The 3-star rating is an average of my appreciation (if not enjoyment) of this and my frustrations. (Sorry, T.D.)
I like a long, baroque, convoluted, labyrinthine sentence as much as the next guy and usually enjoy unpacking the types of twisty phrases and syntax James is known for, along with coaxing out the meaning of said sentences that illustrate complex characters and their even more complex relationships.
I've enjoyed several other Henry James novels quite a bit, especially The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove. But the writing in this one seemed to take his style one unnecessary step further, rendering the untangling of the prose so strenuous it practically made me cross-eyed. The main trouble was, I could see enough of the story to know I wanted to understand it thoroughly, but the opacity of the prose got in the way of my comprehension. What I did get out of this was that the nuanced relationships, motivations, communications and/or obfuscations were part of an intriguing psychological drama, but I kept feeling that I was missing parts of the meaning. After two or three readings of some sentences, I would resolve to cut my losses, move on, and hope it all became clearer in context further on. Sometimes it did, but much remained hazy behind the whirly-gig of words.
This was James’ last novel and one Goodreads reviewer who also had problems with the prose speculated that perhaps old age and ill health were taking their toll on Mr. James’ brain cells and style. I don’t know if that could be true, given this novel’s general reputation and high acclaim from many quarters. It may be my own brain cells to blame, which are not as spry as they used to be.
I’m certainly going to give The Ambassadors a try in the future, but after more than three months of The Golden Bowl, it may be next year or even 2018 before that happens. For now I think I’m going to binge on much shorter, lighter fare for a while.
The 3-star rating is an average of my appreciation (if not enjoyment) of this and my frustrations. (Sorry, T.D.)
May 30, 2023
Este cea mai, cea mai, cea mai minunata carte... dar e imposibil de citit! Zambesc cand scriu asta pentru ca pare de necrezut, insa asa se simte.
Henry James ne ofera una dintre cele mai geniale creatii ale sale, de o frumusete si eleganta care iti taie rasuflarea. Sase zile m-am "torturat" cu aceasta poveste, insa, pana la urma, am reusit sa cuceresc Everestul si cat de fantastic e acolo sus, cand ti se dezvaluie lumea minunata si sofisticata a autorului.
Tematica este una consacrata si anume inocenta americanilor instariti versus experimentatii, viciosii, boemii si risipitorii nobili europeni. O gasim si in alte opere precum "Americanul", "Europenii" etc.
In ceea ce priveste actiunea o cunoastem pe Maggie Verver o tanara fata dintr-o familie instarita americana ce se logodeste cu un print italian saracit dar versat. Pentru tatal fetei el este o adevarata achizitie, un fel de piesa de muzeu pe care trebuie neaparat s-o adauge colectiei. Printul ii considera pe cei doi de buna credinta si zambeste in sinea lui gandindu-se la faptul ca ei nu stiu ce inseamna "inutilitatea autentica" (cum sa nu adori ironia constienta despre valoarea de sine a personajelor lui James).
Cu ocazia nuntii reparare insa in peisaj fosta iubita a printului, femecatoarea dar modesta Charlotte. Ea si printul avusesera o poveste frumoasa de iubire dar situatia lor ii impiedicase sa fie impreuna.
Acum, dupa casatoria printului cu Maggie ne aflam intr-o situatie morala iesita din comun, pe care Henry James o pune sub lupa, deoarece tatal lui Maggie se casatoreste la randul sau cu Charlotte. Cum va fi gestionat acest careu de catre cei doi care stiu adevarul si de catre ceilalti doi care il vor descoperi la un moment dat ramane sa aflati citind romanul.
In ceea ce priveste titlul este nevoie de o explicatie: ca dar de nunta Charlotte doreste sa cumpere printului un obiect pe care il gaseste la un anticariat. Este vorba despre un potir de aur ce are un cusur invizibil ochiului liber. Anticarul o avertizeaza de acest lucru pe Charlotte iar printul refuza categoric darul pentru ca el stie despre ce e vorba. Iata ce metafora creeaza autorul pentru ca potirul de aur ar putea simboliza insusi printul. Abia la final putem descoperi, in mod spectaculos, care este acest cusur al potirului.
Trebuie sa va avertizez ca nu este o lectura usoara fiind una dintre cele mai grele carti pe care le-am citit, dificil de parcurs si inteles, insa fiecare cuvant are armonia si misterul sau fiind destinat parca sa ascuta mintea si intelectul cititorului. Este o opera de o perfectiune rara din care nu ar merge schimbat nimic.
Nu exista analist mai sofisticat si fin al caracterelor si relatiilor umane ca Henry James. El opereaza cu migala, diseca cu prudenta si mana sigura, totul spre a invata si incanta cititorul. Morala sa nu este jignitoare ci educativa.
In incheiere va recomand sa savurati aceasta opera cu stil - este una dintre acele carti pe care le citesti odata in viata si care iti raman in minte mereu. Chiar si dupa terminarea ei cititorul continua sa se gandeasca la diferitele lucruri pe care le-a invatat din ea si are impresia ca a stat de vorba cu un om de mare valoare ce i-a schimbat felul in care percepe oamenii si sufletul lor. Cartea reprezinta ghidul perfect spre profunda cunoastere a felului in care gandesc si simt oamenii.
Iata si cateva citate ce merita retinute:
"Scumpa mea, din cate stiu bunatatea nu a facut pe cineva altfel decat pe ceilalti. Cand e autentica, bunatatea tinde mai degraba sa-l faca pe om la fel ca ceilalti."
"O fata frumoasa, inteligenta, iesita din comun este intotdeauna o complicatie."
"Dar sa stii, prostia impinsa pana la un anumit punct inseamna amoralitate. Caci ce altceva este moralitatea decat o inteligenta de clasa inalta?"
"Are o imaginatie nobila. In toate privintele are o atitudine nobila. Si, mai presus de orice, are o constiinta nobila."
"De fapt, acolo unde e multa mandrie, e si multa tacere."
"Distinctia printului consta tocmai in aceea ca era unul dintre putinii care stiu sa se stapaneasca si sa nu dea frau liber pornirilor. La un barbat aceasta era considerata finete."
Henry James ne ofera una dintre cele mai geniale creatii ale sale, de o frumusete si eleganta care iti taie rasuflarea. Sase zile m-am "torturat" cu aceasta poveste, insa, pana la urma, am reusit sa cuceresc Everestul si cat de fantastic e acolo sus, cand ti se dezvaluie lumea minunata si sofisticata a autorului.
Tematica este una consacrata si anume inocenta americanilor instariti versus experimentatii, viciosii, boemii si risipitorii nobili europeni. O gasim si in alte opere precum "Americanul", "Europenii" etc.
In ceea ce priveste actiunea o cunoastem pe Maggie Verver o tanara fata dintr-o familie instarita americana ce se logodeste cu un print italian saracit dar versat. Pentru tatal fetei el este o adevarata achizitie, un fel de piesa de muzeu pe care trebuie neaparat s-o adauge colectiei. Printul ii considera pe cei doi de buna credinta si zambeste in sinea lui gandindu-se la faptul ca ei nu stiu ce inseamna "inutilitatea autentica" (cum sa nu adori ironia constienta despre valoarea de sine a personajelor lui James).
Cu ocazia nuntii reparare insa in peisaj fosta iubita a printului, femecatoarea dar modesta Charlotte. Ea si printul avusesera o poveste frumoasa de iubire dar situatia lor ii impiedicase sa fie impreuna.
Acum, dupa casatoria printului cu Maggie ne aflam intr-o situatie morala iesita din comun, pe care Henry James o pune sub lupa, deoarece tatal lui Maggie se casatoreste la randul sau cu Charlotte. Cum va fi gestionat acest careu de catre cei doi care stiu adevarul si de catre ceilalti doi care il vor descoperi la un moment dat ramane sa aflati citind romanul.
In ceea ce priveste titlul este nevoie de o explicatie: ca dar de nunta Charlotte doreste sa cumpere printului un obiect pe care il gaseste la un anticariat. Este vorba despre un potir de aur ce are un cusur invizibil ochiului liber. Anticarul o avertizeaza de acest lucru pe Charlotte iar printul refuza categoric darul pentru ca el stie despre ce e vorba. Iata ce metafora creeaza autorul pentru ca potirul de aur ar putea simboliza insusi printul. Abia la final putem descoperi, in mod spectaculos, care este acest cusur al potirului.
Trebuie sa va avertizez ca nu este o lectura usoara fiind una dintre cele mai grele carti pe care le-am citit, dificil de parcurs si inteles, insa fiecare cuvant are armonia si misterul sau fiind destinat parca sa ascuta mintea si intelectul cititorului. Este o opera de o perfectiune rara din care nu ar merge schimbat nimic.
Nu exista analist mai sofisticat si fin al caracterelor si relatiilor umane ca Henry James. El opereaza cu migala, diseca cu prudenta si mana sigura, totul spre a invata si incanta cititorul. Morala sa nu este jignitoare ci educativa.
In incheiere va recomand sa savurati aceasta opera cu stil - este una dintre acele carti pe care le citesti odata in viata si care iti raman in minte mereu. Chiar si dupa terminarea ei cititorul continua sa se gandeasca la diferitele lucruri pe care le-a invatat din ea si are impresia ca a stat de vorba cu un om de mare valoare ce i-a schimbat felul in care percepe oamenii si sufletul lor. Cartea reprezinta ghidul perfect spre profunda cunoastere a felului in care gandesc si simt oamenii.
Iata si cateva citate ce merita retinute:
"Scumpa mea, din cate stiu bunatatea nu a facut pe cineva altfel decat pe ceilalti. Cand e autentica, bunatatea tinde mai degraba sa-l faca pe om la fel ca ceilalti."
"O fata frumoasa, inteligenta, iesita din comun este intotdeauna o complicatie."
"Dar sa stii, prostia impinsa pana la un anumit punct inseamna amoralitate. Caci ce altceva este moralitatea decat o inteligenta de clasa inalta?"
"Are o imaginatie nobila. In toate privintele are o atitudine nobila. Si, mai presus de orice, are o constiinta nobila."
"De fapt, acolo unde e multa mandrie, e si multa tacere."
"Distinctia printului consta tocmai in aceea ca era unul dintre putinii care stiu sa se stapaneasca si sa nu dea frau liber pornirilor. La un barbat aceasta era considerata finete."
November 28, 2009
I am re-reading the mature James right now and have found The Golden Bowl an ethereal experience. James' use of words as well as his deliberate failure to say things and still communicate epiphany after epiphany is staggering. The sentences fall into one's mind like honey and their sense is as gall. All within the formal right-acting of the drawing rooms of the very well to-do. I feel, reading these books as if I am under a spell. It hurts me that there is only one more of this period of his writing life, but I'm going to prolong the sleep-walking period by adding on The Portrait of a Lady, which is considered the best of his earlier books. Oh, bliss!!
March 14, 2009
Am still seeking words for the experience of reading The Golden Bowl. Less "fun" than Wings of the Dove, more serious in manner. Chilling. Yet, oddly, the one James novel that could be counted as having a "happy" ending. As often with James, there is the fascination of watching the movements of a complicated machine or curious contraption and feeling a sort of wonder as you follow, or try to, how the dang thing works. Also, as with Wings, I found the book an astounding psychological investigation, an amazing case study of what I find myself compelled to call the politics of love or the politics of marriage. Or the politics of sex. For at the heart of the book is the portrait of a power struggle, between the American ingenue, Maggie Verver, and the brilliant, gorgeous Charlotte Stant, Maggie's BFF from school days, who also happens to be the lover of the European playboy aristocrat Maggie's father Adam's money buys Maggie for a husband. Blind to the relationship between her husband and Charlotte, Maggie pushes her father to marry Charlotte, thinking to make up to her widower father for leaving him all by himself, prey to every passing gold digger.
One way to register, fictionally, the situation James sets up is to think back to Jane Austen's Emma and Emma Woodhouse's dilemma about how to manage her semi-invalid father's distress when she marries Mr. Knightley at the end of the novel. Essentially, in the Golden Bowl James follows what happens after the marriage -- with the semi-perverse twist that he adds the spice of an adulterous relationship, as if Mr. Knightley had been carrying on with Jane Fairfax and Emma, in her last bit of match-making, had gotten her father and Jane married to one another -- had brought the snake into her own garden.
The passages, at the beginning of volume 2, that trace Maggie's dawning suspicions and doubts about the real relationship between her husband and her step-mother must rank among the most brilliant interior portraits of the contest between awareness and resistance to awareness in all of literature, fictional or psychological; they are worth a hundred psychological studies. And I found it at once inspiring and chilling to watch Maggie proceed from innocent passivity to deliberate agency in pursuit of both knowledge and the political goal of winning her husband--not back but for the first time--from Charlotte, which is the core contest of the book. Maggie's ruthlessness is matched only by her passion, for James makes it clear that the Prince has claimed the sexual avidity of both women. There are passages where James with extraordinary insight shows how the Prince, aware of his erotic power, uses it to blind and dazzle Maggie, and how Maggie, if she is to realize her goal, must exert her own force of will to beat back the appeal, while at the same time feeling the full force of her own desire. For the satisfaction of her desire remains, after all, the ultimate prize she is after. The Prince dangles the prize in front of her tempting her to snatch at it before she has in fact won it -- before he is in her power rather than she in his.
There is much, much more to say and note, especially about Adam and Maggie Verver as American characters in contact and conflict with Europe. Suffice it to say that, as one of the astonishing, chilling masterstrokes of his investigation, James portrays Adam and Maggie as ultimately guided by the determination that, having bought Maggie a real European aristocrat for a husband, they are not going to stand for being cheated or satisfied with anything less than the real thing they bought and paid for. They indicated the value they set in the financial price they paid, and they won't, and don't, rest until they've got what they paid for!
One way to register, fictionally, the situation James sets up is to think back to Jane Austen's Emma and Emma Woodhouse's dilemma about how to manage her semi-invalid father's distress when she marries Mr. Knightley at the end of the novel. Essentially, in the Golden Bowl James follows what happens after the marriage -- with the semi-perverse twist that he adds the spice of an adulterous relationship, as if Mr. Knightley had been carrying on with Jane Fairfax and Emma, in her last bit of match-making, had gotten her father and Jane married to one another -- had brought the snake into her own garden.
The passages, at the beginning of volume 2, that trace Maggie's dawning suspicions and doubts about the real relationship between her husband and her step-mother must rank among the most brilliant interior portraits of the contest between awareness and resistance to awareness in all of literature, fictional or psychological; they are worth a hundred psychological studies. And I found it at once inspiring and chilling to watch Maggie proceed from innocent passivity to deliberate agency in pursuit of both knowledge and the political goal of winning her husband--not back but for the first time--from Charlotte, which is the core contest of the book. Maggie's ruthlessness is matched only by her passion, for James makes it clear that the Prince has claimed the sexual avidity of both women. There are passages where James with extraordinary insight shows how the Prince, aware of his erotic power, uses it to blind and dazzle Maggie, and how Maggie, if she is to realize her goal, must exert her own force of will to beat back the appeal, while at the same time feeling the full force of her own desire. For the satisfaction of her desire remains, after all, the ultimate prize she is after. The Prince dangles the prize in front of her tempting her to snatch at it before she has in fact won it -- before he is in her power rather than she in his.
There is much, much more to say and note, especially about Adam and Maggie Verver as American characters in contact and conflict with Europe. Suffice it to say that, as one of the astonishing, chilling masterstrokes of his investigation, James portrays Adam and Maggie as ultimately guided by the determination that, having bought Maggie a real European aristocrat for a husband, they are not going to stand for being cheated or satisfied with anything less than the real thing they bought and paid for. They indicated the value they set in the financial price they paid, and they won't, and don't, rest until they've got what they paid for!
