Anne Plantagenet

María Casares (1922-1996) nació y se crió en Galicia. En 1936 huyó con su familia a Francia, estableciéndose en Paris. Estudió interpretación en el Conservatorio de París a pesar de sus dificultades con el idioma, que decidió aprender enseguida. Conoció a Albert Camus y mantuvo una relación sentimental con él hasta la muerte de este en 1960. Con su tenacidad y esfuerzo, se convirtió en la musa del existencialismo francés, interpretando obras de Camus, Sartre, Claudel o Jean Cocteau, entre otros. Era ante todo una mujer libre, una persona con una voluntad de hierro, y, a la vez, una mujer cuya fragilidad nos emociona en cada página.Anne Plantagenet, la autora de este impresionante libro, relata la trayectoria de una española que se enamoró de Francia y que luchó por conquistar los escenarios, las cámaras y la gloria.… (mehr)

This is one of the dullest books I've read in a long, long time--which is doubly surprising as the main character led what promissed, from the jacket blurbs, to be a fascinating life. Set in early nineteenth-century France, it tells the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, a famed actress and poet, focusing mainly on her passion for Henri Latouche. She had a tough childhood, her mother leaving the rest of the family to run off with her paramour but dragging young Marceline with her. When her mother's lover fails to provide for them, Marceline is forced to become an actress to provide for them all, and although she tries to maintain her virtue, she keeps falling for the wrong sort of man and has several illegitimate children. Finally she marries a handsome actor who adores her and fathers her beloved son . . . but then she falls for the ugly Latouche. Her lovesick adolescent-like mooing, as depicted in this overwrought novel, is particularly nauseating coming from a woman in her 30s and 40s, the mother of several children. I had no connection with her and certainly no empathy for her on-again, off-again passion. Let me be clear that my opinion is not based on any moral judgment of the character, it's just that this novel is so poorly written that she came off as selfish and silly (which in my book makes her unlikeable!)

The book is a translation from the French, so maybe it's not as bad in the original. A large selection of Marceline's poems, inspired by her passion for Henri, are included at the end of the novel, and I found them to be equally bad. Furthermore, the chapters jump around erratically from past to present to way past to present . . . well, you get the picture. And several of the events in Marceline's life, like her voyage to the Caribbean, are left full of holes.

I could not in good faith recommend this book to anyone.… (mehr)

A fictionalized account of French Romantic poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's life, this felt to me like I was reading underwater. It was muted and slow. Told in chapters alternating between the young Marceline and the older, more jaded Marceline this is very definitely a tale of an unconventional woman, the only female poet writing amongst a sea of luminaries in France at the time. The novel opens with the older Marceline having spent another afternoon with her lover, Henri, detailing the thrill and the horror of her feelings surrounding this vital affair. How she came to be so torn about this infidelity that fuels her best works of poetry unspools as the book progresses.

As a young girl, Marceline is thrust onto the stage in order to support her family, an emotionally fragile mother who leaves her father for her lover and then her alcoholic father and brother to whom Marceline's loyalty never wavers. The chapters of her early life in the theater, the death of her first child before she was more than a child herself, and her eventual meeting and marriage to her husband, fellow actor Prosper Valmore neatly develop the character of this woman who stands outside the bounds of polite society. Interleaved with these chapters are chapters telling of her adult life, the peripatetic existence she and Valmore must live because of the vagaries of the theater-going audiences in France, the financial worries attendent with this life, and the raising of children in such uncertainty. These later in life chapters also detail the ups and downs of her obsessive affair with Henri, the yearning and distance pervading her writing, earning her fame as a poet.

The novel is bursting with elaborate introspection on Marceline's part, emotional and fraught. It seemed to me to be overwrought in many places and Marceline evoked little sympathy in me as a reader, coming off as a fairly cold character despite these professed ardent feelings. In spite of my lack of engagement with the novel, I did think that the circular ending to the book was magnificent and finely wrought. As for the poetry appended to the book, I was fairly unmoved by it. I'm not certain if that is down to the translation, which makes the poetry seem simple and unpolished, or if it is because I have a long standing block against poetry. I do think that many other people will find this far more to their taste than I did. It is well-placed historically in terms of everyday life but those looking for mentions of the major upheavals in France at the time with be disappointed. Fans of poetry will probably enjoy this imagined glimpse into the not terribly easy life of a once-acclaimed French Romantic poet.… (mehr)