Mark Morris: Socrates and Via Dolorosa

Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in Socrates. Photo credit: Chris Hardy. Image source: San Francisco Chronicle

Those who truly grasp philosophy pursue the study of nothing else but dying and being dead.

—Socrates in Plato's Phaedo

Throughout his career Mark Morris has set dances to unusual music choices. In the months after founding his company in 1980 he created dances to Harry Partch's Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (a dance actually made when he was 16, and reset on his new company seven years later), Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano, Vivaldi's sacred choral work Gloria, and traditional Romanian songs. In later years he choreographed pieces to music ranging from the Baroque to the 21st Century, and from pop to High Modernism.

The program Morris brought to Berkeley's Cal Performances (seen April 21) was a two-part meditation on death. The first work was Socrates (2010) to Erik Satie's Socrate for piano and voice (1917/18), which sets three texts from Plato: "Portrait de Socrate" (Portrait of Socrates) from Symposium, "Les bords de l'Ilissus" (The banks of the Ilissus) from Phaedrus, and "Mort de Socrate" (Death of Socrates) from Phaedo.

Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in Socrates. Photo credit: Gene Schiavone. Image source: Time Out

In this performance, tenor Brian Giebler sang all the texts to Colin Fowler's piano accompaniment, although the first two sections are dialogues and the voice part was originally written for one or four female vocalists. The music is stately and formal, and the movement often places the dancers in geometric formations and frieze-like positions suggesting the ancient Greek vase paintings. The dancers are costumed by Martin Pakledinaz in tunics of yellow, red, pastel blue, gold, and brown, colors that, as Alice Miller Cotter has pointed out, echo those seen in Jacques Louis David's painting The Death of Socrates.

Jacques Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787. Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Socrates' raised finger gesture from this painting also makes repeated appearances:

Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in Socrates. Image source: New York Times

No single dancer portrays Socrates; instead, both he and his students are embodied collectively by the group. In the moving final tableau dancers lie onstage, immobile—they are all Socrates, and by extension, we in the audience must reflect on whether there are ideas that we would die for. One dancer, though, escapes into the wings. In her New Yorker review of the premiere, dance critic Joan Acocella wrote that this dancer may represent "his ideas, which, unlike Socrates’ body, could not be put to death."

"Portrait de Socrate" sung by Barbara Hannigan, accompanied by pianist Reinbert de Leeuw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ibFz8I47x4

PORTRAIT DE SOCRATE Alcibiade: Or, mes chers amis, afin de louer Socrate, J’aurai besoin de comparaisons: Lui croira peutêtre que je veux plaisanter; mais rien n’est plus sérieux, Je dis d’abord qu’il ressemble tout à fait à ces Silènes qu’on voit exposés dans les ateliers des sculpteurs et que les artistes représentent avec une flûte ou des pipeaux à la main, et dans l’intérieur desquels quand on les ouvre, en séparant les deux pièces dont ils se composent, on trouve renfermées des statues de divinités.	PORTRAIT OF SOCRATES Alcibiades: And now, my dear friends, in order to praise Socrates I will need to make comparisons, and yet I speak not in jest; nothing could be more serious, I say that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus, which are set up in the statuaries’ studios, which the artists represent holding a flute or pipes in hand, and which, when they are made to open in the middle and are separated into two pieces, have images of gods inside them.
Je prétends ensuite qu’il ressemble au satyre Marsyas. . . Et n’estu pas aussi joueur de flûte? Oui sans doute, Et bien plus étonnant que Marsyas. Celuici charmait les hommes par les belles choses que sa bouche tirait de ses instruments et autant en fait aujourd’hui quiconque répète ses airs; en effet ceux que jouait Olympos, je les attribue à Marsyas son maître,	I say also that he resembles Marsyas the satyr. . . And are you not also a flute-player? That you are, without doubt, and far more amazing than Marsyas. He indeed charmed the souls of men by the beautiful sounds his breath drew from his instruments, and the players of his music do so still; for the melodies of Olympus are derived from Marsyas who taught them.
La seule différence Socrate, qu’il y ait ici entre Marsyas et toi, c’est que sans instruments, avec de simples discours, tu fais la même chose. . . Pour moi, mes amis n’était la crainte de vous paraître totalement ivre, je vous attesterais avec serment l’effet extraordinaire que ses discours m’ont fait et me font encore.	That is the only difference, Socrates, between Marsyas and you. With the effect of your words alone, you produce the same result. . . For me, my friends, if I were not afraid that you would think me hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn to the extraordinary influence which they have always had and still have over me.
En l’écoutant, je sens palpiter mon cœur plus fortement que si j’étais agité de la manie dansante des corybantes, ses paroles font couler mes larmes et j’en vois un grand nombre d’autres ressentir les mêmes émotions. Tels sont les prestiges qu’exerce, et sur moi et sur bien d’autres, la flûte de ce satyre. . .	For when I hear them my heart leaps within me more than that of any Corybantian reveler in his dancing frenzy. His words cause my tears to flow, and I observe that many others are affected in the same manner. And this is power exercised over me and many others by the flute-playing of this satyr. . .
Socrate: Tu viens de faire mon éloge: c’est maintenant à moi de faire celui de monvoisin de droite. . .	Socrates: You praised me just a moment ago: It now falls to me in turn to praise the neighbor to my right. . .

