On Valentine’s day, we thought we would select for you a few cornerstones of Literature related to love.
Lorris, Guillaume de.
Le Roman de la Rose, 1503.
Le Roman de la Rose :
one of the first best sellers
in occidental History.
Racine, Jean.
Andromaque, 1668.
Racine’s first masterpiece.
Each of Racine’s protagonists
wants to be loved and each, off course,
chooses precisely the one person
who cannot love him or her,
whose gaze is always
directed at another.
Laclos, Choderlos de.
Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782.
The sinisterly charming Vicomte de Valmont
has his eye on a beautiful but married visitor,
Madame de Tourvel,
and determines to have her…
Through his scandalous invention,
Choderlos de Laclos made his book
a commentary on the corruption
and libertinism of the ancien regime.
Balzac, Honoré de.
Le Lys dans la vallée, 1836.
La « Princesse de Clèves du romantisme »,
selon Paul Morand.
« Oui, tous les journaux ont été hostiles au Lys ;
tous l’ont honni, ont craché dessus »,
déclare Balzac.
Mme de Berny lui avait assuré que le Lys était
« un des plus beaux livres
de la langue française ».
Flaubert, Gustave.
Madame Bovary, 1857.
The novel became a bestseller
(Leo Tolstoy, whose Anna Karenina
has often been read as a reaction
to Flaubert’s work, had his copy
of Madame Bovary bound together
with an edition of Othello).
Tolstoï, Léon.
Anna Karenine, 1885.
« All happy families are alike;
each unhappy family is unhappy
in its own way »,
so read the famous first line
of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece
of love and society.
Fitzgerald, Francis Scott.
Tender is the Night, 1934.
Regrettably, Tender is the Night,
his intended masterpiece,
is sometimes neglected by readers.
The combination of Fitzgerald’s skillful writing
and the book’s deeply confessional nature
certainly make it worthy of discovery
or perhaps a revisiting.
Duras, Marguerite.
L’Amant de la Chine du Nord, 1991.
« J’ai écrit ce livre dans le bonheur fou de l’écrire.
Je suis restée un an dans ce roman,
enfermée dans cette année-là de l’amour
entre le Chinois et l’enfant ».
You’re welcome to stop by our bookstore (1 rue de l’Odéon, 75006 Paris)
where we’ll be happy to show you these books and many more…