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Blue Self-Portrait
On a flight from Berlin to Paris, a woman haunted by composer Arnold Schoenberg’s self-portrait reflects on her romantic encounter with a pianist. Obsessive, darkly comic, and full of angst, Blue Self-Portrait unfolds among Berlin's cultural institutions, but is located in the mid-air flux between contrary impulses, with repetitions and variations that explore the possibilities and limitations of art, history, and connection.
143 pages, ebook
First published August 27, 2009
About the author
Noémi Lefebvre
7 books10 followersNoémi Lefebvre was born in 1964 in Caen, and lives in Lyon. Further to a PhD on the subject of music education and national identity in Germany and France, she became a political scientist at CERAT de Grenoble II Institute.
She is the author of three novels, all of which have garnered intense critical success: L’autoportrait bleu (2009), L’état des sentiment à l’âge adulte (2012) and L'enfance politique (2015).
She is a regular contributor to the respected French investigative website Mediapart and to the bilingual French-German review La mer gelée.
She is the author of three novels, all of which have garnered intense critical success: L’autoportrait bleu (2009), L’état des sentiment à l’âge adulte (2012) and L'enfance politique (2015).
She is a regular contributor to the respected French investigative website Mediapart and to the bilingual French-German review La mer gelée.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
April 9, 2018
My fourth book from the Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist, and for me the most difficult yet to assess and review. It has superficial similarities with Die, My Love - both are translated novellas that take the form of extended interior monologues but the similarity ends there.
None of the main characters in this book are named. The narrator is flying back to Paris from a trip to Berlin accompanied by her sister. While in Berlin she had a brief affair with a pianist and composer, who is obsessed with Arnold Schoenberg, both as a composer and as the painter of the Blue Self-Portrait that gives the book its title. Her account is largely written in long convoluted sentences and paragraphs, with no chapter breaks and plenty of timeshifts and repetitions - this reminded me a little of Thomas Bernhard, but without the same level of contempt. There are funny moments but to me the pervasive atmosphere is darker and more brooding. The book is partly intended to mimic Schoenberg's revolutionary compositional style, and I am not really qualified to judge how well that worked, nor am I able to assimilate the many descriptions of the music, so overall I was left feeling a little frustrated, and feeling that I was only understanding a small part of what Lefebvre is doing.
None of the main characters in this book are named. The narrator is flying back to Paris from a trip to Berlin accompanied by her sister. While in Berlin she had a brief affair with a pianist and composer, who is obsessed with Arnold Schoenberg, both as a composer and as the painter of the Blue Self-Portrait that gives the book its title. Her account is largely written in long convoluted sentences and paragraphs, with no chapter breaks and plenty of timeshifts and repetitions - this reminded me a little of Thomas Bernhard, but without the same level of contempt. There are funny moments but to me the pervasive atmosphere is darker and more brooding. The book is partly intended to mimic Schoenberg's revolutionary compositional style, and I am not really qualified to judge how well that worked, nor am I able to assimilate the many descriptions of the music, so overall I was left feeling a little frustrated, and feeling that I was only understanding a small part of what Lefebvre is doing.
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
November 14, 2018Nah, I really don't think I should have to try that hard. I mean, I will try pretty hard. Not that hard.
November 19, 2018
Deservedly part of the shortlist for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize for 'gorgeous prose and hardcore literary fiction' from small, independent presses.
Schoenberg or Eisler or Brecht ... the resistance to collective happiness put up by all artists classified as degenerate and persecuted by happiness even in their nightmares.
Les Fugitives is another of the UK’s wonderful small independent presses, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK."
Their highest profile release so far has come from Jeffrey Zuckerman's much-lauded translation of Ananda Devi's Eve out of Her Ruins, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, recently won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction) .
Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis from Noémi Lefebvre's 2009 French original L’autoportrait bleu, is their first new release of 2017.
The title of the novel is taken from Arnold Schönberg's Blaues Selbstportait
The story unfolds in an interior monologue by our narrator, a women on a 90 minute flight from Germany back to her hometown Paris, with her sister, ostensibly reading the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, but primarily reflecting on their trip to Berlin:
J’affichais une sérénité que j’admirais de l’extérieur, je suis forte comme fille, je me disais dans l’avion, d’afficher une sérénité si sereine, n’en revenais pas de me voir aussi paisible, quasiment paissant et non pas hurlant comme une vache dont on aurait prélevé le veau, qui n’aurait que ses pauvres sentiments bovins maternels, l’un n’empêche pas l’autre, pour meugler à mort et personne pour lui répondre. Je lisais donc en paix apparente ces fameuses lettres de Theodor W. Adorno à Thomas Mann et réciproquement, tandis que ma sœur avait les yeux fixés sur les aérofreins et me racontait des histoires de pilotage, de puissance masculine et de folie volante.
I feigned serenity and admired the exterior effect, for a girl I’m pretty tough, I thought to myself in the plane, projecting such serene serenity, couldn’t get over seeing myself so much at ease, practically meadow-grazing certainly not bellowing like a cow whose calf has been kidnapped, only her poor bovine maternal feelings left to nurse, the one doesn’t eliminate the other, to moo herself to death and nobody there to answer. So evidently at ease I was reading these legendary letters from Adorno to Mann and vice versa while my sister, eyes riveted on the air brakes, was telling me tales of great pilots, of masculine might and airborne derring-do.
In particular, she reflects on her relationship with a composer and pianist there, and, in turn, his own obsession with both the twelve-tone scale of Schoenberg, but, more importantly, his resistance to collective happiness and the relationship between music and the Nazi regime, both the resistance of certain artists but the significance that Heydrich's father was himself a composer.
The obsession with music theory has strong echoes of Eszter in Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, an author, in turn, strongly influenced by Thomas Bernhard. And Lefebvre's prose has very strong echoes of Bernhard (except the narrator trains the scorn on herself), such as this passage where she regrets her unflattering comments on the pianist's old car:
He's obliged to accept it, the appellation world-class pianist, simply forced to swallow the irony in that title and to face the face that for me, Miss Bulletproof herself, knowing nothing of the dynamics of pleasure, a car like his must be the object of jocularity, even ridicule, while for him nothing of the sort, reigning Miss Immortal, I trample anti-commercial values without restraint and deny the possibility of any attachment so deep, powerful, so authentic, to this car and no other, as to be practically in the pianist' s DNA, when the same pianist was driving this very banger (though world-class in his eyes) through the fields and closes of that erstwhile republic, heading for Neuhardenberg Castle, in other words, he was touring about the open-country, joyously driving in the sub-sublime and frozen landscape of the Bradenburg backwoods, at the far edge of reunited Germany and a mere ten kilometres from Poland, a Brandenburg castle then a Prussian one then Nazi them Communist and then returned to its heirs and state-subsidised into a space of high unified German culture, the superbly restored castle of Neuhardenberg as described in the leaflet, the hallowed place to which the pianist was driving at the wheel of that altogether world-class car the company of which alone could make him whole, to see the exhibition 'Music and the Third Reich'.
[...]
Forgetting a single Heydrich, father or son, would have immediate consequences for his interpretation of Beethoven and Liszt, the pianist said to whoever would listen, immediate consequences for his composition and for everything else, you can't play any of that romantic, so-called classical music, as if the Heydrichs had not existed, he would say giving his angelic smile, before launching into Beethoven, without letting up he would explain in his polite and polite and respectful manner to the Auditorium audience which was there to listen to classical music and not to hear a pianist saying that to play Beethoven you must not only know Beethoven but also the Heydrichs, not only Heydrich the son but Heydrich the father too, the composer, der Komposer with a big K, a second-rate capital letter composer nonetheless a craftsman of German music, you do follow my meaning, as director of the conservatorium, the pianist explained to the girl who was keen to listen, and thus director of musical minds, and this instructor of young people with bright futures such as Germany was mass-producing at the time, instructors to the musical youth that would only, from one day to the next, turn into Hitler Youth, verstehst du?
The translation is by Sophie Lewis, formerly Senior Editor at And Other Stories edit fiction for And Other Stories but also for other publishers, including Peirene Press and Tilted Axis Press. She has said:
désinvolture)
Lewis provides a very helpful translator's afterword where she explains some key word choices e.g. translating the narrator's self-description as 'désinvolture', which contains elements of nonchalance, insouciance, devilmaycareism, and happy-go-lucky, as 'not-caring.' She also highlights the striking use of repeated leitmotifs is the text: "accompaniment, counter-phrase, nice and niceness, shame and shamelessness, legs knotted and unknotted, overviews of waterways, criticisms of cars, cows' lowing, flute-playing and many more."
