My second Gautier book and a second triumph. Gautier has a very verbose style and never uses one metaphor when 8 will do, however his writing is so lyrical and poetic that it rarely seems too long.
They say people today have a warped view of the opposite sex due to film, porn, celebrity magazines etc. but evidently this is not so modern a problem, as our male 19th century hero is the same and all he had to work with was poetry and oil paintings, he despairs of ever finding a woman who meets his fantastic ideal. Our heroine on the other hand is determined to truly understand men before giving herself to one.
This is a romance i guess, although one of those very realistic ones something along the lines of '500 Days of Summer' . It has really interesting things to say about sexuality aswell, which again makes it seem quite modern.
Overall this is a beautifully written, funny, interesting and remarkably... human story (for want of a better description :) ).
Note: Some prior knowledge of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' might be beneficial.
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Mademoiselle de Maupin is a symphony of adjectives, in which the thematic material alternately suggests the most exquisite pleasures of the senses. It is an ineffably beautiful tableau, heady, intoxicating, Dionysiac, conceived in ecstasy. It is, indeed a “golden book” as close an approximation to painting in the realm of pure aesthetics as anything in words may be. It is a celebration of beauty and its mood is always that of delight. So rare is this the accomplishment of the novelist and so far away is it from the usual mingling of love with tragedy, sorrow, and disillusion, that were it nothing else, the novel should solicit our affection and the novelist deserve our gratitude. Such are the words of American literary critic Burton Rascoe characterizing this sumptuous, grand novel back in 1920.

More specifically, the novel’s main character and first person narrator Chevalier d’Albert is a supreme lover in the tradition of nineteenth century romanticism, loving his dreamy idealizations of women, rotating visions and intense yearnings for goddesses, wood nymphs, angels and female beauties in all shades and variations; loving the idea of being in love (ah, to be so dramatic and such a romantic you are swept away by loving love itself!); and, last but by no means least, in the first chapters of the novel, playing the part of a lover drunk on the beauty of a young woman, Rosette by name. All these passionate feelings and moods mix and mingle to create a festival of sensual splendor.

I have underlined a passage or two or three or more on each and every page. The language and images and metaphors take my breath away. If there ever was a novel where we should open ourselves to literary magic, Mademoiselle de Maupin is that novel. Reading Gautier’s masterpiece, I’m reminded of the words and wisdom of Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of art par excellence: “Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”

And , please, please, please, let this prince of a novel speak to you. Here is Gautier’s lush, poetic prose, this sample from the narrator’s pre-Rosette days, “I am waiting for heaven to open up and an angel to bring me a revelation, or for a revolution to break out and offer me a throne; for one of Raphael’s virgins to step down from her canvas and embrace me; for non-existent relatives to die and leave me enough to allow my imagination to drift away on a river of gold, for a hippogriff to capture me and carry me off to an unknown country.”

The novel is also chock-full of whimsy, hilarity and baroque comedy. For example: here is d’Albert on painterly beauty after spending hours in front of a mirror musing on how his face falls short of his ideal, “You see so many beautiful faces in pictures! Why is none of them mine? So many lovely heads disappearing in the dust and smoke of time at the back of old galleries. Would it not be better if they jumped out of their frames and came to grace my shoulders? Would the reputation of Raphael suffer so very much if one of those angels thronging his ultramarine canvases were to let me borrow his features for thirty years” Yes, indeed, we do have a narrator-dreamer who can out-Narcissus Narcissus.

So far this is a tale of garden-fresh love and intense sensual pleasures between a man and a woman. But there comes a point, surprise, surprise – things change – intensity and freshness, no matter how intense and how fresh, fades. Alas, d’Albert tells us in so many words that he and Rosette are at the point where they have had enough of one another. What is needed is an infusion of energy to lift them to unexplored vistas of raw sensuality, passion and unspeakable beauty. And such an infusion arrives on the scene, a personage who turns out to be a triple dose of energy -- a supremely graceful, super-sexually-charged, a cross-dressing, gender-shifting, high-octane lad (a lass, really) on horseback -- Théodore aka Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Pure literary magic shinning with the brightness and heat of the midday sun. And this Penguin edition is a most readable translation along with an informative introduction, notes, footnotes and Gautier’s famous preface expounding an "art for art sake" aesthetic in answer to the up-tight moralist hacks of his day. Indeed, art for art sake, reading for reading sake, dance for dance sake – as in Matisse’s five joyous dancers – and with this book in hand the five dancers are: D’Albert, Rosette, Théodore, goddess Aphrodite, and you as reader. Joie de vivres.

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Playful retelling of As You Like it, infused with a good deal of meditation on love and gender. I found the Chevalier d'Albert a bit tedious with his constant assertions that he was terribly debauched; but I found Madeleine a intriguing character as she cheerfully roams about in disguise, breaking hearts as she goes. The themes of this book are still fascinating nowadays; one can only wonder how it was received when it was published in the 1830s! ( )

Over the summer I haven't been reading many books that I'm deeply in love with, which is a shame because I love reading and not feeling hyped about my books on the go is such a pity. So I put down the others and picked up this one again. I'd gotten over half-way through it at two different airports at two very different times of the year. Thesis-writing and travel interrupted this book quite unfairly, despite the fact I'd loved reading it whenever it was in my hands.

