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The Blue Flower, a short perfect novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, was published in London in 1995 when she was 78 years old. It’s a dramatization of Friedrich von Hardenberg’s years as a struggling writer and student, from 1790 to 1797, before he made a name for himself as romantic symbolist poet Novalis, and tells the story of his infatuation with the very ordinary, childish 12-year-old Sophie von Kühn. He meets her when he’s 22 and falls in mystical love at first sight with her. Like many powerful novels, it’s a book of longing. What von Hardenberg really longs for however isn’t Sophie, but the “blue flower” he’s writing about. Some lines from the story he reads aloud:“I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower. It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think about nothing else. Never did I feel like this before. It is as if until now I had been dreaming, or as if sleep had carried me into another world.”The blue flower is what he’s been searching for his entire life but cannot find, will never find.What it represents is not explained. It might be understood as a perfect moment of transcendental joy; or the Great Beauty, or the writing that gives meaning to life, the hope, which destroys us, the trembling, skipping longing for the infinite. The flower is different for all of us. The blue has never been seen. We could do with more vaulting romanticism I feel.“The universe, after all,” thinks Friedrich, “is within us.”
Jun 15, 2021
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"Well, the pendulum swung today and I thought, instead of my own body, of Maurice’s. I thought of certain lines life had put on his face as personal as a line of his writing: I thought of a new scar on his shoulder that wouldn’t have been there if once he hadn’t tried to protect another man’s body from a falling wall. He didn’t tell me why he was in hospital those three days: Henry told me. That scar was part of his character as much as his jealousy. And so I thought, do I want that body to be vapour (mine yes, but his?), and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity. But could my vapour love that scar? Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar. We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can even love with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve."
simply perfection
Oct 30, 2024
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the endings of great novels stay with you. a momentous rush that last dot, words and eyes speeding towards it almost with reluctance, until yes that world is done but something ripples out, a faint radiance or shadow, like the dark spot that lingers in your eye long after staring at the sun.
this i felt reading:
—portrait of a lady by henry james
—swann’s way by proust
—the red and the black by stendhal
—ulysses by joyce
—the sun also rises by hemingway
Jan 30, 2024
Captivating and original and strangely so beautiful, but also a relentless 500+ pg literary embodiment of every stress or anxiety dream I have ever had or anyone ever could ever have
May 1, 2024
Top Recs from @dean-kissick
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The most magical view of the most beautiful city, for me, is the quiet overlook from the top of Parc de Belleville, below the painted and mosaiced arches. Few things are better than waking up on a clear summer’s day, picking up a coffee and a pain au chocolat, or an éclair, or Paris-Brest, from one of the neighborhood patisseries high up on Rue de Belleville, and strolling along Rue Piat until, by the Belvédère, the whole of Paris and the day opens shimmering up under you. There are guys selling weed, half-naked people sunning by the fountains. It’s a good place to have breakfast. Or, for lunch, a carrot salad from the Franprix, or at night some vin rouge.
Jun 15, 2021
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A new version of an old song; an old song, “L’Amour Toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino, made slower and more lethargic by a teenage Lithuanian DJ. A song about dreams, about the things you’ve been waiting for, coming down to you, but only in your mind. A tale as old as time!In London in the Noughties I never went to Italo disco clubs. But my buddy Joel, a fantastic furniture designer, did. He told me the first time he went, as a teenager, he was standing in line outside, hoping to get in, and an elegant lady stepped out of the club wearing a silk gown, smoking, walking a ferret on a leash. That’s how he knew he was in the right place.D’Agostino wears a lot of hats. Often he dresses like a pilot. He’s been a mega Italo disco star since the Eighties, his music gives the feeling of driving around Tuscany at sunset in a sports car. His “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is sublime. The sound of Italy and England in perfect romantic harmony; Byron swimming to Shelley across the Bay of Poets.
Jun 15, 2021
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Nestled in the heart of old Padua, a short train ride from Venice, the Cappella degli Scrovegni is a “thin place”, a place where our world grows closer to others; so close we can feel them, might reach out and touch them. Thin places are good, like blue flowers.The chapel’s an unprepossessing medieval stone building of modest size. Before you go inside, you have to wait for 15 minutes while your body humidity is lowered. It’s important that you reserve a ticket in advance because they’re always sold out. Though when I visited I didn’t know this, and was able to sneak up to the chapel doors through the Augustinian monastery, where the guard kindly took pity on me. Inside is the most beautiful room in the cosmos. If you go now, right now, this summer, only ten visitors are allowed in at a time. You’ll never have such an opportunity again.Painted by Giotto, the great Pre-Renaissance painter, maybe the greatest artist, its frescoes tell the story of Christ’s life, and of his mother Mary’s life, her role in our salvation. In this room you’re floating with the angels. You’re caught between worlds, out of time. The ceiling is blue and full of stars.
Jun 15, 2021