Erik and Gollum

[igenlode]

Some of the elements of Erik's character in Leroux are really very reminiscent of Tolkien's subsequent creation of Gollum; the tendency to weep and cringe and refer to oneself in the third person, to giggle in a nasty way, and of course to be consumed by longing for the unattainable within full view, to the extent of commiting murder to get it ;-p
And there's that scene where he paddles away across the lake with only his two eyes visible, which is an almost palpable echo of the subsequent scene in "The Lord of the Rings" where Gollum is spotted in the dusk paddling along after Frodo's boat.

I wonder if Tolkien ever did read "The Phantom of the Opera"? I'm sure there wasn't any direct influence involved (Gollum was created for "The Hobbit", which draws its imagery largely from fairy-tales), but "The Hobbit" was actually written only about twenty years later -- because "Phantom" is a historical novel, one tends to forget that it was written in quite a different era from that in which it was set.

He would have been about twenty and up at Oxford when it first came out, and not really in the right demographic to take an interest in that sort of thing -- by the time the film was made and the story acquired popular traction in the English-speaking world, he was busy making translations from Middle English and probably not an aficionado of Lon Chaney horror movies ;-D So I feel the odds are that he probably never read Leroux...

Comments

[darlingdeathbird]

Sorry to just come springing out of the wood-work, here, but I'm really enjoying your posts. I love this kind of analysis of the book, and I'm with you in the "does not ship C/E" camp... although I find their interactions the most fascinating. It's a complicated situation. But I enjoy hearing more about Raoul being interpreted, and the kind of relationship he has with Christine. My interpretation of him has mostly been the whole seeing him as a symbol of her former identity, to simpler and happier times, what she has lost or had mangled by life (and by Erik). But after reading your musings, I think the missed the part where Christine's life dictated that she be more practical, and that it's Raoul doing a lot of the fantasizing. I may have switched that around in my head thanks to some of the adaptations. lol It's hard not for everything to meld together. Anyway, I'm excited to see that there is discussion about POTO on Dreamwidth, still. If you know of any other good communities or blogs that are active on the subject, I'm totally here for it. -Jenny

[igenlode]

Anyway, I'm excited to see that there is discussion about POTO on Dreamwidth, still. If you know of any other good communities or blogs that are active on the subject, I'm totally here for it.

I rather get the impression that this is the only one :-(
We've had a few people join in the past (well, we've only *ever* had a few people join...) with the comment that it's nice to find a community that discusses POTO, never mind the nominal Raoul-focus. But I'm afraid there's never been a great deal of discussion here, because the community's not big or active enough.

And phantomoftheopera is very dead and never really got off the ground...

[darlingdeathbird]

That's really too bad. :/ I imagine it's a lot of millenial/gen-x people hanging around the site these days, and you'd think POTO would be up some of their alleys. It feels like a lot of things I'm passionate about have rarely had a moment of being actually *relevant*... in my lifetime, that is. hahah Well, I'll take what I can get. One new friend to talk about it with still sounds good! And since we're here already, random question: you are fluent in French? Or just studying French? Either way, you possess some keys to doors that I do not! I also brace myself, admitting Lowell Bair is my favorite translation of all that I've read thus far.

[igenlode]

The LiveJournal fan communities just don't seem to have transferred across to Dreamwidth anywhere, from what I gather. (I read an old post on this somewhere recently, laying the blame on the intermediate 'Tumblr stage', which got fans out of the habit of participating in a general public space and put everything into ephemeral private conversations -- never having been part of Tumblr or had a 'dashboard' or anything, I wouldn't really know.)

It feels like a lot of things I'm passionate about have rarely had a moment of being actually *relevant*... in my lifetime, that is.

Well, that's pretty much always been normal for me. LiveJournal fandom was pretty much dead by the time I arrived (phanwank for the POTO fandom staggered along for a little while after I subscribed there, but most of the interesting content there and elsewhere was in the back archives). The big flourishing of "Phantom" fic/discussion took place about ten years before I had any interest in it. The Blake's 7 letterzine/ print magazine culture died shortly after I discovered fandom, with everything moving online (to which I had no access until years later).

Most of the things I've ever been passionate about have been deemed incredibly old-fashioned or out of date, although ironically a lot of that *does* seem to be getting regarded as 'trendy' nowadays...

you are fluent in French? Or just studying French? Either way, you possess some keys to doors that I do not!

Yes, it's extremely handy for general 19th-century research purposes ;-)

I'm decently fluent in written French, provided it's not too colloquial; I can (and occasionally do) read in French for my own entertainment, and I try to check up on any assertions about Leroux by analysing the original text as versus the translator's choice. De Mattos is definitely deeply unreliable simply because he abridges so much (particularly where Raoul is concerned!), which makes it worrying that so many fans seem to treat his translation like the King James Bible... also not entirely reliable for interpretation as Word from On High, but at least a work of dedicated scholarship at the time.