In that same New Yorker review Acocella wrote, "With Jesus Christ, Plato was the most influential thinker in the history of the West." No surprise, then, that the second half of the program was about Jesus. Via Dolorosa (The street of sorrows, 2024) is Morris' interpretation of Jesus' Passion. Commissioned in part by Cal Performances, this was its world premiere.

Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in Via Dolorosa. Photo credit: Chris Hardy. Image source: San Francisco Chronicle

Via Dolorosa is well-matched with Socrates in mood and theme, if not in choreographic inspiration. Both men were murdered by the state for asking uncomfortable questions, and Nico Muhly's score for Via Dolorosa, entitled The Street (14 Meditations on the Stations of the Cross) for solo harp, seems at times Satie-influenced. The excellent harpist was Parker Ramsay, and Morris' wise decision to omit the recitation of Alice Goodman's textual meditations on each Station (included in the program) enabled us to focus on the music.

Parker Ramsay performing Nico Muhly's The Street (14 Meditations on the Stations of the Cross) as accompaniment to Mark Morris' Via Dolorosa. Photo credit: Chris Hardy. Image source: San Francisco Chronicle

It's not clear what inspired Morris to choreograph the Passion, but as the piece developed I felt that Via Dolorosa increasingly demonstrated the limits of literalism. The dancers wear thin white or light brown robes, as though they are extras in The Last Temptation of Christ. In three of the 14 Stations Jesus falls, and of course, in each of these sections we see the dancers stumble and fall to the stage. In the Stations that mention the cross, dancers hold their arms straight out to the sides as though they portray or are nailed to a cross. When Jesus encounters his mother, we see him being born (sliding forward onstage between her legs as she squats above) and then as a toddler clutching her hand and walking beside her; the toddler Jesus is represented by dancers shuffling forward on their knees, an old vaudeville gag.

Members of the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in Via Dolorosa. Photo credit: Chris Hardy. Image source: San Francisco Chronicle

Via Dolorosa was not a disaster, but at times it skirted the bathetic, and for this viewer it fell far short of achieving the precision of effect, amplified through restraint, seen in its partner work. Socrates has taken its place among Morris' masterpieces; I suspect that Via Dolorosa, despite seeming to have been purposely designed as its companion piece, will not share the same fate.

But Morris' ear for striking, unusual music has not left him; Muhly's score is quietly compelling. Station VI, Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6hhcEkAyIY

Haruki Murakami, part 7: Burning and Norwegian Wood

Still from Lee Chang-dong's Burning (2018). Image source: The Criterion Collection

As a follow-up to my post on the film Drive My Car (2021), in which writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi combines elements from two Haruki Murakami short stories, I'm going to take a look at two other Murakami film adaptations: Burning (2018) and Norwegian Wood (2010).

Burning

Yoo Ah-in (Jong-su) and Yeun Sang-yeop (Ben) in Lee Chang-dong's Burning. Image source: Hikari Hana

Burning is an adaptation by Korean writer-director Lee Chang-dong of Murakami's 1983 short story "Naya o yaku," originally translated by J. Philip Gabriel as "Barn Burning" and published in The New Yorker of 2 November 1992. The story was retranslated by Alfred Birnbaum under the same title for the collection The Elephant Vanishes (Knopf, 1993). For a summary of Murakami's story, please see my post on The Elephant Vanishes.

Lee shifts the action to Korea and adds many details that heighten the psychological tensions only suggested in the story. A flirtatious and free-spirited young woman, Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), calls out to Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) one day when he's on his round of deliveries. The two knew each other as children, but haven't seen one another since junior high school a decade ago. (In fact, Jong-su doesn't recognize Hae-mi at first; she tells him she's had plastic surgery to improve her looks. South Korea has the highest rates of cosmetic surgeries per capita in the world; a BBC poll estimated that more than 50% of South Korean women have cosmetic surgery by age 29. [1])

Jeon Jong-seo (Shin Hae-mi) in Lee Chang-dong's Burning. Image source: Asia Pacific Screen Awards

Hae-mi works doing store promotions, and slips Jong-su the winning ticket for a grand-opening raffle whose prize is a girl's watch (which, of course, she then suggests that he should give to her; it's a clever way for her to find out if he has a girlfriend, as well as gain a watch). Later she invites Jong-su to her apartment to show him how to feed her cat while she's away on an extended trip. But there doesn't seem to be a cat in her apartment; has she invited Jong-su there on a pretext? She reminds him that in junior high school he had told her that she was "really ugly," an incident he doesn't remember; she then seduces him (which takes very little effort). Is Hae-mi's seduction of Jong-su, and perhaps her cosmetic surgery, an attempt to exorcise that painful childhood moment?

When Hae-mi returns from her trip, to Jong-su's surprise and dismay she has a new boyfriend in tow whom she met while abroad, the wealthy Ben (Yeun Sang-yeop). Jong-su feels pangs of sexual jealousy and economic inadequacy, and we begin to wonder whether we're witnessing Hae-min's revenge on Jong-su for his teenage cruelty.

