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frogy927's review against another edition
3.0
I never know how to rate non-fiction. This was interesting, but it wasn't a page turner. I had to force myself to keep reading it. But it was interesting whenever I picked it up.
The first section (not the intro, the first original section) came across as so creepy from a modern perspective. Rosa was like this old lady preying on a super-young Anna. And then there were a bunch of photos at the end of the first section and I realized Anna was middle aged (well, in her 30s, but the photo doesn't make her a young 30s) and it changed everything I thought about it. Because Anna is an adult. But that does not come across at all. The book is in Anna's own words, and I still would have guessed that she were maybe 19 or so from the way she portrays herself; jhe way her parents controlled her life and little things where she seemed naive or innocent. But I think it was just at that time, all unmarried women were treated like children. There was no language or framework for a women being an adult without being married off.
And that just intensified as the book continued. Because Rosa was basically married twice, first to Nathalie, her childhood sweetheart, and then late in life after Nathalie passes away, to Anna. But their relationships are constantly described in mother-and-child terms. There's no girlfriend or wife or partner or anything like that. I have no idea how that came across to people reading the book in the original French when it was published in 1908, but to me now, it's very weird to think of your lover as your mother.
Beyond that, the highlights were:
“Nothing can match my horror for the great slaughters in which our history takes such pride. God willing, the twentieth century, of which I’ll see just the dawn, won’t quarrel with the nineteenth century for the privilege of reinventing gunpowder.”
Because I always think it's interesting/sad/indicative of human nature that at the turn of the calendar people always think the future will be different and better and people won't repeat the mistakes of the past (although they always do).
And the passage that inspired me to pick up the book in an Instagram art history lecture, something Rosa tells Anna toward the end of her life: "I arranged with Nathalie to be buried at Pere-Lachaise cemetery, in the Micas family vault. After me, there'll be room for one more in the tomb. Will you take that place, my dear Anna? Then you'll be close to me even in the grave. Nathalie won't be jealous, I know. Her love for me is big enough to understand that when souls share everything, each one's happiness only increases the other's."
The first section (not the intro, the first original section) came across as so creepy from a modern perspective. Rosa was like this old lady preying on a super-young Anna. And then there were a bunch of photos at the end of the first section and I realized Anna was middle aged (well, in her 30s, but the photo doesn't make her a young 30s) and it changed everything I thought about it. Because Anna is an adult. But that does not come across at all. The book is in Anna's own words, and I still would have guessed that she were maybe 19 or so from the way she portrays herself; jhe way her parents controlled her life and little things where she seemed naive or innocent. But I think it was just at that time, all unmarried women were treated like children. There was no language or framework for a women being an adult without being married off.
And that just intensified as the book continued. Because Rosa was basically married twice, first to Nathalie, her childhood sweetheart, and then late in life after Nathalie passes away, to Anna. But their relationships are constantly described in mother-and-child terms. There's no girlfriend or wife or partner or anything like that. I have no idea how that came across to people reading the book in the original French when it was published in 1908, but to me now, it's very weird to think of your lover as your mother.
Beyond that, the highlights were:
“Nothing can match my horror for the great slaughters in which our history takes such pride. God willing, the twentieth century, of which I’ll see just the dawn, won’t quarrel with the nineteenth century for the privilege of reinventing gunpowder.”
Because I always think it's interesting/sad/indicative of human nature that at the turn of the calendar people always think the future will be different and better and people won't repeat the mistakes of the past (although they always do).
And the passage that inspired me to pick up the book in an Instagram art history lecture, something Rosa tells Anna toward the end of her life: "I arranged with Nathalie to be buried at Pere-Lachaise cemetery, in the Micas family vault. After me, there'll be room for one more in the tomb. Will you take that place, my dear Anna? Then you'll be close to me even in the grave. Nathalie won't be jealous, I know. Her love for me is big enough to understand that when souls share everything, each one's happiness only increases the other's."
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