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A Mixture of Frailties (1958)

par Robertson Davies

Autres auteurs: Voir la section autres auteur(e)s.

Séries: The Salterton Trilogy (3)

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5001548,632 (3.98)1 / 36
"It's a muddle, thought Monica. A muddle and I can't get it straight. I wish I knew what I should do. I wish I even knew what I want to do...I want to go on in the life that has somehow or other found me and claimed me. And I want so terribly to be happy. Oh god, don't let me slip under the surface of all the heavy-hearted dullness that seems to claim so many people...." A Mixture of Frailties is so much more than the story of Monica Gall's life in London and her education as a singer. It is an account of her education as a human being, and the result is an absorbing novel, comic in the true sense, vivid and frequently moving.… (plus d'informations)
  1. 10
    The Salterton Trilogy par Robertson Davies (KayCliff)
  2. 00
    Lives of Girls and Women par Alice Munro (betterthanchocolate)
    betterthanchocolate: The young artist, educated. The provincial confines of small town Ontario, negotiated. And great prose.
  3. 00
    Leaven of Malice par Robertson Davies (KayCliff)
  4. 00
    Tempest-Tost par Robertson Davies (KayCliff)
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 Literary Centennials: Davies - The Salterton Trilogy2 non-lus / 2rebeccanyc, Décembre 2012

» Voir aussi les 36 mentions

Affichage de 1-5 de 15 (suivant | tout afficher)
In this weird time in our human history, Davies is like a balm to my soul. His writing is insightful and witty, warmly crisp and engaging, and hits all the emotional marks, celebrating the passions, fears, and silliness of humankind. In this, the conclusion to the Salterton Trilogy, the story of Solomon Bridgetower and Pearl Vambrace, which began in such an unlikely fashion in the previous volume, is tied up neatly, as they endure the vengeance of Mrs. Bridgetower, exacted upon them from her grave. In crafting her legacy thus, the story of Monica Gall, an indifferent girl who happens to be a singer of some talent, begins. Monica becomes the heiress of a complicated trust designed by Mrs. Bridgetower, which allows--indeed, demands--that she go off to Europe to pursue music as a career, a path which would never have occurred to her in the natural course of her life. But, she travels to London (as my own daughter has done, at Monica's age!), falls in with a varied and, at times, motley crew of musical teachers, and finds herself working toward a success she's not quite sure she deserves. She is filled with Canadian humility and propelled by the passions that consume young women, and her trajectory is informed by both of those qualities. When the story winds down, all injustices appear to be set to right, and Monica is faced with a choice that could change her life forever (again). So excellently written is this tale that I don't even care that the reader doesn't get to know what her decision is, because I get to imagine it. ( )
  karenchase | Jun 14, 2023 |
A Mixture of Frailties is a drastic departure from what came before, but I also find it to be the first true Robertson Davies novel in some ways. The third in the Salterton trilogy has the happy marriage of Solly and Veronica Bridgetower interrupted when Solly's mother Louisa passes away and leaves them with a measly $100, and the rest of his inheritance locked away for the crime of moving out, something every child must eventually do, and worst of all, marrying.

This book is a different experience from [b:Tempest-Tost|347358|Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1290198660l/347358._SY75_.jpg|1967443] and [b:Leaven of Malice|48270|Leaven of Malice (Salterton Trilogy, #2)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469066564l/48270._SY75_.jpg|1010107], and while I can sympathize with complaints that it doesn't feel like the Salterton trilogy, it is easily my favourite of the trilogy because it's more in line with the rest of Davies' work than the rest of the trilogy (I'm especially reminded of the Cornish trilogy). The first quarter is still very Salterton with its focus on previously established characters, the Bridgetowers especially, but it becomes a very different sort of book as soon as Monica Gall crosses the Atlantic to London.