July 6, 2018
He tried, too clearly, to please her – to meet her in her own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: ‘ “See”? I see nothing but you.’
This late work (1904) of James is one replete with echoes: on the local level characters repeat each others’ words, giving significance to changes of emphasis within repetition; on a meta-textual level, this book replays themes and relationships which have haunted James’ oeuvre. The love triangles of The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove, especially, reach a conclusion here in a text which expands the triangle into a more stable quartet or square. It intersects, too, with Wharton’s The Age of Innocence though giving a very different emphasis to the participants.
Structurally, this cleverly divides into two halves focalised around Prince Amerigo (note the connotations of his name) in the first part and his American wife, Maggie, in the second. Almost all the ‘action’ takes place in the consciousness of the protagonists, and scenes of dialogue and confrontation are given thrilling emphasis. At the same time, though, this novel contains some of James’ most dense – even impenetrable – prose (I think he was dictating his work by this point) and there are whole chunks where it’s hard to follow quite what he’s trying to articulate.
It seems odd to me that some readers find James dry: to me, his books are frequently imbued with sex and sensuality, however submerged, and the sense of secret desires heighten the erotic frisson, especially here between Amerigo and Charlotte, his wife’s best friend and now married to his father-in-law.
Overall, the characters here don’t have the same pull as Isabel Archer or the extraordinary Kate Croy. With layer upon layer of irony, James might have finally worked out how to stabilise the erotic triangle that animates some of his other works but I was left slightly unsatisfied – and curious about what Charlotte does next.
May 30, 2022
#RetoEdwardianspirit de la cuenta @victorianspiritsblog, premisa “Un Libro de Familias Bien”.
Lo confieso: ha habido momentos durante esta lectura que pensado muy seriamente en dejarla. Y en más de una vez he estado más que a punto de hacerlo. La única forma en que puedo definir la relación que he establecido con este libro durante los trece días que me ha acompañado es de amor-odio. Ha habido en el cosas que me han exasperado mucho, de la misma forma que también ha contado con aspectos que me han maravillado. Lo que tengo muy claro es que, una vez más, he podido percatarme de que mi relación con Henry James y sus trabajos es, cuanto menos, compleja. Es un autor al que no termino de pillar del todo, Pero con él que sigo obcecada en seguir leyendo. Creo que en cierto modo la culpa es mía por qué tendría que haber cogido un trabajo suyo, no ya digo que más fácil (sinceramente y con este autor dudo que los haya, por lo menos para mí). Pero si por lo menos más corto. De hecho, mi idea era leer antes “Washington Square” o “ Las Bostonianas”. Pero si hay un motivo por el que hago los retos de Victorian Spirits (tanto el victoriano como el eduardiano) es para poder quitar de mis estanterías de pendientes libros que tengo desde hace algún tiempo. Y uno de los principales motivos por el que hago el eduardiano fue por darme a mi misma la oportunidad de leer “ La Copa Dorada”, que desde hace muchos años ha sido uno de mis eternos pendientes. De hecho, creo que hace un buen tiempo lo comencé y tuve que dejarlo por imposible.
Americo es un atractivo y cosmopolita príncipe italiano, rico en lo que se refiere a linaje familiar, pero pobre en lo concerniente a lo económico.Éste último aspecto parece solucionado cuando se compromete con Maggie Verve, la única hija de un rico y ávido coleccionista de antigüedades y obras de arte. Este, a su vez, terminara casado en segundas nupcias con la encantadora Charlotte, una empobrecida pero hermosa norteamericana que es buena amiga de Maggie desde su juventud. Y que en el pasado tuvo una aventura con el propio Americo, la cual volverá a surgir estando los dos casados, creándose una extraña y compleja relación a cuatro bandas entre los dos matrimonios.
Lo que os decía antes: lo de este libro ha sido amor-odio en estado puro. De una historia aparentemente sencilla, James crea una novela que como han descrito en otra crítica muy acertadamente resulta especialmente laberíntica por su prosa barroca. Ese ha sido mi gran problema con esta lectura: lo que es la trama no da para mucho, es lo más simple que puedas echarte a la cara. Pero da la impresión de que James decide retorcer las cosas para convertir esta lectura en algo más. Y cuando hablo de retorcer, no hablo solo de hacer uno o dos arabescos graciosos que amenicen y den un poco de salseo a este culebrón de las altas esferas eduardianas. Hablo de complicarlo todo en el sentido de ahondar profundamente en la psicología y en la forma de pensar de los cuatro personajes principales de la obra. Y no lo hace de una forma somera para nada. Cada paso que cualquiera de estos cuatro personajes acomete es desmenuzado hasta su más diminuto expresión, James dedica páginas y páginas, párrafos y párrafos a dilucidar qué es lo que lleva a actuar a cada personaje así, cuales son sus motivaciones. Y de esta manera, aquello que parecía simple y aséptico se convierte en un auténtico laberinto psicológico que deja extenuado al lector.
Leer sobre el cuadrado amoroso y social que Henry James presenta como hilo conductor de esta novela (a sus cuatro integrantes hay que añadir a un matrimonio amigo de ellos, que actúa, muchas veces, como confidentes o como propulsores de la trama) me ha recordado mucho al famoso juego en que hay que golpear a un topo que va apareciendo en diferentes agujeros. Muchas veces el foco se centraba en un personaje, para que este acabase por evaporarse y dar paso a que todo el interés se centrase en otro carácter, dandole la oportunidad de desarrollarse ante el lector. En un principio, todo parece centrarse en la pareja de amantes culpables, el príncipe y Charlotte. El príncipe tiene un carácter muy pasivo que hace las veces de cortina de humo, impidiendo que el lector y muchos de los de sus compañeros de vida puedan ver con claridad como todo es realmente.Por su parte, Charlotte parece, en un principio, estar abocada a ser la absoluta protagonista de la historia. Pero las tornas se cambiarán cuando Maggie, ahora princesa, empiece a intuir cuál es el auténtico vínculo entre su marido y su nueva madrastra. Es entonces cuando este personaje se hará con todo el espectáculo, convirtiéndose en la auténtica protagonista del Drama doméstico y humano que supone esta novela. El que parecía ser el personaje más anodino e inocente de todos, demostrará ser capaz de jugar sus cartas con auténtica soltura e, incluso, cierta crueldad. Y de esta forma, “La copa Dorada” se convertirá en la odisea de Maggie , en la forma en que tiene que enfrentarse a un mundo que hasta ahora ha sido con ella amable, y como su auténtico carácter deberá surgir con toda su fuerza, hasta mostrarse incluso a ella misma.
Con Henry James siempre me queda la impresión de que tiene la imperiosa necesidad de demostrar al público que sus personajes son más, mucho más de lo que pueden parecer a simple vista. Tanto en profundidad psicológica, como en sensibilidad, tanto en suspicacia, como en glamour y elegancia.De ahí lo intrincado de sus diálogos y sus descripciones narrativas. Explayarse tanto en los motivos tras sus palabras y sus decisiones, la creación de diálogos tan refinados y llenos de inteligencia y sus larguísimos discursos-descriptivo psicológicos, son los medios que usa para demostrar eso ya no solo al lector. También a si mismo. Como si estuviera una encrucijada entre hacer aquello que quiere y demostrar que puede ser un gran autor, un autor británico. Ese es una de las grandes cuestiones que mueven “La Copa Dorada” y otras tantas obras de su creador: la lucha entre dos mundos, el americano y el británico, Entre la tradición y las riquezas. Es la vieja y añeja epopeya de lo noble y cosmopolita buscando el dinero cuando éste falta, haciendo que esos dos mundos choquen sin remedio.
Ese ha sido otro de mis grandes problemas con la novela, no he podido enfatizar ni conectar con ninguno de los personajes. Todos ellos me han parecido muy cerrados en su propio mundo dentro de la cajita compartimentada que es la alta sociedad londinense de principios del siglo XX. Había colocado, inocente de mi, “La Copa Dorada” en la estantería se libros románticos. Nada más lejos de la realidad. Lo que menos mueve a los personajes (quizás con la excepción de Maggie) es el amor. Lo que les mueve es mantener en todo momento las apariencias dentro de una sociedad terriblemente clasista y marcada por una escogidas normas de apariencia y conducta, e incluso falsamente morales. Y, sobre todo, el aburrimiento, la necesidad de rellenar los espacios vacíos de sus existencias privilegiadas y ricas. La obra empieza siendo la historia de Americo y Charlotte por lograr sanear su situación económica de forma honorable, pero no exenta de cierta picaresca. Una vez que lo consiguen, sus mentes inquietas deben buscar la forma de mantenerse activas y darle sal a su existencia. Pero también os digo que eso es una apreciación mía.
Es muy posible que esté equivocada, ya que en determinados momentos he tenido que pasar muy por encima de los párrafos escritos por la soberbia pluma de James, ya que me costaba mucho seguir en el (insisto) laberinto psicológico que es toda esta obra suya. Y he cerrado el libro con la sensación de que no he acabado de pillar del todo lo que el autor quería expresar en su novela, ni de captar a los personajes. Creo que en esto ha tenido mucho que ver la poca conexión que hay en ellos, puesto que nunca hablan realmente los unos con los otros. Les falta sinceridad en las complejas relaciones que se establecen entre cada uno de ellos. Y eso me ha dado una sensación de enorme frialdad, que es uno de los motivos que, también, me ha impedido conectar con lo que tenía entre manos durante esta lectura. El meollo de la cuestión está en que esa sinceridad es algo introspectivo en ellos, nunca florece de forma exacta, pero el lector la conoce de una forma nítida y profunda, incluso bestial.
Tampoco ayudado que la prosa de James sea tan especial mente tupida. Sus párrafos son largos (algunos ocupan páginas y páginas) y sus frases son extremadamente largas y enrevesadas. No sé hasta qué punto en esto ha tenido mucho que ver la propia traducción de la novela, pero me queda la impresión, una vez más, de que es un autor muy difícil y un tanto extenuante al que enfrentarse. Tiene un estilo denso y un tanto esnob, con el que gusta demostrar al mundo sus enormes (y nunca discutidas) capacidades narrativas. Siempre que le leo, me queda un regusto a que todo lo que escribe resulta un tanto artificial, en el sentido de que sus personajes parecen seguir unos patrones de conducta que les hace imposible ser naturales o improvisar, como si su destino estuviera ya escrito en la de antemano. Eso es algo, que no voy a negar que me molesta, ya no solo leer en James, en cualquier otro autor tampoco me gustaría. Me deja un regusto a obra de teatro que, muchas veces logro encajar muy bien, y otras no acaba de convencerme.
Y parece que en esta obra, la última que escribió, pone especial empeño en dejarlo más claro que nunca. Se diría que hay algo masoquista en su pluma, por la forma en que el mismo se pone al límite. E incluso sadomasoquista, por lo que esto implica al lector. Y aún así , si hay algo más que destacable en “La Copa Dorada” es esa pluma. La forma en que escribe James lo es todo en este caso. El narrador del que se vale para esta novela no se limita, únicamente, a decir lo que pasa o a introducirse en la mente de sus personajes. Aquí parece que tiene vida propia, ahí en en un algo irrespetuoso que se mete sin ningún tipo de permiso o concesión en la mente de los personajes, obligándoles a florecer de una forma casi brutal, sin dejar nada en ellos escondido. Y parece que tiene vida propia, obligándoles a actuar muchas veces y a mostrar sus cartas, dejando al descubierto aquello que les gustaría tener más oculto. No hay ningún reto que impida trabajar a este narrador, este demiurgo que mueve sin pudor los hilos de la obra, dotando de vida propia a sus caracteres. Y a esto se le une la forma en que cada una de las palabras que ellos dicen o piensan tienen un doble sentido de lo más afilado. En esta obra todo tiene su por qué, incluso cuando parece que todo el asunto se alarga en demasía. Incluso los silencios de estos personajes suenan y resuenan como un eco que se repite una y mil veces en una cueva, tan dotados de un profundo y abstracto significado que están.
Es por eso que he puesto tan buena puntuación a esta lectura tan exigente y que precisa de ser leída lentamente. Porque hay que reconocer que está increíblemente bien escrita, y que pone al lector en un auténtico compromiso. Por eso, creo que la he valorado también. Siempre es agradable encontrarse algo que, pese a su aparente sencillez, resulte un reto como lector. Y, por lo menos para mi “La Copa Dorada” lo ha sido. Ha sido una lectura que llevaba mucho tiempo pululando en mis estanterías, persiguiendome como una vez. La tenía miedo, lo reconozco, y ha sido muy difícil de leerla, como dije más arriba. De hecho, hacer esta reseña también lo ha sido, en el sentido de que tenía muchas cosas que decir, y a la vez muy pocas cosas. Desde luego, no me ha dejado indiferente. Y ya solo por eso, y por la alegría de haberme lo leído de una vez por todas, he decidido valorarlo muy positivamente. Por lo menos ha sido muy diferente muchas de las cosas que leído con anterioridad, y ya solo por eso ha merecido la pena enfrentarme a este libro de una vez.
Lo confieso: ha habido momentos durante esta lectura que pensado muy seriamente en dejarla. Y en más de una vez he estado más que a punto de hacerlo. La única forma en que puedo definir la relación que he establecido con este libro durante los trece días que me ha acompañado es de amor-odio. Ha habido en el cosas que me han exasperado mucho, de la misma forma que también ha contado con aspectos que me han maravillado. Lo que tengo muy claro es que, una vez más, he podido percatarme de que mi relación con Henry James y sus trabajos es, cuanto menos, compleja. Es un autor al que no termino de pillar del todo, Pero con él que sigo obcecada en seguir leyendo. Creo que en cierto modo la culpa es mía por qué tendría que haber cogido un trabajo suyo, no ya digo que más fácil (sinceramente y con este autor dudo que los haya, por lo menos para mí). Pero si por lo menos más corto. De hecho, mi idea era leer antes “Washington Square” o “ Las Bostonianas”. Pero si hay un motivo por el que hago los retos de Victorian Spirits (tanto el victoriano como el eduardiano) es para poder quitar de mis estanterías de pendientes libros que tengo desde hace algún tiempo. Y uno de los principales motivos por el que hago el eduardiano fue por darme a mi misma la oportunidad de leer “ La Copa Dorada”, que desde hace muchos años ha sido uno de mis eternos pendientes. De hecho, creo que hace un buen tiempo lo comencé y tuve que dejarlo por imposible.
Americo es un atractivo y cosmopolita príncipe italiano, rico en lo que se refiere a linaje familiar, pero pobre en lo concerniente a lo económico.Éste último aspecto parece solucionado cuando se compromete con Maggie Verve, la única hija de un rico y ávido coleccionista de antigüedades y obras de arte. Este, a su vez, terminara casado en segundas nupcias con la encantadora Charlotte, una empobrecida pero hermosa norteamericana que es buena amiga de Maggie desde su juventud. Y que en el pasado tuvo una aventura con el propio Americo, la cual volverá a surgir estando los dos casados, creándose una extraña y compleja relación a cuatro bandas entre los dos matrimonios.
