The Countess de Mondeau by Ben Leyb

The Countess de Mondeau and Characters Who Care

2010-05-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted that my novel The Countess de Mondeau is now available from Eirelander Publishing. To celebrate the launch of the ebook version of the novel, I'm posting the blog entry that follows.

The Fundamental Things Apply As Time Goes By

One of the things I try to do in my novel The Countess de Mondeau is to create characters who care about something besides their own fates. Why should fictional characters need to have feelings for something outside themselves for those figures to evoke sympathy? It's the same with people—the ones who care about others tend to draw more people to them. Think about the difference between the movies Casablanca and The English Patient, for instance. I like both movies, but The English Patient (either Michael Ondaatje’s novel or the movie) for me is not as great. It seems to me that the lovers Count Laszlo de Almásy and Katharine Clifton, played beautifully by Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, don’t seem to know that they are living through a life-and-death struggle for freedom and equality. Isn’t that what World War II was, on the grand scale? For Almásy and Katharine, the war is just a big pain that keeps them from what really matters, hitting the sack together. O.K., I’m all for romance, but there’s a fine line between romance and two-person narcissism.

But in Casablanca, the lovers Rick and Ilsa are acutely aware that the stakes in World War II are much bigger than either of them, or the love triangle they are caught in. There’s a reason that one of Rick’s most famous lines is, "…it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." The audience has to side with Rick when he puts Ilsa on the plane with Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (hmm…another Laszlo!) rather than taking the flight with the woman he loves. It’s more important for Ilsa to join in Victor Laszlo’s fight against fascism than it is for the two lovers to be together.

I want it to be clear from Chapter One of The Countess de Mondeau that the main character, Edouard Herzen, cares deeply about making the world a better place. It takes longer to find out what the countess cares about, but by the time the reader gets to know her, it’s clear that she does see the big picture, and that all her actions are based on that.

Women in France in the Romantic Era

2010-04-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve set my novel The Countess de Mondeau in the Romantic era in Paris partly because that was a time of tremendous change for women. The first organized political movement that advocated gender equality, the Saint-Simonians (see blog below), flourished during this period. That radical group even predicted the coming of a female messiah, which figures into the plot of my book.

Women of letters played leading roles in French culture and society then, both through their writing and through salons. Paris salons, like the one hosted by the title character of my novel, attracted the stars of politics and the arts, and allowed women to influence both of those domains.

Some women of letters, such as the novelist George Sand and her friend Marie d’Agoult, lived outside the norms of society. George Sand dressed as a man to attend theaters that women weren’t permitted to enter, took lovers of both sexes outside her marriage, and advocated radical changes in relations between the sexes and in the division of classes. Sand wrote close to 100 works of literature, and had a long affair with the great composer Frédéric Chopin, nursing him through his long battle with tuberculosis.

Marie d’Agoult was also a writer and the lover of a composer, Franz Lizst. She had three children out of wedlock with him, and hosted one of Paris’s most glittering salons. Her books included an important history of the revolution of 1848, as well as novels.

While some women in France in the Romantic era asserted a freedom that was almost unprecedented at the time, day-to-day life for most women in the 1830s could be dangerous. Paris streets were unsafe for women to walk around at night. Female workers had to labor twelve-hour days, six days a week. A woman whose secret affair was exposed by a jilted lover could be ostracized from society. These tensions between opportunities and perils for women were part of what inspired me to write a novel about this fascinating place and time.

Jewish Life in France in the Romantic Era

2010-04-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

One of the topics of my novel The Countess de Mondeau is the role Jews played in France in the Romantic era of the 1830s. Jews were active in many areas in French society then, though their contributions have often been glossed over.

Jews were particularly active as advocates for social change. The Saint-Simonians (see blog below), a social movement that predicted the coming of a female messiah and was the first political organization to champion the rights of women and workers, was in large part led and funded by Jews. Olinde Rodrigues, a Sephardic Jew, was the right hand of the movement’s founder, the Count de Saint-Simon. Rodrigues was not only a pioneering social activist, he was a banker, and also an accomplished mathematician who discovered two original formulae. In my book, the characters of Oscar Gomès and the protagonist Edouard Herzen are both based in part on him.