It is here that the title's meaning becomes apparent; Monica's mentors prove to be a cantankerous lot whose egos clash with the same regularity as California wildfires, and it really makes me question the company Benedict Domdaniel keeps. Giles Revelstoke and Murtagh might be talented musicians, but I'd rather not have them teach me music, especially someone as sensitive to criticism as Giles, which is probably why I never understood his acrimony towards the music critic Stanhope Aspinwall. Perhaps this is just because I also like to write about music on the side and have pretensions to being a music critic, but his writings are pretty level-headed and cogent, and whatever criticisms he makes always come from hope for improvement.

Theatre once again features prominently, and while Davies' descriptions of production cycles are as excellent as ever, it also shows Davies' development as a writer. He was a playwright before he wrote Tempest-Tost, and it shows in the way it and Leaven of Malice are structured; those books were more farcical in nature, whereas A Mixture of Frailties is more serious in tone, has more focus on character development in addition to characterization, and hops across the Atlantic and the U.K.

The only complaint I have is the brief moments in Salterton prior to the denouement; the emphasis on Monica's story is so strong that whenever we return to Solly and Veronica, it always feels like those moments are only there to remind us that they and Salterton still exist, because they seldom advance the story. Otherwise, I've come to like this book far more rereading it. I don't think Davies has yet entirely honed his craft yet, but I find the characters in this book to be improved for the most part, and his wit and warmth are what make me revisit his work, which fortunately this book and trilogy has in spades. ( )
  collapsedbuilding | Aug 10, 2022 |
La apertura del testamento de Louisa Bridgetower deja atónita a la ciudad de Salterton: su hijo Solly no heredará un centavo hasta que haya tenido un hijo y buena parte de su fortuna se deberá destinar a la educación de una joven artista. Los albaceas seleccionarán a Monica Gall, la solista de un peculiar conjunto de gospel local a la que enviarán a estudiar a Inglaterra. El arte, el genio, la formación artística, la música, el amor, las relaciones paternofiliales, las peculiaridades canadienses… son temas recurrentes en la obra de Davies que aquí trata magistralmente a través de la figura de Monica Gall, la joven cantante de Salterton a la que la herencia de la señora Bridgetower cambiará hasta extremos que ella jamás hubiera imaginado. Tercera entrega del ciclo de novelas independientes que se terminará conociendo como Trilogía de Salterton, la pluma de Davies logra en esta novela un vivo retrato del alma humana, que acaso no sea en verdad otra cosa que una mezcla de flaquezas.
  Natt90 | Jul 12, 2022 |
Every Davies book I've read so far has been really enjoyable, but I found this one truly exceptional. His later novels are more technically skilled - the Deptford trilogy taken as whole contains more detailed characters and more insight into the subjectivity and serendipity of personal experience - but of his individual works that I've read, this one presents Davies' personal philosophy of "live life to the fullest" in the most engaging way. I realize that to a reader in 2016, "the Canadian inferiority complex towards British art and society circa the 1950s" might not at first seem to be the most riveting thematic scaffold for that idea, yet the way that he entwines that commentary with the musical training and personal growth of a young girl from Canada sent to England to learn about art is both a great narrative and fun from a meta perspective, without ever being overly self-aware. In fact, the more you give yourself over to how harmonious Davies' view of life is, the more it rubs off on you, and you wish more authors could blend comedy and drama so smoothly.

In the first two books in this series, Davies had a habit of making his sidekicks the best characters, with the best lines, the most interesting lives, and the most profound insights. And though the way he bounces their vivid, roguish, off-color mannerisms off of the straight-laced central protagonists was perfectly readable, few people would ever consider the somewhat colorless Hector Mackilwraith or Solly Bridgetower as memorable leading men. However, this book is much less farcical in tone, and so Monica Gall goes through a much more interesting transformation, from a quiet girl with potential to an actual person with real experiences and scandalous behavior. She doesn't have quite the depth of the religiophile academic Dunstan Ramsey, brooding playboy David Staunton, or troubled magician Paul Dempster from the Deptford trilogy, but that series was about old people exploring their memories - this is about youth making memories in the first place. I'm not sure if the change from the first two is because Davies improved as a writer, or because having his main character leave Salterton to expand her horizons let him tell a bigger story, but even if he still towers over all of his characters and has the lesser ones deliver most of the meaningful life lessons, it makes for a deeper and more interesting novel.

