THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS
Robertson Davies
New York: Viking, 1989
472 pp., $19.95
WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE
Robertson Davies
New York: Viking, 1985
436 pp., $17.95
THE REBEL ANGELS
Robertson Davies
New York: Viking, 1982
$13.95
To open the Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, or The Lyre of Orpheus--the novels composing Canadian author Robertson Davies' latest trilogy--is to enter a world of magic, where alchemy and illusion mingle with scholarship, angels and dead artists speak, Gypsies break bread with professors, and ordinary people quest for truth and adventure.
Like his earlier Deptford trilogy--Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders--Davies' recent novels are deeply imaginative, rich with allegory and symbol, peopled with eccentric, outspoken, and intriguing characters, and concerned not only with the nature of personality, but of the soul and the heart. "But let us, I entreat you, explore the miraculous that dwells in the depths of the mind," writes the composer E.T.A. Hoffman in The Lyre of Orpheus; it is an invitation that Davies extends to the reader on every page.
In The Rebel Angels, we are introduced to most of the characters who will be called on to confront both the miraculous qualities and the troubling depths of their hearts and minds throughout the trilogy. Maria Magdelena Theotoky is one of the narrators, a beautiful, brilliant graduate student of Rabelais who hopes that the energetic pursuit of scholarship will undo the influence of her Gypsy heritage. She is in love with her mentor, Clement Hollier, a stuffy professor of "paleo-psychology," who studies remnants of folk belief to discover the way the mind worked in different ages. He is fascinated by Maria's mother, Madame Laoutaro, and her uncle Yerko, who doctors worn-out violins with ancient remedies and does a handy business creating "antique" violins on the side.
When art collector Francis Cornish dies, Hollier becomes his executor with two other professors: nasty, narcissistic Urquhart McVarish, whom Hollier suspects of stealing a Rabelaisian manuscript he wants for Maria; and Simon Darcourt, a genial Anglican priest who serves as the other narrator. The three work with Arthur Cornish, Francis' efficient banking nephew, who longs to be a patron in the world of culture. They are also romanced, exasperated, and exploited by John Parlabane, ex-monk and ex-philosophy professor, hot at work on a great autobiographical novel that turns out to be unbearably boring.
The child in the man
Parlabane is a skeptic, a slob, a raconteur, and a scoundrel; a Dickensian character with a nose for gossip, innuendo, and human weakness, and a houndlike persistence in cadging money from his friends. One doesn't trust him for a minute, but he articulates one of the
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