⇒ Download COUP DE GRACE Marguerite Yourcenar 9780374516314 Books

COUP DE GRACE Marguerite Yourcenar 9780374516314 Books

Download As PDF : COUP DE GRACE Marguerite Yourcenar 9780374516314 Books

COUP DE GRACE Marguerite Yourcenar 9780374516314 Books

The back cover of this edition of COUP de GRACE excerpts a quote from a review by the writer- attorney Louis Auchincloss that I suspect is is in line with many readers response to this book.Auchincloss is impressed by Yourcenar's ability to capture post WW1 Lithuania.The thing is the book isn't set in Lithuania and doesn't have all that specific a feel to it.Bluntly , it could be set in 1890s Ruritania as easily as it 's actual setting ,which is Latvia- not Lithuania circa 1919(Auchincloss's error is inadvertently telling).The book is quite claustrophobic.Almost all of the action takes place in an isolated country house among a small group of people.You get little feel of a larger world ; let alone the nuances of any culture ,nation or time.

The two main characters are Erick and Sophie and there is no need to mince words about them, they are to say the least queer ducks.Erick is a German soldier who after WW1 goes to Latvia(I think Kurland or Courland) to fight against the Bolsheviks.He is of Balt(ethnic German) extraction and spent much of his childhood in the country.Sophie is someone he's known since childhood.She is the sister of a dear friend.They all wind up living in the same house.Sophie loves Erick.He does not love Sophie.One may think he should love Sophie but I think the key here is Erick is gay.The book doesn't quite say that but it comes real close.Rejected , Sophie in effect destroys herself in a manner that is simply depressing.The consequences of"limousine liberalism " being quite fatal in this civil war.

I will readily admit, what I have described sounds awful ! It isn't . This is a strange and ultimately gripping novel.It's characters are rather cracked but their destinies moving .Yourcenar is a writer who displays considerable psychological depth and her case studies wind up being compelling.Just avoid approaching this novel as a historical novel.It isn't.The sensibility here is is"symbolist" or "decadent" .It reminds me more of a Moreau painting than the RED BADGE OF COURAGE.


Tags : COUP DE GRACE [Marguerite Yourcenar] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Set in the Baltic provinces in the aftermath of World War I, Coup de Grace</i> tells the story of an intimacy that grows between three young people hemmed in by civil war: Erick,Marguerite Yourcenar,COUP DE GRACE,Farrar, Straus and Giroux,0374516316,Historical - General,010102 FSG Paper,FICTION Historical General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction General,Fiction-Historical,GENERAL,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),ScholarlyUndergraduate,United States,YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE - PROSE & CRITICISM

COUP DE GRACE Marguerite Yourcenar 9780374516314 Books Reviews

Yourcenar can write seemingly anything. Just as in 'Memoirs of Hadrian', her ability to invent voices out of the past and to make them believable and sympathetic is phenomenal. Only people like Umberto Eco and Jonathan Littel write with such staggering attention to the details of the past.

This is a VERY 19th century short novel about one small corner of the Russian Civil War. Yourcenar's narration of the life of a young White Russian solider, his friendships and ultimately tragic love interests, feels like something that could just as easily have been written in 1839 as 1939, when it was published.

It's very heavily narrated in the way that novels from the previous century are, but somehow that anachronism makes it all the more poignant. Yourcenar shows the transition from the old Europe of noblesse oblige and genteel manners to the new Europe of modern warfare and pitiless ideological struggle.
This short novel has a preface written by Yourcenar that is well worth reading prior to reading the novel, for in this preface Yourcenar discusses the challenges to the reader when reading a narrative written from the perspective of one character whose self awareness may be limited. Yourcenar points out that when a novel is written from a single point of reference the reader may be able to detect a truth that underlies every lie. So despite the fact that this is a relatively short novel, which I read in a four hour flight, the novel is full of the unspoken, the inferred, the implied, the avoided facts and emotions.

