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A review by jassmine
Ariel by André Maurois
3.0
I probably had a bit too high expectations, but I just didn’t like this… I don’t regret reading this, because I still learned a lot new information, but I don’t think the author captured the spirit of Shelley’s life and work at all and… right, maybe I should start from the beginning.
The book started of great at Eaton by description of a person I never heard about (doctor Keat) and by a lovely caricature of English society. But then Shelley appears on the scene and everything goes downward – so you know, Percy Shelley: looks like a girl, is girlishly lovely, blushes like a girl, is effeminate and is clumsy and distracted like a woman… honestly, it soon started to be extremely tiring, I understand that the author tried to tell us that Shelley is slender and delicately handsome, but did we had to go through this? In the cases where Shelley isn’t a girl, he’s a child and that at least to the half-point of the book. I get that the author tried to highlight his youth and in some of the situations it was very appropriate (sixteen-year-old Harried and nineteen-years-old Percy elopes together to Scotland), but most of the times, it was just distracting…
Overall, the author’s relationship to women is highly problematic (I’m sorry I don’t have the English quotations… but no one can make me to try to find them…). And I would like to highlight that this about anything some of the character says it’s about the author’s commentary…
I also think that the whole portrait of Harriet is a bit problematic, it seems to me that Maurois tried emphasize her faults to justify Percy leaving her… Well, but I have to – a bit cynically – admit that I didn’t care that much about Harriet (she is a tragic figure and I feel sorry for all the shifted cultural portrayals of her, but…). I care much more about the sloppily done portrayal of Mary (and yes, here it is again…), I get that this isn’t Mary’s biography, but this… this was just so… crappy. Mary is portrayed here as an intelligent companion and partner, but also as a jealous stick, mother of questionable qualities and worn out housewife, which only interest is the household. The tangled story of the publication of Frankenstein is fully missing here… Mary as the author is fully missing here (there is one mention of her and her sister writing something in the same sentence and that’s it). And that was an important part of their relationship… But to be fair, Shelley as a writer is also missing for a big part. A few of his works are mentioned and we see him translating a lot, but the ties of his works to his life are fully missing. Not that I am a stan for fully autobiographical reading of books, but when you are writing a biography of an author, I think that is the aspect that would be most interesting, no? Shelley’s (not)atheism gets a big space, anarchism gets one paragraph and free love is carefully ignored and masked as love platonic… Shelley is portrayed here as a faithful husband – it’s hard to tell, from today’s point, how it truly was, but since he supported Mary in pursuing a physical relationship with Hogg (which she herself didn’t want; and this episode is conveniently missing here too…), I have my doubts about his (full) fidelity… It’s fascinating that Shelley’s life is so controversive that 200 years after his death, Maurois veils up the full extent of his opinions…
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about depictions of all of the protagonists, however there are some parts I really appreciate and which gave me an entirely new point of view on Shelley’s character. Shelley himself absolutely broke is making more debts to provide for his friends, to save Godwin’s bookshop, to pay penalties for a people he never met, to give a dowry to a poor French girl. Shelley who goes to Ireland to help the Irish revolution (and failing spectacularly…). Shelley, who becomes vegetarian, because he couldn’t bear to participate in slaughter industry. Shelley who loves to play with the children of his friends, one by one loses all of his own (the last one by his own death…). Completely calm Shelley, who can’t swim, is sitting in rickety boat at the stormy Genevan lake with crossed arms. Shelley’s corpse has in one pocket a Sophocles and in the other an open book of Keats as if only the storm made him to put down the book. Shelley, who at one side is trying to make his utopia come true is on the other side child his whole life…
Some parts of Shelley’s personality took me unawares. For some reason I didn’t expected him to have such a kind heart. He has to be unusual personality, naïve, (a bit) lunatic, eccentric, but at the same time faithful to his own moral values.
