Page 349 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

Fig. 1

ON THE SHORES OF LAKE GENEVA: Ardor puts it, adding in parentheses that ‘Aleksey and Anna may had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of the
have asterisked here’. Every love story recalls another – especially “prisoner of Chillon”, whose story Byron had told in such moving verse;
7
A LITERARY PANORAMA with stories of forbidden love. The love of Saint-Preux and Julie so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the castle
(although enacted in letter form only), the very physical passions of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonivard endured his dreary
of Anna Karenina and Alexei Vronsky and of Nabokov’s characters captivity three hundred years ago. I am glad I did that, for it took away
Ada and Van, are all related. And so it is no surprise that Albert some of the pain I was feeling on the prisoner’s account. His dungeon
Cohen also sends the characters of his novel Belle du Seigneur here was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he should have been
– characters whose love transgresses social norms – and sends them dissatisfied with it.’ Here, literature and its impact on the real
11
specifically to a luxury room in the Beau-Rivage Palace: but we world become comically entangled as Twain’s narrator expresses
shall return to this later. his incomprehension of Bonivard – who might, after all, have
The Château de Chillon, with its uniquely resonant literary amused himself by getting to know the swarms of guides and
associations, was a natural magnet for romantic pilgrims. Admirers tourists visiting the place on his account.
Cordula SEGER
of Rousseau’s Héloïse were irresistibly attracted to this place with If we continue following these interwoven threads of
‘Literature and nature have made these places more classical than any places of Héloïse’. Foreign travellers would spend several weeks on the its twin associations of tragedy and innocence: it was after Julie’s literature and history, events and influences, we might imagine
bloody battles could have done.’ This is how the Romantic scholar shores of Lake Geneva in order to be able to undertake pilgrimages of fall into the river here and subsequent illness that she became Mark Twain meeting his compatriot Daisy Miller on a visit
1
Heinrich Zschokke described the appeal of the shoreline between this kind. For the travellers this represented a sentimental education; aware of the moral dangers her love for Saint-Preux could entail. to Chillon in 1878. After all, the former was indeed in the
Lausanne and Montreux in 1842, in his survey of classic Swiss for the local people it was a commercial opportunity – and the locals The ‘excursion to the castle of Chillon’ undertaken with her cousin, midst of his famous travels across Europe that year, while the
8
locations. He was thinking first and foremost of Jean-Jacques knew how to pander to the pensive, dreamy visitors, as Karamzin husband and children ends with the mother’s heroic sacrifice. latter appeared in the newly published work by Henry James.
Rousseau, of course, and his incomparable La Nouvelle Héloïse, notes: ‘Many of the inhabitants [of Clarens] know the New Héloïse Here is the eye-witness account of the accident as reported by a Twain would certainly have appreciated this young woman, so
12
with its ‘passions and aberrations’ (fig. 1). and are absolutely delighted that the great Rousseau praised their homeland servant: ‘I uttered a piercing cry; Madame turned round, saw her son fall, unconventional and so untainted by Europe’s influence, while
At the start of Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust shows by making it the setting of his novel. When the farmer at work spots there flew back like an arrow, and threw herself in after him’. 9 in Daisy’s travelling companion Winterbourne, the American
how the imagination helps to give shape to a place, effectively a curious visitor, he asks him with a smirk, “Sir has of course read the The Prisoner of Chillon by Lord Byron (1816) was another exile who can neither understand nor value her, he would have
5
merging with it and leaving a lasting imprint on it. For the young New Héloïse?”’ Locals could pocket a handsome tip for imparting iconic literary text, linking the castle with a story of devotion. seen proof of his theory that Europe exercised a damaging
Marcel, a landscape only becomes ‘actually part of Nature herself, and knowledge of this kind. François Bonivard, prior of Saint-Victor, was famous for resisting influence on the American spirit. Whatever the case, Daisy is no
worthy to be studied and explored’ when it has been selected and In 1779, William Coxe borrowed a copy of the La Nouvelle all the trials he suffered here and remaining true to his ideals more impressed by the famous prisoner’s dark cell than Twain
2
described by the writer. In the eyes of many famous travellers, the Héloïse from a library in Lausanne in order to compare the literature of liberty. Byron’s poem unleashed another wave of literary was: ‘In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element decidedly
shores of Lake Geneva had been sanctified by Rousseau’s story and with the reality: ‘Although there are no traces of any history like that of tourism. However, the context was different by this stage as the prevailed. Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts in
merited exploration with the epistolary novel as a guide. These Julie in these parts, yet the scenery is strongly marked; and every spot, first offshoots of the Rousseau ‘boom’ in turn impacted on the the corkscrew staircases, flirted back with a pretty little cry and a shudder
6
travellers wanted to retrace and experience in person the paths taken which is mentioned in the letters, actually exists in this romantic country.’ literary world: now the characters themselves were embarking on from the edge of the oubliettes, and turned a singularly well-shaped ear to
by the lovers Saint-Preux and Julie. The people who undertook Natural scenery which had previously been given little explicit sentimental pilgrimages, incorporating literary references within everything that Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw that
these sentimental journeys belonged to the upper echelons of society. attention and consideration now became precious because of the the literature itself. she cared very little for feudal antiquities, and that the dusky traditions of
The Russian writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, for example, feelings and sensations it inspired in revered literary characters – as Chillon made but a slight impression upon her.’ 13
followed in the footsteps of his favourite book in 1789. Ten years is clear from the determination with which travellers sought to FICTION AND REALITY Although they are burdened with a greater historical
3
later, Goethe piously turned tear-filled eyes on the setting of a natural identify the traces of this fictional love story on their Grand Tours. In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain makes a pilgrimage to awareness, Alphonse Daudet’s heroes act in a way that is every
10
4
and unworldly love. Hundreds followed them, through to the turn On the shores of Lake Geneva, everything seems tinted with Chillon starting from Ouchy with comments in a wry, satirical bit as delightfully gauche. The charming braggart and mountain
of the century, and English visitors in particular sought out the ‘sacred a ‘novelistic touch’, as the narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or tone, and with the coolly dispassionate eyes of an American: ‘I climber Tartarin de Tarascon travels with a faithful band of
J. Jacottet, Lake Geneva seen from the Bosquet de Julie. Lithographed engraving In the foreground on the right, people wearing their Sunday best stroll or stop to
printed by Lemercier, Paris, published by Blanchoud, Vevey, c.1830. look at the lake. On the left, close to the tall trees, others are sitting on a terrace
The lake front at Clarens seen from the Bosquet de Julie, a resort that takes its admiring the scenery. We can see the Château de Chillon. In the background are the
name from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julie or the New Héloïse (original snow-covered Dents du Midi. On the lake, a steamer.
title Letters from Two Lovers Living in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps)
published in Amsterdam in 1761.
348 349