While the book world (like the world in general) has taken a break and does not pamper readers with novelties, BookJack decided to talk about important re-editions of large novels that came out on the eve of the quarantine. This issue focuses on the Cornish Trilogy by the classic of 20th century Canadian literature, Robertson Davis, three novels linked by a vast array of inner rhymes, where an addictive atmosphere is combined with depth and sophisticated complexity. Cornish trilogy (The Rebel Angels; What's Bred in the Bone; The Lyre of Orph).
William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.
Who is Robertson Davis?
Robertson Davis is the greatest Canadian writer of the twentieth century and, in general, one of the most interesting prose writers of the last century. Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munroe and other classics of modern literature have repeatedly spoken about his influence on their work. In addition, Robertson Davis spent most of his life teaching literature at the University of Toronto, as well as writing plays, essays, critical notes and newspaper columns. His novel "What's in the Bones" (the second part of the "Cornish Trilogy") was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986, and Davis himself became the first Canadian admitted to the American Academy of Letters and Arts. In a word, one of the largest (and sadly underestimated in our country) writers, a true titan and just a cult figure for the entire world of literature.
Why a trilogy?
All of Davis's novels (he wrote eleven of them) are grouped into trilogies - three complete and one unfinished. The novels of each of the trilogies can be read separately, but together they make a much greater impression: scattered details add up to a complex multi-figured panel, on which, in turn, seemingly through motifs and beautiful thematic echoes gradually appear. Therefore, one-volume editions of Davis, despite their frightening appearance (the "Cornish Trilogy" has more than 1,100 pages), are more convenient and more organic than three-volume editions. The most famous and successful of Robertson Davis's trilogies is "Deptford", although the author himself considered the "Cornish" to be the pinnacle of his work.
The word "Cornish" in the title - what does it mean?
Francis Cornish is the protagonist of the second (and best) part of the trilogy, an artist, hoaxer, art critic, spy, collector and philanthropist. And the first and third parts that frame it are directly related to the legacy of the Cornish - primarily the collection of art objects he has collected. Thus, the figure of Francis Cornish is a kind of key to understanding the entire trilogy and its semantic axis, so it is logical that the trilogy bears his name.
So what exactly is this book about?
The first part, Rebel Angels, is based almost entirely on the academic experience of Robertson Davis himself and is a rather acrimonious satire on university life. In the center of the novel is the beautiful graduate student Maria Feotoki, half Polish, half gypsy, and several male professors, to varying degrees, fascinated by her. Well, in parallel, the respected professors are busy analyzing the legacy of Francis Cornish (they all loved the deceased during his lifetime, and after death took on the role of his executors) and the academic and human squabbles associated with him.
The second novel, What's in the Bones, is a detailed biography of that same Cornish, built in the best traditions of the classic English novel. A native of a tiny provincial Canadian town, he receives an excellent education (including in Oxford), marries unsuccessfully, and right on the eve of World War II he finds himself involved in two dizzying intrigues at once: one of them is associated with the fake of medieval art, the second - with international espionage ...
And, finally, in the third, funniest and burlesque part of the trilogy ("The Lyre of Orpheus"), we again meet with the heroes of the first novel. One of them, professor and priest Simon Darkour, is working on a biography of Francis Cornish, trying to shed light on the secrets that he tried to take with him to his grave. At this time, the rest, including Maria, who managed to marry the nephew of the late Cornish, are passionate about a large-scale philanthropic project: they are involved in the recreation and production of the unfinished opera by Ernest Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann "Arthur the British or the Magnanimous Cuckold". Gradually reborn from non-existence, this opera, like a living creature, penetrates into the life of the heroes, gradually beginning to control it.
All three novels are very different in style, narrative structure and author's intonation, however, they form an integral ensemble, complementing and nourishing each other both in plot and ideological terms.
And what about the genre - is it realism or fantasy?
All plot collisions described by Robertson Davis are absolutely realistic and could very well have happened in reality - there is no mysticism in them. However, the events of the second part of the trilogy, "What's in the Bones", are presented on behalf of two creatures of a frankly fantastic nature at once - the apocryphal angel of biographies Zadkil the Small (keeper of the bibliographer of all human destinies) and personal guardian of Francis Cornish, the capricious and mischievous daimon Maimas. And in "The Lyre of Orpheus" part of the narration is conducted on behalf of the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann: together with other creators who did not manage to complete work on their creations during his lifetime, he got stuck in Purgatory and from there with excitement watches the stage embodiment of his unfinished opera ...
All these fragments do not translate Davis's books into the category of fiction or magical realism - rather, they are intended to emphasize the nonrandomness and universal significance of any episode, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem at first glance.
And what kind of cross-cutting motives?
In Davis's book, there are several leitmotifs intertwined with each other.
Maria's mother, the old gypsy Madame Lautaro, is a masterly fortuneteller, and the Tarot symbolism regularly appears even in the most prosaic fragments of the trilogy. At different moments, the heroes have to try on the role of different arcana - for example, Professor Darkur at some point realizes that in fact he is a Fool, a great zero, tenfold the value of any card placed next to him. And the Swedish lady-composer Gunilla Dal-Sut, who comes to Toronto to help with the completion of Hoffmann's opera, discovers the power of the all-powerful and eccentric Empress ...
The Arthurian myth plays a huge role in the entire trilogy. It is the fascination with Arthuriana that leads Francis Cornish to his disastrous marriage: he is so blinded by the beauty of the "sacred Arthurian land" of Cornwall that he walks straight into the matrimonial trap set for him. And Hoffmann's plot of the king as a "generous cuckold" is consistently realized in each of the parts of the novel: in the manner of Arthurian Guenever, who fell in love with Sir Lancelot, all the women-heroines of Davis at some point, willingly or unwittingly, deceive their spouses.
One of the most important topics for the author is the idea of "timeliness", "relevance" of art, which today has become an unspoken cultural imperative. Francis Cornish does not want to create in a
ccordance with the rules and principles of his era, so his work remains for the most part secret, deliberately hidden from his contemporaries by the curtain of time. But the forgotten opera by Hoffmann, lovingly reconstructed and presented to the viewer, on the contrary, suddenly unites two historical periods, showing the illusory nature of the gap separating them.
However, these are only the most obvious things - in reality, the entire trilogy is permeated with a complex and infinitely beautiful system of large and small internal rhymes that hold together a thousand pages almost more reliably than plot collisions.
Still, why should you read it?
The Cornish Trilogy is a book that combines ingenuous appeal for the general reader with depth and sophisticated complexity. In other words, reading Davis's trilogy is pleasant and exciting, and at the end you will have many unexpected and non-trivial topics for thought.
The Cornish Trilogy is a spacious book that creates a comfortable, addictive atmosphere within itself that will reliably isolate oneself from all external anxieties. When and read a thousand-page books, if not now.
Well, and finally, this is a first-class world classics, in the form of direct allusions or hidden references present in many other notable texts of the late XX - early XXI century and therefore extremely important for their understanding.
This article was sponsored by Kellie Cyr
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