Robert HichensRezensionen

The book opens with a chapter describing Lord Reginald Hastings’s languid and self-adhering preparation for going out. It is a portrayal that makes him unsympathetic.
Reggie visits the Belgrave Square home of Mrs. Windsor, whose other guests include Esmé Amarinth. Both he and Mrs. Windsor hope to secure Reggie’s indolent life of beauty by marrying him to the riches of the other guest that evening, Lady Locke, Mrs. Windsor’s young widowed cousin. And Reggie, not disinclined, undertakes a diffident courtship of Lady Locke when the scene shifts to the country, where Mrs. Windsor invites them for a week in her cottage.
Lady Locke soon catches on and prepares herself for the expected proposal. At first, she’s amenable, although her feelings toward Reggie are more maternal than amorous. But, above all, Reggie confuses her. Early on, she says to herself: “I can’t understand him. . . . He seems to be talented, and yet an echo of another man, naturally good-hearted, full of horrible absurdities, a gentleman, and yet not a man at all. He says himself that he commits every sin that attracts him, but he does not look wicked. What is he? Is he being himself, or is he being Mr. Amarinth, or is he merely posing, or is he really hateful, or is he only whimsical, and clever, and absurd? What would he have been if he had never seen Mr. Amarinth?”
Her feelings turn to fury when she overhears Reggie promising her son, Tommy, a green carnation (Reggie and Esmé wear a fresh one in the lapel each day).
The green carnation is, of course, a potent symbol. Green is the color most closely associated with nature, but in a carnation, it is unnatural.
The green carnation was also, notoriously, concocted by Oscar Wilde. Indeed, the two men in the novel are modeled on Wilde and his notorious young companion, Lord Alfred (“Bosie”) Douglas. Moreover, the conversation abounds in Wildean epigrams, many of them, I learned after finishing the book, overheard on the lips of Wilde and Lord Douglas by Hichens.
Amarinth is depicted as an effete aesthete and playwright of minor achievement.
The novel tries to be light-hearted, but by making a brave choice—in England, 1894—to tackle “unnatural vice,” it makes its task difficult. In addition, some of the modest pleasure I took from the book was diminished when I learned that it was introduced as evidence when Wilde was put on trial two years after this book’s publication.
And as for Lady Locke’s speculation that Amarinth has corrupted Reggie—well, in the case of Oscar and Bosie, let’s say that is open to interpretation.

"Robert Smythe Hichens (1864-1950) was tot 1894 een vrij onbekende verhalenschrijver en journalist. In de winter van 1893-1894 vertoefde hij voor zijn gezondheid in Egypte, waar hij Lord Alfred Douglas ontmoette, die hem introduceerde in de kringen van zijn vriend Oscar Wilde. De decadente levensstijl van deze toen beroemde auteur inspireerde Hichens tot het schrijven van de briljante satirische roman The Green Carnation." Zo begint de uitleg op de achterflap van wat in 2005 door Zsuzsó Pennings in het Nederlands vertaald werd als De groene anjer en uitgegeven door Uitgeverij Voltaire.

Nu zal u, mocht u dat willen, vruchteloos zoeken naar Uitgeverij Voltaire. Voor zover ik weet, heeft ze na het uitgeven van nogal wat vertalingen van oudere werken de geest gegeven. En, eerlijk gezegd, ook de werken van Hichens zijn niet meer onder de levenden. Ja, u vindt nog wel korte pagina's op de diverse Wikipedia's over de schrijver, maar er zijn geen clubjes meer die zich bezig houden met 's mans werken, geen verenigingen die zijn nalatenschap in ere houden, geen fans die een of andere webpagina over hem bij mekaar gepend hebben.

Waarom? Wellicht omdat een satire die moet onderdoen voor het origineel niet bijzonder interessant is. En dat is het geval met De groene anjer. Ja, wellicht leidde de roman onbedoeld - want Hichens liet het boek uit de handel halen toen dat gebeurde omdat het hem "van een zeer slechte smaak [leek] te getuigen een dergelijk schotschrift tegen een beroemd man te blijven verkopen wanneer die man in moeilijkheden is geraakt" - tot de gevangenisstraf van Oscar Wilde wegens homofilie, maar je moet al stekeblind zijn om die homofilie niet even goed tussen de lijnen door te kunnen lezen in de werken van Wilde zélf. En Wilde schreef gewoon beter.

Conclusie: als je werken wil lezen uit de zogenaamde Naughty Nineties, ga dan gewoon voor die van Oscar Wilde.

This book is one long "Hipsters suck!" rant. Hipsters in 1895 England being dandy aesthetes like Oscar Wilde and Bosie. It's like, "Look at these rich kids, pretending to be *authentic* and being *creative* the privileged bastards. I am seething with... with... envy! No wait, I shouldn't be. At least I am not a gaymo like tbose fags." It was really funny to read. Not funny like it was clever (because it wasn't) but funny like a car crash.

I spotted this at a used bookstore when I was newly back from Oxford, finishing my thesis in Vancouver, and in such a whirlpool of Wilde that I don't think I could've even appreciated the amusement of it. Two years later it reminds me of how entrenched I once was, but how much I still love it all.

I wouldn't recommend this book for entertainment unless you are really already interested in Wilde's history and aesthetic life & philosophy of the 1890s, because it is so very specific to that ethos. The things Amarinth says are completely over-the-top, but they're very much in the style of Wilde and I think if you took a few phrases out of context, just before they become ridiculous, I'd have a hard time identifying whether they were genuinely Wilde or not. Everything is rose-coloured and gilded and shimmering purple.