Yoo Ah-in (Jong-su), Jeon Jong-seo (Hae-mi), and Yeun Sang-yeop (Ben) in Burning. Image source: Ricepaper Magazine

Ben sees the world as a playground, and confesses to Jong-su that he has an odd hobby. Every so often when he spots an abandoned or run-down greenhouse, he burns it down. Jong-su then begins to look at the greenhouses around his father's farm with a new perspective, weighing the chances that each could be Ben's next target. It's a suggestion that under his nice-guy exterior, Ben may harbor destructive obsessions.

Still from Burning. Image source: franceinfo: culture

Hae-min confesses that on her trip she felt a strong desire "to disappear, as if I had never existed." When she does disappear, Jong-su becomes fixated on Ben and begins following him around the city. One day, Ben spots Jong-su lurking in his Gangnam neighborhood in his delivery truck, and invites him to his spacious apartment. While there, Jong-su encounters a cat that Ben calls by the same name as Hae-min's. Jong-su opens a drawer and discovers that it is filled with bracelets, barrettes, and other small trophies of Ben's conquests; right on top is the watch Jong-su had given Hae-min. Jong-su begins to have dark suspicions about Ben, and Hae-min's possible fate. . .

Lee Chang-dong's additions to Murakami's story bring out aspects only hinted at in the original, and he very effectively ratchets up the suspense. The film is also filled with cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo's strikingly photographed images. But both Jong-su and the film go off the rails in the final few minutes, when the movie completely departs both from Murakami's story and from any connection to plausibility. I found that the final few minutes ruined the film for me; judging by its positive critical reception, others have felt differently.

https://youtu.be/oihHs2Errwk

Norwegian Wood

Rinko Kikuchi (Naoko) and Ken'ichi Matsuyama (Toru) in Ang Hung Tran's Norwegian Wood (2010). Image source: MOMA.org

Anh Hung Tran is the French-Vietnamese writer and director of The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), Cyclo (1995), The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000), and the recent Juliette Binoche film Pot au feu/La passion de Dodin Bouffant (released in the U.S. as The Taste of Things, 2023). In 2010 Tran wrote and directed an adaptation of Murakami's 1987 novel Norwegian Wood; for a summary of the novel please see my post on Murakami's English Library novels.

In 1969, as police storm university campuses to chase student demonstrators, college student Toru Watanabe (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) spends his time chasing girls. One day he encounters Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), the former girlfriend of Toru's best friend Kizuki (Kengo Kora). Kizuki committed suicide, and Naoko and Toru are drawn together by their connection to him. Naoko has thoughts of suicide as well, and leaves the university to go a mental health retreat in the mountains. Toru visits her there and meets her roommate, the 39-year-old divorcée Reiko (Reika Kirishima, who later played Oto in Drive My Car). Back on campus, Toru is approached by Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), a lively, outgoing student who expresses a romantic interest in him even though she already has a boyfriend.

Still from Norwegian Wood. Image source: Asian Movie Pulse

Norwegian Wood is elegantly filmed by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin, with beautifully composed shots of the snowy mountainous region where Naoko's retreat is located contrasting with the cramped apartments and neon-lit bars of Tokyo. But Tran simplifies the story, eliminating even a major subplot that provides the reason that Reiko has come to the sanatorium. Of course, any 2-hour film adaptation of a full-length novel must involve judicious selection of what to include, but the simplified narrative makes the plot seem even more schematic than it does in the book: all too clearly Naoko represents the past and the death drive, Reiko represents the present and the power of healing, and Midori represents the future and the life force. Although the film is shot from Toru's point of view and places him in the coming-of-age dilemma of having to decide among the three women, it's actually the women who make all the key choices (spoiler alert—for some reason those choices all involve wanting to sleep with Toru).

https://youtu.be/6So2GW3QKrY

Filmmakers are drawn to Murakami's fiction in part because of its popularity, but his laconic style and protagonists who are more passively acted-upon than actively choosing their fates can present cinematic difficulties. In Burning Lee makes the mistake of over-elaborating Murakami's story into a violent suspense thriller that ultimately takes the movie too far from its source. In Norwegian Wood Tran over-simplifies the novel and so makes the story's flaws even more apparent. Neither filmmaker manages the careful balance of Hamaguchi's adaptation, which opens up its stories in a way that makes use of the strengths of cinema, but which still retains the atmosphere of Murakami's originals.

Other posts in this series:

• The English Library novels: Hear the Wind Sing (1979/1987), Pinball, 1973 (1980/1985), and Norwegian Wood (1987/1989)
• The first U.S. publications: A Wild Sheep Chase (1982/1989) and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985/1991)
• The transition: The Elephant Vanishes (1980-91/1993) and Dance Dance Dance (1988/1994)
• International breakthrough: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995/1997)
• Film adaptation: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (2021)
• Comics adaptation: Jean-Christophe Deveney and PMGL's Manga Stories (2023)

---

1.  See Patricia Marx, "Letter from Seoul: About Face," The New Yorker, 23 March 2015.
   

Jane Austen proposal scenes, coda: Are Austen's endings romantic?

Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen, circa 1810. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 3630

In the first post of this series (linked below) I wrote about "how reticent Austen often is about her heroes' actual proposals and her heroines' acceptances. She follows their love stories in detail, relating conversations and letters verbatim for 300 or 400 pages. Then she often passes over the moment of the actual proposal quickly, or narrates it in the third person using indirect speech."

