Madame by Antoni Libera

Author:Antoni Libera [Libera, Antoni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Queen’s Gambit

The rest of that day and the next were spent reading. I finished Victory, skimmed through the French version, acquainted myself with Joanna Schopenhauer’s memoirs and learnt to decipher Gothic script. I also started a new notebook. But instead of furnishing it with the usual identifying signs (name, class, subject), I wrote on the cover only the enigmatic title ‘Cahier des citations’ and copied into it various passages and phrases from the books I’d been reading.

The first to go in were three stanzas from the Rhine hymn: the one Constant had quoted, ‘But now, from within / The mountains’ hidden depths . . .’; the one that began, ‘It was the voice of the noblest of rivers . . .’; and the one with the sentence I had seen in the dedication, which began, ‘A mystery is the pure of source . . .’ I carefully underlined the lines ‘C.’ had quoted, and next to them wrote out Constant’s translation (‘For as you were born, so will you remain . . .’), too.

On the following pages (of recycled paper, as a notice on the cover informed me) I copied out extracts from the memoirs, mainly from chapter thirty-nine, which was devoted to the journey back from England. Among them were the following:

Moreover, I had set out, quite unconsciously [this underlining was also mine], in a state in which women ought not to travel unless they are obliged to do so by the most urgent necessity . . .

My fluency in the language and the ease with which I adapted to the local customs and ways made me a welcome guest.

For a long time I was thought to be much older than I was. [I had altered this sentence in what one might call a fairly fundamental way: the author had in fact written that she had been thought younger than she was.]

And I constantly sighed to myself: Ah, quel chien de pays! [This, too, I had altered, although only slightly: she had merely written ‘again’, not ‘constantly’.]

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