Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human.

 Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, first published in 1936

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

This book sort of has a plot. That's not loaded with any good or bad opinions on that, it's just, imo, the truth. It's very lyrical, and very moving, and while a few big things here and there 'happen', it all kind of feels like it's taken place somewhere in the background, and what's really most important is the poetry of the prose. 

Here's our cast of characters: 

Hedvig and Guido Volkbein, parents of...

Felix Volkbein, the 'Baron' (not really a baron, long story), who eventually marries -- Robin Vote     

And who together have a son that they name Guido.

But then Robin leaves Felix for a woman named -- Nora Flood, and for a while they are very passionately in love, until Robin leaves Nora for a woman named == Jenny Petheridge. Nora is still very much in love with Robin, btw. 

Everyone has a mutual friend named Dr. Matthew O'Connor, who appears throughout and tries to console the jilted ex-lovers of Robin, and the story mostly takes place in three cities: Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Hello, blobbists! 

  It is a not-so-crisp day in February, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on my latest book. I finished Nightwood a while ago, and while there isn't much in the way of plot, as I mentioned, there's a lot of exquisite writing, so I found myself taking my time with this post. I don't know that I particularly liked reading Nightwood, but I am very glad that I read it, if that makes any sense. ;) 

My thoughts on the introduction

My copy of the book starts off with an introduction by Jeanette Winterson, who seems to be a rather famous British author. As you know if you read my blob regularly, I don't like to read things that aren't the book before I read the book, so I read the introduction afterwards, and I found it quite surprisingly enchanting, and quite spot-on in terms of the reflections on the book. Here are some of my favorite of Winterson's lines:

• Nightwood is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and strange, and reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass. You have taken in more than you know, and it will go on doing its work. From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined. Isn't this a beautiful image?

• Robin's passivity, Jenny's predatory nature, and Nora's passionate devotion make an impossible triangle. The daily assaults of selfishness and self-harm do not offer a picture of love between women as anything safe or easy. Oooh, this one really stuck with me. I've definitely seen the book described as a lesbian 'cult classic', and I can see why, and how revolutionary it must have been to emerge in the 1930s featuring so many versions of love between women.

• Nightwood is not afraid of feeling. 

• The best texts are time machines; they are of their moment, and can tell it, and they can take us back there later. But they are something more, too - they live on into the future because they were never strapped into time. This is just lovely. 

• Nightwood, peculiar, eccentric, particular, shaded against the insistence of too much daylight, is a book for introverts, in that we are all introverts in our after-hours secrets and deepest loves. Again, such stunning prose! Perhaps I must find myself some Jeanette Winterson to read!

General reflections

Okay, well enough of other people talking about the book. Let's discuss what I really liked about it. 

Writing (like Proust) about music

Something I've come across in reading 'classic' novels is more prose specifically written to describe classical music, and as a classically-trained cellist, I find it so enchanting. Maybe there's more prose out there in contemporary fiction that discusses music, but it seems to have been more 'au courant' at certain periods to describe things like operas, symphonies, and small quartets, like Proust's spectacular descriptions of music at Madame Verdurin's house. Here's a line I loved:

Three massive pianos (Hedvig had played the waltzes of her time with the masterly stroke of a man, in the tempo of her blood, rapid and rising - that quick mannerliness of touch associated with the playing of the Viennese, who, though pricked with the love of rhythm, execute its demands in the duelling manner) sprawled over the thick dragon's-blood pile of rugs from Madrid.

What you drink based on where you are

There's a great line about beverages and geography that I loved.

Austria and tea could never go together. All cities have a particular and special beverage suited to them. What do you think the beverage of your city or town is, blobbist? Do you agree with this sentiment? If Philly had a drink, I think it would be...water ice? LOL. I don't think that counts as a beverage but whatever. It's sort of liquid.

