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Romain Rolland - "Jean Christophe: In Paris"

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Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe: In Paris




Sometimes they misunderstood each other. Olivier's mind was a mixture of
faith, liberty, passion, irony, and universal doubt, for which Christophe
could not find any working formula.

Olivier, on his part, was distressed by Christophe's lack of psychology:
being of an old intellectual stock, and therefore aristocratic, he was
moved to smile at the awkwardness of such, a vigorous, though lumbering and
single mind, which had no power of self-analysis, and was always being
taken in by others and by itself. Christophe's sentimentality, his noisy
outbursts, his facile emotions, used sometimes to exasperate Olivier, to
whom they seemed absurd. Not to speak of a certain worship of force, the
German conviction of the excellence of fist-morality, _Faustrecht_, to
which Olivier and his countrymen had good reason for not subscribing.

And Christophe could not bear Olivier's irony, which used sometimes to make
him furious with exasperation: he could not bear his mania for arguing, his
perpetual analysis, and the curious intellectual immorality, which was
surprising in a man who set so much store by moral purity as Olivier, and
arose from the very breadth of his mind, to which every kind of negation
was detestable,--so that he took a delight in the contemplation of ideas
the opposite of his own. Olivier's outlook on things was in some sort
historical and panoramic: it was so necessary for him to understand
everything that he always saw reasons both for and against, and supported
each in turn, according as the opposite thesis was put forward: and so amid
such contradictions he lost his way. He would leave Christophe hopelessly
perplexed. It was not that he had any desire to contradict or any taste for
paradox: it was an imperious need in him for justice and common sense: he
was exasperated by the stupidity of any assumption, and he had to react
against it. The crudeness with which Christophe judged immoral men and
actions, by seeing everything as much coarser and more brutal than it
really was, distressed Olivier, who was just as moral, but was not of the
same unbending steel; he allowed himself to be tempted, colored, and molded
by outside influences. He would protest against Christophe's exaggerations
and fly off into exaggeration in the opposite direction. Almost every day
this perverseness of mind would make him take up the cudgels for his
adversaries against his friends. Christophe would lose his temper. He would
cry out upon Olivier's sophistry and his indulgence of hateful things and
people. Olivier would smile: he knew the utter absence of illusion that lay
behind his indulgence: he knew that Christophe believed in many more things
than he did, and had a greater power of acceptance! But Christophe would
look neither to the right hand nor the left, but went straight ahead. He
was especially angry with Parisian "kindness."

"Their great argument, of which they are so proud, in favor of 'pardoning'
rascals, is," he would say, "that all rascals are sufficiently unhappy in
their wickedness, or that they are irresponsible or diseased.... In the
first place, it is not true that those who do evil are unhappy. That's a
moral idea in action, a silly melodramatic idea, stupid, empty optimism,
such as you find in Scribe and Capus,--(Scribe and Capus, your Parisian
great men, artists of whom your pleasure-seeking, vulgar society is worthy,
childish hypocrites, too cowardly to face their own ugliness).--It is quite
possible for a rascal to be a happy man. He has every chance of being so.
And as for his irresponsibility, that is an idiotic idea. Do have the
courage to face the fact that Nature does not care a rap about good and
evil, and is so far malevolent that a man may easily be a criminal and yet
perfectly sound in mind and body. Virtue is not a natural thing. It is the
work of man. It is his duty to defend it. Human society has been built up
by a few men who were stronger and greater than the rest. It is their duty
to see that the work of so many ages of frightful struggles is not spoiled
by the cowardly rabble."

At bottom there was no great difference between these ideas and Olivier's:
but, by a secret instinct for balance and proportion, he was never so
dilettante as when he heard provocative words thrown out.

"Don't get so excited, my friend," he would say to Christophe. "Let the
world hug its vices. Like the friends in the 'Decameron,' let us breathe in
peace the balmy air of the gardens of thought, while under the cypress-hill
and the tall, shady pines, twined about with roses, Florence is devastated
by the black plague."

