je lis trop: fiery, azure, obscure
in August, I read A.S.Byatt, Marguerite Yourcenar, Celia Paul, and others
August was slowed down, divine. Every morning, I thought this August was one of a kind. It was a splash of water, but it was also fierce, with the buzz of the insects and the outburst of colors. Red, orange, purple, pink. Blue, azure shades, too.
In childhood, August was always a threshold. In adulthood, each August is different. This one was a fantasy. I saw colors everywhere I went and wished to be colorful, too. I put on bright, bright blue— the brightest crayon in the box—heeled shoes, and I felt they belonged to a bold Cinderella. I imagined bleeding sunsets and sparkling midnights, while in the daytime, these shoes only touched dusty pavements.
When I wasn’t dressing up or trying on colors, I was looking at curious things. I saw village communities, peeked at the backyards, took photos of quaint houses, and sometimes wondered if I would ever want one, wondered if I would ever have a quaint house. I remembered teenage photoshoots with my friends, all the styling, and all the fun. We wrapped colorful shawls around trees and posed against them. We feigned glamour and brought color to abandoned and graffitied houses.
The first two books I read this month—A.S.Byatt’s short story collection, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice, and Deborah Levy’s new novel August Blue—are full of color and sensuality. As the full title of Elementals suggests, these stories alternate between two extremes. Reading it is like plunging into the icy water... only to be plucked out and placed under the sun. And the stories, like visions, float right in front. Picture the city of Nîmes, a snowfield, a desert. Picture a voluptuous swimming pool, an amber glass in a luxurious hotel, or a glistening sugary palace.
My favorite story is “Jael”, which is about a woman, a commercials director. The story combines various themes I’m interested in—friendships, childhood, memories, boredom, work, and which life events count the most— but what I remember most is how impressive the color in that story is. The woman is obsessed with this childhood memory of a drawing based on a Biblical scene. She remembers it richly colored with red. It is dripping red, red all over the page.
August Blue is also mirage-like. But compared with Elementals, my impression is a little diluted. The protagonist, a renowned pianist, decides to walk off the stage mid-performance; it’s the defining moment. I follow her in various cities while she, in turn, is following another woman she considers her double (it’s a mystery who she is, really). The pianist’s travels are punctuated with her memories, which shed some light on her peculiar upbringing and relationships, and each city has a one-of-a-kind atmosphere. Here’s a beautiful sight: “A light shower of rain began to fall on Athens, and with it came the smell of warm ancient stones and petrol from the cars and scooters.” And here’s a sentence that well encapsulates how Paris feels: “The dust of the Métro still on my clothes, in my hair, the traffic and sirens still in my head, Paris on the soles of my shoes.”
(As a side note, I’m yet to figure out why, but I don’t like it when books are set during the pandemic. I’m talking about August Blue. It feels… too close. I’ve read so much about it on social media, in the press, and at work, and seeing it in the novel is just so jarring.)
The absolute highlight, reading-wise, was Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, which kept me company for the better part of the month. Hadrian was a Roman emperor who reigned between 117 and 138; he was responsible for an empire so vast that its frontiers bordered on insanity. Observing his predecessor Trajan at work, Hadrian became concerned with the "unsound growth." As an emperor, he ended expansionist politics and worked on preserving peace and prosperity within the conquered lands.
The memoir is a letter to the future emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian considers his existence, starting from things such as sleep, food, and youth, leading on to arts, beauty, books, and, of course, his philosophy on power, strategy, and preservation of the empire, not forgetting passion, love, and death.
Hadrian has difficulties describing his life in coherent terms. “When I consider my life, I am appalled to find it a shapeless mass. A hero’s existence, such as is described to us, is simple: it goes straight to the mark, like an arrow.” He says that his life has contours “less firm”. And could we expect someone who hoped to make all cities splendid, who wanted to assure culture and protection, who wanted to “increase the beauty of the world” to have a coherent life?
There's one thing, though. If I must be objective and state the facts, these are not Hadrian's words. His voice raises like an echo and comes through Marguerite Yourcenar. The French writer dedicated a part of her life to this project. She abandoned and restarted it several times; she searched for ways that would lead her to some semblance of truth. Yourcenar was interested in Hadrian, specifically, because he lived (and here I'll quote Gustave Flaubert) in that interesting time "[...] when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone."
