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Cosmopolis #1-4
Cosmopolis Complete
The complete text, by Paul Bourget.
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1999
3 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
Paul Bourget
530 books43 followersPaul Bourget, né à Amiens le 2 septembre 1852 et mort à Paris le 25 décembre 1935, est un écrivain et essayiste catholique français issu d’une famille originaire d’Ardèche.
Ayant donné le signal d’une réaction contre le naturalisme en littérature, Bourget est d’abord tenté par le roman d’analyse expérimental1. La finesse de ses études de mœurs et de caractères séduit le public mondain qu’il fréquente dans les salons parisiens de la Troisième République. Ses premiers romans – Cruelle énigme (1885), Un crime d'amour (1886) et Mensonges (1887) – ont ainsi un grand retentissement auprès d’une jeune génération en quête de rêve de modernitéE 1.
Le romancier change ensuite de direction et s’oriente à partir du roman Le Disciple (1889), considéré comme son œuvre majeure, vers le « roman à thèse », c’est-à-dire le roman d'idées. Il ne se contente plus de l’analyse des mœurs mais en dévoile les origines et les causes, soumises à des lois inéluctables et dont la transgression amène tous les désordres individuels et sociaux. Cette nouvelle voie conduit Paul Bourget à écrire des romans davantage psychologiques : L’Étape (1902), Un divorce (1904) et Le Démon de midi (1914). Il est alors influencé dans son engagement littéraire et dans son orientation romanesque par sa conversion au catholicisme et tente une synthèse entre la science et la foi. L’écrivain est amené à appliquer son talent de romancier psychologue et moraliste aux problèmes sociaux, politiques et religieux de son temps2 de ce début de xxe siècle.
Son œuvre multiple comprend aussi des poèmes de jeunesse, des essais et quelques pièces de théâtre. L’engagement politique de Paul Bourget même s’il reste souvent cantonné à l’expression littéraire s’est cependant manifesté au sein de mouvements militants et les nombreuses prises de position du romancier traditionaliste, catholique et antidreyfusard en faveur de la monarchie brouillent la lecture de son œuvre, aujourd’hui incomprise voire méprisée et tombée dans l’oubli.
Ayant donné le signal d’une réaction contre le naturalisme en littérature, Bourget est d’abord tenté par le roman d’analyse expérimental1. La finesse de ses études de mœurs et de caractères séduit le public mondain qu’il fréquente dans les salons parisiens de la Troisième République. Ses premiers romans – Cruelle énigme (1885), Un crime d'amour (1886) et Mensonges (1887) – ont ainsi un grand retentissement auprès d’une jeune génération en quête de rêve de modernitéE 1.
Le romancier change ensuite de direction et s’oriente à partir du roman Le Disciple (1889), considéré comme son œuvre majeure, vers le « roman à thèse », c’est-à-dire le roman d'idées. Il ne se contente plus de l’analyse des mœurs mais en dévoile les origines et les causes, soumises à des lois inéluctables et dont la transgression amène tous les désordres individuels et sociaux. Cette nouvelle voie conduit Paul Bourget à écrire des romans davantage psychologiques : L’Étape (1902), Un divorce (1904) et Le Démon de midi (1914). Il est alors influencé dans son engagement littéraire et dans son orientation romanesque par sa conversion au catholicisme et tente une synthèse entre la science et la foi. L’écrivain est amené à appliquer son talent de romancier psychologue et moraliste aux problèmes sociaux, politiques et religieux de son temps2 de ce début de xxe siècle.
Son œuvre multiple comprend aussi des poèmes de jeunesse, des essais et quelques pièces de théâtre. L’engagement politique de Paul Bourget même s’il reste souvent cantonné à l’expression littéraire s’est cependant manifesté au sein de mouvements militants et les nombreuses prises de position du romancier traditionaliste, catholique et antidreyfusard en faveur de la monarchie brouillent la lecture de son œuvre, aujourd’hui incomprise voire méprisée et tombée dans l’oubli.
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July 28, 2024
Though best described as a prototype psychological thriller of romantic intrigue and cuckoldry, this 1893 novel is so much more. Set in Rome not long after the creation of a unified Italian Kingdom in the late 1800s, "Cosmopolis" takes full advantage of its location in place and time to create a sharp and intelligent psychological study of early modernity.
