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spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
‘It was another proof of art’s indifference; his life might have been broken in two, but painting was still the “bridge of dreams”.’
In order to achieve the depth of soul and vision necessary to become a true artist, [a:Rainer Maria Rilke|7906|Rainer Maria Rilke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651322555p2/7906.jpg] prescribes a life of solitude. However, this exchange of artistry for solitude may come at a very high price. While on a journey through Argentina to paint landscapes, German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas suffered a tragic accident that left him with an horrifically maimed face and damaged nervous system. As his disfigurement and bouts of pain separate him from his companions, pushing him inward towards his own solitude, his new morphine fueled vision unlocks the inner beauty of the world and pushed him further into an elevated artistic spirit. ‘It was as if he had taken another step into the world of his paintings.’ César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is a succinct allegory of an artists solitude and place in the wide world, as Aira’s compact prose illustrates a grand portrait of artistic history and the delicate balance of existence.
Landscape by Rugendas
Aira is so precise, so exacting with his language, that this succinct novella retains the broad scope of a lengthy novel. In 80pgs, Aira covers a story and a deep well of ideas that could easily have been discussed for hundreds of pages, yet, the reader does not feel that Aira has slighted them with his brief, but powerfully moving, book. Every word hangs perfectly in balance, not a word out of place, which is impressively fitting with many of Rugendas and his companion’s investigation of balance in the world. Although Episode finds its roots in factual biography, this is, for all intensive purposes, a fictionalized account of Rugendas, however, like the way Rugendas’ hallucinations blend with reality, the blend of fact and fiction opens up the inner beauty of life and art that is impenetrable to fact and common reality.
Having studied in the genre of physiognomy of nature, a scientific approach to landscape painting laid out by the ideas of Alexander von Humboldt, Rugendas reproduced exactly species to create a perfect, scientific totality.
History itself becomes an important motif of the novella. On their journey, each vision absorbed into them contains some statement on the history of the world, and mans mark he has made on it.
Aira blend of fact and fiction, with the purpose to create a poignant statement fact or fiction couldn’t achieve on it’s own, Rugendas new-found, and highly paid for, vision of the world is a blend of reality and nightmare. ‘Nature, in its nineteen vegetal phases, adapted itself to his perception, enveloped with Edenic light: a morphine landscape.’ Each of his hallucinations carry with it fragments of reality, and the two combine on paper to illustrate a truth in the world that was once hidden to him before.. Whereas he must cover himself behind a veil, the veil of reality is lifted before his eyes. ‘Rugendas had come to the conclusion that the lines of a drawing should not represent corresponding lines in visible reality, in a one-to-one equivalence. On the contrary, the line’s function was constructive.’ His surrealistic paintings embody a truth nobody else had been able to envision.
This is an incredible novella that seems like a trick of the eye must have taken place as so much knowledge is packed into such a small space. Like the best of short fiction, each word is fitted perfectly together to build a grand story — each word is like each physiognomic detail in Rugendas paintings. Aira is certainly not an author to be passed over as he is able to create such a fine balance of fact and fiction as well as beauty and grotesquery. As stated by [a:Roberto Bolaño|72039|Roberto Bolaño|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1617204588p2/72039.jpg] in the forward: ‘[Aira’s] novels seem to put the theories of [a:Witold Gombrowicz|9632|Witold Gombrowicz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1655576009p2/9632.jpg] into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the World.’ If prayer is literature, than Aira certainly offers up some powerful prayer to the literary gods.
4/5
Cattle Raid as depicted by Rugendas
‘All these scenes were much more like pictures than reality. In pictures, the scenes can be thought out, invented, which means that they can surpass themselves in terms of strangeness, incoherence and madness. In reality, by contrast, they simply happen, without preliminary invention.’
In order to achieve the depth of soul and vision necessary to become a true artist, [a:Rainer Maria Rilke|7906|Rainer Maria Rilke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651322555p2/7906.jpg] prescribes a life of solitude. However, this exchange of artistry for solitude may come at a very high price. While on a journey through Argentina to paint landscapes, German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas suffered a tragic accident that left him with an horrifically maimed face and damaged nervous system. As his disfigurement and bouts of pain separate him from his companions, pushing him inward towards his own solitude, his new morphine fueled vision unlocks the inner beauty of the world and pushed him further into an elevated artistic spirit. ‘It was as if he had taken another step into the world of his paintings.’ César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is a succinct allegory of an artists solitude and place in the wide world, as Aira’s compact prose illustrates a grand portrait of artistic history and the delicate balance of existence.
Landscape by Rugendas
Aira is so precise, so exacting with his language, that this succinct novella retains the broad scope of a lengthy novel. In 80pgs, Aira covers a story and a deep well of ideas that could easily have been discussed for hundreds of pages, yet, the reader does not feel that Aira has slighted them with his brief, but powerfully moving, book. Every word hangs perfectly in balance, not a word out of place, which is impressively fitting with many of Rugendas and his companion’s investigation of balance in the world. Although Episode finds its roots in factual biography, this is, for all intensive purposes, a fictionalized account of Rugendas, however, like the way Rugendas’ hallucinations blend with reality, the blend of fact and fiction opens up the inner beauty of life and art that is impenetrable to fact and common reality.
’And yet, at some point, the mediation had to give way, not so much by breaking down as by building up to the point where it became a world of its own, in whose signs it was possible to apprehend the world itself, in its primal nakedness.’To further embody this sentiment, Aira crafts his fictional account to resemble a biographic novel, writing as if citing letters that don’t actually exist and interspersing encyclopedic asides of biographical information. This seemingly factual information grows in the soil of fiction to become something far greater. ‘Reality was becoming immediate, like a novel.’
