The Lyre of Orpheus (original 1988; edition 1989)

This is the third book in the Cornish trilogy from the pen of Robertson Davies (the others being Rebel Angels and What's Bred in the Bone). This book is told from the perspective of Simon Darcourt who was an executor of the will of Francis Cornish and who has been commissioned to write the biography of that man. Interestingly, the biography was detailed in What's Bred in the Bone but we get more information about how Darcourt discovered some of the information about Cornish.

Darcourt is part of the board of The Cornish Foundation, a charitable institution set up with the late Cornish's fortune, and in that capacity he becomes involved in a scheme to put on an opera about the life of King Arthur. The Cornish Foundation has agreed to back a young music student who wants to finish the opera begun by E. T. A. Hoffmann who died before it could be completed. Hulda Schnakenburg is dirty, foul-mouthed and foul-tempered but her professors think she has genius and think she could complete this monumental task with the advice of the right person. Enter Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot, a Scandinavian professor of music with eccentric taste in clothes and an ability to drink that astonishes. She takes the Schnak in hand, cleans her up, makes love to her and assures that the enterprise will be finished. Darcourt is pressed into writing the libretto for the opera. Arthur and Maria Cornish write the cheques. Geraint Powell, a handsome Shakespearean actor who wants to become a director, undertakes to do all the business to put the opera on the stage in Stratford. It soon becomes apparent that the myth of King Arthur is going to be played out in Ontario with Arthur Cornish as King Arthur, Maria as Guinevere and Powell as Lancelot. And the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann (ETAH) hovers over all of them from his spot in Limbo where he languishes because he died before he finished his opera. He is most interested in the outcome because if it is finished he may get to leave Limbo.

Davies shows his love for theatre in this book. After all, he was an actor with the Old Vic Company in London, England before he became a publisher and writer. Davies also wrote two libretti amongst all his other fiction. For this reason I think the sentiments espoused by Simon Darcourt are autobiographical. I found Darcourt charming and I suspect I would have adored Robertson Davies in person. Unfortunately Davies died in 1995 with another trilogy only two-thirds complete. Does this mean he is sitting in limbo waiting for someone to finish it so he can be freed? If so, and if he can read this, I hope he realizes his influence on Canadian life and literature is still being felt. The following portion of the Wikipedia page on Davies shows that:

Davies is one of the authors mentioned in the Moxy Früvous song "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors". The line "Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies" makes reference to his long white beard.
In The Sacred Art of Stealing, Christopher Brookmyre (an admirer of Davies) has a character refer to a painting of "The Marriage at Cana", saying that some experts consider it to be a fake. This is a reference to a decidedly fake (although excellent) picture painted by Francis Cornish, the protagonist in What's Bred in the Bone. Many of the characters in Brookmyre's novels are named after characters in Davies's books.
John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany contains several references to Davies' novels, including strong echoes of Fifth Business; for example, the narrators of both novels work as teachers in Toronto in private schools (Bishop Strachan School in Meany and a fictionalisation of Upper Canada College in Davies's novels).
Indie-rock band Tokyo Police Club references the gravel pit scene in Fifth Business. ( )

This is excerpted from my review of the entire Cornish trilogy.
In the final novel of the trilogy, Maria from the first novel has married Arthur Cornish, Francis Cornish's nephew and heir, and they have established a foundation to carry out Francis's legacy. Their first project is supporting an unformed but brilliant young musician who is attempting to fulfill the requirements for her doctorate by completing an unfinished opera about King Arthur by E. T. A. Hoffman. At the same time, Simon Darcourt, again from the first novel, is struggling with his biography of Francis, also commissioned by the foundation, because he doesn't know, what readers of the second novel know, about Francis's wartime years in Europe.

The creation of the opera gives Davies free rein to depict the artistic and theatrical processes, explore connections between the contemporary characters and those of the Arthurian legend, introduce some wonderful new characters to the mix, and allow some familiar characters the opportunity to grow and discover themselves. Towards the very end, Davies quotes Keats: "A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory -- and very few can see the Mystery of his life." Davies' genius is that he lets us see the mystery and the allegorical aspects of his characters while keeping their feet firmly on the ground of this world.

What a disappointment! Finding that Robertson Davies, whom i have normally considered to be a marvellous story-teller and creator of immensely plausible characters, was capable of writing insubstantial blether of this nature was a bit like stumbling across Sibelius's hitherto unknown concerto for kazoo.
This was the third volume in Davies's Cornish trilogy but it is entirely unworthy even to be referred to in the same paragraph as its two predecessors, "The Rebel Angels" and "What's bred In The Bone". ( )

This is the third and final book of Davies’ Cornish trilogy, so named after Francis Cornish, the central figure of the books despite two of them being set after his death. You could split the three books in different ways – for example Book 1 (Rebel Angels) is about literature and the world of academia; Book 2 (What’s Bred in the Bone) is about art and the world of art, i.e. artists, art critics, art curators, art forgers, the works; and Book 3 (The Lyre of Orpheus) is about music and the world of theatre, opera in particular. Or you could say Book 1 is about the immediate impact of the death of Francis Cornish; Book 2 is about Cornish himself, and all the things that made his life extraordinary; and Book 3 about the long-term impact of his life and death, reaching forward into the arts in Canada, and backwards all the way to E.T.A. Hoffmann, languishing in limbo since his death in 1822.

