bruscato's review against another edition
5.0
Absorbing and obsessive. A book to read again and again.
lauralhart's review
4.0
Fascinating, dissociative, anxiously meditative.
I initially picked this book up as a comp title for one of BLP’s FW20 titles and was so interested in it that I requested it from the library. It proved to be just as obsessive and absurd as I expected. There was a lot of context that went over my head, and the wandering sentences often made me lose my focus (which doesn’t bode well for when I decide to read Ducks, Newburyport), but it was still an enjoyable and challenging experience.
#ReadTranslation
I initially picked this book up as a comp title for one of BLP’s FW20 titles and was so interested in it that I requested it from the library. It proved to be just as obsessive and absurd as I expected. There was a lot of context that went over my head, and the wandering sentences often made me lose my focus (which doesn’t bode well for when I decide to read Ducks, Newburyport), but it was still an enjoyable and challenging experience.
#ReadTranslation
jeffreyp's review
3.0
This one was tough for me--I struggle mightily with stream-of-consciousness narratives, and this one is no exception. And yet, it did pull me in enough to just go with it, to take the ride. I didn't try to understand everything (um, I don't think I could have), and I'm certain there are levels here that I didn't "get", but it was a fun experience. Not sure I'll reread over and over like some reviewers recommend, but I think I will check out Lefebvre again.
grahamiam's review against another edition
3.0
Unfortunately, this crossed the line from fast-paced stream of consciousness to confusing, heftless blur for me. Smart but not fun to read after the initial impact.
drewsof's review against another edition
3.0
This is one where I wish I'd known more about Adorno and Mann and Schomberg going in. Might revisit this one a ways down the line, because the writing and the translation sure are great, but I just didn't really land with this one.
guiltyfeat's review
3.0
Not the most fun I’ve had reading a book. There was much here that went over my head in this stream of consciousness word soup about music and painting and cows. I also found the translation a little distracting sometimes. I would love to know the French expression that was translated as, “not on your nelly.”
catdad77a45's review
2.0
I'm really at a quandary to say ANYTHING about this book, largely because so much of it flew right over my head (... and Wilt Chamberlain's). I mean - I kinda/sorta got the gist of it, but since my idea of 'degenerate music' begins and ends with Madonna, the whole twelve-tone theme and structure was meaningless to me - and shamefully, I even had to look on Wikipedia to remind myself what the Wannsee Conference was all about (I know, I know!) ... as well as to read the bios of many of the historical figures invoked (but hey, I did know Thomas Mann and Brecht & Weill at least! 3 points!). The extreme run-on sentences (why, hi there stream-of-consciousness!) annoyed the crap out of me, as they always do, and often I would just kind of give up on making literal sense of what was going on (I'd have said to myself "Was zum Teufel passiert?" ... but I don't know any German) and just look at it as the literary equivalent of jazz rifts - which maybe was the intention? Regardless, I WILL say I could ADMIRE it, but didn't really ENJOY it much - which seems to be the majority view amongst my GR cognoscenti... and it MIGHT - at some point, justify a quick re-read as many have done, to see if I can make better sense of it on a second go-round. Finally, my sincere thanks to my buddy, Jill, who so generously sent me her copy, since I doubt I would have mustered enough enthusiasm for this to have purchased a copy myself (cheap bastard that I am).
arirang's review
4.0
Deservedly part of the shortlist for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize for 'gorgeous prose and hardcore literary fiction' from small, independent presses.
Schoenberg or Eisler or Brecht ... the resistance to collective happiness put up by all artists classified as degenerate and persecuted by happiness even in their nightmares.
Les Fugitives is another of the UK’s wonderful small independent presses, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK."
Their highest profile release so far has come from Jeffrey Zuckerman's much-lauded translation of Ananda Devi's [b:Eve out of Her Ruins|32068085|Eve out of Her Ruins|Ananda Devi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474173935s/32068085.jpg|2142338], which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, recently won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction) .
Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis from Noémi Lefebvre's 2009 French original L’autoportrait bleu, is their first new release of 2017.
