The Abyss : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: caught in the religious wars
Review: After reading her Memoires of Hadrian, I was delighted to find that Yourcenar had written another historical novel. This book is so dense with detail and emotion that I was astounded and fascinated on almost every page. It is simply brilliant, successfully bringing to life a dark and alien period of history.

WHile this book, at least in French, is touted as being about a man "between the Medieval Ages and Renaissance," it is best at chronicling the personal consequences of the religious wars on everyday lives. Zenon is an alchemist, but above all a tolerant and humanistic physician in an age of religious intolerance. His caring and vision, after a neglected childhood in a merchants' household, are indeed deeply moving.

Zenon is a great original in historical fiction, an intellectual rather than a king or empire builder. You follow him as he wanders about Europe, learning, teaching, healing, and occasionally loving. The tenderness and empathy that he feels for those around him reveal the tenor of the times in exacting detail.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: An impressive recreation of the time
Review: I read this book several years ago and although I no longer remember many details I still think of it as one of my favorite books. It recreates around the life of the main character all the main issues of the historical period concerned: The crumbling of the medieval political order and the slow rise of the Nation-States, the Reformation and the Religion wars and, in general, all the chaos generated by the decline of Medieval thought and the emergence of a myriad of new alternative conceptions about mankind, nature and society. What makes this book so marvellous is that it masterly combines all these issues into a literary work elegantly and coherently written.

The book speaks for itself and I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in historical novels. However, I can tell that it is much more enjoyable with some knowledge of the politics and ideas of the time, because that is when you find out all the work that the author had to do in order to present this incredible novel.

Although I do not consider it as a demerit of the work, the only thing I dislike of the book were the final reflexions of Zenon, because they have certain twenty-century sartrian flavor, which -although valid- cause frictions with the so lively historical atmosphere created by the author.

Rating:
Summary: A great study of a complex psyche
Review: Reading a book by M. Yourcenar, a prose writer of great skill, is invariably a delight. The scope of her novels is epic, the composition is as intricate and carefully crafted as a Beethoven symphony. Here in The Abyss, the main theme of the book - the clash between the impetus of momentous historical forces and the destiny of a single human being - is introduced in the very first sentence of the book. It accompanies the reader throughout the book as an insistent motto theme. Yourcenar's prose is carefully polished and aristocratic and reflects her admirable erudition. It is a language with the colour, texture and depth of a precious fabric or an excellent wine. The pace of the book is naturally rather slow, particularly in its second part where the alchemist and doctor Zenon has settled down again in Bruges and is given to long bouts of introspection. But the noble pacing is fully in accord with the gravity of the subject matter and the stakes involved. I think the book has lost nothing of its relevance today, a time in which civil rights are being widely curtailed in the name of abstract principles. As such it warrants closer study by those wanting to resist these pressures and to stick to honest and authentic choices.

Rating:
Summary: A Monument in Literature
Review: The Abyss is one of the two books that haunted Marguerite Yourcenar during her whole life, the other one being the famous "Memoirs of Hadrian".
Zenon, the Hero of the Abyss, is much closer to the author as he shares with her the passion for the unknown countries of the soul and the spirit. Like always, Marguerite Youcenar delivers an analytical vision of the universality of human condition without turning her book into a boring dogma. She has the unique talent and intelligence to be habited by her characters and delivers here a chef d'oeuvre in many regards. The accuracy of the description of the torments of Zenon emphasized by the precise knowledge of major events of this part of this history transforms almost this book into a mystical experience. The chapter named "The abyss" is a piece of literature that can be read many times while still discovering a teaching or a new element of poetry.
It would be VERY unfair not to mention here, Grace Frick, Marguerite's life companion, who was maybe the best French translator of her generation and delivers here a maginificient English text.
Du grand art!

Rating:
Summary: A Monument in Literature
Review: The Abyss is one of the two books that haunted Marguerite Yourcenar during her whole life, the other one being the famous "Memoirs of Hadrian".
Zenon, the Hero of the Abyss, is much closer to the author as he shares with her the passion for the unknown countries of the soul and the spirit. Like always, Marguerite Youcenar delivers an analytical vision of the universality of human condition without turning her book into a boring dogma. She has the unique talent and intelligence to be habited by her characters and delivers here a chef d'oeuvre in many regards. The accuracy of the description of the torments of Zenon emphasized by the precise knowledge of major events of this part of this history transforms almost this book into a mystical experience. The chapter named "The abyss" is a piece of literature that can be read many times while still discovering a teaching or a new element of poetry.
It would be VERY unfair not to mention here, Grace Frick, Marguerite's life companion, who was maybe the best French translator of her generation and delivers here a maginificient English text.
Du grand art!

Rating:
Summary: Zeno de Bruges and the path taken.
Review: This is a story of a human being trying to escape the horrors of humanity. Yourcenar's writing style is simple and sensual but epic in it's description on an individual discovering inner self-love within a very dark outer medieval time. This is a tender but haunting book, likely to last a long time in the reader's memory.