Reviews for Armenia, Its Present Crisis and Past History

The average rating for Armenia, Its Present Crisis and Past History based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-15 00:00:00 John Shannon Manon Lescaut is a deceptive novel in multiple ways. It could be easily labeled as a classic, picturesque short tale of a doomed love affair between a noble young man, Chevalier des Grieux, and a beautiful maiden from a lower breed, set in the Paris of The Régence, a convulsive era where class structures and ancient regime ruled the world. Told from the male lover point of view in a fast-paced, flowing narrative, the reader is presented with the irrevocable passion, almost obsession des Grieux is consumed with when he first sets his eyes on Manon, a fatal moment which will make his inner peace crumble down and bring him to perform all sort of dubious acts, even to commit murder, to keep his beloved with him. Des Grieux constructs his own story in retrospection, using a nameless narrator who crosses paths with him almost at the end of his misadventures, giving this way a foreboding tone to the story. "Love has made me too soft, too passionate, too faithful and perhaps over-indulgent of the desires of a most charming woman; and that is the sum of my crimes" says des Grieux, talking about his beloved Manon, the temptress, and the one to blame for his forthcoming misdeeds. The fact that we only get to hear Manon’s voice throughout des Grieux’s account leaves the reader completely blind about her character, devoid of her motivations or her true feelings. Des Grieux describes her as a fickle, capricious creature prone to take other lovers in order to live lavishly. So Manon appears as a cold, calculating character, becoming a sort of desirable object to possess, an object des Grieux rightfully believes to belong to him. But still, in the rare passages where Manon can voice her quiescent values, we can envisage a strong spirit who keeps defying des Grieux’s views with her struggles to remain her own mistress. Couldn’t it be that in challenging him to broaden his conservative views about relationships, Manon would also be challenging the imposed gender politics of the time? In any case, the driven plot of the story takes sweet revenge separating the lovers again and again in myriad forms: family, legal authority and the gulf between social classes keep preventing them from being together until they receive the ultimate punishment in being exiled to the colonies in New Orleans, where against all odds and once set free of the French, rotten social pressures, the idea of a simple, bare existence in a new world impregnates them with a wish to live at peace with rekindled values of virtue and morality, flirting even with an improbable happy ending, which makes the final twist in the story even more brusque and cruel than expected. As I stated at the beginning of this rambling review, this self-righteous account, this seemingly lineal plot and simple, direct style can be misleading. My first instinctive reaction to the story was to doubt the veracity of des Grieux’s biased tale for he is a flawed hero and unreliable narrator. His constant search for self-excuse, his vain urge in blaming others for his own acts, his theatrical, almost parodic explosion of emotive outbursts and his unremorseful confession of using them to take advantage of others made it very difficult to empathize with him. But what most struck me when trying to add perspective into the story was the shameful realization that my dislike for des Grieux came from recognition, as his futile attempts at trying to hold on to Manon revealed the universal impossibility of a mutual understanding, the hopelessness of a complete possession of the other. No simple tale then, but a novel which oozes with the complexity of human relationships and the tragic consequences of trying to cross the barrier of subjectivity in appealing to raw emotions, as one can’t disengage from individual consciousness , however much we try. "What fatal power had dragged me down to crime? How came it that love, an innocent passion, had turned for me into the source of all misery and vice" wonders a despairing des Grieux. Exalted existential questions about the tragic consequences of being in love, as being infected by an incurable disease, which robs us of our former selves, blinding us with passion, making it difficult to find our place in a material world where authority and order prevail over emotions. And in this sense, I’d say that Manon Lescaut is a disruptive novel because in giving free expression to des Grieux’s feelings, even if charged with subjectivity, Prévost is encouraging us to reach our own truths through language, although he also whispers a warning, reminding us that our own reached reality might be easily misunderstood by those we love the most and by the world we live in.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-28 00:00:00 Jill Swanston [ The Chevalier has spent the book insisting that he would prefer to die than to lose Manon. On several occasions when Manon appears to be lost for good, he seriously considers suicide as the preferable alternative to life without her. Which would be at least vaguely romantic, I suppose. But after he has dragged Manon into the wilderness of Lousiana, causing her to die from some combination of exhaustion and exposure, does he immolate himself on her pyre? Does he run himself through to mingle his blood with hers? Does he blow out his brains in hope of joining her in the idiot's lounge in heaven? No. He goes home to France. End of story. Seriously. The book practically ends with, "So I made my way back to France, to see where life would take me next." There's that Alanis Morissette lyric that reminds her ex-lover that he told her he'd hold her until he died, so now their love is over, why is he still alive? That's the question I would ask the Chevalier, who is exposed in the end, by his own admission, as a melodramatic twit for whom Manon was the world... until she wasn't. (hide spoiler)]