A Conversation with Anka Muhlstein 

Anka Muhlstein was raised in Paris and she and her family escaped the advancing Nazi occupiers in 1940. She lived in New York until 1946 when she returned to France. And once again New York beckoned in 1974, in the form of the attorney and later novelist Louis Begley, who fell in love with her.

She is the author of biographies of Queen Victoria, James de Rothschild, and Cavelier de La Salle; studies on Catherine de Médicis, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria; a double biography, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart; and most recently, The Pen and the Brush,

Balzac’s Omelette and Monsieur Proust’s Library (Other Press). 

She won the Goncourt Prize for her biography of Astolphe de Custine, and has received two prizes from the Académie française.

TG: You write that the creation of fine art museums after the French Revolution especially the Louvre in 1793, had a seminal influence on the development of the visual novel. Talk about that and offer some examples. 

AM: The important thing for me is that the Louvre was the first and for many years the only truly public museum. There always had been private collections that accepted visitors but these had to be recommended while the essential innovation in Paris was that anybody could just walk in the Louvre. And the collection was huge as from the beginning it was constituted mainly of the royal holdings. A few years later, it was increased exponentially by the spoils of the military conquests of Napoleon. 

Many young artists, writers or painters, took advantage of this opportunity. Without the Louvre, a young man like Balzac, who had no money, no connections and no time on his hands, would have never had the opportunity of seeing great art. For me the visual novel has two aspects. First, I am struck by the importance given to paintings in the description of people and places. A young woman is often described by Balzac as a Raphael, an old man as a Rembrandt for instance and secondly, I am impressed by the adoption by writers of painterly techniques, for example in Zola: the importance of light for instance, the use of mirrors, the composition of a landscape be it rural or urban. 

TG: Zola’s writing reflected the accessibility of the working class to fine art. Could he be the first mass-market novelist? 

AM: I am not sure one can apply the notion of mass-market to a population who was still in majority illiterate but certainly his sales were impressive in comparison to his colleagues especially for l’Assommoir and Nana. He stresses the enthusiasm of the lower and middle-class for art exhibitions and the Museum but readers were still comparatively scarce at the time. Soldiers, either on leave or retired, curiously were attracted by the Louvre’s offerings. 

TG: When did you first notice the relationship between the pen and the brush in 19th century artists and writers? 

AM: When I was invited to talk at the Frick Museum about literary society at the time of Renoir. As soon as I started reading or rereading the novels of the time, I realized how central art was to the preoccupations of French writers. What surprised and puzzled me was that it was so clearly a French phenomenon. You do not find that interest in English literature before Virginia Woolf, in American literature before Henry James. The great Russians ignore painting completely. 

TG: How did growing up in Paris inform your work? 

AM: Had I grown up in London, in New York or Madrid, I would have been also exposed to great art. Today, art is accessible while it was not at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Obviously, being French and having received a French education has made me more familiar with the literature of my country. But actually, I started writing once I moved to New York! 

TG: Has the writing of this book changed the way you look at paintings and if so, how? 

AM: No, it has changed the way I read books. 

TG: Zola the art critic on Manet: “I am so sure that M. Manet will be one of the masters of tomorrow that I would believe I was making a sound investment, if I had the money, were I to buy all his paintings today. In ten years’ time they would sell for fifteen or twenty times the price.” 

Did this perspicacity evolve from his friendships with painters or did it evolve from his writing? 

AM: I believe it is explained by his friendships and his intimacy with painters and of course by his work as an art critic. 

TG: In preparing THE MASTERPIECE Zola set out to find a point of view, exactly as a painter would before starting a landscape. Talk about his methodology and THE MASTERPIECE. 

AM: Zola was extremely methodical as a writer. Exactly as a painter would have done, when he planned to describe a Parisian view, he would take long walks, identify all the reference points provided by the bridges and monuments, take note of the position of the sun depending on the time of day and of course the variations of the weather. He sometimes obtained panoramic photographs to get a clearer idea of the layout of the neighborhood. And surprisingly for a realist writer, he would not hesitate, at the risk of anachronism, of placing a steeple or a cupola built later than in the time frame of his novel, in his literary description. The Masterpiece is a novel that takes place in the artistic milieu of Paris. Some of the characters have features of Zola’s friends but the main subject – the tortures of creation – is inspired more by Zola himself as by anybody else. However, the very detailed evocation of a painter’s atelier, the reaction of the crowd at the Salon, the difficult relation of an artist with his wife, the role of the art dealer come obviously from the long intimacy of Zola with a group of painters. It was believed wrongly that Cézanne, Zola’s old childhood friend, broke with him after the publication of the novel, but the discovery of a trove of later letters put an end to this tale. 

TG: In ABBE MOURET’S TRANSGRESSION Zola’s sensuality takes on a very erotic tone during the Abbe’s convalescence after a bout of brain fever. In the company of the beautiful Albine, during a walk on the grounds, he writes: “ The tea roses grew adorably moist, displaying hidden modesties, parts of the body that are not shown...the different roses had their own way of loving. Some consented only partly to open their buds...while others their corsets unlaced, panting, wide open.... Who was the painter who most aroused these erotic expressions? 

AM: I am not sure that the inspiration came from a writer. Zola had a rather difficult sexual relation with his wife and it is only late in life that he found physical and psychological happiness. I think that the erotic tone of the novel, written before he began his affair with the young woman, was a way for him to express his yearnings. 

TG: And finally, there is an element of anti-Semitism in this group. Dégas, Renoir and surprisingly Balzac. whose description of the Jewish art dealer Elie Magus could have been a template for the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher and Der Stumer. Do you attribute it to the zeitgeist in the period pre-Dreyfus, or was there something else going on? 

AM: Anti-Semitism was very acute at the time in France especially at the end of the nineteenth century. It is quite true that Renoir, Degas and Cézanne were anti- Semitic (though they were very good friends and supporters of Pissarro, the sole Jewish Impressionist) and during the Dreyfus Affair, they were all nationalists. The success of many Jews not only in banking but in academia took by surprise and irritated many catholic Frenchmen. Read Proust to get an idea of how Jews, even born in France and sometimes converted, were still considered as being foreigners. 

Balzac is another story. I think seeing Elie Magus as a template for Julius Streicher is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Balzac was not an anti-semite and he created two wonderful, generous, good Jewish characters, Josepha and Esther. He was also a realist and at the time Jews were often art dealers. In his view, all dealers were crooks: it went with the territory. Read Cousin Pons, Mme Camusot, the Auvergnat Remonecq and the terrible Mme Cibot are worse that Magus who has the excuse of being passionate about art. 

TG: If you were to assemble a reading list of three or four writers for someone interested in learning about the 19th century French novel who would they be and what titles would you recommend.

AM: 

Balzac-Père Goriot 

Stendahl: The Charterhouse of Parma

Zola: La Curée

Maupassant: Bel Ami-He is enormously appealing, light, never ponderous

TG: You and Louis collaborated on Venice for Lovers. What is about Venice that so attracts you?

AM: The beauty and the silence. You can hear you footsteps. You are not assaulted by noise as in every other city in the world. There are no cars, no  buses and in the evening the city is empty.