Overall highly recommended and a book I plan to revisit.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
For further reviews see:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and
https://triumphofthenow.com/2017/06/0...
Schoenberg or Eisler or Brecht ... the resistance to collective happiness put up by all artists classified as degenerate and persecuted by happiness even in their nightmares.
Les Fugitives is another of the UK’s wonderful small independent presses, one with a very specific remit: to publish "Short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK."
Their highest profile release so far has come from Jeffrey Zuckerman's much-lauded translation of Ananda Devi's Eve out of Her Ruins, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, recently won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction) .
Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis from Noémi Lefebvre's 2009 French original L’autoportrait bleu, is their first new release of 2017.
The title of the novel is taken from Arnold Schönberg's Blaues Selbstportait
The story unfolds in an interior monologue by our narrator, a women on a 90 minute flight from Germany back to her hometown Paris, with her sister, ostensibly reading the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, but primarily reflecting on their trip to Berlin:
J’affichais une sérénité que j’admirais de l’extérieur, je suis forte comme fille, je me disais dans l’avion, d’afficher une sérénité si sereine, n’en revenais pas de me voir aussi paisible, quasiment paissant et non pas hurlant comme une vache dont on aurait prélevé le veau, qui n’aurait que ses pauvres sentiments bovins maternels, l’un n’empêche pas l’autre, pour meugler à mort et personne pour lui répondre. Je lisais donc en paix apparente ces fameuses lettres de Theodor W. Adorno à Thomas Mann et réciproquement, tandis que ma sœur avait les yeux fixés sur les aérofreins et me racontait des histoires de pilotage, de puissance masculine et de folie volante.
I feigned serenity and admired the exterior effect, for a girl I’m pretty tough, I thought to myself in the plane, projecting such serene serenity, couldn’t get over seeing myself so much at ease, practically meadow-grazing certainly not bellowing like a cow whose calf has been kidnapped, only her poor bovine maternal feelings left to nurse, the one doesn’t eliminate the other, to moo herself to death and nobody there to answer. So evidently at ease I was reading these legendary letters from Adorno to Mann and vice versa while my sister, eyes riveted on the air brakes, was telling me tales of great pilots, of masculine might and airborne derring-do.
In particular, she reflects on her relationship with a composer and pianist there, and, in turn, his own obsession with both the twelve-tone scale of Schoenberg, but, more importantly, his resistance to collective happiness and the relationship between music and the Nazi regime, both the resistance of certain artists but the significance that Heydrich's father was himself a composer.
The obsession with music theory has strong echoes of Eszter in Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, an author, in turn, strongly influenced by Thomas Bernhard. And Lefebvre's prose has very strong echoes of Bernhard (except the narrator trains the scorn on herself), such as this passage where she regrets her unflattering comments on the pianist's old car:
He's obliged to accept it, the appellation world-class pianist, simply forced to swallow the irony in that title and to face the face that for me, Miss Bulletproof herself, knowing nothing of the dynamics of pleasure, a car like his must be the object of jocularity, even ridicule, while for him nothing of the sort, reigning Miss Immortal, I trample anti-commercial values without restraint and deny the possibility of any attachment so deep, powerful, so authentic, to this car and no other, as to be practically in the pianist' s DNA, when the same pianist was driving this very banger (though world-class in his eyes) through the fields and closes of that erstwhile republic, heading for Neuhardenberg Castle, in other words, he was touring about the open-country, joyously driving in the sub-sublime and frozen landscape of the Bradenburg backwoods, at the far edge of reunited Germany and a mere ten kilometres from Poland, a Brandenburg castle then a Prussian one then Nazi them Communist and then returned to its heirs and state-subsidised into a space of high unified German culture, the superbly restored castle of Neuhardenberg as described in the leaflet, the hallowed place to which the pianist was driving at the wheel of that altogether world-class car the company of which alone could make him whole, to see the exhibition 'Music and the Third Reich'.
[...]
Forgetting a single Heydrich, father or son, would have immediate consequences for his interpretation of Beethoven and Liszt, the pianist said to whoever would listen, immediate consequences for his composition and for everything else, you can't play any of that romantic, so-called classical music, as if the Heydrichs had not existed, he would say giving his angelic smile, before launching into Beethoven, without letting up he would explain in his polite and polite and respectful manner to the Auditorium audience which was there to listen to classical music and not to hear a pianist saying that to play Beethoven you must not only know Beethoven but also the Heydrichs, not only Heydrich the son but Heydrich the father too, the composer, der Komposer with a big K, a second-rate capital letter composer nonetheless a craftsman of German music, you do follow my meaning, as director of the conservatorium, the pianist explained to the girl who was keen to listen, and thus director of musical minds, and this instructor of young people with bright futures such as Germany was mass-producing at the time, instructors to the musical youth that would only, from one day to the next, turn into Hitler Youth, verstehst du?
The translation is by Sophie Lewis, formerly Senior Editor at And Other Stories edit fiction for And Other Stories but also for other publishers, including Peirene Press and Tilted Axis Press. She has said:
I love the visionary sensations I sometimes get as I work between languages, seeing how they tessellate or shadow each other, or how they diverge.(see https://caroltranslation.com/2017/06/...
désinvolture)
Lewis provides a very helpful translator's afterword where she explains some key word choices e.g. translating the narrator's self-description as 'désinvolture', which contains elements of nonchalance, insouciance, devilmaycareism, and happy-go-lucky, as 'not-caring.' She also highlights the striking use of repeated leitmotifs is the text: "accompaniment, counter-phrase, nice and niceness, shame and shamelessness, legs knotted and unknotted, overviews of waterways, criticisms of cars, cows' lowing, flute-playing and many more."
Overall highly recommended and a book I plan to revisit.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
For further reviews see:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and
https://triumphofthenow.com/2017/06/0...
June 10, 2017
Blue Self-Portrait, the debut novel by Noémi Lefebvre, was originally published in her native France in 2009. It’s now being released in English translation by Les Fugitives, a new press that publishes short works by francophone women authors previously unavailable in the UK. The translator, Sophie Lewis, is a former Senior Editor with And Other Stories.
This is a somewhat difficult book to characterize. In essence, it is the internal monologue of a woman on a plane ride back from Berlin. She happens to be reading the correspondence that passed between Thomas Mann and Theodor W. Adorno. In her mind she moves back and forth between German and French, snippets of which appear in the text, as she relives her unusual romantic encounters with a male pianist/composer in Berlin, such as a meeting at the Kaiser Café and a film at the Sony Centre. Fragments of her personal history share space with incidents from wider history: her failed marriage versus flying over the Wannsee and thinking of the Conference that took place there in 1942.
This stream of consciousness is the narrator’s attempt at achieving self-knowledge. Simultaneously offhand and earnest, she plays with language and memory in a verbal riff on composer Arnold Schoenberg’s 1910 painting, Blue Self-Portrait. Even at novella length, this is not a particularly easy read – the paragraphs, in blocks of justified text, run to several pages; even some individual sentences last a page and a half or so – so I can recommend it only to those who enjoy reading a more experimental style of fiction by women authors (Eimear McBride, Rachel Cusk et al.).
Review originally published at Nudge.
This is a somewhat difficult book to characterize. In essence, it is the internal monologue of a woman on a plane ride back from Berlin. She happens to be reading the correspondence that passed between Thomas Mann and Theodor W. Adorno. In her mind she moves back and forth between German and French, snippets of which appear in the text, as she relives her unusual romantic encounters with a male pianist/composer in Berlin, such as a meeting at the Kaiser Café and a film at the Sony Centre. Fragments of her personal history share space with incidents from wider history: her failed marriage versus flying over the Wannsee and thinking of the Conference that took place there in 1942.
This stream of consciousness is the narrator’s attempt at achieving self-knowledge. Simultaneously offhand and earnest, she plays with language and memory in a verbal riff on composer Arnold Schoenberg’s 1910 painting, Blue Self-Portrait. Even at novella length, this is not a particularly easy read – the paragraphs, in blocks of justified text, run to several pages; even some individual sentences last a page and a half or so – so I can recommend it only to those who enjoy reading a more experimental style of fiction by women authors (Eimear McBride, Rachel Cusk et al.).