It wouldn’t feel fitting to be too learned and serious in our analysis of these books. Sure, they’re jammed full of the most vivid and scholarly ideas I’ve read in any novel written in the last 30 years*. I’ve said before that Davies is so wonderfully intelligent that every paragraph of his books is a delight for both the mind and the imagination. But the flavour of Davies is not serious and earnest. His language is never dense or difficult. His characters never verge on the postmodern, or even the modern (not implying anything against these things), but they are firmly lodged within their own story: sympathetic, complicated, and really incredibly fun. In these books, Davies is often flamboyant, wacky, or at least theatrical – and yet I think you have to read Davies to really see how he handles that wackiness, because it isn’t weird, or surreal, or silly. He takes situations or character types that fit into that category, and then he fills them with thought and personality and contradictions. And he puts them into the world and makes them seem real.

The Lyre of Orpheus is about the beginnings of an opera which E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote before his death about the King Arthur myth called Arthur of Britain; or The Magnanimous Cuckold. (Davies made this up, the opera does not in fact exist.) The fortune accumulated by Francis Cornish now funds the Cornish Foundation, an arts patron group made up of the characters we came to know and love in Rebel Angels. So the Foundation takes on a bunch of colourful new characters and funds them to finish the opera and produce it. So we enter the world of theatre and music, and very theatrical it is, too. At the same time, the members of the Foundation are unconsciously living out their own King Arthur story, following the plot of the opera in the modern world. And on top of all this, Hoffmann himself, who has been languishing in limbo since his death, is taking a great interest in this production of his unfinished opera, looking down (or out?) upon it in the hopes that it will be produced successfully so that he can leave limbo and go on to wherever he’s going next.

Hoffman’s part is interesting, and not what I would have expected. He provides a commentary on how opera production in the 20th century is so different from that of his own time. He only gives us a few insights into his own life, and his commentary on what he wants from the opera only appears a couple of times. He is definitely not a prominent character. By excellent fortune, I happened to read Hoffmann’s book The Life and Adventures of the Tomcat Murr not long ago, and this book is referred to often in The Lyre of Orpheus. In Tomcat Murr, there are sections about a musician called Kreisler – ultra-romantic, emotional, full of unbearable joys and unbearable agony – the archetype of the Romantic artist. I had understood that Kreisler was modelled in some way on Hoffmann himself. Whether that is the case or not, Davies does not depict him like that here. The Hoffmann of The Lyre of Orpheus is strangely unemotional – maybe because he is in limbo? However, Powell, another character in the book, takes on this romantic role instead, though not exactly the same. The tomcat Murr himself is mentioned often throughout the book as a shortcut to explaining people who are self-satisfied and disinclined to grow or move on – what Hoffmann called Philistines. For me personally, it was an extra delight to read a Roberston Daveis book in which E.T.A. Hoffmann also featured. What a combination!

In What’s Bred in the Bone, Davies explores the idea of an artist’s thought and style belonging to a past age rather than in his own. Should an artist paint in a bygone style? Is it still art, or merely imitation? He asks these questions but doesn’t provide a definitive answer. Then, in The Lyre of Orpheus, this theme continues, as modern-day people try to create an opera in the style Hoffmann would have done over a century and a half earlier. Can it still be art? Can it still succeed? The reason I mention this is because I think it is a question that really meant something to Robertson Davies. He is a writer whose style and way of thinking belongs more to the 19th than the 20th century. He probably had to ask these questions of himself all his life. Maybe it’s the reason Davies isn’t as well known as I think he should be – because his art belongs to a past style, was never cutting edge or ‘new’, so maybe too many readers failed to see the strength of ideas in his work.

It feels as though I have left out so many things in this review that are worth talking about, but I have to stop somewhere. I loved the whole Cornish trilogy. I know I will read them again, more than once. I hope to read everything Davies ever wrote. These are great books, and deserve to be better known.

*To be quite fair, I must acknowledge that I certainly haven’t read everything published in these decades, and most notably I haven’t yet read David Foster Wallace. ( )

Hulda Schnackenberg, a graduate student in musicology and composition, is selected to complete a recently-discovered opera by E.T.A. Hoffman on the legend of King Arthur. (Bob Copeland)

Third in a trilogy by this Canadian author.