Collected Writings: Olive Moore

by Olive Moore

Once again available, Dalkey Archive's edition of the four books of lost British modernist Olive Moore (born around 1905, believed to have died around 1970) includes three novels, Celestial Seraglio, a wicked account of coming of age in a Belgian convent school; Spleen, about a woman who goes into self-imposed exile in Italy after giving birth to a deformed child; and Fugue, the story of a clever newspaper woman, pregnant and unmarried, suffocating amidst the English expatriate intelligentsia. The fourth book, The Apple Is Bitten Again (1934) is a dazzling and disturbing collection of observations and aphorisms on modern civilization and art.

Genres: Fiction

426 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1992

Reviews

[Vel Veeter]

Celestial Seraglio 4/5 stars

This novel takes place in a Belgian convent school and the primary actors in the book are the children in the school and the nuns. There is no real appreciable plot to the book other than the general comings and goings, the friendships and heartbreaks, the weird religious lessons, and the various injustices of girlhood. It’s a really funny book too. The book starts with a lesson on faith but actually is about venality being punished in harsh and direct terms. There’s also a lot going on in the book about how sets of rules that one doesn’t really have a lot of choice in following or not have deep and grave impact on your life. You could chalk this up to a general, well life ain’t fair kind of attitude, but the book, through the eyes of the girls doesn’t agree. The general sentiment is, if you didn’t have a choice in adhering to the rules or creating them, why is it fair that you are forced to follow them? As a teacher, this principle, in general, is both familiar and fair. Students and children should have a clear understanding of the purpose and origin of rules (and by their nature rules should have an actual purpose) so they understand their importance, but like most things in childhood, rules are not understandable limits on daily living, but a series of arbitrary controls with consequences for not following but none for following.

The Apple is Bitten Again
In a book that could very easily turn out to be an annoying collection of aphorisms and musing, this collection of aphorisms and musings is actually pretty interesting and clever. Though most of the various collected thoughts are clever but youthful. You can really see the piercing wit and mind of someone who was on top of her game. It also becomes a kind sad lament on her later disappearance. She has brash opinions on art, race, men and women, and various other ideas. In addition to these different aphorisms, there are a couple of interesting essays, especially regarding her fascination with DH Lawrence, which seems like such a clear obvious choice for a precocious writer.

Here’s what it’s like:

“Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excrement.”

“Selective Spirit: The same soil produces potatoes, sun-flowers, grapes. The potato root knows only how to find nourishment for being a potato. It is the selective spirit of the root which makes the artist.”

“Bitterness: To be saying now truths which one day they must come to. To know that it is a matter of days multiplied through intolerant years. To know that what they blame you for now they will not thank you for then. That is despair.”

“Distinction: Men are cunning in their works. Women in their lives.

Further distinction: Man opens his arms: women her thighs.”

“Good Clean Fun: Woman has (supposedly) so many temptations to resist. It is a pity she does not realise that Art is the most insatiable of all the vices, and resist its assault on her dishonour.”