Your Reviews "On Beauty"
Background painting chosen by Begoña Rodríguez Varela to illustrate Beauty
Review by Begoña Rodríguez Varela
It's Carlene and Kiki's friendship that strikes me as beautiful, apart from other moments in which the different characters enjoy being together(Jerome and his siblings for instance). Indeed, these strong women, whose struggle to find meaning in life is different, love spending their time together. The picture "A road in Maine", which links them to the genuine Emily Dickinson, might well depict the harshness and beauty of life… But I chose "Walk on the Beach" by Sorolla. I could imagine the honest kiki and hawkeyed Carlene enjoying the inspiring light by the Mediterranean sea. Beauty is Truth. Truth Beauty ❤️
Sorolla's wife and eldest daughter
Review by Cándido Pintos
“On Beauty” is not only the feud between two families and two ways of living, but, also a profound reflection on the different hurdles and challenges a married couple have to overcome along more than thirty years. With the lives of their three children as guiding threads and the academic life in a college as background, Zadie Smith uncovers the multiple layers of intellectuality, race, nationality and religion that in the end, shape the actual American families.
Yolanda Irawan Rincón: Thoughts on Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith has a unique ability to perceive her world and someone else´s, to describe it in a way in which judgement is not passed on anyone … there is no questioning, but makes us wonder about it; there is no subjectivity, but she creates... distrust, posits questions that, maybe, we have never asked ourselves…..This uncertainty, these questions also appear in her book "White Teeth" where she tells an intergenerational story about 3 families whose origins are very different, whose lives crush into each other in the present. Their experiences together bring questions and reopen wounds that apparently are closed but actually they are not and we go there back and forward again and again.
Review by Margarida Pereira
I had a really good time reading “On beauty”. I found myself very immersed in the drama of the Belsey family, enjoying every side story and laughing out loud with its snappy dialogues. It’s a book full of references to paintings, music and literature, allowing us to delve deeper into each protagonist, and understand their inner feelings. In fact, I think it’s incredible how Zadie Smith could make me feel sympathetic towards all protagonists, despite their flaws. Through them, “On beauty” touches on different themes such as love, family, friendship and ageing; but also openly discusses some controversial topics such as race, gender and religion.
Painting chosen by Margarida to illustrate her perception. "Two Women at a Window." by Murillo
Final Thoughts on beauty
"Pulchra sunt quae visa placent"
st Thomas Aquinas
"Beauty" inside "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith
"She" / "I"
At that time her (Kiki's) BEAUTY was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry – natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday. She was not one of Howard’s intellectual set, but she was actively political, and her beliefs were genuine and well expressed. Womanish, as they said back then, not feminine. For Claire, Kiki was not only evidence of Howard’s humanity but proof that anew kind of woman had come into the world as promised, as advertised. ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith, 227, part 2, section 8)
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep... John Keats
Painting
‘Oh, yes. She (Maitresse Erzulie) 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.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? It’s rather like all the Catholic saints rolled into one being.’ ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith.)
Music
"And that was a shame, for Levi loved rap
music; its BEAUTY, ingenuity and humanity were neither obscure nor unlikely
to him, and he could argue a case for its equal greatness against any of the
artistic products of the human species" ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Physical
‘It’s true that men – they respond to BEAUTY… it doesn’t end for them,
this… this concern with BEAUTY as a physical actuality in the world – and
that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes… but it’s true and… I don’t
know how else to explain what ’" ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Pastoral fallacy
"The food arrived. Claire was still speaking about the land. Zora, who had
been clearly brooding on something, now spoke up. ‘But how do you avoid
falling into pastoral fallacy – I mean, isn’t it a depoliticized reification, all
this BEAUTY stuff about landscape? Virgil, Pope, the Romantics. Why
idealize?’ ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Spiritual
‘Both these pictures speak of illumination. Why? That is to say, can we
speak of light as a neutral concept? What is the logos of this light, this
spiritual light, this supposed illumination? What are we signing up to when
we speak of the ‘‘BEAUTY ’’ of this ‘‘light’’?’ (Howard) ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/rembrandt-van-rijn-young-woman-sleeping-a-drawing/RgGYBoljD5rVJg
No Technicalities...
"The metaphors won´t work. And who cares, anyway, for technicalities
when that starburst of pleasure and love and BEAUTY is taking you over?" ("On Beauty and Being Wrong,"section three from "On Beauty")
I Died for Beauty
Emily Dickinson
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.