Review originally published at Nudge.
January 15, 2018
How to rate a novel that is obviously as much about its form as the ideas it conveys. The title is a reference to the painting by excellent German composer, Arnold Schönberg, whose development of twelve-tone method was a breakthrough in classical music.
Noemi Lefebvre is a musicologist and political scientist, therefore, the novel plays between historical ideas we try to escape like nazism and music and its genius, Schonberg.
I have a very little knowledge of the history of music but I have a feeling that Lefebvre was mimicking Schonberg twelve-tone, in her writing. The circular narration, returning over and over again phrases and motives of education, Nazism, neurosis, and cows longing after its calf, were bringing the novel on the side of absurdity with which Lefebvre obviously flirted. Having said, it definitely didn't make it a smooth read. Interesting experience nonetheless.
Noemi Lefebvre is a musicologist and political scientist, therefore, the novel plays between historical ideas we try to escape like nazism and music and its genius, Schonberg.
I have a very little knowledge of the history of music but I have a feeling that Lefebvre was mimicking Schonberg twelve-tone, in her writing. The circular narration, returning over and over again phrases and motives of education, Nazism, neurosis, and cows longing after its calf, were bringing the novel on the side of absurdity with which Lefebvre obviously flirted. Having said, it definitely didn't make it a smooth read. Interesting experience nonetheless.
February 20, 2018
NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE
The book is published by Les Fugitives, a small publisher “dedicated to publishing short works by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English”.
“L’autoportrait bleu” was originally published in 2009 and was Noémi Lefebvre’s debut novel.
The book is effectively an inner monologue / stream of consciousness of the narrator, sitting next to her sister on a flight from Berlin, reflecting on her interactions in Berlin with a world-class pianist and composer.
The title of the book is taken from a painting (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/arnold-...) by the composer, music theorist and painter Arnold Schoenberg, inventor of the influential twelve-tone technique which was at the heart of a movement in modern music which (as I understand it) prioritised musical theory, cerebral experimentation and the experience and input of the composer; as opposed to traditional tonal classical music which prioritises the enjoyment and emotional engagement of the listener (by use of familiar and comforting musical devices and a hierarchy of major and minor themes).
The book is in subject matter partly an examination of Schonberg’s life, music and painting – with the composer/pianist significantly affected by viewing the Blue Self Portrait.
However it also draws on his musical techniques for its meta-structure – with a series of repeating but equally prominent themes or tones: desinvolutre/ “not-caring”; crossing and uncrossing of legs; the lowing of a cow separated from its calf; encounters in cafes; the contrasts between the characters of the narrator and her sister despite their identical education; the notion of collective happiness; American cultural influences; languages – even in the original French the book features German and American phrases; talking too much and its relationship with a missing tooth; her sisters obsession with flying; the pianist’s usual companion (“accompaniment”); her parachutist ex -boyfriend).
As a result therefore this book could, in the same way as Schonberg’s music, perhaps be accused of elevating literary experimentation over the engagement of the reader.
The book I can most easily compare this to is A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing with its attempt to reproduce thoughts via a first person stream of consciousness, its literary innovation and also its reflections on male dominance. The latter theme is of course much more explicit in Eimear McBride's book, but is still strong here (the narrator agonising over having dominated the conversation with the composer, her sister reflecting on the invention of the air brake).
Interestingly the most considered review I have read of this book is by McBride in the Guardian.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.th...
If this book lacks the linguistic virtuosity of McBride's lyrical reinvention of English (I don't know if that is true in the original book but phrases like "not my cuppa" jarred here); almost all books would fall short of that standard.
Overall this is an admirable book. It is also beautifully translated and I appreciated the insights from Sophie Lewis in her translator's note.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
The book is published by Les Fugitives, a small publisher “dedicated to publishing short works by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English”.
“L’autoportrait bleu” was originally published in 2009 and was Noémi Lefebvre’s debut novel.
The book is effectively an inner monologue / stream of consciousness of the narrator, sitting next to her sister on a flight from Berlin, reflecting on her interactions in Berlin with a world-class pianist and composer.
The title of the book is taken from a painting (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/arnold-...) by the composer, music theorist and painter Arnold Schoenberg, inventor of the influential twelve-tone technique which was at the heart of a movement in modern music which (as I understand it) prioritised musical theory, cerebral experimentation and the experience and input of the composer; as opposed to traditional tonal classical music which prioritises the enjoyment and emotional engagement of the listener (by use of familiar and comforting musical devices and a hierarchy of major and minor themes).
The book is in subject matter partly an examination of Schonberg’s life, music and painting – with the composer/pianist significantly affected by viewing the Blue Self Portrait.
However it also draws on his musical techniques for its meta-structure – with a series of repeating but equally prominent themes or tones: desinvolutre/ “not-caring”; crossing and uncrossing of legs; the lowing of a cow separated from its calf; encounters in cafes; the contrasts between the characters of the narrator and her sister despite their identical education; the notion of collective happiness; American cultural influences; languages – even in the original French the book features German and American phrases; talking too much and its relationship with a missing tooth; her sisters obsession with flying; the pianist’s usual companion (“accompaniment”); her parachutist ex -boyfriend).
As a result therefore this book could, in the same way as Schonberg’s music, perhaps be accused of elevating literary experimentation over the engagement of the reader.
The book I can most easily compare this to is A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing with its attempt to reproduce thoughts via a first person stream of consciousness, its literary innovation and also its reflections on male dominance. The latter theme is of course much more explicit in Eimear McBride's book, but is still strong here (the narrator agonising over having dominated the conversation with the composer, her sister reflecting on the invention of the air brake).
Interestingly the most considered review I have read of this book is by McBride in the Guardian.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.th...
If this book lacks the linguistic virtuosity of McBride's lyrical reinvention of English (I don't know if that is true in the original book but phrases like "not my cuppa" jarred here); almost all books would fall short of that standard.
Overall this is an admirable book. It is also beautifully translated and I appreciated the insights from Sophie Lewis in her translator's note.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
January 16, 2018
Shame to say, but Blue Self-Portrait is a bit of a slog.
Streams of consciousness writing presents its challenges to the reader, and this book is a challenge.
I have visited Berlin twice in the last year, so those settings in the book,around the Tiergarten, and the Sony Centre, were familiar to me. Such points of reference were welcome and helpful in a book which, inter alia, draws inspiration from "admiration for great men" (the narrators expression) and from the Twelve-tone musical composition technique pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg, the same painter of Blue Self-Portrait(1910).
The litany of Germanic "great men" makes for an informative insight into the angst of the German national psyche. Heroes and villains.
Reinhard Heydrich.
But also Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Beethoven and Wagner.
It is strange that German cultural, philosophical and military history, is distilled here by a French writer.
The titans of German history held my interest; the sense of Germanic grandeur expressed through Weltanschauung, with the Tannhauser and Der Jasager operas, nicely offsets the hijacking of German identity by the Nazis with particular culmination at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.
The Germanic grandeur dominates the first part of Blue Self-Portrait. It falls away a bit in the second half, and I don’t have the technical understanding of music necessary to properly relate to the Schoenberg musical composition specifically referred to by the translator, Sophie Lewis, in her afterword, of the 12 tone serial system. I align myself with those other reviewers (Mark Hebwood) who are doubtful about how technical messages absorbed through music can be said to have comparable structure when conveyed through words.
The relationship between our narrator, and her sister, and separately the relationship between the pianist and our girl narrator were messy at times. The pianist connected with Schoenberg's determination to stay true to his life principles through his music (and painting) .
Our pianist states, aping Schoenberg :
I've written nothing of which I could be ashamed " (106 & 146)
The other side to our pianist is that of a lothario cruising the piano bars of Potsdamer Platz taking advantage of impressionable or vulnerable young women "from one girl to the next" (29). The pianists own, semi permanent, partner or "accompaniment", is conveniently out of town , thereby allowing him his assignations.
Our leading girl narrator is clearly ill, emotionally and physically. She is self-conscious in what she says, she has exited a horrible marriage, and her childhood memories are morbid and fearful of death. Hers are the internal bellows of a person barely holding it together. I took this to be the concluding message of the book as the pianist talks of this damaged girl; chilly and anxious in character.
I have limited exposure to Thomas Bernhard but while comparisons have been made to the great man elsewhere, I never felt that our nameless girl narrator ever spoke to me with the necessary detachment, or controlled cynicism, to warrant the reference.