Zeugma

Again, if you've been following along, you know how much of a sucker I am for zeugma. Here's how the internet defines it: zeugma - a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g., John and his license expired last week) or to two others of which it semantically suits only one (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts).

His chest was as heavy as if it were supporting the combined weight of their apparel and their destiny.

The cast of characters, presented in vignettes

Guido #1, on hiding his blood

The elder Guido is hiding from his wife and family that he has Jewish roots, which I thought might end up playing a larger part, but ultimately served as a sort of brewing/festering family secret in a time when anti-Semitism was agressively present. (Not that it's nonexistent today, tbh.)

• on 'family portraits' that are hung on his wall: The likeness was accidental. Had anyone cared to look into the matter they would have discovered these canvases to be reproductions of two intrepid and ancient actors. Guido had found them in some forgotten and dusty corner and had purchased them when he had been sure that he would need an alibi for the blood. I love so much about this - it's basically the equivalent of putting up photos with their stock photo in them and being like, yeah, those are my grandparents/cousins/etc. I also think 'alibi for the blood' is a stunning phrase.

'Baron' Felix

Felix is not, in fact a Baron, as his father has made up his lineage as part of his attempt to hide his roots. I don't think Felix actually knows this, though.

• Felix was heavier than his father and taller. His hair began too far back on his forehead. His face was a long stout oval, suffering a laborious melancholy. Wow. What a stunning portrayal of a man. ;)

• He was usually seen walking or driving alone, dressed as if expecting to participate in some great event, though there was no function in the world for which he could be said to be properly garbed; wishing to be correct at any moment, he was tailored in part for the evening and in part for the day. This is so spectacularly sad, and paints such a perfect picture of Felix, who seems to be living in a sort of permanent stage of FOMO.

• In nineteen hundred and twenty he was in Paris (his blind eye had kept him out of the army), still spatted, still wearing his cutaway, bowing, searching, with quick pendulous movements, for the correct thing with which to pay tribute: the right street, the right cafe, the right building, the right vista. Again, Felix is so perfectly portrayed as a man without a home, without a real sense of self, always trying to find where he fits.

Nora Flood

Nora is the first woman to be Robin's lover, and the one she leaves Felix for. Nora and Jenny are, imho, significantly more likable than Robin, but perhaps that's something about how love works; it doesn't always attract us to the kindest people, and we cannot always control our desires.

• The strangest 'salon' in America was Nora's. It was the 'paupers' salon for poets, radicals, beggars, artists, and people in love; for Catholics, Protestants, Brahmins, dabblers in black magic and medicine; all these could be seen sitting about her oak table before the huge fire, Nora listening, her hand on her hound, the firelight throwing her shadow and his high against the wall. Of all that ranting, roaring crew, she alone stood out. Don't you just want to drop everything and go to Nora's salon? I sure do!

• There was some derangement in her equilibrium that kept her immune from her own descent. I'm still not really sure what this sentence means, but I love it.

• One missed in her a sense of humour. Her smile was quick and definite, but disengaged.

• Matthew, to Nora: 'You never loved anyone before, and you'll never love anyone again, as you love Robin.' This seems to be the case for anyone who loves Robin, which seems to be unlucky for them in the end.

• Nora, to Matthew: 'There is no last reckoning for those who have loved too long, so for me there is no end. Only I can't, I can't wait for ever!' she said frantically. 'I can't live without my heart!' So sad! So heartbreaking!

Jenny Petherbridge

Jenny Petherbridge kind of steals Robin out from under Nora, although again, I'm not so sure Robin is a such a prize. 

• Jenny Petherbridge was a widow, a middle-aged woman who had been married four times. Each husband had wasted away and died; she had been like a squirrel racing a wheel day and night in an endeavour to make them historical; they could not survive it. I love this line so much. 

• She had no sense of humour or peace or rest. Apparently Robin is attracted to women without a sense of humor. 

• The books in her library were other people's selections. This is a real black mark on her character in my book. But at least she has a library!