Jews were also active in Paris’s dazzling salons. One leading salon was led by the Countess Marie d’Agoult, a woman of letters who partly inspired the title character in my novel. Marie d’Agoult was a novelist and historian who wrote an important account of the revolution of 1848, and was the lover of the composer Franz Lizst. Rumor had it that on her mother’s side, she was of Jewish descent. Ironically, one of the children she had with Lizst, their daughter Cosima, married the notoriously anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner.

Anti-Semitism was very much alive at this time in France. One of France’s greatest actresses of this era was Rachel Félix, who was Jewish. A contemporary chronicler of French society, Henri d’Almeras, attacked her only on the basis of her Semitic origins: “Rachel had, it must be said without any bias and because it is the truth, a Jewish talent. This talent, in other ways so remarkable, lacked sweetness, joy, and serenity.” And speaking of her father, who worked hard to manage her career, d’Almeras writes, “With an interest that is easily explained, with an interest that one can, without exaggeration, call that of a usurer, the former peddler Félix followed his daughter’s progress and reputation.” The stereotypes are so caricatured that they are almost laughable, except when you think of how limited the choices were for Jews in France at this point in history, and how deadly this mindset became for French Jews during the Holocaust.

France in the Romantic Era

2010-03-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

I chose to set my novel The Countess de Mondeau during the period after Napoleon in France because it was a time of churning social change. Many of the movements and ideas that are still challenging society today initially surfaced during this period. The first pro-feminist movement, the Saint-Simonians, began organizing during this time, and my novel directly concerns this group. Theories about gay and lesbian rights, equality of the classes, and a unified Europe also found expression during this era in France. The utopian thinker Charles Fourier was laughed at for predicting that the polar ice caps would melt, but that prophecy has become all-too-true in our own time.

It was also an era where people were experimenting in their private lives in previously unheard-of ways. Novelist George Sand lived as a free woman, picking her many lovers from among her male and female friends. For over a decade she lived openly with the great composer Frédéric Chopin. The Countess Marie d’Agoult also cohabited and had three children with her lover, Franz Liszt. Both women wrote novels and political books under male pen names.

Liberation Theology also began during the Romantic era in France under the leadership of Abbot Lamennais. Long before this idea swept through the Catholic world in the late twentieth century, Lammenais preached that Jesus was the savior of the poor, and that social equality was the logical implication of Christianity.

In fact there were so many new ideas that circulated in France in the 1830s, that the Alfred de Vigny wrote in Otello:
No year has given rise
To as many theories about humanity
As the year 1832 has spawned
In one single day.

Excerpt from The Countess de Mondeau

2010-03-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a very brief excerpt from my novel, The Countess de Mondeau, which will be published May 21, 2010 by Eirelander Publishing.

"Mademoiselle Kerlec, we are grateful for your visit."

"Her Excellency is kind to invite us." Cecile half-dropped a curtsy.

"We don‘t use those ridiculous titles here." The countess waved her hand as if to banish such nonsense from her presence. "Call me Amandine. And have one of these delicious tartes aux fruits that my cook made. No, have two." She stopped the heavy-set, blonde serving-woman who was passing around a silver tray and Cecile selected a tiny apricot dessert in a circle of scalloped paper.

Edouard couldn‘t help but notice that the countess had her blue dress cut low all around, exposing all of her lovely pale neck and shoulders. What looked like a mere suggestion of sleeves barely covered a portion of her thin upper arm. The dress allowed a generous decolletage to peek from her neckline. The countess is not at all deficient in that area, Edouard remarked to himself.

"We‘ll start the program in a little while," Amandine said, "as soon as people have had dessert and a bit of amaretto to loosen their tongues. I love a good argument, don‘t you?"

"I suppose I do," Edouard said, admiring her boldness.

The Baron de Basse-Rivière

2010-03-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

He’s not one of the two main characters of my novel The Countess de Mondeau. Whenever the Baron de Basse-Rivière appears on the scene, though, I hope he adds sparkle. The baron, Hervé to his friends, is a devout cynic in a sea of optimists. Living in the Romantic era, when the concept of progress ruled, the baron stands alone as a skeptic. He is doubtful about everything, from the unruly gardens of his time to the social movements that want to make dramatic changes. The baron has a history that has led to his cynicism, since he survived the worst days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

In sharp contrast to the baron is the main character, Edouard Herzen, who ardently desires change and progress, two things that de Basse-Rivière doesn’t believe exist. Even though the baron and Edouard are opposites when it comes to their views of progress, Edouard becomes the baron’s student in the bedroom arts. Edouard wants to learn how to please the Countess de Mondeau, and the baron becomes his Dumbledore, instructing him in how to make love to a woman. There is a certain irony in this because the baron, like Dumbledore, is gay.

