An Equal Music - First Edition cover
May all our fiction
selections this year be as satisfying as An
Equal Music! Eight of us enjoyed reading and discussing it, avidly offering
our responses to Vikram Seth’s long excursus into the arcane world of chamber
music and its dedicated practitioners.
Sunil, Mathew, Esther, Priya, KumKum reading Julia's letter
We learnt
about book-cricket and wondered which Eden we would now be inhabiting had Adam
been born with a snake-eating habit. Aphorisms and allusions fill this novel
with verbal riches.
Priya reads about Billy the cellist making expansive gestures on the open string
There is the
mandatory Onegin stanza at the head of every novel by Vikram Seth, this one
dedicated to his (former) lover Philippe Honoré. A discussion with him on a
walk, standing on a bridge over the Serpentine, started VS off on his novel. He
writes:
Our
story lit with borrowed powers
Rather,
by what our spirits burned,
Embered
in words, to us returned.
Thommo signing the Association of Parties articles making KRG a legal entity
The epigraph
by Donne, reminds us of what qualities Paradise will have – among them
no
noise nor silence, but one equal music
KumKum, Gopa, Thommo, Sunil, Mathew
How wonderful
to experience that here and now on this earth!
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Esther, Gopa, KumKum, Thommo, Mathew, Sunil, Joe (Priya left early)
To read the full account click below ...
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Reading on Feb 20, 2014
Vikram Seth at the
Hay Festival in Kerala 2010 – Surprised by my camera
Present:
Esther, KumKum, Priya, Joe, Thommo, Sunil, Mathew, Gopa
Absent:
Talitha (out of town), Zakia (busy with mil), Ankush (out of town on work),
Preeti (?)
These are the dates for the next two sessions:
Fri Mar 21, 2014: Practice for Shakespeare Festival reading by KRG on
Sat Apr 26
Fri Mar 28,
2014: Oscar
and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Esther who chose
the book introduced Vikram Seth to the readers. She
read out from her smartphone web– based information about Vikram Seth (amader Bikrom, as he was called at the
Kolkata Lit Fest Jan 25-30, 2014). A brief outline of his wonderful and
adventurous life is at the wiki site:
Because
he is such an accessible person, readers will find many interviews scattered on
the web. See:
for
a straightforward bio.
“All of us are pretty much in her shade,” VS
says of his mother, [Leila Seth] crediting her with encouraging him to write Two Lives.
Vikram
Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’ Sequel finds a new home. He started work on his own
novel in verse written in Pushkin stanzas: The
Golden Gate. Even now all his prose works are prefaced by a poem in this
verse form.
Interview:
Chinese is such a compressed language that each word is actually one syllable
so it expands inevitably in English. However, as a result of studying Chinese
and doing translations, some of my English poems have also become monosyllabic
so the entire text of Soon [the AIDS
poem] or Walk is in monosyllables and
certain passages in An Equal Music
are also monosyllabic.
The
Stanford connection. "Since I was studying economics, not English, I stood
outside the orbit of the latest critical theories and did not realize that
writing in rhyme and meter would make me a sort of literary untouchable,"
Seth recalls. Rejected by every publisher he tried, Seth typeset, published and
distributed the book himself. Peddling it around to Bay Area bookstores,
however, he found few takers. "I then forced copies on my friends and
family, telling them to sell them if they could and to give them away if they
couldn't," Seth recounts.
A
year later, the collection of poems, Mappings,
was published by P. Lal at the Calcutta's Writers' Workshop. (Penguin Books
reissued it in 1994.). See: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/343417.html
The
connection to George Herbert. VS says: “If somebody writes clearly, you can
pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they
write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can’t tell if the stream is
one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.”
Vikram Seth obliges Joe by signing his copies of 'An Equal Music' and 'The Golden Gate'
1.
Priya
After reading the passage Priya said she liked the
music. In the passage an incident develops regarding Billy’s habit of making
expansive gestures on the open string – a disease
common to cellists. Everyone else begins to imitate him unconsciously. Sunil
felt that you had to know the music they were playing, and have some learning
in Western classical music, in order to appreciate the novel fully, for it is
about the effect of Music played in an intimate group by humans (chamber
music), as much as it is about Love among humans. Of course, the author
explains many things so that the unmusical are not left out altogether, said
Esther.
KumKum remarked on an audiobook read by Alan Bates –
it has the music too. The book seems even more beautiful listened to in that
fashion. She heard it on audiotapes borrowed from a library by a friend in Ohio.