I read this book with a hope that I will get answers to some of my questions… that didn’t happen, instead I am more confused then before trying to separate what is Maurois and what is Shelley. Overall is this an easy and (kind of) interesting read, I don’t regret reading it, but I am not thrilled either.
The book started of great at Eaton by description of a person I never heard about (doctor Keat) and by a lovely caricature of English society. But then Shelley appears on the scene and everything goes downward – so you know, Percy Shelley: looks like a girl, is girlishly lovely, blushes like a girl, is effeminate and is clumsy and distracted like a woman… honestly, it soon started to be extremely tiring, I understand that the author tried to tell us that Shelley is slender and delicately handsome, but did we had to go through this? In the cases where Shelley isn’t a girl, he’s a child and that at least to the half-point of the book. I get that the author tried to highlight his youth and in some of the situations it was very appropriate (sixteen-year-old Harried and nineteen-years-old Percy elopes together to Scotland), but most of the times, it was just distracting…
Overall, the author’s relationship to women is highly problematic (I’m sorry I don’t have the English quotations… but no one can make me to try to find them…). And I would like to highlight that this about anything some of the character says it’s about the author’s commentary…
I also think that the whole portrait of Harriet is a bit problematic, it seems to me that Maurois tried emphasize her faults to justify Percy leaving her… Well, but I have to – a bit cynically – admit that I didn’t care that much about Harriet (she is a tragic figure and I feel sorry for all the shifted cultural portrayals of her, but…). I care much more about the sloppily done portrayal of Mary (and yes, here it is again…), I get that this isn’t Mary’s biography, but this… this was just so… crappy. Mary is portrayed here as an intelligent companion and partner, but also as a jealous stick, mother of questionable qualities and worn out housewife, which only interest is the household. The tangled story of the publication of Frankenstein is fully missing here… Mary as the author is fully missing here (there is one mention of her and her sister writing something in the same sentence and that’s it). And that was an important part of their relationship… But to be fair, Shelley as a writer is also missing for a big part. A few of his works are mentioned and we see him translating a lot, but the ties of his works to his life are fully missing. Not that I am a stan for fully autobiographical reading of books, but when you are writing a biography of an author, I think that is the aspect that would be most interesting, no? Shelley’s (not)atheism gets a big space, anarchism gets one paragraph and free love is carefully ignored and masked as love platonic… Shelley is portrayed here as a faithful husband – it’s hard to tell, from today’s point, how it truly was, but since he supported Mary in pursuing a physical relationship with Hogg (which she herself didn’t want; and this episode is conveniently missing here too…), I have my doubts about his (full) fidelity… It’s fascinating that Shelley’s life is so controversive that 200 years after his death, Maurois veils up the full extent of his opinions…
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about depictions of all of the protagonists, however there are some parts I really appreciate and which gave me an entirely new point of view on Shelley’s character. Shelley himself absolutely broke is making more debts to provide for his friends, to save Godwin’s bookshop, to pay penalties for a people he never met, to give a dowry to a poor French girl. Shelley who goes to Ireland to help the Irish revolution (and failing spectacularly…). Shelley, who becomes vegetarian, because he couldn’t bear to participate in slaughter industry. Shelley who loves to play with the children of his friends, one by one loses all of his own (the last one by his own death…). Completely calm Shelley, who can’t swim, is sitting in rickety boat at the stormy Genevan lake with crossed arms. Shelley’s corpse has in one pocket a Sophocles and in the other an open book of Keats as if only the storm made him to put down the book. Shelley, who at one side is trying to make his utopia come true is on the other side child his whole life…
Some parts of Shelley’s personality took me unawares. For some reason I didn’t expected him to have such a kind heart. He has to be unusual personality, naïve, (a bit) lunatic, eccentric, but at the same time faithful to his own moral values.
I read this book with a hope that I will get answers to some of my questions… that didn’t happen, instead I am more confused then before trying to separate what is Maurois and what is Shelley. Overall is this an easy and (kind of) interesting read, I don’t regret reading it, but I am not thrilled either.