FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78  
79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   >>   >|  
the great Balzacian world has the power of making every other milieu seem a little faded and pallid. But one got a delicious sense of contrast reading him just there in those golden evenings, and across the margin of one's mind floated rich and thrilling suggestions of the vast vistas of human life. One had the dreamy pleasure that some sequestered seminarist might have, who, on a sunny bench, under high monastic walls, reads of the gallantries and adventures of the great ungodly world outside. Certainly the heavy avalanches of scoriac passion which rend their way through the pages of the Human Comedy make even the graceful blasphemies of the Oscar Wilde group, in those fastidious enclosures, seem a babyish pretence of naughtiness. I remember how I used to return after long rambles through those fields and village lanes which one reads about in "Thyrsis," and linger in one of the cavernous book-shops which lie--like little Bodleians of liberal welcome--anywhere between New College and Balliol, hunting for Balzac in the original French. Since then I have not been able to endure to read him in any edition except in that very cheapest one, in dusty green paper, with the pages always so resistently uncut and tinted with a peculiar brownish tint such as I have not seemed to find in any other volumes. What an enormous number of that particular issue there must be in Paris, if one can find so many of them still, sun-bleached and weather-stained, in the old book-shops of Oxford! Translations of Balzac, especially in those "editions de luxe" with dreadful interpretative prefaces by English professors, are odious to me. They seem the sort of thing one expects to find under glass-cases in the houses of cultured financiers. They are admirably adapted for wedding presents. And they have illustrations! That is really too much. A person who can endure to read Balzac, or any other great imaginative writer, in an edition with illustrations, is a person utterly outside the pale. It must be for barbarians of this sort that the custom has arisen of having handsome young women, representing feminine prettiness in general, put upon the covers of books in the way they put them upon chocolate boxes. I have seen even "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" prostituted in this manner. It is all on a par with every other aspect of modern life. Indeed it may be said that what chiefly distinguishes our age from previous ages is its habit of leaving no
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78  
79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Balzac

 

person

 

edition

 
endure
 

illustrations

 

volumes

 

cultured

 

odious

 

expects

 
houses

bleached

 

weather

 

stained

 
number
 

Oxford

 

interpretative

 

dreadful

 

prefaces

 

English

 

editions


financiers

 
enormous
 
Translations
 

professors

 
imaginative
 

aspect

 

modern

 

Indeed

 

manner

 

Urbervilles


prostituted

 
leaving
 

previous

 

chiefly

 
distinguishes
 
chocolate
 

writer

 

utterly

 
wedding
 
adapted

presents

 

barbarians

 

prettiness

 

feminine

 
general
 
covers
 
representing
 

arisen

 
custom
 

handsome