The Tragic Muse (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Henry James (Author), Philip Horne (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1995 | Series: Penguin Classics

'You must paint her just like that ...as the Tragic Muse' Suggests one of James' characters to Nick Dormer, the young Englishman who, during the course of the novel, will courageously resist the glittering Parliamentary career desired for him by his family, in order to paint. His progress is counterpointed by the 'Tragic Muse' of the title, Miriam Rooth, one of James' most fierily beautiful creations, a great actress indifferent to social reputation, and triumphantly dedicated to her art. In portraying the conflict between art and 'the world' which is his novel's central idea, James engaged obliquely with current debates on the new aestheticism of Pater and Wilde and on the nature of the actor's performance. Through the living complexity of his protagonists he reveals how much, as Philip Horne puts it, 'to take art seriously as an end in itself ...is still a provocative course'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Novel by Henry James, published serially in The Atlantic Monthly from 1889 to 1890 and in book form in 1890. This study of the conflict between the demands of art and those of the "real world" is set in London and Paris in the 1880s. Nicholas Dormer, an Englishman, gives up a career in Parliament and marriage to a beautiful, wealthy woman to become a portrait painter. He is encouraged by his actress friend Miriam Rooth, the "tragic muse" of the title. Although by the end of the novel Nicholas has still not achieved his goal, James implies that he made the right decision in choosing to live at a higher level of consciousness, whether or not he achieves material success. Written when James himself was suffering setbacks in his career as a playwright, the novel reflects many of the author's concerns about personal sacrifice for the sake of art. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York and settled in Europe in 1875. He was a regular contributor of reviews, critical essays, and short stories to American periodicals. He is best known for his many novels of American and European character.

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140433899
• ISBN-13: 978-0140433890
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,796,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lessons of the Master, February 11, 2006

By 

R L B (Sydney) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tragic Muse (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

In an interview, Vladimir Nabokov once spoke of the distinction Russians draw between a genius (such as Tolstoy), and a mere "talent", and the example Nabokov gave of the latter was Henry James. Nabokov never did rate James highly (nor Thomas Mann, Hemingway and many other undoubtedly great writers). Nabokov was of course mistaken. Henry James is one of the true geniuses of literature. His capacity to portray nuances of character through subtle changes of light and shade has never been equalled.

The later James style is notoriously dense, elliptical and difficult to read. And yet through this density, the Victorianisms of the language spoken by James' characters, the important - often critical - things that are only half spoken, and sometimes never spoken, James reveals characters facing moral and personal dilemmas of a kind that seem startlingly immediate to us. James' characters are always complex, rarely do what we expect them to, and are often as frustrating and intriguing as any "real" people.

The Tragic Muse is a lengthy discussion of the role of the artist in society, and the choices - sometimes hard choices - people make in becoming artists and leaving the conventional world behind. James certainly would have been conscious of these issues from his own career. And yet The Tragic Muse is often very funny, with very sharp, witty dialogue, amusing characters and an engrossing story.

I agree with the previous reviewer, who described it as an overlooked masterpiece. I rate it as highly as, say, The Ambassadors, one of James' final three great completed novels.

The later Henry James can be difficult going, and I have found these books to be a taste slowly acquired. I would therefore not recommend this book to readers new to James (instead I would suggest Washington Square, The Europeans or the Bostonians). However, once you have acquired the taste for James his prose style, frustrating as it sometimes is, becomes addictive, especially for the deep insights into character that he offers and the ability to conjure up reality through a seeming haze of words.

For those who enjoy reading Henry James - and, like Nabokov, not everyone does - this book is very highly recommended.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Surprise, June 9, 2004

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M. Nesbit "One reader" (Daly City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Tragic Muse (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This James novel is an overlooked masterpiece. I'm not entirely certain I don't like it every bit as much as the often praised "Wings of the Dove".

Art with a capital "A" is the subject at hand and Miriam Rooth (the Tragic Muse), Peter Sherringham and Nick Dormer all have their own way of coming to terms with the idea of a life given over to Art.

Favorite chapters are those on a visit to the Green Room of the Theatre Francaise and the magnificent Chapter XLVI.

