Here is the latest in my series of book reviews from the library of Dr. Oliver Sacks. This time, we are talking about Henry James. From the Library of Dr. Oliver Sacks: Book Review #6: The Short Stories of Henry James #TheAspernPapers #HenryJames #OliverSacks tommacinneswriter.com/2025/10/02/f...
Thank you for reading! #James24 #TheAspernPapers #HenryJames #readinganactofsharedsolitude #ReemReel #paperpills💊 #AThingOfBeauty #beedoubleokayess📚🐦
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#James24 #TheAspernPapers Die Aspern-Schriften
tr./Nachwort: Bettina Blumenberg
…Der Erzähler wechselt vom Nacherzählen zum Berichten, vom Vorgreifen zur Rückblende und zur Rückkehr in die Erzählzeit, sodass ein zeitliches Flirren und damit ein besonders intensives Empfinden von Jetztzeit entsteht…
#James24 #TheAspernPapers [9]
As you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge the canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro against the battered scenery of their little houses of comedy,
1/
“What shall you do—where shall you go?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I have done the great thing. I have destroyed the papers.”
“Destroyed them?” I faltered.
“Yes; what was I to keep them for? I burned them last night, one by one, in the kitchen.”
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
I found myself aware of this almost as soon as I opened my eyes; it made me jump out of my bed with the movement of a man who remembers that he has left the house door ajar or a candle burning under a shelf. Was I still in time to save my goods?
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
As the day went on I grew to wish that I had never heard of Aspern’s relics, and I cursed the extravagant curiosity that had put John Cumnor on the scent of them.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
What in the name of the preposterous did she mean if she did not mean to offer me her hand? That was the price—that was the price! And did she think I wanted it, poor deluded, infatuated, extravagant lady?
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
In a moment she was facing me again, with her streaming eyes. “I would give you everything—and she would understand, where she is—she would forgive me!”
“Ah, Miss Tina—ah, Miss Tina,” I stammered, for all reply.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
“You don’t mean to say you made her a deathbed promise? It was precisely against your doing anything of that sort that I thought I was safe. Oh, I would rather she had burned the papers outright than that!”
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
“I have got them but I can’t show them,” she added.
“Not even to me? Ah, Miss Tina!” I groaned, with a voice of infinite remonstrance and reproach.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
After that there would be nothing left for me but to go to the station; for seriously (and as it struck me in the morning light) I could not linger there to act as guardian to a piece of middle-aged female helplessness.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
I left Venice the next morning, as soon as I learned that the old lady had not succumbed, as I feared at the moment, to the shock I had given her—the shock I may also say she had given me.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
They glared at me, they made me horribly ashamed.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
#TheAspernPapers
#HenryJames
#James24
“Now I'll go home." Miss Tita laid her hands on the back of her aunt's chair and began to push, but I begged her to let me take her place. "Oh, yes, you may move me this way—you shan't in any other!"
I kept thinking about Byatt's Possession as I was reading Henry James' The Aspern Papers. Those two stories fit well together. She must have read it at some point and maybe was even inspired by it.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
#TheAspernPapers
#HenryJames
#James24
“You have been guilty?"
"I have sailed under false colors."
„I feel as if you were a new person, now that you have got a new name.“
#James24 #TheAspernPapers [8]
#TheAspernPapers
#HenryJames
#James24
I foresaw that I should have a summer after my own literary heart, and the sense of holding my opportunity was much greater than the sense of losing it.
Miss Bordereau stood there in her nightdress, in the doorway of her room, watching me; her hands were raised, she had lifted the everlasting curtain that covered half her face, and for the first, the last, the only time I beheld her extraordinary eyes.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
I touched the button with my hand—a mere touch would tell me; and as I did so (it is embarrassing for me to relate it), I looked over my shoulder. It was a chance, an instinct, for I had not heard anything.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
Did she know I was there and was she just keeping quiet to see what I would do—what I COULD do? But what could I do, when it came to that? She herself knew even better than I how little.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
as it were, a rendezvous which it might have been a point of honor with me to keep. It may be said that her leaving the place dark was a positive sign that she released me, and to this I can only reply that I desired not to be released.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
May I ask if you have looked?
Yes, I have looked—for you.
How for me, dear Miss Tina? Do you mean you would have given them to me if you had found them? I asked, almost trembling.
Suddenly she broke out, I don’t know what I would do—what I wouldn’t!
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
I had an immense curiosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty to represent to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be spared the sight of me. “The sight of you? Do you think she can SEE?”
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
I had an immense curiosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty to represent to Miss Tina that if I made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be spared the sight of me. “The sight of you? Do you think she can SEE?”
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
#James24 #TheAspernPapers #HenryJames #readinganactofsharedsolitude #ReemReel #paperpills💊 #AThingOfBeauty #beedoubleokayess📚🐦
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#TheAspernPapers
#HenryJames
#James24
But he picked up amazingly little for a knowing Venetian: it must be added that where there is a perpetual fast there are very few crumbs on the floor.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers [7]
It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat.
1/
“You would buy a likeness of a person you don’t know, by an artist who has no reputation?”
“The artist may have no reputation, but that thing is wonderfully well painted,” I replied, to give myself a reason.
#James24 #TheAspernPapers