In some cases this may be because Austen recognizes that while every couple's love story is unique, at the moment of proposal and acceptance they are participating in a social ritual with a fixed form. We can all imagine what the gentleman will say and how the young lady will respond. In Sense and Sensibility we are told of Edmund's proposal to Elinor that "in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told"; in Emma, of Emma's response to Mr. Knightley's offer, "What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does."

It is striking that the proposal scenes that are related in the most detail, especially in terms of the women's speech, are refusals. They include Elizabeth Bennet's rejection of Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice ("I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart"); her refusal of Darcy's first proposal ("I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry"); and in Emma, Emma's rebuff of Mr. Elton's declaration ("Believe me, sir, I am far, very far, from gratified in being the object of such professions. . .Nothing could be farther from my wishes").

The literary scholar Inger Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey argues that Austen's brief, narrated denouements also reveal a skepticism about romantic endings. In Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) she notes that at the moment when the reader might expect to enjoy a full and intimate transcription of the couple's expressions of love, we are instead given the narrator's third-person distance and pointed, if affectionate, irony. Brodey outlines the strategies Austen employs to undercut readers' sentimental responses, including the speed of the novels' resolutions, the narration (rather than the depiction) of the actual proposals, the author/narrator's commentaries and rhetorical questions, and convenient/coincidental dei ex machina. [1]

As examples of last-minute events that enable the hero and heroine to marry, Brodey points in particular to four novels (spoilers follow): 

• In Sense and Sensibility, Lucy Steele's abrupt transfer of her affections to Edward Ferrar's brother Robert frees Edward to propose to Elinor Dashwood, while Marianne's change of heart about Colonel Brandon's age renders her amenable to his marriage proposal.
• In Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford's elopement with Maria Rushworth, and Mary Crawford's expression of regret to Edmund Bertram only that Henry and Maria's affair was discovered, eliminates Henry as a rival for Fanny's affections, and Mary as the object of Edmund's. With the romantic field open, Edmund comes to realize that Fanny would be a far more suitable marriage partner than Mary.
• In Emma, when a poultry thief appears in the neighborhood, Mr. Woodhouse's fear of despoilation overcomes his objections to Emma devoting some of her attentions to Mr. Knightley rather than all of them to himself, enabling Emma "to fix her wedding day."
  
• In Northanger Abbey, we learn in the final three paragraphs that Eleanor Tilney's longtime beau's "unexpected accession to title and fortune had removed all his difficulties" in proposing marriage to her. Eleanor and her husband are then able to convince General Tilney that Mr. Morland is not impoverished and that Catherine's family is a proper one for his second son to marry into, clearing the way for Henry and Catherine's marriage.

In Brodey's view these endings, each of which involves an obvious authorial contrivance that suddenly removes all obstacles to the couple's union, are another way that Austen signals her anti-romanticism. They are a metafictional technique, like her knowing commentary about the couple. As an example of the latter, in the concluding chapter of Mansfield Park we read of Edmund that,

Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, a hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire. (Ch. XLVIII)

In employing ironizing metafictional techniques at the moment of her characters' greatest happiness, Austen is following a model provided by some of her favorite authors, such as Shakespeare, Henry Fielding and Maria Edgeworth. Edgeworth's Belinda (1801) concludes, in a chapter entitled "The Denouement," with an arresting conceit:

'And now, my good friends,' continued Lady Delacour, 'shall I finish the novel for you?'

'If your ladyship pleases; nobody can do it better,' said Clarence Hervey.

'But I hope you will remember, dear Lady Delacour,' said Belinda, 'that there is nothing in which novelists are so apt to err as in hurrying things toward the conclusion: in not allowing time enough for that change of feeling, which change of situation cannot instantly produce.'

'That's right, my dear Belinda; true to your principles to the last gasp. Fear nothing—you shall have time enough to become accustomed to Clarence. Would you choose that I should draw out the story to five volumes more? With your advice and assistance, I can with the greatest ease, my dear. A declaration of love, you know, is only the beginning of things; there may be blushes, and sighs, and doubts, and fears, and misunderstandings, and jealousies without end or common sense, to fill up the necessary space, and to gain the necessary time; but if I might conclude the business in two lines, I should say,

"Ye gods, annihilate both space and time,
And make four lovers happy."'

Maria Edgeworth by John Downman, 1807. Image source: Lapham's Quarterly

So Austen's irony at the moment of the proposal is not unprecedented. But Austen is not merely following favorite models. In her novels, rationality, or, as the title of her first published novel has it, sense, is essential to both individual and marital happiness.

This may be one reason why we are invited to view the proposal scenes objectively, from the perspective of the narrator, rather than sentimentally, from the perspective of the lovers. As one of many examples, after Bingley receives Mr. Bennet's consent to his marriage to Jane, Elizabeth, "till her sister came down,. . .had to listen to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane’s perfections; and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself" (Ch. LV).

