The Beauty in Every Inch

"Howard looked at Kiki. In her face, his life. Kiki looked up suddenly at Howard - not, he thought, unkindly. Howard said nothing. Another silent minute passed. The audience began to mutter perplexedly. Howard made the picture larger on the wall, as Smith had explained to him how to do. The woman's fleshiness filled the wall. He looked out into the audience once more and saw Kiki only. He smiled at ther. She smiled. She looked away, but she smiled. Howard looked back at the woman on the wal, Rembrandt's lover, Hendrickje. Though her hnds were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on pain and rolled with the brush, the rest of skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety - chalk whites an dlively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come."

Howard made me angry. His infidelity, his obscurity, his precociousness. I saw him as arrogant and undeserving, selfish and chauvinist. Like the rest of his family, I found myself hardened by his transgressions and thought of with him with feelings that could be nicely described as disdain. This last scene, however, made me see Howard as we all are: human. My heart not only softened, but it opened up to the perfect fallibility of Howard. There was something vulnerable, something selfless about this moment. He abandons his art. He abandons his theories. He abandons, in essence, himself. He surrenders to true beauty, the beauty he finds in Kiki. Suddenly, there is little more important than humanity and the greatest gift of humanity: love. The description of Hendrickje is, though short, perhaps one of the most powerful passages in On Beauty. To me, in emphasized the beauty of life, the sheer magnifience of human existence. Love is not perfect. Life is not perfect. Nothing is perfect. But there is undeniable beauty in this imperfection.

I have, for many years, reveled in a particular prayer written by the late Archbishop Oscar Romero. In it, he writes, "We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to di it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest." And while this certainly integrates very explicit Christian ideals, I feel it contains some universal, secular truth. We will, as humans, never be wholly perfect. There will be mistakes, hypocrisy, and pain. Nothing is every entirely good, bad, right or wrong. It is simply impossible. But this means something and it means something very great. It means that we are wonderfully incapable and gloriously vulnerable. It reminds us that our heart will beat strong until one day when it will, inevitably, stop beating. It ensures our humanity, our very life.

Binaries and Beauty

Amidst romantic entanglements, heartbreaking infidelity, and family struggles, On Beauty offers an insightful look at the complicated construction and deconstruction of familiar binaries. Beautiful and ugly. Intelligent and stupid. Right and Left. Big and small. White and black. Building them up and breaking them down, Zadie Smith offers a pardoxical perspective on seeing through a dichotomous lens.

Perhaps one of the most noticebale ways in which Smith complicates notions binarical structures is in her depiction of the Left. Howard is an intellgient, talented, Leftist. He works hard to convince his young students that there is beauty in the world, beauty that can be found in secret places. He urges his students to look beyond stereotypical constructions of art and beauty and, rather, embrace the individual beauty of the avant-garde. At first, the reader might cling to the quixotic sentiments of Howard, applauding his comfortability with interracial desire and advocacy for free-thinking. However, it is his affair with Claire that begins to shake the reader's faith in the old professor. Of course, the infidelity in and of itself is (at best) disconcerting, but it is the image of Claire that is most troubling. Small and white, she is the literal physical opposite of Howard's wife Kiki. Moreover, she is the standard of beauty. She is not large, she is not dark. She fulfills the most standard, stereotypical image of feminine beauty. What's this all about, Howard? Here, the reader can start to see the separation of practice and theory. Howard, righteous in his academic convictions, seemingly transgresses his own obscure conception of beauty.

Another binary addressed by Smith is the one containing Self and Other. This is made apparent in a conversation between Kiki and Carlene in which the latter insists that a wife must live for her lover and the former confesses that she has, in fact, not done that at all. Confused by what she should be living for, Kiki questions Carlene for her opinion. Carlene's answer sets up another complex binary. To Carlene, one must live his/her lover, for the Other. But what does this say about Self? Does the relationship become a complimentary one or a devouring one? Does Carlene lose herself in her husband? If she lives for her husband, and thus defines herself in relation to him, does she then have any real, independent definition? Later, after Kiki discovers the truth about Howard's affair, yells at her husband, "I staked my life on you!" Does this contradict what she had said to Carlene? Perhaps Kiki simply could not accept that she had depended so heavily on a man, a white man, a person whom was everything she was not. By allowing herself to be defined by him, she simultaneously sacrificed significant aspects of her Self.

The complication of binaries and trespassing of personal ideologies are at once troubling and comforting. It is troubling to think that, despite our most earnest efforts to become a person of whom we can be very proud, we are still inevitably and eternally susceptible to fallibility. Our righteous and admirable theories can, at any moment, be shaken by our own umanity.

Art According to Zadie

CULTURE WARS
Right (Canon-Loving Recognizers of "Great Art")
versus
Left (Bard-Rejecting Multiculturalists)

• (Zadie Smith) + (Multicultural Uplifting) = Zadie "The Bard" Smith?

Is the Left Wing Culture Army constructing the very figure against which they are fighting? Does rejecting "great art" simply mean the rejection of canonical art? Is it acceptable for sometihng to be worshipped if it is not supposed to be worshipped? That is, since the works of Zadie Smith is seen as counter-canon, does her transcendence into the terrioty of "genius" suddenly become allowed by the Left?

ART abandonment of vanity; "truthful picture of [one's] conception of the world;" a case/an analogy of morals; resisting self-imposed goodness; Zadie Smith, "We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship."

GENIUS Death of the Author; death of the White author?; No one is a genius; Zadie is a genius?

