Love! Vengeance! Murder! : Reviewing "Zastrozzi, A Romance"

Title: Zastrozzi, A Romance
Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Reader: Martin Geeson
Genre: Gothic Horror
Length: 5 hours and 16 minutes
Location: Recording hosted by Librivox. It is in the public domain.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5

I have been listening to the Librivox recording of Percy Bysshe Shelley's gothic story, Zastrozzi, on and off for about four months. It isn't War and Peace and it isn't Les Miserables - it's a five hour novella that is neither as dense nor as intellectually demanding as the aforementioned pair. As a consequence, I never felt quite right about taking so long to finally set the novella aside. But there it is. The performance is excellent... but the story is painful. I came to dread seeing the title of Zastrozzi on my iPod screen, and from there arrived at my decision: I couldn't finish it, no matter how many reasons I had for doing so.

I wavered over finally putting aside this novella for four reasons:

1) It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I loved his poetry when I was younger, and though I've fallen out of the habit of reading it (or any kind of poem - I regret the absence of that old, deliciously romantic (as in Romantic!) poetry in my life), his name on a work of literature will still make me pick it up.

2) It was Percy Bysshe Shelley juvenilia. I love the idea of an author's juvenilia; I'm in the process of reading all of Charlotte Bronte's adolescent fiction, written before her first published novel, The Professor. 

3) It's Gothic literature. Though my relationship with that genre is of a bafflingly love-hate kind, I still count it as my favourite genre, in that I WILL read it, even if I end up hating the book and ranting about my hatred into the silence of the Internet.

And 4) the performance of the reader, Martin Geeson, riveted me. Geeson reads with such hearty enthusiasm, as if he were performing Shakespeare on some Elizabethan stage, and gives the recording a sense of irony that made Zastrozzi feel like the parody of gothic novel (might I venture, in the vein of Thomas Love Peacock? Who is one of the hundreds of authors on the top of my TBR list, x3). I really enjoyed Geeson's voice, and how it transformed Zastrozzi from straight Gothic in a satirical drama - as though the novella took itself with good humour, and mocked its excesses with clear sighted vision.

But in the end - alas! - I could not finish the story itself. It's excessive - such weeping and moaning and clashing of teeth! - and irredeemably solemn about its excess. For all its thrilling going-ons (kidnap! murder! death beds!), Zastrozzi is dull, full of repetitions, and silly (each character revolves around a single trait: vengeance, unrequited love, or grief ). I've read that readers can gain a sense of the brilliant poet Shelley was to become; however, I found that the bathos of Shelley's characters and situations, and the melodrama of his style, drowned any sense of Shelley's developed (or developing) brilliance. I sometimes felt as if I had missed a "Part One" somewhere - Zastrozzi leaps into his vengeance without explanation, and the scene is already so developed - enemies made and rivalries unfolding - that I felt lost and strange.

All in all, Martin Geeson's performance is deletable, and I anticipate finding any other recordings that he has done. But as for Shelley... I don't mean to read another word of his gothic Juvenilia.

:: eyes the sequel of Zastrozzi, as found at the Australian Gutenberg Project ::

Or at least, not at the moment.

“Unhappy Man!”: Reviewing “Clarimonde”

Title: Clarimonde
Author: Theophile Gautier
Reader: Joy Chan
Genre: Gothic Horror
Length: 1 hour and 23 minutes
Location: Recording hosted by Librivox. It is in the public domain.

A young novice, poised upon the threshold of his ordination, glances up from his prayers, glimpses the face of the beautiful Clarimonde, and is hopelessly ensorcelled. He hungers after her, even as he vows himself to the priesthood, and as he leaves the ceremony, Clarimonde catches him by the hand and cries, “Unhappy man, unhappy man, what hast thou done?” For he is not alone in yearning; she has understood his hunger, and returns it.

The priest cannot escape the thought of Clarimonde. And so when he is given a chance to revoke his vows and become her lover, he seizes it.

Consequences be damned.

Final Verdict: 2 out of 5. This tale is simply and straightforwardly told: innocence faces temptation, and innocence prevails. There are vampires, holy water, and stakes. In a word, “Clarimonde” is early literary Gothic. No twists, no embellishments, just a good, old-fashioned clash of virtue versus the supernatural.

Listening to and reading early Gothic always requires some mental readjustments on my part—there’s no use in being irritated by the priest’s obsessive catalogue of Clarimonde’s charms—absorbed at a glance—because… well… it’s Gothic. Early Gothic. It’s supposed to be excessive and sound as if it takes itself seriously. (Does it?) That is what (can) be so charming about the genre.

"Clarimonde" is certainly excessive (and a bit more promiscuous than I was expecting. There was nothing explicit, but Clarimonde’s reputation suffers dreadfully in the mouths of her detractors). There isn’t a great deal of substance to the story, and the protagonist is—understandably—given to sanctimonious posturing and expressions of horror that story does not warrant. It makes for a light, amusing listen.

I enjoyed the reader, Joy Chan. Her voice is pleasant on the ear, and I loved the line of French that she narrated. But a grating burst of noise substituted for the dash in phrases such as, “the priest of — parish,” or “in the year 17—” It startled me rather badly the first time I heard it, and I never grew used to it.