City of Gustave, by William Shakespeare Ilan Rubel.
"The City" is about this imaginary city which the protagonist, Gustave, rediscovers after twenty years of exile or isolation in his dark, damp and musty-dusty one room studio, in a location not identified, but which could be anywhere around the world .... Other than the fact that many French words are used, to name the chateau, ("Toursenreve- tour sans reves, castle without dreams,) Le Cafe du Sucre ( Sugar cafe) or streets, which might be interpreted as a setting in France. Strange characters in arcane, unknown, invented settings, yet universal, as the City reveals itself as the place of his birth, the locale of his childhood, the place he might have been happy once, and the place he now realizes he must return to, to stop wasting his life in this state of total isolation and loneliness, and dreadful poverty, (we are not told how he survived in his sordid studio, surrounded by huge paintings he painted years ago, and financial matters as well as mundane consideration such as obtaining food and clothing are not even alluded to, except that at some point, Gustave had been Sophia's bedside teacher, hired by Lars to care for her education and mind, for Sophia too, like her defunct mother was being raised in isolation in the convent or mansion her mother had left her ... So Sophia is a rich heiress.
The lesson to be gleaned from this long but not lengthy, truly fascinating discourse on the meaning of love, life and death, is that none may be understood and therefore, life, love and death are to be experienced fully, rather than analyzed. One cannot learn to die, nor to live, nor to love.
The cleverness of the novel is that it is written by an "aphorist", and is a masterpiece a tapestry of clever aphorisms. In the end of “The City of Gustave” the aphorist concludes:"All is vanity."
The main protagonists are Gustave, Lars, (whom we may guess is closely related to Gustave and has a love-hatred protector/protected relationship within, akin to brotherly love, and Sophia, the daughter of Rachel, (Voltaire's Cunegonde, Dante's Don Quichote's.)
There is a circle of eight minor characters, whose function is to assist in explaining, observing, commenting, or dissecting what is happening in the protagonist’s psyche.
It appears that both Lars and Gustave had fallen in love with Rachel, unawares that she had given birth to her daughter Sophia through Immaculate Conception and therefore must not be loved like other women, for doing so would be "using" her, "defiling" her, and ultimately "destroying" her. Gustave spent twenty years in solitary confinement ruminating the grief and guilt he felt upon her death ... Guilty, because he failed to let her know that she was free that she too had a right to enjoy life. Guilty because he failed to prevent her apparent suicide. She is also described as living as a recluse in a convent, and having mental illness. Gustave is awakened out of his twenty years exile and torpor by Lars who comes to deliver him, reminding him that it is time to look for Sophia, and watch over her so that her mother's dark drama does not repeat itself ...
Now age twenty, Sophia is the embodiment of her mother's beauty and character, and the search for her by both Gustave, and Lars, independently and together, seems to be the motivation for the many, labyrinthine circumlocutions, and philosophical discourse in the protagonists’! minds as well as in their occasional colloquies.
The novel brings to mind powerful mood scenes, with images that conjure the films of the great filmmaker-director Ingmar Berman ... Once read, slowly and carefully, the novels demand second and third readings, perhaps a lifetime of re-reading to savor the cleverness of the language, the beautiful poetry of sentence structure and the profundity of each enunciation.... It reads like the bible of "Know yourself. Find .. " "find the meaning of life, death and love."
And ... " and the answer it leaves us with is an exhortation to stop thinking and dissecting, what cannot be truly examined, and come out and enjoy that which is given to us without its creator's "business
plan." ... Instead, just enjoy life, love and death ... Perhaps taking comfort in the finding that at the moment of death, everyone is equal and innocent, in fact, "Death itself is the innocence."
There is a third sequel to the "City of Gustave".and "Gustave in the Weight of Things." It is called Marvel. Soon to be published.
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