Pride

What is mine? What can I truly, confidently call mine? Are the words I speak original? Are the thoughts I think authentic? Are the aspirations I seek crafted by my own personal perception of success and happiness or are they persuaded by socialized standards? And what if they aren’t? What if I am simply a walking canvas that has been decorated by the paintbrushes of others? Furthermore, what if I become a very famous painting? What if the critics praise me, lauding my contribution to the world? Will it matter that others and not myself have created me? And will I let myself be created? If I were to resist, surely I would risk success. Surely, I would never be great because, after all, to deny the projections of society is to denounce their standards and, thus, be a worthless member. To live in a privileged world—one that offers opportunity and relentlessly encourages personal achievement—is to reconcile one’s true self with society’s image of what is successful and valuable. An unavoidable aspect of this struggle, I believe, is pride.

Dignified and confident, arrogant and audacious.

Pride.

Personally, I’m worried about pride. I’m worried that any attempt to live life with a genuine heart and selfless intentions are simultaneously and paradoxically adulterated by self-serving motives. I’m worried that pride so subtly and so consistently propels us in our most earnest endeavors that we end up completely unaware of the ubiquitous vice. I’m afraid of the furtiveness with which it slinks through the winding corridors of our hearts and into the dark corners of our minds. I’m quite positive that it is slowly permeating the purity of us all and that the painters of society have created a very grim portrait of Old Man Success. I’m worried that the goodness and grandeur of the world is beginning to wane in the shadow of narcissism and the constant striving for worldly achievements. I’m afraid that we are all so blinded by what society has gradually deemed prosperous that we are intimidated by true happiness and pure love; we are terrified of “failing” in the eyes of others. I’m worried that humanity, in its entirety, is suffering at the hands of bankers and economists who are never fully satisfied. There is a constant yearning, a constant search. Houses are never big enough, cars are never fast enough, phones are never small enough.

Winterson writes, “The fatal combination of indulgence without feeling disgusts me….For myself, I prefer to hold my desires just out of reach of appetite, to keep myself honed and sharp. I want the keen edge of longing. It is so easy to be a brute and yet it has become rather fashionable.” This tackles another deadly sin: gluttony. Doesn't the proud presence of gluttony seem entirely problematic? It has become entirely acceptable to want too much, buy too much, sell too much, process to much. This has got to be a problem, right?

ART

Laura Mandell's Theory of Literary Art (In An Insufficient Nutshell):

There's genre. And what we know about the history of the genre that is the "novel" is that it originated in the 18th century. Novel genre is formulaic. Formulaic fiction. And then, of course, there is the canon (of great literature). But has the canon been blown apart? Theoretically, yes, it has. Now there exists an array of ethnic and minority literature studies. The "great literature' has, put simply, been supplanted by cultural studies. Laura thinks, however, that there does exist "great literature" and that the canon has undergone too much deconstruction.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." This raises quite a few questions. Do we love authors because we love ourselves? When we read a text, fall in love with a text, and admire that text, is it because we see ourselves, our thoughts, in that text? What does this say about the self? The individual? How does this complicate notions of great art and great artists? It seems to me that great art and great artists do indeed exist. I believe in works of beauty, in works of genius. In the same breath, I also advocate the diversity of genius. I believe that genius can exist outside the canon. I believe that Ramona from Greenwich Village may recognize a different genius than Gerard from Dijon. I have no qualms with bardolatry. To each his own, is what I say. But I do, and earnestly, resist the exclusiviy of bardolatry.

TagCrowd: Whatchya Sayin?

With the help of TagCrowd, we took a look at word choice and frequency within three different versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818 Edition, 1818 Thomas Edition, and 1831 Edition). Listed below are some abridged results, focusing primarily on the words that that achieved the highest frequency of use:

1818 Edition:
Friendship (3 occurences)
Creature (2 occurences)


1818 Thomas Edition:
Deep (3 occurences)
Friend (3 occurences)
Creature (2 occurences)

1831 Edition:
Converse (3 occurences)
Creatures (3 occurences)
Spoke (3 occurences)
Man (3 occurences)
Friend (3 occurences)

Based on this brief comparison of texts, one can see that Shelley did not curtail her writing with every passing edition, but rather, she expanded and developed the storyline and its previous concepts.

Aurora Leigh

. . . She had lived
A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,
Accounting that to leap from perch to perch
Was act and joy enough for any bird.
Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live
In thickets and eat berries!
I, alas,
A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,
And she was there to meet me. Very kind.
Bring the clean water [to purify Aurora]; give out the fresh seed [to grow a new woman].

Aurora Leigh
Book I, 304-312

Aurora Leigh--a free bird, an unbridled spirit. Aurora's aunt? Not so free and not so unbridled. In this passage, Elizabeth Barrett Browning applies the metaphor of "woman as bird" to both Aurora and her aunt, allowing the comparison to operate in two different ways. Aurora is a bird who is not caged for she understands, appreciates, and takes full advantage of the freedom she has been given. However, upon joining her aunt--who "misliked women who are frivolous"-- Aurora's free femininity is curtailed by an ideology that perpetuates the containment of women. The aunt, born into and never encouraged to question this cage-like ideology, does not attempt to tame Aurora because of any misguided intentions; rather, it seems the aunt has pure intentions in "improving" Aurora. By "bringing the clean water" and "[giving] out the fresh seed," one could suggest that Aurora's aunt is cleansing her niece of the flawed femininity she has adopted as well as creating an entirely new woman.

As previously mentioned, Aurora's aunt has never known freedom, she has never lived outside the cage, and thus, she cannot value the "free" lifestyle. Aurora's tendency to desire that which lies beyond domestic duties and a confined existence demonstrates how vastly her views differ from the aunt's conception of life and femininity.