I can't *write* in French with any great degree of competency: even a short comment on Facebook involves an inordinate amount of double-checking of vocabulary and grammar to try to ensure I don't sound too illiterate. And these days I can barely speak it at all ;-p

I can mostly understand spoken French if it is old-fashioned, grammatical and well-enunciated, which is why I get on well with the 1970s adaptation of Leroux's "La Poupée Sanglante"; quickfire radio broadcasts and politicians ranting at crowds are a bit beyond me!

[darlingdeathbird]

Yes, a lot of people went to tumblr after LJ (myself included), and then the tumblr exodus happened. And now, it's like that entire type of fandom subculture fizzled out, and the people who partook in it have all but went extinct. Or they are fine with twitter and instagram? I don't know. It's weird, and it's also hella sad. I was there for LJ's biggest wave, and nothing has compared since then. There was a significant amount of Phan activity, too. I think because the year I joined LJ (2004) was also the year that one film came out... In that regard, calling oneself a "phan" could mean all kinds of things.

I appreciate all the distinctions you make when discussing fluency in a language. As a longtime student of Japanese, they are easy to understand and relate with. I understand older people talking better than young folks using a lot of slang. My listening comprehension is not great, but I can read short stories and retain a lot, and I did write a short fanfic in Japanese. Whether it was good or not, is another thing, but I did feel I could *attempt* it, so I consider that something. lmao Ah, that is still cool though: RE: French. Competency in a language even if not fluent can be so rewarding.

In looking at my phantom book collection, I see that I actually have two copies of De Mattos' translation on hand. But! One book I simply bought for the pretty pictures, without reading it. Another, I read when I was 15 and did not connect with it at all. So I guess I can concur that De Mattos' version is no good. XD

[igenlode]

And now, it's like that entire type of fandom subculture fizzled out, and the people who partook in it have all but went extinct. Or they are fine with twitter and instagram? I don't know.

Well, I was never really around when it was active (the only *active* fandom I've ever been a part of was alt.fan harry-potter on Usenet while the books were
still coming out), so I didn't get to see where it went. It's possible the entire fandom is a lot less active now that the 2004 generation have grown up; it's possible that today's online audience is less skewed towards those with higher education and thus less interested in intellectual debate. (When I was first on the Internet, *everyone* was either accessing it via a university network, a computer geek dialling up from home via Demon Internet, or an American escapee from AOL's walled garden.)

I've heard it hypothesised that most people are now using the Internet on their mobile phones and thus find it a lot harder to type chunks of text beyond a sentence or two, which would tend to impact on all forms of discussion. It may also be a reason why people seem to be commenting less on fan-fiction than was the case back in 2001-2004 -- although I think the fact that the fan-fiction community is now a lot larger and that people don't feel a personal connection with fellow authors probably has a lot to do with that.


Reading, writing, listening and speaking are the standard four components of learning *any* language, and the ones you get examined separately on :-)

I certainly wouldn't attempt to write fanfic in French; I did attempt to comment in German on each successive chapter of a German-language fic, and that was extraordinarily hard work (about a hundred words an hour, although come to think of it that's now my approximate rate of fiction writing in English!)
But I lack basic vocabulary in all languages compared to English, so even for simple critique it's either a case of attempting to find alternative ways to say things using whatever words I do know, or else of spending far too much time checking and double-cross-checking words and phrasings in a dictionary.

One book I simply bought for the pretty pictures, without reading it.

I'm guessing that was the Greg Hildebrandt version?
https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/57079.html

Another, I read when I was 15 and did not connect with it at all. So I guess I can concur that De Mattos' version is no good. XD

I think I read it in the 1980s after listening to the Lloyd Webber soundtrack, or out of curiosity after the 2004 movie came out (I did see that, but was not a fan at the time and didn't become one as a result :-P), possibly looking for answers to plot holes in the movie version! Whenever it was, I do remember that I found the experience very disappointing and wrote the book off as one of those things where the adaptation is much more successful than the original material.

Weirdly enough it never so much as occurred to me (despite the fact that I'd already discovered that "Les Misérables" in French was quite a different experience to reading Hugo's novel in the library's tedious 19th-century English translation) that "The Phantom of the Opera" had been written in French -- I just assumed that the translated text *was* the story, possibly because the Phantom has become part of modern folklore, like Jekyll and Hyde or Dracula. (After all, we never think of Cinderella as French, or Rumplestiltskin as German.) And of course it never for one instant occurred to me that the translator had heavily abridged the content of the book in the process!