"As they hastily turned round—" Illustration of Jane and Bingley by C.E. Brock for Pride and Prejudice, J.M. Dent, 1907. Image source: HathiTrust.org

There are, of course, sobering negative examples as well: characters who impulsively follow their superficial romantic attractions (such as Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice), or those who choose their spouses solely through the cold calculation of financial and social gain (such as Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility). In either case, they are in danger of sacrificing their future happiness. In Austen, as, perhaps, in life, the marriages that have the best chance of felicity unite couples whose true and sincere emotional attachment is supported by "excellent understanding."

In Mansfield Park Henry Crawford and Maria Rushworth run off together, Henry "regretting Fanny even at the moment, but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him, by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind, and the excellence of her principles."

"Put round her shoulders by Mr. Crawford's quicker hands." Illustration of Henry Crawford and Fanny Price by Hugh Thomson for Mansfield Park, Macmillan, 1902. Image source: HathiTrust.org

In behaving such a thoughtless and ill-considered way, the narrator tells us, "we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved" (Ch. XLVIII).

Inger Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey's Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness will be published in June, and can be pre-ordered now.

Image source: Johns Hopkins University Press

Other posts in the Jane Austen proposal scenes series:

• Part 1: Sense and Sensibility
• Part 2: Pride and Prejudice
• Part 3: Mansfield Park
• Part 4: Emma
• Part 5: Northanger Abbey
• Part 6: Persuasion
  

---

1. On 24 March 2024 Brodey gave a presentation about her book to the Jane Austen Society of North America's Northern California chapter.
   

Remembering Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, American mezzo-soprano, October 1, 2003. Photo credit: Richard Avedon. Image source: Operachic

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, born 1 March 1954, would have turned 70 today. It is a shock to realize that it has been almost 18 years since her tragic death from breast cancer on 3 July 2006, at the age of only 52.

We were incredibly fortunate to have been able to see her in performance four times: twice as the repudiated Empress Ottavia in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea) at San Francisco Opera in the summer of 1998—her "Addio Roma, addio patria" was magnificent—and twice in recitals sponsored by UC Berkeley's Cal Performances: the first on 29 April 2001 in the cavernous Zellerbach Hall, and the second on 29 September 2002 in the more intimate wood-lined Hertz Hall. Although all of her appearances were memorable, the second recital was one of the most moving performances I've ever experienced.

In late January 1999 Lorraine Hunt was scheduled to perform a program of Bach's cantatas directed by Peter Sellars as part of the Cal Performances season; a second show was even added in early February. However, just two weeks before those performances were to take place they were cancelled "because of an illness in Hunt's family," according to the announcements that appeared. We later learned that her sister Alexis had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and Hunt cancelled the engagements to be with her. Alexis died in May 2000.

Two months before her sister's death, Hunt herself was diagnosed with the disease. The program of the 2002 recital was clearly a response to her diagnosis and her sister's death. Every song was about mortality and the imperative to grasp fleeting moments of joy, from the opening "Scherza infida" ("Mock me, faithless one," from Handel's Ariodante), in which the suicidal Ariodante seeks "the embrace of death," to the closing "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," ("I am lost to the world," from Mahler's Rückert-Lieder), in which she sings "truly I am dead to the world./I am dead to the world’s clamor/And rest in a quiet place,/I live alone in my heaven,/In my love, in my song!"

Fortunately for us, her performances of some of the songs from this recital program were recorded. Here is Claude Debussy's "Beau soir," recorded at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on 20 October 2002. As in the Berkeley recital we attended three weeks earlier, Robert Tweten is her accompanist:

https://youtu.be/1QgEAsJul18 ["Beau soir" ends at 3:10]

Beau soir (Paul Bourget) Lorsque au soleil couchant les rivières sont roses, Et qu'un tiède frisson court sur les champs de blé, Un conseil d'être heureux semble sortir des choses Et monter vers le cœur troublé; Un conseil de goûter le charme d'être au monde Cependant qu'on est jeune et que le soir est beau, Car nous nous en allons, comme s'en va cette onde: Elle à la mer — nous au tombeau!

Beautiful evening (My translation) When at sunset the rivers turn pink And a mild breeze brushes the fields of wheat, Everything seems to urge contentment And ascend to a troubled heart; To urge us to savor the delight of being in the world, While we are young and the evening so beautiful, For our life flows by, as do the waves: They to the sea — we to the tomb.

As in the recital we attended, on this recording "Beau soir" is followed after a pause by Ernest Chausson's "Le Colibri" (The hummingbird); if you want to keep listening you can find the words by Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle together with a translation by Richard Stokes on the Oxford International Song Festival website.

The final song (and third encore) of the recital was her signature encore, the spiritual "Deep River," in which she sings "Deep river/My home is over Jordan/Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground." This recording was made live at the 2004 Ravinia Festival with Peter Serkin as her accompanist:

https://youtu.be/iSkskC68eEQ ["Deep River" ends at 2:40]

Although no recording can do justice to the experience of hearing this remarkable artist in person, many of her performances are available on audio or video. Among our favorites are the collections of Handel arias she recorded with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under musical director Nicholas McGegan, Arias for Durastanti and Handel Arias (there are four tracks in common). Supreme for me, of course, reigns her performance with the PBO of the Carthaginian queen Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. I've written elsewhere on this blog about how Dido and Aeneas and Hunt's other Baroque opera and oratorio performances with PBO and McGegan played a major role in igniting our passion for Baroque opera—a gift for which we will always be profoundly grateful.

