4.0
Miracle of the Rose
ByPublisher Description
“One of the greatest achievements of modern literature.”—Richard Howard
“A major achievement . . . . Genet transforms experiences of degradation into spiritual exercises and hoodlums into bearers of the majesty of love.”—Saturday Review
“Genet can use a brutal phraseology that makes prison life specific and immediate. Yet through his singular sensibility, these elements are transmuted into something fragile, rare, beautiful.”—The New York Times
“This book recreates for the reader Genet’s magic world, one of dazzling beauty charged with novelty and excitement.”—Bettina Knapp
“Genet would have deserved international standing for this novel alone. . . . He succeeds to an amazing degree in creating poetry from the profoundest degradation.”—The Times (London)
“A major achievement . . . . Genet transforms experiences of degradation into spiritual exercises and hoodlums into bearers of the majesty of love.”—Saturday Review
“Genet can use a brutal phraseology that makes prison life specific and immediate. Yet through his singular sensibility, these elements are transmuted into something fragile, rare, beautiful.”—The New York Times
“This book recreates for the reader Genet’s magic world, one of dazzling beauty charged with novelty and excitement.”—Bettina Knapp
“Genet would have deserved international standing for this novel alone. . . . He succeeds to an amazing degree in creating poetry from the profoundest degradation.”—The Times (London)
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesMiracle of the Rose Reviews
4.0
Kami
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od1_40reads
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“My second work by Genet, and again I’m bowled over by his astonishing talent.
Described as a monster of French literature, Genet’s writing finds beauty in the darkest of places. Here he writes about his time incarcerated during the 1940s in Fontevrault prison, a former monastery in France, and also back to his childhood at Mettray Penal Colony for young, male delinquents.
Genet writes of the tortured beauty he finds in the horrors of prison life - the filth, relentless beatings, hunger, solitary confinement, public defecation, rape, gang rape and the ultimate pinnacle of glory and ascension, the death sentence by guillotine.
In amongst all this, Genet focuses on the relationships he develops with his inmates; some friends, some lovers, with some individuals elevated to saintlike status. He writes of prison life as a deeply religious experience.
I doubt this will be for everyone, but if you can stomach it, it’s an outstanding work.
“One day, Harcamone [an inmate, sentenced to death by guillotine for murder] got drunk. Wine could not pickle an angel on a mission, but it did turn him blue. Coloured by the blue wine, he meandered all over the Colony, stumbling, tottering, hiccuping, belching, without anyone’s seeing him. The memory of that powdered murderer lurching among the laurels still sets me dreaming. Ah! I madly love all that strange masquerade of crime. Those princes and princess of high, shameless audacity [the inmates], those “Marie Antoinettes”, those stunning “Lamballes” emit charms that stagger me. The smell of their armpits after a race is the smell of orchards! Harcamone, drunk, with his dick beribboned, was singing in the yard! No one saw him, but did he see anyone? Even though his eyes were open, they were shut.“”
Evan Zuk
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Sairam Satheesan
Created about 3 years agoShare
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Anna D
Created over 3 years agoShare
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