Neo-Victorian Voices: Melnitz, Charles Lewinsky (2006), trans. Shaun Whiteside (2015)

I’m cheating a little with this one. My Neo-Victorian Voices series typically covers books written in the twenty-first century, and set in the nineteenth. Charles Lewisnky’s Melnitz, first published in German in 2006, starts in the 1870s, but covers the fortunes of the Swiss Jewish Meijer family until the Second World War. Still, I couldn’t not tell you about this wonderful novel!

I love a good multigenerational family saga (Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing (2020) and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017) were recent favourites). But it can be hard to connect with so many characters across multiple generations. Lewinsky does a great job of characterising his cast with a few deft brushstrokes, painting them as individuals forced to make painfully human choices amidst shifting political tides and the ever-lurking threat of anti-Semitism. 

To read this novel is to live with the burden of history. We know what will happen next as the Meijers cannot. Where to live? Under which nationality? And with whom? These are life or death decisions. The drama of Melnitz isn’t comprised of twists we don’t see coming. As readers, we’re watching a train thundering towards the family, and unable to tell them to get off the tracks. 

I loved the broad definition of family the novel embraces. Not all of the characters are linked by blood or marriage, or even religion—the Christian baptism of one character is a momentous event in the course of the novel. But a shared cultural inheritance, stories, and memories, as well as the experience of being othered within Switzerland and beyond, bind those we follow together. 

Some of the standout moments for me included the depiction of Arthur’s sexuality, the evolution of the relationship between stepsisters Chanele and Mimi, and the sort-of friendship between Hillel and his Frontist classmate at the agricultural college. 

Coming to this novel, I knew little about the lives of Jewish people in Switzerland in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, depictions of the country in the WWII period often focus on Switzerland as a dream destination, the symbol of freedom and safety, appearing through the Alps. I’m so happy I read this book and will be recommending it to anyone who’ll listen. If you enjoy novels filled with humour and pathos, which bring to life histories you haven’t heard before, you’ll love this book.

What novel would you like me to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. My novel, Bronte’s Mistress, is available in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book now, and the paperback will be released on June 22nd! Want to stay in touch? Sign up for my monthly email newsletter below.

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The Origins of Coppelia

A few weeks ago the Secret Victorianist was back at the New York City Ballet (see my thoughts on the NYCB’s Nutcracker here) for a production of Coppelia, the perennially popular story of a man who believes his doll has come to life. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1870, with music by Leo Delibes, libretto by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter and choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon. The New York City Ballet uses Balachine and Danilova’s 1974 choreography.

The NYCB's Coppelia

Coppelia plays with many of the tropes of European folklore and fairy-tale. Lovers fight and are reunited, youngsters trick old men, reality isn’t always in line with appearances. But watching the NYCB’s production made me wonder about the origins of this nineteenth-century ballet, conceived in a time when clockwork toys were all the rage, not quaint reminders of a distant past.

Coppelia was in fact inspired a story penned by E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King inspired Christmas-favourite The Nutcracker. In 1815 short story Der Sandmann, protagonist Nathanael turns away from loving childhood sweetheart Clara, enraptured by the beautiful Olimpia, who turns out to be an automaton.

There are multiple similarities here. One of Olimpia’s creators goes by the names Copellius and Coppola, directly influencing the names used in the ballet. The dolls in both stories sit on balconies, apparently reading, while watched by pining lovers. And in both cases a man abandons his former love for a fantasy, calling into question the fragility of reality and the fickleness of masculine desire.

But the differences are even more revealing. In the ballet abandoned fiancée Swanhilda steals the show, mimicking the movements of a doll to trick lonely inventor Dr Coppelius and her untrustworthy lover. In Der Sandmann Clara merely suffers patiently and can only enjoy her happy ending after Nathanael’s death.

In the comedy it is the inventor who must be humbled by the end, with order returned to the village and youngsters dancing off neatly in pairs. But in the unnerving and Gothic story, Nathanael’s fate changes the nature of relationships between men and women, with lovers now doubting not only their partners’ sincerity, but also their humanity.

Finally a central theme of Hoffmann’s survives into the NYCB’s choreography in just a couple of moments, where Swanhilda mocks the blinking of the doll’s mechanical eyes. In Der Sandmann the idea of sight is ever present. The threat of the sandman blinding them is used to scare children to bed, a telescope allows Nathanael to ‘see’ Olimpia, without really understanding what she is, and the devastating revelation that she’s just a toy comes when he finds her eyes discarded on the ground.

'Ava' in Ex Machina

It’s easy to think of modern equivalents for these two very different approaches to the idea of women designed for men. The doll Coppelia is the precursor to the fem-bots in Austin Powers, the ballet equivalent of the blow-up doll carried around at a bachelor party. But Olimpia has more kinship with Ava in Ex Machina or an army of Stepford Wives.

Audiences will continue to delight in the unabashed silliness of one of the world’s most popular ballets, to revel in the quaintness of the toy store set, the nostalgia of Germanic villages decked out by ribbons and flowers. But I couldn’t help wishing for a modern take on Coppelia in a world of AI, sex-bots and catfishing.

Do you know of any NYC productions you’d love the Secret Victorianist to watch? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

10 thoughts I had watching The Nutcracker as an adult

With Christmas just around the corner, the Secret Victorianist went to Lincoln Center this week for the New York City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker.

Tchaikovsky’s 1892 work was the first full-length ballet I saw as a child and watching the excited children arriving for this performance, decked out in dance clothes and party dresses, brought back many fond memories.

But what goes through your head when you’re watching The Nutcracker as a much more cynical adult, and without a child in tow? Read on to find out…

Image from the NYC Ballet's production

1. I wish it was acceptable for me to dress like Clara. Could I get away with a large pink hair bow? I could definitely get away with a large pink hair bow. Maybe I should embrace Lolita fashion.

2. I’m glad I didn’t have to decorate that Christmas tree — it’s huge.

3. The adults don’t seem to be having much fun at this party. Where’s the punch?

4. These toys are very gendered. Somebody complain to Target.

5. And now the tree is even bigger? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Image from the NYC Ballet's production

6. Call the exterminator! Are they mice? Are they rats? Either way, somebody kill them quick.

7. Clara is outside in a nightgown? While snowflakes are dancing around her? Give that child a coat!

Image from the NYC Ballet's production

8. Clara, you’re too young to find a prince. Wait a few years. Keep playing with your dolls before you play the field.

9. A strong female leader? Who gets to wear a tiara and tutu? I’m very pro-Sugar Plum Fairy. This story is more feminist than I thought.

Image from the NYC Ballet's production

10. So much Christmas. Casual racism. Overwhelming nostalgia. All the feels.

Do you know of any other NYC productions you think the Secret Victorianist would enjoy? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Salome, Wilde and Strauss

Wilde complained to me one day that someone in a well-known novel had stolen an idea of his. I pleaded in defence of the culprit that Wilde himself was a fearless literary thief. "My dear fellow," he said, with his usual drawling emphasis, "when I see a monstrous tulip with four wonderful petals in someone else's garden, I am impelled to grow a monstrous tulip with five wonderful petals, but that is no reason why someone should grow a tulip with only three petals." THAT WAS OSCAR WILDE.

Robert Ross

Patricia Racette in the Met's 2016 production

Last week, the Secret Victorianist visited the Metropolitan Opera in New York to see Patricia Racette as the eponymous character in Strauss’s 1905 Salome.

The opera, which is performed in German, is based on Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play of the same name — a play written in French, banned by the censors and famously illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in the first English version (1894).

Beardsley's illustrations

Originally deemed shocking for its overt sexuality and liberal depiction of Biblical characters, it was from accusations of plagiarism that Robert Ross defended the play in his Note on the text in 1912. For Ross, Wilde’s freedoms with his sources, such as conflating the Biblical Herods, are necessary for artistic innovation and literary thievery is acceptable as long as improves the sources it plunders. I couldn’t help but wonder then what Wilde might have made of Strauss’s opera and the Met’s current production.

For an opera, Salome is incredibly true to the play it is based on — from the lyrics that the performers sing, to the reactions it invokes. Beheadings still fascinate and appall, erotic dances titillate. Even today the opera still has the ability to shock — not just through the fleeting full frontal nudity, but also in the sense of danger that pervades, in the story, yes, but also in the staging and the music.

Beardsley's illustrations

What has changed perhaps is our response to Jochanaan. When once audiences and readers baulked at the combination of eroticism with their own religion, today, sitting watching in Manhattan, it’s hard not to find John the Baptist’s prophecies as alien and unsettling as the play’s more pagan symbolism.  It’s easy to imagine that for early audiences Jochanann and Salome were two great oppositional forces, carrying almost equal sway, but today’s Salome is undoubtedly dominated by its titular character.