Dido's lament from the final scene of the opera:

https://youtu.be/IKRjtUCbTmw

For more about what is was like to hear Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in performance, it would be difficult to find a warmer tribute than Alex Ross's "Fervor" (The New Yorker, 25 September 2006). Details in this post were also taken from the following articles:

• Joshua Kosman, "Singing the music of her life: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's programs express sorrow of illness, joy of marriage," San Francisco Chronicle, 22 April 2001 [1]
  
• Charles Michener, "The soul singer," The New Yorker, 5 January 2004
• Anthony Tommasini. "Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, luminous mezzo, dies at 52," New York Times, 5 July 2006
• Charlotte Higgins, "Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: American opera singer renowned for her passionate, beautiful, bold interpretations," The Guardian, 6 July 2006

---

1. I believe that in this article Kosman mis-states the date of Lorraine Hunt's diagnosis; the date he gives of spring 1999 is contradicted by both Charles Michener's and Charlotte Higgins' accounts.
   
   Perhaps this is also the place to mention that while Kosman can be an insightful critic, he seemed utterly oblivious to the wrenching theme of Hunt's 2002 recital. In his review in the San Francisco Chronicle (1 October 2002) Kosman wrote that the recital was "an odd patchwork affair" that "lacked something of the unnerving sublimity of Hunt Lieberson's previous performances" and, to him, felt like "[one] song after another." Sublimity is, of course, in the ear of the auditor, but Kosman seemed not to grasp the story Hunt was telling through her musical choices. Not only was the recital a thematically coherent meditation on death, it was also carefully structured (the songs were grouped by language), and deeply affecting. So, hardly a patchwork, and it's no closer to the mark to call it "an appealing sampler," as Kosman does in his first sentence.
   

Jane Austen proposal scenes, part 6: Persuasion

Ciarán Hinds (Captain Frederick Wentworth) and Amanda Root (Anne Elliot) in Persuasion (1995)

Persuasion

Background to the proposal scene: Eight years ago, 19-year-old Anne Elliot became engaged to 23-year-old Commander Frederick Wentworth while he was on shore leave during the wars with Napoleon's France. But Anne's prudent neighbor, counsellor, friend, and surrogate mother Lady Russell strongly disapproved of the engagement. "Lady Russell had. . .of anything approaching to imprudence a horror. She deprecated the connexion in every light." Wentworth "had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession." Under intense pressure from her family and from Lady Russell, Anne broke their engagement, and the lovers separated.

Eight years on, Napoleon has been defeated (temporarily), and Wentworth, promoted to the rank of captain due to his skill and valor, and made rich by war prizes, has returned. [1] Anne and he have been thrown together, but relations between them remain strained: "Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. . .there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement."

Two other couples are contrasted with Anne and Wentworth in this scene. Charles Hayter and Henrietta Musgrove, one of Anne's sisters-in-law, have faced parental hesitancy because the income from his living is not large, and the living itself is temporary. However, his prospects are good, and he will ultimately inherit a modest estate. Anne's other sister-in-law, Louisa Musgrove, has become engaged to Wentworth's former shipmate Captain Benwick while recovering from a fall from the Cobb at Lyme at the home of Wentworth's friend Captain Harville and his family. Benwick had been engaged to Captain Harville's sister Fanny until her unexpected death about six months ago. Before meeting Louisa, Benwick had been in mourning. Finally, Anne's cousin William Elliot, heir to her family's estate Kellynch, has been paying Anne decided attentions.

The film: screenplay by Nick Dear, directed by Roger Michell (1995)

In "Favorite Austen adaptations and final thoughts" (did I say "final thoughts"?) I wrote, "Almost as great a miracle as the Jennifer Ehle–Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice adaptation of the same year, this version beautifully renders key scenes from Austen's novel (and, amazingly, is able to do so in under two hours). Both Root and Hinds are completely convincing as the estranged lovers who are suddenly reunited after eight years apart. It's clear, too, that great care has been taken in portraying locations, interiors, music, and other details from the novel. Not to be missed." (And all other Persuasion adaptations are to be avoided.)

https://youtu.be/Bm3QywZFBuA?t=1424

The novel:

"And so, ma'am, all these thing considered," said Mrs Musgrove, in her powerful whisper, "though we could have wished it different, yet, altogether, we did not think it fair to stand out any longer, for Charles Hayter was quite wild about it, and Henrietta was pretty near as bad; and so we thought they had better marry at once, and make the best of it, as many others have done before them. At any rate, said I, it will be better than a long engagement."

"That is precisely what I was going to observe," cried Mrs Croft. "I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement. . ."

. . .Anne found an unexpected interest here. She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth's pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.

The two ladies continued to talk, to re-urge the same admitted truths, and enforce them with such examples of the ill effect of a contrary practice as had fallen within their observation, but Anne heard nothing distinctly; it was only a buzz of words in her ear, her mind was in confusion.