This novel represents a transition from Paul Bourget's earlier novels to his late period. In the 1880s, his racy romances were all set in high society, which made them fashionable among the leisure-class readership of the day. Bourget converted to Catholicism in 1901, and his output in the 20th Century was heavily influenced by his religion. Some would say his work went from stylish and fun psychological dramas and thrillers to proselytizing didactics thinly disguised as novels heavily laden with support for traditional values, old-world monarchies, and nationalism.
"Cosmopolis" falls right in the middle of his career, and you can tell that he was forming his stance that would characterize his mature years. Ostensibly, the novel is about a love triangle between two married men and a wealthy and widowed cougar of a countess which grows violent. But the city of Rome seems to be the main character, and is the source for much of Bourget's keen powers of observation of human nature and his thematic philosophies which serve as the backbone for this story. There is certainly an awe and respect for the feudal days of kings and nobility and papal states. Through one of the first characters introduced in the novel, the Marquis de Montfanon, who lost an arm serving in a French regiment defending the last papal state of Rome, Bourget romanticizes a time before a unified Italy, when the Pope needed and used an army.
Contemporary readers forget that it wasn't that long ago that the Pope was not just an ecclesiastic, but a kind of monarch until the papal lands were all conquered and assimilated by 1870, leaving the Pope essentially an exiled political leader in Rome. It wasn't until Benito Mussolini that the problem of this papal "prisoner in Rome" was resolved by the creation of the Vatican as an autonomous country, a city-state in Rome itself, with the Pontifical Swiss Guard remaining today a ghostly remanent of the secular power of the Holy See.
Bourget's Rome is one of titled nobility, wealthy heirs, parasitic artists, jealous trophy wives, and unscrupulous investors. Bourget expresses a longing for the old Rome and is highly critical of how the ancient city has progressed from metropolis to cosmopolis. No longer just a huge and prosperous mecca for commerce and local culture, Rome has become a playground for international elites, full of opportunistic ex-patriots from around the world seeking to pilfer and profit from the capital of the new Italian state. The novel thus focuses not on native Italians, but on a group of Americans and Europeans with no firm cultural, historical, religious, or ethnic identity, each person being a genetic mix of races who has moved from country to country in a never-ending quest for wealth and social position.
I think that if Bourget were alive today, he'd be mortified at a Brussels-centered Europe, a centralized European currency, open borders, and the very idea that a Soros dynasty has influence in so many countries. But whether or not you ascribe to Bourget's brand of nationalism or feel he is an old xenophobic fuddy-duddy, I think this novel does a fine job examining every side of a complex debate. Bourget had not come to any firm conclusions as of yet, and so the clash of his characters is symbolic of his own internal analysis of his personal stance. Thus, "Cosmopolis" allows readers to come to their own conclusions about themes that are still highly relevant over 130 years since it was first published. But what is the debate and how does it apply today?
I will attempt to explain. One can argue that literacy was actually much higher among the middle and upper class at the turn of 20th Century than it is today, while simultaneously, people were more ignorant about diversity, the environment, mental health, and many other issues. But how important is being enlightened about these issues if modern civilization spends little time on epistolary arts? Most people I talk to outside of Goodreads or BookTube haven't read a book or written anything beyond a social media post since high school, but it is through reading and writing that we learn to organize our thoughts into something beyond chaos, to think beyond ourselves, and to be effective communicators. And as we decline in our ability to communicate, the more insulated we become. Despite the powers of the digital age at our fingertips, we don't really have the tools to talk with people of diverse philosophies and cultures if we can't hardly speak our own language let alone other languages. Instead, we spend all our time in our rooms wasting thousands of hours on porn sites, getting high, watching TV, and scrambling for likes on our latest posts. So we tend to hide in silos, never thinking critically about the buzzwords, hashtags, and thumbnails fed to us through our social bubble, because we have no idea of the world outside the one we created (or which was created for us).
In Paul Bourget's time, not only was the classroom a structured environment to get those alternative views, but so was traveling (I don't mean taking a cruise to Cozumel and never actually meeting any Mexican people as you spend all your time getting smashed at the beach side bar at Margaritaville). If you didn't have the money to travel, you spent time in your local area, in the park or cafes or in the very streets themselves, talking with people from a variety of backgrounds. And the more vibrant and metropolitan your community, the more opportunities someone had to get that needed diversity.
