I was in the third grade, I attended St Mary's School, Downers Grove, IL, Every Wednesday, we were summoned from our classroom to have this book read to us,
At least I THINK it was this book, That wasyears ago, so who can be sure,
It was the pastor of our church, a Catholic priest, who did the reading,
It is a memory seared into my brain, . at least the memory of sitting in an aluminum folding chair in the gym hearing some Vesuvius tale being read to me.
When asked what book I enjoyed being read to me, this is what I remembered,
I will have to read it again someday just to see if this was the one, Of course, if it turns out to not be the one, I will be devastated,
Ich kann mich gar nicht erinnern, dass das Buch streckenweise so langatmig war, Ich habe es zugegebenermaßen das erste Mal aus Übersetzung aus dener Jahren gelesen und da hat man möglicherweise die langatmigen Stellen gestrafft.
Erstaunlich wie wenig Handlung man in so viel Text unterbringen kann,
Ein klassischer Fall von educative Literature, Genau wie in Hugos "Glöckner von Notre Dame" ist die Handlung eigentlich nur ein Mittel zum Zweck, die neusten Archeologischen Ausgrabungen und Entdeckungen in Pompeij zu vermarkten.
Teilweise wird sogar gesagt, wo man die Gegenstände besichtigen kann, die die Protagonisten gerade geschenkt bekommen oder benutzen.
Zum Schluss hin ist das aber sehr effektvoll, Der Roman beschreibt, wie die Toten da hin kommen, wo die Archeologen sie gefunden haben, Aus namenlosen, archeologischen Funden werden so plötzlich Personen mit einer Geschichte, auch wenn diese Erfunden ist, Sie ist immerhin gut erfunden,
Klar, frühes Christentum musste zu der Zeit auch sein, das wollten die Leser, Starke, muskulöse Frühkristen war ein gängiges Motiv, dessen ableben von einigen vitkorianischen Lesern sehr betrauert wurde.
Man fragt sich aber schon streckenweise, ob die Darstellung der Frühchristen wirklich ironisch gemeint war, oder das heutzutage nur so rüberkommt.
Insgesamt ein frühes Werk des Infotainment, Die Fakten aus der romischen Literatur und damals neueste Ausgrabungsergebnisse werden zu einer spannenden Geschichte verwoben,
Hat schon seinen Grund, warum die Geschichte auch heute noch gedruckt wird und ein Klassiker geworden ist, Pompeij fasziniert bis heute. Having read to pageso far, . .
A satirical writing contest still exists in Lytton's name, to honour the worst prose passage written annually, but I don't honestly find his style that florid.
I was even honestly moved by a blind flower girl's song early on, It's really his plain descriptions of Roman architectural layouts which I find impossible to follow, but that is probably a matter of my general spatial incompetence.
Lytton is more infamous for committing his overly critical Irish wife to an insane asylum for a week, before popular uproar helped earn her release, all of which earned him a second book by his wife describing his failings, and probably earned him his annual satirical honour as well.
. .
My grandfather's favourite book was something called 'The Robe,' which, with its story of a Greek slave serving the Romans, while also relating a Christian message, suggests that 'The Robe' may be a pale American copy of a detailed British precursor, possibly this.
What's far more unforgivable than Lytton's writing are his failures bringing up his son, sans mother naturally.
That's because his son went on to become the leader of India under Queen Victoria, and oversaw a famine there which killed somewhere betweenandmillion Indians.
Once wildly popular, Baron Edward BulwerLytton is now best know for a couple of his quotes, One is "the pen is mightier than the sword," which is often used the other is the opening to his novel Paul Clifford: "It was a dark and stormy night," which was later used by Charles Schulz in Peanuts, with Snoopy's attempts at writing a novel always starting with that line.
InBulwerLytton published The Last Days of Pompeii, a potboiler about the days leading up the August,AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
He has a network of characters, heroes and villains, that get into tight spots, but all goes poof when the mountain erupts and the town is buried in ash.
The main characters are Glaucus, an Athenian, who is in love with the beautiful Ione, But she is also loved by the Egyptian Arbaces, who turns out to a mustachetwirling villain: "'Then hear me,' said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper 'thou shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arm! What! thinkest thou Arbaces will brook a rival such as this puny Greek What! thinkest thou that he has watched the fruit ripen, to yield it to another! Pretty foolno! Thou are mineallonly mine: and thusthus I seize and claim thee!'" Other key characters are the blind slave girl, Nydia, who falls in love with Glaucus, who is good to her, but in her jealousy ends up getting him sentenced to the arena to be eaten by a lion.
Along with him is Olinthus, the Christian, who is the bright ray of sunshine in this pagan world: "They regarded the Christian as the enemy of mankind the epithets they lavished upon him, of which 'Atheist' was the most favored and frequent, may serve, perhaps, to warn us, believers of the same creed now triumphant, how we indulge the persecution of opinion Olinthus then underwent, and how we apply to those whose notions differ from our own terms at that day lavished upon the fathers of our faith.
" BulwerLytton was ahead of his time on religious tolerance,
The novel has a serial quality, with episodes rather than a thorough plot, There is also a lot of purple prose, some of it for pages and pages, that don't seem to have much to do with anything.
I slowed down when actual events were taking place, but there is a ton of filler, perhaps to satisfy BulwerLytton's attention to his research.
"Pompeii was the miniature of the civilization of that age, Within the narrow compass of its walls was contained, as it were, a specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power.
In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its circusin the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the whole empire.
" Of course, this is true given that the ruins of Pompeii, which were discovered in thes, was the best chance to see Roman civilization as it was, untouched for twothousand years.
The last few chapters are a real page turner, Arbaces has framed Glaucus for a murder he himself committed, Glaucus is about to enter the arena to be eaten by a lion, Will Nydia's letter to Glaucus' friend, exonerating him, be read in time Of course, there's also the impending volcanic eruption, that only we know about.
BulwerLytton provides some striking details in the last few pages: "The lion had been kept without food for twentyfour hours, and the animal had, during the whole morning, testified a singular and restless uneasiness, which the keeper had attributed to the pangs of hunger.
Yet is bearing seemed rather that of fear than of rage its roar was painful and distressed it hung its headsnuffed the air through the barsthen lay downstarted againand again uttered its wild and farresounding cries.
" It's a kind of genius to shift the point of view to the lion at that point, but then we learn whythe lion, once released, will ignore exposed
Glaucus, an innocent man, leading the mob to cry out for justice.
Then, when the volcano erupts: "The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pinetree the trunk, blacknessthe branches, fire!a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare!"
BulwerLytton will then go on to the obviousthose engaged in looting and larceny will end up buried in ash, alongside the goodyou can't take it with you! A few will escape to the sea.
But he sums up the notion of time nicely here: "Nearly Seventeen Centuries had rolled away when the City of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues its walls fresh as if painted yesterdaynot a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floorsin its forum the halffinished columns as left by the workman's handin its gardens the sacrificial tripodin its halls the chest of treasurein its baths the strigilin its theaters the counter of admissionin its saloons the furniture and the lampin its triclinia the fragments of the last feastin its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of faded beautyand everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life!".