Lo que os decía antes: lo de este libro ha sido amor-odio en estado puro. De una historia aparentemente sencilla, James crea una novela que como han descrito en otra crítica muy acertadamente resulta especialmente laberíntica por su prosa barroca. Ese ha sido mi gran problema con esta lectura: lo que es la trama no da para mucho, es lo más simple que puedas echarte a la cara. Pero da la impresión de que James decide retorcer las cosas para convertir esta lectura en algo más. Y cuando hablo de retorcer, no hablo solo de hacer uno o dos arabescos graciosos que amenicen y den un poco de salseo a este culebrón de las altas esferas eduardianas. Hablo de complicarlo todo en el sentido de ahondar profundamente en la psicología y en la forma de pensar de los cuatro personajes principales de la obra. Y no lo hace de una forma somera para nada. Cada paso que cualquiera de estos cuatro personajes acomete es desmenuzado hasta su más diminuto expresión, James dedica páginas y páginas, párrafos y párrafos a dilucidar qué es lo que lleva a actuar a cada personaje así, cuales son sus motivaciones. Y de esta manera, aquello que parecía simple y aséptico se convierte en un auténtico laberinto psicológico que deja extenuado al lector.
Leer sobre el cuadrado amoroso y social que Henry James presenta como hilo conductor de esta novela (a sus cuatro integrantes hay que añadir a un matrimonio amigo de ellos, que actúa, muchas veces, como confidentes o como propulsores de la trama) me ha recordado mucho al famoso juego en que hay que golpear a un topo que va apareciendo en diferentes agujeros. Muchas veces el foco se centraba en un personaje, para que este acabase por evaporarse y dar paso a que todo el interés se centrase en otro carácter, dandole la oportunidad de desarrollarse ante el lector. En un principio, todo parece centrarse en la pareja de amantes culpables, el príncipe y Charlotte. El príncipe tiene un carácter muy pasivo que hace las veces de cortina de humo, impidiendo que el lector y muchos de los de sus compañeros de vida puedan ver con claridad como todo es realmente.Por su parte, Charlotte parece, en un principio, estar abocada a ser la absoluta protagonista de la historia. Pero las tornas se cambiarán cuando Maggie, ahora princesa, empiece a intuir cuál es el auténtico vínculo entre su marido y su nueva madrastra. Es entonces cuando este personaje se hará con todo el espectáculo, convirtiéndose en la auténtica protagonista del Drama doméstico y humano que supone esta novela. El que parecía ser el personaje más anodino e inocente de todos, demostrará ser capaz de jugar sus cartas con auténtica soltura e, incluso, cierta crueldad. Y de esta forma, “La copa Dorada” se convertirá en la odisea de Maggie , en la forma en que tiene que enfrentarse a un mundo que hasta ahora ha sido con ella amable, y como su auténtico carácter deberá surgir con toda su fuerza, hasta mostrarse incluso a ella misma.
Con Henry James siempre me queda la impresión de que tiene la imperiosa necesidad de demostrar al público que sus personajes son más, mucho más de lo que pueden parecer a simple vista. Tanto en profundidad psicológica, como en sensibilidad, tanto en suspicacia, como en glamour y elegancia.De ahí lo intrincado de sus diálogos y sus descripciones narrativas. Explayarse tanto en los motivos tras sus palabras y sus decisiones, la creación de diálogos tan refinados y llenos de inteligencia y sus larguísimos discursos-descriptivo psicológicos, son los medios que usa para demostrar eso ya no solo al lector. También a si mismo. Como si estuviera una encrucijada entre hacer aquello que quiere y demostrar que puede ser un gran autor, un autor británico. Ese es una de las grandes cuestiones que mueven “La Copa Dorada” y otras tantas obras de su creador: la lucha entre dos mundos, el americano y el británico, Entre la tradición y las riquezas. Es la vieja y añeja epopeya de lo noble y cosmopolita buscando el dinero cuando éste falta, haciendo que esos dos mundos choquen sin remedio.
Ese ha sido otro de mis grandes problemas con la novela, no he podido enfatizar ni conectar con ninguno de los personajes. Todos ellos me han parecido muy cerrados en su propio mundo dentro de la cajita compartimentada que es la alta sociedad londinense de principios del siglo XX. Había colocado, inocente de mi, “La Copa Dorada” en la estantería se libros románticos. Nada más lejos de la realidad. Lo que menos mueve a los personajes (quizás con la excepción de Maggie) es el amor. Lo que les mueve es mantener en todo momento las apariencias dentro de una sociedad terriblemente clasista y marcada por una escogidas normas de apariencia y conducta, e incluso falsamente morales. Y, sobre todo, el aburrimiento, la necesidad de rellenar los espacios vacíos de sus existencias privilegiadas y ricas. La obra empieza siendo la historia de Americo y Charlotte por lograr sanear su situación económica de forma honorable, pero no exenta de cierta picaresca. Una vez que lo consiguen, sus mentes inquietas deben buscar la forma de mantenerse activas y darle sal a su existencia. Pero también os digo que eso es una apreciación mía.
Es muy posible que esté equivocada, ya que en determinados momentos he tenido que pasar muy por encima de los párrafos escritos por la soberbia pluma de James, ya que me costaba mucho seguir en el (insisto) laberinto psicológico que es toda esta obra suya. Y he cerrado el libro con la sensación de que no he acabado de pillar del todo lo que el autor quería expresar en su novela, ni de captar a los personajes. Creo que en esto ha tenido mucho que ver la poca conexión que hay en ellos, puesto que nunca hablan realmente los unos con los otros. Les falta sinceridad en las complejas relaciones que se establecen entre cada uno de ellos. Y eso me ha dado una sensación de enorme frialdad, que es uno de los motivos que, también, me ha impedido conectar con lo que tenía entre manos durante esta lectura. El meollo de la cuestión está en que esa sinceridad es algo introspectivo en ellos, nunca florece de forma exacta, pero el lector la conoce de una forma nítida y profunda, incluso bestial.
Tampoco ayudado que la prosa de James sea tan especial mente tupida. Sus párrafos son largos (algunos ocupan páginas y páginas) y sus frases son extremadamente largas y enrevesadas. No sé hasta qué punto en esto ha tenido mucho que ver la propia traducción de la novela, pero me queda la impresión, una vez más, de que es un autor muy difícil y un tanto extenuante al que enfrentarse. Tiene un estilo denso y un tanto esnob, con el que gusta demostrar al mundo sus enormes (y nunca discutidas) capacidades narrativas. Siempre que le leo, me queda un regusto a que todo lo que escribe resulta un tanto artificial, en el sentido de que sus personajes parecen seguir unos patrones de conducta que les hace imposible ser naturales o improvisar, como si su destino estuviera ya escrito en la de antemano. Eso es algo, que no voy a negar que me molesta, ya no solo leer en James, en cualquier otro autor tampoco me gustaría. Me deja un regusto a obra de teatro que, muchas veces logro encajar muy bien, y otras no acaba de convencerme.
Y parece que en esta obra, la última que escribió, pone especial empeño en dejarlo más claro que nunca. Se diría que hay algo masoquista en su pluma, por la forma en que el mismo se pone al límite. E incluso sadomasoquista, por lo que esto implica al lector. Y aún así , si hay algo más que destacable en “La Copa Dorada” es esa pluma. La forma en que escribe James lo es todo en este caso. El narrador del que se vale para esta novela no se limita, únicamente, a decir lo que pasa o a introducirse en la mente de sus personajes. Aquí parece que tiene vida propia, ahí en en un algo irrespetuoso que se mete sin ningún tipo de permiso o concesión en la mente de los personajes, obligándoles a florecer de una forma casi brutal, sin dejar nada en ellos escondido. Y parece que tiene vida propia, obligándoles a actuar muchas veces y a mostrar sus cartas, dejando al descubierto aquello que les gustaría tener más oculto. No hay ningún reto que impida trabajar a este narrador, este demiurgo que mueve sin pudor los hilos de la obra, dotando de vida propia a sus caracteres. Y a esto se le une la forma en que cada una de las palabras que ellos dicen o piensan tienen un doble sentido de lo más afilado. En esta obra todo tiene su por qué, incluso cuando parece que todo el asunto se alarga en demasía. Incluso los silencios de estos personajes suenan y resuenan como un eco que se repite una y mil veces en una cueva, tan dotados de un profundo y abstracto significado que están.
Es por eso que he puesto tan buena puntuación a esta lectura tan exigente y que precisa de ser leída lentamente. Porque hay que reconocer que está increíblemente bien escrita, y que pone al lector en un auténtico compromiso. Por eso, creo que la he valorado también. Siempre es agradable encontrarse algo que, pese a su aparente sencillez, resulte un reto como lector. Y, por lo menos para mi “La Copa Dorada” lo ha sido. Ha sido una lectura que llevaba mucho tiempo pululando en mis estanterías, persiguiendome como una vez. La tenía miedo, lo reconozco, y ha sido muy difícil de leerla, como dije más arriba. De hecho, hacer esta reseña también lo ha sido, en el sentido de que tenía muchas cosas que decir, y a la vez muy pocas cosas. Desde luego, no me ha dejado indiferente. Y ya solo por eso, y por la alegría de haberme lo leído de una vez por todas, he decidido valorarlo muy positivamente. Por lo menos ha sido muy diferente muchas de las cosas que leído con anterioridad, y ya solo por eso ha merecido la pena enfrentarme a este libro de una vez.
April 20, 2022
hmm...second reading of this after 20 years did not go as well. I found my patience and attention less than it was, and my level of interest in the text significantly reduced. Far too frequently I picked it up with a sigh and forced myself to wade on through....
September 30, 2009
Although The Portrait of a Lady will no doubt always be Henry James' most read and most loved novel, I think The Golden Bowl is his masterpiece. Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl, along with The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, constitutes James' final, and most complex, phase as a novelist.
The Golden Bowl, set in England and in Italy during 1903 to 1906, is the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. Two marriages whose core holds the same secret, the same unacknowledged truth. The plot is a simple one, and revolves around that most human of all "failings"--adultery--or at least the suspicion of adultery, and in this case, suspicion may prove to be more deadly than the actual deed, itself.
Adam Verver, a wealthy American industrialist, sans scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. When he travels to Europe, accompanied by his young daughter, Maggie, however, he has one important "purchase" yet to make--a husband for Maggie. He thinks he's found the perfect candidate in Prince Amerigo. And in some ways, he has. Although now impoverished, Prince Amerigo is descended from an aristocratic Florentine family, a family who lives in the once elegant Palazzo Ugolini. Prince Amerigo can provide Adam Verver's descendants with something Adam, himself, cannot provide at any price...a title. Maggie, herself, finds the Prince charming and delightful and is not at all averse to her father's plans for her marriage. But the course of love and marriage is, more often than not, a rocky road, and predictably, complications lie in wait for Maggie in the form of her best friend, Charlotte Stant.
Fanny Assingham, a American expatriate now living in London thinks she's found the perfect way around those complications, however, and Fanny suggests that Adam and Charlotte marry. It will be one, big, happy family - Adam and Charlotte and Prince Amerigo and Maggie - or so Charlotte thinks.
One of the biggest problems in the marriages of Adam and Maggie isn't what the reader might expect. The real problems surface only when Adam and Maggie, who are both very happy with the situation, begin spending far too much time together, leaving Prince Amerigo and Charlotte to devise ways to amuse themselves on their own. As might be expected, consequences ensue. Part of the blame, of course, must lie with Adam and Maggie, themselves, who are so involved with each other and so wrapped up in each others lives that they fail to notice the problems inherent in their own marriages.
The Golden Bowl is a book filled with ambiguity. Nothing is black or white, good or bad, something that makes it all the more challenging to its reader, but all the more rewarding as well. The Golden Bowl is a character study par excellence, and as such, it is filled with more innuendo and delicately shaded nuance than are any of James' other books. In this novel, James left much for the reader, himself, to answer. And, lest any reader think the "sin" in this book is what's on the surface, it isn't. It's excessive attachment, excessive clinging, excessive selfishness.
The book's title isn't superfluous. The Golden Bowl really does contain a golden bowl and it's this that leads Maggie to the startling realization that both her husband and her best friend have been lying to her...for quite some time. Does she assert herself? Does she become a victim? Does she resign herself to her fate, much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady? That, of course, would be unfair to disclose, but it is Maggie's actions that brings The Golden Bowl to a surprising end.
The Golden Bowl is Henry James at his finest. His narrative powers, in my opinion, have never been greater than they are in this magnificent novel, though I do know people who find this book rather boring. I really think those people wouldn't like James no matter what book of his they chose to read, and indeed, if one is new to the work of Henry James, this isn't the place to begin. Daisy Miller would be a far better choice. I found The Golden Bowl to be a richly dense tapestry, as James layers scene upon scene, set piece upon set piece, weaving all into a seamless whole.
The Golden Bowl does contain James' beautiful, flowing, convoluted prose that meanders and continuously folds back on itself again and again, however, I don't think the prose is quite as convoluted as it is in The Portrait of a Lady. The Golden Bowl is divided into two sections, with the first being titled "The Prince" and the second, "The Princess." As the novel opens, Prince Amerigo is in London, considering his options and lost in thought regarding Maggie Verver:
The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a case. If it was a question of an Imperium, he said to himself, and if one wished, as a Roman, to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on London Bridge, or even, on a fine afternoon in May, at Hyde Park Corner.
Perhaps, more than any other book written by James, The Golden Bowl is a very interior, introspective book. Yes, even more so than The Portrait of a Lady, for, while that book concerned the internal torment of one very naïve person, Isabel Archer, The Golden Bowl contains the internal torment of two, Prince Amerigo and Maggie Verver, and by extension, Adam Verver and Charlotte Stant, and save for Maggie, none of these characters is, in the slightest bit, naïve.
Surprisingly, for me at least, the most sympathetic character isn't Maggie, it's Charlotte. Maggie and Adam are "collectors"--they treat people in much the same way they treat objets d'art. It is indicative of the genius of James, however, that our sympathies never settle, but constantly shift, first to Charlotte, then to Maggie, then to Adam, then to the Prince. It is also indicative of the genius of James that, despite the tragic failings of each of the four main characters in The Golden Bowl, there is something to be pitied in each of them.
If I have one small criticism of this magnificent novel, it's the fact that it lacks story tension, and as such, might be just a little overly long.
In the end, The Golden Bowl revolves around the torment we endure because of the lies we tell ourselves, the words we leave unspoken. This book constantly asks the questions: What constitutes truth? What constitutes a lie? What is right and what is wrong? James never makes the answers clear and this book is filled with much nebulous ambiguity. In the final analysis, one must ask oneself if tragedy lies in the doing or in the unacknowledged desire of what we want, and perhaps, need, to happen.
The Golden Bowl, set in England and in Italy during 1903 to 1906, is the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. Two marriages whose core holds the same secret, the same unacknowledged truth. The plot is a simple one, and revolves around that most human of all "failings"--adultery--or at least the suspicion of adultery, and in this case, suspicion may prove to be more deadly than the actual deed, itself.
Adam Verver, a wealthy American industrialist, sans scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. When he travels to Europe, accompanied by his young daughter, Maggie, however, he has one important "purchase" yet to make--a husband for Maggie. He thinks he's found the perfect candidate in Prince Amerigo. And in some ways, he has. Although now impoverished, Prince Amerigo is descended from an aristocratic Florentine family, a family who lives in the once elegant Palazzo Ugolini. Prince Amerigo can provide Adam Verver's descendants with something Adam, himself, cannot provide at any price...a title. Maggie, herself, finds the Prince charming and delightful and is not at all averse to her father's plans for her marriage. But the course of love and marriage is, more often than not, a rocky road, and predictably, complications lie in wait for Maggie in the form of her best friend, Charlotte Stant.
Fanny Assingham, a American expatriate now living in London thinks she's found the perfect way around those complications, however, and Fanny suggests that Adam and Charlotte marry. It will be one, big, happy family - Adam and Charlotte and Prince Amerigo and Maggie - or so Charlotte thinks.