So Bourget brilliantly argues through the course of his plot for the benefits of metropolitan living. At the same time, he cautions against the trend to cosmopolitan societies, which he would see as closer to how most Westerners experience the world today. In a globalist cosmopolitan landscape, diversity becomes diffused. People lose their unique ethnic and cultural heritage which allows for diversity of thought. They forget their history very quickly, which allows for phenomena like electing the very leaders who drag us into wars that we just complained about a decade prior, never learning and never progressing. Ironically, a cosmopolitan society provides more opportunities for the sharing of information and knowledge, but is actually more isolated, because it is empty of soul and history, living only for the present moment. Thus, Bourget is trying to find a balance. Isolated bubbles are unhealthy, divisive, and dangerous, but a shallow global society only gives the illusion of diversity while making us more divided by convenience and ignorance.
Throughout the novel, we follow a circle of friends who are the products of this ironic isolation. They are all cosmopolitan, globalist elites who are victims of their own privilege, shut off from the real world and out of touch, and emotionally immature for all their education and refinement. None of them are bad people, but none are as noble as their titles or reputation suggest. The entire plot revolves around the consequences of their selfishness. We have marital infidelity, jealousy, temper tantrums, and all sorts of childish behavior. One person's actions wounds the pride of another, who responds in a way that adversely effects yet further members of the circle, triggering more narcissistic rage, escalating until the entire friend group is shattered. As things grow more intense and dangerous, the reader can't help but wonder what these people of comfortable position have to be so angry about. Bourget answers this question as he makes the psychological rounds on each character, giving us a little of their backstory so that we understand how broken, vulnerable, and isolated they really are despite having all the resources of the world at their fingertips.
The writing and translation are exquisite, but it takes a while to acclamate to Bourget's style. He tends to drop a lot of names of historical events, artists, kings, religious leaders, and military figures with which most readers will not be familiar. That is a decidedly French trait, one which continues to the current day, and can come across as pompous and annoying. In this case, if you take the time to look up a few of the references, it will reward you with a rich tapestry of background that will help you understand the themes much better. For example, he keeps referring to "doges" and "dogaresses" without explanation. A doge is an honorary title that dates back to when Venice was its own republic, being the highest role of Venetian authority until abolished in 1797, one hundred years before the setting of this novel. However, one of the central characters in "Cosmopolis," the widowed Countess Steno, is referred to as "Dogaresse." It is true that some Venetian women from noble families continued to refer to themselves as "Dogaressa", even though the office no longer existed and the title was not supposed to be hereditary. In short, the title meant very little in 1893. Therefore, by simply having his characters refer to Steno as Dogaresse, Bourget was conveying just how out of touch they really were. That's brilliant.
Bourget was quite popular in his day, even in the English-speaking world. Robert Louis Stevenson was a big fan. So was Mark Twain, who wrote a collection of essays about Bourget's work. "Cosmopolis" was translated into English the very same year it was released in French. But he is another one of those authors from the Golden age of modern French literature who has largely been forgotten now. You're not likely to find much recent discussion or analysis of this book today, nor is there much chance of his books being republished by Penguin or other imprints in today's literary climate, where Sasquatch porn sells better than old novels by dead people.
But I do recommend digging up this old relic for free, as it is in the public domain. Give it a try, though I do recognize it won't be for everyone.
SCORE: 4 Zouaves out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Pasquinade
SUGGESTED MUSICAL PAIRING: Debussy set a whole slew of Bourget's poetry to music. Any collection of these melancholic yet romantic compositions will serve as a perfect complement.
This novel represents a transition from Paul Bourget's earlier novels to his late period. In the 1880s, his racy romances were all set in high society, which made them fashionable among the leisure-class readership of the day. Bourget converted to Catholicism in 1901, and his output in the 20th Century was heavily influenced by his religion. Some would say his work went from stylish and fun psychological dramas and thrillers to proselytizing didactics thinly disguised as novels heavily laden with support for traditional values, old-world monarchies, and nationalism.
"Cosmopolis" falls right in the middle of his career, and you can tell that he was forming his stance that would characterize his mature years. Ostensibly, the novel is about a love triangle between two married men and a wealthy and widowed cougar of a countess which grows violent. But the city of Rome seems to be the main character, and is the source for much of Bourget's keen powers of observation of human nature and his thematic philosophies which serve as the backbone for this story. There is certainly an awe and respect for the feudal days of kings and nobility and papal states. Through one of the first characters introduced in the novel, the Marquis de Montfanon, who lost an arm serving in a French regiment defending the last papal state of Rome, Bourget romanticizes a time before a unified Italy, when the Pope needed and used an army.
