“In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.” – Nietzsche

Last time in our discussion, we touched on the notion of how genre conventions can be manipulated by a skilled writer: our expectations, for example, of when the corpse will ‘surface’ in a mystery or detective novel (earlier rather than later) were “off-set” by the delay in _Through a Glass, Darkly_.

For our final installment in this summer’s Book Club, we read a third kind of genre: historical fiction, wherein the reader’s expectations are tempered by the accuracy or believability of the setting / time period in which the “fiction” occurs. While the characters may or may not be based on actual persons, we expect that the surrounding details of the setting will seamlessly transport us back in time, back in history. Interestingly enough, we often place similar demands on fiction: even stories that are not deliberately set in a historical period, require a certain aura of believability. If our hero suddenly acts “out of character,” we are disappointed in part because the illusion of the work – that it come to seem almost more real than reality – is painfully interrupted by our glimpse of the metaphorical Wizard Of Oz manipulating the levers and switches behind the emerald curtains. (There are of course exceptions who subvert the very premise of what is believable in the first place – as for when Kafka’s Gregor Samsa wakes up one day to ‘find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin.’) Instead of beginning with the reviews this time, I’ll give my take and then compare it to what the critics observed (next post.)

No wonder that the first question in the “Questions and Topics for Discussion” section focuses on this very question, for in some ways it is the litmus test for works in this genre. Are they “accurate” at the same time they are imaginative? Is there an opposition between history and art (beauty)? [On beauty, see 185-189; 208; 231 etc.]

The more I reflect back on the novel, skimming back through it for pithy quotes, the more the history in _In the Company of the Courtesan_almost overshadows the characters. While I very much enjoyed Bucino, Fiametta, and La Draga, my own imagination is almost more attracted to this moment in time, first 1527 and then (part 3) the mid 1530s. As Dunant outlines in the “Historical Note” that serves as preface, Rome falls a short ten years after Luther’s stubborn refusal to capitulate to the Catholic Church. This is not just the Renaissance (as such), it’s the entire emergence of the modern. With the New World fueling changes that were sweeping the Continent, this was the age of the “Wunderkammern,” the wonder cabinet that combined art & science in the same visual space. Dunant’s sense of the historical moment spans not just Venice ‘at the height of its powers,’ but also the encroaching presence of the Ottoman Empire (through the character of Abdullah Pashna; 90-92, 135, 250-256,) and the marginalized Jewish Ghetto.

As for the characters, meanwhile, they inhabit this carefully constructed history without somehow taking it for granted. On a general level, they reflect the zeitgeist of the age: if Europe is ‘re-born’ at this time, so too are they “born again” in Venice, rising from the ashes of Rome with a touch of good old Hollywood magic, a mouthful of precious gems and a plot device that will come in very handily a number of times, just as it seems there is no way out: the world’s first erotic book (23, 145, 152-157, 167, 310-11, 317).

Bucino’s keen observations on religion (8-9; 26-29; 149-150; 182-184; 255; 294-295, 328-329) benefit from a historian’s perspective, almost an outsider’s point of view (making him a dwarf is a good choice), or someone who’s able to conceive of themselves in the midst of their historical moment, a dot in time. Bucino, amazingly enough, can not only read, having been taught by his father (145), but grew up with a collection of his own books that enable him to place himself firmly in the major intellectual framework of the period. Told from his point of view in the present tense (the exception is the past tense for pp. 3-42; 44-54), Bucino is arguably the novel’s main character, although the self-reflection or ‘epiphany’ that he makes during Fiametta’s love affair with Foscari is hardly earth-shattering. Instead, it’s a rather quiet moment of realization: “For it is true,” he says to himself, “that I am duller than I was. (…) Did I come this far for that? (280). When at last he confesses to Fiametta that he’s in love with La Draga (322), it’s all the Courtesan can do to sigh, in melodramatic sympathy, “Oh, Bucino.” In the final scene, he and Fiametta welcome La Draga’s daughter (also named Fiametta) into the house, presumably to be raised by both of them (as some kind of super-whore?).

As much as I enjoyed the characters, I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that they were being used to illustrate aspects of history. On one occasion, I tripped on an apparent contradiction: Bucino tells us on page 265 that he does “not remember (his) mother (…) I have no image or memory of what she looked like,” and yet early in the novel he clearly recalls (albeit fuzzily) “a woman’s face smiling down at me, holding me, running her fingers over the top of my head as if it was a thing of wonder rather than a thing of shame” (52).

For Fiammetta too, mothers serve as authority figures that sit in judgment of one’s life (see 41, 57, 84-85, 87, 131, 238). Fiammetta’s trajectory, like Bucino’s, is similarly anti-climactic. Like Bucino, she falls for an impossible other, the “puppy” Foscari, and offers as an excuse: “For him, I am me. Just me. And yes, yes, he loves me for it.” (239) Watching them in his best voyeuristic moment, Bucino observes that

…this is not the crude excitement of the act. Rather it is its aftermath…when lust and hunger are satiated and you are safe, complete, yourself and yet without self at the same time. It is the instant when lovers feel almost as if they have stopped time with their passion.” (231)

Stopping time brings us back to the idea of history and how, in this particular genre, there’s bound to an interesting dynamic between the lives of the characters and the ‘life of the times” (zeitgeist) in which they live. In the next post, I’ll google some reviews and try to answer some of the questions that other readers have. In general, I hope it’s obvious that I enjoyed the novel, raced through it in four or five days, and am now “picking at hairs.”

(DF)