One of the biggest problems in the marriages of Adam and Maggie isn't what the reader might expect. The real problems surface only when Adam and Maggie, who are both very happy with the situation, begin spending far too much time together, leaving Prince Amerigo and Charlotte to devise ways to amuse themselves on their own. As might be expected, consequences ensue. Part of the blame, of course, must lie with Adam and Maggie, themselves, who are so involved with each other and so wrapped up in each others lives that they fail to notice the problems inherent in their own marriages.
The Golden Bowl is a book filled with ambiguity. Nothing is black or white, good or bad, something that makes it all the more challenging to its reader, but all the more rewarding as well. The Golden Bowl is a character study par excellence, and as such, it is filled with more innuendo and delicately shaded nuance than are any of James' other books. In this novel, James left much for the reader, himself, to answer. And, lest any reader think the "sin" in this book is what's on the surface, it isn't. It's excessive attachment, excessive clinging, excessive selfishness.
The book's title isn't superfluous. The Golden Bowl really does contain a golden bowl and it's this that leads Maggie to the startling realization that both her husband and her best friend have been lying to her...for quite some time. Does she assert herself? Does she become a victim? Does she resign herself to her fate, much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady? That, of course, would be unfair to disclose, but it is Maggie's actions that brings The Golden Bowl to a surprising end.
The Golden Bowl is Henry James at his finest. His narrative powers, in my opinion, have never been greater than they are in this magnificent novel, though I do know people who find this book rather boring. I really think those people wouldn't like James no matter what book of his they chose to read, and indeed, if one is new to the work of Henry James, this isn't the place to begin. Daisy Miller would be a far better choice. I found The Golden Bowl to be a richly dense tapestry, as James layers scene upon scene, set piece upon set piece, weaving all into a seamless whole.
The Golden Bowl does contain James' beautiful, flowing, convoluted prose that meanders and continuously folds back on itself again and again, however, I don't think the prose is quite as convoluted as it is in The Portrait of a Lady. The Golden Bowl is divided into two sections, with the first being titled "The Prince" and the second, "The Princess." As the novel opens, Prince Amerigo is in London, considering his options and lost in thought regarding Maggie Verver:
The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a case. If it was a question of an Imperium, he said to himself, and if one wished, as a Roman, to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on London Bridge, or even, on a fine afternoon in May, at Hyde Park Corner.
Perhaps, more than any other book written by James, The Golden Bowl is a very interior, introspective book. Yes, even more so than The Portrait of a Lady, for, while that book concerned the internal torment of one very naïve person, Isabel Archer, The Golden Bowl contains the internal torment of two, Prince Amerigo and Maggie Verver, and by extension, Adam Verver and Charlotte Stant, and save for Maggie, none of these characters is, in the slightest bit, naïve.
Surprisingly, for me at least, the most sympathetic character isn't Maggie, it's Charlotte. Maggie and Adam are "collectors"--they treat people in much the same way they treat objets d'art. It is indicative of the genius of James, however, that our sympathies never settle, but constantly shift, first to Charlotte, then to Maggie, then to Adam, then to the Prince. It is also indicative of the genius of James that, despite the tragic failings of each of the four main characters in The Golden Bowl, there is something to be pitied in each of them.
If I have one small criticism of this magnificent novel, it's the fact that it lacks story tension, and as such, might be just a little overly long.
In the end, The Golden Bowl revolves around the torment we endure because of the lies we tell ourselves, the words we leave unspoken. This book constantly asks the questions: What constitutes truth? What constitutes a lie? What is right and what is wrong? James never makes the answers clear and this book is filled with much nebulous ambiguity. In the final analysis, one must ask oneself if tragedy lies in the doing or in the unacknowledged desire of what we want, and perhaps, need, to happen.
February 20, 2008
Unbearably good, and almost impossible to read. How does that work? I have no idea. But I love it.
October 9, 2007
Henry James - you are awful. I will spend no more of my life reading you. What is the point?
June 18, 2024
For a man who was never married nor, to the best of my knowledge, was ever in a long-term relationship with a woman, Henry James has written a novel that drills down deep into the heart of the dynamics of marriage and relationships between the sexes. While a stoutly thick novel, it largely swings back and forth between the relationships of three married couples--just six people; and like most of James's fiction, The Golden Bowl is a psychological tour-de-force. This is a tale that allows the reader to experience what a protagonist is thinking, and about what a protagonist thinks another protagonist is thinking. Sometimes facts are not facts, and sometimes assumptions and inference provide glimpses through clear glass, and other times everything is murky and quite unclear.
This is a complicated and richly complex novel that involves a very wealthy American patron of the arts, Adam Verver, and his daughter, Maggie. While in Europe acquiring art for his museum back in the states, the Ververs decide to acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo of a titled, but now poor, Italian family. Ah, but this marriage now upsets the harmonious balance in the relationship between father and daughter. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry. Enter Charlotte Stant, a young, vivacious and street-smart poor American expat. Little known to Maggie and Pere Verver though is that Prince Amerigo and Miss Stant are very 'well acquainted', very well indeed.
It is probably safe to postulate that as long as there are humans linked in marriages or relationships there will be adultery or cheating; not in each and every relationship, but it is a real enough threat that we all know that lurks in the darker fringes of our psyche and soul. The question that remains to be answered in each and every relationship is how it is dealt with; and that is what this novel--The Golden Bowl--explores. Not only the circumstances leading to the extramarital affair, but how each of the characters in the novel responds to it.
I think, for me, the novel's most powerful character is Maggie. Through the course of the novel the reader watches her mature and grow in knowledge and the capability to see what is happening around her and deal with it in the fashion that brings the least amount of pain and anguish to all involved, and most especially to her father and even herself.
The most tragic character for me is Charlotte Stant, as I believe that she knows going into her marriage with Maggie's father, Adam; and even her adulterous relationship with Prince Amerigo; that while she can attain financial stability, it is not clear that she will ever achieve romantic stability. There is a scene near the end of the novel where Charlotte and Maggie have a quiet, but forthrightly candid conversation on the balcony of the Verver estate. Both women know what the other knows, and both women know what needs to occur moving forward. The reader can almost hear both women panting as they breathe and think, the reader can feel the pounding of the pulses in arteries of both women as they face off and discuss how they will manage their marriages. It is gripping stuff, to be sure.
Like The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl is late Henry James, and it requires the reader's full dedication, commitment and concentration. Nuance, subtlety, innuendo, and inference are your watchwords. Masks and facade camouflage the powerful undercurrents of emotions that course through each of the characters as the tale unfolds. And while Henry James has crafted a fascinating portrait of marriage and relationships in The Golden Bowl, it is first and foremost a brilliant examination of human nature, and this is its relevance to each of us as we can see glimpses of our own selves and our own behaviors in each of the novel's characters.
A solid 4.5 stars for me.
This is a complicated and richly complex novel that involves a very wealthy American patron of the arts, Adam Verver, and his daughter, Maggie. While in Europe acquiring art for his museum back in the states, the Ververs decide to acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo of a titled, but now poor, Italian family. Ah, but this marriage now upsets the harmonious balance in the relationship between father and daughter. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry. Enter Charlotte Stant, a young, vivacious and street-smart poor American expat. Little known to Maggie and Pere Verver though is that Prince Amerigo and Miss Stant are very 'well acquainted', very well indeed.
It is probably safe to postulate that as long as there are humans linked in marriages or relationships there will be adultery or cheating; not in each and every relationship, but it is a real enough threat that we all know that lurks in the darker fringes of our psyche and soul. The question that remains to be answered in each and every relationship is how it is dealt with; and that is what this novel--The Golden Bowl--explores. Not only the circumstances leading to the extramarital affair, but how each of the characters in the novel responds to it.
I think, for me, the novel's most powerful character is Maggie. Through the course of the novel the reader watches her mature and grow in knowledge and the capability to see what is happening around her and deal with it in the fashion that brings the least amount of pain and anguish to all involved, and most especially to her father and even herself.
The most tragic character for me is Charlotte Stant, as I believe that she knows going into her marriage with Maggie's father, Adam; and even her adulterous relationship with Prince Amerigo; that while she can attain financial stability, it is not clear that she will ever achieve romantic stability. There is a scene near the end of the novel where Charlotte and Maggie have a quiet, but forthrightly candid conversation on the balcony of the Verver estate. Both women know what the other knows, and both women know what needs to occur moving forward. The reader can almost hear both women panting as they breathe and think, the reader can feel the pounding of the pulses in arteries of both women as they face off and discuss how they will manage their marriages. It is gripping stuff, to be sure.
Like The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl is late Henry James, and it requires the reader's full dedication, commitment and concentration. Nuance, subtlety, innuendo, and inference are your watchwords. Masks and facade camouflage the powerful undercurrents of emotions that course through each of the characters as the tale unfolds. And while Henry James has crafted a fascinating portrait of marriage and relationships in The Golden Bowl, it is first and foremost a brilliant examination of human nature, and this is its relevance to each of us as we can see glimpses of our own selves and our own behaviors in each of the novel's characters.
A solid 4.5 stars for me.
June 30, 2012
This is possibly one of the most tedious, overwrought books I have ever read. On that negative note, I have enjoyed other books by Henry James, mainly The Portrait of a Lady, which was actually quite good. It appears that his late works, The Golden Bowl, Wings of the Dove etc, are in his most annoying, self-indulgent style, and most of them are practically unreadable.
And this book is indeed unreadable. Henry James style is overly wordy and verbose, his sentences go on for paragraphs. I found myself having to stop reading in the middle of a sentence just to keep track of what he was saying. This book is so wordy that it took me several months to finish it, and several times I found myself angrily throwing this book against the wall. How can anyone endure this? I have read other author's who are very wordy, such as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, but never have I encountered writing so painfully excruciating.
The plot isn't very interesting either for that matter, there's very little action in this book, and it seemed that James liked to "suggest" rather than describe actions or a scene, which doesn't work very well when your writing style is like verbal diarrhea. What sounds like an interesting plot, adultery and intrigue, come off like hot air in Henry James writing style.
I was really looking forward to reading more Henry James after The Portrait of a Lady, but this book ruined him for me. I can safely say I probably will never read any more Henry James again, thanks to this book. And as far as this book, consider yourself warned..
And this book is indeed unreadable. Henry James style is overly wordy and verbose, his sentences go on for paragraphs. I found myself having to stop reading in the middle of a sentence just to keep track of what he was saying. This book is so wordy that it took me several months to finish it, and several times I found myself angrily throwing this book against the wall. How can anyone endure this? I have read other author's who are very wordy, such as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, but never have I encountered writing so painfully excruciating.
The plot isn't very interesting either for that matter, there's very little action in this book, and it seemed that James liked to "suggest" rather than describe actions or a scene, which doesn't work very well when your writing style is like verbal diarrhea. What sounds like an interesting plot, adultery and intrigue, come off like hot air in Henry James writing style.
I was really looking forward to reading more Henry James after The Portrait of a Lady, but this book ruined him for me. I can safely say I probably will never read any more Henry James again, thanks to this book. And as far as this book, consider yourself warned..
September 11, 2017
What a tour-de-force this book is! Even more so than in any of the other James' novels I've read, there is the story on the surface and the story underneath -- or maybe even stories. Near the end I found the story underneath very chilling, though very subtle. The power of this one scene could change your thought process about what you thought was going on previously. How James gets into the heads of these individuals is amazing -- or should I say masterful, as he is in complete control, and all I could do was follow.
January 23, 2024
Uzun betimlemeler ve derin duygusal çözümlemelerin bolca yer aldığı, uzun bir roman.
Zenginlik, asalet ve adanmışlık arasında, gizemli cümlelerle ifade edilen duygular, kitabın tamamına yakın kısmında merak uyandırıyor. Karakterlerin sayısal olarak çokluğu, oldukça uzun bir roman olan metne zenginlik katarken, farklı sesleri duymamızı engellemiyor. Karakterlerin sesli ifade etmedikleri derin duyguları ve felsefeleri, daha dikkatli bir okuma gerektiriyor.
Yazarın, bu kitapla aynı dönemde yazılmış olan “Güvercinin Kanatları” adlı eserinde de aynı duyguyu hissetmiştim. ‘Bir Kadının Portresi’ eseri; -çeviriden mi kaynaklanıyor bilmiyorum ama- daha akıcı ve daha fazla okuma keyfi veren bir eser.
Bunun nedenlerinden biri; duygusal ve psikolojik çözümlemeleri içeren ve iç içe -parantez cümleleriyle- açıklamalarla iyice uzayan cümleler. Bu uzun cümleler, zaman zaman dikkatin dağılmasına ve akışın bozulmasına neden oluyor. Yazar zaten yaratmış olduğu muammalar, belirsizlikler, boşluklar ve hızlı ileri gidiş ve geri dönüşlerle bu dikkat gerekliliğini yaratmışken, bu uzun cümleler anlamın kavranmasını oldukça zorlaştırıyor. Dolayısıyla, metnin/olayların anlaşılabilmesi için cümlelerin birkaç kez okunması gerekiyor, dikkat dağınıkken ve hızlı okunacak bir kitap değil.
Bir başyapıt olan bu eseri okumak keyifliydi.
Zenginlik, asalet ve adanmışlık arasında, gizemli cümlelerle ifade edilen duygular, kitabın tamamına yakın kısmında merak uyandırıyor. Karakterlerin sayısal olarak çokluğu, oldukça uzun bir roman olan metne zenginlik katarken, farklı sesleri duymamızı engellemiyor. Karakterlerin sesli ifade etmedikleri derin duyguları ve felsefeleri, daha dikkatli bir okuma gerektiriyor.
Yazarın, bu kitapla aynı dönemde yazılmış olan “Güvercinin Kanatları” adlı eserinde de aynı duyguyu hissetmiştim. ‘Bir Kadının Portresi’ eseri; -çeviriden mi kaynaklanıyor bilmiyorum ama- daha akıcı ve daha fazla okuma keyfi veren bir eser.
Bunun nedenlerinden biri; duygusal ve psikolojik çözümlemeleri içeren ve iç içe -parantez cümleleriyle- açıklamalarla iyice uzayan cümleler. Bu uzun cümleler, zaman zaman dikkatin dağılmasına ve akışın bozulmasına neden oluyor. Yazar zaten yaratmış olduğu muammalar, belirsizlikler, boşluklar ve hızlı ileri gidiş ve geri dönüşlerle bu dikkat gerekliliğini yaratmışken, bu uzun cümleler anlamın kavranmasını oldukça zorlaştırıyor. Dolayısıyla, metnin/olayların anlaşılabilmesi için cümlelerin birkaç kez okunması gerekiyor, dikkat dağınıkken ve hızlı okunacak bir kitap değil.
Bir başyapıt olan bu eseri okumak keyifliydi.
December 14, 2016
So far typical James plotting and manipulation
Even if James' opinion of women wasn't well know, it would easily be determined by the behavior of his female characters-conniving, meddling, shallower
The most enjoyable chapters include the discussions of the guilelessness of the couples between Colonel and Fannie Assingham. The ambiguous use of pronouns, the constant need for clarification and the backtracking makes for entertaining reading.
I'm really torn over the ending. I have strong feeling for both Maggie and Charlotte, but I'm not sure how to discuss them without giving away too much of their pivotal relationship.
I could give this book 3.5, but I'm really more a fan of james' short stories compared to this.
Even if James' opinion of women wasn't well know, it would easily be determined by the behavior of his female characters-conniving, meddling, shallower
The most enjoyable chapters include the discussions of the guilelessness of the couples between Colonel and Fannie Assingham. The ambiguous use of pronouns, the constant need for clarification and the backtracking makes for entertaining reading.
