Beard of the Week XXII: Artistic Celebrities
Recently I read a very nice essay by Bryan Appleyard* about literary biographies, which he describes as "one of the dominant forms of our time". He establishes his theme right at the beginning:
Jane Austen had a lesbian affair with her older sister, Cassandra. It’s obvious, really. There was “the passionate nature of the sibling bond” so evident in the letters. There were her descriptions of women, betraying “a kind of homophilic fascination”. And, of course, there was her fascination with the “underlying eros of the sister-sister bond”. Case closed, I’d say.
Well, no. All these quotations come from a 1995 article in the London Review of Books by Terry Castle, an American academic. Castle was simply noting certain important preoccupations in her writing. An eager subeditor, however, had other ideas. “Was Jane Austen Gay?” was the headline. The LRB had barely hit the newsstands when Newsnight went on air with an earnest discussion of the sexual proclivities of one of our greatest novelists. Good grief! Was Mr Darcy really a woman, the bulge in his breeches a clumsy prosthetic? We had to know. But why?
Why, he asks, do we want — insist that! — our writers be celebrities? (The subtext: what is the big fascination with celebrities — people well known for being famous — anyway?) Does it really enhance our enjoyment or understanding of their work?
I suspect not really, although it's useful for literary criticism. On the other hand, humans are a nosey lot and not much interests us with such limitless fascination as other humans. It can be fun to know about Jane Austen's secret life (if she had one) even if it doesn't lead to a deeper understanding of Pride and Prejudice. Then, does it spoil the book if one finds out she had a sordid lesbian affair? Why should it since not a single word changed in the book? In a caricatured way it's the same problem people have had for years deciding whether they should be disgusted by Wagner's music because Wagner happened to be a favorite of Hitler's. The attitude might suggest, however, that a lot of literary criticism is more about us than about the text.
The fascination, and its fall-out, can easily go to far for my taste. I remember discussions in an all-gay mailing list about someone in the news, let's say a newspaper publishes a photo of a man accused of shooting and killing a dozen people at a shopping mall. Someone comments: "I think he's cute." Someone else: "Eeeuw! How could you think that? He's a murderer?" And so it would go, back and forth with a large pinch of meta-discussion thrown in. I always wondered why it mattered so much — or maybe they argued over it because it mattered so little.
Mr. Appleyard comments on the matter in his essay:
Orwell wondered if we’d feel any differently about Shakespeare if it turned out he was in the habit of assaulting little girls. Well, would we? The answer, it seems, is yes.
Oddly so.
Which brings us to our beard of the week, belonging to French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921).** Famous in this country largely for his "Carnival of the Animals", the "Symphony No. 3 in c minor, The Organ Symphony", and perhaps some of his piano concerti, he was a prolific and stylish composer of significance.#
His relevance to this theme? There is the persistent rumor that Saint-Saëns had a taste for young boys; we don't know whether it's true, or what he may have done about it, or what the reaction may have been in 19th century France. Does it alter our perception of his music? Should it?
Oh dear, I nearly forgot that I was going to comment on the perennially inscrutable (to most Americans) pronunciation of Saint-Saëns' name. My thought had been to say something helpful, pointing out that it's like saying "Slant Swans" without the "l" and "w" but with one of those nasal-y French accents, but that's a bit ungainly. So, let's end with this small poem written by Ogden Nash as the Introduction in a set of poems to accompany a performance of "Carnival of the Animals":
Camille Saint-Saëns
Was wracked with pains,
When people addressed him,
As Saint-Sanes.
He held the human race to blame,
Because it could not pronounce his name,
So, he turned with metronome and fife,
To glorify other kinds of life,
Be quiet please – for here begins
His salute to feathers, fur and fins.
———-
*Bryan Appleyard, "Just Their Type", The Times [UK], 19 November 2006.
**Painting of Camille Saint-Saëns by A. Rossi, from 1903; reproduced at Warszawski's biography of Saint-Saëns, referenced in the next note.
#A very nice biography with a comprehensive list of works (all in French) is Jean-Marc Warszawski, "Saint-Saëns, Camille", musicologie.org.
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on Saturday, 2 December 2006 at 07.56
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Context is important, oftentimes. It would change the context for some people, when reading Austen, if in the back of their minds they were imagining her as a lesbian.
Take O.J. Simpson: some people hate him more for being a murderer, some people want to date him more for the extra thrill.