The last book began with a fake wedding, and this one begins with a real funeral. Mrs. Bridgetower, the overbearing mother of Solly, has finally died and divided up her earthly possessions in her will. Unfortunately for her son and his wife Veronica, not only are they forced to keep living in her gigantic old house without being able to sell it, but the money they were hoping to inherit goes straight into a trust. The trust is dedicated to sending a young Salterton girl to Europe for artistic training, which they couldn't care less about (just as in the last book, the church organist Cobbler has a typically good jab at musical taste in Salterton: "'Music is like wine, Bridgetower,' he had said; 'the less people know about it, the sweeter they like it.'"). What's more, the only way to reclaim the money is to have a son, or else the trust will keep sending girls off to Europe in perpetuity. As Davies was a big Dickens fan, this situation is reminiscent of the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case in Bleak House. But very little of the novel concentrates on Solly and Veronica's struggle to produce an son under the weight of the maternal bequest. The majority is dedicated to Monica Gall's transformation from a religiously sheltered young girl with a good singing voice to a full-fledged artist, and her simultaneous growth as a person through a scandalous love affair as a sugar mama, until the affair ends, she returns home, and has a major personal decision to make.

The way that Mrs. Bridgetower's will controls the lives of the other characters is deliberately tied up with how European culture overawed Canadians back in Davies' era, the hand of the dead placed firmly on the shoulders of the living. In the last book as well, but especially in this one, Davies pursues a strong theme of young people needing to be free to live their life and make their own mistakes, because often, after enough time, mistakes turn out to not really be mistakes at all. Monica loses her virginity to composer Giles Revelstoke, falls in love with him, attempts to displace his current lover Persis Kinwellmarshe, uses her trust money to fund his grand and critically acclaimed opera, ends up falling out with him, and even ends the book convinced that she's directly murdered him, but if she accepts conductor Benedict Domdaniel's proposal of marriage, which probably wouldn't have happened without her interaction with him during her affair with Revelstoke, was that affair really a mistake? Saying that "your life experience is made up of both good and bad, so whether it turns out all right is up to you" is very simplistic, but who would want a life where they avoided making any important decisions so that nothing could go wrong? As another good Cobbler line has it, "People who mind their own business die of boredom at thirty."

That part of growth which entails making choices means that you develop an ambiguous relationship to what you've left behind, with upsides and downsides. There's a funny part after Monica has just gotten to London where she meets the McCorkills, fellow Canadians, whose dedication to the homeland is so strong that they purchase as much Canadian foodstuffs as possible, and fret that their young children are developing English accents instead of proper Canadian ones - "the McCorkills' vast disrelish for England meant no more than that they were uprooted, afraid, and desperately homesick". Immediately following, there's an interlude where Monica leaves London for a Christmas holiday to Wales with Revelstoke and the rest of his crew. In real life Davies was very interested in his own Welsh ancestry, which makes the combination of his admiration for the beauty of the countryside and his sardonic take on their overindulgence in their own history pretty funny, and the discussion on "the longing for what is unattainable, which is called 'hiraeth' in Welsh" is a great example. After a character rhapsodizes on this "real Celtic magic", Davies deflates the parochialism of the Welsh for thinking they've invented some uniquely abstract concept: "The Welsh make a fuss about their hiraeth as if they'd invented it; it's common to all small, disappointed, frustrated nations. The Jews have used it as their principal artistic stock-in-trade for two thousand years. It’s the old hankering to get back to the womb, where everything was snug. Whimpering stuff."

