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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Cosmopolis '— Complete," Paul Bourget meticulously explores the complexities of urban life and the individual's place within the bustling metropolis of Paris in the early 20th century. Bourget's literary style is characterized by a psychological depth that merges naturalism and symbolism, offering a profound examination of the moral dilemmas faced by modern society. Through rich character development and immersive descriptions, the text delves into themes of identity, alienation, and the metamorphosis of social values amidst the dynamism of urban existence, reflecting the changing cultural landscape of the time. Paul Bourget, a noted French novelist and critic, drew inspiration from his own observations of the rapid societal changes occurring in post-industrial Europe. Having been immersed in both academia and the literary world, Bourget's works often reflect his profound engagement with philosophical ideas and psychological intricacies. His personal experiences in the cosmopolitan milieu of Paris provided fertile ground for the narrative, enriching the characters and their struggles in "Cosmopolis." This book is highly recommended for readers interested in the intersection of psychology and society, as well as those keen on exploring the intricacies of human experience within the complexities of urban life. Bourget's incisive observations and artistry make "Cosmopolis '— Complete" a compelling read that resonates with contemporary urban concerns, engaging the reader in a timeless dialogue about humanity's evolving identity. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Cosmopolis — Complete
Table of Contents
Introduction
In a glittering European world-city where titles, fortunes, and talents circulate like international coin, Cosmopolis charts a single, unbroken tension between the intoxicating promise of borderless self-invention and the counterclaims of origin, duty, and conscience that persist beneath the masks of polite society, asking whether a person can truly belong everywhere without belonging anywhere, and whether the cosmopolitan ideal that dazzles salons, embassies, and studios is liberation from narrowness or merely a subtler captivity to fashion, reputation, and desire, in which the heart’s choices are weighed against the invisible tariffs of culture and class.
Paul Bourget’s Cosmopolis is a late nineteenth-century society novel with a strong psychological bent, published in the early 1890s amid the Belle Époque’s confidence and unease. It inhabits the refined spaces of European high society—salons, ateliers, and diplomatic drawing rooms—where art, politics, and private life intersect. Bourget, a French novelist and critic known for his interest in moral psychology, places the narrative within a recognizably realist tradition, attentive to manners and motive. The book arrives at a historical moment fascinated by cosmopolitan modernity, when European capitals imagined themselves as crossroads of language, wealth, and influence, yet quietly debated the cost of such dazzling openness.
The premise is deceptively simple: an ensemble of travelers, expatriates, aristocrats, and artists converges in an international social circuit, and their intersecting ambitions, affections, and loyalties become the novel’s field of inquiry. Rather than racing through incident, Cosmopolis offers a measured, observant experience, drawing readers into rooms where glances and phrases carry weight. The voice is cultivated and probing, less sensational than diagnostic, inviting us to notice how reputations are made and unmade. The mood balances elegance with moral restlessness, offering the pleasures of social portraiture while keeping attention fixed on the inner calculations that shape public poise.
At its heart, the book explores the allure and limits of cosmopolitan identity. It asks how far a person can travel—socially, geographically, intellectually—before the threads of origin tug back, and whether the blending of cultures refines character or erodes it. Questions of sincerity and performance recur: which gestures are fluent adaptations and which are disguises? Themes of honor, responsibility, and the ethics of desire surface not as abstract debate but as pressure on daily choices. The novel also examines language and code—how talk in cultivated circles both reveals and conceals, and how translation, literal and social, shapes understanding.
Bourget brings a critic’s eye to character, tracing the psychology of decision with a steadiness that avoids melodrama. Interior life and social ritual echo one another: a hesitation at the threshold of a salon mirrors a hesitation of conscience; a compliment masks a strategy. The narration, poised and omniscient in coloration, blends storytelling with reflective analysis, yet it keeps confidences, safeguarding the reader from premature certainties. The result is a novel of manners that doubles as a novel of ideas, attentive to the ways belief, upbringing, and ambition leave their imprint on conduct, and how small compromises accumulate into a moral direction.
Readers today may find the book uncannily contemporary in its portrait of transnational elites, curated identities, and reputations shaped by a restless public gaze. Cosmopolis speaks to the frictions of globalization before the term existed: mobility that broadens opportunity while unsettling belonging, intimacy across difference shadowed by cultural misreadings, ideals of openness complicated by informal hierarchies. It invites reflection on how to remain principled without becoming provincial, and how to be at home in many places without treating any place as merely instrumental. The novel’s questions about character under social pressure resonate in an age of travel, networks, and performative selfhood.
Approach Cosmopolis expecting an urbane, carefully paced immersion rather than a rush of plot—an experience composed of luminous interiors, alert dialogue, and incremental revelations of motive. The “complete” text offers the full arc of Bourget’s design, allowing scenes to accumulate significance and themes to reverberate across encounters. For readers drawn to psychological realism and the art of social observation, it promises both aesthetic pleasure and ethical inquiry. Without disclosing turns best discovered in reading, it is fair to say that the novel rewards attentiveness: the more one listens to its conversations, the more one hears the quiet debates about who we are, and where we belong.