He would amuse himself for days together by pulling to pieces art, science,
philosophy, to find their hidden wheels: so he came by a sort of
Pyrrhonism, in which everything that was became only a figment of the mind,
a castle in the air, which had not even the excuse of the geometric
symbols, of being necessary to the mind. Christophe would rage against his
pulling the machine to pieces:

"It was going quite well: you'll probably break it. Then how will you be
better off? What are you trying to prove? That nothing is nothing? Good
Lord! I know that. It is because nothingness creeps in upon us from every
side that we fight. Nothing exists? I exist. There's no reason for doing
anything? I'm doing what I can. If people like death, let them die! For my
part, I'm alive, and I'm going to live. My life is in one scale of the
balance, my mind and thought in the other.... To hell with thought!"

He would fly off with his usual violence, and in their argument he would
say things that hurt. Hardly had he said them than he was sorry. He would
long to withdraw them: but the harm was done. Olivier was very sensitive:
his skin was easily barked: a harsh word, especially if it came from some
one he loved, hurt him terribly. He was too proud to say anything, and
would retire into himself. And he would see in his friend those sudden
flashes of unconscious egoism which appear in every great artist. Sometimes
he would feel that his life was no great thing to Christophe compared with
a beautiful piece of music:--(Christophe hardly troubled to disguise the
fact).--He would understand and see that Christophe was right: but it made
him sad.

And then there were in Christophe's nature all sorts of disordered elements
which eluded Olivier and made him uneasy. He used to have sudden fits of a
freakish and terrible humor. For days together he would not speak: or he
would break out in diabolically malicious moods and try deliberately to
hurt. Sometimes he would disappear altogether and be seen no more for the
rest of the day and part of the night. Once he stayed away for two whole
days. God knows what he was up to! He was not very clear about it
himself.... The truth was that his powerful nature, shut up in that narrow
life, and those small rooms, as in a hen-coop, every now and then reached
bursting-point. His friend's calmness maddened him: then he would long to
hurt him, to hurt some one. He would have to rush away, and wear himself
out. He would go striding through the streets of Paris and the outskirts in
the vague quest of adventure, which sometimes he found: and he would not
have been sorry to meet with some rough encounter which would have given
him the opportunity of expending some of his superfluous energy in a
brawl.... It was hard for Olivier, with his poor health and weakness of
body, to understand. Christophe was not much nearer understanding it. He
would wake up from his aberrations as from an exhausting dream,--a little
uneasy and ashamed of what he had been doing and might yet do. But when the
fit of madness was over he would feel like a great sky washed by the storm,
purged of every taint, serene, and sovereign of his soul. He would be more
tender than ever with Olivier, and bitterly sorry for having hurt him. He
would give up trying to account for their little quarrels. The wrong was
not always on his side: but he would take all the blame upon himself, and
put it down to his unjust passion for being right; and he would think it
better to be wrong with his friend than to be right, if right were not on
his side.

Their misunderstandings were especially grievous when they occurred in the
evening, so that the two friends had to spend the night in disunion, which
meant that both of them were morally upset. Christophe would get up and
scribble a note and slip it under Olivier's door: and next day as soon as
he woke up he would beg his pardon. Sometimes, even, he would knock at his
door in the middle of the night: he could not bear to wait for the day to
come before he humbled himself. As a rule, Olivier would be just as unable
to sleep. He knew that Christophe loved him, and had not wished to hurt
him: but he wanted to hear him say so. Christophe would say so, and then
the whole thing would be forgotten. Then they would be pacified. Delightful
state! How well they would sleep for the rest of the night!

"Ah!" Olivier would sigh. "How difficult it is to understand each other!"

"But is it necessary always to understand each other?" Christophe would
ask. "I give it up. We only need love each other."

All these petty quarrels which, with anxious tenderness, they would at once
find ways of mending, made them almost dearer to each other than before.
When they were hotly arguing Antoinette would appear in Olivier's eyes. The
two friends would pay each other womanish attentions. Christophe never let
Olivier's birthday go by without celebrating it by dedicating a composition
to him, or by the gift of flowers, or a cake, or a little present, bought
Heaven knows how!--(for they often had no money in the house)--Olivier
would tire his eyes out with copying out Christophe's scores at night and
by stealth.