I'm really torn over the ending. I have strong feeling for both Maggie and Charlotte, but I'm not sure how to discuss them without giving away too much of their pivotal relationship.
I could give this book 3.5, but I'm really more a fan of james' short stories compared to this.
July 20, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
“ -No era el momento de preguntar. Preguntar es sugerir, y no era el momento de sugerir. Allí una tenía que hacerse su propia idea de la forma más secreta posible y con los elementos de juicio que una tenía a su disposición.”
Con "La copa dorada" se cumple de alguna forma el objetivo que me había marcado de leer la trilogía final de Henry James, que comenzó con "Los Embajadores" (1903) y que me llamó tanto la atención por lo avanzado de su planteamiento que además despertó mi curiosidad por ver como evolucionaba en las dos novelas siguientes, "Las alas de la paloma" (1902) y finalmente ésta que nos ocupa, publicada en 1904, la última de sus novelas. En las reseñas anteriores ya más o menos abordé el acercamiento a estas novelas desde un punto de vista concreto en cada caso porque son novelas tan densas, tan extensas en todo lo que acaba planteando James, que me resultaba más fácil detenerme en un punto concreto pero ahora viéndolo con perspectiva una vez terminadas, se podría decir que podrían formar un compendio, una obra total.
Por ejemplo:
- En "Los Embajadores", la acción a través de algunas cartas y de cómo conforma el comportamiento del personaje central, a través de ellas.
- En "Las Alas de la paloma", la acción a a través de la engañosa inmovilidad de sus personajes, acción desarrollada, casi en su totalidad, en la mente de sus personajes.
-Y en "La Copa dorada", que es la novela más densa de las tres, James despoja la novela de argumento y prácticamente toda la novela se desarrolla con pocos diálogos, centrándose más que nunca en la mente de cada uno de ellos. Flujo de conciencia puro y duro. Y volvemos a tener personajes que aparentemente parecen no avanzar, o no moverse, y que sin embargo, un pequeño gesto, o un pequeñísimo detalle, un guiño inesperado, nos está mostrando que la acción es un volcán interno.
“En cierta manera, el señor Verver tuvo la impresión de que Charlotte mediante estas palabras hab��a avanzado un paso hacia su encuentro, pero que al mismo tiempo no se había movido.”
En "La Copa dorada" Henry James vuelve a envolver un argumento aparentemente inexistente dándole exclusividad al contenido psicológico, se puede decir que esta profundidad psicológica desborda al contenido argumental, y tampoco es que sean tantos los personajes que sirvan como excusa a James como para que le salga una novela de 800 páginas, pero es cierto, que una vez terminada, sí que le vi justificación porque es una forma de narración que se va cociendo a fuego lento lo que le da al lector el espacio para entrar en sus conciencias. En esta última parte de su vida, Henry James dictaba sus manuscritos, y luego los revisaba, así que entiendo que esta forma de enfrentarse a sus manuscritos le diera la excusa perfecta para experimentar con la prosa más allá del argumento centrándose en sus personajes, en sus comportamientos, porque a medida que James se introduce en sus mentes y nos muestra sus dilemas, sus dudas, sus conspiraciones, está forzando al lector a hacer lo mismo, a hacerse las mismas preguntas, así que el lector llegado un punto acaba preguntándose cómo habría actuado de encontrarse en las mismas disyuntivas: “Por raro que parezca, estamos inmensamente solos.” Puede ser un ejercicio denso, y agotador sobre todo por la prosa en la que James juega a darle la vuelta a una frase o a un pensamiento casi hasta la extenuación, pero yo personalmente me siento muy identificada con este acercamiento y al final, acabo totalmente enganchada a estos análisis de las relaciones personales, que a la postre no se diferencian mucho de las nuestras hoy en día.
"- Que se dieron cuenta de que nada podía pasar entre ellos. Esa fue su pequeña aventura romántica, ésa su pequeña tragedia.
-¿Y dónde está la aventura romántica?
- En su frustración, en tener la valentía de enfrentarse con la realidad. Al ver que no era posible renunciaron mutuamente."
En esta cita casi que se puede decir que es dónde se concentran los cimientos que le sirven a James para crear una novela tan extensa: dos personas enamoradas que renuncian la una a la otra y por qué? En el mundo de Henry James el dinero es esencial y los matrimonios se construían a partir de estos intereses creados, así que aquí hay dos personas por lo demás libres y que sin embargo conscientemente, renuncian. Charlotte y el Príncipe se apartan el uno del otro, porque deben encontrar más allá de ellos mismos, esta seguridad económica: "- Creen en sí mismos. Aceptan la realidad tal como es. Y esto los salva. Y lo magnífico es que tienen miedo de sí mismos, de su propio peligro." A partir de aquí, Henry James escribe una novela con cuatro personajes principales, y con un par de secundarios, que son también diríamos esenciales porque serán los que se convertirán casi en cómplices de lector.
“Sí, llegaba momento en que uno se descubría a sí mismo en el trance de utilizar la imaginación principalmente para averiguar como se las arreglaba aquella gente para estimular tan poco la imaginación.”
Americo, el Príncipe, acaba casándose con Maggie Verver, riquisima heredera americana, hija de Adam Verver, billonario y coleccionista de arte, afincados en Inglaterra. Padre e hija están muy unidos, así que Maggie conseguirá a la larga que su padre se acabe casando con Charlotte, una amiga americana. Lo que ni Maggie ni su padre saben es que Charlotte y el Príncipe se conocían y habían tenido una relación. Así que en resumidas cuentas tenemos una especie de Afinidades Electivas llevada hasta las últimas consecuencias: dos parejas interconectadas Charlotte/Adam Verver y Maggie Verver/El Príncipe con lo que esto significa de cercanía, no es difícil presuponer que Charlotte y el Príncipe retomen la relación. Aparentemente es una situación perfecta porque ambos han conseguido el objetivo en cuanto a proteger sus intereses económicos, pero es que además siempre han estado enamorados, con lo cual, la única preocupación es que sus respectivas parejas no averiguën el pequeño secreto. En este mundo donde prima el dinero es muy interesante la dicotomía que establece Henry James: el Príncipe y Charlotte de alguna forma son comprados por el billonario Adam Verver, el primero para su hija única, y la segunda, para él mismo, y en varios momentos Henry James establece la comparación con las obras de arte que Adam Verver coleccionaba porque tanto la figura de Charlotte como la del Príncipe son como si llegaran a formar parte de las piezas de la colección para los Verver. Henry James no deja títere con cabeza a la hora de cuestionar este tipo de uniones y cuestiona a todas y cada una de las partes, tanto a los compradores como a los que se dejan comprar. Y hay un momento espléndido que resume este efecto, casi al final de la novela, en el que padre e hija, contemplan a sus respectivos esposos sentados y rodeados de piezas de arte, como si ellos mismos formaran parte de las piezas de su colección.
“La fusión de su presencia con los elementos decorativos, su contribución al triunfo de la selección, eran completas y admirables, aunque ante una mirada más detenida, ante una mirada más penetrante de lo que la ocasión requería, también hubieran podido figurar como concretos ejemplos de un insólito poder de adquisición.
-¿Muy bellas verdad?
Los otros dos, al oír estas palabras, centraron en ellos, durante un buen rato, su lenta conversación, una atención toda gravedad, que fue como una mayor sumisión a la general magnificencia, sentados tan quietos, para ser admirados, como dos efigies de los grandes contemporáneos…”
Casi en su mayor parte, la novela está dedicada en examinar y profundizar en las acciones de sus personajes desde el primer momento casi sin dejar a ninguno de estos cuatro personajes fuera de foco. El sufrimiento de estos personajes está en esas emociones que no llegan a exponer, casi todo está soterrado ante la vista de los demás, y aunque todos estos sufrimientos están intrínsecamente relacionados con el tema del dinero, de buscarlo, de conseguirlo, y una vez que lo tienen, de intentar mantenerlo, a la vez que han sacrificado muchas cosas en el camino, el sufrimiento está quizás, en tener que vivir con ciertas renuncias, emocionales y esto lo expone Henry James desde una fínisima sensiblidad, analizando y desmenuzando cada uno de sus pensamientos.
"- Eran íntimos, ¿comprende? Íntimos.
- Bueno, también hay que tener en cuenta lo que se entiende por...
- ¿Lo que se entiende por intimidad? Sé muy bien ahora lo que entiendo por intimidad. Eran tan íntimos que no pueden decírmelo."
Es una novela que transcurre a lo largo de varios años y la marcación entre las diferentes partes o capítulos, está delimitando estas lineas temporales, elípticas, porque Henry James no explica todo lo que ha pasado a lo largo de estos años sino que se detiene en escenas concretas a raíz de un punto de inflexión. La primera parte que está dedicada al príncipe es más contemplativa, lenta y se regodea completamente en las acciones mentales y cuando llega a la segunda parte, que está dedicada a Maggie Verver hay una especie de cambio de ritmo, en la que la novela abandona un poco ese tono contemplativo y Henry James lo insufla de un ritmo mucho más rápido porque es justo el momento en que Maggie Verver descubre la infidelidad: “Se había sorprendido a si misma en el acto de detenerse, luego en el de quedarse largo rato detenida y, por fin, en el de acercarse llegando a un punto de cercanía sin precedentes.” Toda esta parte desde el momento en que Maggie descubre el engaño es fascinante, porque el status quo la obliga a No Moverse de cara a la galería, pero sin embargo, su mente es un volcán en ebullición. Y justo este climax se produce durante una noche en la que Maggie se desvela y Henry James nos introduce en la forma en la que va hilando los datos que ha ido recabando al observar ciertos comportamientos….
Desde el momento en que se se acuerda de cómo suena la voz de Charlotte, porque ella, Maggie, es la única que se da cuenta de que sufre:
"La voz seguía sonando, sus vibraciones, iban solamente dirigidas a oidos atentos; pero verdaderamente hubo treinta segundos durante los cuales la voz sonó, para Maggie, como un grito de un alma en pena. Si seguía sonando un minuto más, la voz se le quebraría..."
Hasta que a continuación pasa a analizar el comportamiento de su marido, el príncipe:
"Por ejemplo, aquella mañana Americo había estado tan ausente como de un tiempo a esta parte parecía desear se advirtiera que lo estaba. Se había ido a Londres para pasar allí el dia y la noche, era una necesidad que ahora experimentaba a menudo. A la rosada luz del alba vio que Américo, a pesar de todo, era capaz en ocasiones de pecar por excesivo candor. Si no fuera así, no hubiera dicho que la razón de ir a la casa de Portland Place, en pleno agosto, consistía en ordenar libros. Pero cuando la imaginación de Maggié siguió a Americo hasta la polvorienta ciudad, hasta la casa de persianas cerradas, no le vio dedicado, en mangas de camisa, a abrir maltratadas cajas de libros. Maggie le vio vagar por las oscuras estancias cerradas, ir de un lado a otro de la casa, durante largos ratos, fija la vista al frente, a través del humo de encadenados cigarrillos. Estimó ahora que Americo lo que le gustaba era quedarse a solas con sus pensamientos."
Para finalmente llegar a una conclusión...
"Maggie concluyó que Américo había huido de un sonido. Ese sonido todavía resonaba en los oídos de Maggie, era el de las altas y coaccionadas vibraciones de la voz de Charlotte, como si fuera la voz de un ser atenazado por la angustia."
La dificultad de esta novela está en que Henry James deja mucho sin decir, realmente es como si narrara la vida escondida y hubiera que hacer un esfuerzo para leer entrelineas. Para ello vuelve a tirar de un personaje amigo como el de Fanny Assingham, que puede servir como puente entre él y sus personajes, herméticos a la hora de mostrarse y exponerse. Esta mujer que está justo en medio de ambas parejas, pondrá en claro algunas dudas. Es un mundo en el que hay que conservar la compostura, encorsetado, en el que lo de verdad importante no se dice, no llega a pronunciarse nunca, por ese miedo a resultar vulgares por lo que algunas conversaciones se convierten en un arte para no llegar a verbalizar ciertas palabras: celos, aventura, engaño, decepción… Es casi imposible que los personajes sufran arrebatos o enfados, guardan la compostura de cara a la galería pero como contrapartida Henry James nos mostrará este mundo interior y aquí ya vemos que hay personajes que sufren por lo que nunca podrán expresar.
“Por fin, los dos tuvieron silencios que casi fueron rudas expresiones de su recíproca existencia, silencios que persistieron.”
La copa dorada es para mi fundamentalmente una novela sobre secretos, lo que nunca se dirá en voz alta y al mismo tiempo lo que nunca llegará a expresarse, todos y cada uno de estos cuatro personajes andarán sobre una especie de cuerda floja, sin saber dónde apoyarse precisamente por esta ambigüedad que produce lo que nunca se expresa. Andarán a tientas, esperarán algún gesto o alguna mirada para poder avanzar en este mar de sentimientos encubiertos. Henry James entendió como nadie esta ambigüedad y aunque sus personajes no puedan expresar lo que sienten, es a través de la hondura psicológica cómo llegaremos a conocerlos. El lector verá la luz poco a poco, pero la irá viendo a medida que el personaje se vaya revelando frente a él. James no le pone las cosas fáciles al lector pero aquí está precisamente lo gratificante de esta novela lenta, pausada y que se toma todo el tiempo del mundo para unir las piezas.
“Se sentía cohibida por la diferencia que mediaba entre lo que tenía que escuchar y lo que ella podía decir, entre lo que realmente sentía y lo que podía mencionar."
♫♫♫ No More Disguise - Thievery Corporation ♫♫♫
Nota: (Tengo que advertir que esta reseña funcionará creo que solo si va unida a las dos reseñas anteriores, Los Embajadores y Las alas de la paloma..., las tres unidas, son una especie de compendio sobre lo que me interesa de Henry James…)
Trilogía Final
#1 Los Embajadores
#2 Las alas de la paloma
#3 La copa dorada
“ -No era el momento de preguntar. Preguntar es sugerir, y no era el momento de sugerir. Allí una tenía que hacerse su propia idea de la forma más secreta posible y con los elementos de juicio que una tenía a su disposición.”
Con "La copa dorada" se cumple de alguna forma el objetivo que me había marcado de leer la trilogía final de Henry James, que comenzó con "Los Embajadores" (1903) y que me llamó tanto la atención por lo avanzado de su planteamiento que además despertó mi curiosidad por ver como evolucionaba en las dos novelas siguientes, "Las alas de la paloma" (1902) y finalmente ésta que nos ocupa, publicada en 1904, la última de sus novelas. En las reseñas anteriores ya más o menos abordé el acercamiento a estas novelas desde un punto de vista concreto en cada caso porque son novelas tan densas, tan extensas en todo lo que acaba planteando James, que me resultaba más fácil detenerme en un punto concreto pero ahora viéndolo con perspectiva una vez terminadas, se podría decir que podrían formar un compendio, una obra total.
Por ejemplo:
- En "Los Embajadores", la acción a través de algunas cartas y de cómo conforma el comportamiento del personaje central, a través de ellas.
- En "Las Alas de la paloma", la acción a a través de la engañosa inmovilidad de sus personajes, acción desarrollada, casi en su totalidad, en la mente de sus personajes.
-Y en "La Copa dorada", que es la novela más densa de las tres, James despoja la novela de argumento y prácticamente toda la novela se desarrolla con pocos diálogos, centrándose más que nunca en la mente de cada uno de ellos. Flujo de conciencia puro y duro. Y volvemos a tener personajes que aparentemente parecen no avanzar, o no moverse, y que sin embargo, un pequeño gesto, o un pequeñísimo detalle, un guiño inesperado, nos está mostrando que la acción es un volcán interno.