I should have read it much earlier. I can imagine what my response to it would be in high school (might not have laughed at D'Albert in the way he deserves, but god I would have appreciated the aesthetics, the beauty, and Madeleine de Maupin herself). This is a perfect artistic text, perfectly decadent, and I wrote so much around it in the course of my thesis without having read it first hand. But I'd always known I'd love it and am not sure why I put it off so long.

I picked it up again at the beginning of the play. I read out D'Albert's vivid description of his ideal stage setting to my mom & step-dad while lying on the beach. And [b:As You Like It|42607|As You Like It |William Shakespeare|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327935363s/42607.jpg|702863] being the play of choice only struck me further, as it was the first Shakespeare play that I really read and, I believe, the first book that I picked up from my high school library. It's gender politics make it a perfect choice for this book, and made the whole novel feel so personal to me. I think that was the real takeaway, that this book felt personal, felt written to me, felt like all that I want and look for. ( )

Mademoiselle de Maupin is a symphony of adjectives, in which the thematic material alternately suggests the most exquisite pleasures of the senses. It is an ineffably beautiful tableau, heady, intoxicating, Dionysiac, conceived in ecstasy. It is, indeed a “golden book” as close an approximation to painting in the realm of pure aesthetics as anything in words may be. It is a celebration of beauty and its mood is always that of delight. So rare is this the accomplishment of the novelist and so far away is it from the usual mingling of love with tragedy, sorrow, and disillusion, that were it nothing else, the novel should solicit our affection and the novelist deserve our gratitude. Such are the words of American literary critic Burton Rascoe characterizing this sumptuous, grand novel back in 1920.

More specifically, the novel’s main character and first person narrator Chevalier d’Albert is a supreme lover in the tradition of 19th century romanticism, loving his dreamy idealizations of women, rotating visions and intense yearnings for goddesses, wood nymphs, angels and female beauties in all shades and variations; loving the idea of being in love (ah, to be so dramatic and such a romantic you are swept away by loving love itself!); and, last but by no means least, in the first chapters of the novel, playing the part of a lover drunk on the beauty of a young woman, Rosette by name. All these passionate feelings and moods mix and mingle to create a festival of sensual splendor.

I have underlined a passage or two or three or more on each and every page. The language and images and metaphors take my breath away. If there ever was a novel where we should open ourselves to literary magic, Mademoiselle de Maupin is that novel. Reading Gautier’s masterpiece, I’m reminded of the words and wisdom of Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher of art par excellence: “Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.”

And , please, please, please, let this prince of a novel speak to you. Here is Gautier’s lush, poetic prose, this sample from the narrator’s pre-Rosette days, “I am waiting for heaven to open up and an angel to bring me a revelation, or for a revolution to break out and offer me a throne; for one of Raphael’s virgins to step down from her canvas and embrace me; for non-existent relatives to die and leave me enough to allow my imagination to drift away on a river of gold, for a hippogriff to capture me and carry me off to an unknown country.”

The novel is also chock-full of whimsy, hilarity and baroque comedy. For example: here is d’Albert on painterly beauty after spending hours in front of a mirror musing on how his face falls short of his ideal, “You see so many beautiful faces in pictures! Why is none of them mine? So many lovely heads disappearing in the dust and smoke of time at the back of old galleries. Would it not be better if they jumped out of their frames and came to grace my shoulders? Would the reputation of Raphael suffer so very much if one of those angels thronging his ultramarine canvases were to let me borrow his features for thirty years” Yes, indeed, we do have a narrator-dreamer who can out-Narcissus Narcissus.

So far this is a tale of garden-fresh love and intense sensual pleasures between a man and a woman. But there comes a point, surprise, surprise – things change – intensity and freshness, no matter how intense and how fresh, fades. Alas, d’Albert tells us in so many words that he and Rosette are at the point where they have had enough of one another. What is needed is an infusion of energy to lift them to unexplored vistas of raw sensuality, passion and unspeakable beauty. And such an infusion arrives on the scene, a personage who turns out to be a triple dose of energy -- a supremely graceful, super-sexually-charged, a cross-dressing, gender-shifting, high-octane lad (a lass, really) on horseback -- Théodore aka Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Pure literary magic shinning with the brightness and heat of the midday sun. And this Penguin edition is a most readable translation along with an informative introduction, notes, footnotes and Gautier’s famous preface expounding an ‘art for art sake’ aesthetic in answer to the up-tight moralist hacks of his day. Indeed, art for art sake, reading for reading sake, dance for dance sake – as in Matisse’s five joyous dancers – and with this book in hand the five dancers are: D’Albert, Rosette, Théodore, goddess Aphrodite, and you as reader. Joie de vivres.

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