Synopsis
Set in Rome during a brilliant winter season, Cosmopolis follows an international circle gathered amid palaces, studios, and ruins. A French novelist arrives to observe this milieu, drawn by letters of introduction and his curiosity about a society where nationalities mix with ease. The narrative introduces diplomats, artists, financiers, and aristocrats who navigate receptions, exhibitions, and drives on the Campagna. Rome's ancient stones and the modern salons form a continuous backdrop. From the outset, the book frames cosmopolitan life as both spectacle and test, as private motives intersect with public reputation, and as hospitality conceals rivalries that are polite on the surface.
At the center of this world stands a celebrated noblewoman whose hospitality assembles the season's most sought-after guests. Her palazzo becomes a crossroads for an American painter of rising fame, a restless Polish aristocrat, a worldly financier, and the financier's thoughtful daughter. Conversational brilliance, musical evenings, and impromptu excursions feed an atmosphere of charm and competition. The hostess's influence extends beyond entertainment; she facilitates introductions, protects reputations, and shapes alliances. The French writer, half participant and half observer, recognizes how each guest translates national codes into a shared etiquette that is cosmopolitan in appearance yet rooted in personal ambition.
Through visits to studios, archaeological sites, and convent gardens, the narrator slowly maps the relationships that animate the group. Letters circulate as discreet instruments of favor and proof, and conversations travel from aesthetics to politics with practiced ease. The financier's daughter emerges as a figure of steady conscience, while the hostess's own daughter represents a more impetuous idealism. The American artist balances artistic pride with social dependence, and the Polish nobleman carries a sharp sense of honor. The novelist's notebooks capture their gestures and words, but his growing intimacy with several of them draws him into responsibilities he did not seek.
As the season matures, whispers gather around a liaison that would compromise the hostess's carefully managed poise. The suggestion unsettles the group, above all a man whose pride cannot bear ambiguity. Cultural differences sharpen the tension: one side trusts tact and time, another demands clarity and reparation. The novelist is pressed to choose between detachment and intervention, while the banker's household worries about proximity to scandal. Public civility continues, yet small signs—a missed call, an altered route, an unclaimed note—announce a shift. What was play becomes earnest, and the Roman setting's pageantry begins to carry an undertone of peril.
A turning point arrives in the form of written evidence, the kind that can neither be ignored nor publicly acknowledged without catastrophe. A confidant contrives discreet remedies: a hurried journey, a confrontation away from witnesses, a proposal of withdrawal. Rome's outskirts—villas in the hills, an ancient road, a seaside resort—serve as stages for attempts at resolution. The old code of the duel, though officially discouraged, shadows every conversation. Friendships strain under the weight of demands for satisfaction, and even those untouched by romance feel the threat to their own names. The novelist tries to forestall irrevocable gestures.
Parallel to the mounting dispute, the younger women embody contrasting paths through the same cosmopolitan fabric. One leans toward faith, duty, and a measured sincerity; the other seeks intensity, art, and immediate truth. Their choices, observed by chaplains, critics, and guardians, place the city's religious and diplomatic institutions in quiet motion. The American artist debates the demands of work against the temptations of applause. The banker calculates reputational risk while professing principle. The narrator, privy to private confidences, considers how literature describes life without harming it, questioning where observation ends and participation begins in a tightly knit society.
The crisis gathers at a country house and then on ground marked by Roman memory, where chance meetings cannot be dismissed as chance. A summons is delivered, minutes are counted, and seconds are found. Protocol and secrecy dominate, while loyal friends search for a compromise that preserves honor without blood. The atmosphere is keyed to small gestures—opening a gate, returning a token, choosing a witness—that decide fates more than declarations. The group's international bonds are tested by incompatible standards, and the narrator must weigh intervention against respect for others' autonomy at a moment when events move rapidly.
The aftermath unfolds through silences, visits, and sudden departures. Embassies, clubs, and parishes absorb shock and supply explanations that protect families while leaving the curious unsatisfied. Some reputations appear mended, others altered in ways only close observers detect. The season's rhythm resumes outwardly, but relationships realign. The novelist distills lessons about discretion, the price of visibility, and the protective fictions that make a cosmopolitan circle function. Individuals reckon with choices made under pressure, while Rome reasserts its continuity, a city where ancient forms of honor and modern sociability coexist uneasily yet persistently.
Cosmopolis ultimately presents a portrait of international society tested by passion, pride, and the demands of public face. Without insisting on verdicts, the book traces how elegance depends upon invisible rules and how quickly those rules reveal their national and moral origins under strain. It shows a community bound by taste and convenience yet vulnerable to the very differences it celebrates. The narrative's progression—from bright receptions to guarded interviews—suggests the limits of detachment and the cost of belonging. Rome's permanence frames the drama, leaving a final impression of brilliance shadowed by conscience and of unity negotiated day by day.
