René Leys

by Victor Segalen

Book Overview

In this entrancing story of spiritual adventure, a Westerner in Peking seeks the mystery at the heart of the Forbidden City. He takes as a tutor in Chinese the young Belgian Ren? Leys, who claims to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590170415
• ISBN13: 9781590170410
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Impenetrability of the Forbidden City

It is 1911. After thousands of years, the rule of the Chinese emperors is about to come to an end. It is the Beijing of Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR. The 5-year-old Pu-Yi is emperor; and political power is in the hands of a Regent. A character named Victor Segalen engages two tutors in the Chinese language. One is Chinese; the other is a 17-year-old Belgian by the name of René Leys who has a certain facility for languages. The narrator, Victor, wishes to penetrate into the heart of the Forbidden City at the heart of the capital. He wishes to "know" China in every way, including the Biblical sense of the world. The very first words of Segalen's disturbing novel are, "I shall know no more, then. Well, I shall not insist; I shall retire from the field ... respectfully, let it be said, and of course backwards, since court etiquette will have it so, and since it is a question of the Imperial Palace, and of an audience that was never granted, and that never will be granted..." After this initial admission of failure, the book goes back earlier in the same year, as Victor falls more and more under the spell of René. It seems that the Belgian youth has achieved everything that Victor wants. He is a member of the palace's Secret Police; the Regent grants him a young concubine in the palace; he has even won to the heart and bed of the Dowager Empress (not the same one that contributed to the Boxer Rebellion, who was by now dead). The novel grows ever more feverish as young René appears to be more tightly wrapped up in the life of the Forbidden City even as Victor grows more dispirited about his own efforts. Or is he? This question is at the heart of Segalen's novel. The story grows ever more feverish as Victor's desires to be admitted to the Celestial Presence are foiled, even as René ascends ever higher in the Imperial hierarchy. I am reminded of a scene in Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL, in which a young man awaits his whole life to be admitted to the law, but the gatekeepers ever refuse him admission. Finally, as he is about to die, the man asks the gatekeeper why no one else in all the years had sought admission at that gate, whereupon the answer is, "No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it." Many readers of this book will end up puzzled or frustrated, because Segalen does not choose to wrap the story up neatly. The desire he has to become part of what seems so patently unknowable gives rise to a nightmarish atmosphere and a growing sense of unreality that reaches a climax at the end of the novel. I for one was enthralled the whole way through. So what if RENE LEYS is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma (which also pretty much describes its author's life). This little-known novel is just another excellent offering of the fledgeling NYRB imprint whose offerings are occupying ever so much more of my reading time.

Cultural and sexual initiation.

A young man succeeds in what he always dreamed of: slip into China's forbidden city and participate in the power plots inside it. He becomes head of the emperor's secret service and lover of the empress. A thriller with a surprising end.A fascinating novel about the mysterious Chinese power circle around the reigning emperor. A masterpiece.I also recommend a French novel with the same themes: 'La Vallée des Roses' by Lucien Bodard.