Final Thoughts on beauty and "On Beauty"
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Transcript
Your Reviews "On Beauty"
Background painting chosen by Begoña Rodríguez Varela to illustrate Beauty
Review by Begoña Rodríguez Varela
It's Carlene and Kiki's friendship that strikes me as beautiful, apart from other moments in which the different characters enjoy being together(Jerome and his siblings for instance). Indeed, these strong women, whose struggle to find meaning in life is different, love spending their time together. The picture "A road in Maine", which links them to the genuine Emily Dickinson, might well depict the harshness and beauty of life… But I chose "Walk on the Beach" by Sorolla. I could imagine the honest kiki and hawkeyed Carlene enjoying the inspiring light by the Mediterranean sea. Beauty is Truth. Truth Beauty ❤️
Sorolla's wife and eldest daughter
Review by Cándido Pintos
“On Beauty” is not only the feud between two families and two ways of living, but, also a profound reflection on the different hurdles and challenges a married couple have to overcome along more than thirty years. With the lives of their three children as guiding threads and the academic life in a college as background, Zadie Smith uncovers the multiple layers of intellectuality, race, nationality and religion that in the end, shape the actual American families.
Yolanda Irawan Rincón: Thoughts on Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith has a unique ability to perceive her world and someone else´s, to describe it in a way in which judgement is not passed on anyone … there is no questioning, but makes us wonder about it; there is no subjectivity, but she creates... distrust, posits questions that, maybe, we have never asked ourselves…..This uncertainty, these questions also appear in her book "White Teeth" where she tells an intergenerational story about 3 families whose origins are very different, whose lives crush into each other in the present. Their experiences together bring questions and reopen wounds that apparently are closed but actually they are not and we go there back and forward again and again.
Review by Margarida Pereira
I had a really good time reading “On beauty”. I found myself very immersed in the drama of the Belsey family, enjoying every side story and laughing out loud with its snappy dialogues. It’s a book full of references to paintings, music and literature, allowing us to delve deeper into each protagonist, and understand their inner feelings. In fact, I think it’s incredible how Zadie Smith could make me feel sympathetic towards all protagonists, despite their flaws. Through them, “On beauty” touches on different themes such as love, family, friendship and ageing; but also openly discusses some controversial topics such as race, gender and religion.
Painting chosen by Margarida to illustrate her perception. "Two Women at a Window." by Murillo
Final Thoughts on beauty
"Pulchra sunt quae visa placent"
st Thomas Aquinas
"Beauty" inside "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith
"She" / "I"
At that time her (Kiki's) BEAUTY was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry – natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday. She was not one of Howard’s intellectual set, but she was actively political, and her beliefs were genuine and well expressed. Womanish, as they said back then, not feminine. For Claire, Kiki was not only evidence of Howard’s humanity but proof that anew kind of woman had come into the world as promised, as advertised. ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith, 227, part 2, section 8)
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep... John Keats
Painting
‘Oh, yes. She (Maitresse Erzulie) 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.’ ‘Yes, isn’t it? It’s rather like all the Catholic saints rolled into one being.’ ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith.)
Music
"And that was a shame, for Levi loved rap music; its BEAUTY, ingenuity and humanity were neither obscure nor unlikely to him, and he could argue a case for its equal greatness against any of the artistic products of the human species" ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Physical
‘It’s true that men – they respond to BEAUTY… it doesn’t end for them, this… this concern with BEAUTY as a physical actuality in the world – and that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes… but it’s true and… I don’t know how else to explain what ’" ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Pastoral fallacy
"The food arrived. Claire was still speaking about the land. Zora, who had been clearly brooding on something, now spoke up. ‘But how do you avoid falling into pastoral fallacy – I mean, isn’t it a depoliticized reification, all this BEAUTY stuff about landscape? Virgil, Pope, the Romantics. Why idealize?’ ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
Spiritual
‘Both these pictures speak of illumination. Why? That is to say, can we speak of light as a neutral concept? What is the logos of this light, this spiritual light, this supposed illumination? What are we signing up to when we speak of the ‘‘BEAUTY ’’ of this ‘‘light’’?’ (Howard) ("On Beauty" by Zadie Smith)
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/rembrandt-van-rijn-young-woman-sleeping-a-drawing/RgGYBoljD5rVJg
No Technicalities...
"The metaphors won´t work. And who cares, anyway, for technicalities when that starburst of pleasure and love and BEAUTY is taking you over?" ("On Beauty and Being Wrong,"section three from "On Beauty")
I Died for Beauty
Emily Dickinson
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.