The Lyre of Orpheus (tct-3) by Robertson Davies

Author:Robertson Davies [Davies, Robertson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_classic
ISBN: 0140114335
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1990-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

I felt cold when I read that.”

“Good. And you saw how it fits Schnak’s musical fragment? So genuine Hoffmann is mated with my genuine poet, and with luck we may get something truly fine.”

“I wish very much I knew your poet.”

“Then look for him. He’s not totally obscure. Just a little off the beaten path.”

“Is he this Walter Scott, about whom Powell spoke?”

“Anything good you can pinch from Scott is well known, and nothing but his best is of any use.”

“Surely you will be found out when the opera is produced.”

“Not for a while. Perhaps not for a long time. How much of a libretto do you actually hear? It slips by, as an excuse for the music, and to indicate a plot.”

“You have changed the plot Powell told us about?”

“Not much. I’ve tightened it up. An opera has to have a good firm story.”

“And the music ought to carry the story and make it vivid.”

“Well—not in Hoffmann’s day. In Hoffmann’s operas and those he admired you get a chunk of plot, usually in pretty simple recitative, and then the action stops while the singers have a splendid rave-up about their feelings. It’s the rave-up that makes the opera; not the plot. Most of the plots, even after Wagner, have been disgustingly simple.”

“Simple—and few.”

“Astonishingly few, Nilla, however you dress them up.”

“Some critic said there were not more than nine plots in all literature.”

“He might as well have said, in all life. It’s amazing, and humbling, how we tread the old paths without recognizing them. Mankind is wonderfully egotistical.”

“Lucky for mankind, Simon. Don’t grudge us our little scrap of individuality. You talk like that woman Maria Cornish, with her wax-and-seal. What path is she treading, do you think?”

“How can I tell till her full story is told? At which time I shall probably not be around to have an opinion.”

“She interests me very much. Oh, not what you are thinking. I don’t want to break up her marriage, though she is a lovely creature. But somebody will.”

“You think so?”

“That husband of hers is all wrong for her.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Yes. A cold fish. Not a scrap of feeling in him.”

“Now Nilla, I see through you. You want me to contradict you and tell you all I know about Arthur. All I’m going to tell you is that you are wrong.”

“What a man for secrets you are.”

“Secrets are the priest’s trade or he is no priest.”

“All right. Don’t tell. But that woman comes out of a very different box from Arthur Cornish, who is all money and careful plans, and Kater Murr.”

“You’re right about Maria. Wrong about Arthur. He is scrambling upward from Kater Murr just as fast as he can.”

“Oh? So he married Maria to get away from Kater Murr? You let something slip, there. That woman is no Canadian.”

“Yes she is. A Canadian can be anything. It is one of our very few gifts. Because, you see, we all bring something to Canada with us, and a few years won’t wash it out.

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