• She was avid and disorderly in her heart. Oooh, I love this line.

• She wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing. And this one. 

Little Guido, son of the 'Baron' Felix and Robin

• Mentally deficient and emotionally excessive, an addict to death; at ten, barely as tall as a child of six, wearing spectacles, stumbling when he tried to run, with cold hands and anxious face, he followed his father, trembling with an excitement that was a precocious ecstasy. This is such an amazing sentence to capture little Guido. 

The Doctor (Dr. Matthew O'Connor), an Irishman from the Barbary Coast (Pacific Street, San Francisco), whose interest in gynaecology had driven him half around the world

• the Doctor - My mind is so rich that it is always wandering. ME TOO, Matthew, ME TOO.

• Felix thought to himself that undoubtedly the doctor was a great liar, but a valuable liar. Lololll, what makes a liar valuable, I wonder?

• 'Oh,' he cried. 'A broken heart have you! I have falling arches, flying dandruff, a floating kidney, shattered nerves and a broken heart! But do I scream that an eagle has me by the balls or has dropped his oyster on my heart? Am I going forward screaming that it hurts, that my kind goes back, or holding my guts as if they were a coil of knives?' I love this so much. Matthew is talking to Nora, who is complaining of her heartbreak from Robin, and this is Matthew's comeback. 

• Are you the only person with a bare foot pressed down on a rake? Well? Are you? ;)

Robin Vote, the center of the love triangle (or love square?), who may or may not be worth the fuss

• She hates everyone near her. WOW. What a real catch!

• She wants to be loved and left alone, all at the same time. OK, that's not difficult or problematic at all. 

• She would kill the world to get at herself if the world were in the way, and it is in the way. What a force! I love this line, because I feel like it so perfectly captures her aura.

And now allow me to present: the three eras of Robin

1 - Courting Robin/The Robin and Felix era

• She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in man's image is a figure of doom. Because of this, Felix found her presence painful, and yet a happiness. Isn't that just Robin in a nutshell? Painful, but also a happiness?

• Robin took to wandering again, to intermittent travel from which she came back hours, days later, disinterested. People were uneasy when she spoke to them; confronted with a catastrophe that had yet no beginning. God, this is such a beautiful line. 

• Felix, later: Why did she marry me? It has placed me in the dark for the rest of my life. Poor Felix! Like Nora, and later Jenny, I think everyone is a bit worse for the wear after loving Robin!

2 - The Robin and Nora Era

• Nora closed her house. They travelled from Munich, Vienna and Budapest into Paris. Robin told only a little of her life, but she kept repeating in one way or another her wish for a home, as if she were afraid she would be lost again, as if she were aware, without conscious knowledge, that she belonged to Nora, and that if Nora did not make it permanent by her own strength, she would forget. This is just so stunning, and feels like such an apt capture of their relationship.

• In the passage of their lives together every object in the garden, every item in the house, every word they spoke, attested to their mutual love, the combining of their humours. 

• Unconsciously at first, she went about disturbing nothing; then she became aware that her soft and careful movements were the outcome of an unreasoning fear - if she disarranged anything Robin might become confused - might lose the scent of home. I love this so much, as if Robin is a pet that needs to have a constant scent of home to stay rooted.

• To keep her (in Robin there was this tragic longing to be kept, knowing herself astray) Nora knew now that there was no way but death. In death Robin would belong to her. 

• As an amputated hand cannot be disowned because it is experiencing a futurity, of which the victim is its forebear, so Robin was an amputation that Nora could not renounce. God, I love this line. I mean, that is a serious and likely often painful kind of love, but just stunning prose.

• Surprising, isn't it, I'm happier when I'm alone now, without her, because when she was here with me, in this house, I had to watch her wanting to go and yet to stay. This seems to be the case with many of Robin's lovers, where the absence of her brings a kind of peace, but also a deep sense of loss.