Asking about the origins of VS, Mathew noted he is a
Khatri from UP. But it is quite misleading to tag an author like Vikram Seth with
a narrow ID like that; for he breaks every genre of writing and has resided in
many parts of the world while sporting an Indian passport, and travelled to
many more, including Antarctica. VS was recently at the Patna Literary
Festival, a city with which he has connections from childhood.
2.
KumKum
KumKum
first read Julia’s letter in which she tells Michael:
I, of all
people, who have a Before and an After, should have known that you can't relive
your life. I should never have come backstage that night.
J is not willing to let go of her stable life with
James, the Boston banker. She wants another child by him so Luke can learn to
share. In the second passage where they go for a walk in the park, J says,
I am not, I am not ever, I am never going to play with
anyone again.
and a little later:
I love him
[James] now. I can't live without him. What's the point of explaining these
things? Or Luke. How could I have been so stupid – worse than stupid, so selfish, so self-indulgent,
so reckless?
M replies:
You'll cope without me, Julia. I won't without you.
And that’s the heart of the tragedy, not merely
that love is lost, but the further prospect of life for M is blighted.
Sunil noted the absence of a ring on J’s finger.
Gopa asked: is it the residue of Indian culture in VS that has caused him to
give this cast of being forever the loyal wife to J? Joe thought not, for the characters
are doing whatever they are doing as VS thinks such a person would do – he’s
inside the mind of the character and empathising with J, and indeed with every
other character in the novel. VS in an interview said:
It’s
not often that I can understand the motivations of my characters and it’s not
always that I’m very pleased with what they do; in fact, very often I am
frustrated with what they do but then I realise that they themselves don’t
understand what they themselves do, anymore than I do.
KumKum was emphatic that J could not fulfill her
life in any other satisfactory way. But when Joe was challenged how he would
make the story turn out, he replied that a different ending might be possible
with J leaving James (with a proper farewell letter), asking for a no-fault
divorce, agreeing to share Luke, and flying off with M to Salzburg, Vienna or
Venice (wherever their musical heroes lived), some place where they could make love
– and make music –
with equal abandon, thus making possible a sequel titled, An Equal Abandon.
Soon they’d have a
child of their own, equally precocious, and Luke and Matthew (their future gospel child’s
name) will be as close as M&J. And James having won a premature
fortune as a trader at his bank, will retire, buy a villa in the same city and
invite M&J to play at his home. He would meanwhile have married a hearing-unimpaired
art restorer who will confess to him ‘Music to me is dearer even than speech.’
Esther gave her own version.
For KumKum the moral of the whole story could be
summed up thus: never sneak off to an encounter with a former lover, whether backstage or on
stage. So, no novel.
Mathew thought that J only realised later that she
had made a bad mistake by going backstage to meet M, for although her passion
for M had long abated, such was the flammable fire burning still in the poor boy’s arid
heart, that it would soon consume her too.
The conversation turned to VS. Mathew said he was
bisexual. Yes, that’s right. The first explicit hint is in his poem, Dubious. It is light in
texture, the fluffiest mousse you can imagine made of words, half in quest of
self, half questioning the accepted conventions on sex.
Some men like Jack
and some like Jill;
I'm glad I like
them both; but still
I wonder if
this freewheeling
really is an
enlightened thing –
Or is its greater
scope a sign
Of deviance from
some party line?
In the strict ranks
of Gay and Straight
What is my status?
Stray? Or Great?
The last word is a self-reference to the time he had in
one cheeky line of a stanza in The Golden
Gate rhymed ‘Seth’ with ‘great:’
An editor at a plush party
(Well-wined, -provisioned, speechy, hearty)
Hosted by (long live!) Thomas Cook
Where my Tibetan travel book
Was honored – seized my arm: “Dear fellow,
What’s your next work?” “A novel…” “Great!
We hope that you, dear Mr Seth – ”
“In verse”, I added. He turned yellow.
"How marvelously quaint,” he said,
And subsequently cut me dead.
KumKum narrated the story VS told at the Kolkata
Lit Meet in Jan 25-30, 2014 – that he was originally to be named Amit after the
hero of the story Sesher Kobita in
Bengali, but some elder in their clan pointed out that the eldest son’s name
had to begin with the V sound, so he became Vikram and was glad to be saved from
carrying the effete poet’s name in that novel by Rabindranath.
