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Belmarch: A Legend of the First Crusade
I was certain that Davis had had a vision "[This book] combines observation and perception in a remarkable . . . way this is not a touching book; it is a seizing one." -Leonard Bernstein. "A surrealist nightmare . . . compelling, disturbing . . . it is also a brave, ambitious book . . . Davis is a story teller with a vivid sense of visual imagery and striking descriptive power." The Jewish Exponent
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Christopher Davis
142 books4 followersThere is more than one author in the database with this name. Not all the books on this profile belong to the author with this biography.
Christopher Davis was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1928 and raised there. He was educated at public schools; at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Institute; at the Art Students League in New York; at the Barnes Art Foundation in Philadelphia; at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome; and at the University of Pennsylvania (junior year Phi Beta Kappa, BA degree).
His father was the Philadelphia labor lawyer Edward Davis. His mother, Josephine Blitzstein Davis, was a social activist. His uncle was Marc Blitzstein, the American composer. His brother Stephen is a retired banking lawyer who now teaches law. He is the father of four daughters--Kirby Bosley, Katherine Davis, Emily Davis and Sarah Davis. He is married to Sally Warner, the artist and children's book author, with whom he lives in Altadena, California.
Davis has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania; at Bowling Green State University in Ohio; at Drexel University in Philadelphia; at Indiana University of Pennsylvania; at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania; at Rider College in New Jersey; and, from 1977 to 1995, at Bryn Mawr College. He is Senior Lecturer in the Arts emeritus from Bryn Mawr College.
He has published eleven novels, three books of non-fiction, a book for children, and numerous articles and short stories in magazines such as Esquire, Holiday, Travel & Leisure, and The Pennsylvania Gazette. His short story "A Man of Affairs" was an O'Henry prize story and was the basis for a play produced by the Actors Theater of Louisville. His novels have been published in England, Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, Denmark, Italy and Holland as well as the United States. His novel Lost Summer was adapted for the stage under the title "There was a little Girl" and produced on Broadway with Jane Fonda in the principal role. His adaptation to the stage of his novel A Peep Into the 20th Century was given staged readings at the Long Wharf Theater and at the Annenberg Theater, and was produced first by the Seattle Repertory Company, and later by the Philadelphia Festival of new plays. The text has been published by Plays in Process, Volume Ten Number Eight.
Christopher Davis was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1928 and raised there. He was educated at public schools; at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Institute; at the Art Students League in New York; at the Barnes Art Foundation in Philadelphia; at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome; and at the University of Pennsylvania (junior year Phi Beta Kappa, BA degree).
His father was the Philadelphia labor lawyer Edward Davis. His mother, Josephine Blitzstein Davis, was a social activist. His uncle was Marc Blitzstein, the American composer. His brother Stephen is a retired banking lawyer who now teaches law. He is the father of four daughters--Kirby Bosley, Katherine Davis, Emily Davis and Sarah Davis. He is married to Sally Warner, the artist and children's book author, with whom he lives in Altadena, California.
Davis has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania; at Bowling Green State University in Ohio; at Drexel University in Philadelphia; at Indiana University of Pennsylvania; at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania; at Rider College in New Jersey; and, from 1977 to 1995, at Bryn Mawr College. He is Senior Lecturer in the Arts emeritus from Bryn Mawr College.
He has published eleven novels, three books of non-fiction, a book for children, and numerous articles and short stories in magazines such as Esquire, Holiday, Travel & Leisure, and The Pennsylvania Gazette. His short story "A Man of Affairs" was an O'Henry prize story and was the basis for a play produced by the Actors Theater of Louisville. His novels have been published in England, Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, Denmark, Italy and Holland as well as the United States. His novel Lost Summer was adapted for the stage under the title "There was a little Girl" and produced on Broadway with Jane Fonda in the principal role. His adaptation to the stage of his novel A Peep Into the 20th Century was given staged readings at the Long Wharf Theater and at the Annenberg Theater, and was produced first by the Seattle Repertory Company, and later by the Philadelphia Festival of new plays. The text has been published by Plays in Process, Volume Ten Number Eight.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 5, 2024
This book could be terrible, I’m not sure. A Crusades-mode literary A FIELD IN ENGLAND. For whatever reason, I resonated with the strange dissociative waves it was tossing with an assiduously stubborn insistence on not only confounding the expectations of his readers but also in unmooring them from any steady perception of the world he’s creating. It is, thus, altogether an appropriate choice for a novel of religious mania, feverish guilt, eschatological winks, and the justification of slaughter.
A representative paragraph: “The scene, in the thickened air, is slowed. A knight smiles like a woman. In order to lie down, a dog launches itself into the heavy air, then settles slowly as a leaf, curling into sleep as it falls.”
How’s that now? …
Substance-wise, there is something much larger lurking behind the shambolic narrative of the thing. For, as we realize, about halfway through, our two central characters — Belmarch and Annas — are doomed and destined to play out in complete repeat the Judenhetze in Mainz, an explicitly fantastical intrusion into a story heretofore only such in literary effect. And we therefore duly follow them again, as they descend upon the town — Belmarch as reluctant soldier and Annas as hopeless Jew — and experience the slaughter, only to be coughed out once again at the end, following each other for reasons neither can articulate, knowing, we can be sure, that they will relive the atrocity over and again.
It is, clearly, a commentary upon both the cycle of persecution across European history, but also the tragically inevitable co-dependency of victim and perpetrator across the same span (surely the most controversial assertion of the work, although the extent to which anyone ever read this thing or gave it much thought is unclear to me).
A representative paragraph: “The scene, in the thickened air, is slowed. A knight smiles like a woman. In order to lie down, a dog launches itself into the heavy air, then settles slowly as a leaf, curling into sleep as it falls.”
How’s that now? …
Substance-wise, there is something much larger lurking behind the shambolic narrative of the thing. For, as we realize, about halfway through, our two central characters — Belmarch and Annas — are doomed and destined to play out in complete repeat the Judenhetze in Mainz, an explicitly fantastical intrusion into a story heretofore only such in literary effect. And we therefore duly follow them again, as they descend upon the town — Belmarch as reluctant soldier and Annas as hopeless Jew — and experience the slaughter, only to be coughed out once again at the end, following each other for reasons neither can articulate, knowing, we can be sure, that they will relive the atrocity over and again.
It is, clearly, a commentary upon both the cycle of persecution across European history, but also the tragically inevitable co-dependency of victim and perpetrator across the same span (surely the most controversial assertion of the work, although the extent to which anyone ever read this thing or gave it much thought is unclear to me).
Displaying 1 of 1 review