As I neared the end of the book too many non-consequential, and actually baffling, references appeared
Much better to be accompanied than understood and,
the girl who understands without feminine decorum (71)
I’m tempted to rate this a bit higher, but I suspect the parts that remain with me, those of Germany in the c. 19th and c.20th, are parts that I should absorb by reading the works of a renowned German philosopher or writer, such as Thomas Mann.
Streams of consciousness writing presents its challenges to the reader, and this book is a challenge.
I have visited Berlin twice in the last year, so those settings in the book,around the Tiergarten, and the Sony Centre, were familiar to me. Such points of reference were welcome and helpful in a book which, inter alia, draws inspiration from "admiration for great men" (the narrators expression) and from the Twelve-tone musical composition technique pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg, the same painter of Blue Self-Portrait(1910).
The litany of Germanic "great men" makes for an informative insight into the angst of the German national psyche. Heroes and villains.
Reinhard Heydrich.
But also Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Beethoven and Wagner.
It is strange that German cultural, philosophical and military history, is distilled here by a French writer.
The titans of German history held my interest; the sense of Germanic grandeur expressed through Weltanschauung, with the Tannhauser and Der Jasager operas, nicely offsets the hijacking of German identity by the Nazis with particular culmination at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.
The Germanic grandeur dominates the first part of Blue Self-Portrait. It falls away a bit in the second half, and I don’t have the technical understanding of music necessary to properly relate to the Schoenberg musical composition specifically referred to by the translator, Sophie Lewis, in her afterword, of the 12 tone serial system. I align myself with those other reviewers (Mark Hebwood) who are doubtful about how technical messages absorbed through music can be said to have comparable structure when conveyed through words.
The relationship between our narrator, and her sister, and separately the relationship between the pianist and our girl narrator were messy at times. The pianist connected with Schoenberg's determination to stay true to his life principles through his music (and painting) .
Our pianist states, aping Schoenberg :
I've written nothing of which I could be ashamed " (106 & 146)
The other side to our pianist is that of a lothario cruising the piano bars of Potsdamer Platz taking advantage of impressionable or vulnerable young women "from one girl to the next" (29). The pianists own, semi permanent, partner or "accompaniment", is conveniently out of town , thereby allowing him his assignations.
Our leading girl narrator is clearly ill, emotionally and physically. She is self-conscious in what she says, she has exited a horrible marriage, and her childhood memories are morbid and fearful of death. Hers are the internal bellows of a person barely holding it together. I took this to be the concluding message of the book as the pianist talks of this damaged girl; chilly and anxious in character.
I have limited exposure to Thomas Bernhard but while comparisons have been made to the great man elsewhere, I never felt that our nameless girl narrator ever spoke to me with the necessary detachment, or controlled cynicism, to warrant the reference.
As I neared the end of the book too many non-consequential, and actually baffling, references appeared
Much better to be accompanied than understood and,
the girl who understands without feminine decorum (71)
I’m tempted to rate this a bit higher, but I suspect the parts that remain with me, those of Germany in the c. 19th and c.20th, are parts that I should absorb by reading the works of a renowned German philosopher or writer, such as Thomas Mann.
December 17, 2017
NOW RE-READ AFTER ITS INCLUSION ON THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE LIST.
I've now re-read this (due to its inclusion on the excellent Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses long list) and I am upping my rating from 3 to 4 stars.
In her translator's note at the end, Sophie Lewis says: "Nonetheless, I hope your experience as a reader is at least as much of a giggle as it is a serious interrogation of your attitude to history or a test of your musical antennae." And Eimear McBride wrote a review in The Guardian in which she said: "This is a dense, intense examination of the disruptive effect that ideas about art and politics have on one another. Lefebvre is particularly interesting on the effect of music on the historical memory, and vice versa.
It's not an easy book to read with its stream-of-consciousness approach including long rambling sentences and numerous digressions. But I think if you read it in the context of the two quotes above it becomes a far more powerful work than I originally considered it in my initial review (below). Having recently re-read Orfeo which also considers the relationship between politics and music (plus The Noise of Time earlier this year), there are several thought-provoking topics here.
What I also noticed more on a re-read is the quality of Lewis's translation. Yes, there are several sentences that I could not understand even after multiple readings, but I don't think that is the translation. I think Lewis has done an excellent job of rendering this text into a voice that seems to fit well with the character of both the protagonist and the book.
I don't want to change comments I made in my original view about the musical side of the book. It still feels like someone trying to write a novel using the musical 12-tone technique and, on a re-read, the repeating motifs (many listed below) are perhaps more obvious.
It is funnier on a re-read than I remember it being first time through. Not sure why that is!
-------------
Blue Self-Portrait (originally L'Autoportrait Bleu) is published in English by Les Fugitives. Les Fugitives is one of the UK's small independent publishers and works with a very specific remit: "Les Fugitives is dedicated to publishing short works by award winning Francophone female authors previously unavailable in English." Reading that mission statement, you quickly realise they will only publish a few books and, indeed, only two others are mentioned in the list at the end of this book.
This is a short novel (just 151 pages) which takes the form of an internal monologue by the narrator who is a woman sitting on a plane leaving Berlin with her sister next to her. Outwardly, she is calm and, to all who notice her, she is reading and comparing a couple of books. But, the internal monologue we hear tells a different story. There has been a relationship with a pianist/composer who is obsessed with Schoenberg, both his music (he is known primarily for the 12 tone scale) and his painting (specifically his blue self-portrait that gives the book it's title).
The monologue is almost dreamlike to read. It flits around, it goes off on tangents. There are no chapters or sections and there are some very long sentences. It is difficult to take a break while reading it because there are no obvious places to pause!
In the end, and given the subject, I imagine this may be deliberate, I found it hard not to be impressed by this book but also hard to like it. Like the 12-tone-scale it discusses, it is technically and intellectually very clever. But, also like the 12-tone-scale (I am not an expert here, so could be wrong!) it seems more about theory and mental experiments than about any emotional involvement. It reads like an attempt to mirror the structure of a piece of music with several repeating themes (I noted coiling of legs like snakes, meetings in cafes, failing to stop and count to 10, the phrase "ich habe zu viel gesprochen", the lowing of a cow separated from its calf, the identical education of the narrator and her sister - but there are several more).
So, for me, in the end it felt, like the music it discusses, more like a theoretical exercise and less like a novel of emotions or story. But an impressive theoretical exercise, nonetheless.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
I've now re-read this (due to its inclusion on the excellent Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses long list) and I am upping my rating from 3 to 4 stars.
In her translator's note at the end, Sophie Lewis says: "Nonetheless, I hope your experience as a reader is at least as much of a giggle as it is a serious interrogation of your attitude to history or a test of your musical antennae." And Eimear McBride wrote a review in The Guardian in which she said: "This is a dense, intense examination of the disruptive effect that ideas about art and politics have on one another. Lefebvre is particularly interesting on the effect of music on the historical memory, and vice versa.
It's not an easy book to read with its stream-of-consciousness approach including long rambling sentences and numerous digressions. But I think if you read it in the context of the two quotes above it becomes a far more powerful work than I originally considered it in my initial review (below). Having recently re-read Orfeo which also considers the relationship between politics and music (plus The Noise of Time earlier this year), there are several thought-provoking topics here.
What I also noticed more on a re-read is the quality of Lewis's translation. Yes, there are several sentences that I could not understand even after multiple readings, but I don't think that is the translation. I think Lewis has done an excellent job of rendering this text into a voice that seems to fit well with the character of both the protagonist and the book.
I don't want to change comments I made in my original view about the musical side of the book. It still feels like someone trying to write a novel using the musical 12-tone technique and, on a re-read, the repeating motifs (many listed below) are perhaps more obvious.
It is funnier on a re-read than I remember it being first time through. Not sure why that is!
-------------
Blue Self-Portrait (originally L'Autoportrait Bleu) is published in English by Les Fugitives. Les Fugitives is one of the UK's small independent publishers and works with a very specific remit: "Les Fugitives is dedicated to publishing short works by award winning Francophone female authors previously unavailable in English." Reading that mission statement, you quickly realise they will only publish a few books and, indeed, only two others are mentioned in the list at the end of this book.