Captain Harville, who had in truth been hearing none of it, now left his seat, and moved to a window, and Anne seeming to watch him, though it was from thorough absence of mind, became gradually sensible that he was inviting her to join him where he stood. He looked at her with a smile, and a little motion of the head, which expressed, "Come to me, I have something to say;" and the unaffected, easy kindness of manner which denoted the feelings of an older acquaintance than he really was, strongly enforced the invitation. She roused herself and went to him. The window at which he stood was at the other end of the room from where the two ladies were sitting, and though nearer to Captain Wentworth's table, not very near. As she joined him, Captain Harville's countenance re-assumed the serious, thoughtful expression which seemed its natural character.

"Look here," said he, unfolding a parcel in his hand, and displaying a small miniature painting, "do you know who that is?"

"Certainly: Captain Benwick."

"Yes, and you may guess who it is for. But," (in a deep tone), "it was not done for her. Miss Elliot, do you remember our walking together at Lyme, and grieving for him? I little thought then—but no matter. This was drawn at the Cape. He met with a clever young German artist at the Cape, and in compliance with a promise to my poor sister, sat to him, and was bringing it home for her; and I have now the charge of getting it properly set for another! It was a commission to me! But who else was there to employ? I hope I can allow for him. I am not sorry, indeed, to make it over to another. He undertakes it;" (looking towards Captain Wentworth,) "he is writing about it now." And with a quivering lip he wound up the whole by adding, "Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!"

"No," replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice. "That I can easily believe."

"It was not in her nature. She doted on him."

"It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved."

Captain Harville smiled, as much as to say, "Do you claim that for your sex?" and she answered the question, smiling also, "Yes. We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions."

"Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men (which, however, I do not think I shall grant), it does not apply to Benwick. He has not been forced upon any exertion. The peace turned him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our little family circle, ever since."

"True," said Anne, "very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say now, Captain Harville? If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man's nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick."

"No, no, it is not man's nature. I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. . .We shall never agree upon this question," Captain Harville was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Captain Wentworth's hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room. It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Anne was startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined to suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could have caught.

"Have you finished your letter?" said Captain Harville.

"Not quite, a few lines more. I shall have done in five minutes."

"There is no hurry on my side. I am only ready whenever you are. I am in very good anchorage here," (smiling at Anne), "well supplied, and want for nothing. No hurry for a signal at all. Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice), "as I was saying, we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."

"But how shall we prove anything?"

"We never shall. We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or in some respect saying what should not be said."

"Ah!" cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, "if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, 'God knows whether we ever meet again!' And then, if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth's absence, perhaps, and obliged to put into another port, he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, 'They cannot be here till such a day,' but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still! If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence! I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!" pressing his own with emotion.

"Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed.

"You are a good soul," cried Captain Harville, putting his hand on her arm, quite affectionately. "There is no quarrelling with you. And when I think of Benwick, my tongue is tied."

Their attention was called towards the others. Mrs Croft was taking leave.

"Here, Frederick, you and I part company, I believe," said she. "I am going home, and you have an engagement with your friend. To-night we may have the pleasure of all meeting again at your party," (turning to Anne). "We had your sister's card yesterday, and I understood Frederick had a card too, though I did not see it; and you are disengaged, Frederick, are you not, as well as ourselves?"

Captain Wentworth was folding up a letter in great haste, and either could not or would not answer fully.

"Yes," said he, "very true; here we separate, but Harville and I shall soon be after you; that is, Harville, if you are ready, I am in half a minute. I know you will not be sorry to be off. I shall be at your service in half a minute."

Mrs Croft left them, and Captain Wentworth, having sealed his letter with great rapidity, was indeed ready, and had even a hurried, agitated air, which shewed impatience to be gone. Anne knew not how to understand it. She had the kindest "Good morning, God bless you!" from Captain Harville, but from him not a word, nor a look! He had passed out of the room without a look!

She had only time, however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened, it was himself. He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a time, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Musgrove was aware of his being in it: the work of an instant!

"Placed it before Anne." Illustration by Charles E. Brock for Persuasion (Dent, 1922). Image source: HathiTrust.org

The revolution which one instant had made in Anne, was almost beyond expression. The letter, with a direction hardly legible, to "Miss A. E.—," was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily. While supposed to be writing only to Captain Benwick, he had been also addressing her! On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her. Anything was possible, anything might be defied rather than suspense. Mrs Musgrove had little arrangements of her own at her own table; to their protection she must trust, and sinking into the chair which he had occupied, succeeding to the very spot where he had leaned and written, her eyes devoured the following words:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W.

"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

"Wentworth's letter." Illustration by William C. Cooke for Persuasion (Dent, 1895). Image source: HathiTrust.org

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. Half an hour's solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten minutes only which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity. Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was overpowering happiness. And before she was beyond the first stage of full sensation, Charles, Mary, and Henrietta all came in.

The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an immediate struggle; but after a while she could do no more. She began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself. They could then see that she looked very ill, were shocked and concerned, and would not stir without her for the world. This was dreadful. Would they only have gone away, and left her in the quiet possession of that room it would have been her cure; but to have them all standing or waiting around her was distracting, and in desperation, she said she would go home.

"By all means, my dear," cried Mrs Musgrove, "go home directly, and take care of yourself, that you may be fit for the evening. I wish Sarah was here to doctor you, but I am no doctor myself. Charles, ring and order a chair. She must not walk."