Historical Context
Paul Bourget situates Cosmopolis in Rome during the early 1890s winter social season, when the city functioned as a meeting ground for European aristocrats, diplomats, artists, and wealthy travelers. The setting exploits the unique coexistence of the Quirinal, seat of the Italian monarchy, and the Vatican, spiritual center of Catholicism, to stage conflicts of allegiance, etiquette, and belief. Published in French in 1892 and widely read in translation soon after, the novel uses Roman palaces, embassies, and salons as a cosmopolitan theater. The action occasionally radiates across Europe, but Rome’s postunification urban and political landscape provides the essential backdrop and organizing tension.
The Risorgimento culminated in the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861 and the capture of Rome on 20 September 1870, when Bersaglieri breached Porta Pia and ended papal temporal rule. In 1871 Rome became the capital, transforming an ecclesiastical city into the administrative center of a new nation. This produced a rift between the new Savoy monarchy and the Holy See, and divided the Roman nobility into white aristocracy loyal to the crown and black aristocracy aligned with the papacy. Cosmopolis is steeped in this aftermath: its salons and ceremonies mirror the negotiated cohabitation of state and church elites and the codes that governed their encounter.
The Roman Question dominated 1870s to 1890s politics: Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII refused to recognize Italian sovereignty over Rome, while the Non expedit discouraged Catholic participation in parliamentary life. Under Leo XIII, papal diplomacy became especially active, appealing to foreign courts and forming a distinct diplomatic corps apart from the embassies accredited to the Italian state. The 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed labor, property, and social reform, giving Catholic elites a new language for the social question. Cosmopolis reproduces this dual system in drawing rooms where prelates, ambassadors, and aristocrats debate authority, charity, and modernity, revealing Rome as a nexus of international Catholic politics.
After 1870, Rome underwent sweeping urban works: the Lungotevere embankments to control Tiber floods began in 1876; Via Nazionale was driven through hill neighborhoods in the 1870s and 1880s; new quarters such as Esquilino and Prati rose for bureaucrats and speculators. The frenzy fed the Banca Romana scandal, which erupted in 1892–1893 when illegal overissue of banknotes by Governor Bernardo Tanlongo and political coverups were exposed. The crisis implicated figures around Francesco Crispi and Giovanni Giolitti and led to the creation of the Bank of Italy in 1893. The novel’s milieu of financiers, titled spenders, and anxious creditors echoes this atmosphere of speculation, moral hazard, and reputational fragility in the capital.
Late nineteenth century great power politics shaped Roman high society. Italy joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary on 20 May 1882, renewing it in 1887 and 1891, partly in response to the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881 that soured Franco-Italian relations. Embassies to the Quirinal and the Vatican filled the city with Austrian, German, Russian, British, and French envoys. Social calendars intertwined with chancery priorities, and private salons served as informal diplomatic stages. Cosmopolis depicts this transnational elite as it measures national loyalties against cosmopolitan friendships, reflecting the precarious equilibrium of alliance politics felt in everyday Roman sociability and aristocratic networking.
French crises also inform the novel’s moral and political concerns. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine traumatized the French elite, feeding nationalist reactions like Boulangism in 1886–1889. The 1890s saw sharpening debates over anti-clericalism and national identity, soon to culminate in the Dreyfus Affair after 1894. Bourget, a French observer with conservative and Catholic sympathies developing in these years, channels this context into a critique of rootless cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolis stages French and international characters in Rome wrestling with loyalty, duty, and decadence, echoing the post-1870 French anxiety that moral weakening and supranational fashions could erode civic responsibility and national cohesion.
The spread of rail travel transformed Rome into a seasonal cosmopolis. The Fréjus, also called Mont Cenis, rail tunnel opened in 1871, and the Gotthard tunnel in 1882, speeding movement from Paris, Vienna, and Berlin to Italy. Organized tourism expanded under firms like Thomas Cook, while aristocratic wintering sustained an intense calendar of receptions, hunts, and gallery visits. Urban landmarks under construction, such as the Victor Emmanuel II Monument whose foundation stone was laid in 1885, embodied national narratives amid ancient ruins. Cosmopolis leverages this influx and spectacle, depicting visitors, expatriates, and residents negotiating status, taste, and identity in a city where antiquity, nationhood, and fashionable modernity collided.
Bourget’s novel functions as a social and political critique of the fin de siècle. By contrasting the duties of tradition with the allure of cosmopolitan pleasure, it exposes the moral compromises of elites who arbitrate culture while benefiting from speculative finance and diplomatic privilege. The tension between Quirinal and Vatican spheres reveals the costs of unresolved sovereignty and factional allegiance, while discussions of charity and social reform register the era’s unequal distribution of wealth. Through portraits of salons as power markets, Cosmopolis indicts class insulation, performative piety, and status anxiety, suggesting that the international set’s brilliance conceals structural injustices and a crisis of accountability in modern Europe.
