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Bella
L'amour de Bella Rebendart pour Philippe Dubardeau est contrarie par la vieille inimitie entre leurs familles, puissantes et politiquement opposees. Plus qu'une satire des m urs de la Troisieme Republique, l'on peut voir dans Bella une transposition moderne de la rivalite des Capulets et des Montaigus, interpretee avec une liberte pleine de fantaisie. Bella est une femme de notre temps, mais elle represente aussi, comme les autres heroines de Giraudoux, celle par qui tout arrive ."
286 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
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22 people want to read
About the author
Jean Giraudoux
462 books76 followersGreek mythology or Biblical stories base dramas, such as
Electra
(1937), of French writer Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux, who also wrote several novels. He fathered Jean-Pierre Giraudoux.
People consider this French novelist, essayist, diplomat. and playwright among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. They note his work for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy. The relationship between man and woman or some unattainable ideal in some cases dominates themes of Giraudoux .
Léger Giraudoux, father of Jean Giraudoux, worked for the ministry of transport. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux and upon graduation traveled extensively in Europe. After his return to France in 1910, he accepted a position with the ministry of foreign affairs.
With the outbreak of World War I, he served with distinction and in 1915 became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honour.
He married in 1918 and in the subsequent inter-war period produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927). An ongoing collaboration with actor and theater director Louis Jouvet, beginning in 1928 with Jouvet's radical streamlining of Siegfried for the stage, stimulated his writing. But it is through his plays that gained him international renown. He became well known in the English-speaking world largely because of the award-winning adaptations of his plays by Christopher Fry (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, The Enchanted, The Apollo of Bellac).
Giraudoux served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.
He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.
His son, Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, was also a writer.
People consider this French novelist, essayist, diplomat. and playwright among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. They note his work for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy. The relationship between man and woman or some unattainable ideal in some cases dominates themes of Giraudoux .
Léger Giraudoux, father of Jean Giraudoux, worked for the ministry of transport. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux and upon graduation traveled extensively in Europe. After his return to France in 1910, he accepted a position with the ministry of foreign affairs.
With the outbreak of World War I, he served with distinction and in 1915 became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honour.
He married in 1918 and in the subsequent inter-war period produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927). An ongoing collaboration with actor and theater director Louis Jouvet, beginning in 1928 with Jouvet's radical streamlining of Siegfried for the stage, stimulated his writing. But it is through his plays that gained him international renown. He became well known in the English-speaking world largely because of the award-winning adaptations of his plays by Christopher Fry (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, The Enchanted, The Apollo of Bellac).
Giraudoux served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.
He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.
His son, Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, was also a writer.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 14, 2018
Nolit
Beograd, 1957.
Preveo: Todor Manojlović
Jezik prijevoda je srpski. Moram priznati da mi je bilo pomalo otežano čitanje srpskog, cijelo vrijeme mi se činilo nekako čudno sve u vezi s jezikom, dugo nisam nešto čitao na srpskom, uistinu se radi o dva jezika.
Giraudouxov jezik je izrazito osebujan i stilogen, ponajviše u vidu sintakse te atmosfere asocijativnosti. Tekst se lagano i smireno prelijeva po stranicama.
Radnja je isprekidana digresijama, asocijacijama, siže je spiralno iskonstruiran, fabula je u potpunosti nepodudarna sa sižeom. Pomalo me stil pisanja i konstrukcija teksta podsjeća na Jeličića; http://www.enciklopedija.hr/natuknica..., Jeličić je jedan od najboljih hrvatskih pisaca druge polovice dvadesetog stoljeća koji je bezrazložno zanemaren.
Trojka je dana jer mi je prije svega bilo teško odrediti razinu jezične aktualizacije. Efekt začuđenja, aktualizacije je bio ostvaren prije svega radi srpskog prijevoda. Da sam čitao roman na hrvatskom (nisam mogao jer ne postoji hrvatski prijevod) ili na izvornom francuskom (ne bih mogao navedeno jer ne znam francuski) lakše bih odredio jezičnu aktualizaciju samog Giraudouxa. Kul mi je bila aktualizacija na razini sintakse i stila, odudaranjem od tipičnog pisanja je baš osvježenje. No, sam jezik na razini leksema mi nije bio dovoljno "gust", dovoljno barokan.
