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| Cover of 1st edition of La Belle Bête, 1959. Source: https://laurentiana.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/marie-claire-blais-la-belle-bete.html |
Once upon a time there stood an evil farm where Hatred, Vanity and Vengeance ruled... Marie-Claire Blais's La Belle Bête reads easy, but offers its reader no comfort, as the world of this Quebec author is cold and frightening. The characters are torn away by their passions, but the only true feelings here are hatred and envy, any positive feelings are either fake or selfish or borne by people who are either blind or mad (i. e. mentally blind). Physical beauty is one of the central themes (as the title implies), but it is always accompanied by a physical or mental flaw, and always - by a flawed soul. Yes, in her novel Blais leaves no place for hope, no "crack" through which the light would get in. And yet it is an interesting work.
The novel was published in Quebec at the end of 1950s, but it without a doubt has a universal appeal because it is void of any local color, of any common details or social commentary. Like in Shakespearean theater with its stage set only by a board with a word "Forest" on it, here the author introduces places of action by naming them "farm", "forest", "lake", etc., but no further details are given. Any common objects that are mentioned play a symbolic rather than descriptive role (all those mirrors or a gilded cane...). There are no laborers on that farm, except the daughter works there when she has nothing else to do with her life (and no details of her work are given, she just "spends her time" there). And so we have a universal and poetic parable about a vane and unjust mother, her ugly daughter and a handsome son, that and a Shakespearean number of corpses by the final scene.
At this point I would like to mention that the novel was written by a 20-year old and I dare say it shows. I would be curious to read her later works.
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