Brideshead Revisited (Revisited)
Nov. 9th, 2020 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI didn’t intend to reread the entirety of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, just the first section “Et in Arcadia Ego,” the part of the book that focuses on Charles Ryder’s friendship with Sebastian Flyte before it all goes to pot and Sebastian descends into alcoholism. However, once I’d begun, I couldn’t stop, and read all the way through to the bitter end, and somehow have begun rewatching the 1981 miniseries with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.
I may end up rewatching the 2008 movie version, too, even though my recollection is that the filmmakers really wanted Charles Ryder to be straight and only in love with one Flyte, Julia, while Sebastian pined away for Charles in the wings, and this unrequited love possibly drove Sebastian to alcoholism? Which is not what happens in the book at all; possibly the only problem book Sebastian doesn’t have is unrequited love. In fact, if anyone is pining, it’s Charles for Sebastian. However, I don’t seem to have written a review of the film at the time, so possibly I’m not remembering quite right.
I’ve returned to this story again and again and am always incredibly moved by it and then end up unable to say anything about it; even the Brideshead reviews I managed to write are sorely lacking, like this one I managed to cough up nearly a year after watching the miniseries in January 2017: “I meant to post about it ever since because I loved it so much, but I never did get around to it. It starts off golden and beautiful (“Et In Arcadia Ego” is the name of the first episode, and never has anything been more aptly named) and becomes incredibly sad.”
For “I never did get around to it” please read “My intense feelings about this story paralyzed not only my critical faculties but in fact my entire ability to put anything into words at all.”
It is so beautiful! And so sad! The lost golden pleasures of youth, the love that is so deep and powerful and yet not enough to save the friend, the lost friend who drifts out of your life and never comes back, their absence aching like a sore tooth, an unresolved loose end even when the story comes full circle, and Charles Ryder returns again to Brideshead, sadder, perhaps wiser?, trudging on it seems in sheer exhaustion. And yet he does go on.
...also, it is just super gay. Of course I noticed this the first time I read it, but rereading it this time with more knowledge of English queercoding at the time, oh my GOD it is SO GAY. Waugh never actually comes right out and says “AND THEN CHARLES AND SEBASTIAN BANGED,” but!!! they love each other so much!!! and that’s what makes it so tragic. If you COULD save someone through the power of love, Charles would have done it. That saying about setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm? That is what Charles does his final term at Oxford for Sebastian, and it’s not enough.
Charles tells Lady Marchmain, and clearly believes, that if she’d just let Sebastian live with him as planned, Charles would be able to keep Sebastian’s drinking in check. The first time I read the book I more or less believed this too (and it’s even possible that Waugh intends us to believe it), but this time around, an older and life-battered reader, I recognize wishful thinking when I see it. That might perhaps have slowed Sebastian’s descent, but unless Sebastian decided he wanted to stop drinking, nothing would have stopped it (and even that might not have sufficed) - and Sebastian never decides that.
The first time I read the book, I found Sebastian’s intransigency irritating; pretty much my only comment on the book was “I don’t think I’m supposed to find Sebastian’s self-pitying decline into alcoholism quite as annoying as I do.” And I do see that, I do still wish that he wanted to get better. Even if Sebastian ultimately failed, it would be so much easier on Charles and on his little sister Cordelia and indeed on his whole family if he tried and failed instead of not trying at all.
But I think I’ve come to see, now, that sometimes the wanting itself is not within our power; it’s like that quote (Google tells me it’s from Schopenhauer), “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” If someone doesn’t want to get better, they can’t make themselves want that, even if on some level they wish they did want it - and the tragedy of Sebastian is that he knows he ought to want it and even, intermittently, does want it, when he sees how he is hurting Charles or Cordelia. But in the end the pull of oblivion is stronger.
...Also there is a LOT of Catholicism in this book. It all whooshed over my head the first time I read it, and I still don’t particularly grasp it; pagan that I am, I think Charles has a point when he complains that all the Church seems to do for the Flytes is make them miserable, and if they let it go they would be not only happier but kinder and all around more capable of goodness. However, maybe next time I read the book, the Catholicism will all pop into place for me and I’ll understand what Waugh is saying… although I still may not agree with it.
I may end up rewatching the 2008 movie version, too, even though my recollection is that the filmmakers really wanted Charles Ryder to be straight and only in love with one Flyte, Julia, while Sebastian pined away for Charles in the wings, and this unrequited love possibly drove Sebastian to alcoholism? Which is not what happens in the book at all; possibly the only problem book Sebastian doesn’t have is unrequited love. In fact, if anyone is pining, it’s Charles for Sebastian. However, I don’t seem to have written a review of the film at the time, so possibly I’m not remembering quite right.