But the chair would never do. Worse than all! To lose the possibility of speaking two words to Captain Wentworth in the course of her quiet, solitary progress up the town (and she felt almost certain of meeting him) could not be borne. The chair was earnestly protested against, and Mrs Musgrove, who thought only of one sort of illness, having assured herself with some anxiety, that there had been no fall in the case; that Anne had not at any time lately slipped down, and got a blow on her head; that she was perfectly convinced of having had no fall; could part with her cheerfully, and depend on finding her better at night.

Anxious to omit no possible precaution, Anne struggled, and said—

"I am afraid, ma'am, that it is not perfectly understood. Pray be so good as to mention to the other gentlemen that we hope to see your whole party this evening. I am afraid there had been some mistake; and I wish you particularly to assure Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth, that we hope to see them both."

"Oh! my dear, it is quite understood, I give you my word. Captain Harville has no thought but of going."

"Do you think so? But I am afraid; and I should be so very sorry. Will you promise me to mention it, when you see them again? You will see them both this morning, I dare say. Do promise me."

"To be sure I will, if you wish it. Charles, if you see Captain Harville anywhere, remember to give Miss Anne's message. But indeed, my dear, you need not be uneasy. Captain Harville holds himself quite engaged, I'll answer for it; and Captain Wentworth the same, I dare say."

Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity. It could not be very lasting, however. Even if he did not come to Camden Place himself, it would be in her power to send an intelligible sentence by Captain Harville. Another momentary vexation occurred. Charles, in his real concern and good nature, would go home with her; there was no preventing him. This was almost cruel. But she could not be long ungrateful; he was sacrificing an engagement at a gunsmith's, to be of use to her; and she set off with him, with no feeling but gratitude apparent.

They were on Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of familiar sound, gave her two moments' preparation for the sight of Captain Wentworth. He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to join or to pass on, said nothing, only looked. Anne could command herself enough to receive that look, and not repulsively. The cheeks which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated were decided. He walked by her side. Presently, struck by a sudden thought, Charles said—

"Captain Wentworth, which way are you going? Only to Gay Street, or farther up the town?"

"I hardly know," replied Captain Wentworth, surprised.

"Are you going as high as Belmont? Are you going near Camden Place? Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my place, and give Anne your arm to her father's door. She is rather done for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to be at that fellow's in the Market Place. He promised me the sight of a capital gun he is just going to send off; said he would keep it unpacked to the last possible moment, that I might see it; and if I do not turn back now, I have no chance. By his description, a good deal like the second size double-barrel of mine, which you shot with one day round Winthrop."

There could not be an objection. There could be only the most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined in and spirits dancing in private rapture. In half a minute Charles was at the bottom of Union Street again, and the other two proceeding together: and soon words enough had passed between them to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow. There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were gone through; and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an end.

She had not mistaken him. Jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding weight, the doubt, the torment. That had begun to operate in the very hour of first meeting her in Bath; that had returned, after a short suspension, to ruin the concert; and that had influenced him in everything he had said and done, or omitted to say and do, in the last four-and-twenty hours. It had been gradually yielding to the better hopes which her looks, or words, or actions occasionally encouraged; it had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and those tones which had reached him while she talked with Captain Harville; and under the irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper, and poured out his feelings.

Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge: that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness. . ."I have been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards. Like other great men under reverses," he added, with smile, "I must endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve."

When I read Persuasion for the first time in college, I did not understand the necessity of Wentworth's letter. Why could he not simply take Anne aside and "pour out his feelings"? I did not grasp the social constraints under which they were both operating: Anne always being with relatives and friends, the streets and public rooms of Bath always crowded with people, and there being no private place where an unrelated man and woman could sequester themselves to have an intensely personal conversation.

Screenwriter Nick Dear wisely lets Austen's characters speak the words she gave them (judiciously edited). I particularly admire the way Anne and Wentworth's voices alternate and overlap as the letter is read, signifying the mutuality of their feelings.

Some people with whom I've viewed this adaptation of Persuasion have expressed mixed feelings about the circus parade passing down the street at the moment of the proposal; shouldn't there be swelling romantic music on the soundtrack rather than blaring clarinets and pounding drums? But I think the clamorous parade serves two purposes: first, it contrasts the noise and bustle of public spectacle with the still, almost wordless private communication between the couple. And second, there is no possible way that Anne and Wentworth could kiss on the street to seal their engagement without a major distraction drawing away everyone else's attention and (for those facing them from the other side of the street) blocking the couple from view.

Persuasion is Austen's most deeply felt novel. And in Nick Dear's and Roger Michell's television version, it has found a most worthy adaptation.

For more on the novel, please see "Persuasion and war" and "Persuasion and Austen's sailor brothers"

Previous posts in this series:

• Northanger Abbey
• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and Sensibility

---

1. As usual in an Austen novel, we are told (or can determine) exactly how rich: Wentworth has "five-and-twenty thousand pounds," undoubtedly invested in Navy five percent bonds, yielding an annual income of £1250. If war comes again—spoiler alert: it will—he will have the opportunity to earn more prize money by capturing enemy ships. In addition, on active duty he receives a salary of about £400, and while on leave receives half-pay. In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor Dashwood describes an income of £1000 as the wealth necessary for happiness and comfort.