{"product_id":"amours-de-voyage-2","title":"Amours de Voyage","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 477px;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/7642\/5795\/files\/82-Amours_de_Voyage.jpg?v=1593110735\u0026amp;width=700\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"std\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePREFACE BY JULIAN BARNES\u003cbr\u003e128pp\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9781903155721 \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmours de Voyage\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e (1849) is a novel in verse and is arranged in five cantos, or chapters, as a sequence of letters. It is about a group of English travellers in Italy: Claude, and the Trevellyn family, are caught up in the 1849 political turmoil. The poem mixes the political (‘Sweet it may be, and decorous, perhaps, for the country to die; but,\/On the whole, we conclude the Romans won’t do it, and I sha’n’t’) and the personal (‘After all, do I know that I really cared so about her?\/Do whatever I will, I cannot call up her image’). The political is important – hence the Persephone edition reproduces nine London Illustrated News drawings of the battlefront – but the personal dilemmas are the crucial ones.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClaude, about to declare himself, retreats, then regrets his failure to speak. It is this retreat, his scruples and fastidiousness, that, like a conventional novel, is the core of \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eAmours de Voyage\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e. The poem thus contributed something important to the modern sensibility; it is a portrait of an anti-hero; it is about love and marriage (the difficulties of); and it is about Italy. Clough wrote to his mother: ‘St Peter’s disappoints me: the stone of which it is made is a poor plastery material; and indeed, Rome in general might be called a rubbishy place… The weather has not been very brilliant.’ As Julian Barnes points out in his new Persephone Preface: ‘If you want a one-word introduction to the tone, sensibility and modernity of Arthur Hugh Clough, you have it in that single, italicised (by him, not me) word: rubbishy.’ Clough was unimpressed by Rome and so is his hero, Claude, ‘a very unGrand Tourist’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘What his friend Arnold perceived to be the weaknesses of Clough's poetry,’ continues Julian Barnes, ‘are precisely what over time have come to seem its strengths – a prosey colloquiality which at times verges on awkwardness, a preference for honesty and sarcasm over suavity and tact, a direct criticism of modern life, a naming of things as themselves. It is absolutely contemporary... It is also a highly contemplative and argumentative poem, about history, civilisation and the individual's duty to act. And it is, as the title tells us, a love story – or, this being Clough, a sort of modern, near-miss, almost-but-not-quite love story (“I am in love you say; I do not think so, exactly”) with mismatching, misunderstanding, tortuous self-searching, and a mad, hopeful, hopeless pursuit leading us to a kind of ending.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlso available as a (free) e-book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEndpaper\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"endpaper-caption\"\u003eEndpapers taken from a woven dress silk by Campbell, Harrison and Lloyd, Spitalfields, c. 1850, that might have been worn by the Englishwomen travelling in Italy. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"endpaper-caption\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePicture Caption\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"endpaper-caption\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eFrom the London Illustrated News June 1849\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Arthur Hugh Clough","offers":[{"title":"None","offer_id":54098809159987,"sku":"nex1789695040999","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Tissue\/Endpaper","offer_id":54098809192755,"sku":"mjc1789695041000","price":38.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cambridge Imprint paper","offer_id":54098809225523,"sku":"qde1789695041001","price":40.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Reusable fabric napkin","offer_id":54098809258291,"sku":"udt1789695041002","price":53.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0989\/0578\/4627\/files\/amours-de-voyage_1_a6b2d720-dfa2-48e6-8d9b-b2a552f197bc.jpg?v=1789695081","url":"https:\/\/sandstepclad.shop\/products\/amours-de-voyage-2","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}