Radnja je previše razvodnjena i loše mi je bilo što se ljubavno-tjelesna zavrzlama nije podrobnije prikazala.
U samom izdanju u kojem djelo pročitah; http://161.53.142.7/cgi-bin/wero.cgi?..., bio je objelodanjen još jedan roman, "Simon patetični", kojeg mi se nije dalo čitati.
Sve u svemu nije mi žao što pročitah ovu knjigu.
Ne mogu vjerovati što je samo trinaestero ljudi ocjenilo ovu knjigu na ovoj mreži, a samo dvoje je bacilo osvrt- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4.... Zbilja sam na manjinskoj, kulerskoj strani ove mreže.
Ostanite i vi, čitajući moje osvrte.
Trenutačno čitam drugi dio "Propasti Zapada" te posudih "Zvijezdanu goru", sovjetski science fiction, dakle, bit će još vrijednih osvrta.
Pa-pa moje nebrojivo i intergalaktičko čitateljstvo!
Poseban pozdrav tamnoputim čitateljicama s Trinidada i Tobaga!
Beograd, 1957.
Preveo: Todor Manojlović
Jezik prijevoda je srpski. Moram priznati da mi je bilo pomalo otežano čitanje srpskog, cijelo vrijeme mi se činilo nekako čudno sve u vezi s jezikom, dugo nisam nešto čitao na srpskom, uistinu se radi o dva jezika.
Giraudouxov jezik je izrazito osebujan i stilogen, ponajviše u vidu sintakse te atmosfere asocijativnosti. Tekst se lagano i smireno prelijeva po stranicama.
Radnja je isprekidana digresijama, asocijacijama, siže je spiralno iskonstruiran, fabula je u potpunosti nepodudarna sa sižeom. Pomalo me stil pisanja i konstrukcija teksta podsjeća na Jeličića; http://www.enciklopedija.hr/natuknica..., Jeličić je jedan od najboljih hrvatskih pisaca druge polovice dvadesetog stoljeća koji je bezrazložno zanemaren.
Trojka je dana jer mi je prije svega bilo teško odrediti razinu jezične aktualizacije. Efekt začuđenja, aktualizacije je bio ostvaren prije svega radi srpskog prijevoda. Da sam čitao roman na hrvatskom (nisam mogao jer ne postoji hrvatski prijevod) ili na izvornom francuskom (ne bih mogao navedeno jer ne znam francuski) lakše bih odredio jezičnu aktualizaciju samog Giraudouxa. Kul mi je bila aktualizacija na razini sintakse i stila, odudaranjem od tipičnog pisanja je baš osvježenje. No, sam jezik na razini leksema mi nije bio dovoljno "gust", dovoljno barokan.
Radnja je previše razvodnjena i loše mi je bilo što se ljubavno-tjelesna zavrzlama nije podrobnije prikazala.
U samom izdanju u kojem djelo pročitah; http://161.53.142.7/cgi-bin/wero.cgi?..., bio je objelodanjen još jedan roman, "Simon patetični", kojeg mi se nije dalo čitati.
Sve u svemu nije mi žao što pročitah ovu knjigu.
Ne mogu vjerovati što je samo trinaestero ljudi ocjenilo ovu knjigu na ovoj mreži, a samo dvoje je bacilo osvrt- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4.... Zbilja sam na manjinskoj, kulerskoj strani ove mreže.
Ostanite i vi, čitajući moje osvrte.
Trenutačno čitam drugi dio "Propasti Zapada" te posudih "Zvijezdanu goru", sovjetski science fiction, dakle, bit će još vrijednih osvrta.
Pa-pa moje nebrojivo i intergalaktičko čitateljstvo!
Poseban pozdrav tamnoputim čitateljicama s Trinidada i Tobaga!
