Watching a sexual or romantic relationship from a distance is a gratifying experience, which is why there are such genres as romantic novels or romantic films. Or, even pornography can be the viewer's flip side of the romance. Nevertheless, the reader/viewer can be at a safe distance where our thoughts or eyes can roam on the projected lovers (either on the screen or page), and with that in mind, we often project ourselves onto the relationship. Claude Anet (aka Jean Schopter) wrote a novel in 1918 called Ariane: A Russian Girl in post-revolutionary Moscow. It’s interesting to note that Anet wrote this novel during the Russian Revolution as it took place. Yet, he ignores that world for a more romantic Moscow, perhaps an imaginary landscape for his sense of eros and narration.
Jean Schopter was a tennis player who participated in the games at the Amateur French Championships in 1892 and 1893. He eventually became a writer focusing on art and travel and wrote a book about travels within Russia. During World War 1, he wrote La Révolution Russe. Anet’s novel Ariane is a tale of an 18-year-old teenager involved with an older playboy, Constantin Michel. The story mainly occurs in Moscow but in expensive hotels, restaurants, and theaters. Ariane presents herself as being worldly and sexually aware. She reminds me of the Marcel Proust Narrator’s young girlfriend from The Prisoner, but much more aware of her surroundings, yet playful in the game of deceit and eros. The novel is about the nature of miscommunication and the consequential feelings due to the urges and the masochistic aspects of romance.
It’s not surprising that Vladimir Nabokov acknowledged Ariane in his 1930 novel The Eye. As a reader, one is pulled back, and at a distance, one can study a relationship as if it were done in a scientific laboratory. The beauty of literary love is that one can take it as a further exploration of one’s consciousness and sexuality, as long as it is entertaining and at a distance. Ariane feeds that need, and this page-turner of a small novel can be a wonderful love in the afternoon.
this writer and book sound interesting. especially as we go through some sort of cold revolution ourselves. thanks for the post.