Of Monasteries and Mountains

[selenak]

Having successfully mastered the art of the Peugeot driving - honestly, it wasn't the various gears per se, I did learn to drive that way, not on automatic, I am that old; it was the secret of the reverse! - I was set to chauffeur my mother around the island. Well, we planned various tours, and on Tuesday, we did the first. Which led us to

Comments

[wee_warrior]

Just lovely. I'll never understand why so many people go to Mallorca only for partying, when it is so amazingly beautiful.

Oh, Chopin and Sand! Yay for early gender-bending couples!

Well, quoth I, while the novel is indeed a great one, it IS a novel and the Graves parts (he's only a minor character in it anyway) struck me as very much what happens if a fanfic author has an OTP (in Barker's case Sassoon/Owen) and doesn't want anyone to be as important or shock, even more important and connected to one of her guys, so she bashes that annoying person TPTB Real Life provided.Hee. I'm reading it just now and it is a really good book, although I must admit that the real life circumstances of Sassoon and Owen's insta-friendship/mutual crush/epic romance/presumably all of the above really look like a romantic screenplay gone wild, so I can see why Barker would be tempted to concentrate on that. (As for Graves, he mostly strikes me as incredibly pragmatic to Sassoon's idealistic frustration so far. Does he get more dickish later on

[selenak]

Re: early gender-bending: have you ever read the Gustave "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" Flaubert/ George Sand correspondance? He addresses her as "chère Maitre" - which the German version makes into "liebe Meisterin", not being able to use the female adjective and the male noun, and the whole thing is just fun to read on every level - popular novelist versus ultra-artistic super critical novelist, vivacious old lady versus gloomy man who feels aged somewhere in his 30s, busy family woman (with her sons and grandchildren, and still writing novels, of course) versus hermit, and G.S. as something like the last surviving Romantic versus Flaubert the realist/naturalist

[wee_warrior]

Re: early gender-bending: have you ever read the Gustave "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" Flaubert/ George Sand correspondance?

Nope. *puts on list* I believe to remember reading that she used to call Chopin her wife, more or less jokingly, but I may have made that up. They must have been quite an interesting pair, though.

ut Barker needed someone to play the "now do be sensible, Siegfried, we're not going to change anything anyway" role, and she didn't need another soldier-poet in an intense relationship with Sasson, hence the basically two Graves scenes we get and their content.

I confess that I interpreted these entirely different, namely as Graves being concerned about his friend and thus doing everything to get him into a hospital instead of prison...now, I'm also someone who doesn't think pragmatism is bad, so it could just be my interpretation merrily overriding authorial intend to my heart's delight. So far I also have the feeling that Prior is more of a main character than either Sassoon or Owen, but that might of course change.

[selenak]

Prior is; he's also the central character of the entire trilogy, and entirely fictional, which is why his characterisation is completely up to the author. *g*

[kathyh]

Sounds like you've driven round half the island already :) I've got a travel book about Mallorca written by an Englishman in the 1930s and they travelled to most places by hiking or riding on donkeys as the roads were more or less non-existent. Hard to imagine now!

I've always felt rather sorry for the poor monks of Valldemossa who had to put up with Chopin and George Sand. Not the easiest of visitors.

Now English (And Scottish, and Welsh, and Irish) people on my list, isn't that where you'd go if you said "Goodbye To All That", too?

Most definitely, yes. I thought Deia was stunning and the simplicity of Graves' grave very moving.

Lovely photos. Many thanks for sharing.

ETA: And I meant to say that your mum looks great and I can't believe this trip is her .. birthday present :)

[selenak]

Not the easiest of visitors.

And don't forget the kids. *g* (George Sand's, that is.) Though actually, having read George Sand's correspondance with Gustave Flaubert in her old age, I must say she sounds like a very good visitor to have, one who really enjoys travelling and is very good humoured (she's endlessly trying to cheer up Flaubert and pointing out the things to enjoy in those letters, and she's still travelling, albeit not to Mallorca, just within France).

My mum says thanks!

[timeofchange]

I'm longing to go to Mallorca now. Your photos are so excellent.

[selenak]

Thank you, and here's hoping that you'll make it! So worth a visit.

[londonkds]

Do young Germans learn on automatics now, then? In the UK if you learn on an automatic you need to take a second driving test if you ever want to drive a manual, so it's not common.

Sorry, but banning people from using public transport to your home (presumably from snobbery about Teh Disgusting Lower-Class Daytrippers?) does make you a dick, by my estimation.

My first ever foreign holiday, at three, was to Port de Soller. Was the tramway running?

[selenak]

Honestly, I'm not sure, since it's been *cough* twenty years since I learned, and back then, we had the same rule - i.e. if you learned on automatics, it said so in your licence and you needed to take a second test if, etc. But today, there are hardly any non-automatic cars left, so I wonder!

Public transport: let me clarify - buses get to Deia itself, they're just not allowed to drive in the old city centre, which is good because those streets are TINY (or is the right word "tight"? "slim"? "narrow"?) and a bus would entirely block them, keeping out not only cars but people. Graves' home, otoh, is NOT in the bus-free zone, it's outside of the city core, which means buses can drive there. So it's not like he can be accused of self interest. (Unless one postulates he liked using the bus himself?)

Tramway at Port de Soller: yes, it's running!

[londonkds]

Ah, I misunderstood you about the buses, probably because there are some twentieth-centiury writers who one can imagine thinking that way.

[likeadeuce]

A while ago likeadeuce asked me whether I didn't think Robert Graves was something of a dick, and revealed Pat Barker's novel Regeneration as the source of that opinion.

Heh, you know, it's funny because I've actually read "Goodbye" -- at least, I'm pretty sure, I read excerpts from it for a college course --,' but the fictionalized version stood out in my mind more for some reason. Oh, the power of pushy shippers!

Lovely pictures, as always, and I'm glad it's not too wintery here or I might just stare at these all day.

[selenak]

But, but, but you told me Virginia isn't wintery at all i.e. I couldn't ski there?

Anyway: glad you like the photos. And I'm still amused about the power of pushy shippers, too.*g*

[likeadeuce]

Cold sometimes; snow rarely :).