At only one act, this is one of the shorter operas I’ve seen, but one that draws you in to a discordant and unsettling world. I only wished the Met’s production could have staged the moon that dominates Wilde’s imagining of Herod’s court, Beardsley’s illustrations and the singers’ words:

Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb.  She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things.

Do you know of any NYC productions you think the Secret Victorianist should watch? Let me know — here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Art Review: Munch and Expressionism, Neue Galerie, New York City

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is one of those artists whose works, at first glance, seem too modern to have originated in the nineteenth century. His 1893 The Scream (in fact several slightly varying compositions in different formats, several of which were on display in this exhibition) seems prescient of the spirit of the twentieth century and maybe even the twenty-first, given the high levels of interest and cultural capital it still commands.

The Scream, Edvard Munch (1893)

Munch was a Norwegian painter and printmaker who was a key figure in the Symbolist movement. He also had a profound influence on contemporary German and Austrian Expressionists. This relationship forms the basis of the Neue Galerie’s current exhibition, which comprises of 35 paintings and 50 works on paper, largely by Munch but also featuring Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Egon Schiele and others.

Two Human Beings The Lonely Ones, Edvard Munch (1896)

Putting Munch into dialogue with these artists helps create a clear place for him within the history of twentieth-century art, removing his slight outlier status. It’s clear to see how Munch’s innovations with wood cuts and printmaking translated into the works of his Austrian and German counterparts, but also too how the same concerns, philosophical and emotional, are the bedrock of both.

Model by the Wicker Chair, Edvard Munch (1919-1921)

Loneliness for me was the foremost theme of the exhibition, even more so than existential angst. Munch’s figures are irreparably apart even when pictured together. Two Human Beings The Lonely Ones (1896) depicts a man and woman staring out at the sea, united in their isolation. In his Model by the Wicker Chair (1919-1921) the separation is between the painter (and by extension the viewer) and the model, her eyes downcast, a human being less vibrant than the colourful furniture.

Street, Dresden, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1908)

In Kirchner’s famous Street, Dresden (1908) there is the loneliness of the modern cityscape, a theme Munch also plays with in his Angst (1894) images (although here his figures inhabit Oslo), and that inspires Ludwig Meidner in his I and the City (1913), a self -portrait set against the chaos of a kaleidoscopic cityscape.

I and the City, Ludwig Meidner (1913)

The ultimate loneliness of death is present, even in depictions of youth, such as his 1894-1895 Puberty or in his shocking Madonna lithograph (1895-1902), where a skeletal looking foetus cowers in the corner of the sperm patterned border.

Puberty, Edvard Munch (1894-1895)

Munch shines brightest in the exhibition despite the inclusion of major works by other artists, but there’s much to see here beyond The Scream. The exhibition is open until June 13 and is a wonderful opportunity to see some iconic works in person and discover much more to Munch and artist who’s lifetime and career spanned significant portions of two centuries.

Madonna, Edvard Munch (1895-1902)

Can you recommend an NYC exhibition for the Secret Victorianist to review? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Review: House of Wax: Anatomical, Pathological, And Ethnographic Waxworks from Castan’s Panopticum, Berlin, 1869-1922, Morbid Anatomy Museum, Brooklyn

This weekend the Secret Victorianist returned to one of the first museums I visited on moving to New York—the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn.

Last time I visited, the exhibition space was given over to the trappings of Victorian mourning—hair work, death masks and post-mortem portraits. But the current exhibition features works that were once part of Castan’s Panopticum—a collection of waxworks and curiosities, which remained a crowd pleaser in Berlin for half a century and has some parallels with London’s Madame Tussauds.

The exhibition

This isn’t one fore the squeamish. Expect disease-ridden genitalia, syphilitic skin, models of dissected foetuses, and cross sections of complex births (complete with disembodied physicians’ hands).

There are also ‘ethnographic’ busts, delineating racial differences between groups such as African ‘bushmen’ and Chinese noblemen, which bring you face to face with nineteenth-century scientists’ now uncomfortable views on race.

Ethnographic busts

A full size model of serial killer Fritz Haarmann, the ‘Butcher of Hanover’ (1879-1925), looms over you if you choose to walk to the restrooms, only a metre away from the death masks of figures as varied as Napoleon, Henrik Ibsen and Kaiser Wilhem I.

The exhibits that were of particular interest to me included two models depicting the effects of tight corsetry on internal organs (a topic I wrote about a couple of years ago on this blog) and a couple of examples of intersex genitalia (something I haven’t previously seen many Victorian references to).