The novel is written from the perspective of a young aristocrat who fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War in the Baltic states. Erick von Lhomond narrates the events that happened twenty years earlier when he was much younger and the Civil War was in terrible progress. Erick has been friends since childhood with another aristocratic boy, Conrad, and his sister Sophie. The novel takes place in the country mansion of Conrad and Sophie. As the Civil War rages on, the house becomes a barracks for White Russian soldiers, who are as desperate and cruel as the Bolsheviks.

The Civil War is background for the actual theme of the novel which is Sophie’s growing obsessions with Erick. Erick is polite, a complete gentleman, but he is completely indifferent to Sophie and his regard for her is attached to the fact that she is the younger sister of his closest friend and companion, Conrad. Yourcenar makes the reader feel all manner of discomfort as Sophie tries to manipulate every scene and situation to obtain Erick’s love and affection, which is an impossibility. There are a few tiny hints that Erick may be homosexual but Yourcenar is never fully revealing around this and thus her narrator, Erick, never lets us in on his full emotional breadth.

As a young man who is worshiped by a pretty young woman, Erick is actually a prisoner even though in the relationship he thinks he holds all the cards since he is not interested in Sophie in the least. Sophie goes through multiple stages of desperation and depression and destructive actions since she becomes a woman under a obsession like a dark magic spell. Her final acts of self-destruction are some of the most fascinating and terrible in the book.

Yourcenar has a literary style similar to Mishima or Paul Bowles in that she uses an economy of narration, leaves much unsaid, and writes about the downward spiral of hopelessness that characterizes human existence.
I just love this book. The writing is beautiful. In a way, I think it is even better than The Memoirs of Hadrian by the same author. The translation by Grace Flick is also excellent.
Petronius hits the nail on the head, when he links this book to the tormented 1930s, and to a time when nothing was expressed directly, and you had to read between the lines. If you want a full-blast exposure to the mood just before World War II, read this book! The harsh conditions of ideological tension and confused battle that Yourcenar depicts resonate with a lot that has been happening today in the Middle East.
It's fascinating to read this book alongside the Schlondorff movie, which shifts the story over much more to the woman's point of view, as acted by Margarete von Trotta. The two versions make for a perfect contrast between limited first-person and omniscient points of view on the action.
The back cover of this edition of COUP de GRACE excerpts a quote from a review by the writer- attorney Louis Auchincloss that I suspect is is in line with many readers response to this book.Auchincloss is impressed by Yourcenar's ability to capture post WW1 Lithuania.The thing is the book isn't set in Lithuania and doesn't have all that specific a feel to it.Bluntly , it could be set in 1890s Ruritania as easily as it 's actual setting ,which is Latvia- not Lithuania circa 1919(Auchincloss's error is inadvertently telling).The book is quite claustrophobic.Almost all of the action takes place in an isolated country house among a small group of people.You get little feel of a larger world ; let alone the nuances of any culture ,nation or time.

The two main characters are Erick and Sophie and there is no need to mince words about them, they are to say the least queer ducks.Erick is a German soldier who after WW1 goes to Latvia(I think Kurland or Courland) to fight against the Bolsheviks.He is of Balt(ethnic German) extraction and spent much of his childhood in the country.Sophie is someone he's known since childhood.She is the sister of a dear friend.They all wind up living in the same house.Sophie loves Erick.He does not love Sophie.One may think he should love Sophie but I think the key here is Erick is gay.The book doesn't quite say that but it comes real close.Rejected , Sophie in effect destroys herself in a manner that is simply depressing.The consequences of"limousine liberalism " being quite fatal in this civil war.

I will readily admit, what I have described sounds awful ! It isn't . This is a strange and ultimately gripping novel.It's characters are rather cracked but their destinies moving .Yourcenar is a writer who displays considerable psychological depth and her case studies wind up being compelling.Just avoid approaching this novel as a historical novel.It isn't.The sensibility here is is"symbolist" or "decadent" .It reminds me more of a Moreau painting than the RED BADGE OF COURAGE.