And of course the rest of her interactions with Revelstoke and his friends, as she discovers that "sophisticated scenes" are both more and less glamorous than the naive would imagine, are both a wonderful portrait of artistic progression and a very relatable account of the often-painful accumulation of life experience. There's several great discussions about the power of criticism, not trying to be clever with something meta, but showing the power of art and criticism on each other. The point is that you have to be true to yourself: in the same Christmas Welsh scene, she tries to impress all of the assembled English people with tall tales of Canadian loyalty to the Empire, only to be laughed at for being too eager to fit in. This difficulty of feeling confidence in herself is a constant in her artistic training. Her initial trainer Molloy has to get her to truly feel the mood ("muhd") of many of the pieces she's trying to sing in order to excel, but whereas an author like Thoman Mann might have their protagonist look to Mephistopheles for artistic inspiration, as in Doktor Faustus, for Monica it's a matter of choosing the best parts of what's already in herself. Molloy tries to get her to admit that she likes her talents because of the power they give her and to tell her not to be ashamed of that, though she should still think carefully:

"In your heart of hearts you think of singing as a form of power: and you've got more common sense in your heart of hearts than you have on that smarmy little tongue of yours. You're right; singing is a form of power - power of different kinds. Singing as a form of sexual allurement - there's nothing wrong with that. Very natural, indeed: every real man responds to the woman with the golden, squalling, cat-like note, and every real woman longs to hurl herself at the cock-a-doodling tenor or the bellowing bass. Part of Nature's Great Plan. But sex-shouting's a trap, too. At fifty, your golden squall becomes a bad joke."

The ending scene, at a Bridgetower Memorial Lecture stipulated by the will, does a great job of showing the complexity of life experience. She's come home on vacation to sing before the Saltertonians she has moved beyond, such as her old flame George Medwall, who seems fated to live a pleasant but constrained life in the hometown. Coincidentally, Veronica has finally given birth to a boy, which has at last fulfilled the conditions of the will, releasing the Bridgetowers from their maternally-imposed purgatory. The lecture is about the importance of education as apprehension, as understanding what's happening in the world around you, although ironically Monica is ignoring it while pondering her marriage proposal from Domdaniel, though we don't find out what she chooses. I wasn't expecting that ultimate ambiguity, but it makes sense for the character, and for the story. Davies managed to balance his inimitable sense of humor with his sympathy for the process of life beautifully here, and a big part of life is the unknown. Very few writers make the unknown seem as pleasant as he does.
( )
1 voter aaronarnold | May 11, 2021 |
This was a reread (love R. Davies), but I had forgotten everything so it was like reading it for the first time. Adore it. ( )
  ReadMeAnother | Apr 16, 2020 |
Affichage de 1-5 de 15 (suivant | tout afficher)
"a thoroughly rewarding writer with a fine new book. "
ajouté par GYKM | modifierNew York Times, Edmund Fuller (Aug 31, 1958)
 

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Nothing softeneth the Arrogance of our Nature than a Mixture of some Frailties. It is by them that we are best told, that we must not strike too hard upon others because we ourselves so often deserve blows. They pull our Rage by the sleeve and whisper Gentleness to us in our censures.

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It was appropriate that Mrs. Bridgetower's funeral fell on a Thursday, for that had always been her At Home day.
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English is not a language of quantities, like Latin, but a language of strong and weak stresses. A faulty stress destroys the meaning and flavour of a word, and distorts the quality of a line of verse. Without a just appreciation of the stresses in a line of verse, you cannot sing it - for singing is first, last and all the time a form of human eloquence, speech raised to the highest degree.
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"It's a muddle, thought Monica. A muddle and I can't get it straight. I wish I knew what I should do. I wish I even knew what I want to do...I want to go on in the life that has somehow or other found me and claimed me. And I want so terribly to be happy. Oh god, don't let me slip under the surface of all the heavy-hearted dullness that seems to claim so many people...." A Mixture of Frailties is so much more than the story of Monica Gall's life in London and her education as a singer. It is an account of her education as a human being, and the result is an absorbing novel, comic in the true sense, vivid and frequently moving.

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