Tuesday, January 22, 2008

In Lucia's Eyes ~ for Feburary discussion

Lucia works as a servant girl in Italy and is engaged to be married. But after the pox disfigures her face, she flees in shame without telling her lover. Years later, as a reknowned Amsterdam courtesan who never goes out without her veil, Lucia is at the theater when she recognizes her long-lost fiancé, Giacomo Casanova; and she cannot resist the opportunity to encounter him again. Based on a woman who appeared briefly in Casanova’s legendary diaries, Lucia emerges as a brilliant woman who becomes every bit his match. In Lucia’s Eyes by Arthur Japin is an elegant and moving story of love denied and transformed.

According to brief references in his autobiography, the adult Casanova happens upon his lost adolescent love, Lucia, in an Amsterdam brothel where he is shocked to find that she has become, in his own words, "repulsive" (see the author’s postscript on page 233). Japin imagines this chance meeting of the former sweethearts through the eyes of the young woman herself, constructing Lucia’s own autobiography almost as a counterpart to Casanova’s celebrated memoirs. In Japin’s hands, the story of Lucia’s tragic life becomes a complex exploration of the meaning of love and human nature, as well as an unflinchingly honest portrait of Dutch prostitution in the eighteenth century.

The beautiful and innocent Lucia falls in love with the dashing young Casanova, whom she meets at her childhood home in rural northern Italy. When Casanova leaves for Venice to pursue his diplomatic career, promising to return in the spring to marry Lucia, tragedy strikes: Lucia becomes ill with smallpox. She survives the ordeal but her face is permanently scarred and ugly. Knowing that Casanova cannot pursue his career in Venice with an unsightly wife, she chooses to give him up — instructing her mother to tell him that in his absence she ran off with a courier. The rejected Casanova departs, and Lucia, in desperation, flees her home forever to make her way alone.

In Bologna, Lucia develops her new identity, Galathée de Pompignac, and becomes a secretary to Zélide, a French female archaeologist. As they travel together through Italy and France, Lucia’s education is furthered by the ideas of the Europe’s nascent Age of Enlightenment. However, after Zélide’s untimely death, Lucia moves on to Amsterdam where it is not long before her destitution drives her to the sordid life of a prostitute. Years later, after Lucia’s position has finally improved and she has become a highly-desired courtesan, Lucia’s emotional foundation is shaken to its core by a chance encounter with the love of her youth: Casanova. The reunion of the former lovers reveals the true meaning of love and survival for Lucia and, ultimately, brings her a chance for a new life.

If you want to know the WHOLE story, you could also read Giacomo Casanova's History of My Life. Known as a womanizer, Casanova retired at 60 to write about his life. Because every previous edition of Casonova's Memoirs had been abridged to suppress the author's political and religious views and tame his vivid, often racy, style, the literary world considered it a major event when Willard R. Trask's translation of the complete original text was published in six double volumes between 1966 and 1971. Trask's award-winning translation now appears in paperback for the first time (at 1512 pages long).
__________

To read all posts related to our discussion of ILE, click here.
__________

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why is the book titled this way?
Part 1
When did she know?
Why the name change?
Part 2
A Great Imperfection
Part 3

7 comments:

Shelley said...

I'll probably just stick with Japin's novel! He must have thought very highly of himself to write so much!

Shirley said...

Can you imagine if Cassanova had had a blog?

The first time I posted this I discovered an obvious misspelling so I deleted my short comment as I couldn't figure out a way to correct it.

Shelley said...

Shirley, your comment made me laugh, and I really needed a good laugh! Thanks.

Zorro said...

Are the questions and discussion for ILE somewhere here or have they been deleted? I am reading the book now and was hoping to look over these.

Bonnie Jacobs said...

To read all posts related to our discussion of ILE, click here. I've also added this link to the bottom of the post itself.

To access ANY of our book discussions, click on the book's initials in the labels. That brings up ALL posts about the book. And that's why I have been so careful to correct labels so that "DQ" is only on posts with our discussion questions, and the books have their own two- or three-word acronym: for example, ILE stands for In Lucia's Eyes.

Zorro said...

Bonnie, I have recently finished ILE and was frustrated with the book and the author until the last 20 or so pages. Then the real love story began and I was thankful that I stuck with the book. I did not sympathize with the characters throughout and did not 'get' the author's inclusion of certain scenes and travels of Lucia. But the ending made it all worthwhile. I have copied your questions and comments on to my BooksIRead and will be editing and responding to them there. Wish I had gotten on these boards in time to read ILE with you.
Mary

Bonnie Jacobs said...

Here's the link to Mary Zorro's ILE post, which includes not only her own musings, but comments from other people and places as well:

http://booksiread-zorro.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-lucias-eyes.html

Thanks, Zorro.