Literature, Music, and Art History Favorites November 2015

by

Mackenzie Patel

Hello all! Although neither November nor October was particularly earth-shattering or wildly thrilling for this abnormal youth (me), I did chance upon several books and musical pieces that elegantly spell out the definition of beauty. Personally, I was just floating through the cracks of college, trying on different faces and personas and eyeliner brands that would ultimately reveal my true character behind the thick, fake crust of adolescence. However, I did ace a calculus two exam and was featured on the cover of UF Libraries newsletter—in short, my delicious levels of dork were astronomically higher than any midi-chlorian count in Anakin’s blood. Read the schmoozy but colorful newsletter here!

Literature

I must start with this rich category because I have consumed many tasty words and storylines in the past few weeks. I found literary macaroons of delight and cannolis of culture in French novels and Russian masterpieces, notably Anna Karenina.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

From July to October, I was married to this mammoth of a novel and did not shut its brown, leathery, and slightly smelly cover until the last existential musings of Levin were complete. Au revoir angsty farmer who was always in denial about God and his life!  Adios to his frilly, aristocratic wife with nothing better to do than count doilies! I finally bid adieu to the hateful frog of a man that was Karenin, but besides those few characters, it was gut-wrenching to abandon the twisted love story of Anna and Vronsky, as well as her ruined son Serezha. Anna Karenina was a spectacular novel, and I licked every last word to the bone (even the intense threshing and farming scenes of Levin that most find utterly dull). It was rich in life lessons, dramatic rendezvous, flirtatious exchanges, and urban/rural settings. As its page count slowly crawled to 900, the story got direr and more complicated, my snail of a reading pace drawing out each struggle, train station scene, and bipolar Vronsky encounter until I thought Tolstoy truly wrote to infinity. Because I adored this novel so much, I registered for a War and Peace class at UF for this upcoming semester. Although W&P is much longer than Anna K, I doubt its Russian thrills and tempestuous characters will be any less satisfying than the colorful Anna or the debonair Count V. Read another Anna K post here.

• The President’s Hat by Antoine Laurain

I just published a post relating to this Nutella crepe of wonder, stuffed with a chocolate plot, cherry characters, and sweet caramel feelings of wholeness. Published in 2012, this novel is about the fabled loss of French President Mitterrand’s felt Homburg hat in a random Parisian brasserie. Picked up and subsequently forgotten again by the obsessive Daniel Mercier, this devilish brim graced the eyebrows of plenty of different characters, ranging from a star-studded perfume maker to an ultra-conservative has-been that eventually becomes a socialist (all because of the liberal hat, of course). I was enchanted by the art history and Machiavellian allusions that were casually tossed into the French air, the whole story infused with the European and the unreal. The characters swam in a sea of whim, and I gratefully dove in with them, wishing that I had a President’s Hat to hide in. One of my favorite passages from the novel was:

“It was though he had traveled back in time, back to adolescence, when life stretches out before you and everything is still possible.”

I also read Looking for Alaska by John Green this month, but to be honest, I did not enjoy it. It was so similar to Paper Towns and wreaked of underdeveloped adolescent characters—just because one writes “yeah” and “Christ Pudge” doesn’t make one dimensional people transform into believable 3D teenagers. I found the ending unsatisfactory and a poor writing decision on the author’s part; I didn’t want to read the “after” part, mostly because I didn’t feel attached or that affected by Alaska’s death. If you’ve always read Paper Towns or The Fault In Our Stars, skip this book because it’s basically a repetition of those storylines with more death and cigarettes tossed in.

 

Music

Surprisingly, I discovered quite a few pretty minutes of music lurking around sketchy corners of YouTube this month. It’s amazing how the deeper I wade into the ocean of classical music, the more pearls and tarnished coins and dinglehoppers I find. Of course, I had to include Tchaikovsky this month because he’s the best composer that was and ever will exist…

• Duet of the Flowers by Léo Delibes

 

I am strangely enamored with this piece, for its tune is so graceful, repetitive, slow, and deliberate. This classical duet is from the Lakmé opera, but I’m only a massive addict of the instrumental version, not the actual opera with trilling voices and ear-bleeding high notes.  I can play this short piece on the flute, and it’s so damn beautiful not even my elementary music skills and inexperienced fingers can taint the whimsical melancholy. The libretto for this passage is frilly and plays with the boundaries of language, but several lines are poetic and highly visual.

“To the roses comes greeting,

To the roses comes greeting,

By flower banks, fresh and bright,
On the flow’rd bank, gay in morning light,

Come, and join we their meeting.”

Watch a random British Airways commercial featuring this Duet here.

• Piano Trio No. 1 by Felix Mendelssohn

 

This trio is burnished into my memory because the circumstances in which I heard it live were unique and wholly random.  I met my violinist friend at the UF music building around 10p.m., and within the tiny closet of a practice room, she and another person were playing this captivating melody. I had never met a piano virtuoso before, but with this song and within those decrepit, peeling walls, I finally did. His fingers danced on the keys like playing the lead role of Swan Lake was nothing at all. His eyes scanned the impossibly tiny notes on his phone like they were already programmed into his muscle memory. Although the cello was missing, the piano and violin were incredible, and this melody, at once mournful, powerful, and unrestrained, was introduced to me in the best possible way.

• Perfection from Black Swan by Yosra Ameen

I was disturbed and perplexed by this psychological (and sexual) film, but the music contained within the schizophrenic viewpoint was impeccably dramatic. Perfection is based off the Swan Lake finale by Tchaikovsky, the classic oboe theme twisted with disturbia and death. The final scene in Black Swan, in which Natalie Portman dances herself to death, is completed with this booming chorus surrounding her. It’s empowering and terribly unsettling, but the last few seconds of the piece, starkly uplifting and transcendent, embody the main character’s last wispy words: “I was perfect. I was perfect.”

 

• Estampes: Pagodes by Claude Debussy

 

Composed in 1903, this work is a classic example of the watery tranquility that Debussy is renowned for. The notes of the piano seem so striking, cold, and “chinking” in a way, like metal hitting clear glass. Pagodes (“pagoda” in French) whispers Eastern culture and tales, and hazy charcoal prints of ancient Chinese structures kissing the fog undoubtedly come to mind. Meaning “prints”, Estampes is the perfect study music, although there’s so much more than just vibrating piano strings and pretty hands making noise. There’s five minutes of unreal serenity in a world that doesn’t stop for or consider anyone.

Art

I did not research or enjoy many art pieces these last two months, but a few Impressionist works flew off the waxen pages and onto the Wikipedia screen of my computer. I’m saving all my art fanaticism for this summer when I travel to England, Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy—so much Europe, it’s fantastic.

• Capo di Noli by Paul Signac, 1898

Although Seurat did not craft this, Capo di Noli is pointillist to the hilt, albeit in a more relaxed, carefree way.  It depicts an ideal world on the Italian Riviera, except that I can say from experience that the unreal stretch of coast is every bit as sun-kissed and striking as the paintings and novels portray. The intense, segmented hues attracted me to this piece because I’m a fauvist girl at heart, with Derain as my lover and Matisse as my mentor. Pure colors are passion, humans dwarfed by constructed nature are humbling, and pinkish sails with unseen captains belong to the Undying Lands.

Also, November marked the month where I became obsessed with Star Wars—WHERE HAVE I BEEN MY ENTIRE LIFE? Needless to say, the badass Darth Vader theme and the rolling yellow credits served as the background to my explosion of newfound geek. I’ll see you in December, the grandest month of the year! May the force be with you.