Helen MacEwan’s new book is, indeed, a journey back in time to the Brussels the Brontë sisters would have known in the early 1840s. No one can dip into these sumptuous pages without escaping contemporary Brussels . Along with a wealth of colour illustrations from the period.
The Brontës in Brussels presents a fascinating look at how this city influenced the two sisters’ hearts and imaginations. Cogent details transport the time-traveller immediately: we follow Charlotte on a ramble along the Rue de Louvain, where she refreshed herself with a coffee and currant bun; we slip into an illustration of a wide, leafy boulevard with views over the surrounding countryside, and find ourselves at once elated and heartsick to touch this Brussels we will never know. Thanks to Helen’s book, however, this vanished city still has a pulse. She guides us to those corners where, if we close our eyes, we might still detect a horse’s hoof or rustle of silk in the endless drone of traffic. Such moments bring a familiar frisson to those of us who have spent many years in Brussels and fallen in love with her enigmas.
Most moving of all is Helen’s inclusion of Charlotte’s letters to Constantin Heger. The stark intimacy of these confessions draws the reader far from Brussels, all the way to the moorland chill of Yorkshire and the grey-clad little woman who anguished there, in physical and emotional exile from her “promised land”. It is with a strange sort of clairvoyance that we read those letters, knowing as we do how Charlotte’s genius would eventually transform her despair into great art.
brusselsbronte
Brussels is so important to the Bronte story . Charlotte's experience there and after over shadows Emily's. Natural enough , but Brussels had to have an impact on Emily in the music she heard there
BeantwoordenVerwijderenWe cannot quite realize the fact that if one wanted to hear any music, a flute much less an orchestra, one had to witness the actual playing of it in real time. They would consider our musical devices of even 100 years ago , a miracle on a par with the parting of the Red sea
We know the music she heard in Brussels meant a great deal to Emily because one of the few things found in her desk was a program from a concert. She doesn't strike on as a collector of souvenirs generally and so it;s significant
As to Charlotte's letters, when Charlotte wrote those letters far as she knew, she would never be in the company again of such a mind as Heger.'s. She was stuck back in Haworth having seen the greater world. She would eventual devise a plan of of at least mental escape . Emily would help