Contemporary readers forget that it wasn't that long ago that the Pope was not just an ecclesiastic, but a kind of monarch until the papal lands were all conquered and assimilated by 1870, leaving the Pope essentially an exiled political leader in Rome. It wasn't until Benito Mussolini that the problem of this papal "prisoner in Rome" was resolved by the creation of the Vatican as an autonomous country, a city-state in Rome itself, with the Pontifical Swiss Guard remaining today a ghostly remanent of the secular power of the Holy See.
Bourget's Rome is one of titled nobility, wealthy heirs, parasitic artists, jealous trophy wives, and unscrupulous investors. Bourget expresses a longing for the old Rome and is highly critical of how the ancient city has progressed from metropolis to cosmopolis. No longer just a huge and prosperous mecca for commerce and local culture, Rome has become a playground for international elites, full of opportunistic ex-patriots from around the world seeking to pilfer and profit from the capital of the new Italian state. The novel thus focuses not on native Italians, but on a group of Americans and Europeans with no firm cultural, historical, religious, or ethnic identity, each person being a genetic mix of races who has moved from country to country in a never-ending quest for wealth and social position.
I think that if Bourget were alive today, he'd be mortified at a Brussels-centered Europe, a centralized European currency, open borders, and the very idea that a Soros dynasty has influence in so many countries. But whether or not you ascribe to Bourget's brand of nationalism or feel he is an old xenophobic fuddy-duddy, I think this novel does a fine job examining every side of a complex debate. Bourget had not come to any firm conclusions as of yet, and so the clash of his characters is symbolic of his own internal analysis of his personal stance. Thus, "Cosmopolis" allows readers to come to their own conclusions about themes that are still highly relevant over 130 years since it was first published. But what is the debate and how does it apply today?
I will attempt to explain. One can argue that literacy was actually much higher among the middle and upper class at the turn of 20th Century than it is today, while simultaneously, people were more ignorant about diversity, the environment, mental health, and many other issues. But how important is being enlightened about these issues if modern civilization spends little time on epistolary arts? Most people I talk to outside of Goodreads or BookTube haven't read a book or written anything beyond a social media post since high school, but it is through reading and writing that we learn to organize our thoughts into something beyond chaos, to think beyond ourselves, and to be effective communicators. And as we decline in our ability to communicate, the more insulated we become. Despite the powers of the digital age at our fingertips, we don't really have the tools to talk with people of diverse philosophies and cultures if we can't hardly speak our own language let alone other languages. Instead, we spend all our time in our rooms wasting thousands of hours on porn sites, getting high, watching TV, and scrambling for likes on our latest posts. So we tend to hide in silos, never thinking critically about the buzzwords, hashtags, and thumbnails fed to us through our social bubble, because we have no idea of the world outside the one we created (or which was created for us).
In Paul Bourget's time, not only was the classroom a structured environment to get those alternative views, but so was traveling (I don't mean taking a cruise to Cozumel and never actually meeting any Mexican people as you spend all your time getting smashed at the beach side bar at Margaritaville). If you didn't have the money to travel, you spent time in your local area, in the park or cafes or in the very streets themselves, talking with people from a variety of backgrounds. And the more vibrant and metropolitan your community, the more opportunities someone had to get that needed diversity.
So Bourget brilliantly argues through the course of his plot for the benefits of metropolitan living. At the same time, he cautions against the trend to cosmopolitan societies, which he would see as closer to how most Westerners experience the world today. In a globalist cosmopolitan landscape, diversity becomes diffused. People lose their unique ethnic and cultural heritage which allows for diversity of thought. They forget their history very quickly, which allows for phenomena like electing the very leaders who drag us into wars that we just complained about a decade prior, never learning and never progressing. Ironically, a cosmopolitan society provides more opportunities for the sharing of information and knowledge, but is actually more isolated, because it is empty of soul and history, living only for the present moment. Thus, Bourget is trying to find a balance. Isolated bubbles are unhealthy, divisive, and dangerous, but a shallow global society only gives the illusion of diversity while making us more divided by convenience and ignorance.
