Share for friends:

The Quest For Corvo: An Experiment In Biography (2001)

The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (2001)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
4.17 of 5 Votes: 3
Your rating
ISBN
0940322617 (ISBN13: 9780940322615)
Language
English
Publisher
new york review of books

About book The Quest For Corvo: An Experiment In Biography (2001)

This book is mostly famous as an example of how to write a proper biography . Rather than chronologically narrating the life of Frederic Rolfe a.k.a "Baron Corvo", the author follows his own progress and correspondence in search of the Baron's life details. The subject of the book itself is one of those late victorian characters that simply had to confront a new reality driven by capitalism and not just church or aristocratic patronage. Frederic Rolfe was a delusional, tragic man with a talent for writing and a deep seated paranoia. He attempted to become a priest for all the wrong reasons and was quickly expelled and dismissed as a superficial spendthrift . He cursed at all those who tried to help him, begged and buggered around in Venice till funds ran out. Then he died alone and poor as a rat. He refused moral judgment while dispensing it in abundance. But his writings, mostly "Hadrian the VII" and "Tales that Toto told me" caused enough impression on enough people to merit Mr. Simmons "quest" for Corvo. It is interesting to see how the author seems to need to justify the life of this hard working parasite again and again based on his literary merits. The author cannot conceal his passion for the subject and it becomes contagious. May be he saw in Fr. Rolfe a twin soul. I haven't read the books Rolfe wrote but I am afraid that they might have lost whatever glow they had in their time. Some of the neologisms he created and the language he used might have been dazzling a century ago. Today, I am afraid it might be almost incomprehensible in its rancid archaism. I admit I am judging it a priori but somehow I have no interest in finding out if I am right or wrong.

Wow! This is excellent. How had I not heard about it before?I only happened on the Quest for Corvo serendipitously while reading about the Dickens-Dostoevsky kerfluffle.The book is nominally a biography, but so much better structured than the usual soup-to-nuts (or cradle-to-grave) bio.Symmons sets out to learn about Fredrick Rolfe, author of Hadrian the Seventh, among other books, and uncovers quite a character. Rolfe is charming and talented, but also self-destructive, inevitably turning on those who try to help him. He wants to be a clergyman, but cannot, wants to paint, but fails, wants to write, but never makes any money--he is throughout his life desperately poor. He is a man out of time, addicted to the Renaissance and a homosexual in Victorian England.The story is structured, roughly, around Symmon's quest, what he finds out when, the lucky breaks that lead him to insights, the nagging holes that he cannot fill but that the reader might do so imaginatively.The only criticism is that by the end, when we know Rolfe's tendencies, it becomes a bit tedious to learn of yet another patron he cultivated and then turned on--some of that could certainly have been glossed. Otherwise, though, excellent.

Do You like book The Quest For Corvo: An Experiment In Biography (2001)?

About Fr. Rolfe's lost novel Don Renato, or An Ideal Content, A.J.A. Symons writes:No writer ever set himself a more difficult task. He, or rather Dom Gheraldo in his entries, tells a story: he reveals by slow and feline touches the character of the priest from within; and at the same time he attempts to give an English equivalent for the verbal mix-up of the pretended original. And in all this he succeeds, though in retaining Dom Gheraldo's macaronics he almost makes the book unreadable. Fortunately, he provides a glossary, so that it is possible to understand, without a headache, the exact meaning that he meant to extract from such constructions or compounds or rarities as argute, deaurate, investite, lucktifick, excandescence, galbanate, lecertose, insulsity, hestern, macilent, effrenate, dicaculous, pavonine, and torose. Even so, Don Renato is not a book to read at a sitting, but rather one to be dipped into at odd hours when the mind can be stimulated by puzzles in verbal ingenuity.About his own life, writing back to a friend who accuses him of selfishness, Fr. Rolfe writes:Selfish? Yes, selfish. The selfishness of a square peg in a round hole.
—Jacob Wren

I read this book years ago, when I was a young woman living in -- and, of course, in love with -- New York City. I immersed myself in its arts and culture, and its bustling liveliness, and prayed for some kind of mystical ascension, whereby I would become one with the grey heavens of Manhattan. Perhaps that's why I fell in love with the nutty Baron Corvo, whose love for Venice, and whose decadence -- contained only by purifying bouts of asceticism -- twanged a chord or two in my own mind and soul. I wonder whether I want to read it again now, if it would hold the same magic.
—T.D. Whittle

This groundbreaking 'experimental biography' is a comical but curiously sad portrait of Frederick Rolfe, self-styled Baron Corvo. Rolfe was a consummate eccentric who also happened to be a talented writer. A.J.A. Symon's disappointment at not being able to find out anything to speak of about Corvo after reading one of his obscure books led to the 'quest' of the title. Symons was fascinated by Corvo, and we in turn become fascinated as well. Corvo was a tortured soul, given to quarrels and paranoid delusions. He seemed to have been besieged by the sort of extravagant bad luck that always follows those who feel the world doesn't fully appreciate them. But he was also an charismatic charmer, leading at times a high-rolling life that contrasted sharply with periods of abject poverty. His writing was likewise distinct -- erudite and lavishly ornamental. A noted homosexual, Corvo converted to Catholicism and even aspired to the priesthood, but he was so distracted by other "callings," including an obsession with the Italian Renaissance, that he never manged to become a priest. He was, in short, a fantasist - a man who lived more in a world he created himself than the real world.
—Kay

download or read online

Read Online

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Other books by author A.S. Byatt

Other books in category Fiction