"On Beauty" by Zadie Smith

ANATOMY LESSON PART 2 "On Beauty"

A recap of previous session...

Exploration of mixed cultural identity

Geographic shift in the inception of literature

Postcolonial literature

Adaptation and appropriation of language

Asserting cultural integrity

Hybridity: a mingling between the colonising and the colonized cultures

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40962783

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism and Black Studies in Zadie Smith's "On Beauty"

Humour and zest characterize Zadie Smith's writing

Zadie Smith belongs to the second diaspora of Caribbean writers

She doesn't have the anger nor the rage of the first generation of post-colonial writers

The story follows the lives of a mixed-race British/American family living in the United States, addresses ethnic and cultural differences in both the USA and the UK, as well as the nature of beauty, and the clash between liberal and conservative academic values.

"On Beauty," Zadie Smith’s third novel, is both a tribute to and a riff on English novelist E. M. Forster’s "Howards End, "updated as an exploration of the politics of contemporary life.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294826/on-beauty-by-zadie-smith/9780143037743/readers-guide/

The Belseys are liberal atheists, headed by African American matriarch Kiki and her white British professor husband Howard, who are based in the fictitious university town of Wellington, Near Boston

The Kippses: Conservative, Christian, Caribbean, live in London and move to USA.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294826/on-beauty-by-zadie-smith/9780143037743/readers-guide/

"On Beauty"

"is a hilarious, scathing, and emotionally profound novel of human aspiration and failure, an unfailingly perceptive portrait of a struggling marriage, and an empathetic depiction of adolescent struggle. It is also an outsider’s witty look at American cultural life floundering under the weight of political and cultural divisions. Will Howard and Kiki’s marriage survive? How will the feud between Howard and Monty be resolved? Which of the Belsey children are poised to find a true and lasting identity, and which are teetering (balancing) toward heartbreak? Who will find their true place, and will it be found in family or home, in nationality, abstract theory, or religion? " .

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/294826/on-beauty-by-zadie-smith/9780143037743/readers-guide/

"This is Zadie Smith on beauty—exploring who possesses it and who longs for it, who embraces it and who denies it, who exploits it and who is destroyed by it—in a novel both entertaining and wise that consolidates her position as one of the most spellbinding writers of her generation"

The Rivalry between Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps

ANATOMY LESSON PART 2 "On Beauty"

"A Thing of Beauty" poem by John Keats

Intertextual reference with allusion to the romantic poet "Keats," in Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" comes in section 2, "The Anatomy Lesson," part 8. The reference is linked to Carl , an "amazing lyricist" as put by Zora, rapping at the Moroccan "Bus Stop": "He's like Keats with a knapsack" (230)

"On to the blackboard Smith was poster-gumming a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Dr Nicolaes Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm, 1632, that clarion call of an Enlightenment not yet arrived, with its rational apostles gathered around a dead man, their faces uncannily lit by the holy light of science. The left hand of the doctor, raised in explicit imitation (or so Howard would argue to his students) of the benefactions of Christ; the gentleman at the back staring out at us, requesting admiration for the fearless humanity of the project, the rigorous scientific pursuance of the dictum Nosce te ipsium, ‘Know thyself ’ – Howard had a long shtick about this painting that never failed to captivate his army of shopping-day students, their new eyes boring holes into the old photocopy. Howard had seen it so many times he could no longer see it at all. He spoke with his back to it, pointing to what he needed to with the pencil in his left hand. But today Howard felt himself caught in the painting’s orbit. He could see himself laid out on that very table, his skin white and finished with the world, his arm cut open for students to examine. He turned back to the window. Suddenly he spotted the small but unmistakable figure of his daughter, clomping a speedy diagonal towards the English Department. "

The Anatomy Lesson" On Beauty. Page 144

Contextualization of the quote

“The Anatomy Lesson” in "On Beauty" opens up with Rembrandt’s “Dr Nicolaes Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm”(1632). This painting constitutes the cue for Howard’s recruitment of acolytes in shopping-day (students choose lectures and professors) at Wellington. The painting also announces the personal disembowelment of Howard through his crumbling relation with Kiki after he has betrayed her with his peer Claire.

“Know thyself” / oxymoronic “holy light of science” /outlayers vs inner layers

"In the centre of the frame there was a tall, naked black woman wearing only a red bandanna and standing in a fantastical white space, surrounded all about by tropical branches and kaleidoscopic fruit and flowers. Four pink birds, one green parrot. Three humming birds. Many brown butterflies. It was painted in a primitive, childlike style, everything flat on the canvas. No perspective, no depth.

‘It’s a Hyppolite. It’s worth a great deal, I believe, but that’s not why I love it. I got it in Haiti itself on my very first visit, before I met my husband.’ ‘It’s lovely. I just love portraits. We don’t have any paintings in our house. At least, none of human beings.’ ‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ said Carlene and looked stricken. ‘But you must come here whenever you want and look at mine. I have many. They’re my company – they’re the greater part of my joy. I realized that quite recently. But she’s my favourite. She’s a great Voodoo goddess, Erzulie. She’s called the Black Virgin – also, the Violent Venus. Poor Clotilde won’t look at her, can’t even be in the same room as her – did you notice? A superstition.’ ‘Really. So she’s a symbol?’ ‘Oh, yes. She represents love, beauty, purity, the ideal female and the moon… and she’s the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord, and, on the other hand, of love, perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune.’ ‘Phew. That’s a lot of symbolizing.’