“En cierta manera, el señor Verver tuvo la impresión de que Charlotte mediante estas palabras hab��a avanzado un paso hacia su encuentro, pero que al mismo tiempo no se había movido.”
En "La Copa dorada" Henry James vuelve a envolver un argumento aparentemente inexistente dándole exclusividad al contenido psicológico, se puede decir que esta profundidad psicológica desborda al contenido argumental, y tampoco es que sean tantos los personajes que sirvan como excusa a James como para que le salga una novela de 800 páginas, pero es cierto, que una vez terminada, sí que le vi justificación porque es una forma de narración que se va cociendo a fuego lento lo que le da al lector el espacio para entrar en sus conciencias. En esta última parte de su vida, Henry James dictaba sus manuscritos, y luego los revisaba, así que entiendo que esta forma de enfrentarse a sus manuscritos le diera la excusa perfecta para experimentar con la prosa más allá del argumento centrándose en sus personajes, en sus comportamientos, porque a medida que James se introduce en sus mentes y nos muestra sus dilemas, sus dudas, sus conspiraciones, está forzando al lector a hacer lo mismo, a hacerse las mismas preguntas, así que el lector llegado un punto acaba preguntándose cómo habría actuado de encontrarse en las mismas disyuntivas: “Por raro que parezca, estamos inmensamente solos.” Puede ser un ejercicio denso, y agotador sobre todo por la prosa en la que James juega a darle la vuelta a una frase o a un pensamiento casi hasta la extenuación, pero yo personalmente me siento muy identificada con este acercamiento y al final, acabo totalmente enganchada a estos análisis de las relaciones personales, que a la postre no se diferencian mucho de las nuestras hoy en día.
"- Que se dieron cuenta de que nada podía pasar entre ellos. Esa fue su pequeña aventura romántica, ésa su pequeña tragedia.
-¿Y dónde está la aventura romántica?
- En su frustración, en tener la valentía de enfrentarse con la realidad. Al ver que no era posible renunciaron mutuamente."
En esta cita casi que se puede decir que es dónde se concentran los cimientos que le sirven a James para crear una novela tan extensa: dos personas enamoradas que renuncian la una a la otra y por qué? En el mundo de Henry James el dinero es esencial y los matrimonios se construían a partir de estos intereses creados, así que aquí hay dos personas por lo demás libres y que sin embargo conscientemente, renuncian. Charlotte y el Príncipe se apartan el uno del otro, porque deben encontrar más allá de ellos mismos, esta seguridad económica: "- Creen en sí mismos. Aceptan la realidad tal como es. Y esto los salva. Y lo magnífico es que tienen miedo de sí mismos, de su propio peligro." A partir de aquí, Henry James escribe una novela con cuatro personajes principales, y con un par de secundarios, que son también diríamos esenciales porque serán los que se convertirán casi en cómplices de lector.
“Sí, llegaba momento en que uno se descubría a sí mismo en el trance de utilizar la imaginación principalmente para averiguar como se las arreglaba aquella gente para estimular tan poco la imaginación.”
Americo, el Príncipe, acaba casándose con Maggie Verver, riquisima heredera americana, hija de Adam Verver, billonario y coleccionista de arte, afincados en Inglaterra. Padre e hija están muy unidos, así que Maggie conseguirá a la larga que su padre se acabe casando con Charlotte, una amiga americana. Lo que ni Maggie ni su padre saben es que Charlotte y el Príncipe se conocían y habían tenido una relación. Así que en resumidas cuentas tenemos una especie de Afinidades Electivas llevada hasta las últimas consecuencias: dos parejas interconectadas Charlotte/Adam Verver y Maggie Verver/El Príncipe con lo que esto significa de cercanía, no es difícil presuponer que Charlotte y el Príncipe retomen la relación. Aparentemente es una situación perfecta porque ambos han conseguido el objetivo en cuanto a proteger sus intereses económicos, pero es que además siempre han estado enamorados, con lo cual, la única preocupación es que sus respectivas parejas no averiguën el pequeño secreto. En este mundo donde prima el dinero es muy interesante la dicotomía que establece Henry James: el Príncipe y Charlotte de alguna forma son comprados por el billonario Adam Verver, el primero para su hija única, y la segunda, para él mismo, y en varios momentos Henry James establece la comparación con las obras de arte que Adam Verver coleccionaba porque tanto la figura de Charlotte como la del Príncipe son como si llegaran a formar parte de las piezas de la colección para los Verver. Henry James no deja títere con cabeza a la hora de cuestionar este tipo de uniones y cuestiona a todas y cada una de las partes, tanto a los compradores como a los que se dejan comprar. Y hay un momento espléndido que resume este efecto, casi al final de la novela, en el que padre e hija, contemplan a sus respectivos esposos sentados y rodeados de piezas de arte, como si ellos mismos formaran parte de las piezas de su colección.
“La fusión de su presencia con los elementos decorativos, su contribución al triunfo de la selección, eran completas y admirables, aunque ante una mirada más detenida, ante una mirada más penetrante de lo que la ocasión requería, también hubieran podido figurar como concretos ejemplos de un insólito poder de adquisición.
-¿Muy bellas verdad?
Los otros dos, al oír estas palabras, centraron en ellos, durante un buen rato, su lenta conversación, una atención toda gravedad, que fue como una mayor sumisión a la general magnificencia, sentados tan quietos, para ser admirados, como dos efigies de los grandes contemporáneos…”
Casi en su mayor parte, la novela está dedicada en examinar y profundizar en las acciones de sus personajes desde el primer momento casi sin dejar a ninguno de estos cuatro personajes fuera de foco. El sufrimiento de estos personajes está en esas emociones que no llegan a exponer, casi todo está soterrado ante la vista de los demás, y aunque todos estos sufrimientos están intrínsecamente relacionados con el tema del dinero, de buscarlo, de conseguirlo, y una vez que lo tienen, de intentar mantenerlo, a la vez que han sacrificado muchas cosas en el camino, el sufrimiento está quizás, en tener que vivir con ciertas renuncias, emocionales y esto lo expone Henry James desde una fínisima sensiblidad, analizando y desmenuzando cada uno de sus pensamientos.
"- Eran íntimos, ¿comprende? Íntimos.
- Bueno, también hay que tener en cuenta lo que se entiende por...
- ¿Lo que se entiende por intimidad? Sé muy bien ahora lo que entiendo por intimidad. Eran tan íntimos que no pueden decírmelo."
Es una novela que transcurre a lo largo de varios años y la marcación entre las diferentes partes o capítulos, está delimitando estas lineas temporales, elípticas, porque Henry James no explica todo lo que ha pasado a lo largo de estos años sino que se detiene en escenas concretas a raíz de un punto de inflexión. La primera parte que está dedicada al príncipe es más contemplativa, lenta y se regodea completamente en las acciones mentales y cuando llega a la segunda parte, que está dedicada a Maggie Verver hay una especie de cambio de ritmo, en la que la novela abandona un poco ese tono contemplativo y Henry James lo insufla de un ritmo mucho más rápido porque es justo el momento en que Maggie Verver descubre la infidelidad: “Se había sorprendido a si misma en el acto de detenerse, luego en el de quedarse largo rato detenida y, por fin, en el de acercarse llegando a un punto de cercanía sin precedentes.” Toda esta parte desde el momento en que Maggie descubre el engaño es fascinante, porque el status quo la obliga a No Moverse de cara a la galería, pero sin embargo, su mente es un volcán en ebullición. Y justo este climax se produce durante una noche en la que Maggie se desvela y Henry James nos introduce en la forma en la que va hilando los datos que ha ido recabando al observar ciertos comportamientos….
Desde el momento en que se se acuerda de cómo suena la voz de Charlotte, porque ella, Maggie, es la única que se da cuenta de que sufre:
"La voz seguía sonando, sus vibraciones, iban solamente dirigidas a oidos atentos; pero verdaderamente hubo treinta segundos durante los cuales la voz sonó, para Maggie, como un grito de un alma en pena. Si seguía sonando un minuto más, la voz se le quebraría..."
Hasta que a continuación pasa a analizar el comportamiento de su marido, el príncipe:
"Por ejemplo, aquella mañana Americo había estado tan ausente como de un tiempo a esta parte parecía desear se advirtiera que lo estaba. Se había ido a Londres para pasar allí el dia y la noche, era una necesidad que ahora experimentaba a menudo. A la rosada luz del alba vio que Américo, a pesar de todo, era capaz en ocasiones de pecar por excesivo candor. Si no fuera así, no hubiera dicho que la razón de ir a la casa de Portland Place, en pleno agosto, consistía en ordenar libros. Pero cuando la imaginación de Maggié siguió a Americo hasta la polvorienta ciudad, hasta la casa de persianas cerradas, no le vio dedicado, en mangas de camisa, a abrir maltratadas cajas de libros. Maggie le vio vagar por las oscuras estancias cerradas, ir de un lado a otro de la casa, durante largos ratos, fija la vista al frente, a través del humo de encadenados cigarrillos. Estimó ahora que Americo lo que le gustaba era quedarse a solas con sus pensamientos."
Para finalmente llegar a una conclusión...
"Maggie concluyó que Américo había huido de un sonido. Ese sonido todavía resonaba en los oídos de Maggie, era el de las altas y coaccionadas vibraciones de la voz de Charlotte, como si fuera la voz de un ser atenazado por la angustia."
La dificultad de esta novela está en que Henry James deja mucho sin decir, realmente es como si narrara la vida escondida y hubiera que hacer un esfuerzo para leer entrelineas. Para ello vuelve a tirar de un personaje amigo como el de Fanny Assingham, que puede servir como puente entre él y sus personajes, herméticos a la hora de mostrarse y exponerse. Esta mujer que está justo en medio de ambas parejas, pondrá en claro algunas dudas. Es un mundo en el que hay que conservar la compostura, encorsetado, en el que lo de verdad importante no se dice, no llega a pronunciarse nunca, por ese miedo a resultar vulgares por lo que algunas conversaciones se convierten en un arte para no llegar a verbalizar ciertas palabras: celos, aventura, engaño, decepción… Es casi imposible que los personajes sufran arrebatos o enfados, guardan la compostura de cara a la galería pero como contrapartida Henry James nos mostrará este mundo interior y aquí ya vemos que hay personajes que sufren por lo que nunca podrán expresar.
“Por fin, los dos tuvieron silencios que casi fueron rudas expresiones de su recíproca existencia, silencios que persistieron.”
La copa dorada es para mi fundamentalmente una novela sobre secretos, lo que nunca se dirá en voz alta y al mismo tiempo lo que nunca llegará a expresarse, todos y cada uno de estos cuatro personajes andarán sobre una especie de cuerda floja, sin saber dónde apoyarse precisamente por esta ambigüedad que produce lo que nunca se expresa. Andarán a tientas, esperarán algún gesto o alguna mirada para poder avanzar en este mar de sentimientos encubiertos. Henry James entendió como nadie esta ambigüedad y aunque sus personajes no puedan expresar lo que sienten, es a través de la hondura psicológica cómo llegaremos a conocerlos. El lector verá la luz poco a poco, pero la irá viendo a medida que el personaje se vaya revelando frente a él. James no le pone las cosas fáciles al lector pero aquí está precisamente lo gratificante de esta novela lenta, pausada y que se toma todo el tiempo del mundo para unir las piezas.
“Se sentía cohibida por la diferencia que mediaba entre lo que tenía que escuchar y lo que ella podía decir, entre lo que realmente sentía y lo que podía mencionar."
♫♫♫ No More Disguise - Thievery Corporation ♫♫♫
Nota: (Tengo que advertir que esta reseña funcionará creo que solo si va unida a las dos reseñas anteriores, Los Embajadores y Las alas de la paloma..., las tres unidas, son una especie de compendio sobre lo que me interesa de Henry James…)
Trilogía Final
#1 Los Embajadores
#2 Las alas de la paloma
#3 La copa dorada
February 18, 2024
Uma obra prima da construção psicologicamente tensa de personagens e ambientes. Um dos melhores livros que o realismo de Henry James deixou para os leitores do futuro.
Óbvio é que o leitor do século XXI ache a escrita descritiva de James demasiado "difícil". Para mim foi uma delícia sem fim.
Óbvio é que o leitor do século XXI ache a escrita descritiva de James demasiado "difícil". Para mim foi uma delícia sem fim.
June 9, 2023
Maggie Verver, daughter of the wealthy widower, Adam Verver, marries an impoverished Italian aristocrat, Amerigo, who has previously had an affair with her best friend, Charlotte Stant. Maggie plays a role in getting Adam together with Charlotte, and they eventually marry. These four, along with Maggie’s friend, Fanny Assingham, form the small core of primary characters. Each is keeping secrets, and the affair continues despite the two marriages. The storyline follows the infidelity, its impact, and its eventual resolution.
This is a character driven novel about morality, idealism, and selfishness. Adam and Maggie at first are portrayed as honorable and upright, and perhaps too trusting, in contrast to the selfishness of the Prince and Charlotte. As the story progresses, Adam and Maggie gradually move toward more realistic and balanced personas. At first, Charlotte appears oblivious to the damage she is doing to Maggie. She is adventurous, a social climber, running roughshod over her best friend’s feelings. This book was published in 1904. It is an exploration of romantic relationships and fidelity (or lack thereof), pushing the envelope for the time period. The “golden bowl” of the title is a symbol of the relationship between the partners and friends.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. A modern reader will need some patience to wade through long convoluted sentences, but I noticed a difference between the books he wrote in the late 1800s and this one. The Golden Bowl is much more straightforward in style, though with all the secrets being kept it requires close attention to follow the plot. The second half is faster paced than the first. It is a long book. Back then, I think people were more willing to take more time with books, but for today’s reader it may feel like it could have been edited without losing much. Still, if you enjoy reading the classics, as I do, I recommend it as a good example of James’s work, along with Portrait of a Lady.
This is a character driven novel about morality, idealism, and selfishness. Adam and Maggie at first are portrayed as honorable and upright, and perhaps too trusting, in contrast to the selfishness of the Prince and Charlotte. As the story progresses, Adam and Maggie gradually move toward more realistic and balanced personas. At first, Charlotte appears oblivious to the damage she is doing to Maggie. She is adventurous, a social climber, running roughshod over her best friend’s feelings. This book was published in 1904. It is an exploration of romantic relationships and fidelity (or lack thereof), pushing the envelope for the time period. The “golden bowl” of the title is a symbol of the relationship between the partners and friends.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. A modern reader will need some patience to wade through long convoluted sentences, but I noticed a difference between the books he wrote in the late 1800s and this one. The Golden Bowl is much more straightforward in style, though with all the secrets being kept it requires close attention to follow the plot. The second half is faster paced than the first. It is a long book. Back then, I think people were more willing to take more time with books, but for today’s reader it may feel like it could have been edited without losing much. Still, if you enjoy reading the classics, as I do, I recommend it as a good example of James’s work, along with Portrait of a Lady.
September 14, 2024
Well, well, well, here I am at the very end of my project to read all of Henry James's novels in chronological order. I did skip The Other House as I don't have a copy and couldn't easily procure one at the time, but I also added a few shorter works not usually included among the New Yorker's novels but rather relegated to long-ish tales, even if they're mostly published under a single cover. In a way I'm kind glad that I still have one James novel to pick up and read ex nihilo at some point in the future.