The effects of tight corsetry

It was also fascinating to read about the often moralistic way in which the exhibits were arranged—e.g. attractive female nudes sat side-by-side with examples of the ugly effects of sexually transmitted diseases.

Both men and women attended panoptica, but they were sometimes segregated by gender for the more explicit rooms. I spent much of my visit imagining what it must have been like for groups of women, with little biological knowledge and a strong sense of modesty, to be left alone for their allocated time, examining a cankerous penis or a uterus in the third trimester.

A C-section

Put in modern terms, panoptica (like Castan’s or Barnum’s in New York City) must have been a mash up of a biology text book, obstetrician’s office, natural history museum, sensational crime documentary and touristy house of horrors, with a large dose of racism spooned out throughout. And attending a retrospective exhibition on one now adds another layer of interpretative complexity.

If you’re in Brooklyn and have an interest in the kind of popular exhibitions that entertained generations, or just want to see the visceral side of the nineteenth-century view of the body, then check out House of Wax before it closes on April 3.

Death mask of Henrik Ibsen

Do you know of any other NYC exhibitions you think the Secret Victorianist would enjoy? Let me know! Here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

The Secret Victorianist at the Tenement Museum, New York City

It’s Labor Day weekend here in the US, so I decided to honour the occasion by visiting the Tenement Museum in New York – a museum dedicated to preserving the stories of the immigrant workers who made the city what it is today.

Founded in 1988, by Ruth Abram and Anita Jacobson, the museum tells the stories of the 7,000 or so people who lived at 97 Orchard Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in the setting of the small apartments which were their homes between the 1860s and the 1930s.

You can only visit the museum on one of the guided tours. These are themed, and deal with different aspects of the building and area’s history. The tour I joined (naturally, as an Irishwoman and a Victorianist) was focused on an Irish immigrant family who lived in the tenement in the 1860s – the Moores.

Entitled ‘Irish Outsiders’, the tour told the sad story of the short period the Moores lived at 97 Orchard Street – their difference from their largely German neighbours, the discrimination they, and their countrymen and women, would have faced when seeking employment, and the death of their baby, Agnes, from malnutrition.

The living conditions were cramped. They were a family of five, living in three rooms, with no plumbing – a set up that helps you put into perspective the complaints of many New Yorkers about the size of their apartments today. Interior windows help some light penetrate the inner rooms (although they still feel dark and claustrophobic), yet these were installed not for aesthetic reasons, but to combat tuberculosis – a very real threat in this period.

The mother Bridget’s life is a particularly bleak one to think about. She had eight children prior to her death aged 36, four of whom survived. Her days would have been a constant fight against coal dust and a never-ending relay of bringing pail upon pail of water up four flights of stairs, filled with the pain of suffering her own ill health, and seeing her baby dying.

Yet the story isn’t without hope. For a start, 97 Orchard Street seems to have been far from the worst of these tenement buildings. The privies in the backyard flushed, redecoration was relatively frequent (as the museum found when the historians investigated the layers of wallpaper), and the landlord lived in the building and made renovations beyond those required by him legally.

What’s more, the Moores may not have been removed from their neighbours, despite their differences in origin and religion. The guide played us some recordings of Irish ditties dating from the period, including ‘McNally’s Row of Flats’ – a raucous song about the sense of community that could come from different peoples being thrown into close quarters with each other.

The story the tour tells is ultimately one of upward mobility. One moment we are asked to take a leap of imagination, piecing together what it might have been like to be an illiterate Irish immigrant in the mid-nineteenth century from the building, a baptismal certificate, and some census records. In the next, we are actually holding a photograph of one of the Moore children, taken in the 1930s, by which time she and her husband are well off enough to have their own backyard (in Queens).

A restored apartment in the tenement 

As Europeans, we can find it amusing – ridiculous even – when Americans identify strongly with the heritage of a country they’ve never seen. It’s something of a running joke how absolutely some Americans can assert their Irishness.  Yet, visiting the Tenement Museum, made the connection between New York today and the Ireland these men and women left behind feel much closer. And remembering the conditions your ancestors lived in when seeking out a new life must be very special.

Some aspects of life in 97 Orchard Street have all but faded from our modern world – but immigration is a real and living issue. Maybe investigating the histories of these families in the Tenement Museum won’t get us any closer to determining how the stories of today’s immigrants might end, but I firmly believe that learning about the lives of those who worked to make this city what it is can help us grow in tolerance, understanding and compassion.

Where else in New York City would you like to see the Secret Victorianist visit? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.