The title of the novel is taken from Arnold Schönberg's Blaues Selbstportait
The story unfolds in an interior monologue by our narrator, a women on a 90 minute flight from Germany back to her hometown Paris, with her sister, ostensibly reading the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, but primarily reflecting on their trip to Berlin:
J’affichais une sérénité que j’admirais de l’extérieur, je suis forte comme fille, je me disais dans l’avion, d’afficher une sérénité si sereine, n’en revenais pas de me voir aussi paisible, quasiment paissant et non pas hurlant comme une vache dont on aurait prélevé le veau, qui n’aurait que ses pauvres sentiments bovins maternels, l’un n’empêche pas l’autre, pour meugler à mort et personne pour lui répondre. Je lisais donc en paix apparente ces fameuses lettres de Theodor W. Adorno à Thomas Mann et réciproquement, tandis que ma sœur avait les yeux fixés sur les aérofreins et me racontait des histoires de pilotage, de puissance masculine et de folie volante.
I feigned serenity and admired the exterior effect, for a girl I’m pretty tough, I thought to myself in the plane, projecting such serene serenity, couldn’t get over seeing myself so much at ease, practically meadow-grazing certainly not bellowing like a cow whose calf has been kidnapped, only her poor bovine maternal feelings left to nurse, the one doesn’t eliminate the other, to moo herself to death and nobody there to answer. So evidently at ease I was reading these legendary letters from Adorno to Mann and vice versa while my sister, eyes riveted on the air brakes, was telling me tales of great pilots, of masculine might and airborne derring-do.
In particular, she reflects on her relationship with a composer and pianist there, and, in turn, his own obsession with both the twelve-tone scale of Schoenberg, but, more importantly, his resistance to collective happiness and the relationship between music and the Nazi regime, both the resistance of certain artists but the significance that Heydrich's father was himself a composer.
The obsession with music theory has strong echoes of Eszter in Krasznahorkai's [b:The Melancholy of Resistance|119512|The Melancholy of Resistance|László Krasznahorkai|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487661795s/119512.jpg|592233], an author, in turn, strongly influenced by [a:Thomas Bernhard|7745|Thomas Bernhard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1326833554p2/7745.jpg]. And Lefebvre's prose has very strong echoes of Bernhard (except the narrator trains the scorn on herself), such as this passage where she regrets her unflattering comments on the pianist's old car:
He's obliged to accept it, the appellation world-class pianist, simply forced to swallow the irony in that title and to face the face that for me, Miss Bulletproof herself, knowing nothing of the dynamics of pleasure, a car like his must be the object of jocularity, even ridicule, while for him nothing of the sort, reigning Miss Immortal, I trample anti-commercial values without restraint and deny the possibility of any attachment so deep, powerful, so authentic, to this car and no other, as to be practically in the pianist' s DNA, when the same pianist was driving this very banger (though world-class in his eyes) through the fields and closes of that erstwhile republic, heading for Neuhardenberg Castle, in other words, he was touring about the open-country, joyously driving in the sub-sublime and frozen landscape of the Bradenburg backwoods, at the far edge of reunited Germany and a mere ten kilometres from Poland, a Brandenburg castle then a Prussian one then Nazi them Communist and then returned to its heirs and state-subsidised into a space of high unified German culture, the superbly restored castle of Neuhardenberg as described in the leaflet, the hallowed place to which the pianist was driving at the wheel of that altogether world-class car the company of which alone could make him whole, to see the exhibition 'Music and the Third Reich'.
[...]
Forgetting a single Heydrich, father or son, would have immediate consequences for his interpretation of Beethoven and Liszt, the pianist said to whoever would listen, immediate consequences for his composition and for everything else, you can't play any of that romantic, so-called classical music, as if the Heydrichs had not existed, he would say giving his angelic smile, before launching into Beethoven, without letting up he would explain in his polite and polite and respectful manner to the Auditorium audience which was there to listen to classical music and not to hear a pianist saying that to play Beethoven you must not only know Beethoven but also the Heydrichs, not only Heydrich the son but Heydrich the father too, the composer, der Komposer with a big K, a second-rate capital letter composer nonetheless a craftsman of German music, you do follow my meaning, as director of the conservatorium, the pianist explained to the girl who was keen to listen, and thus director of musical minds, and this instructor of young people with bright futures such as Germany was mass-producing at the time, instructors to the musical youth that would only, from one day to the next, turn into Hitler Youth, verstehst du?