"The Anatomy Lesson" . On Beauty. 175-176

Context for "Maitresse Erzulie" in "On Beauty

On a visit to Carlene Kipps , Kiki notices this painting by Caribbean painter Hyppolite . Kiki feels entranced by the painting : "a Voodoo goddess, a Violent Venus," "love, beauty, purity ... vengeance and discord, all ...rolled into one being". Beyond binary preconceptions of opposites of Western civilization. The connections are ready at hand, Kiki's beauty goes beyond the frame, "natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday" as Claire will later say.

Source for background painting in this slide

‘Maitresse Erzulie’ by Hector Hyppolite Hector Hyppolite (1894-1948) is a legendary artist of Haiti who used chicken feathers, his fingers and brushes to create complex, intuitive paintings. Most of his paintings depict his religious convictions. His voodoo gods are crude and ugly; his heroes are reincarnations of voodoo spirits; his flowers are metaphors of perpetual life; his birds refer to the supernatural world; and the hypnotic eyes of his subjects evoke the serpent eyes of Damballah. "

Source: https://caribbeanpainters2.tumblr.com/post/135210510263/maitresse-erzulie-by-hector-hyppolite-hector/amp

Towards the end of the section "The Anatomy Lesson "...two more paintings

"Jacob Wrestling with the Angel." Rembrandt. (1658)

"Seated Nude" an etching from 1631

These two paintings are commented by Katie, a student that attends Howard’s lecture, unprivileged, and apparently intellectually and physically invisible.

"A lot of the time she felt the professor speaking a different language from the one she has spent sixteen years refining...The words were not there. She did find "liminality", but she still didn't understand the way Dr Belsey was using it..." (Section 2, chapter 10, 250)

Jacob Wrestling with an Angel (1658) by Rembrandt

The first painting is Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1658. Katie has thought about the vigorous impasto that works counter-intuitively to create that somnolent, dreamy atmosphere. She makes notes on the angel’s resemblance to Rembrandt’s pretty son, Titus; on the perspective lines that create the illusions of frozen movement; on the personal dynamic between the angel and Jacob. When she looks at this painting she sees a violent struggle that is, at the same time, a loving embrace. It reminds her, in its homoeroticism, of Caravaggio (since beginning at Wellington she finds a lot of things homoerotic). She adores the earthy colours – Jacob’s simple damask, and the angel’s off-white farm-boy smock. Caravaggio always gave his angels the darkly resplendent wings of eagles; by contrast, Rembrandt’s angel is no eagle but he’s no dove either. No bird Katie has ever seen really has these imprecise, shabby, dun-coloured wings. The wings seem almost an afterthought, as if to remind us that this painting is meant to be of matters biblical, other-worldly. "On Beauty" page 250 / Part 2 / section 10

See comments on the aforementioned painting and passage by Begoña Rodríguez (below blog entry)

Seated Nude (1631) by Rembrandt. Etching

The second picture, on the other hand, makes Katie cry. It is Seated Nude, an etching from 1631. In it a misshapen woman, naked, with tubby little breasts and a hugely distended belly, sits on a rock, eyeing Katie directly. Katie has read some famous commentaries on this etching. Everybody finds it technically good but visually disgusting. Many famous men are repulsed. A simple naked woman is apparently much more nauseating than Samson having his eye put out or Ganymede pissing everywhere. Is she really so grotesque? She was a shock, to Katie, at first – like a starkly lit, unforgiving photograph of oneself. But then Katie began to notice all the exterior, human information, not explicitly in the frame but implied by what we see there. Katie is moved by the crenulated marks of absent stockings on her legs, the muscles in her arms suggestive of manual labour. That loose belly that has known many babies, that still fresh face that has lured men in the past and may yet lure more. Katie – a stringbean, physically – can even see her own body contained in this body, as if Rembrandt were saying to her, and to all women: ‘For you are of the earth, as my nude is, and you will come to this point too, and be blessed if you feel as little shame, as much joy, as she!’ This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience – these are the marks of living. So Katie feels. And all this from cross-hatching (Katie makes her own comics and knows something of cross-hatching); all these intimations of mortality from an inkpot!

"The subject, Saskia van Uylenburgh, was the daughter of Friesland’s town burgomaster (aka chief magistrate and master of hamburgers). She was also the wife of ...Rembrandt. Though both Saskia’s mother and father were dead by the time she married Rembrandt, it didn’t prevent the rest of her family from bestowing her with parental-type warnings against the match. "

https://www.sartle.com/artwork/seated-female-nude-rembrandt.

The word that Erskine does not understand: "stymie."

The word that Levi cannot say "Chouc" and changes to "Choo" because it runs best in his ear.

The word that Katie does not understand "liminality".

Further Reflection

From Brightsummeries.com

• Discuss the role beauty plays in "On Beauty"
• Does the novel make a case for or against affirmative action? Explain your answer.
• Both Howard and Monty have sex outside of marriage, which of the two,in your opinion, is more hypocritical in doing so?
• Discuss the representation of Haiti in the novel.
• Can this novel be described as political fiction? Why or Why not?
• To what end is music used in the novel?

Source for photo: https://cdn.britannica.com/24/198024-050-D0A3D9C3/Zadie-Smith.jpg