February 24, 2017
The first Giraudoux novel I've been able to read, since I don't trust my French and so have had to fall back on the three English translations published in the 1920s (the other two are on their way).
I first became interested in reading Giraudoux when I learned that his discursive, imagistic, deliberately artificial novels were one of the primary models for the Spanish and Latin American vanguard of the 20s; where Anglo and German (and even French, with Proust) modernism went in for Massive Tomes, the lighter, leaner, even more frivolous Giraudoux and Hispanophone sympathizers like Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Benjamín Jarnés, or Jaime Torres Bodet constitute a sort of school of forgotten modernism (at least outside of Hispanic Studies academia).
So how was the actual book? Interesting, if not particularly satisfying. Bella was the last of Knopf's efforts to bring Giraudoux as a novelist to the English-speaking public (his later career as a dramatist would be much more successful in that regard), and it's easy to see why: deeply, extravagantly French, it is a novel of ideas of which not a single idea can be taken seriously (nor, apparently, are they meant to be). It's a sort of shaggy-dog allegory of the postwar French spirit, trapped in an eternal intergenerational schism between legalistic-political and scientific-diplomatic families. Every person who comes onto the stage gets nearly a whole chapter devoted to their family history, with the result that almost nothing happens for most of the book, and then there's one scene, and the rest is denouement.
But the journey was more enjoyable than the destination; Giraudoux' urbane, deadpan voice, preposterously erudite, so full of metaphor and simile as to be a little exhausting unless you're prepared for it, and discursive as all get-out, is a genuine pleasure, if an acquired one. I'm looking forward to (what I'm told are) the more straightforward Siegfried et le Limousin and Suzanne et le Pacifique next.
I first became interested in reading Giraudoux when I learned that his discursive, imagistic, deliberately artificial novels were one of the primary models for the Spanish and Latin American vanguard of the 20s; where Anglo and German (and even French, with Proust) modernism went in for Massive Tomes, the lighter, leaner, even more frivolous Giraudoux and Hispanophone sympathizers like Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Benjamín Jarnés, or Jaime Torres Bodet constitute a sort of school of forgotten modernism (at least outside of Hispanic Studies academia).
So how was the actual book? Interesting, if not particularly satisfying. Bella was the last of Knopf's efforts to bring Giraudoux as a novelist to the English-speaking public (his later career as a dramatist would be much more successful in that regard), and it's easy to see why: deeply, extravagantly French, it is a novel of ideas of which not a single idea can be taken seriously (nor, apparently, are they meant to be). It's a sort of shaggy-dog allegory of the postwar French spirit, trapped in an eternal intergenerational schism between legalistic-political and scientific-diplomatic families. Every person who comes onto the stage gets nearly a whole chapter devoted to their family history, with the result that almost nothing happens for most of the book, and then there's one scene, and the rest is denouement.
But the journey was more enjoyable than the destination; Giraudoux' urbane, deadpan voice, preposterously erudite, so full of metaphor and simile as to be a little exhausting unless you're prepared for it, and discursive as all get-out, is a genuine pleasure, if an acquired one. I'm looking forward to (what I'm told are) the more straightforward Siegfried et le Limousin and Suzanne et le Pacifique next.
March 28, 2023
Roméo et Juliette dans les années 20- écriture un peu datée, avec des passages un peu gênants pour le lecteur d'aujourd'hui. A lire pour le style de cet écrivain plein de fantaisie qui me fait un peu penser à Albert Cohen, ne serait-ce que par son évocation de l'administration de l'époque
January 27, 2010
Oh, dear. I picked this up at an antique store, and it looked really good. Blue leather binding, adorable picture of '20s flapper inside the cover, promises of Fitzgerald-like ambiance.
Twenty pages later (twenty pages, I might add, of straight stream-of-consciousness text without any paragraph breaks, dialogue, or sentences shorter than 100 words in length), I gave up.
Twenty pages later (twenty pages, I might add, of straight stream-of-consciousness text without any paragraph breaks, dialogue, or sentences shorter than 100 words in length), I gave up.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews