Allusions+to+Literature

In the novel // Disgrace // by J.M Coetzee there are many allusions. Here are some of the allusions made. On page 4 we're told that David has published three books, the first is an opera //Boito and the Faust Legend: The Genesis of Mefistofele//, the second is //The Vision of Richard of St Victor//, and the third is //Wordsworth and the Burden of the Past//. There are many allusions in these titles. There is an allusion made to Arigo Boito and the Faust Legend. Another one is about Richard of St Victor and finally the last one is about Wordsworth, his work and his history.

Arrigo Boito (1842 - 1918)
//Poet, novelist, and composer, Boito is known for the single opera he completed,// // Mefistofele ////. Like [|Gioacchino Rossini], who wrote three dozen operas by his mid-thirties, and spent the next forty years of his life unable or unwilling to complete another, Boito underwent some kind of crisis early, and worked 54 years unsuccessfully at completing his second opera.// // As a student at the Milan Conservatory, Boito was awarded a stipend after winning composition prizes that enabled him to travel and study abroad for two years. He took advantage of the prize to visit Poland, his mother's birthplace, as well as England, Germany, and France. He was much impressed during these sojourns with the dramatic power of the operas of [|Ludwig van Beethoven] and especially of [|Richard Wagner]. Hence he reshaped the traditional elements of Italian opera to suit the kind of dramatic presentation he had in mind. The result was // // Mefistofele ////, first performed when the composer was barely 24, for which the highly literary and literate Boito also wrote the libretto. At its premiere performance, a pious contingent, objecting to the thematic modernism of Boito's version of the Faust legend, demonstrated angrily. After the second performance was likewise ill-received, Boito withdrew the opera and undertook to modify it to appease criticism. It has become a staple of the repertoire, one of the most exciting and compelling of operas.// // Dry as his font of musical inspiration became, Boito nevertheless retained in full his literary powers. He wrote librettos for [|Amilcare Ponchielli's] // // La Gioconda // //and for [|Giuseppe Verdi's] operas// // Falstaff // //and// // Othello ////, all regarded as works of the first order. Much of Boito's poetry has never fallen out of favor, and his letters reveal unusual gifts as well. Seldom, if ever, has anyone else secured a seemingly imperishable niche in musical history with so little output. One can only lament the early evaporation of Boito's source of musical inspiration. Had his powers increased, he might have eclipsed all others. ~Douglas Purl// Boito and David Lurie are similar to each other in that they both took a long time to write a master piece of their own and were not able to write anything else as good as their first work. Faust Legend http://www.theatrehistory.com/german/goethe003.html // Goethe took the Faust legend like so many others; but he alone saw the typical, universal element hidden in it; he alone was able to engraft his own life and the governing forces of all human life upon this wild offspring of a darker age. He began to write in 1773, after the subject had been maturing for two or three years in his brain, and by 1775 had written nearly half of the first part. It was composed very slowly, every line and couplet being carefully finished in his mind before being put upon paper. With his removal to Weimar the work ceased, and the manuscript was yellow with age when he took it with him to Italy. Two scenes were added in Rome, and in the edition of his works, published in 1790, first appears Faust ein Fragment, containing not quite two-thirds of the first part. Stimulated and encouraged by Schiller, he resumed the work in 1799 and completed the whole of the first part and a considerable portion of the second, which belonged to his plan from the start. In 1808 the first part, as we now possess it, was published; but the second part, delayed by his scientific and Oriental studies, was suffered to wait until 1824, by which time Goethe was seventy-five years old. The third act, generally called Die Helena, was published as a fragment in 1827, and the interest and curiosity which it excited encouraged Goethe, in spite of his age, to work out the whole of his grand design. In August, 1831, the second part was finished, but it was not given to the world until after his death. // It took David Lurie a long period of time to write his opera about Byron’s lifetime in Italy. His opera went through similar events that the Faust Legend went through. The Faust Legend was written over a disconnected period of time because Goethe got busy with other studies and research that he came to write his play from time to time. Also David Lurie wrote his opera about Byron over a period of time because he was busy with his college teaching and when he went to his daughter’s farm he didn’t plan all his day working on his play. He worked on it whenever he got the chance to and when was free of work.

In addition on pp. 31-33 there is an allusion to Byron’s “Lara”. Byron is mentioned many times during the novel.

There’s also another allusion to George Grosz’s //After the Storm// on page 19 after David sleeps with his student Melanie. in addition since Lurie is interested in Wordsworth there may be an allusion in the name of his daughter, Lucy refering to "Lucy poems"