This is a short novel (just 151 pages) which takes the form of an internal monologue by the narrator who is a woman sitting on a plane leaving Berlin with her sister next to her. Outwardly, she is calm and, to all who notice her, she is reading and comparing a couple of books. But, the internal monologue we hear tells a different story. There has been a relationship with a pianist/composer who is obsessed with Schoenberg, both his music (he is known primarily for the 12 tone scale) and his painting (specifically his blue self-portrait that gives the book it's title).
The monologue is almost dreamlike to read. It flits around, it goes off on tangents. There are no chapters or sections and there are some very long sentences. It is difficult to take a break while reading it because there are no obvious places to pause!
In the end, and given the subject, I imagine this may be deliberate, I found it hard not to be impressed by this book but also hard to like it. Like the 12-tone-scale it discusses, it is technically and intellectually very clever. But, also like the 12-tone-scale (I am not an expert here, so could be wrong!) it seems more about theory and mental experiments than about any emotional involvement. It reads like an attempt to mirror the structure of a piece of music with several repeating themes (I noted coiling of legs like snakes, meetings in cafes, failing to stop and count to 10, the phrase "ich habe zu viel gesprochen", the lowing of a cow separated from its calf, the identical education of the narrator and her sister - but there are several more).
So, for me, in the end it felt, like the music it discusses, more like a theoretical exercise and less like a novel of emotions or story. But an impressive theoretical exercise, nonetheless.
Thanks to Les Fugitives for the ARC.
January 20, 2018
I'm really at a quandary to say ANYTHING about this book, largely because so much of it flew right over my head (... and Wilt Chamberlain's). I mean - I kinda/sorta got the gist of it, but since my idea of 'degenerate music' begins and ends with Madonna, the whole twelve-tone theme and structure was meaningless to me - and shamefully, I even had to look on Wikipedia to remind myself what the Wannsee Conference was all about (I know, I know!) ... as well as to read the bios of many of the historical figures invoked (but hey, I did know Thomas Mann and Brecht & Weill at least! 3 points!). The extreme run-on sentences (why, hi there stream-of-consciousness!) annoyed the crap out of me, as they always do, and often I would just kind of give up on making literal sense of what was going on (I'd have said to myself "Was zum Teufel passiert?" ... but I don't know any German) and just look at it as the literary equivalent of jazz rifts - which maybe was the intention? Regardless, I WILL say I could ADMIRE it, but didn't really ENJOY it much - which seems to be the majority view amongst my GR cognoscenti... and it MIGHT - at some point, justify a quick re-read as many have done, to see if I can make better sense of it on a second go-round. Finally, my sincere thanks to my buddy, Jill, who so generously sent me her copy, since I doubt I would have mustered enough enthusiasm for this to have purchased a copy myself (cheap bastard that I am).
January 1, 2018
I plan to continue reading books published my Les Fugitives since I fell in love with Eve out of Her Ruins. They focus on books published originally in French by female authors whose work was previously unavailable in English.
I loved how this entire story is really what is going on in the main character's head on the short flight with her sister. As her upbeat & hopeful sister longs to take out her violin and play and rambles about the wonder of flight, our narrator is hoping her internal lowing (as in a cow lowing after losing her baby) will not break her façade of serenity as she reflects on her experiences in Berlin. She is consumed with questions about not caring (does she, doesn't she, should she, why doesn't she) and her own feelings about shame. The absurdity and vulnerability of her writing connected with me.
I was not familiar with Schoenberg's art or music, so some of the depth of the story may mean more to others familiar with musical theory and art history. I also struggled at times with the stream of consciousness, but this is always a personal challenge for me - to stay focused when there are few breaks (sentences, paragraphs, chapters) in the narrative.
3.5 stars rounded up.
I loved how this entire story is really what is going on in the main character's head on the short flight with her sister. As her upbeat & hopeful sister longs to take out her violin and play and rambles about the wonder of flight, our narrator is hoping her internal lowing (as in a cow lowing after losing her baby) will not break her façade of serenity as she reflects on her experiences in Berlin. She is consumed with questions about not caring (does she, doesn't she, should she, why doesn't she) and her own feelings about shame. The absurdity and vulnerability of her writing connected with me.
I was not familiar with Schoenberg's art or music, so some of the depth of the story may mean more to others familiar with musical theory and art history. I also struggled at times with the stream of consciousness, but this is always a personal challenge for me - to stay focused when there are few breaks (sentences, paragraphs, chapters) in the narrative.
3.5 stars rounded up.
Read
November 15, 2018DNF @30%. Not working for me and not at all interested in trying any harder to make it work.
June 21, 2017
Blue Self-Portrait, by Noémi Lefebvre (translated by Sophie Lewis), is an introspective inner monologue that flits around the narrator’s angst ridden thoughts. Travelling home on a flight between Berlin and Paris with her sister there is time for such self reflection. She is suffering ‘the wrath of grapes’ (possibly the best description of a hangover I have read) and dislikes air travel, attempting yet failing to distract herself with the books she balances on her lap. Her sibling expresses excitement at the mode of transport although is sensitive to her companion’s disquiet. They have a close relationship and mutual understanding. Thay are both well educated in ‘cultural integration’. The narrator, whilst outwardly composed, is bellowing in silence following her behaviour during dalliances with a pianist-composer in Berlin. She berates herself for having talked too much,
‘dizzying the pianist with a flood of verbiage’
The couple met in a popular intellectual cafe, the setting offering a model of restraint and good taste. Clientele would typically sip their coffee whilst leafing through a newspaper in a relaxed, cultured way. The narrator’s body language she describes as wired, feeling shame afterwards for her indecorious behaviour whilst the pianist remained calm and collected. Her thought processes travel in tangents as she recalls the time spent with this man. She ruminates on her prejudices at his choice of drink and her inability not to pause and consider before she shares her learned conceits. She says of herself:
“I disturb, I’ve never done other than disturb”
She believes that, after some time, the pianist was no longer listening to her many words. They visit a cinema where the narrator feels deliberately silenced.
There are reflections from their conversations on inspirations which the pianist believes may be found by following in the footsteps of the greats, including to their graves – composition amongst decomposition. There are scenes in cafes, in a modern, soulless building as well as those steeped in history.
Pivotal is a visit to the Brandenburgian castle of Neuhardenberg after which the pianist was moved to create a new composition following his discovery of the German composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait. Its gloomy palette is displayed amongst what he regards as hateful depictions of Aryan collective happiness promoted by the Nazi regime. The narrator muses that the pianist
“felt incapable of talking about the music but also dying to give it a good talking about”
She herself is haunted by the portrait, and by her behaviour.
The pianist’s appearance is described as:
“the difference between style and affectation not only in the artistry of his playing, in particular, but also in his art of life, in general, the art of living”
The narrator considers herself to be outwardly socially acceptable, although jittery and appearing underfed.
“looking after yourself means aligning your mind to be in tune with your body”
Her mind is anxious amidst her embarrassed reflections.
There are thoughts on resistance, collaboration, shame and the meaning of moral existence. The effect of the portrait is woven throughout with music and the relationship between artists, composers and a genocide in which they may be complicit.
The writing is insightful although at times opaque. This is a book that will likely benefit from considered rereading.
‘dizzying the pianist with a flood of verbiage’
The couple met in a popular intellectual cafe, the setting offering a model of restraint and good taste. Clientele would typically sip their coffee whilst leafing through a newspaper in a relaxed, cultured way. The narrator’s body language she describes as wired, feeling shame afterwards for her indecorious behaviour whilst the pianist remained calm and collected. Her thought processes travel in tangents as she recalls the time spent with this man. She ruminates on her prejudices at his choice of drink and her inability not to pause and consider before she shares her learned conceits. She says of herself:
“I disturb, I’ve never done other than disturb”
She believes that, after some time, the pianist was no longer listening to her many words. They visit a cinema where the narrator feels deliberately silenced.
There are reflections from their conversations on inspirations which the pianist believes may be found by following in the footsteps of the greats, including to their graves – composition amongst decomposition. There are scenes in cafes, in a modern, soulless building as well as those steeped in history.
Pivotal is a visit to the Brandenburgian castle of Neuhardenberg after which the pianist was moved to create a new composition following his discovery of the German composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Blue Self-Portrait. Its gloomy palette is displayed amongst what he regards as hateful depictions of Aryan collective happiness promoted by the Nazi regime. The narrator muses that the pianist
“felt incapable of talking about the music but also dying to give it a good talking about”
She herself is haunted by the portrait, and by her behaviour.
