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Title: The Cornish Trilogy: The Rebel Angels/What's Bred in the Bone/the Lyre of Orpheus/3 Books in 1 Volume by Robertson Davies ISBN: 0-14-015850-2 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.36 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Even more satisfying than The Deptford Trilogy
Comment: While my favorite novel by Robertson Davies remains Fifth Business, a book so dazzling it leaves me almost speechless, I feel the three novels of The Cornish Trilogy--The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus--are more satisfying in the aggregate than The Deptford Trilogy. The middle novel, What's Bred in the Bone, is the lynchpin of the trilogy--the "biography" of Francis Cornish, a wealthy art collector and restorer who in time will be suspected of being an art forger, but who in reality is a great artist of high inward purpose. To remind us of Mark Twain's dictum that a man's true biography is what goes on in his own mind, the book is narrated by the two invisible spirits who served as Cornish's guardians on Earth--the only ones who will ever know the whole truth about him. What's Bred in the Bone is sandwiched in between The Rebel Angels, about mayhem and skulduggery among a group of academics when they inherit the bountiful legacy of the late Francis Cornish, and The Lyre of Orpheus, concerning the convoluted doings when a young musical genius tries to recreate an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann. This book features a particularly rollicking gang of characters, including E.T.A. Hoffmann himself speaking from the grave. Davies' style glistens with his trademark scholarship and wit; his Jungian philosophy, deep spirituality and often profound insights into the artistic process make these novels important works of art as well as delightful semi-satiric, semi-fantasy romps. One major complaint I have about Davies is that all his characters tend to sound like erudite, well-settled, middle-aged men--fine for the Rev. Simon Darcourt, but not for Maria Theotoky Cornish, the 23-year-old, half-Gypsy beauty. Also, some of his set pieces simply go on too long, such as the contentious "Arthurian" dinner party thrown by Arthur and Maria Cornish. However, the totality of Davies' gifts is so enormous that I'm willing to forgive him his flaws.
Rating: 3
Summary: Falls short of the magic of "Deptford"
Comment: I absolutely loved the Deptford Trilogy, so I naturally couldn't wait to devour the Cornish Trilogy, and The Rebel Angels, the first book, did not disappoint. To me, The Rebel Angels was on par with Deptford. The Rebel Angels had manifold intriguing characters and story-lines and mysteries (just like Deptford) that I thought would only get better throughout the Trilogy. Some of the most interesting things about The Rebel Angels were Davies' allusions and references to alchemy and his uncanny sensibilty for the mysterious. All in all, it's a great peek into the teeming world of academia at its most exciting and spell-binding. And I wouldn't imagine that it is an easy task to make academia exciting. Next comes What's Bred in the Bone, and all and all, it was good, but there was one aspect to it that made me want to scream in exasperation. Davies, unfortuneately used an absolutely ridiculous, silly, and down-right ludicrous narrative device in the form of two "biographer angels" that apparently were dreamed up sometime during the Middle Ages. These two biographer angels interrupt the main story at the end of the chapters to basically insult the reader by explaining certain aspects of the story. I couldn't believe Davies used this in an other-wise worthy novel. When these two angels made their first appearance, wholly out of no-where, I had to restrain myself from throwing the book across the room in exasperation. And as for the third novel, The Lyre of Orpheus, let's just say that it must've been Davies' first novel that he never had published, because it seemed to be the work of a second-rate author, something that Davies certainly is not. It also used a similarly ludicrous plot device as the biographer angels, only this time it is a long-dead 2nd rate composer from the 19th century chiming in with his entirely inappropriate commentary about his life and about the events of the main story. I don't know what Davies was thinking.....and as for the main story, it is at times interesting, but it tends to hit the reader over the head with its Arthurian allusions. Also, it leaves a great many questions posed in the first and second novels unanswered, especially from the first novel, being that the first and third novels take place after the second novel. That was what disappointed me the most about the third novel. Instead of focusing on some of the stupendous characters brought into play in the first novel and digging further into their stories, Davies chose to push aside (or eliminate) many of the best characters from the first novel and even bring in a few characters to be center-pieces which didn't hold my interest nearly as much. All in all, I think the Cornish Trilogy, to me, represents many missed chances. It could've been just as could as the Deptford Trilogy all throughout, but i don't know what happened. I don't regret having read it, but my advice would be to read it before the Deptford Trilogy, so you can save the best for last and truly be dazzled by the highly superior trilogy. I would give The Rebel Angels 4 and a half stars by itself, 3 and a half (maybe just 3 stars) to What's Bred in the Bone (those angels really bugged the hell out of me), and 2 stars to The Lyre of Orpheus, so that evens out to about three stars total. (By the way, I have not yet read the Salterton Trilogy, so i cannot make any comparisons in this regard. I will read it shortly, though)
Rating: 5
Summary: A frenzy of artistic expression
Comment: Robertson Davies writes like a friendly, jocose composite of every college professor you've ever had. Like Rabelais, the French Renaissance scholar who is one of the many subjects of "The Cornish Trilogy," he is amazingly learned and uses his fiction to display the staggering expanse of his knowledge, but he understands the inherent joy in reading and learning and balances his writing with equal measures of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow humor.
