Booking Through Thursday...a Day Late
This week, BTT poses the following question:
Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!
My immediate answer was "Moriarty," but on reflection, I thought that I'd share a different favorite, one who has definitely seeped into our consiousness, even if we don't know who he is.
George Du Maurier's Trilby tells the story of a young woman who is destroyed by the manipulations of an evil, controlling Svengali-like creature, named, oddly enough, Svengali (*winks*). A brief introduction to Svengali:
He had been the best pianist of his time at the Conservatory in Leipsic; and, indeed, there was perhaps some excuse for this overweening conceit, since he was able to lend a quite peculiar individual charm of his own to any music he played, except the highest and best of all, in which he conspicuously failed.He had to draw the line just above Chopin, where he reached his highest level. It will not do to lend your own quite peculiar individual charm to Handel and Bach and Beethoven; and Chopin is not bad as a pis-aller.
He had ardently wished to sing, and had studied hard to that end in Germany, in Italy, in France, with the forlorn hope of evolving from some inner recess a voice to sing with. But nature had been singularly harsh to him in this one respect — inexorable. He was absolutely without voice, beyond the harsh, hoarse, weak raven's croak he used to speak with, and no method availed to make one for him. But he grew to understand the human voice as perhaps no one has understood it — before or since.
So in his head he went for ever singing, singing, singing, as probably no human nightingale has ever yet been able to sing out loud for the glory and delight of his fellow-mortals; making unheard heavenly melody of the cheapest, trivialest tunes — tunes of the cafe concert, tunes of the nursery, the shop-parlour, the guard-room, the schoolroom, the pothouse, the slum. There was nothing so humble, so base even, but what his magic could transform it into the rarest beauty without altering a note. This seems impossible, I know. But if it didn't, where would the magic come in?
Whatever of heart or conscience — pity, love, tenderness, manliness, courage, reverence, charity — endowed him at his birth had been swallowed up by this one faculty, and nothing of them was left for the common uses of life. He poured them all into his little flexible flageolet.
Svengali playing Chopin on the pianoforte, even (or especially) Svengali playing 'Ben Bolt' on that penny whistle of his, was as one of the heavenly host.
Svengali walking up and down the earth seeking whom he might cheat, betray, exploit, borrow money from, make brutal fun of, bully if he dared, cringe to if he must — man, woman, child, or dog — was about as bad as they make 'em.
So many gifts, but still so unsatisfied. You almost feel sorry for him, because of his upbringing, his artistic pain, and the racism and mockery directed at him by other characters. But he takes advantage, he ruins, he destroys.
So he wins for me in this round. And I'm off to Louisiana to do some wedding planning (!!!) and visit family. I'll try to post from the road. I'm shamefully behind on my Sockapalooza 4 socks, and I need to confess to my knitting peeps.
won't be out until later this fall, but I want to knit the argyle scarf on the cover NOW.