While reading Memoirs of Hadrian, I picked up another book, Nathalie Léger’s Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden (Suite for Barbara Loden in English). I got this book as a gift from a dear friend. Only a few days into reading it, I realized how well this book aligns thematically with the Memoirs of Hadrian. Yes, these are two extremely distant personalities: Hadrian, a Roman emperor, and Barbara Loden, an American actress and director who lived between 1932 and 1980. But even if the scope of these books is different, the interrogations and the methods can seem similar at times.
Yourcenar went to places that Hadrian had visited and looked at how the sun fell where his foot touched the ground. Léger went to places where Loden was, exploring desolate and sad landscapes, such as Centralia (her descriptions of these ghost-like places fascinate me, but only because I feel safe in my fiery, azure, obscure surroundings). Interestingly, Nathalie Léger didn’t set out to write a book about Loden. She was tasked with writing a short entry on Loden for a dictionary of cinema but was compelled to do much more than that. She attempted to follow traces, to catch and cling onto existing fragments of Barbara Loden’s life, and she also turned to Wanda, Loden’s single feature film. But despite her best efforts, she couldn’t pin her down.
Isn’t it remarkable how people might still be looking for your echoes, your truths, and your lived reality long after you’ve gone? We are mysteries to ourselves, and we don’t know who we are. Hadrian: “When I seek deep within me for knowledge of myself what I find is obscure, internal, unformulated, as as secret as any complicity.” We keep asking ourselves questions; the questioning is inexhaustible and so others can keep doing it when we no longer can.
Mid-month, the mood shifted. One weekend, I had to drive. It had been a few years since I last drove a car. I hadn’t forgotten the rules, but I had forgotten the atmosphere. I’d forgotten how high-stakes this whole thing is. I’d forgotten how it feels to see some shiny wolf in a rear-view mirror, continually fretting and continually moving around, swinging to and fro, to and fro, left-center, left-center, to see if they can overtake you; they’re rushing you, they’re building the tension, you can feel just how much they’d love to get you out of their way. Only common sense and maturity prevent me from listening to that little voice urging me to slam on the brakes and see what happens.
(Would I become a reputable road player if I did that?)
That’s why it was funny that the book I started that weekend, La lenteur (Slowness in English) by Milan Kundera, began with a man trying to overtake another. One is tailgating the other; the car is emanating waves of impatience. The narrator explains this behavior by the ecstasy that comes with speed, but I don’t know if I believe it. There’s just something of a twisted power play on the roads. It’s much more than the love of speed.
Anyway, my destination was lovely, and La lenteur accompanied me for a couple of days. I’m conflicted because this book had brilliant and funny sections. I was particularly interested in how Kundera described impressions people want to leave on each other and the performative nature of conversations. Reflections on speed and slowness were interesting, too. At the same time, some sections—especially those regarding attitudes toward women—left me cold. That’s becoming my usual reaction to Kundera’s books; I don’t really have much more to say.
The end of the month approached slowly. The light in the sky went out at 9:00 p.m. I wasn't ready to let go of summer just yet. I decided to close it with Celia Paul's Self-Portrait, a serene yet poignant account of a woman artist's life. Her writing is light, detached, and a little enigmatic, even when she tackles intimate topics (one of them is her relationship with the painter Lucian Freud). I adored looking at all the artwork featured on these pages— they complemented and, in many cases, explained Paul's words.
I remember how, as a kid, I wished I could draw or paint. I usually think of this whenever a beautiful book filled with art falls into my hands. I look at the pictures and then look for the words to describe what I would paint if I could. If I could, I would perhaps paint a fiery sky. A vibrant, fiery sky with patches of azure shades. Perhaps a stormy sea below and two small figures, a man and a woman (I think I dreamt something like this). All of it blending into the horizon, disappearing into warm obscurity.
August reading list
Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice by A.S.Byatt
August Blue by Deborah Levy
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger
La lenteur by Milan Kundera
Self-Portrait by Celia Paul