BOOK: Kassandra Vivaria, "Via Lucis"

Kassandra Vivaria: Via Lucis. New York: George H. Richmond & Son, 1898. 480 pp. [Available on hathitrust.org (and also on archive.org, but the scans there are bad, with many fuzzy or partly blank pages.)]

This is probably one of the more obscure books I've read in a good long while. I first heard of the author, rather than of the book, and that purely by chance: I was looking at some other book, I forget which, on archive.org some time ago, and it included an advertisement page listing a few other recent books from the same publisher, and this list included a work of d'Annunzio translated by Kassandra Vivaria — probably The Flame of Life, first published in 1900. Anyway, the translator's name caught my attention, as it sounds so very exotic and puts one in the mind of an exotic dancer or circus artiste rather than of a writer or translator; I had obviously never heard of her before, and naturally I wanted to find out more about her.

It turns out that, with a bit of googling, and thanks to the fact that scans of so many books and newspapers are now available online, you can in fact find out quite a bit about her and her book. Her real name was Magda Sindici; her father was an Italian army officer, poet and writer; her mother was a painter of Spanish aristocratic background* [1, 2, 3, 4]. Via Lucis is her first novel, written when she was only twenty years old; she also wrote some poetry and journalism, but was unable to make a living from it, and she was obliged to write under a pseudonym as a condition for the continued (modest) financial support from her family. In November and December 1898 she wrote a series of autobiographical articles for the Daily Chronicle, but I haven't been able to find them online [1, 2, 3].

[*I found one article that describes her mother as an Englishwoman, but this strikes me as dubious, since nobody else mentions it. Several reviews in the British press say instead that Vivaria had some Scottish blood, which makes more sense: her mother was a cousin of the Duke of Berwick and Alba, and that is a family which originated with an illegitimate son of king James II; but they had been living in Spain since the early 18th century.]

The manuscript of Via Lucis came with the warm recommendations of Gabriele D'Annunzio, and was published in New York by D'Annunzio's American publisher. Rumour had it that Vivaria was going to enter a convent, surely an odd idea considering the decidedly unflattering pictures of convent life that she paints in her novel. In actual fact, she married her British publisher, William Heinemann, a name familiar to me because I have several of his books, mostly Swinburne's poetry (which, incidentally, also features prominently in Via Lucis — two of the protagonists read Swinburne on pp. 274–6, 282–3, and quotations from his poems appear on pp. 39, 408, 451). It was, at any rate, widely believed that the rumours of her plans to enter a convent had been spread by Heinemann himself to drum up publicity for the book [1, 2].

The novel was widely, and for the most part encouragingly, reviewed in the English-language press (New York Times, 30 Jul 1898; The Globe, 4 Aug 1898; Pall Mall Gazette, 24 Aug 1898; The Athenæum, 10 Sep 1898; The Times, 20 Sep 1898; The Sydney Daily Telegraph, 24 Sep 1898; Westminster Gazette, 8 Oct 1898; London Evening Standard, 13 Oct 1898; St. James's Gazette, 8 Dec 1898); most reviewers agreed that, while the novel had some faults, those were outweighed by its good qualities.*

[*Typical complaints were: some parts of the novel drag on a bit; the author's English is at times slightly unidiomatic; occasionally her psychologizing about Arduina's mental processes is a bit unclear; and some objected to the overall impression of pessimism, since Arduina's struggles end in resignation rather than happiness. On the other hand, the reviewers praised the novel's descriptions of an Italian bourgeois milieu, of convent life, Arduina's interesting and complex personality as well as a wide range of minor characters.]

The Bookman published a glowing profile of the novel and its author shortly before it came out (including a portrait of her, which also appears as the frontispiece of Via Lucis), though the actual review after publication was more reserved. But the New York Times called it “a novel of very moderate merit [. . .] it is of course possible that the author is an Italian nun. If so, the translator of her book is a person quite incapable of writing decent English. [. . .] I trust she is a better nun than she is a novelist.” Just ten years after its publication, a critic dismissed Via Lucis in passing: “Such stories as [. . .] Kassandra Vivaria's ‘Via Lucis,’ are forgotten long ago.”

Alas, it seems that her literary career did not continue as auspiciously as it had begun. Vivaria and Heinemann divorced after a few years; she was plagued by debts and had to declare bankruptcy; she went on to translate one or two other books, but doesn't seem to have written any more novels of her own.

*

But enough about the author; let's say something about the story. The protagonist, Arduina d'Erella, is the daughter of an impecunious Italian aristocrat and his British wife.* Her parents separate early and Arduina lives very happily with her mother until the latter dies of consumption; then the poor child is left in the hands of her neglectful, pointlessly domineering and often brutishly violent father and a useless alcoholic governess.

[*Surprisingly many newspaper reviews describe Arduina's mother as American; actually she was the daughter of a British father and American mother, and her parents lived in England until moving to Italy; pp. 12–13.]

Eventually a friend persuades her father to send the governess away and enroll Arduina (now sixteen) in a convent school. She is a bit happier there, and develops a sort of enthusiasm for the religious life (considering what sort of family she grew up in, it's hardly surprising that she doesn't want to marry and start a family of her own). But she thinks that none of the existing religious orders would suit her, including the one that's running her school; they are too narrow-minded. Instead, she wants to start an order of her own, and even draws up fairly detailed plans of its rules, organization, costume etc. In fact it wouldn't be a religious order in the strict sense at all; open to women of all creeds, it would expect its members to see Christ as an example worth following but not necessarily as the son of god (p. 230). Its aim would be to train its members (“to form individually perfect types” and let each arrive “at the highest of which her nature is capable”, p. 229) and send them into the world to cultivate various kinds of intellectual, artistic and philantropic work (pp. 224–5).

