What a book Il Figlio Maledetto L'Enfant Maudit
by Honoré de Balzac published by Marsilio.
Very very sad, but, written with intense poeticity, touches the most profound chords of the soul.
The story starts when a poor 18 years old girl called Jeanne is constricted, because very rich and alone, her parents both dead, at marrying an aristocratic old man of 50.
The family of d'Herouville the one of men of war. Traces of battlefields could be seen also on the face and body of this man. He was a disgusting human being, without any touch of delicacy; he didn't know how to be gentle and close to a girl. He was just a cruel individual. Poor Jeanne, pregnant, starts to enter in labour in the first page of the book.
She knows that the baby is the son of a cousine she loved a lot, Chaverny; a lost love, because of the necessity of marrying this man. Let's add that because they were relatives the baby was extremely frail for all his existence.
When the husband discovers that she is close to the fatal moment of the arrival of that bastard, he calls a "rebouteur," a man who understood all alone the secrets of medicine and that was in grade of fixing the most important problems in a body of a human or animal. Beauvouloir understood immediately that the situation was embarassing and that for that girl growing up that baby would have meant a lot of sacrifices because in constant peril.
And in fact! The poor kid grew up isolated from the castle, in a little place where her devoted mother visited him, growing up the son as she would have wanted; he transmitte dhim love for songs, literature, culture. The kid and then the teenager had an immense sensibility; he started to recognize when his enemy returned home, sensations transmitted by her mother when very little.
With the time Jeanne had another baby, always a male and this time, the son of d'Herouville. D'Herouville grew up the son, healthy and without problems, instilling in his soul his same values of war and prepotence. That one became the copy of the father.
Substantially in this family there was a favorite for each parent: Jeanne preferred the son she had had with Chaverny because remembered her a best moment of her existence and a different man; the duke preferred his son.
Let's precise that the relationship with Chaverny started before the decision of marrying
d'Herouville.
Living close to the Ocean to Etienne meant to speak the same language of nature, of that Ocean; calm or cruel it depended by the moments.
The story of Etienne is particular because he can't become anything in that family, treated as if he wouldn't exists.
Story changes when her mother dies, like also his brother, never met by him!!!
The father, remembering that there was another son, starts to think that nothing is lost, deciding, for opportunity, of giving a chance to this cursed son.
But it is just a story of time.
Beauvouloir would want to donate to the teenager as future bride the daughter he has had when a mature man, Gabrielle.
Gabrille and Etienne fall in love graciously, gradually and with tenderness but when the pale idea of becoming a family starts to become real, the father of Etienne proposes another woman.
The two won't never accept something like that and he won't hesitate of killing both of them. After all he hadn't never seen that son called by him, cursed, an abort, till the beginning of his existence.
Strong, strong book!
The text of this book is also in french, so if you prefer, you can read it in original.
Highly recommended.
I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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