Сладострастие бытия

“She was a poet’s dream... give her alms,” it is sung in an old romance. In fact, this is a brief summary of the charming novel by Maurice Druon “The Voluptuousness of Being”, where the image of the main character, Countess Lucrezia Sanziani, is inspired by a real woman - Marchioness Louise Casati, a beauty who for many years awestruck all of Europe. In the novel, this is an eccentric, almost detached from reality, elderly lady, for whom the voluptuousness of existence, which once permeated every second of a fantastic life, has been replaced by sweet memories that have become her only reality.