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I started reading Lowry's Under the Volcano. As the book is considered one of the major English-language books of the previous century, I could not skip it. (De plus, il est possible d'inclure le moment venu cette lecture dans le Bingo 2019.) I decided to read this book because of this one: Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid
Under the Volcano

P. 86:
What I like though are the 'vague' years of the old Mayans. And their delicious names for the months. Pop. Uo. Zip. Totz. Tzec. Xul. Yaxkin.

May, 25, 2019 = 14 Zip (Haab) 10 Cimi (Tzolkin)

(This remark is about Haab Mayan Calendar: Haab)

p. 151: Twelve o'clock, and the Consul said to the doctor: "Ah, that the dream of the dark magician in his visioned cave, even while his hand - that's the bit I like - shakes in its last decay, were the true end of this so lovely world. Jesus. Do you know, compañero, I sometimes have the feeling that's it's actually sinking, like Atlantis, beneath my feet. Down, down to the frightful poulps. Meropis and Theopompus… And the ignivome mountains. And the doctor who was nodding gloomily said: 'Si, that is tequila. Hombre, un poco de cerveza, un poco de vino, but never more tequila. Never no more mescal.'
- ignivome exists in French as well, "which vomits fire", in French language it's and old-fashioned adjective.
- Meropis is a fiction written by Theopompos of Chios, it is a parody of Plato's Atlantis, as the True Story is a parody of Homer's Odyssey. We can see that the Consul knows some elements of Greek mythology. Lowry imagines ships, Philoctetes and Oedipus Tyrannos, both Greek tragedies… See Philoctetes (hero) and Philoctetes (play)


Anche Dante Alighieri esce un pochino cambiato: a pag. 154, - Nel mezzo del bloody cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai in… These words come from Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia. Except "bloody" :) which is quite a newby in this text.
See «Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.» - This is the beginning of the Divina Commedia, the incipit (i.e. beginning, "here (it) starts" in Latin) of the 1st Canto "Inferno" (Hell). - "In the middle of our life's journey
I found myself in a dark forest,
for the straight way was lost. "

p. 207: I should have become a sort of Donne of the fariways at last. Poet of the unreplaced turf.
A Donne of the fairways ? The Consul can't play golf. John Donne (1572-1631) is famous because of his Meditation XVII: … No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The words "for whom the bell tolls" were re-used, cf. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Another echo of the bell can be read in Gilles Perrault's essay Le Pull-over rouge about Christian Ranucci criminal case, as Perrault quoted the judge Viala at the court in Aix-en-Provence: "Ne te demande pas pour qui sonne le glas, il sonne pour moi, il sonne pour toi, il sonne pour l'humanité tout entière". This was the famous speech by Viala, as Christian Ranucci was sentenced to death in March 1976 (child abduction and murder). "For Whom the Bell Tolls" becomes in French "Pour qui sonne le glas".

P. 211: "Alastor, Alastor", Hugh strolled over to him saying, "Who is, was, why and/or wrote Alastor, anyway ?
"Percy Bysshes Shelley", The Consul leaned against the mirador beside Hugh.
Alastor

P. 212 Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale quoted in French (a play by Cocteau, his way to "read" Oedipus' myth). "It was Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale. Oui, mon enfant, mon petit enfant", he read, "les choses qui paraissent abominable aux humains, si tu savais, de l'endroit où j'habite, elles ont peu d'importance." (sic; I know "abominable" should have been spelled with "s" abominables - plural - but it's spelled abominable in the book) I.e.
"Yes, my child, my little child, things that seem abominable to humans, if you knew, from where I live, they are of little importance."
La Machine infernale

p. 213: "No se puede vivir sin amor." One cannot live without love.

Under the Volcano. Which one ? No mystery, that's the Popocatepetl. From "popoca", it smokes (in Nahuatl language) and "tepetl", mountain = Smoking Mountain. Alternative names: El Popo, Don Goyo (Goyo is a nickname, formally Don Gregorio). Elevation 5,426 m (17,802 ft).
One of the most active volcanoes in Mexico…

Dans le Bingo 2019, ce roman entrera dans les mille et un livres à avoir lus. Le thème de l'alcool, je l'ai déjà rempli cette année avec une autre lecture. Pourtant, entre mezcal et tequila, les verres se succèdent. Le mezcal et le tequila sont produits de façon assez proche, en se servant d'agaves qu'on met au four, enfin, tout un processus complexe, c'est donc de… l'alcool de cactus !

P. 209:
'Have you gone mad ?' M. Laruelle exclaimed at last. 'Am I to understand that your wife has come back to you, something I have seen you praying and howling from under the table - really under the table… And that you treat her indifferently as this, and will continue only to care where the next drink's coming from ?'

Pp. 267-268:
And there... only the signs above her and around her said: Dubonnet, Amer Picon, Les 10 Frattelini, Moulin Rouge. And 'Yvonne, Yvonne !' a voice was saying at her entrance…
The 10 "Fratellini" were a family working in circus, it has to be spelled Fratellini instead of Frattelini. Fratellini family
I looked at the French version. Some more informations about Fratellini dynasty. See Famille Fratellini There is a photograph of Rebecca Fratellini at Circus Knie (Switzerland)...

No comprendo, the Consul took the card and turned it over. Blackstone is my name. I am a writer, not an anarchist.

He knew he'd half hoped all along Yvonne would come to rescue him, knew, now, it was too late, she would not come.