Sunil noted how simple the language is,
although the development of the relationships among people, and the description
of nature is full of things that make you wonder. Priya added there are no ‘purple’ passages – god,
wouldn't VS be embarrassed if readers ever found him writing like a Mills &
Boon author!
Mathew noted the Doon School upbringing of VS, and
said it was a pastime among Dosco graduates to search for passages in his
writing to find traces of Doon School. In an address to Doon School boys VS spoke
of his being bullied for not conforming, and hoped it was not like that any
more.
Esther said there are no ‘tough’ passages. True,
but how much you extract from the novel depends quite a bit on the musical
attainments of the reader, and hiser ability to ferret out the innumerable historical and poetic allusions which are hidden in the novel.
3.
Gopa
Going back to
the past always brings heart-break was Gopa’s preface to her reading of M&J’s
first days together in Vienna. Gopa noted a sentence
… what I learnt from her
I was not taught
as indicative
of the special meaning J had for M. Gopa specially liked the insight in another
sentence:
She had an acuity, a gentleness unlike anything I
was used to. Perhaps what she saw in me was a corresponding strangeness – a volatility, a sense of resistance,
of scepticism, roughness, impulsiveness, even, at times, of dark panic, almost
brainsickness.
Someone noted
M has just dropped Virginie, the French girl who was his student and stand-in
for a casual lover. She never meant much to him; there was no real passion
there.
4.
Thommo
Thommo was not
quite prepared but the readers insisted he open the book at a random page and
read. Amazing to report, his choice fell upon the single deus-ex-machina moment in the book: M seated in a double-decker bus
in London going along Regent Street and sighting J (whom he has not seen in ten
years) in another bus going in the opposite direction, not more than five feet
from him! This pivotal sighting is the great thrust that propels the novel
forward, with flashbacks to illumine the unique double love (of each other and
of Music) that lies at the centre of the story.
Joe noted this
was the one Bollywood movie type moment in the novel, but others said
they saw further instances of M&J’s coordinates coinciding by the author’s design,
with important consequences for the two protagonists. Yes, for instance, J
going backstage to greet the Quartetto Maggiore without knowing M was a member.
Mathew
elaborated on ‘book-cricket’ a game which distracted students play when the
class session is boring. He explained, but as always wiki has a note catering
to such minutiae (which would never have entered the now defunct Encyclopedia
Britannica):
5.
Joe
An Appreciation by Joe
Love lost in youthful Vienna, regained a decade later in London, reinvigorated in Venice, then lost again in London – with the woman retreating forever to a secure life with her banker-husband, but afflicted by the saddest condition a musician can have: deafness. She manages the emotional sundering from Michael to be back with her James; but Michael is shot through, and we hear him muttering:
Grief and rue, grief and rue, break the erring heart in two.
Love lost in youthful Vienna, regained a decade later in London, reinvigorated in Venice, then lost again in London – with the woman retreating forever to a secure life with her banker-husband, but afflicted by the saddest condition a musician can have: deafness. She manages the emotional sundering from Michael to be back with her James; but Michael is shot through, and we hear him muttering:
Grief and rue, grief and rue, break the erring heart in two.
At bottom is the question: can one amorous heart hold two
loves? Apparently it can. But one rational mind cannot. Julia gives up,
realising two loves cannot be reconciled in her life, alas. The innocent, and
precocious Luke decides matters in the end for her.
For Michael the question is: can love regained, be lost
again? Can life bereft, be lived with one unending love? Vikram Seth depicts
him as Orpheus, in the Italian painting by Padovanino that adorns the cover of
one edition.
.+Photograph+by+Corbis+-+Harp+and+soul.jpg)
Orpheus and Euydice (detail) by Alessandro Padovanino. Photograph by Corbis
Orpheus lamented without end for the love he lost, Eurydice. He
rescued her from Hades by the power of his music. And then lost her forever,
when he looked back before regaining the upper world. By this allegory VS
indicates that one life can yield no more than one undying love, for a person
so stricken as Michael; and yes, a love regained can be lost again, in a trice.
Michael has no one to return to, only an empty flat and all
these memories for the rest of his life. He will fall apart. But the bequest of
the Tononi violin to him by the old lady who encouraged his talent in Rochdale,
is a tender solace. He decides to retire from active quartet playing and return
to his roots in the north country, a cultural backwater compared to London, but
it’s a place he can live out the half-impaired life left to him, close to his
aging father and aunt. He’ll survive by teaching and forming his own trio.