Misunderstandings between friends are never very serious so long as a third
party does not come between them.--But that was bound to happen: there are
too many people in this world ready to meddle in the affairs of others and
make mischief between them.

* * * * *

Olivier knew the Stevens, whom Christophe rarely visited, and he too had
been attracted by Colette. The reason why Christophe had not met him in the
girl's little court was that just at that time Olivier was suffering from
his sister's death, and had shut himself up with his grief and saw no one.
Colette, on her part, did not go out of her way to see him: she liked
Olivier, but she did not like unhappy people: she used to declare that she
was so sensitive that she could not bear the sight of sorrow: she waited
until Olivier's sorrow was over before she remembered his existence. When
she heard that he seemed to be himself again, and that there was no danger
of infection, she made bold to beckon him to her. Olivier did not need much
inducement to go. He was shy but he liked society, and he was easily led:
and he had a weakness for Colette. When he told Christophe of his intention
of going back to her, Christophe, who had too much respect for his friend's
liberty to express any adverse opinion, just shrugged his shoulders and
said jokingly:

"Go, dear boy, if it amuses you."

But nothing would have induced him to follow his example. He had made up
his mind to have nothing more to do with a coquette like Colette or the
world she lived in. Not that he was a misogynist: far from it. He had a
very tender feeling for all the young women who worked for their living,
the factory-hands, and typists, and Government clerks, who are to be seen
every morning, half awake, always a little late, hurrying to their
workshops and offices. It seemed to him that a woman was only in possession
of all her senses when she was working and struggling for her own
individual existence, by earning her daily bread and her independence. And
it seemed to him that only then did she possess all her charm, her alert
suppleness of movement, the awakening of all her senses, her integrity of
life and will. He detested the idle, pleasure-seeking woman, who seemed to
him to be only an overfed animal, perpetually in the act of digestion,
bored, browsing over unwholesome dreams. Olivier, on the contrary, adored
the _far niente_ of women, their charm, like the charm of flowers, living
only to be beautiful and to perfume the air about them. He was more of an
artist: Christophe was more human. Unlike Colette, Christophe loved other
people in proportion as they shared in the suffering of the world. So,
between him and them there was a bond of brotherly compassion.

Colette was particularly anxious to see Olivier again, after she heard of
his friendship with Christophe: for she was curious to hear the details.
She was rather angry with Christophe for the disdainful manner in which he
seemed to have forgotten her: and, though she had no desire for
revenge,--(it was not worth the trouble: and revenge does mean a certain
amount of trouble),--she would have been very glad to pay him out. She was
like a cat that bites the hand that strokes it. She had an ingratiating way
with her, and she had no difficulty in getting Olivier to talk. Nobody
could be more clear-sighted than he, or less easily taken in by people,
when he was away from them: but nobody could be more naively confiding than
he when he was with a woman whose eyes smiled kindly at him. Colette
displayed so genuine an interest in his friendship with Christophe that he
went so far as to tell her the whole story, and even about certain of their
amicable misunderstandings, which, at a distance, seemed amusing, and he
took the whole blame for them on himself. He also confided to Colette
Christophe's artistic projects, and also some of his opinions--which were
not altogether flattering--concerning France and the French. Nothing that
he told her was of any great importance in itself, but Colette repeated it
all at once, and adapted it partly to make the story more spicy, and partly
to satisfy her secret feeling of malice against Christophe. And as the
first person to receive her confidence was naturally her inseparable Lucien
Levy-Coeur, who had no reason for keeping it secret, the story went the
rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier,
who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry
figure. It seemed unlikely that the story could be very interesting to
anybody, since the heroes of it were very little known: but a Parisian
takes an interest in everything that does not concern him. So much so, that
one day Christophe heard the story from the lips of Madame Roussin. She met
him one day at a concert, and asked him if it were true that he had
quarreled with that poor Olivier Jeannin: and she asked about his work, and
alluded to things which he believed were known only to himself and Olivier.
And when he asked her how she had come by her information, she said she had
had it from Lucien Levy-Coeur, who had had it direct from Olivier.

The blow overwhelmed Christophe. Violent and uncritical as he was, it never
occurred to him to think how utterly fantastic the story was: he only saw
one thing: his secrets which he had confided to Olivier had been
betrayed--betrayed to Lucien Levy-Coeur. He could not stay to the end of
the concert: he left the hall at once. Around him all was blank and dark.
In the street he narrowly escaped being run over. He said to himself over
and over again: "My friend has betrayed me!..."

Olivier was with Colette. Christophe locked the door of his room, so that
when Olivier came in he could not have his usual talk with him. He heard
him come in a few moments later and try to open the door, and whisper
"Good-night" through the keyhole: he did not stir. He was sitting on his
bed in the dark, holding his head in his hands, and saying over and over
again: "My friend has betrayed me!...": and he stayed like that half
through the night. Then he felt how dearly he loved Olivier: for he was not
angry with him for having betrayed him: he only suffered. Those whom we
love have absolute rights over us, even the right to cease loving us. We
cannot bear them any ill-will; we can only be angry with ourselves for
being so unworthy of love that it must desert us. There is mortal anguish
in such a state of mind--anguish which destroys the will to live.

Next morning, when he saw Olivier, he did not tell him anything: he so
detested the idea of reproaching him,--reproaching him for having abused
his confidence and flung his secrets into the enemy's maw,--that he could
not find a single word to say to him. But his face said what he could not
speak: his expression was icy and hostile. Olivier was struck dumb: he
could not understand it. He tried timidly to discover what Christophe had
against him. Christophe turned away from him brutally, and made no reply.
Olivier was hurt in his turn, and said no more, and gulped down his
distress in silence. They did not see each other again that day.

Even if Olivier had made him suffer a thousand times more, Christophe would
never have done anything to avenge himself, and he would have done hardly
anything to defend himself: Olivier was sacred to him. But it was necessary
that the indignation he felt should be expended upon some one: and since
that some one could not be Olivier, it was Lucien Levy-Coeur. With his
usual passionate injustice he put upon him the responsibility for the
ill-doing which he attributed to Olivier: and he suffered intolerable pangs
of jealousy in the thought that such a man as that could have robbed him of
his friend's affection, just as he had previously ousted him from his
friendship with Colette Stevens. To bring his exasperation to a head, that
very day he happened to see an article by Lucien Levy-Coeur on a
performance of _Fidelio_. In it he spoke of Beethoven in a bantering way,
and poked fun at his heroine. Christophe was as alive as anybody to the
absurdities of the opera, and even to certain mistakes in the music. He had
not always displayed an exaggerated respect for the acknowledged master
himself. But he set no store by always agreeing with his own opinions, nor
had he any desire to be Frenchily logical. He was one of those men who are
quite ready to admit the faults of their friends, but cannot bear anybody
else to do so. And, besides, it was one thing to criticise a great artist,
however bitterly, from a passionate faith in art, and even--(one may
say)--from an uncompromising love for his fame and intolerance of anything
mediocre in his work,--and another thing, as Lucien Levy-Coeur did, only to
use such criticism to flatter the baseness of the public, and to make the
gallery laugh, by an exhibition of wit at the expense of a great man.
Again, free though Christophe was in his judgments, there had always been a
certain sort of music which he had tacitly left alone and shielded: music
which was not to be tampered with: that music, which was higher and better
than music, the music of an absolutely pure soul, a great health-giving
soul, to which a man could turn for consolation, strength, and hope.
Beethoven's music was in the category. To see a puppy like Levy-Coeur
insulting Beethoven made him blind with anger. It was no longer a question
of art, but a question of honor; everything that makes life rare, love,
heroism, passionate virtue, the good human longing for self-sacrifice, was
at stake. The Godhead itself was imperiled! There was no room for argument
It is as impossible to suffer that to be besmirched as to hear the woman
you respect and love insulted: there is but one thing to do, to hate and
kill.... What is there to say when the insulting blackguard was, of all
men, the one whom Christophe most despised?

And, as luck would have it, that very evening the two men came face to
face.

* * * * *

To avoid being left alone with Olivier, contrary to his habit, Christophe
went to an At Home at the Roussins'. He was asked to play. He consented
unwillingly. However, after a moment or two he became absorbed in the music
he was playing, until, glancing up, he saw Lucien Levy-Coeur standing in a
little group, watching him with an ironical stare. He stopped short, in the
middle of a bar: he got up and turned away from the piano. There was an
awkward silence. Madame Roussin came up to Christophe in her surprise and
smiled forcedly; and, very cautiously,--for she was not sure whether the
piece was finished or not,--she asked him:

"Won't you go on, Monsieur Krafft?"

"I've finished," he replied curtly.

He had hardly said it than he became conscious of his rudeness; but,
instead of making him more restrained, it only excited him the more. He
paid no heed to the amused attention of his auditors, but went and sat
in a corner of the room from which he could follow Lucien Levy-Coeur's
movements. His neighbor, an old general, with a pinkish, sleepy face,
light-blue eyes, and a childish expression, thought it incumbent on him to
compliment him on the originality of his music. Christophe bowed irritably,
and growled out a few inarticulate sounds. The general went on talking
with effusive politeness and a gentle, meaningless smile: and he wanted
Christophe to explain how he could play such a long piece of music from
memory. Christophe fidgeted impatiently, and thought wildly of knocking the
old gentleman off the sofa. He wanted to hear what Lucien Levy-Coeur was
saying: he was waiting for an excuse for attacking him. For some moments
past he had been conscious that he was going to make a fool of himself: but
no power on earth could have kept him from it.--Lucien Levy-Coeur, in his
high falsetto voice, was explaining the aims and secret thoughts of great
artists to a circle of ladies. During a moment of silence Christophe heard
him talking about the friendship of Wagner and King Ludwig, with all sorts
of nasty innuendoes.

"Stop!" he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table by his side.

Everybody turned in amazement. Lucien Levy-Coeur met Christophe's eyes and
paled a little, and said:

"Were you speaking to me?"

"You hound!... Yes," said Christophe.

He sprang to his feet.

"You soil and sully everything that is great in the world," he went on
furiously. "There's the door! Get out, you cur, or I'll fling you through
the window!"

He moved towards him. The ladies moved aside screaming. There was a moment
of general confusion. Christophe was surrounded at once. Lucien Levy-Coeur
had half risen to his feet: then he resumed his careless attitude in his
chair. He called a servant who was passing and gave him a card: and he went
on with his remarks as though nothing had happened: but his eyelids were
twitching nervously, and his eyes blinked as he looked this way and that
to see how people had taken it. Roussin had taken his stand in front of
Christophe, and he took him by the lapel of his coat and urged him in the
direction of the door. Christophe hung his head in his anger and shame,
and his eyes saw nothing but the wide expanse of shirt-front, and kept on
counting the diamond studs: and he could feel the big man's breath on his
cheek.

"Come, come, my dear fellow!" said Roussin. "What's the matter with you?
Where are your manners? Control yourself! Do you know where you are? Come,
come, are you mad?"

"I'm damned if I ever set foot in your house again!" said Christophe,
breaking free: and he reached the door.

The people prudently made way for him. In the cloak-room a servant held
out a salver. It contained Lucien Levy-Coeur's card. He took it without
understanding what it meant, and read it aloud: then, suddenly, snorting
with rage, he fumbled in his pockets: mixed up with a varied assortment of
things, he pulled out three or four crumpled dirty cards:

"There! There!" he said, flinging them on the salver so violently that one
of them fell to the ground.

He left the house.

