Can you note an interesting detail in this cover image? If you do, write about it in the comments!
"La Chevre au Pieds d'Or" by Charles-Henry Hirsch is perhaps the first novel ever published about Mata Hari's saga - in 1920. It set some elements that reappeared in later novels, for instance, the transformation of the Dutch dancer Margaretha Zelle into a more exotic creature, here a Russian dancer nicknamed "Toutcha," while the other main character of the novel is clearly inspired by Zelle's friend, Eduard Clunet.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it is a pretty good novel. It comes from a period in which novels were a common entertainment form, they were rarely high-level works of art but had to maintain a minimum of quality. People would buy these novels in order to read them and the novels had to be simple enough to be understandable by almost everybody.
And this is what Hirsch does: his novel is a straightforward drama, very simple in form and told in a style that today we would find unsophisticated, but that's effective for the author's purpose. We have only three main characters, Toutcha (Mata Hari), Marc Brégyl (Clunet) and the painter Ursac. Toutcha is the evil seductress, Brégil is the well-intentioned, although somewhat naive, lover and Ursac acts as a connection, chorus, and witness. Other characters are barely sketched: for instance, when Brégil is told by a good friend of him that Toutcha is a spy, we never learn the name of this person. That has a purpose: the novel has to be simple and readable by readers who couldn't be encumbered with too many names. Hirsch was surely a professional in these things.
Then, the story follows closely the official version of the Mata Hari story, with only one quirk and a very nasty one. The final turn of the plot has Brégil telling Toutcha that her execution will not be carried out all the way to the end, that it is all a pretense, that at the last moment the guns will not fire, and that he (Brégil) will come to save Toutcha from death. And Toutcha, the smart and devilish spy, turns out to be dumb enough to fall for this dirty trick completely.
Again, these novels were destined to a general public and couldn't be too sophisticated. This kind of crude plot twist could work well, no matter how nasty they were in regard to poor Mata Hari, not only killed for something that she had never done but cheated up to the last moment of her life. But so it goes, Hirsch was simply reacting to a common legend of the time which said that Mata Hari had not been shot for real, that the execution had been a fake.
One last point, why "La Chevre au Pieds d'Or?" It is not explained in the novel and it takes a little work for the non-French reader to understand that it is a reference to Victor Hugo's novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." A goat with feet painted in gold. named Djali, is a companion to the character of Esmeralda the Gypsy. Considering that in Hugo's novel Esmeralda is hanged as a witch, the reference to Mata Hari is obvious,
From "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo
A little white goat came running to her. Its horns were painted gold. "Now it's your turn, Djali," said Esmeralda. She held out her drum. "Which month is it, Djali?" she asked, smiling. The goat tapped the drum once with its foot. "That is right!
Ah... and one last point: at some point in the novel, we learn that the real name of Toutcha is "Maria Tatiana Golgoronine." Evidently, an evil character has to have a suitably evil sounding name!
No comments:
Post a Comment