Anywho, This novel, The Golden Bowl, is, as advertised, a worthy final entry in the steadily evolving oeuvre of the great man. While it's not my personal objective choice for James's greatest novel (which I would give to this one's immediate predecessor, The Ambassadors), there are a lot of what makes James a great novelist on display here: the mix of exposition and terrific scenes, fascinating characters, a lovely central image/symbol, the amazing dialogue representing how well these sophisticated society types of a century and a half or so ago talked endlessly around the topics too taboo to invoke, the very slow and maniacal presentation of people's feelings, words, and inner movements until you almost feel as if you've lived their lives along with them. It's all top notch and thus this is another of the very best of the nineteenth century novel (here just over the edge into the new century but still before the watershed event of WWI, which would produce a whole new kettle of modernist fish), when it shook off the broadness and sometimes frivolously silliness of the Dickensian and tried to treat seriously of adult topics.
My one criticism, despite it being pretty much inevitable given James's whole approach, is that the relatively simple so-called plot here (really more of a series of situations at best) is pretty slight to hang so many pages on. While it was important to get the side commentary of dear Mrs. Assingham, perhaps shortening a tad or omitting a couple of her long, long evening conversations with her husband might have been propitious. This is especially noticeable, I think, in James because of all he doesn't (and refuses) to say--no easy answers or authorial revelations. Several characters, including the reader, remain oblivious to one thing or another, as happens in life and I appreciate James's realistic way of presenting that, even if it is occasionally frustrating when we, as readers, want to know all.
I have on other occasions bemoaned the fact that the greatest flaw of the nineteenth century European novel (particularly of the English and American variety) is it's yearning to touch on adult subjects--code for love and marriage--but not being able even to acknowledge that human beings have genitalia, much less sexual desire or, God forbid, actual sexual intercourse, or that these dirty truths have any effect at all on courtship, marriage, and/or later married life. How much richer the literature could have been if we knew how bad Edgar Linton was in bed or how good--or perhaps frightening--Heathcliff was. At least James partly avoids our thinking about it as he leaves so many other elements shrouded in darkness or some character's impressions and opinions only.
In the end the flawed golden bowl of the title stands not only for marriage, for human imperfection, but for the novel itself: a beautiful object just short of perfect.
Anywho, This novel, The Golden Bowl, is, as advertised, a worthy final entry in the steadily evolving oeuvre of the great man. While it's not my personal objective choice for James's greatest novel (which I would give to this one's immediate predecessor, The Ambassadors), there are a lot of what makes James a great novelist on display here: the mix of exposition and terrific scenes, fascinating characters, a lovely central image/symbol, the amazing dialogue representing how well these sophisticated society types of a century and a half or so ago talked endlessly around the topics too taboo to invoke, the very slow and maniacal presentation of people's feelings, words, and inner movements until you almost feel as if you've lived their lives along with them. It's all top notch and thus this is another of the very best of the nineteenth century novel (here just over the edge into the new century but still before the watershed event of WWI, which would produce a whole new kettle of modernist fish), when it shook off the broadness and sometimes frivolously silliness of the Dickensian and tried to treat seriously of adult topics.
My one criticism, despite it being pretty much inevitable given James's whole approach, is that the relatively simple so-called plot here (really more of a series of situations at best) is pretty slight to hang so many pages on. While it was important to get the side commentary of dear Mrs. Assingham, perhaps shortening a tad or omitting a couple of her long, long evening conversations with her husband might have been propitious. This is especially noticeable, I think, in James because of all he doesn't (and refuses) to say--no easy answers or authorial revelations. Several characters, including the reader, remain oblivious to one thing or another, as happens in life and I appreciate James's realistic way of presenting that, even if it is occasionally frustrating when we, as readers, want to know all.
I have on other occasions bemoaned the fact that the greatest flaw of the nineteenth century European novel (particularly of the English and American variety) is it's yearning to touch on adult subjects--code for love and marriage--but not being able even to acknowledge that human beings have genitalia, much less sexual desire or, God forbid, actual sexual intercourse, or that these dirty truths have any effect at all on courtship, marriage, and/or later married life. How much richer the literature could have been if we knew how bad Edgar Linton was in bed or how good--or perhaps frightening--Heathcliff was. At least James partly avoids our thinking about it as he leaves so many other elements shrouded in darkness or some character's impressions and opinions only.
In the end the flawed golden bowl of the title stands not only for marriage, for human imperfection, but for the novel itself: a beautiful object just short of perfect.
June 25, 2017
Everytime one thinks of domestic tragedy, psychological studies and familiy issues, there are three authors I beleive must be paid attention to: Liev Tolstoi, Thomas Hardy and Henry James.
If you're looking for a wholesome study concerning the historic context of the plot, go for Tolstoi. In case you have a strong stomach to physical pain and human misery, Hardy is your pick. However, whenever you're searching for a detailed examination of the myriad of human feelings and behaviour, James is definitively your author.
The Golden Bowl is a late novel in Jame's collection of oeuvres. It was published in 1904 and, apparently, wasn't warmly welcomed by readers nor the critic.
Adam Verve, America's first billionaire, one fine day decided to go shopping for a husband to his only daughter, Maggie, a kind hearted young lady. And what would fit daddy's little princess better than an athentic European Prince? So he sets up Italian impoverished aristocrat Amerigo, a less than pure match to Maggie, as he used to be lovers with her schoolgirl friend, Charlotte. And, lo and behold! what a coincidence, Charlotte is precisely Maggie's choice to replace her as mistress of her daddy's home.
A very complicated set of couples is therefore displayed. Charlotte and Amerigo reconnect as lovers as a very tormented Maggie is trying to save her father's feelings and spouse pride, so she conceals her learning of the adultery from both her daddy and 'dear friend' Charlotte. Maggie starts to plot a subtle scheming to drive the other couple away from the old continent, back to America, as she'd rather stay away from her father than risk to lose him as well as her husband.
In short words, this novel is also the process of a naïve little maiden (with a damsel in distress hint) to a grown mature woman. Who kept the best part of the bargain was Amerigo, as he had previously delightened his passion along with Charlotte but has fallen truely in love with a seductively strong wife.
As in other James' plots, I recognise the main theme, in my humble opinion, as how people make choices unaware of the complexity of consequences and later consider the price to pay way too high, concealing their deceit and growing resigned of their self elected fates.
If you're looking for a wholesome study concerning the historic context of the plot, go for Tolstoi. In case you have a strong stomach to physical pain and human misery, Hardy is your pick. However, whenever you're searching for a detailed examination of the myriad of human feelings and behaviour, James is definitively your author.
The Golden Bowl is a late novel in Jame's collection of oeuvres. It was published in 1904 and, apparently, wasn't warmly welcomed by readers nor the critic.
Adam Verve, America's first billionaire, one fine day decided to go shopping for a husband to his only daughter, Maggie, a kind hearted young lady. And what would fit daddy's little princess better than an athentic European Prince? So he sets up Italian impoverished aristocrat Amerigo, a less than pure match to Maggie, as he used to be lovers with her schoolgirl friend, Charlotte. And, lo and behold! what a coincidence, Charlotte is precisely Maggie's choice to replace her as mistress of her daddy's home.
A very complicated set of couples is therefore displayed. Charlotte and Amerigo reconnect as lovers as a very tormented Maggie is trying to save her father's feelings and spouse pride, so she conceals her learning of the adultery from both her daddy and 'dear friend' Charlotte. Maggie starts to plot a subtle scheming to drive the other couple away from the old continent, back to America, as she'd rather stay away from her father than risk to lose him as well as her husband.
In short words, this novel is also the process of a naïve little maiden (with a damsel in distress hint) to a grown mature woman. Who kept the best part of the bargain was Amerigo, as he had previously delightened his passion along with Charlotte but has fallen truely in love with a seductively strong wife.
As in other James' plots, I recognise the main theme, in my humble opinion, as how people make choices unaware of the complexity of consequences and later consider the price to pay way too high, concealing their deceit and growing resigned of their self elected fates.
April 13, 2018
Me encanta la complejidad de la escritura de Henry James. Demorar en terminar un libro es una buena señal... pero no siempre. En este caso, se me hizo difícil acabarlo porque, sinceramente, no me podía conectar con la historia. En ciertos momentos creí que el problema de los personajes era la falta de comunicación entre ellos. Sin las conversaciones esquivas y la desesperante pasividad de los protagonistas (por supuesto, el hecho de que la narración se concentre en sus pensamientos ayuda a elaborar esa sensación), el libro hubiera durado mucho menos. Haría una relectura, pero será para un momento en el que esté despejada.
March 30, 2021
The Golden Bowl is certainly characteristic of James’ oeuvre as a whole—stylistically, structurally, and thematically. In typical James fashion, the prose is very meandering. It can feel, at times, excessively, even insufferably so, particularly to readers who are accustomed to the clarity and succinctness that have become the hallmark of modern American literature. Many of us are used to evaluating writing based on its ability to convey the most amount of information in the fewest words possible—and judged according to this standard, its unsurprising that James frustrates many modern readers. James’ writing style is the opposite of concise. He can spin a small observation into a pages long dissection of the potential meanings of a single untoward glance, can stretch out the almost unbearable tension of a brief conversation into an entire chapter.
Don’t enter into a James novel, particularly this one, expecting it to be a straightforward journey from point A to point B. Don’t even expect a slightly indirect route with a few detours here and there. James’ work is almost all detour—but detour that is gorgeously written, brilliantly conceived of, and remarkably insightful. If you want a book that never deviates from the direct course of its narrative, that moves from plot point to plot point with speed and unwavering focus, this isn’t it. If you’re willing to trust James, though, to entirely give yourself over into his hands and follow his thoughts where they lead—not constantly holding your breath and waiting for the next big event to take place, but simply marveling at the richness of the prose, the impossibly enigmatic moral ambiguity of the characters, the mind-bogglingly complex and nuanced interpersonal interactions—I promise you won’t be disappointed.
The beauty of The Golden Bowl isn’t in the so-called “big” moments, the shocking revelations or the seismic shifts in relationships. The beauty is in the details, even those that feel superfluous at the time. Perhaps it is precisely in those details that seem least important that the most beauty lies, in fact. It is in the incredible intricacy, the exquisite subtlety of the narrative that such a richness of meaning lies. It is a novel that demands a wealth of careful attention, of the sort we rarely are willing to expend in our fast-paced modern world. But it also a novel that recompenses the reader tenfold for their efforts. The book itself is like the site of an archeological dig, filled with a wealth of precious artifacts quietly begging to be unearthed. It is a mine of a novel, patiently waiting for the reader to excavate and examine all of the glittering gems that James has so artfully embedded and concealed throughout.
It was all, at bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold, still flame; where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in spite of the general tendency of the “devouring element” to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with unconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires.
Like most of James’ novels, The Golden Bowl centers around a cast of meticulously drawn and deliciously ambiguous characters, whose convoluted relationships with one another are riddled with duplicity and haunted by the specter of secrets locked away in dusty rooms, just waiting to reemerge. The story follows a rich American businessman and widower, Mr. Verver, and his daughter Maggie, as they both enter into seemingly perfect marriages that later reveal themselves to have built upon a foundation of lies more extensive and convoluted than either of them could have fathomed. The credulous and kind-hearted Maggie, the youthful picture of American innocence, first weds an impoverished but elegant Italian prince Amerigano, who, on the surface, appears be a faultless spouse. A few years later, Mr. Verver becomes enamored of the formidable Charlotte, a brilliant young woman of little means but great ambition and a friend of his daughter. The two marry after a brief but tender courtship, and Maggie gives her blessing, hoping the companionship of a beautiful and clever wife will provide him with protection from the importunate advances of scheming and seductive fortune-hunters. More importantly, however, she imagines that it will be a consolation to him for the loss of his daughter to her own marriage, a marriage that has taken her away from her familial home and divided her love, once wholly the possession of her father, between the two most important men in her life.
Little do either of the good-natured Ververs know, however, that the Prince and Charlotte were previously attached to one another, and only abandoned their relations in the face of insurmountable pecuniary difficulties that made marriage to one another a dreary prospect for the two natural voluptuaries, if not an altogether impossibility. And while the bond between these charming figures may be hidden in the past as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is far from forgotten, the passion between them anything but extinguished. The ill-fated foursome—the father, the daughter, and their two beguiling spouses—come to constitute the central cast of the novel, and the complexity of the dynamics between them makes the typical love triangle look like child’s play. Witnessing the odd and convoluted web of connections between the four precariously form, and then slowly but irreparably devolve, is fascinating. It is utterly enthralling to watch as the tangle of relationships, poisoned by deception and secrecy, quietly but bitterly implode at their core, retaining every outward appearance of respectability while contempt and wounded outrage smolder imperceptibly under the surface.
She was keeping her head for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her forcing the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air.
Also central to the narrative is an inanimate object—the beautiful but flawed golden bowl from which the novel takes its name—that serves not only on a literal level as an important plot point, but also a profound symbol for the elegant deception around which the tale revolves. The portentous bowl is introduced at the very beginning of the novel, its significance almost immediately apparent. It is found by the Prince and Charlotte in a curious antique shop a day before the Prince’s wedding, where the pair claim to be shopping for a gift for Maggie—a clever ruse that allows them to spend a few more gloriously free and unobserved hours together before their inevitable and (so they believe) irrevocable separation. The bowl, which appears to be made entirely of glistening gold, catches their eye amongst the age-worn trinkets and trifles of the strange little store, and the shopkeeper, an old man as enigmatic as the mysterious golden goblet itself, tries to sell it to them. Ultimately the two leaved empty handed, but possessed of the knowledge that the golden bowl, which appears at first glance to be a luminous and flawless treasure, is not pure gold, but mere gilded crystal. The crystal is, moreover, cracked—albeit imperceptibly, its tiny fissure covered by sparkling gilding but ominously ever-present nonetheless.
“A crack is a crack—and an omen’s an omen.”
Explicit mention of the golden bowl subsequently disappears from the narrative for a time (though it does menacingly reemerge later in the book to serve a crucial role), but the well of symbolism the object provides is embedded in almost every page, begging the reader to drink from it deeply. The connection is instantly clear between the lustrous goblet—beautiful at a glance but flawed beneath its meticulously-applied gilding—and the seemingly perfect marriages of the Verver father and daughter to young consorts who make elegant figures in the world and yet harbor dark secrets under their exquisitely refined exteriors. Like the bowl itself, the seemingly harmonious relations binding the four central characters to one another are little more than a brilliant counterfeit—a dazzling show of manners and unanimity, put on for each other as much as for the outside world, that serves only to disguise the corruption and claustrophobia poisoning the relationships from within.
“I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.”
“A brilliant, perfect surface—to begin with at least. I see.”
“The golden bowl—as it WAS to have been.” And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. “The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack.”
What I particularly loved about this novel, and why I think it is ultimately more interesting and nuanced than James’ better-known work The Portrait of a Lady, is that it is profoundly morally ambiguous. Where the reader is clearly meant to feel compassion for Isabel Archer and loathe Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady, it is entirely unclear where our sympathies are supposed to lie in The Golden Bowl. In The Portrait of a Lady, as in most novels, the protagonist and antagonist are clearly delineated—the straightforward line between good and evil crisply and unwaveringly marked in a steady hand. In The Golden Bowl, on the other hand, no such clear line is ever drawn—and the reader searching for moral clarity or resolution is left entirely at sea, tossed relentlessly upon the shadowy gray waves of uncertainty.
Who, ultimately, is at fault in the novel? Is it, as it would seem at first glance, the two worldly and secretive lovers, mutely standing guard at the locked door of their shared past, guilty of fresh acts of infidelity? Is the mere fact of their duplicitousness enough to condemn them, even in the face of their noble intentions to do no harm? The Prince and Charlotte entered into their respective marriages believing themselves strong enough to renounce one another—a sin, perhaps, of overconfidence in the strength of their own resolves, but certainly not one of meticulously planned deception or malevolent scheming. Can we truly blame them for crumpling under the weight of the circumstances, which seemed bent on constantly and painfully throwing the pair together? When it almost seemed as if fate were arranging things just precisely so as to reunite them, are they entirely at fault for giving in to what they viewed as its inexorable and alluring dictates?
Nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid.
And, equally as important, are the seemingly naive American father and daughter duo really so innocent? Do these two avid collectors, of human beings as well as antiques, not bear some of the blame for viewing their charming spouses as the crowing acquisitions to their glorious collections of priceless artifacts? Are they not at fault for treating their partners as objects rather than people, for holding the Prince and Charlotte in bonds as if they were mere toys that had been purchased and paid for? For it becomes clear, as the novel progresses, that the Ververs ultimately view their young consorts as their possessions—beautiful and docile ornaments that will complete the perfect picture they aim to make of their lives. Is it not a sin, too, to believe that human souls can be bought and sold if only the price is high enough?
Mrs. Verver and the Prince fairly “placed” themselves, however unwittingly, as the high expressions of the kind of human furniture required, esthetically, by such a scene. The fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase. There was much indeed in the tone in which Adam Verver spoke again, and who shall say where his thought stopped? “Le compte y est. You’ve got some good things.”
Maggie met it afresh—“Ah, don’t they look well?”
Don’t enter into a James novel, particularly this one, expecting it to be a straightforward journey from point A to point B. Don’t even expect a slightly indirect route with a few detours here and there. James’ work is almost all detour—but detour that is gorgeously written, brilliantly conceived of, and remarkably insightful. If you want a book that never deviates from the direct course of its narrative, that moves from plot point to plot point with speed and unwavering focus, this isn’t it. If you’re willing to trust James, though, to entirely give yourself over into his hands and follow his thoughts where they lead—not constantly holding your breath and waiting for the next big event to take place, but simply marveling at the richness of the prose, the impossibly enigmatic moral ambiguity of the characters, the mind-bogglingly complex and nuanced interpersonal interactions—I promise you won’t be disappointed.
The beauty of The Golden Bowl isn’t in the so-called “big” moments, the shocking revelations or the seismic shifts in relationships. The beauty is in the details, even those that feel superfluous at the time. Perhaps it is precisely in those details that seem least important that the most beauty lies, in fact. It is in the incredible intricacy, the exquisite subtlety of the narrative that such a richness of meaning lies. It is a novel that demands a wealth of careful attention, of the sort we rarely are willing to expend in our fast-paced modern world. But it also a novel that recompenses the reader tenfold for their efforts. The book itself is like the site of an archeological dig, filled with a wealth of precious artifacts quietly begging to be unearthed. It is a mine of a novel, patiently waiting for the reader to excavate and examine all of the glittering gems that James has so artfully embedded and concealed throughout.
It was all, at bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold, still flame; where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in spite of the general tendency of the “devouring element” to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with unconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires.
Like most of James’ novels, The Golden Bowl centers around a cast of meticulously drawn and deliciously ambiguous characters, whose convoluted relationships with one another are riddled with duplicity and haunted by the specter of secrets locked away in dusty rooms, just waiting to reemerge. The story follows a rich American businessman and widower, Mr. Verver, and his daughter Maggie, as they both enter into seemingly perfect marriages that later reveal themselves to have built upon a foundation of lies more extensive and convoluted than either of them could have fathomed. The credulous and kind-hearted Maggie, the youthful picture of American innocence, first weds an impoverished but elegant Italian prince Amerigano, who, on the surface, appears be a faultless spouse. A few years later, Mr. Verver becomes enamored of the formidable Charlotte, a brilliant young woman of little means but great ambition and a friend of his daughter. The two marry after a brief but tender courtship, and Maggie gives her blessing, hoping the companionship of a beautiful and clever wife will provide him with protection from the importunate advances of scheming and seductive fortune-hunters. More importantly, however, she imagines that it will be a consolation to him for the loss of his daughter to her own marriage, a marriage that has taken her away from her familial home and divided her love, once wholly the possession of her father, between the two most important men in her life.
Little do either of the good-natured Ververs know, however, that the Prince and Charlotte were previously attached to one another, and only abandoned their relations in the face of insurmountable pecuniary difficulties that made marriage to one another a dreary prospect for the two natural voluptuaries, if not an altogether impossibility. And while the bond between these charming figures may be hidden in the past as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is far from forgotten, the passion between them anything but extinguished. The ill-fated foursome—the father, the daughter, and their two beguiling spouses—come to constitute the central cast of the novel, and the complexity of the dynamics between them makes the typical love triangle look like child’s play. Witnessing the odd and convoluted web of connections between the four precariously form, and then slowly but irreparably devolve, is fascinating. It is utterly enthralling to watch as the tangle of relationships, poisoned by deception and secrecy, quietly but bitterly implode at their core, retaining every outward appearance of respectability while contempt and wounded outrage smolder imperceptibly under the surface.
She was keeping her head for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her forcing the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air.
Also central to the narrative is an inanimate object—the beautiful but flawed golden bowl from which the novel takes its name—that serves not only on a literal level as an important plot point, but also a profound symbol for the elegant deception around which the tale revolves. The portentous bowl is introduced at the very beginning of the novel, its significance almost immediately apparent. It is found by the Prince and Charlotte in a curious antique shop a day before the Prince’s wedding, where the pair claim to be shopping for a gift for Maggie—a clever ruse that allows them to spend a few more gloriously free and unobserved hours together before their inevitable and (so they believe) irrevocable separation. The bowl, which appears to be made entirely of glistening gold, catches their eye amongst the age-worn trinkets and trifles of the strange little store, and the shopkeeper, an old man as enigmatic as the mysterious golden goblet itself, tries to sell it to them. Ultimately the two leaved empty handed, but possessed of the knowledge that the golden bowl, which appears at first glance to be a luminous and flawless treasure, is not pure gold, but mere gilded crystal. The crystal is, moreover, cracked—albeit imperceptibly, its tiny fissure covered by sparkling gilding but ominously ever-present nonetheless.
“A crack is a crack—and an omen’s an omen.”
Explicit mention of the golden bowl subsequently disappears from the narrative for a time (though it does menacingly reemerge later in the book to serve a crucial role), but the well of symbolism the object provides is embedded in almost every page, begging the reader to drink from it deeply. The connection is instantly clear between the lustrous goblet—beautiful at a glance but flawed beneath its meticulously-applied gilding—and the seemingly perfect marriages of the Verver father and daughter to young consorts who make elegant figures in the world and yet harbor dark secrets under their exquisitely refined exteriors. Like the bowl itself, the seemingly harmonious relations binding the four central characters to one another are little more than a brilliant counterfeit—a dazzling show of manners and unanimity, put on for each other as much as for the outside world, that serves only to disguise the corruption and claustrophobia poisoning the relationships from within.
“I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.”
“A brilliant, perfect surface—to begin with at least. I see.”
“The golden bowl—as it WAS to have been.” And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. “The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack.”
What I particularly loved about this novel, and why I think it is ultimately more interesting and nuanced than James’ better-known work The Portrait of a Lady, is that it is profoundly morally ambiguous. Where the reader is clearly meant to feel compassion for Isabel Archer and loathe Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady, it is entirely unclear where our sympathies are supposed to lie in The Golden Bowl. In The Portrait of a Lady, as in most novels, the protagonist and antagonist are clearly delineated—the straightforward line between good and evil crisply and unwaveringly marked in a steady hand. In The Golden Bowl, on the other hand, no such clear line is ever drawn—and the reader searching for moral clarity or resolution is left entirely at sea, tossed relentlessly upon the shadowy gray waves of uncertainty.
Who, ultimately, is at fault in the novel? Is it, as it would seem at first glance, the two worldly and secretive lovers, mutely standing guard at the locked door of their shared past, guilty of fresh acts of infidelity? Is the mere fact of their duplicitousness enough to condemn them, even in the face of their noble intentions to do no harm? The Prince and Charlotte entered into their respective marriages believing themselves strong enough to renounce one another—a sin, perhaps, of overconfidence in the strength of their own resolves, but certainly not one of meticulously planned deception or malevolent scheming. Can we truly blame them for crumpling under the weight of the circumstances, which seemed bent on constantly and painfully throwing the pair together? When it almost seemed as if fate were arranging things just precisely so as to reunite them, are they entirely at fault for giving in to what they viewed as its inexorable and alluring dictates?
Nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid.
And, equally as important, are the seemingly naive American father and daughter duo really so innocent? Do these two avid collectors, of human beings as well as antiques, not bear some of the blame for viewing their charming spouses as the crowing acquisitions to their glorious collections of priceless artifacts? Are they not at fault for treating their partners as objects rather than people, for holding the Prince and Charlotte in bonds as if they were mere toys that had been purchased and paid for? For it becomes clear, as the novel progresses, that the Ververs ultimately view their young consorts as their possessions—beautiful and docile ornaments that will complete the perfect picture they aim to make of their lives. Is it not a sin, too, to believe that human souls can be bought and sold if only the price is high enough?
Mrs. Verver and the Prince fairly “placed” themselves, however unwittingly, as the high expressions of the kind of human furniture required, esthetically, by such a scene. The fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase. There was much indeed in the tone in which Adam Verver spoke again, and who shall say where his thought stopped? “Le compte y est. You’ve got some good things.”
Maggie met it afresh—“Ah, don’t they look well?”
November 27, 2023
1902 ve 1904 yılları arasında seri bir şekilde yayımladığı Güvercinin Kanatları ve The Ambassadors ile birlikte Henry James’in en güçlü eserlerinden kabul ediliyor Altın Kase. Romanın, klasiklerin geneline söyleyebileceğimiz gibi klişe bir konusu var. James iki evliliğin hikayesini anlatıyor. Amerikalı bir sanat koleksiyoneri olan Adam Verver kızını bir prensle evlendirir. Avrupa’da son demlerini yaşayan kraliyet ailelerinin son üyelerinden birini de tıpkı bir sanat eseri gibi satın alır. Maggie evlendikten sonra babasının yalnız kalacağını düşündüğü için babasına da uygun bir eş bulmak ister. Bulduğu eşse Maggie’nin kocasının eski sevgilisidir. Bu iki çiftin kışkırttığı olaylar, sakladıkları sırlar ve çevirdikleri dolaplar üzerine bir roman.
Konusu basit gibi görünse de Henry James muazzam bir derinlikle anlatıyor. Baba kız ilişkisi, eş ilişkileri, yasak ilişkiler gibi birçok farklı ilişkiyi derinlemesine işliyor. Eşler arasında olduğu kadar arkadaşlık ve aile ilişkilerindeki sadakati de sorguluyor. Romanın dili çok dolambaçlı, ilişki ağının genişliğini ve detaylarını okuru yormadan anlatıyor. Okurken bir ihanet hikayesine dönüşeceğini düşündüm ama James daha fazlasını veriyor. Sadakatsizliklerin ardında yıkılmış insanlar bulmuyoruz. Baba figürü özellikle ilginçti. Kızını evlendirirken aslında kızına bir unvan almak istiyor. James’in birçok romanında işlediği masum Amerikalı ve medeni ama yozlaşmış Avrupalı imgesi bu kitapta da var. Bunu her ne kadar melodrama çevirse de kötülüğü genel olarak Avrupa’ya yerleştiriyor. Baba da masum bir Amerikalı aslında. Ama James insan psikolojisine öyle hassasiyetle yaklaşıyor ki yakalamak istediği imgenin de ötesine geçiyor. Babanın da pek masum olmadığını fark ediyoruz okudukça.
Baba gibi ihanete uğrayan Maggie de masumiyetini sorguladığım karakterlerden. Babası bir prens satın alırken bundan memnun. Aldatılma sonrasında bile sanki bir sadakatsizlik gösteri izlemiş gibi kurnaz davranır. Romanın çatışmasını psikolojik olarak harika bir gerginlikle kuruyor. Duygular ve tepkiler üzerine küçük detayları, karakterlerin amaçları ve tepkilerini kademeli olarak berraklaştırıyor. Yoğun anlatımını eğlenceli hale getiren de bu stil oluyor. Tüm karakterlerin psikolojilerini girift bir ağ gibi kullanıyor. Modernist yazarların kullandığı bir yöntem bu. Proust, Joyce gibi modernizmin devlerini önceleyen bir yazar kesinlikle. Modernistlerin yaptığı gibi tüm olayları karakterlerin diyaloglarından öğrenmemizi sağlıyor. Bilinç akışına giden yolda bir basamak olduğunu düşünüyorum. Klasikler içinde hiçbir zaman popüler olmasa da çok kendine has bir roman. Klasik değil modern klasik diye sınıflandırılacak kadar ilginç ve yenilikçi bir üslubu var. Çok keyifli bir okumaydı.
Konusu basit gibi görünse de Henry James muazzam bir derinlikle anlatıyor. Baba kız ilişkisi, eş ilişkileri, yasak ilişkiler gibi birçok farklı ilişkiyi derinlemesine işliyor. Eşler arasında olduğu kadar arkadaşlık ve aile ilişkilerindeki sadakati de sorguluyor. Romanın dili çok dolambaçlı, ilişki ağının genişliğini ve detaylarını okuru yormadan anlatıyor. Okurken bir ihanet hikayesine dönüşeceğini düşündüm ama James daha fazlasını veriyor. Sadakatsizliklerin ardında yıkılmış insanlar bulmuyoruz. Baba figürü özellikle ilginçti. Kızını evlendirirken aslında kızına bir unvan almak istiyor. James’in birçok romanında işlediği masum Amerikalı ve medeni ama yozlaşmış Avrupalı imgesi bu kitapta da var. Bunu her ne kadar melodrama çevirse de kötülüğü genel olarak Avrupa’ya yerleştiriyor. Baba da masum bir Amerikalı aslında. Ama James insan psikolojisine öyle hassasiyetle yaklaşıyor ki yakalamak istediği imgenin de ötesine geçiyor. Babanın da pek masum olmadığını fark ediyoruz okudukça.
Baba gibi ihanete uğrayan Maggie de masumiyetini sorguladığım karakterlerden. Babası bir prens satın alırken bundan memnun. Aldatılma sonrasında bile sanki bir sadakatsizlik gösteri izlemiş gibi kurnaz davranır. Romanın çatışmasını psikolojik olarak harika bir gerginlikle kuruyor. Duygular ve tepkiler üzerine küçük detayları, karakterlerin amaçları ve tepkilerini kademeli olarak berraklaştırıyor. Yoğun anlatımını eğlenceli hale getiren de bu stil oluyor. Tüm karakterlerin psikolojilerini girift bir ağ gibi kullanıyor. Modernist yazarların kullandığı bir yöntem bu. Proust, Joyce gibi modernizmin devlerini önceleyen bir yazar kesinlikle. Modernistlerin yaptığı gibi tüm olayları karakterlerin diyaloglarından öğrenmemizi sağlıyor. Bilinç akışına giden yolda bir basamak olduğunu düşünüyorum. Klasikler içinde hiçbir zaman popüler olmasa da çok kendine has bir roman. Klasik değil modern klasik diye sınıflandırılacak kadar ilginç ve yenilikçi bir üslubu var. Çok keyifli bir okumaydı.
October 9, 2020
I’ve never resented yet respected a book so much. I’m more torn than Natalie Imbruglia. The prose is decked out with all the bells and whistles and on a close reading level it’s stunning. This depth of text, however, for 464 pages, becomes a slog through a quagmire of metaphor, hidden meaning and repetitive emotion. As Cheryl Cole tells us, “Too much of anything can make you sick, even the good can be a curse”. So while I respect James and this novel’s position as a classic of the early modern period, I recommend you quite literally never buy or even touch it.
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