Throughout the novel, we follow a circle of friends who are the products of this ironic isolation. They are all cosmopolitan, globalist elites who are victims of their own privilege, shut off from the real world and out of touch, and emotionally immature for all their education and refinement. None of them are bad people, but none are as noble as their titles or reputation suggest. The entire plot revolves around the consequences of their selfishness. We have marital infidelity, jealousy, temper tantrums, and all sorts of childish behavior. One person's actions wounds the pride of another, who responds in a way that adversely effects yet further members of the circle, triggering more narcissistic rage, escalating until the entire friend group is shattered. As things grow more intense and dangerous, the reader can't help but wonder what these people of comfortable position have to be so angry about. Bourget answers this question as he makes the psychological rounds on each character, giving us a little of their backstory so that we understand how broken, vulnerable, and isolated they really are despite having all the resources of the world at their fingertips.
The writing and translation are exquisite, but it takes a while to acclamate to Bourget's style. He tends to drop a lot of names of historical events, artists, kings, religious leaders, and military figures with which most readers will not be familiar. That is a decidedly French trait, one which continues to the current day, and can come across as pompous and annoying. In this case, if you take the time to look up a few of the references, it will reward you with a rich tapestry of background that will help you understand the themes much better. For example, he keeps referring to "doges" and "dogaresses" without explanation. A doge is an honorary title that dates back to when Venice was its own republic, being the highest role of Venetian authority until abolished in 1797, one hundred years before the setting of this novel. However, one of the central characters in "Cosmopolis," the widowed Countess Steno, is referred to as "Dogaresse." It is true that some Venetian women from noble families continued to refer to themselves as "Dogaressa", even though the office no longer existed and the title was not supposed to be hereditary. In short, the title meant very little in 1893. Therefore, by simply having his characters refer to Steno as Dogaresse, Bourget was conveying just how out of touch they really were. That's brilliant.
Bourget was quite popular in his day, even in the English-speaking world. Robert Louis Stevenson was a big fan. So was Mark Twain, who wrote a collection of essays about Bourget's work. "Cosmopolis" was translated into English the very same year it was released in French. But he is another one of those authors from the Golden age of modern French literature who has largely been forgotten now. You're not likely to find much recent discussion or analysis of this book today, nor is there much chance of his books being republished by Penguin or other imprints in today's literary climate, where Sasquatch porn sells better than old novels by dead people.
But I do recommend digging up this old relic for free, as it is in the public domain. Give it a try, though I do recognize it won't be for everyone.
SCORE: 4 Zouaves out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Pasquinade
SUGGESTED MUSICAL PAIRING: Debussy set a whole slew of Bourget's poetry to music. Any collection of these melancholic yet romantic compositions will serve as a perfect complement.
April 9, 2018
Scritto tre anni dopo il Piacere di D'annunzio e contemporaneo all'Innocente, Bourget sembra aggiungere una quarta opera ai romanzi della rosa dannunziani.
Opera focalizzata sulla vita degli stranieri facoltosi che risiedono a Roma, Bourget aggiunge a queste finestre sulla Roma di fine ottocento la sua ricerca sulla psicologia, il senso profondo della religione cristiana, e un omaggio alla teoria del suo amico De Gobineau, di cui in alcuni passaggi imita persino il modo di scrivere.
Un romanzo storico e psicologico splendido insomma, che oggi non potrebbe essere scritto.
Se un Bourget redivivo avesse pubblicato questo stesso romanzo oggi, sarebbe finito in carcere e il libro non avrebbe mai raggiunto gli scaffali.
E questo fa pensare riguardo alla presunta libertà dell'epoca attuale.
Opera focalizzata sulla vita degli stranieri facoltosi che risiedono a Roma, Bourget aggiunge a queste finestre sulla Roma di fine ottocento la sua ricerca sulla psicologia, il senso profondo della religione cristiana, e un omaggio alla teoria del suo amico De Gobineau, di cui in alcuni passaggi imita persino il modo di scrivere.
Un romanzo storico e psicologico splendido insomma, che oggi non potrebbe essere scritto.
Se un Bourget redivivo avesse pubblicato questo stesso romanzo oggi, sarebbe finito in carcere e il libro non avrebbe mai raggiunto gli scaffali.
E questo fa pensare riguardo alla presunta libertà dell'epoca attuale.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews