International Impressions

In Confessions of a Young Man, George Moore famously admitted: "I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress but capable of receiving any; of being molded into all shapes." The dust jacket of George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds announces that the volume's eighteen essays—selected from the first trilingual international conference, "George Moore: Literature and the Arts," held in University College, Cork, on 18–20 March 2005—offer "fresh insights into diverse elements" of Moore's œuvre and reflect the wide variety of his "literary innovations, influences and legacy." Readers will not be disappointed: here is Moore in all shapes and guises—from autobiographer to Voltairian—through the lenses of Irish, English, American, French, Spanish, Brazilian, and Greek scholars.

The essays are grouped under five headings. "Portraits of the Artists" begins with a lively essay by biographer Adrian Frazier (George Moore 1852–1933 [2000], reviewed in ELT 44:3) who—with a riposte to Denis Donoghue—rehabilitates the often-disparaged Moore (Yeats being the primary culprit). According to Frazier, what Moore feared "was that his current book would not be as good as those by Balzac, Turgenev, or Flaubert; that it would not be cherished as a work of art by connoisseurs during his lifetime, and by posterity after his death." Frazier goes on to show that Moore's fears were unfounded.

Next under scrutiny is how the protagonists of A Mummer's Wife and Evelyn Innes are "engaged in a dual process of self-creation and self-destruction": acting takes its alienating toll on the bodies and minds of both actresses. Moreover, in these and other "artist novels," the author detects "an unmistakeable metafictional component that foreshadows modernism." Then comes an interesting study of the female hysteric as failed artist in the second edition of Vain Fortune, where Moore reaches conclusions similar to Freud's regarding hysteria as a response to dysfunctional parenting and childhood trauma, although where Freud posits that trauma is repressed into the unconscious and recovered under hypnosis, Moore illustrates how traumatic memory is "obsessively recalled and verbalised every time a new wound is added to the old scars." A lack of catharsis leads to tragedy: "It is their powerlessness to displace, and thus transform, their personal tragedies into creative matter which propels them [Emily Watson and Hubert Price] into hysteria, depression, and suicide."

"Wider Horizons" opens with a study of The Untilled Field that examines how Moore is able "to shift emphasis from external conflict to the internal exploration of consciousness and polyphonic narration." Next comes an interesting analysis of Moore's links with the satirical republican daily Le Voltaire, where he published (on 4 November 1879) a letter on his proposed translation of Émile Zola's La Curée (his English editor rejected the idea) which would be, he writes, "une reconstitution fidèle de son style" (an accurate reconstruction of his style). The essay also examines The Lake's "Enlightenment values and attitudes concerning religion and freedom of thought." There follows a fascinating piece on Moore's reception in Spain, where censorship (1938 to 1976), coupled with Moore's controversial character (a 1927 article mentions his "tongue which drills the walls"), delayed publication of his work there until 1942 (two stories from Celibate Lives). Amazingly, not one of Moore's novels has been translated into Spanish. The last essay in this group is on the importance of Confessions of a Young Man to Brazilian literary studies, a somewhat puzzling premise given that the book has not been translated into Portuguese.

"Smooth Passages" begins with a study of Moore's 1924 translation (via Jacques Amyot's 1559 French version) of The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe, with Moore's "amplifications" of Longus nonetheless retaining his "highly rhetorical style." Moore even reinstates some of the erotic scenes (nude bathing, sexual initiation) excised by Amyot. Next is editor Pierse's demonstration of Moore's "unremitting engagement with social, sexual, artistic, religious, literary and...