Chaos and Night (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Henry de Montherlant (Author), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), Gary Indiana (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: New York Review Books Classics | Publication Date: February 17, 2009

Don Celestino is old and bitter and afraid, an impossible man. An anarchist who has been in exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War. He fulminates against the daily papers; he brags about his past exploits. He has become bigoted, self-important, and obsessed; a bully to his fellow exiles and a tyrant to his daughter, Pascualita.

Then a family member dies in Madrid and there is an inheritance to sort out. Pascualita wants to go to Spain, which is supposedly opening up in response to the 1960s, and Don Celestino feels he has no choice but to follow. He is full of dread and desire, foreseeing a heroic last confrontation with his enemies, but what he encounters instead is a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems. Because the last act of Don Celestino’s dizzying personal drama will prove that though “there is nothing serious . . . , there is tragedy.”

An astonishing modern take on Don Quixote, Chaos and Night untangles the ties between politics and paranoia, self-loathing and self-pity, rage and remorse. It is the darkly funny final flowering of the art of Henry de Montherlant, a solitary and scarifying modern master whose work, admired by Graham Greene and Albert Camus, is sure to appeal to contemporary readers of Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolaño.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A magnificent novel of a type that only Montherlant could produce…The author’s feat in embodying much of himself in such an exceptional creation wile maintaining his customary austerity of view an of style, his almost frightening insolence and is extraordinary gift for characterization evoke…admiration.” –New York Times Book Review

“Indisputably a magnificent writer.” –Saturday Review

“Written with intense control and beautifully translated, Chaos and Night is one of those rare explorations of the place where political commitment, religious faith, illusion and necessity intersect, where morality and mortality come to terms.” –The New York Times

“Wry and likeable” –Time

“Admired by such as Malraux, Camus, Graham Greene and Peter Quennell…[and] one of the few French dramatists worthy of ranking with Corneille and Racine…This is a magnificent novel of a type that only he could produce…Henry de Montherlant will live as one of the outstanding writers of the century.” –The New York Times

“Well rendered in English by Terence Kilmartin.” –The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Henry de Montherlant (1896–1972) was born and raised in Neuilly, outside of Paris. Montherlant’s father, who boasted of his connection to the aristocracy, was a rock-ribbed reactionary; his mother spent years in bed; both parents doted on their son. Expelled from high school for homosexual activity, Montherlant studied law briefly, enlisted in the army, and was wounded in World War I. His first novel, The Dream (1922), was a paean to the camaraderie of warriors, and several subsequent works were written in a similar vein. However, in The Bachelors (1934) Montherlant
discovered a new interest in the aberrations of human behavior and psychology, and developed his mature voice: sardonic, bemused, without hint of consolation. The Bachelors won the Grand Prix of the French Academy and was followed by four novels that were collected as The Girls (1936–39), one of Montherlant’s major achievements and an international best seller. During WorldWar II , Montherlant remained in occupied Paris and wrote scathingly in right-wing journals about the fallen Third Republic, leading to later charges of collaborationism. He also turned from
fiction to drama, rapidly making a name as one of France’s finest playwrights. In 1960, Montherlant was elected a member of the Académie Française. In 1972, after years of worsening health, he committed suicide.

Terence Kilmartin was literary editor of The Observer from 1951–1985. He translated several novels by Henry de Montherlant, including The Bachelors, The Girls, and The Boys, as well as works by André Malraux, Françoise Sagan, and others. Kilmartin’s revision of C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past was published in 1981. He died in 1991.

Gary Indiana is a critic and novelist. His most recent books are Utopia’s Debris: Selected Essays and The Shanghai Gesture, a novel to be published in 2009. From 1985–1988 he was senior art critic for The Village Voice, and has written for New York magazine, Artforum,
the London Review of Books, and other publications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159017304X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590173046
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,202,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surprising little gem, June 20, 2009

By 

DaLaoHu (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chaos and Night (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

I don't know how this book ended up on my reading list, but there it was and the text was short, so I thought I'd take the plunge. And I'm glad I did. Besides being an engaging character study (the entire time you are reading this you are wondering whether this guy was truly a revolutionary or someone who is merely manufacturing his past), the ending was simply ... well ... magnificently executed. Read it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonder--a polished gemstone--a novel somehow overlooked, May 14, 2011

By 

T. M. Teale (Colorado Springs, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Chaos and Night (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

As of this writing, there is only one other reader's review of Montherlant's _Chaos and Night_. Dear reader, if you're tired of mediocre novels just off the press by so-called living authors who have sold out or cut back on their ambition--and there seem to be many--you better try this novel. Yes, "back to the classics" will be my cry.