The pianist’s appearance is described as:
“the difference between style and affectation not only in the artistry of his playing, in particular, but also in his art of life, in general, the art of living”
The narrator considers herself to be outwardly socially acceptable, although jittery and appearing underfed.
“looking after yourself means aligning your mind to be in tune with your body”
Her mind is anxious amidst her embarrassed reflections.
There are thoughts on resistance, collaboration, shame and the meaning of moral existence. The effect of the portrait is woven throughout with music and the relationship between artists, composers and a genocide in which they may be complicit.
The writing is insightful although at times opaque. This is a book that will likely benefit from considered rereading.
June 30, 2018
Absorbing and obsessive. A book to read again and again.
May 4, 2018
Atonal Ingenuity, or Simply Logorrhea?
At 130 pages, this is a novella, not a novel. But brevity is good; I could not have sustained a longer reading. Is it a good novella? Some may think so, but how would I know? After reading it, I still have very little idea of what it is about, who the characters may be, or even how many of them there are. The entire thing is the inner monologue of a youngish woman on a flight from Berlin back to Paris; given its brevity, it could probably be read in real time, 90 minutes or so. She is recalling her time spent with a German-American pianist, "dizzying him with a flood of verbiage; I’d literally floored him by talking." And talk she does, in long run-on sentences, brilliantly but incessantly. I’ll give a sample in a moment.
But first, the title. "Blue Self-Portrait" refers to a painting in Expressionist style by Arnold Schoenberg, painted in 1910. Yes, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who would go on to develop atonal music in which each of the twelve notes of the scale have equal prominence. The same Schoenberg whose music was denounced to the Nazis and who bravely stood up for the moral necessity of writing it. Schoenberg, a Christianized Jew who would later return to his old religion, though he escaped to America before the Holocaust. All these themes and many many more are intricately interwoven in Lefebvre’s book, in burbling prose like the following:
[…] the pianist had hung Schoenberg's painting among the black trees and broken through the framework of negativity, then composed an original musical phrase in the Brandenburg forests, a brand-new antiphrase while his accompaniment for the day maintained a reverential and passably stupid silence as it often goes with reverence but ultimately perhaps a beneficial silence, productive and positive, the silence and the accompaniment's reverence an essential climate for the transformation of a musical intention into a compositional act, the antiphrase a monody perhaps or a recitative but expressionless, the sentence that says nothing, a cold shade, the cold shade in a recitative, the blue face, the painting's blue but far and scattered as if suspended, the painting in the branches, the monodic line unaffected by the crows' spasmodic calling, ad libitum crows in peaked black uniform, three tones of the twelve, the call of birds obliged to spend their lives circling over cemeteries and denuded trees, to each naked tree a definitive bed and the individual, himself blue, who knows his own end and does not waver—my relationship to Schoenberg is changing the pianist realized.The pianist is a composer as well, and he too plays to audiences who boo his innovations. The narrator meets him in one Berlin cafe or another, and follows him to a conference where he speaks on Music in the Third Reich. Perhaps she sees him as a second Schoenberg, a century after the original, but those particular battlegrounds have changed; it is impossible to read his story with the same urgency. Not that it is easy to make out what his story actually is; we almost never get to see him perform or practice, and the narrator’s relationship (other than talking the ear off him—like Schoenberg’s missing appendage in the portrait) is far from clear. We gather that they have a sexual relationship at one point, but there is also talk of one or more people called simply "the girl," plus apparently another partner or partners referred to as "the accompaniment." Since the narrator is perfectly capable of referring to herself in the third person, I began to wonder whether all the women in the novella were different avatars of the same person, though I now think not.
Arnold Schoenberg was also the originator of Serialism, a means of organizing atonal music according to repetitions, inversions, and reversals of the basic notes. The brilliant translator Sophie Lewis (checking the first few pages in French has reinforced my admiration) suggests that Lefebvre, with her repeated images and intricate patterning, "weaves her text in approximation of a serialist piece." She may be right, but too often it seemed merely clever logorrhea. And, as for what she says in the final paragraph of her translator’s note, it appears that my sense of humor only goes so far. But I'll let her have the last word; you may well find the same:
Nonetheless, I hope your experience as reader is at least as much of a giggle as it is a serious interrogation of your attitude to history or a test of your musical antennae. No, I hope it is more of a giggle than anything else, for Lefebvre's dominant key is absurdity. Translating this girl who imagines herself as a cow mooing loudly enough to break the glass in her plane's portholes, a girl who despite hang-ups gives as good as she gets to her one-time mother-in-law over a tennis match, who delights in her parachutist boyfriend's irreverence, and can't rein in her neuroses even on dates with her buttoned-up "world-class" pianist love interest, has been a hoot, if an unexpectedly educational one.
February 6, 2018
Blue Self-Portrait is a seriously humorous and melancholic character study with lots of mental twists and turns in the mind of a young woman in her 20s aboard a flight with her sister from Berlin to Paris. The woman is a music studies student and has had encounters with an American-German Pianist who both composes and plays music and is working on a composition having to do with Schoenberg and his Blue Self-Portrait. She sits on the plane trying to concentrate on a book of letters between Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno but keeps thinking back to her feelings of having said too much - 'Ich habe zu viel gesprochen' - to the Pianist, potentially putting him off. She is neurotic in analyzing her meetings with him at the highly intellectual location of Cafe Einstein, where the people there are so engrossed in their reading that the world could fall apart outside and they wouldn't notice, and at Kaiser Cafe. She always says too much and confesses this to him. She cannot stop talking and embarrasses herself for what comes out of her mouth. Sitting on the plane and thinking on this, she likens herself to a cow crying after its calf has been taken away and will never be returned. She knows that she cannot undo what has been said. It's already out there. She obsesses too about an imagined trip the Pianist makes to Neuhardenberg Castle where he visits Schoenberg's Blue Self-Portrait, as Schoenberg was a pianist and a painter, and thinks on Beethoven and Wagner who came before Schoenberg. She romanticizes the idea that the Pianist is so interested in Schoenberg's Blue Self-Portrait that he uses it together with his placement of it in the black trees surrounding the Castle, his car unworthy of a master pianist, and his American blended Whiskey to compose his next musical score. She thinks he would like the girl to be with him as his muse but that he doesn't want her to be there when he doesn't need her because first and foremost his composing is most important and he cannot be distracted with her.
There are scores of mental acrobatics at play here, a highly literary novella. I found Blue Self-Portrait a joy to read. It also didn't hurt that I am familiar with Berlin having lived there and know some German.
There are scores of mental acrobatics at play here, a highly literary novella. I found Blue Self-Portrait a joy to read. It also didn't hurt that I am familiar with Berlin having lived there and know some German.
Read
July 10, 2018Whether it's the warm weather, the annoying loudness of neighbors or, I don't know, the daily horrors in the news, sitting down with a book has never seemed more difficult.
In the past few weeks, I have opened many astounding novels to just stare at their pages. My eyes act of their own accord. When encountering a period, they refuse to go on. Though I urge them to continue, they seem to mock me and even, I imagine, light a cigarette. My mind, following suit, fleets away.
Blue Self Portrait is a book with very unusual punctuation. A slim novel, Blue Self-Portrait sings in an endless arrangement of commas, semi-colons, dashes and, like a great musical epic, it is punctuated by the great cymbal crash of periods sparingly.
In the span of a flight from Berlin to Paris (a mere hour and forty minutes), a hilariously obsessive narrator combs through every gesture, facial tick and word uttered (and not uttered) in her short romantic interaction with a pianist in Berlin.
The narrator's inability to reign in her tongue is a constant source of embarrassment for her, and constant source of entertainment for us. But beneath the constantly running motor of hilarious verbosity, a rich tapestry of ideas develops. Aided by observations of the narrator's in-flight surroundings—her sister seated next to her, the landscape below—Lefebvre is able to work in profound meditations on the Third Reich's influence on music, women's place in culture and art-making.
Blue Self-Portrait may be the antidote to our condition of having too many things on the mind—but I'd love to read it anytime, especially while on a plane. Go to this book for the lack of periods, but stay for deliciously absurd humor and the ideas just beneath the surface.
In the past few weeks, I have opened many astounding novels to just stare at their pages. My eyes act of their own accord. When encountering a period, they refuse to go on. Though I urge them to continue, they seem to mock me and even, I imagine, light a cigarette. My mind, following suit, fleets away.