The translation is by Sophie Lewis, formerly Senior Editor at And Other Stories edit fiction for And Other Stories but also for other publishers, including Peirene Press and Tilted Axis Press. She has said:
désinvolture)
Lewis provides a very helpful translator's afterword where she explains some key word choices e.g. translating the narrator's self-description as 'désinvolture', which contains elements of nonchalance, insouciance, devilmaycareism, and happy-go-lucky, as 'not-caring.' She also highlights the striking use of repeated leitmotifs is the text: "accompaniment, counter-phrase, nice and niceness, shame and shamelessness, legs knotted and unknotted, overviews of waterways, criticisms of cars, cows' lowing, flute-playing and many more."
Overall highly recommended and a book I plan to revisit.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
For further reviews see:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2017044110 and
https://triumphofthenow.com/2017/06/02/blue-self-portrait-by-noemi-lefebvre/
Schoenberg or Eisler or Brecht ... the resistance to collective happiness put up by all artists classified as degenerate and persecuted by happiness even in their nightmares.
Les Fugitives is another of the UK’s wonderful small independent presses, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK."
Their highest profile release so far has come from Jeffrey Zuckerman's much-lauded translation of Ananda Devi's [b:Eve out of Her Ruins|32068085|Eve out of Her Ruins|Ananda Devi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474173935s/32068085.jpg|2142338], which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, recently won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction) .
Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis from Noémi Lefebvre's 2009 French original L’autoportrait bleu, is their first new release of 2017.
The title of the novel is taken from Arnold Schönberg's Blaues Selbstportait
The story unfolds in an interior monologue by our narrator, a women on a 90 minute flight from Germany back to her hometown Paris, with her sister, ostensibly reading the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, but primarily reflecting on their trip to Berlin:
J’affichais une sérénité que j’admirais de l’extérieur, je suis forte comme fille, je me disais dans l’avion, d’afficher une sérénité si sereine, n’en revenais pas de me voir aussi paisible, quasiment paissant et non pas hurlant comme une vache dont on aurait prélevé le veau, qui n’aurait que ses pauvres sentiments bovins maternels, l’un n’empêche pas l’autre, pour meugler à mort et personne pour lui répondre. Je lisais donc en paix apparente ces fameuses lettres de Theodor W. Adorno à Thomas Mann et réciproquement, tandis que ma sœur avait les yeux fixés sur les aérofreins et me racontait des histoires de pilotage, de puissance masculine et de folie volante.
I feigned serenity and admired the exterior effect, for a girl I’m pretty tough, I thought to myself in the plane, projecting such serene serenity, couldn’t get over seeing myself so much at ease, practically meadow-grazing certainly not bellowing like a cow whose calf has been kidnapped, only her poor bovine maternal feelings left to nurse, the one doesn’t eliminate the other, to moo herself to death and nobody there to answer. So evidently at ease I was reading these legendary letters from Adorno to Mann and vice versa while my sister, eyes riveted on the air brakes, was telling me tales of great pilots, of masculine might and airborne derring-do.
In particular, she reflects on her relationship with a composer and pianist there, and, in turn, his own obsession with both the twelve-tone scale of Schoenberg, but, more importantly, his resistance to collective happiness and the relationship between music and the Nazi regime, both the resistance of certain artists but the significance that Heydrich's father was himself a composer.
