Book Review: "The Quest for Corvo" by A.J.A Symons

“A Quest for Corvo” was one of those books that I was really looking forward to reading and I can honestly say that I was not in the least bit disappointed. It was just as good and if not, better, than what I had first imagined. There was definitely a certain amount of trepidation going in since I already knew the book this book was constantly making reference to [“Hadrian the Seventh” by Rolfe] and yet, I had never really given the author a second look. I did not know that this author and the author of “A Quest for Corvo” were both so interesting with the latter trying to find the other through intense amounts of passionate readings, searchings and research that lasts for the entire book. Through newspaper reports and other journalistic and non-fiction publications, we get an image of this man who was practically lost to literary history until right here and right now. The language is often wrought with passion, defiance and this want and urge to know as much as physically possible whilst also mourning the very strange loss of this author alongside it, almost like it is flowing underneath through the tunnel of the soul of the novel. I cannot describe how much I enjoyed reading this book, split up into sections entitled things such as “The Problem” - it gives us a chronological look at what happens when we follow the literary rabbit hole of a strange and estranged author.

“My quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925, in the company of Christopher Millard. We were sitting lazily in his little garden, talking of books that miss their just reward of praise and influence. I mentioned Wylder’s Hand, by Sheridan Le Fanu, a masterpiece of plot, and the Fantastic Fables of Ambrose Bierce. After a pause, without commenting on my examples, Millard asked ‘Have you read Hadrian the Seventh?’ I confessed that I never had and to my surprise he offered to lend me his copy - to my surprise for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places.”

The opening paragraph of this book is just incredible. It opens with something as simple as two friends sitting somewhere and having a conversation about books when one lends another a book that the friend has never heard of. It feels like one of those everyday conversations I used to have at university where people would give other people book recommendations and well, I remember a friend of mine telling me I should read some stuff by Rainbow Rowell, who I hadn’t heard of at the time, and honestly - I loved it. The opening to “The Quest to Corvo” is so very relative to real life that you feel instantly taken by the book.

“The style in which Hadrian the Seventh is written is hardly less remarkable than the story it tells. Fr. Rolfe shares his hero’s liking for compound words and his pages are studded with such inventions of adaptations such as ‘tolutiloquence’, ‘contortuplicate’, ‘incoronation’, ‘noncurant’, ‘occession’ and ‘digladiator’. In constructing his sentences he sets his adverbs as far before both parts of the verb as he can; and though he often lapses into learning and Latin, the most homely expressions are not disdained in his elaborate paragraphs. But these peculiarities do not rob him of a real eloquence; as, for instance, when describing Hadrian’s private visit to St. Peters…”

The best and most beautiful thing about this book is the fact that there are passages from the book it is making reference to inside it. There are passages that are gorgeously written and, to A.J.A Symons give away something about the author within them. The mystery of his life, the strangeness of his existence and the oddness of his mental health - there was something odd and peculiar in this isolation of character and when Rolfe becomes more and more estranged, these quotations get deeper and deeper into the way in which this man existed.