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The Europeans
By Orlando Figes
Metropolitan, 562 pages, $35
BYDANHOFSTADTER
C
ULTURAL HISTORYis
frequently written as
if circumscribed by
national borders, with
each country laying
claim to a discrete social and intel-
lectual way of life. Dismayed at this
tendency, Orlando Figes, a noted
historian of Russia, found himself
wondering whether the forces of
transnational integration weren’t at
least as decisive as those that would
drive cultures apart. In his new study
“The Europeans” he aims “to ap-
proach Europe as a space of cultural
transfers, translations and exchanges
crossing national boundaries, out of
which a ‘European culture’—an inter-
national synthesis of artistic forms,
ideas and styles—would come into ex-
istence and distinguish Europe from
the broader world. As Kenneth Clark
once said, nearly all the great ad-
vances in civilization...havebeen
during periods of the utmost inter-
nationalism.” In this view, not only is
there nothing sinister about appro-
priating artistic forms from other eth-
nic groups, but such cross-cultural
borrowing is the predominant way,
anthropologically speaking, that artis-
tic expression evolves and mutates.
Mr. Figes has chosen the inter-
twined lives of three Europeans to
illustrate the growth of this cosmo-
politan sensibility during the 19th
century. They are Pauline Viardot, née
Garcia (1821-1910), one of the finest
singers and all-around musicians of
the period, born in Paris to Spanish
parents; her much older husband,
Louis Viardot (1800-83), a French
theater manager, scholar, journalist,
art collector and translator; and Ivan
Turgenev, the Russian novelist (1818-
83), who was for decades Pauline’s
devoted admirer and off-and-on lover.
These three were almost constantly
on the move throughout Europe,
though not always together, and if the
nature of their connection frequently
shifted—in part because Louis and
Pauline’s marriage was not a love-
match but rather a kind of protective
arrangement for a young mezzo-
soprano—their immersion in foreign
cultures never lost its passionate
intensity. Mr. Figes is not concerned
with the intimate aspects of this tri-
angle, which have besides been
treated elsewhere. His chief concern
is with the connection between
money and the arts, because the re-
muneration of the artist—along with
accurate attribution of authorship and
copyright protection—was in fact the
precondition for an expanding realm
of pan-European culture.
Glancing recently at my copy of
“Illusions Perdues” (“Lost Illusions”),
Balzac’s 1843 masterpiece about a
young provincial’s struggle to gain a
foothold in Parisian journalism and
literary writing, I found the margins
littered with dense arithmetical nota-
tions in my handwriting: Clearly the
story couldn’t be understood without
a good grasp of who was indebted
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In the 19th century, technology, commerce and art combined to knit Europe’s many cultures together
to whom, and by how much. This
running ledger, this constant trans-
mutation of artistic endeavor into
unabashed bookkeeping, forms the
backbone of Mr. Figes’s work. That
he has managed to accomplish it so
lucidly and entertainingly is a re-
markable feat in itself, but it also
illuminates much about the very na-
ture of art and society in 19th-century
Europe.
His monumental work is the prod-
uct of thorough and extensive re-
search, largely in archival sources and
in several languages. The author has
a remarkable capacity to keep a huge
quantity of factual material present in
mind, and to bind it moreover into a
coherent story. Woven through the
biographical narrative is a detailed
account of the transformations in
technology, mores and law that cre-
ated the new cosmopolitanism.
Chief among these was the rapid
construction of railways, such that in
France alone, for example, well more
than 8,000 miles of track were laid
down between 1850 and 1870. Railway
travel gave people the time and com-
fort to read newspapers and fiction,
which they could procure in the doz-
ens of station bookstalls set up by
merchants like W.H. Smith. “The
train,” Mr. Figes notes, “was smoother
than a horse-drawn carriage on a
bumpy road, enabling passengers toread a book more easily.” Literacy had
increased dramatically, and the rotary
press, invented in 1843, facilitated
the production of a vast quantity of
printed matter, distribution of which
deep into the provinces was in turn
driven by the ramifying network of
trains. Previously most writers, if not
independently wealthy, had labored
hard merely to stay alive, but climb-
ing sales figures gave them steel in
their spine to demand better pay-
ment. Turgenev’s case was a little dif-
ferent, in that he got by as a rentier
before his first success, receiving a
portion of his family’s land income
from his mother back in Russia; yet
even after his breakthrough his writ-
ing was widely pirated, mangled by
czarist censorship and crudely mis-
translated. Despite growing public
adoration, especially in Russia, he was
never handsomely paid.
The vast expansion of railway net-
works, along with the growth of
steamship lines plying rivers like the
Rhine and the Danube, transformed
tourism, traditionally a patrician
affair, into an activity affordable to
middle-class people. “‘Culture’ was
the biggest draw,” Mr. Figes writes.
“Tourists...approached culture as
acquisitions or commodities,” yet at
the same time their easy shuttling
about the continent created a sense of
shared patrimony. “Italian” art and“German” music could conceivably
belong to everybody.
The spread of gas lighting, in-
vented in the 1790s, made it possible
for people to read comfortably in the
evening. It also enabled them to play
the piano at home, and of course
piano technology had kept pace: The
instruments became easier to play,
and cheaper as well. In 1845, by the
author’s estimation, 100,000 people inParis were playing the piano, of which
there were 60,000 in a city of about
one million people. The popularity of
airs drawn from the musical stage led
to an enormous production of sheet
music based on reductions for two
or four hands, which meant a lot of
money for music publishers and, by
extension, for musicians themselves.
One of these musicians was Pauline
Viardot. Though her voice and vocal
style were acclaimed early on by
music lovers, she had no money of
her own. An initial experience of re-jection by the Paris Opéra toughened
her up. “Forced to go abroad to earn
a living on the stage,” Mr. Figes tells
us, “she saw her earnings as a token
of her value as a professional art-
ist....Hercredowasasimple one:
singers were respected when they
were well paid.” Among her many
admirers were Gounod, Berlioz and
Chopin, six of whose Mazurkas she
arranged for voice and piano. (Chopin,
wanting any knack for dealing with
the world of commerce, had re-
ceived—stand back—300 francs
apiece, the equivalent of a couple
thousand dollars today, in France for
the Mazurkas and the Nocturnes.)
Berlioz perceived that Pauline’s
voice was equaled by her sensitive
musicianship. She was not a beautiful
woman, but she had the gift of loving
her friends, and like Turgenev the
tormented Berlioz grew besotted with
her (without, however, winning her
favors). She helped him to revise the
vocal writing in Gluck’s “Orphée,”
triumphing in the opera in 1859 in
a costume she designed with the
painter Eugène Delacroix, and she
also helped to create a piano-and-
voice version of Berlioz’s opera “Les
Troyens.”
There is in French an expression,
“la disponibilité” (“availability”), that
refers to the artist’s traditional will-
PleaseturntopageC9MAKING CONNECTIONS‘The Gare Saint-Lazare: Arrival of a Train’ (1877) by Claude Monet.
BRIDGEMAN IMAGESThe rotary press gave
Europeans quantities of
printed matter that,
thanks to gas lighting,
filled their evening hours.© 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 6DJ7417Explore
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