The obsession with music theory has strong echoes of Eszter in Krasznahorkai's [b:The Melancholy of Resistance|119512|The Melancholy of Resistance|László Krasznahorkai|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487661795s/119512.jpg|592233], an author, in turn, strongly influenced by [a:Thomas Bernhard|7745|Thomas Bernhard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1326833554p2/7745.jpg]. And Lefebvre's prose has very strong echoes of Bernhard (except the narrator trains the scorn on herself), such as this passage where she regrets her unflattering comments on the pianist's old car:
He's obliged to accept it, the appellation world-class pianist, simply forced to swallow the irony in that title and to face the face that for me, Miss Bulletproof herself, knowing nothing of the dynamics of pleasure, a car like his must be the object of jocularity, even ridicule, while for him nothing of the sort, reigning Miss Immortal, I trample anti-commercial values without restraint and deny the possibility of any attachment so deep, powerful, so authentic, to this car and no other, as to be practically in the pianist' s DNA, when the same pianist was driving this very banger (though world-class in his eyes) through the fields and closes of that erstwhile republic, heading for Neuhardenberg Castle, in other words, he was touring about the open-country, joyously driving in the sub-sublime and frozen landscape of the Bradenburg backwoods, at the far edge of reunited Germany and a mere ten kilometres from Poland, a Brandenburg castle then a Prussian one then Nazi them Communist and then returned to its heirs and state-subsidised into a space of high unified German culture, the superbly restored castle of Neuhardenberg as described in the leaflet, the hallowed place to which the pianist was driving at the wheel of that altogether world-class car the company of which alone could make him whole, to see the exhibition 'Music and the Third Reich'.
[...]
Forgetting a single Heydrich, father or son, would have immediate consequences for his interpretation of Beethoven and Liszt, the pianist said to whoever would listen, immediate consequences for his composition and for everything else, you can't play any of that romantic, so-called classical music, as if the Heydrichs had not existed, he would say giving his angelic smile, before launching into Beethoven, without letting up he would explain in his polite and polite and respectful manner to the Auditorium audience which was there to listen to classical music and not to hear a pianist saying that to play Beethoven you must not only know Beethoven but also the Heydrichs, not only Heydrich the son but Heydrich the father too, the composer, der Komposer with a big K, a second-rate capital letter composer nonetheless a craftsman of German music, you do follow my meaning, as director of the conservatorium, the pianist explained to the girl who was keen to listen, and thus director of musical minds, and this instructor of young people with bright futures such as Germany was mass-producing at the time, instructors to the musical youth that would only, from one day to the next, turn into Hitler Youth, verstehst du?
The translation is by Sophie Lewis, formerly Senior Editor at And Other Stories edit fiction for And Other Stories but also for other publishers, including Peirene Press and Tilted Axis Press. She has said:
I love the visionary sensations I sometimes get as I work between languages, seeing how they tessellate or shadow each other, or how they diverge.(see https://caroltranslation.com/2017/06/01/greatest-women-in-translation-sophie-lewis/
désinvolture)
Lewis provides a very helpful translator's afterword where she explains some key word choices e.g. translating the narrator's self-description as 'désinvolture', which contains elements of nonchalance, insouciance, devilmaycareism, and happy-go-lucky, as 'not-caring.' She also highlights the striking use of repeated leitmotifs is the text: "accompaniment, counter-phrase, nice and niceness, shame and shamelessness, legs knotted and unknotted, overviews of waterways, criticisms of cars, cows' lowing, flute-playing and many more."