Blue Self Portrait is a book with very unusual punctuation. A slim novel, Blue Self-Portrait sings in an endless arrangement of commas, semi-colons, dashes and, like a great musical epic, it is punctuated by the great cymbal crash of periods sparingly.
In the span of a flight from Berlin to Paris (a mere hour and forty minutes), a hilariously obsessive narrator combs through every gesture, facial tick and word uttered (and not uttered) in her short romantic interaction with a pianist in Berlin.
The narrator's inability to reign in her tongue is a constant source of embarrassment for her, and constant source of entertainment for us. But beneath the constantly running motor of hilarious verbosity, a rich tapestry of ideas develops. Aided by observations of the narrator's in-flight surroundings—her sister seated next to her, the landscape below—Lefebvre is able to work in profound meditations on the Third Reich's influence on music, women's place in culture and art-making.
Blue Self-Portrait may be the antidote to our condition of having too many things on the mind—but I'd love to read it anytime, especially while on a plane. Go to this book for the lack of periods, but stay for deliciously absurd humor and the ideas just beneath the surface.
June 5, 2018
I think this is a case of me more than the book. I can't write off stream of consciousness completely as not my cup of tea, because there have been some that compelled me to stay with them. But mostly, it's anxiety inducing. I think this is because I already have a very busy mind thinking cyclical thoughts, so much that I need external tools like zentangle to zone out and get out of my head for a little while. So when I read books that are centered around the cyclical thoughts of someone else, I can relate, but I can't really be bothered to keep invested.
This book might be more compelling to someone who knows more about music or Schonberg than I do (I know nothing). I also didn't get why our girl was so torn up about her pianist, it didn't seem like a compatible relationship at all, and which seemed like it died in 3-4 meetings. Perhaps there was something in the subtext that I didn't catch because of how I can't stay invested in such a narrative. So this book was kind of wasted on me.
This book might be more compelling to someone who knows more about music or Schonberg than I do (I know nothing). I also didn't get why our girl was so torn up about her pianist, it didn't seem like a compatible relationship at all, and which seemed like it died in 3-4 meetings. Perhaps there was something in the subtext that I didn't catch because of how I can't stay invested in such a narrative. So this book was kind of wasted on me.
August 2, 2021
Contemplations of German art while flying home from Berlin after a bad date. Schoenberg, Mann, Adorno, Brecht, and tacitly the Austrian Bernhard because the style is so reminiscent of Concrete except sex and women exist.
May 16, 2022
Why was this so hard for me to get through
January 16, 2020
Portrait of a Portrait in a Portrait
Review of the Les Fugitives paperback edition (2017) translated from the French original L'autoportrait bleu (2009)
"Blue Self-Portrait" takes its title from a painting by Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) who is best known for his early atonal works such as Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) (1899) and Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and for his later development & formalization of so-called "12-tone music" which did not compose in the conventional classical music key signatures and instead worked with themes of 12-tone rows where each note of the chromatic scale was treated equally. Although the style became somewhat of a dead end for classical music in that it became so esoteric that many composers & audiences eventually sought simpler classical forms or even reduced forms such as minimalism for their listening enjoyment, Schoenberg's innovations and his historical importance cannot be overrated and they are still part of most contemporary composers' journeys to study and adapt & utilize aspects of them.
Lefebvre's portrait in its turn takes Schoenberg's painting as a point of reference for a stream-of-consciousness journey which takes place in the mind of an unnamed narrator while on her journey with her sister back from Berlin, where they have been attending concerts and galleries, to Paris. The narrator has also had a liaison with a German-American pianist-composer who is in the process of composing a work which is also called "Blue Self-Portrait." The narrator's own story mixes both long and short-term flashbacks of the recent Berlin trip and of her earlier life. That itself is another "Blue Self-Portrait."
All of this may sound overly artsy and self-referentially cultural but the overall tone of this is often humorous and self-deprecating. I am often attracted to writing that is built around music and composition so obviously some personal bias goes into my assessment here. The energy and spirit of the writing here (and the superb translation, which flows easily) was unexpected though (Lefebvre is entirely new to me) and made for even greater enjoyment.
This is my first read of the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist of 6 books selected prior to the final awarding on March 20, 2018. The R of C Prize is a unique award for independent publishers which is partially crowd-funded. One of the funding perks includes copies of each of the shortlisted works, which is how I obtained my copies. My thanks to RoCPrize and Les Fugitives press for that! See and read more about the Prize at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/re...
Review of the Les Fugitives paperback edition (2017) translated from the French original L'autoportrait bleu (2009)
"Blue Self-Portrait" takes its title from a painting by Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) who is best known for his early atonal works such as Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) (1899) and Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and for his later development & formalization of so-called "12-tone music" which did not compose in the conventional classical music key signatures and instead worked with themes of 12-tone rows where each note of the chromatic scale was treated equally. Although the style became somewhat of a dead end for classical music in that it became so esoteric that many composers & audiences eventually sought simpler classical forms or even reduced forms such as minimalism for their listening enjoyment, Schoenberg's innovations and his historical importance cannot be overrated and they are still part of most contemporary composers' journeys to study and adapt & utilize aspects of them.
Lefebvre's portrait in its turn takes Schoenberg's painting as a point of reference for a stream-of-consciousness journey which takes place in the mind of an unnamed narrator while on her journey with her sister back from Berlin, where they have been attending concerts and galleries, to Paris. The narrator has also had a liaison with a German-American pianist-composer who is in the process of composing a work which is also called "Blue Self-Portrait." The narrator's own story mixes both long and short-term flashbacks of the recent Berlin trip and of her earlier life. That itself is another "Blue Self-Portrait."
All of this may sound overly artsy and self-referentially cultural but the overall tone of this is often humorous and self-deprecating. I am often attracted to writing that is built around music and composition so obviously some personal bias goes into my assessment here. The energy and spirit of the writing here (and the superb translation, which flows easily) was unexpected though (Lefebvre is entirely new to me) and made for even greater enjoyment.
This is my first read of the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist of 6 books selected prior to the final awarding on March 20, 2018. The R of C Prize is a unique award for independent publishers which is partially crowd-funded. One of the funding perks includes copies of each of the shortlisted works, which is how I obtained my copies. My thanks to RoCPrize and Les Fugitives press for that! See and read more about the Prize at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/re...
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
December 27, 2017Abandoned at 28%. There's nothing wrong with this, but I don't feel interested enough to continue, and as it's written in stream-of-consciousness format, I think you need to be quite engaged to get the best out of it.
May 21, 2018
I’d just passed the halfway point when I put this book down, picked up my tablet and read half a dozen reviews of this book. They were mostly glowing. Although none pretended the book was the easiest of reads, what with its labyrinthine (not a word I use lightly) sentences and lengthy paragraphs, the general consensus was this was a worthwhile and, indeed, rewarding read. So it was with a heavy heart I decided on my fourth day plodding though this novella—and with the prospect of another four days ahead of me—that enough was enough. This isn’t the first novel that’s got the better of me—Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man and Herman Hesse’s Gertrude failed to keep my interest—but I’m a better judge of books than I used to be and can usually tell within a couple of pages if it’s the wrong time to read a particular book. So I’m not saying I’ll never return to Blue Self-Portrait because I never say never but I’d need a much clearer head than I have at the moment for anything to go in.
I do doubt I’ll ever finish this though because in my heart of heart’s I’m a grammar Nazi. I have no problem with long sentences IF they punctuated properly—look to Gerald Murnane or Laszlo Krasznahorkai if you need any lessons in that regard. These weren’t and there was no reason for them not to be. In the translator’s note Sophie Lewis says that Lefebvre “weaves her text in approximation of a serialist piece,” and I see where’s she’s coming from but having listened to Schoenberg’s music for over forty years all I can say is that it obeys more rules than it breaks. His musical phrases are no different to Beethoven’s. In fact in his Fundamentals of Musical Composition when he defined a musical “sentence” as an eight-measure theme, that consists of two different phrases ending in a cadence, the example Schoenberg cited was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor, op.2. I actually think I would’ve got more out of an audio version of this book.