I’ve returned to this story again and again and am always incredibly moved by it and then end up unable to say anything about it; even the Brideshead reviews I managed to write are sorely lacking, like this one I managed to cough up nearly a year after watching the miniseries in January 2017: “I meant to post about it ever since because I loved it so much, but I never did get around to it. It starts off golden and beautiful (“Et In Arcadia Ego” is the name of the first episode, and never has anything been more aptly named) and becomes incredibly sad.”
For “I never did get around to it” please read “My intense feelings about this story paralyzed not only my critical faculties but in fact my entire ability to put anything into words at all.”
It is so beautiful! And so sad! The lost golden pleasures of youth, the love that is so deep and powerful and yet not enough to save the friend, the lost friend who drifts out of your life and never comes back, their absence aching like a sore tooth, an unresolved loose end even when the story comes full circle, and Charles Ryder returns again to Brideshead, sadder, perhaps wiser?, trudging on it seems in sheer exhaustion. And yet he does go on.
...also, it is just super gay. Of course I noticed this the first time I read it, but rereading it this time with more knowledge of English queercoding at the time, oh my GOD it is SO GAY. Waugh never actually comes right out and says “AND THEN CHARLES AND SEBASTIAN BANGED,” but!!! they love each other so much!!! and that’s what makes it so tragic. If you COULD save someone through the power of love, Charles would have done it. That saying about setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm? That is what Charles does his final term at Oxford for Sebastian, and it’s not enough.
Charles tells Lady Marchmain, and clearly believes, that if she’d just let Sebastian live with him as planned, Charles would be able to keep Sebastian’s drinking in check. The first time I read the book I more or less believed this too (and it’s even possible that Waugh intends us to believe it), but this time around, an older and life-battered reader, I recognize wishful thinking when I see it. That might perhaps have slowed Sebastian’s descent, but unless Sebastian decided he wanted to stop drinking, nothing would have stopped it (and even that might not have sufficed) - and Sebastian never decides that.
The first time I read the book, I found Sebastian’s intransigency irritating; pretty much my only comment on the book was “I don’t think I’m supposed to find Sebastian’s self-pitying decline into alcoholism quite as annoying as I do.” And I do see that, I do still wish that he wanted to get better. Even if Sebastian ultimately failed, it would be so much easier on Charles and on his little sister Cordelia and indeed on his whole family if he tried and failed instead of not trying at all.
But I think I’ve come to see, now, that sometimes the wanting itself is not within our power; it’s like that quote (Google tells me it’s from Schopenhauer), “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” If someone doesn’t want to get better, they can’t make themselves want that, even if on some level they wish they did want it - and the tragedy of Sebastian is that he knows he ought to want it and even, intermittently, does want it, when he sees how he is hurting Charles or Cordelia. But in the end the pull of oblivion is stronger.
...Also there is a LOT of Catholicism in this book. It all whooshed over my head the first time I read it, and I still don’t particularly grasp it; pagan that I am, I think Charles has a point when he complains that all the Church seems to do for the Flytes is make them miserable, and if they let it go they would be not only happier but kinder and all around more capable of goodness. However, maybe next time I read the book, the Catholicism will all pop into place for me and I’ll understand what Waugh is saying… although I still may not agree with it.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-10 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-10 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-10 12:16 pm (UTC)Also there is a LOT of Catholicism in this book. It all whooshed over my head the first time I read it, and I still don’t particularly grasp it
...I was recommended this book by a friend who began the conversation with "hey, you're gay and interested in class issues and have a complex relationship with Catholicism and your mother, right?" so, uh, that should explain a lot about my overall feelings/reaction to this book.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-10 09:49 pm (UTC)Also that DOES sound like the perfect background with which to read Brideshead Revisited. Did you identify a lot with Sebastian?
no subject
Date: 2020-11-14 05:56 pm (UTC)Did you identify a lot with Sebastian?
Yes and no. I wouldn't say I identified with him in the sense of "oh, wow, we're so similar!", but I recognized the shape of his bruises, as it were, and I felt that I understood the way he ticked well enough to dip my toe back into fanfiction for the first time since, like, 2014, although I didn't end up keeping anything I wrote. I found him a really interesting and compelling character, although it will be interesting to see whether I'll have as much patience for him this time around...?
no subject
Date: 2020-11-14 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-11 01:20 pm (UTC)What do you mean, this isn't the ending of Brideshead Revisited?
no subject
Date: 2020-11-11 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-12 06:43 am (UTC)The lost golden pleasures of youth, the love that is so deep and powerful and yet not enough to save the friend
You put it so well, this is why the book stays in my mind I think.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-13 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 05:39 pm (UTC)Wow. I've never gotten around to reading Brideshead Revisited, mainly because I'd osmosised that it was just generically sad midcentury gays – but this description really makes me interested. I mean, I do like generically sad historical gays! It's just that there's a lot of them, and most of the ones I have read left me unengaged. But your summary sounds absolutely fantastic.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 09:50 pm (UTC)