A Reading Diary (2005)
“I’m in Calgary for a short visit, to attend a conference at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The city seems to have extended itself in the past few years, allotment after identical allotment, an unstoppable growth, a horrible imitation of the American Midwestern model made up of crowded monstrosities with no urban heart—no squares, no schools, no churches, no small shops. What kind of dialogue or communication can take place in communities like these?
When I first read Goethe’s Elective Affinitie...s—twenty-five years ago at least—I did so after a long conversation with Hector Bianciotti on Marivaux’s La dispute, which he had seen in Lavelli’s production and which I had had to miss because I couldn’t afford the price of the ticket. Like so many other Marivaux plays, La dispute explores the nature of love: Two aristocratic characters wish to resolve the question of who is more likely to be unfaithful, man or woman, and in order to reach an answer they place four children in solitary seclusion, each looked after by a couple of “savages.”MoreLess
When I first read Goethe’s Elective Affinitie...s—twenty-five years ago at least—I did so after a long conversation with Hector Bianciotti on Marivaux’s La dispute, which he had seen in Lavelli’s production and which I had had to miss because I couldn’t afford the price of the ticket. Like so many other Marivaux plays, La dispute explores the nature of love: Two aristocratic characters wish to resolve the question of who is more likely to be unfaithful, man or woman, and in order to reach an answer they place four children in solitary seclusion, each looked after by a couple of “savages.”MoreLess
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