J’ai découvert ce livre il y a peu sur une liste de lecture amie, et j’ai été surprise de le trouver sur les rayonnages d’une boutique d’occasions alors que je regardais les titres sans idée précise en tête. Mon édition, dans la collection biblio du Livre de poche, est un cadeau dans le cadre d’une offre promotionnelle. Cela explique peut-être la mise en page assez désagréable (lettres qui bavent un peu, et une police de caractère beaucoup trop dense pour être agréable), mais j’étais vraiment curieuse de lire cette œuvre inachevée, alors je me suis accrochée.
C’est facile de dire d’une œuvre inachevée qu’elle aurait été le chef-d’œuvre de son auteur, comme le fait abondamment la quatrième de couverture ou l’appareil critique qui entoure ce début de roman… C’est un roman d’aventure de Stevenson qui commence de façon assez classique. Une opposition entre un père conservateur et son fils exalté, une histoire d’amour qui va à l’encontre des conventions sociales, une nature omniprésente qui reflète les caractères tourmentés et les sentiments sombres… Un roman prometteur, dont on peut deviner les grands traits de la suite qui ne sera jamais écrite.
Une lecture plutôt intéressante et agréable pour moi qui n’avait pas lu de roman d’aventure de Stevenson depuis longtemps, il faut juste accepter de se voir couper dans son élan, ce qui a un petit caractère frustrant mais pas dénué de piquant. C’est marrant, j’ai sur mes étagères un autre roman inachevé de Stevenson, [La Malle de cuir] (lui achevé par Michel Le Bris), je me demande si Stevenson était habitué à laisser des œuvres en plan. Mais ici, c’est la mort qui a empêché Stevenson de mener à bien cette histoire, puisqu’il y travaillait encore la veille de sa mort. Une curiosité à découvrir donc que ce début de roman, qui peut-être, c’est vrai ; aurait pu être un chef-d’œuvre d’aventure et de noirceur.

Am I allowed to be mad at RLS for dying while writing this? It was so slow, and had finally just starting to get better!

Also, it’s basically David Copperfield without the orphaning part. ( )

La società scozzese, i suoi valori, la transizione da un mondo di certezze a una situazione ricca di dilemmi e contraddizioni, il tema della memoria come rivisitazione delle proprie radici socio-culturali nell'ultimo, incompiuto romanzo di Stevenson
Nel suo ultimo romanzo, rimasto incompiuto, Stevenson affronta il tema della memoria intesa sia come rivisitazione nostalgica delle proprie radici storico-culturali, sia come poderosa sintesi delle molte voci - storiche e leggendarie - che costituivano il cuore e l'essenza della Scozia. Un aspetto saliente di Weir di Hermiston riguarda la valenza conflittuale che lo caratterizza, facendo dei vari livelli narrativi il luogo di una tensione che mai si risolve: il figlio contro il padre, il presente contro il passato, la lingua inglese contro il dialetto scozzese, Edimbugo contro Hermiston, la legge contro l'anarchia, la memoria contro l'oblio. Nella scelta tematica della figura del giudice, implacabile anche nei confronti del proprio figlio, Stevenson delinea la crisi dei valori fondanti della società scozzese e la drammatica transizione da un mondo di certezze e verità incrollabili a una società percorsa da dilemmi e contraddizioni.

By either account, it is a blessing that this novel remains unfinished. The two people who shared Stevenson’s confidences, reveal endings that could have seriously degraded his effort. The “Weir of Hermiston” carries us to the point where whatever “inevitable mechanics” were about to bring the story into conformity with one genre or another. Then Stevenson died, suddenly, in Samoa.

The first part of a tragedy is always the best and least punishing.The father and son who anchor the novel receive narrative sympathy and criticism in a pleasantly unresolved mixture. Even a number of the minor characters are thrown into varying lights as they are sketched into the happenings. This keeps things fresh and interesting. The reader is not allowed to get comfortable with his judgments or confident in his interpretations. Critics emphasize that this has to do with Stevenson’s contention that the Scotch character is divided—a theme he made most famous with “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

His language also vacillates between two poles; one is the exquisitely crafted, psychologically aware 19th century prose that Stevenson had been refining throughout his career: “Clem and Gib, who were men exactly virtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand’s irregularities as a kind of clog or drawback in the mysterious providence God affixed to bards;” “Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine.”

The other pole is Scots dialect (make sure your edition includes a glossary or explanatory footnotes): “Ye daft auld wife! A bonny figure I would be, palmering about in bauchles!” “You and your noansense! What do I want with a Christian faim’ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets.”

It is only moments of deep human connection and drama that prompt the rare combination of these opposite modes of communication. I do not intend to reveal the details of the story (betrayal, love, rivalry etc)—it is finely wrought and believable, little more than one hundred pages. Absolutely worth an afternoon of reading. ( )

I hadn't realized until I got to the end that "an unfinished romance" is not a poetic subtitle but a literal description: the author died before completing it. However, it is less frustrating than Dickens's "Mystery of Edwin Drood", since we have a better idea of how the plot was intended to proceed. Although I wouldn't rate this as a great work of literature, there are some nice little vignettes of early 19th-century Scottish lowland life. MB 11-xii-06 ( )