Considering that James made his choice of a life given up to literature at a very early age, one can't help seeing this book as his apologia. And a grand one it is, too!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There Are NO Americans in This Novel!, March 7, 2011

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Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Tragic Muse (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

No upstate New York belles with fresh cheeks and fresher manners! No self-made Ohio bachelors in Europe questing for culture and perhaps an ornamental spouse! All of the major characters are English, though we first meet them in Paris. That's a welcome departure from Henry James's favorite theme of cultural bewilderment between Americans and Europeans. And it's virtually all I knew about "The Tragic Muse" before I read it. It isn't one of the novel normally assigned in college lit classes, and it happened to be the only full-length James novel I'd never read. Imagine my surprise! It's surely one of the best! One of the wittiest, stocked with the most convincing characters, about whose travails the reader might genuinely care! And yet the critics pay it scant attention! Well, so much for critics then!

I was lucky in my choice of editions, I'm happy to mention. The Tragic Muse was first published in 1890, four years after The Bostonians and just at the onset of James's futile attempt to prove himself as a playwright. Eighteen years later, James the Master -- sometimes referred to as "James the Old Pretender" -- revised the novel drastically, changing phrases in nearly every paragraph, assiduously qualifying and obfuscating its forthright vigor. Unfortunately, the 1908 revision has been included in the so-called "Definitive Edition", a decision that may account for the relative unpopularity of this very fine novel. Be sure you read the the original edition of 1890!

For one thing, the descriptive passages of The Tragic Muse -- the prose, you might say, that frames the dramatic dialogue -- are among the most vivid and pictorial to be found in James's writings. Appropriately so, since the novel begins with a scene in a gallery of the Paris Salon, and since one of the seven principal characters is a young Briton of the "political" class who yearns to devote himself to Art. But this is a novel dominated by dialogue, and the dialogue is so finely written that one has to wonder why James had so little luck with the stage. Each palaverer in the sometimes quite extended conversations has his/her own authentic speaking voice, even including the minor figures. Of course the dialogues are wittier and more lucid than real-time conversations could ever be, but they're therefore both more entertaining and more revelatory of the personalities of the speakers than any stammering verisimilitude could make them.

The dramatis personae:
*Lady Agnes Dormer, the widow of a revered Parliamentary lion
*Her daughter Grace, hopelessly plain and literal, making her name painfully ironic
*Her younger daughter Biddy, charming and impressionable
*Her son Nick, upon whom the family's aspirations for sustaining Public Greatness rest uncomfortably, whose uncertainty about his future as a politician or as an artist is the core of the novel
*Peter Sherringham, a cousin of the Dormers, an ambitious young diplomat, whom Biddy adores
*Julia Dallow, the beautiful widowed sister of Peter and thus also a cousin, who has inherited significant wealth from her dead husband, whose ambition to play a large role in society as a statesman's wife is one of the driving forces of the narrative
*Gabriel Nash, not a cousin, a college friend of Nick's, a dilettante of enigmatic habits, an 'influence' on Nick for good or ill, depending on one's expectations of propriety
*Miriam Rooth, definitely not a cousin, not even certainly of the respectable class, the daughter of a Jewish merchant and a fabulating mother who has raised her erratically all around the Continent, who aspires to be a great actress at any cost

Every one of these characters is memorable and utterly plausible. Henry James never exceeded the psychological insight of his portrayals of these very distinct 'antagonists' in the acts of Will that determine a Life; it's the agony of incompatible Wills that give this novel its passion. Encapsulated in the drama, however, there are also some profound reflections on the value of art and the merit of the artistic life, measured against the more pragmatic values of public service and production of Wealth. I wonder how pointedly Henry James addressed this novel to his pragmatic brother, the psychologist William.

Miriam Rooth is surely the most triumphant portrayal of a spirited woman in any of James's novels, a character I'm sure women readers of today will accept more happily than the heroines of The Bostonians or The Portrait of a Lady. Gabriel Nash is the prototype of everyone's least reputable college friend, half Jiminy Cricket and half Mephistopheles, the guy whose escapades make the best wry anecdotes. Peter and Nick, cousins, lifetime friends, implicitly rivals... in the end it seems to me that this novel is above all about their relationship, about the possibility of empathy and sustained regard between two men of such divergent temperaments. Two brothers, shall we suppose ...