• Matthew - Oh, for God's sweet sake, didn't she ever disgust you! Weren't you sometimes pleased that you had the night to yourself, wishing, when she did come home, that it was never? LOLOLOLOL I love this line so much. Matthew is talking to Nora, who can't stop waxing poetic about her time with Robin, and he's finally just like, come on, didn't she ever just GET ON YOUR NERVES?!

• Was I her devil trying to bring her comfort? There are so many sentences in this book that I feel like could be starters or prompts for entire novels. There's another introduction by T.S. Eliot, who championed this book and its publication, and I can see why he loved the poetry of the lines so much.

• 'Robin can go anywhere, do anything, because she forgets, and I nowhere because I remember. Wow. So powerful. 

3 - The Robin and Jenny era

• As, from the solid archives of usage, she had stolen or appropriated the dignity of speech, so she appropriated the most passionate love that she knew, Nora's for Robin. She was a 'squatter' by instinct. I love this description of how Jenny covets and then steals Robin. 

• Jenny knew about Nora immediately; to know Robin ten minutes was to know about Nora. Robin spoke of her in long, rambling, impassioned sentences. It had caught Jenny by the ear - she listened, and both loves seemed to be one and her own. From that moment the catastrophe was inevitable. Again, a whole novel could start with that: "from that moment the catastrophe was inevitable".

• She (Jenny) did not understand anything Robin felt or did, which was more unendurable than her absence. Jenny walked up and down her darkened hotel room, crying and stumbling. Again, sadly it seems like winning Robin's love is not such a great prize, but Jenny must find this out on her own, just as Felix and Nora did.

Referents and Reverberations

This is the section where I talk about books this book reminded me of, whether they came before (referents) or after (reverberations). 

There were two things that this book really reminded me of: 

(1) Proust - The way Proust writes about love, especially unrequited, or jilted love, felt so familiar as I was reading these descriptions of Felix and Nora and Jenny's love for Robin, and their feeling that something absolutely life-alteringly bad would happen if they didn't pursue it, even at their own peril. Here's one of Proust's lines as a reminder: 

And this malady which Swann's love had become had so proliferated, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after his death, was so utterly inseparable from him, that it would have been impossible to eradicate it without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his love was no longer operable.

Also, the way Barnes described music was very reminiscent of/made me nostalgic for the way Proust writes about classical music.  

(2) The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, particularly the Virginia Woolf narrative - something about the way that Robin was simultaneously desperately desired by her partners but also kind unable to be fixed in place or time felt very reminiscent of Woolf's wanderings and unwillingness/inability to stay moored to her husband. 

Lines I Liked (this is a trimmed down version, because there were so many!)

• Hedvig had liked things in twos and threes.

• She seemed to be expecting a bird. I love this line so much. What does it mean to be expecting a bird? I love it. 

• He moved with a humble hysteria. Mm. This line is just so fantastic.

• The last muscle of aristocracy is madness. Again. So great.

• Her thoughts were in themselves a form of locomotion.

• The darkness is the closet in which your lover roosts her heart. This was really in contention for the title, but ultimately I felt like the title captured Robin's intensity better.

• An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

• Bend down the tree of knowledge and you'll unroost a strange bird.

• Do you think there is no lament in this world but your own? Again, could be a whole novel!

• If you don't want to suffer you should tear yourself apart. God, so eloquent. 

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines, describing some of Robin's intense attachments. 

They were so 'haunted' of each other that separation was impossible.

The louder she cried out the farther away went the floor below, as if Robin and she, in their extremity, were a pair of opera glasses turned to the wrong end, diminishing in their painful love; a speed that ran away with the two ends of the building, stretching her apart.

With hope that you experience love, but perhaps never a love so passionately painful as that of falling in love with Robin Vote, I'll leave you to return to the rest of your day! Keep passing the open windows, keep safe, and keep reading! I'm on to Middlesex.