Having studied in the genre of physiognomy of nature, a scientific approach to landscape painting laid out by the ideas of Alexander von Humboldt, Rugendas reproduced exactly species to create a perfect, scientific totality.
‘[Rugendas'] aim was to apprehend the world in its totality; and the way to do this, he believed, in conformity with a long tradition, was through vision…The artistic geographer had to capture the “physiognomy” of the landscape by picking out its characteristic “physiognomic” traits…The precise arrangement of physiognomic elements in the picture would speak volumes to the observer’s sensibility, conveying information not in the form of isolated features but features systematically interrelated so as to be intuitively grasped…The key to it all was “natural growth,” which is why the vegetable element occupied the foreground…’The artistic style has him reproduce exact, scientific elements in each painting to maintain an accurate image of reality, to highlight a specific moment in fluid history. As he reproduces small details of flowers to better capture the whole of a landscape, when drawing the Indian cattle raids, he comments that each toe, each tiny element of the Indians body is an expression on the whole of the man, which then must be reproduced, ‘seeing it as part of the multitudinous species, which would go on making nature. Continually reappearing from the wings, the Indians were, in their way, making history.’
History itself becomes an important motif of the novella. On their journey, each vision absorbed into them contains some statement on the history of the world, and mans mark he has made on it.
‘The mules were driven by human intelligence and commercial interests, expertise in breeding and bloodlines. Everything was human; the farthest wilderness was steeped with sociability, and the sketches they had made, in so far as they had any value, stood as records of this permeation.’While storytelling is often the method for passing down history, Rugendas argues that ‘art was more useful that discourse.’ If all the storytellers fell silent, he argues that history could be better passed down by ‘a set of “tools,” which would enable mankind to reinvent what had happened in the past, with the innocent spontaneity of action.’ Rugendas argues for repetition, that all of humanity’s actions deserve to happen again to better learn from them. The repetitions of events lead to the telling of humanity, and each individual part speaks volumes to the whole. Like the reproduction of individual flora and fauna to create an accurate landscape, each scene, like the Indian raid, is an individual piece to the larger portrait of history. ‘The scenes would be part of the larger story of the raid, which in turn was a very minor episode in the ongoing clash of civilizations.’
Aira blend of fact and fiction, with the purpose to create a poignant statement fact or fiction couldn’t achieve on it’s own, Rugendas new-found, and highly paid for, vision of the world is a blend of reality and nightmare. ‘Nature, in its nineteen vegetal phases, adapted itself to his perception, enveloped with Edenic light: a morphine landscape.’ Each of his hallucinations carry with it fragments of reality, and the two combine on paper to illustrate a truth in the world that was once hidden to him before.. Whereas he must cover himself behind a veil, the veil of reality is lifted before his eyes. ‘Rugendas had come to the conclusion that the lines of a drawing should not represent corresponding lines in visible reality, in a one-to-one equivalence. On the contrary, the line’s function was constructive.’ His surrealistic paintings embody a truth nobody else had been able to envision.
’He was like a drunk at the bar of a squalid dive, fixing his gaze on a peeling wall, an empty bottle, the edge of a window frame, and seeing each object or detail emerge from the nothingness into which it had been plunged by his inner calm. Who cares what they are? asks the aesthete in a flight of paradox. What matters is that they are.’His new facial strangeness and ugliness opens up the beauty of strangeness in the world. Rugendas companion, Krauss, spends much time pondering the balance of the world, and with Rugendas, we see Rilke’s balance of artistry and solitude come to life in mortifying glory. The man leaves humanity all but behind to fully embody painting.
This is an incredible novella that seems like a trick of the eye must have taken place as so much knowledge is packed into such a small space. Like the best of short fiction, each word is fitted perfectly together to build a grand story — each word is like each physiognomic detail in Rugendas paintings. Aira is certainly not an author to be passed over as he is able to create such a fine balance of fact and fiction as well as beauty and grotesquery. As stated by [a:Roberto Bolaño|72039|Roberto Bolaño|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1617204588p2/72039.jpg] in the forward: ‘[Aira’s] novels seem to put the theories of [a:Witold Gombrowicz|9632|Witold Gombrowicz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1655576009p2/9632.jpg] into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the World.’ If prayer is literature, than Aira certainly offers up some powerful prayer to the literary gods.
4/5
Cattle Raid as depicted by Rugendas
‘All these scenes were much more like pictures than reality. In pictures, the scenes can be thought out, invented, which means that they can surpass themselves in terms of strangeness, incoherence and madness. In reality, by contrast, they simply happen, without preliminary invention.’
abby_312's review against another edition
I thought this would be a chill relaxing read…
axelo's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
goosedollaz's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
helgamharb's review against another edition
3.0
3.5
Since art is eternal, nothing is lost.
This is a fictionalized adventurous expedition of Johan Moritz Rugendas, the German landscape painter to Argentina. He intends to journey far into the south, to unexplored regions, in order to capture the essence of the wild landscape and depict it as he sees it.
But things don’t go as planned…
Since art is eternal, nothing is lost.
This is a fictionalized adventurous expedition of Johan Moritz Rugendas, the German landscape painter to Argentina. He intends to journey far into the south, to unexplored regions, in order to capture the essence of the wild landscape and depict it as he sees it.
But things don’t go as planned…
sentient_meat's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
A gem of a novel. Slight bit powerful. Can't recommend enough.
wirawin_aria's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
tomrubenreads's review against another edition
5.0
Bedwelmende samenzwering van een imposant landschap met een hallucinerend hoofdpersonage, tegen het decor van een fascinerende geschiedschrijving. Nogmaals lezen!