Overall highly recommended and a book I plan to revisit.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
For further reviews see:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2017044110 and
https://triumphofthenow.com/2017/06/02/blue-self-portrait-by-noemi-lefebvre/
jackielaw's review
4.0
Blue Self-Portrait, by Noémi Lefebvre (translated by Sophie Lewis), is an introspective inner monologue that flits around the narrator’s angst ridden thoughts. Travelling home on a flight between Berlin and Paris with her sister there is time for such self reflection. She is suffering ‘the wrath of grapes’ (possibly the best description of a hangover I have read) and dislikes air travel, attempting yet failing to distract herself with the books she balances on her lap. Her sibling expresses excitement at the mode of transport although is sensitive to her companion’s disquiet. They have a close relationship and mutual understanding. Thay are both well educated in ‘cultural integration’. The narrator, whilst outwardly composed, is bellowing in silence following her behaviour during dalliances with a pianist-composer in Berlin. She berates herself for having talked too much,
‘dizzying the pianist with a flood of verbiage’
The couple met in a popular intellectual cafe, the setting offering a model of restraint and good taste. Clientele would typically sip their coffee whilst leafing through a newspaper in a relaxed, cultured way. The narrator’s body language she describes as wired, feeling shame afterwards for her indecorious behaviour whilst the pianist remained calm and collected. Her thought processes travel in tangents as she recalls the time spent with this man. She ruminates on her prejudices at his choice of drink and her inability not to pause and consider before she shares her learned conceits. She says of herself:
“I disturb, I’ve never done other than disturb”
She believes that, after some time, the pianist was no longer listening to her many words. They visit a cinema where the narrator feels deliberately silenced.
There are reflections from their conversations on inspirations which the pianist believes may be found by following in the footsteps of the greats, including to their graves – composition amongst decomposition. There are scenes in cafes, in a modern, soulless building as well as those steeped in history.
Pivotal is a visit to the Brandenburgian castle of Neuhardenberg after which the pianist was moved to create a new composition following his discovery of the German composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait. Its gloomy palette is displayed amongst what he regards as hateful depictions of Aryan collective happiness promoted by the Nazi regime. The narrator muses that the pianist
“felt incapable of talking about the music but also dying to give it a good talking about”
She herself is haunted by the portrait, and by her behaviour.
The pianist’s appearance is described as:
“the difference between style and affectation not only in the artistry of his playing, in particular, but also in his art of life, in general, the art of living”
The narrator considers herself to be outwardly socially acceptable, although jittery and appearing underfed.
“looking after yourself means aligning your mind to be in tune with your body”
Her mind is anxious amidst her embarrassed reflections.
There are thoughts on resistance, collaboration, shame and the meaning of moral existence. The effect of the portrait is woven throughout with music and the relationship between artists, composers and a genocide in which they may be complicit.
The writing is insightful although at times opaque. This is a book that will likely benefit from considered rereading.
‘dizzying the pianist with a flood of verbiage’
The couple met in a popular intellectual cafe, the setting offering a model of restraint and good taste. Clientele would typically sip their coffee whilst leafing through a newspaper in a relaxed, cultured way. The narrator’s body language she describes as wired, feeling shame afterwards for her indecorious behaviour whilst the pianist remained calm and collected. Her thought processes travel in tangents as she recalls the time spent with this man. She ruminates on her prejudices at his choice of drink and her inability not to pause and consider before she shares her learned conceits. She says of herself:
“I disturb, I’ve never done other than disturb”
She believes that, after some time, the pianist was no longer listening to her many words. They visit a cinema where the narrator feels deliberately silenced.
There are reflections from their conversations on inspirations which the pianist believes may be found by following in the footsteps of the greats, including to their graves – composition amongst decomposition. There are scenes in cafes, in a modern, soulless building as well as those steeped in history.
Pivotal is a visit to the Brandenburgian castle of Neuhardenberg after which the pianist was moved to create a new composition following his discovery of the German composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait. Its gloomy palette is displayed amongst what he regards as hateful depictions of Aryan collective happiness promoted by the Nazi regime. The narrator muses that the pianist
“felt incapable of talking about the music but also dying to give it a good talking about”
She herself is haunted by the portrait, and by her behaviour.
The pianist’s appearance is described as:
“the difference between style and affectation not only in the artistry of his playing, in particular, but also in his art of life, in general, the art of living”
The narrator considers herself to be outwardly socially acceptable, although jittery and appearing underfed.
“looking after yourself means aligning your mind to be in tune with your body”
Her mind is anxious amidst her embarrassed reflections.
There are thoughts on resistance, collaboration, shame and the meaning of moral existence. The effect of the portrait is woven throughout with music and the relationship between artists, composers and a genocide in which they may be complicit.
The writing is insightful although at times opaque. This is a book that will likely benefit from considered rereading.
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