You might have read the basic plot outlines, namely, that an aging Spaniard named Celestino Marcilla has been living in exile in Paris for over twenty years because he was on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War against General Franco and his Fascists; his sister dies in Madrid and Celestino goes back to settle the estate. The "action" of the novel takes place inside Celestino's troubled head--but what a mind! Celestino is tortured by his role in the civil war, the decisions he made--an understandable dilemma--and then he's like a spoiled brat old man; he can't stand the French he's been living among, but doesn't like his fellow Spaniards, and he even has the ingratitude to fall out with his devoted young daughter, Pascualita, as well as tell his best friends, Ruiz and Pineda to f---off. But wait, there's more. . . . .

On the train to Madrid, to settle his sister's estate, Montherlant brings Celestino to a feverish pitch--fear of arrest and imprisonment are real since Franco is still in power--but Celestino is consumed by another fear, that his beloved bullfighting ritual will have been diluted my commercialism. Yes, this old war veteran is an aficionado, and his high-minded perfectionism is easily recognized as a spiritual necessity. As crotchety and irritating as the aging Spaniard is, every step of the way in this novel, Montherlant weaves in hints of Celestino's humanity. Yes, this is a novel about weakness and strength--about all of us--as Celestino realizes he is dying and must say goodbye to everything that he has ever loved: life itself.

There are some great lines: Celestino: "Newspapers are more important than machine-guns provided there is no freedom of the Press," and "I can't write my book because I have too many ideas." Ruiz, his fellow exile: "If you had a job, you wouldn't have time to have ideas. I work, which is why I have no more ideas than are strictly necessary."

For those of us unfortunate enough not to read the original French, we've got Terence Kilmartin's translation, which seems impossible to improve upon. I've never regretted not reading Don Quixote--until now, since old Celestino is a bit quixotic himself.

3.0 out of 5 stars Chilly Spain, June 12, 2011

By 

JAK "jk" (nj) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Chaos and Night (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Some years ago I read Montherlants' THE GIRLS.I remember thinking, it's good but not especially compelling . It proved to be a book that didn't stick with me. I decided to read CHAOS and NIGHT largely because the Spanish Civil War interests me and I was curious to see what kind of spin an old reactionary like Montherlant would give it.

The book centers around Celestino, a Loyalist veteran and refugee who lives in France.Now there was a time when such people were deemed heroes by the Left and I assume this was so in France. When the book came out in 1960 French literary culture was a left wing province and you'd expect a portrait of a Spanish Republican veteran to be downright reverential. But then you wouldn't be reading a book by Montherlant.I wondered what he'd do to such character. It's not a pretty sight! While Montherlant was fascinated by Spain, he clearly wasn't bowled over by the mythos of the Loyalists.Celestino is a bourgeois pseudo - anarchist and if you are one of those who has trouble reading a book with unlikeable characters, avoid this like the plague .I'm not bothered by unlikeable characters. However I did find Celestino grating.He is not merely unlikeable , he is a complete jerk.Shallow, not particularly well informed or well educated, utterly tone deaf to cultural matters and grossly insensitive ,Celestino imagines he is a deep thinker .He spends his days writing articles that can't get published and that no one wants to read.A talentless bore like Celestino does well to be very nice , instead he goes out of his way to alienate everyone he knows. Worse yet, in doing so he imagines that he is exuding nobility.Periodically he reflects on his civil war past, and Montherlant drops a number of hints to the effect that Celestino was a vicious political killer during the war.Unsurprisingly these reflections don't perturb Celestino.

There is a profoundity to the portrait Montherlant gives us.Celestino is exactly the kind of person who becomes a political executioner.Crackpot ideas and abstractions have always been more real for him than the concrete.He tries to ignore the material world in favor of dwelling in an abstract world where he knows the truth and if he has to kill to attain it , so be it.There is a grim humor to this.That is, Celestino is so intellectually muddled he has no idea what his great truth is.He admits he doesn't understand Marxism .He realizes he's not really an anarchist.He actually hates the people he is so dedicated to delivering to the promised land.What he likes , and he is conscious of this , is destroying things.