These three novels revolve around a man named Francis Cornish whose wealth, talent, and connections elevate his uncommonly consequential life almost to the status of an Ontario folk legend. Growing up in a rural town called Blairlogie, he develops a sensibility for the power of visual images and becomes an artist and an art connoisseur, educating himself at the University of Toronto's College of St. John and the Holy Ghost, affectionately called Spook. After working as an art assessor and spying for the British from a Bavarian castle during World War II, he spends the rest of his life amassing a tremendous collection of art, books, and manuscripts, which he leaves to Spook and other Canadian institutes upon his death.
The trilogy's second novel, "What's Bred in the Bone," in which Cornish's life story is narrated by a Recording Angel, is like the gentle, reflective adagio of a three-movement symphony. By contrast, the first novel, "The Rebel Angels," in which three Spook professors, the executors of Cornish's will, are assigned to catalogue and distribute the bequeathal, is in a modern Rabelaisian spirit: erudite, bawdy, and perverse. The discovery of an unknown Rabelais manuscript leads to an academic uproar among Clement Hollier, his nubile graduate student Maria, and his obnoxious rival Urquhart McVarish, whose tea-time companion, the boorish ex-monk John Parlabane, will do literally anything to get his unreadable autobiographical novel published.
The third novel, "The Lyre of Orpheus," concerns itself with an unfinished opera about King Arthur by E.T.A. Hoffmann which is found among Cornish's manuscripts. As a tribute to their benefactor, the Cornish Foundation allows to have the opera completed by a filthy waif of a girl who goes by the name of Schnak and is being hailed as a musical prodigy, with the libretto penned by Simon Darcourt, Spook's resident Anglican priest. The proceedings are annotated by none other than the ghost of Hoffmann himself, trapped in Limbo because he was unable to complete his Arthurian opera, and the Cornish Foundation's effort is his only chance to pass on to the next world. As the fledgling opera goes into production, Davies gives a brilliantly colorful account of the stormy dramas and passions involved in the world of musical theater.
These novels are broad satires of the worlds of academics, art, and music, respectively, and the main characters are so fatuously self-important they almost dare the reader to hate them. The general theme is the imagined conflict between the artist and the philistine, illustrated by Hoffmann's Johannes Kreisler/Tomcat Murr alter egos, but this imaginary line is only as thick as we make it. If, as Hoffmann's ghost says, a philistine is someone who is content to live in a wholly unexplored world, then Davies's "Cornish" trilogy acts wonderfully as an antiphilistine corrective.
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Title: The Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business/the Manticore/World of Wonders by Robertson Davies ISBN: 0140147551 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies ISBN: 014015910X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1991 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Cunning Man: A Novel by Robertson Davies ISBN: 0140248307 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies ISBN: 0140168842 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books by Robertson Davies ISBN: 014027586X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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