Sic transit Geoffrey Firmin… So it's done. Read Under the Volcano. A masterpiece. It is the fiesta Day of Death in Mexico and Geoffrey Firmin, consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and ruined man, is living out…

Picture: Mictlantecuhtli, or Tzontemoc, an Aztec god of the dead.

Under the Volcano (film)

Ce livre entre dans la catégorie 13 (!) du Bingo 2019, l'un des Mille et Un livres qu'il faut avoir lus avant de mourir. Une appartenance qui lui sied à merveille, d'ailleurs, au vu de l'intrigue. Après tout, ce roman suit Geoffrey Firmin à Cuernavaca le Jour mexicain des Morts. Jusqu'à ce que G. F. rencontre son destin au bar Farolito.

According to the blog Fundación Malcolm Lowry, malcolmlowry.blogspot.com, the "calle Nicaragua", Nicaragua Street, had a model: Humboldt Street, in Cuernavaca.
See Dans les pas de Malcolm Lowry, a report in French, to confirm that the real Cuernavaca has almost nothing to do with the "Lowryan" small town. Too many changes occurred.
Which Cuernavaca do we want ? The real one, or the Lowryan one ? Lowry and Cuernavaca

In French, "Ballast", an article about Malcolm Lowry:
Malcolm Lowry (en français) revue Ballast

See below:
Revisiting Malcolm Lowry's UTV

Ce roman circulera (bookring).
1. Neige78
2. PhVI

Il ne t'est jamais donné de rêve sans le pouvoir de le réaliser. (Richard Bach)

Eh bien, vous avez découvert quelque chose...
Un livre abandonné exprès !
N'ayez pas d'hésitation: donnez votre avis, ou racontez votre découverte, cela nous plaît de savoir ce que deviennent les livres "libérés" ainsi.


1ère participante du ring: Neige78.

Je suis la 1ère du ring !!!

Ce livre que j'ai bien aimé s'en va rejoindre son prochain lecteur.
J'étofferai le commentaire plus tard car je saute dans un train pour partir en vacances..
Bonne lecture :)

Bien arrivé peu après la dernière éruption de chaleur.

Michael Schmidt, the very author of this edition's Introduction, confesses that he first read the book through "after three false starts" (!), and that it is very common to have difficulties to "get going" with this book. It is probably what helped me in my decision to let the book down at the end of Chapter 3 and almost 100 pages out of 375. What can I say ? Chapter 1 is like the following of some other novel one has not read, and in the next two chapters, where the main characters appear, nothing really happens, and I don't seem to get any point. It reminded me sometimes of "Ulysses" (Joyce), but told by a drunk narrator (or suffering from partial amnesia, false memories or whatever). Of course, knowing a little about Lowry's biography, the first thing you think about is alcoholism and somehow I got to feel that the book itself was drunk... Can you expect a book to sober up ? Still, "Under the volcano" is an interesting and rather fascinating book, and I would like to read it through now and what I think I will do is starting again from the beginning but with a french translation, because I also had the feeling sometimes that the style was somehow obscure or complicated, at least regarding my skills in english. I mean I feel I can get something out of this reading, but maybe more easily through french (at least to begin with). And hopefully I can come back to te original version later on.

Where am I now ? I have read the first three chapters twice, first in English, then in French, and I have read the next three chapters partly in French, partly in English. The fact is it does not make more sense to me reading it in French, so I am going on now mostly with the original text. Moreover, there are two distinct french translations, the first one from 1949, titled “Au-dessous de volcan” (which would be more like “Underneath the volcano”), and the second one from 1987, more exactly titled “Sous le volcan” (plain “Under the volcano”). I prefer the first one, more “readable” (but, one may ask, is Lowry so “readable” in the first place, and does he have to be once translated ?…), but I only found the second at the public library, thus the French parts I was reading at home, but I also took time some days to go to another public library near my work (but where I cannot borrow books), where they have a copy of “Au-dessous de volcan”, which I was reading there. I am definitely appealed by Lowry’s phrasing and way of writing seemingly without any plan. Maybe he simply got lost in his way just as he is about to get lost in almost each and every one of his long and perilous sentences. Or maybe the book has just found his way where I left it by now, at the end of chapter 6, maybe it is all about writings arriving too late or to the wrong person, or both. Maybe it is all about whether you can expect at all a writing, a book, any kind of message, to be delivered to the right person at the right time ? Whatever. I have suspended my reading for a while and caught another book to get some sort of rest, but now this other book is nearly over and I am longing to go back to the volcano and read my way to the top of it.

Finished it like five minutes ago.
OK, it may be hard to read, even discouraging at times. I may not be sure about what I have understood or not because of the english, and above all the constant and abrupt cut-up leaps between "objectivity" and the Consul's growing delirium (that is why I intend to soon re-read it in french), but in any case I am glad I read it through in english for the true music of it and what really matters is that I got hooked in the end and I definitely enjoyed this GREAT BOOK.
In those final chapters, the lower the characters fall, the higher the book rises. Lowry unleashes its sentences, style, lyricism, poetry, it is like a symphony, with the quality, the beauty and the power of true and pure art. We are left unresolved, alone, yet fulfilled and grateful.

Volcanoes back among the swiss mountains.

Il est bien arrivé chez moi aujourd'hui. Merci, PhVi.

M. Lowry.

Il ne t'est jamais donné de rêve sans le pouvoir de le réaliser. (Richard Bach)

I have no German-language book at home. That's not serious :) when Souram takes part to a MBC in Strasbourg and Kehl bridging the Rhine. But I have this one Under the Volcano. "A Faustian masterpiece" (Anthony Burgess)