(As she explains later, it isn't necessarily religion as such that is so important to her; it's that she wants to have some sort of impact on the world beyond just being a housewife and a mother. In countries where women's rights had made more progress, having that kind of career might be possible without becoming a nun, but in Italy it wasn't; pp. 412–13.)

Unsurprisingly, nobody takes her wild scheme very seriously, but the priest whom she consults as her spiritual director, one Monsignor Ferri, realizes that if he doesn't discourage her too openly, he might be able to steer her towards becoming an ordinary nun in one of the existing orders.

Meanwhile, Arduina finishes school and spends a summer at the seaside with friends of the family, the Sant' Onofrios. One of them, Prospero, is a 36-year-old naval officer; little by little, she and Arduina fall in love. This puts her in a very difficult bind, having to choose between her religious commitments and her newfound love; whichever she chooses, she'll be miserable. By the end of the summer Prospero proposes to her; but, under the influence of Monsignor Ferri and his jesuitical arguments, she rejects the proposal and resolves to enter a convent after all. Convinced that Arduina is now lost to him for good, Prospero agrees to marry her friend Gabriella, who has long wanted to marry him even though he doesn't particularly love her.

As a novice, Arduina is sent to France and Belgium for some time; at first she throws herself into her new life with zeal, but after two or three years she is worn out in body and mind, and regrets joining. She begins to show symptoms of consumption, the same disease that had carried her mother off at an early age. The Mother Superior of her convent, to avoid accusations of neglecting a novice's health, sends her to spend the summer at the seaside with the Sant' Onofrios again.

Arduina and Prospero still love each other, and despite initial efforts to the contrary, they eventually end up in each other's arms. Her health improves markedly. Gabriella, quite unaware of all this, urges Arduina not to return to her convent; but she returns anyway, and only changes her mind at the very door of the convent.

She disappears without a trace, and it is believed that she has committed suicide; but in fact, not wanting to interfere with Gabriella's marriage, Arduina goes to live quietly with Lizzie Blake, her old nurse and previously the childhood companion of her mother. Three years pass, and Arduina's health recovers almost completely. Eventually Lizzie, worried about how Arduina would fare in case Lizzie dies, makes her whereabouts known to the Sant' Onofrios. It turns out that Gabriella has died meanwhile, Prospero still loves Arduina, and she agrees to marry him.

Unfortunately, their married bliss is short-lived. Soon Prospero grows tired of her, and arranges for the Navy to post him to Constantinople, leaving Arduina behind in Italy. She goes nearly mad with grief, but gradually she comes to feel a kind of resignation, accepting life and the world such as they are. After a while, Prospero realizes that the bachelor lifestyle is no longer for him; he loves Arduina again and asks her to join him in Constantinople. She agrees to go, because he needs her, although she doesn't really love him any more and it will be dissimulation on her part.

*

This novel was quite an enjoyable read. There is an interesting and varied cast of characters; a good number of things happen and I never found the story to be particularly predictable, in fact I was often curious what would happen next. I couldn't help sympathizing with poor Arduina's predicaments, and hoping that she would eventually find a way to be happy; if the book had ended just after she and Prospero get married, that would have suited me just fine. But I guess it is a proof of the author's serious intentions as a writer, and therefore praiseworthy, that she continued the story and brought Arduina into a state of resignation rather than happiness.

Another thing I liked about the novel are the environments in which it was set; these were unfamiliar to me and therefore interesting. For example, what was it like in an Italian seaside town during the summer season in the late 19th century? This novel gives us a few glimpses into that. One interesting detail is that, in the absence of air conditioning, we see people spending much of the hottest part of the day napping indoors, with curtains drawn against the heat etc. Another unfamiliar environment, of course, was the convent, which comes across as a very deplorable institution; how nice it would be if someone invented something like it, but without the narrow-minded religious fanaticism, the meanness and backbiting, the pointless discomforts and self-flaggelation and obsession with obedience and all that other nonsense! And how unfortunate it is that in Arduina's time, the convent was the only alternative that a woman like her had to a life of boring domesticity. Would she be happier if she lived now, when she could have a career and try to make a difference in the world that way? I wonder — considering how intense her idealism was and how high her ambitions would probably be, she would be bound to end up disappointed anyway.

Incidentally, I'm immensely impressed by the fact that Vivaria wrote this novel when she was only twenty, and in a foreign language to boot (apparently she had “an English education”, despite living in Italy). Some of the reviewers in the English press did mention that her language is at times slightly unidiomatic, but almost none of them thought that this was actually detrimental to the style; and as for me, I can't say that I even noticed anything like that. As English is an even more foreign language to me than it was to the author of this novel, I'm used to encountering more or less unfamiliar things in it, and naturally put them down to the gaps in my own knowledge rather than that of the author.

ToRead:

• Vivaria doesn't seem to have written any other fiction that I could read, but her being something of a protégée of d'Annunzio reminded me that I should some day get around to reading some of his work. I usually hear about him as the evil Italian nationalist who occupied Rijeka in 1919 and established his own proto-fascist state there (possibly with blackjack and hookers). And to be sure, he was all that, but it's still interesting to know that, decades before that, he was also seen as a perfectly normal and actually fairly well-regarded writer. Quite a few of his works seem to be available in English, so that I have no idea where to start.