* * * * *

Olivier knew nothing about it. Christophe chose as his witnesses the first
men of his acquaintance who turned up, the musical critic, Theophile
Goujart, and a German, Doctor Barth, an honorary lecturer in a Swiss
University, whom he had met one night in a cafe; he had made friends with
him, though they had little in common: but they could talk to each other
about Germany. After conferring with Lucien Levy-Coeur's witnesses, pistols
were chosen. Christophe was absolutely ignorant about the use of arms, and
Goujart told him it would not be a bad thing for him to go and have a few
lessons: but Christophe refused, and while he was waiting for the day to
come went on with his work.

But his mind was distracted. He had a fixed idea, of which he was dimly
conscious, while it kept buzzing in his head like a bad dream.... "It was
unpleasant, yes, very unpleasant.... What was unpleasant?--Oh! the duel
to-morrow.... Just a joke! Nobody is ever hurt.... But it was possible....
Well, then, afterwards?... Afterwards, that was it, afterwards.... A cock
of the finger by that swine who hates me may wipe out my life.... So be
it!...--Yes, to-morrow, in a day or two, I may be lying in the loathsome
soil of Paris....--Bah! Here or anywhere, what does it matter!... Oh! Lord:
I'm not going to play the coward!--No, but it would be monstrous to waste
the mighty world of ideas that I feel springing to life in me for a
moment's folly.... What rot it is, these modern duels in which they try to
equalize the chances of the two opponents! That's a fine sort of equality
that sets the same value on the life of a mountebank as on mine! Why don't
they let us go for each other with fists and cudgels? There'd be some
pleasure in that. But this cold-blooded shooting!... And, of course, he
knows how to shoot, and I have never had a pistol in my hand.... They are
right: I must learn.... He'll try to kill me. I'll kill him."

Obituary: Donald Westlake

The disputed Holocaust memoir which was dropped from Penguin Group's publication schedule at the end of December is set to appear as a work of fiction.

Herman Rosenblat's memoir - which Oprah Winfrey called "the single greatest love story" she had heard in two decades in television - recounted how as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp, he was kept alive by the food which was thrown to him by a young girl, Roma Radzicky. Penguin's US imprint Berkley Books had planned to publish the story, which sees Rosenblat reunited with Radzicky on a blind date years later, as Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived, next month.

But a Holocaust historian said it would have been impossible to approach the fence in the Schlieben concentration camp to throw food over it, concluding that this part of the story was made-up. Berkley initially defended the book, saying it was a work of memory, but then decided to cancel its planned publication, and demanded the return of the advance it had made to Rosenblat. A $25m film based on the book, to be called The Flower of the Fence, is still going ahead, with production due to start this year.

Publisher York House Press based in White Plains, New York, has entered into a tentative agreement with the film production company to publish a novel based on the film script early this spring. It said the book would be "grounded in fact", and would rise "to the proper levels of artistic value, ethical conduct and social responsibility".

A spokesperson for York House Press condemned the attacks which were made on the 80-year-old Rosenblat after the veracity of his story was questioned, describing them as a "savage" response to what was otherwise "a credible, heart-wrenching, and verifiable account" of his time in the concentration camp.

"No deliberate untruth is permissible, but beneath any fabrication is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat's motivations were very human, understandable and forgivable," the spokesperson said. "It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust survivors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, rationalise or fantasise and promote fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves."

The president of the company producing the film, Harris Salomon from Atlantic Overseas Productions, said the book, "regardless of its shortcomings", would "challenge, educate and enlighten" readers about the horrors of the Holocaust. "The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a survivor of concentration camps," he said.

But Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, said that neither she nor Rosenblat were involved with this version of his story. "Usually book rights from films come out after the movie is released," she told guardian.co.uk. "I think the timing on this is very insensitive."

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Obama to feature in Marvel comic

We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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Climbing the walls

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with the superhero. The story sees one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, trying to stop Obama being inaugurated. Spider-Man's alter ego, Peter Parker, is covering the event as a photographer, and saves the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon?" Spider-Man says as he thwacks the villain in the face. "The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up."

He tells Obama: "This is your day, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me" - in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that Obama had been "palling around with terrorists".

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said the publisher's editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada.

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