It would be so easy to write a paper about Lady Locke's anxiety about the green carnation. Much too easy, really. This is not subtle satire, there is nothing cloaked here, and I'm sure it's not just my background in Wilde's life & times that makes me say so.

An acknowledged classic of the psychological horror subgenre. The concept is interesting and original, and there are some genuinely creepy moments, but in the final analysis "Guildea" suffers from a plodding, overly literal execution. Its clinical, yes-this-is-really-happening atmosphere reminded me of Fitz-James O'Brien's "What Was It?", but this story is longer--much longer--and that works to its detriment, too. Had Hichens shaved off fifteen or twenty pages, it would have resulted in a tighter, more fully engaging tale. Still, "Guildea" has stood the test of time for a reason, and anyone with an interest in the evolution of horror literature should seek it out. It's the story of a haunting, yes, but a haunting quite unlike anything you'll find in the standard ghost yarn.

A one-word description of this book might be "overwrought." On the one hand, it is the romance to end all romances, but on the other hand, it is also a story of religious ecstasy in the context of Catholic faith. At some point, the romantic and religious rapture seem to merge, and in the end one is destroyed by the other. The reader is carried away by all this euphoria through an environment of living, breathing and loving the northern Sahara desert, descriptions of which are almost as infinite as the Sahara itself.

It is small wonder that The Garden of Allah was used by Hollywood not once, but three times as the basis for a desert romance, the most recent in 1936 starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, with Basil Rathbone thrown in for good measure. The movie pales by comparison to the book. It doesn't begin to convey the intensity of emotion found on the printed page. And it turns the plot upside down and in so doing loses significant elements of drama that lead to an actual climax in the book that is entirely missing in the film.

To be sure The Garden of Allah is a product of its time. According to Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Journey through Literary History by Brian Stableford (1998), it is very much in the vein of Marie Corelli's fiction which was very popular at the turn of the last century. She too managed to turn romantic love into a religious experience when elements of the occult and religious fervor were almost commonplace in some types of fiction.

The central figure of the novel — as opposed to the movie — is a thirtyish aristocratic Englishwoman, aptly named Domini, whose life has been quite sheltered in spite of her age and wealth. She embarks on a voyage of self-discovery which takes her to the Algerian desert. On her way to Beni-Mara, an oasis where the railroad line ends and the northern edge of the desert begins, she encounters a boorish man named Boris who seems to lack the most basic manners. They end up at the same hotel and every time they meet in passing, he repeatedly manifests such rudeness that she comes to believe his is a destructive personality.

Inexplicably — and I mean it: it is never explained, at all — Domini and Boris get married against the better judgment of the local priest, a friendly Italian count who has seen Boris in action and, of course, a native sand diviner who has foretold Domini's future with forbidding overtones. Directly after the wedding, the two lovebirds embark on a voyage into the desert, complete with sandstorm, camel caravan, Arab retainers, boundless dunes and mirages. This desert honeymoon symbolizes the self-discovery that continues for both Domini and Boris and becomes a rite of passage that takes an unforeseen turn and results in an ending that could not have been predicted early on. Domini sets out in search of freedom and truth, and as the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that Boris's own search for freedom is blocked by a lack of truth.

Modern readers don't seem to care for the seemingly unending descriptions — in this case of love, religion, the desert — but I cannot help admiring Hichens' ability to use style, syntax and sentence structure to convey the buildup to a climax — most notably the passages describing their love on the wedding night. Remember, this is 1904, and the word "sex" appears nowhere in the 490 pages of this book. At the outset, I appreciated especially the picture of the desert community of Beni-Mara (based on the oasis town of Biskra in Algeria), the native denizens, and the beauty of the desert itself and its surrounding mountains. But as the novel wore on, even I began to tire of what began to seem like a repetitious overexposure of the protagonists, their love and their religion, but the desert never completely lost its magic.

The 1947 Hitchcock film starring Gregory Peck and the largely unknown Alida Valli was adapted from this book. The film version which was certainly badly flawed,is better known however than the book.
A beautiful woman stands accused of murdering her blind,war-hero husband,Colonel Paradine. Sir Anthony Keene,a famous lawyer takes on the task of defending her. Keene is a complex character who carefully keeps his home life and his work life separate. He is happily married to the lovely Gay and everything seems perfect until he becomes so deeply involved in the case that things begin to unravel. The fascinating Mrs Paradine becomes more to him than merely a client and it becomes an obsession with Keene to prevent her from being found guilty of the murder and hanging. A further complication is that the judge chosen to try the case is Lord Horfield,a man with his own twisted agenda. he hates Keene and has a twisted passion for his wife.In addition he delights in donning the 'black cap' and sentencing women in particular to death.
Although rather long-winded ( we only get to Court by well past page 300) I found this a compelling read and apart from a couple of small quibbles, it made a very good impression on me. The Court finds for The Parradine Case.

Rien ne ressemble plus à un frisson de plaisir qu'un frisson d'horreur. Des femmes en proie à d'étranges désirs, des hommes habités par des forces primitives et perverses, des lieux maléfiques qui déchaînent les pulsions les plus incontrôlables, des êtres fantomatiques dont les étreintes sont aussi voluptueuses que monstrueuses... Lorsque les maîtres de la terreur rencontrent les meilleurs auteurs du thriller, les ardeurs de l'amour ressemblent à s'y méprendre aux flammes de l'enfer...

Not nearly as good as "December Love" by the same author. So wordy that you have to skim. A good story is buried into all the unnecessary prose and endless descriptions of the desert. Not really worth reading.

A delightful novel full of insight into the female psyche, both for the old and the young. Beautifully written, a great story..

A brilliant parody on Oscar Wilde and his circle.

hipsters have always been the same...½