The baron acquires his knowledge about intimate relations partly through his library, which can only be accessed by using a secret latch in his drawing room that reveals a hidden set of shelves. He collects erotica from the world over, including Japanese prints, pre-Columbian sculptures, Persian miniatures, and etchings from Europe.

I had great fun writing the scenes with the baron. He’s always the character with a biting come-back. I could always count on him to lighten a scene, or to lend a sympathetic ear to Edouard, the protagonist.

The Saint-Simonians

2010-02-23T14:12:00.000-08:00

My novel The Countess de Mondeau is based in part on a social movement called the Saint-Simonians, which I call the Lazulists in my book. The Saint-Simonians flourished in France and other countries in the 1820s and 1830s, the era of the Romantic movement. They were an extraordinary group who followed the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, the count de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), a utopian social thinker with ideas we still have not caught up with.

The Saint-Simonians were the first organized social movement to champion equality for women. They even announced the coming of a female messiah, an episode that figures in my novel. The Saint-Simonians called for a united Europe a century and a half before that dream became a political reality. They advocated an end to the continual wars that plagued the continent and preached that armies should be converted to peaceful tasks such as building transportation, hospitals, and housing. The Saint-Simonians also espoused an end to class privilege and inheritance, setting up communes that embodied their ideals.

Among the odder features of the sect were their uniforms—dark blue jackets and white pants for the male rank and file, with a lighter shade of blue for each step up in the echelons of the movement. The men’s tunics fastened only in the back with laced stays, like corsets, to remind males of the interdependence of all people.

The Saint-Simonians quickly acquired a large following both among the workers and intellectuals of Europe, particularly in France, where the movement started. The downfall of the Saint-Simonians was their sectarian in-fighting, another topic that comes up in my novel. The movement endured painful and dramatic splits that finally led to the group becoming a cult of personality focused on their new leader, Prosper Enfantin, represented in my book by the character Auguste Lepetit.

An interesting sidelight of the movement is that many of the activists and leaders were Jewish, beginning a long history of Jews playing important roles on the political left.

The lasting contribution of the Saint-Simonians is their prophetic vision of a society of equals, unencumbered by the puritanism of the old religions. Strangely, one of their few concrete legacies was the Suez Canal, which was largely engineered by followers of the movement who fled to Egypt. Over the years the group has been so influential that a 2006 exhibit on the Saint-Simonians at the French National Library was entitled The Century of the Saint-Simonians.

Ben Leyb's novel The Countess de Mondeau will be published by Eirelander Publishing in May 2010.

The Erotic Novel

2010-01-22T14:17:00.000-08:00

My novel, The Countess de Mondeau, is inspired by a tradition of erotic novels, a tradition that goes back at least to Petronius’ Satyricon in ancient Rome. More recent erotic novels include D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet.

First of all, what is an erotic novel? Lots of novels have sex scenes, but what makes a work of fiction an erotic novel, to my mind, is that the sex is not just incidental to the book, but a substantial part of it. Sometimes, the author of an erotic novel focuses on the sex because the writer wants to bring to light ways of making love that have been buried or denied. I think both D.H. Lawrence and Sarah Waters had that in mind when they included explicit sex scenes in their books. Lawrence wanted to promote a no-holds-barred sort of lovemaking that highlighted male-female intercourse, especially between classes. Sarah Waters wanted to put lesbian sex in the spotlight.

What sets an erotic novel apart from pornography, is that it has themes and characters that are at least as important as the sex scenes, if not more. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is as much about social classes as it is about sex. The intimacy of the sex scenes is part of a larger truthtelling in the novel. As Lawrence wrote in the book, “...the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and refreshing.” Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet also dramatizes relationships between social classes, and its scenes that show the hidden history of lesbians are some of the most fascinating material in the book.

Part of my intention in the love scenes in The Countess de Mondeau is also to bring to the surface certain ways of making love. I want to suggest ways that men and women can greatly please one another and also become more intimate emotionally. Why does this belong in a novel and not in a sex manual? Because The Countess de Mondeau is also about searching for utopia, on the political level, the economic level, and the erotic level. The main character Edouard Herzen engages in all these searches, and all these quests in the book are connected.

Ben Leyb’s novel, The Countess de Mondeau, is currently available from Eirelander Publishing.