Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
Swinburne's famous praise of Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin applies with far greater fitness to Pater's masterpiece; for, if ever a book deserved to be described as The golden book of spirit and sense, The holy writ of beauty, it is Marius the Epicurean.
It was in some of his operas, I believe, that certain rôles were sung by Mlle. de Maupin, whose incredibly wild, scandalous, and ambiguous love affairs, and duels in male costume, made the material for Gautier's famous romance. As a boy he neglected his lessons in language for his music-books.
What surprised me most was to find that quite half the books were in French French poets and French romancers: a charming, very rare edition of Ronsard, a beautifully printed edition of Alfred de Musset, and a copy of Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin. How did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted New England farm-house?
Suddenly, at the turn of a path, Beatrix was seized with a horrible trembling, with that contagious horror which is caused by the sight of a snake, and which Calyste felt before he saw the cause of it. On a bench, beneath the branches of a weeping ash, sat Conti, talking with Camille Maupin.
I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? Great was my conversion.
Neither has she your voice of love, your tender eyes, your gracious manner; she is Camille Maupin; there is nothing of the woman about her, whereas in you are all the things of womanhood that I love. It has seemed to me, from the first moment when I saw you, that you were mine. You will laugh at that fancy, but it has grown and is growing.
Her superior mind refused to make the abdication by which a married woman begins that life; she keenly felt the value of independence, and was conscious of disgust for the duties of maternity. It is necessary to give these details to explain the anomalies presented by the life of Camille Maupin.
Another object was to come to close quarters as quickly as possible, so as to use our revolvers when the rifles had been emptied. Howard Maupin, an old Indian fighter, and father of the youth who accompanied us, once remarked that in "close quarters an Indian can't hit the side of a barn."
Had I the stuff in me to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown? bays, laurel crown, a distinct souvenir of Parnassus, but there is no modern equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of Mdlle. de Maupin.
If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is forgotten in the rapture and praise of her unmatchable woman's loveliness. But if Mdlle. de Maupin was the highest peak, it was not the entire mountain. The range was long, and each summit offered to the eye a new and delightful prospect.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking