This final post is the second one responding to a passage from chapter four of Confessions of a Young Man:  Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, a voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. In my last post, I examined what the word 'perverse' is doing in this passage. I suggested that Confessions draws upon a number of different meanings associated with the word ‘perverse’ that were floating around at the end of the nineteenth century. It is a ‘perverse’ text in form and contents, I claimed. And I want to say something very similar about the word ‘morbid’. Like ‘perverse’, several different meanings of ‘morbid’ are relevant to this passage from Confessions; and like ‘perverse’, the word ‘morbid’ acquired pa...

I've been putting off writing this post for a bit now. When I started this blog, I explained that I hoped to use the exercise of writing about George Moore and Confessions of a Young Man to jumpstart a project that had been delayed by COVID. The aim was to write up some of the ideas that I'm going to use for a general introduction to a critical edition of Confessions . And so far that has worked fine (for me) - Moore is a fascinating and interesting person and Confessions is a complex and provocative text: all kinds of influences run through it. But one of the problems holding me back has been the crafting of a logical hook upon which to hang all the different ideas and topics that I'd like to fit into the introduction. The solution that I have in mind is to use the following passage from chapter four of Confessions: Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, a voice I am ...

The critical edition of Confessions of a Young Man that I'm preparing is based on the text of the second book version that George Moore published in 1889 (only a year after he published it as a book). One of the major changes he made for that version of the book was the insertion of additional chapter, just before the end of the book. That chapter - chapter 12 of the 1889 version of Confessions  - is another example of how Moore experiments with narrative form in his book. It is set up for the most part, like the script of a play and it consists largely of a dialogue staged between the narrator and his own conscience. The chapter has no subtitle in the English version of the text, but Moore first published this chapter within a French translation that appeared in 1888. In that version the chapter was subtitled 'Examen de Minuit' (Midnight Examination or Thoughts at Midnight).  Some parts of Confessions deliberately complicate our understanding by introducing new or diverse...

The Strand, 1887 (c) British Transport Museum As discussed in previous posts, much of Confessions of a Young Man is set in Paris and focusses upon different aspects of the literary and artistic scene in France at the end of the nineteenth century. However, half-way through the book the protagonist leaves Paris and moves to London. Whilst Confessions offers important space to consideration of English-speaking writers, such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson, it nevertheless remains strongly focussed upon France and French writers. Take Chapter 12, entitled 'Thoughts in a Strand Lodging', which opens: Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away – stowed the last child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has ceased to pester me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the inducements that occur to her landlady’s mind; the actress from the Savoy has ...

Having discussed some issues around the presentation of self in previous posts through particular influences and examples, this post is going to be a little more abstract. I'm going to consider some of the claims made by Max Saunders in his book, Self-Impression: Life-writing, Autobiografiction and the Forms of Modern Writing (2010). This lengthy study examines the emergence of certain kinds of Modernist writing in the twentieth century out of late nineteenth-century biographical and autobiographical texts. Saunders' book is very handy because of the deft way in which it manages some of the terminology around these topics, considering labels such as biography, autobiography, life-writing and autobiografiction (I'll return to the latter in a bit). One starting point for Saunders is Philippe Lejeune's concept of 'formal autobiography' or 'contractual autobiography', 'in which real author, narrator, and the name on the title‐page all coincide, and seek ...

Caricature of Huysmans In my previous post on Moore and Huysmans I suggested that A rebours (1884)   and Confessions of a Young Man (1887) share a sense of equivocation or ambivalence that might be, in some respects, more truly Decadent than any reference to vice or excess. Another shared connection here is their relation to autobiography. Huysmans' creation, Des Esseintes was frequently taken to be modelled upon himself by critics. And  Confessions of a Young Man presents itself as an autobiography - from the second English edition of 1889, the narrator even shared the same name as the author. In both cases, however, autobiographical identifications are important, but complex and hard to sustain at certain points.*  So, in this post and the next, I'll explore some points around Confessions and its vexed and complex status as autobiography. My starting point is passage from early in chapter 1: I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax,...

In the two previous posts, I discussed George Moore's relationship with Émile Zola, suggesting that Confessions of a Young Man reflected a change from admiration and emulation towards a more qualified, even distanced attitude by Moore towards the French novelist. In this post, I'm going to look at the links between Moore and another contemporary French writer, J-K Huysmans. For there are important parallels to be drawn here.  Huysmans is now best known for A rebours (1884), which relates the proclivities of a corrupt and ailing aristocrat, Jean Floressas des Esseintes. Forced into early retirement from Parisian social life by ill health, Des Esseintes retires to his Fontainbleau, where he puts his considerable resources to use in order to indulge his every whim and taste. This ranges from his cultivation of an extreme bibliophile (he commissions bound copies of Baudelaire's work for every day of the week), to sexual excesses (he pursues a complicated relationship with a v...

This post is going to be a bit shorter and more patchy.* More precisely, it's about a current gap in my research. My previous post provided a bit of general information about Émile Zola and how important he was to George Moore. I suggested that Moore set himself up as an authority on Zola in London in the early 1880s, by writing critical articles about him, translating Zola's work and writing about him in Confessions of a Young Man . As an earlier post pointed out, however, Moore's attitude and disposition towards Zola changed considerably - where his early articles express sympathy and enthusiasm for the French writer, his later was response was more qualified even critical. I'm hoping to capture some of this in the appendices to the critical edition of Confessions that I'm working on, by reproducing some excerpts from Moore's journalism. But this is where I have run into problems, exacerbated by the COVID19 pandemic and crisis. Moore wrote an article for Eng...

In my previous post I described how George Moore ruined his literary relationship with the French writer Émile Zola through some creatively tactless writing in Confessions of a Young Man. In the next couple of posts, I'm going to explore Moore's relationship with Zola in a bit more detail. So - first off - a bit of background. Zola's reception in the UK was very mixed during the nineteenth century. Known for a frank and explicit form of realism known as Naturalism, he first became famous in France during 1877 for his novel L'Assommoir which describes the lives of a working class family, Gervaise Macquart and her husband, Coupeau in one of the poorer districts of Paris. Although Coupeau rescues Gervaise from an abusive previous relationship, he turns to drink after an accident at work and they both descend into alcoholism and poverty. The title of the book, derives from a verb meaning 'to stun': it's a familiar name for small drinking establishments where wor...

Edgar Degas, 'L'Absinthe' (1875) [Supposedly set in the  Nouvelle Athènes] When the narrator's career as a painter does not work out (due to a lack of talent), he decides to become a writer instead. Accordingly Confessions of a Young Man  transforms from an account of the visual arts into a depiction of the French literary scene. The setting shifts from art school to the famous cafe culture of Paris. Chapter seven is set in the Nouvelle Athènes - a bar just off the Place Pigalle. This part of Paris became infamous in the twentieth century as a red light district, but the area did not have quite the same reputation during the period Moore describes. (The Café de la Nouvelle Athènes was replaced by a strip bar only later.) In the 1870s, Pigalle was more closely associated with the Bohemian artist types who lived in nearby Montmartre. In chapter seven, Moore relates how the café was frequented by writers such as Villiers de l'Isle Adam and painters, such as Edgar Degas...

Rudolph Julian I mentioned in my previous post that the narrator of Confessions of a Young Man moves from studying at the École des Beaux Arts to working in a smaller school based in the passage des Panoramas off the Boulevard Montmartre in the 2e arrondissement of Paris. The Académie Julian was founded in 1868 by Pierre Louis Rodolphe Julian (1839-1907), who had moved to Paris from the South of France. Moore was fascinated by Julian* and also wrote about him in an article entitled 'Meissonier and the Salon' for the Fortnightly Review in July 1890: M. Julian was once a shepherd in the south of France. In his native village he established a reputation for extraordinary strength and artistic capacity. He had thrown every young man within twenty miles in the wrestling contests, and he had astonished every one by the skill he showed in drawing. For a time his fate hung in the balance. A great wrestler or a great painter, which was he to be? Moore seems to have been greatly impres...

Ecole des Beaux Arts, Scribner's Magazine (1887) In the second chapter of Confessions of a Young Man the narrator moves to Paris, where he hopes to train as an artist. This reflects Moore's own experiences in the 1870s and offers some fascinating insights into the period. In fact, whilst tracking down historical sources to write the notes for this chapter I was struck by how frequently Moore's writings (including his fiction) have served as an important primary source for historians of the period. On arrival in Paris, the narrator enrols at the École des Beaux Arts - the central, state-sponsored artistic establishment. Entrance to the Beaux Arts was determined for French students by a competitive process, but it was possible for foreign students to bypass this by applying directly to one of the artists or professors who maintained studios within the school. It was also necessary for such foreign students to obtain a letter of introduction from their diplomatic legation.*  ...