Cornish Trilogy (Paperback)

Although there are characters in the other two books who are interesting in their own right they have nowhere near the life and depth of Francis Cornish of "Bred in the Bone". These two books surround the great one on either side sort of like hangers on to a great man hoping for some of the glory themselves.

The first is concerned with the academic life in a Canadian University especially concerning the life of Maria Theotoky a great student of Renaissance legend Rebalais being mentored by the brilliant but socially inept Professor Hollier who is overwhelmed by the arrival of his old friend, the obnoxious Parlabane. Although interesting especially when discussing academic life and the jealousy evident when a reputation or fame is at stake, the novel does not really come to life in the same sense as the second. There are some characters which liven things up such as Maria's mother Mamusia the gypsy half of her. To be honest its difficult to tell where the male leads end and Maria begins, there is really little differentiation. A woman's aspects, as compared to the men involved, do not really come to light. The somewhat stale atmosphere of academia is never expunged by any kind of life, even from the female heroine. Still not bad at all.

The third book details the life of another of the charcaters in the first, i.e. Professor Darcourt, a priest but now successful academic and his and other's attempt to execute the estate of Francis Cornish, especially the use of the Cornish Foundation and its attempt to support the PhD of a gifted composer Hulda Schnakenburg. Its her fascinating mentor Dahl-Soot, as well as the spirit of Hoffmann who keeps this going.

All told the books enliven each other but the second one gives the whole thing a semblance of greatness. Its Davies' inability to really produce passion and spontaneity which prevents me from singing the books praises.

Good as a whole.

These three novels revolve around a man named Francis Cornish whose wealth, talent, and connections elevate his uncommonly consequential life almost to the status of an Ontario folk legend. Growing up in a rural town called Blairlogie, he develops a sensibility for the power of visual images and becomes an artist and an art connoisseur, educating himself at the University of Toronto's College of St. John and the Holy Ghost, affectionately called Spook. After working as an art assessor and spying for the British from a Bavarian castle during World War II, he spends the rest of his life amassing a tremendous collection of art, books, and manuscripts, which he leaves to Spook and other Canadian institutes upon his death.

The trilogy's second novel, "What's Bred in the Bone," in which Cornish's life story is narrated by a Recording Angel, is like the gentle, reflective adagio of a three-movement symphony. By contrast, the first novel, "The Rebel Angels," in which three Spook professors, the executors of Cornish's will, are assigned to catalogue and distribute the bequeathal, is in a modern Rabelaisian spirit: erudite, bawdy, and perverse. The discovery of an unknown Rabelais manuscript leads to an academic uproar among Clement Hollier, his nubile graduate student Maria, and his obnoxious rival Urquhart McVarish, whose tea-time companion, the boorish ex-monk John Parlabane, will do literally anything to get his unreadable autobiographical novel published.

The third novel, "The Lyre of Orpheus," concerns itself with an unfinished opera about King Arthur by E.T.A. Hoffmann which is found among Cornish's manuscripts. As a tribute to their benefactor, the Cornish Foundation allows to have the opera completed by a filthy waif of a girl who goes by the name of Schnak and is being hailed as a musical prodigy, with the libretto penned by Simon Darcourt, Spook's resident Anglican priest. The proceedings are annotated by none other than the ghost of Hoffmann himself, trapped in Limbo because he was unable to complete his Arthurian opera, and the Cornish Foundation's effort is his only chance to pass on to the next world. As the fledgling opera goes into production, Davies gives a brilliantly colorful account of the stormy dramas and passions involved in the world of musical theater.

These novels are broad satires of the worlds of academics, art, and music, respectively, and the main characters are so fatuously self-important they almost dare the reader to hate them. The general theme is the imagined conflict between the artist and the philistine, illustrated by Hoffmann's Johannes Kreisler/Tomcat Murr alter egos, but this imaginary line is only as thick as we make it. If, as Hoffmann's ghost says, a philistine is someone who is content to live in a wholly unexplored world, then Davies's "Cornish" trilogy acts wonderfully as an antiphilistine corrective.

In a sense, The Rebel Angels is two novellas that are split into the same number of chapters that you bounce between. "Second Paradise" is the story of Maria Theotoky, a PhD candidate studying the works of Rabelais, who finds herself drawn into the life of returned professor turned monk, John Parlabane. But the real issue is a secret manuscript that was purchased by the recently deceased Francis Cornish, whom her advisor, as one-third executor of Cornish's estate, has promised to her as the substance for her doctorate. Unfortunately, the manuscript has vanished. "The New Aubrey" is told from the point of view of Professor the Reverend Simon Darcourt, another third of the multi-headed Cornish executors, who is also a professor's of Maria's and an old friend of Parlabane's. Darcourt has decided to work on a biography of the university professors in the style of Aubrey, and thinks he has plenty to work with in Clem Hollier (Maria's advisor), Parlabane, and the last third of the executors, Urky McVarish. Confused? You won't be, because Davies is a master at handling the many threads of the story, and nothing is ever mis-placed. As in the Deptford trilogy, nothing "fantastic" occurs, although the secret manuscript is definitely a fictional device and not something that exists in our world. Maria's mother, however, is of the old-world gypsies, and there's a few scenes in which she shows Hollier some gypsy "magic" and fortune-telling, but in each of these cases, one can suppose that nothing extra-worldly is occurring. And, yes, there is a tie between The Rebel Angels and the Deptford books--Parlabane and Hollier are said to have attended school with David Staunton, the subject of The Manticore.

The second book, What's Bred in the Bone, definately throws in the fantastic. After a prologue in which the characters from The Rebel Angels, who have formed a trust fund for the use of Francis Cornish's fortune to promote art, talk about the biography that Darcourt is trying to write of Cornish. From this, two angels (the Lesser Zadkiel, Angel of Biography, and his brother, the Daimon Maimas, Cornish's personal fiend), take over to tell the story of Cornish from his beginning as scion of the richest family in town, through his introduction to art by a singular book, his religious duology by his Catholic great-aunt and Protestant housekeeper, the art instruction by combining what he learned in the book with the subjects of the local morgue. Then it's off to boy's school in which he becomes a pupil of Dunstan Ramsay (the Fifth Business from the book of that name) for a time, then gets drawn into his father's business as an English spy. All along it is art that imbues him (what is bred in the bone, as the title says), that strengthens him, and, in the end, that sustains him.

The final book picks up where the first book left off, with the Cornish Trust board of directors, Hollier, Darcourt, Maria, Arthur Cornish, and Geraint Powell, deciding to stage a reconstructed opera by one of the university students, even though there is no libretto and the student is a doctoral candidate who has never attempted something of this magnitude before. The opera, an unfinished piece by E.T.A. Hoffman, is Arthur, or The Magnanimous Cuckold, an attempt to put the story of King Arthur as a true opera (rather than the singing in a story of Camelot). The student, Schnak, they soon discover is a belligerent and odiferous genius, but nothing compared to the special advisor that is brought in from Sweden, Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot. Darcourt, meanwhile, is frustrated because he is having little luck completing the biography of Francis Cornish, and now is tagged to write a libretto for this opera. Everything comes together, although never in quite the way you expect it to, which is the beauty of Davies' novels.

To say that I like Robertson Davies would be an understatement. He has, as I've said to Jill, become an obsession. I have purchased the Salterton trilogy, which is begging from the shelf to be read, and I expect that you will see mention of it in the next installment. I am, however, saddened. Davies died about six years ago, and I know the limits of my obsession as those few books that I have yet to read. One side of me says to savor the moment, the opportunity to read them from a fresh perspective, while the reckless side of me is urging for me to get on with the business as I'm not getting any younger.