The Art of the Fugue - Contrapunctus I by Johann Sebastian Bach
But there’s one last piano recital by Julia he has to attend
in London, and after hearing her play Bach’s The Art of the Fugue on the piano, he muses …
There
is no forced gravitas in her playing. It is a beauty beyond imagining –
clear, lovely, inexorable, phrase across phrase, phrase echoing phrase, the
incomplete, the unending "Art of the Fugue". It is an equal music.
…
Music,
such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to
grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and
to hear such music – not too much, or the soul could not sustain
it from time to time.
KumKum complained that Joe took up excessive time
with his readings and the commentary, which Priya said she liked. KumKum added,
as an afterthought, that people like Michael should never marry.
By what matrimonial criterion does Michael fail? Should a guy like M not be allowed to marry even in fiction? This is fiction after all; and
while it’s moot whether VS would agree with KumKum, M is ejected beyond the
pale of marriage in the book.
Thommo’s answer was that KumKum would then
disapprove of lots of the guys who are getting married nowadays. Sunil derived
from this the lesson, ‘beware of going backstage!’
And what about Adam in the Bible – did he have any
choice, asked Thommo? Sunil gave us the joke about what would have happened if
Adam was a Chinese – he’d have killed the snake and eaten it, and all of us
would have been living happily ever after in the Garden of Eden!
But wouldn't we all be simpleton duffers in that
garden without having eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Would we
know the Pythagoras theorem, or E=mc2,
and the DNA's Double Helix? And how could we have undermined the very idea
of the creation myth in Genesis by discovering Darwinian evolution?
The first piece Joe read is Ch 4.25 which is all
in monosyllables. It’s a very conscious effort that strikes the attentive
reader right away. It is similar to many stark poems VS has written in
monosyllables like the famous one, Soon,
about a man dying of AIDS.
In the second passage M&J, while touring
Venice on foot, come upon the church of Vivaldi, Santa Maria della Visitazione,
or della Pietà as it is popularly known. There M takes out his Tononi violin to
play Vivaldi’s First Manchester Sonata’s Largo movement (II) and he convinces J
to join him on the piano.
Vivaldi's Church - Santa Maria della Pieta, Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice
It is an ethereal experience for both of them. Joe
read out the passage while playing the three-minute movement softly in the
background from his computer. You can hear it here shared from his Google drive:
It is also here:
6.
Sunil
Sunil read a
piece that is ruminative and sensuous; M is able to remember J’s playing from
long ago and senses her presence deeply as he plays. Joe remarked that though
all his novels have a filmability, not one film has been attempted, although
there’s an attempt at a radio play on BBC Radio 4:
A Suitable Boy
would make a blockbuster 3- or 4-part movie, but it would take immaculate
casting to make Rupa Mehra, Lata, Haresh, Amit, Kabir, Kakoli, Saeeda Bai and
the lot appear real and true to the novel, not mere caricatures.
The second passage is the beginning of the end as
M&J leave Venice. The post-mortem of love starts with the question of M:
Why did you come here with me if everything
between us was a sham?
M concludes:
Yes, I have got to where I am from somewhere else.
But I too am subject to higher powers – to music, to my
fellows, to the life of someone who is better off without me.
7.
Mathew
Mathew’s first
passage is about love-making by daylight. VS does not disappoint. It’s tender,
not mushy; about loving sex, not eroticism.
The closest he comes to the latter is:
The scent of her
body, mixed with her faint perfume, drives me into a frenzy.
What exquisite
taste!
The second passage is the mind-expanding
walk in the park with Luke and the dog, Michael getting to know the other world
of Julia, that he is unaware of.
8.
Esther
The first passage is a trail of
subconscious thoughts as M wanders around Venice on J’s departure. It will seem
obscure to a person who has not been to Venice and seen the sights: ‘Campari calls
from the Lido’ refers to a huge neon sign atop a building advertising the aperitif Campari; ‘our
plankton love might grow’ refers to Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress where the line ‘My vegetable love should grow’ appears; Carpaccio’s dog refers to
this painting of St Augustine:
which
is housed in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni of Venice; ‘Each beast
is sad thereafter’ refers to post-coital blues, first signalled by Galen in his
Latin proverb
post coitum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier
post coitum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier
(After
sex all animals are sad except the cock and the woman.)
One
can go on.
Two
striking aphorisms grace the passage:
Grief
and rue, grief and rue, break the erring heart in two.
and
An
egg may not be unboiled nor trust resealed.
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