Esther Kinsky on Is Beauty Good, the Novel by Rosalind Belben
Many years ago I spent a summer in southeastern Poland. One day, on a hike, I came upon a gathering in the late morning sun. A group of people had assembled on a meadow just outside a village, an audience
In the summer of many years ago, the author found themselves in southeastern Poland, hiking through the Tatra Mountains. They stumbled upon a gathering of musicians, an audience in waiting on a meadow. The musicians were elderly men, dressed in dark woollen clothes and black bucket-style hats. They formed a brass band, playing with an embrace of dissonance that was never jarring.
This dissonance emphasized a melancholy undercurrent, a tiny tonal interstice where tuning diverged slightly, telling wordless tales of past or present affliction. The author was struck by this embrace of dissonance as an ingredient of beauty. Upon reading 'Air Ride', the second chapter of Rosalind Belben's novel, the author perceived this element of dissonance in Belben's writing.
The novel, originally published in 1989, doesn't focus on defining beauty but raises questions about it. Belben's novel explores the presence of nature, landscape, mountains, history, and melancholy, which are all intertwined in borderlands. The talkative protagonist attempts to find language for the rift between humans and their natural environment, which is perpetually disturbed by history.
The absence of a question mark at the end of the title, "Is beauty good?", seems to be a frame, a mock window offering a view of fragmented thoughts.
Written by urgent.news from Literary Hub's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