Here’s a sentence, picked pretty much at random, to illustrate my point:
Anyway I’ve found myself reading for the sake of reading simply to get to the end, to say I’d read it when I know full well I won’t be able to remember a damn thing about it in a fortnight’s time. There are so many better books than this I can’t remember reading. What is especially annoying is that I jumped this book the top of my to-read list because it really appealed to me and I think its message is one I would appreciate IF the author hadn’t buried it in such a morass of words.
If I haven’t put you off—that was never my intention—do check out the following reviews which I found illuminating. Nothing will be lost by reading them up front; in fact you might find them helpful:
Blue Self-Portrait by Noémi Lefebvre review – sex, art and neurosis
The Blue Note: on Noémi Lefebvre’s Blue Self-Portrait
In Blue Self-Portrait Noémi Lefebvre created a space to breathe
I do doubt I’ll ever finish this though because in my heart of heart’s I’m a grammar Nazi. I have no problem with long sentences IF they punctuated properly—look to Gerald Murnane or Laszlo Krasznahorkai if you need any lessons in that regard. These weren’t and there was no reason for them not to be. In the translator’s note Sophie Lewis says that Lefebvre “weaves her text in approximation of a serialist piece,” and I see where’s she’s coming from but having listened to Schoenberg’s music for over forty years all I can say is that it obeys more rules than it breaks. His musical phrases are no different to Beethoven’s. In fact in his Fundamentals of Musical Composition when he defined a musical “sentence” as an eight-measure theme, that consists of two different phrases ending in a cadence, the example Schoenberg cited was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor, op.2. I actually think I would’ve got more out of an audio version of this book.
Here’s a sentence, picked pretty much at random, to illustrate my point:
Two days later, leaving the Kaiser Café where I had once again all but spelled out to the virtuoso pianist how to handle his piano, a stroke of luck that I’d stopped myself just in time, I uttered my notorious Ich habe zu viel gesprochen for it was true, I had said too much, so much too much that I had to proclaim this brand-new truth the very moment it occurred to me; my noble pianist: no, not at all, it’s quite all right, he sweetly replied, warmly replied, even though it wasn’t fine, not only not fine but catastrophic, so catastrophic as to be irreparable, besides I didn’t repair anything but on the contrary promptly went and dug myself in deeper: of course I had to interrupt again, when I had only just said Ich habe zu viel gesprochen, I didn’t pause and count to ten, not to ten nor to any lesser number, I didn’t count at all; I just had to go on and on in the underground car park when he, our poor pianist, was already and indeed for some time had been, broken, kaput, as they say, in fact just five minutes after stepping inside the Kaiser Café he’d already begun to yawn, ten minutes in was out of commission and quite kaput, and yet here we are in the underground car park and I’m picking on his car, I have to make some comment about his car being unworthy of a world-class pianist, as if all that I’d said before in the Kaiser Café hadn’t been appalling, about music in general and the pianist’s playing in particular even though I haven’t the first notion about music in general, and as for the pianist’s playing in particular here I go even now critiquing it from every angle, not only the music performed by the pianist but also that composed by the composer, the pianist being both pianist and composer, I am a pianist first and foremost and yet foremost and first of all I am a composer, the pianist said one day to all within earshot, indeed the pianist did have a talent for composing that not every pianist is blessed with—and the composer a pianistic virtuosity to which few composers may lay claim, both gifts united in a single person, in the perfect bodily and spiritual harmony that alone could justify the general and nevertheless exceptional title of musician; I am, above all a musician, the pianist said, it isn’t my profession but my condition, yet in spite of his condition I held back a mere hair’s breadth away from explaining to the pianist how to play the piano and to the composer how to compose.Let me just say that’s not how I’d punctuate this. You can read a longer excerpt here.
Anyway I’ve found myself reading for the sake of reading simply to get to the end, to say I’d read it when I know full well I won’t be able to remember a damn thing about it in a fortnight’s time. There are so many better books than this I can’t remember reading. What is especially annoying is that I jumped this book the top of my to-read list because it really appealed to me and I think its message is one I would appreciate IF the author hadn’t buried it in such a morass of words.
If I haven’t put you off—that was never my intention—do check out the following reviews which I found illuminating. Nothing will be lost by reading them up front; in fact you might find them helpful:
Blue Self-Portrait by Noémi Lefebvre review – sex, art and neurosis
The Blue Note: on Noémi Lefebvre’s Blue Self-Portrait
In Blue Self-Portrait Noémi Lefebvre created a space to breathe
April 14, 2022
do you ever feel like a cow lowing so hard you might break the window of an airplane?
February 3, 2019
Although this is a slight volume, Blue Self-Portrait is not a book that should be read (perhaps cannot be read) in an hour or two. This is a book to demands coddling and cogitation. The monologue throws up all kinds of ideas about art, music, and politics that have to be considered whether they appear at first as though they are conflicting. I highly recommend this book but be prepared to spend some time with it; it is well worth it.
October 30, 2019
It's easy to say 'this book is a gem'. But a gem is inert and trapped in its own rigid past. 'Blue Self-Portrait' is a stream, a stream of consciousness, an upland giggling brook when flowing over a bed of pebbles, sometimes getting trapped in an eddy, calling you to loose yourself into the depths of her peaty waters, hilarious little waterfalls now and then. I immersed myself in this little brook called 'Blue Self-Portrait' and emerged weak and feeble, but with a smile on my face, by its beauty, by its musicality, by its long lavish sentences, its thought-provoking character, by its capability to take you by the hand and say 'follow me, and I'll show you my world, hanging in mid-air, somewhere between Berlin and Paris'.
February 26, 2019
Uh...no. This is bad. This is pretentious, overwrought, and ridiculous. I can handle run on sentences, I can handle 139 pages without a chapter break, but not like this. There is nothing to hold on to here at all. The writing is bland and Lefebvre tries desperately to make up for that by constantly name dropping artists as if merely mentioning them is going to make her book worth reading. I'm not impressed by the fact that your character is reading the correspondence of Thomas Mann & Theodor Adorno on a plane, or by her love interest's reminiscing about Schoenberg holding him and kissing him as he had held Berg & Webern. Are you kidding me? So silly and embarrassing. Ugh. Yikes.
April 24, 2021
Oh no, it was frustrating but I loved it. Lots about auto-translation, memories of shame, fantasizing, and a frequent self-comparison to a cow mooing with grief. Every sentence is a good two pages long so be warned.
Read
November 15, 2018Got more than 50% through but not for me. DNF.
January 16, 2019
One of my greatest unhappinesses is the difficulty of finding books like this written by women (I mean, this is not a great unhappiness in the grand scheme of things, but you know). The family tree is fairly straightforward: Proust and Beckett, through Bernhard, Marias, Moya, and so on. These books are unashamedly intellectual, funny, not formally interesting necessarily, but at least aware that authors have a choice in the style of their compositions.
Here's one for all of you who feel the same way: this is just fucking great, and more than worthy to sit alongside the other living representatives of this tradition. Congratulations to Sophie Lewis on the translation. I hope to see more Lefebvre in English soon.
Here's one for all of you who feel the same way: this is just fucking great, and more than worthy to sit alongside the other living representatives of this tradition. Congratulations to Sophie Lewis on the translation. I hope to see more Lefebvre in English soon.
March 10, 2020
Aiii. I read very little experimental fiction, which has left me with vanishingly few waypoints to navigate this book, and also a stunted vocabulary to write about it afterwards. Most of what I’ve got is a maybe-there comparison with the formal gymnastics of Anna Burns’ Milkman or Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, or at least in the twisting course of my emotions when reading them: initial shock at the unfamiliar style, quickly followed by disappointment (I had hoped this would be easier), then something like annoyance at the flamboyance of it all, but which is partially envy of the people who are configured to receive this scrambled code, and then slowly, over time, resistance being melted down under the intense weight and pressure of the writing; after which, finally, moments of extreme excitement, often in a “putting-a-finger-on-why”-avoidant way. Unfortunately in this case, those moments then became more and more sporadic, and less and less of a good reason to invest time and brainspace in the act of reading. Fifty pages from the finish, I really began to run out of steam and in the end it was only pigheadedness that got me over the line, rather than enjoyment.
There are definitely some interesting excursions into its subject matter. The way it dissects male visions of art, genius and (inevitably female) muse is devastating and often funny. But as other people have noted, the book’s stylistic/syntactic/structural signature is its real attraction or distraction. A few scenes (and the memories the narrator flips through like a slideshow do feel like scenes!) are A+ arguments for how formally daring prose can be worth the effort - like the humiliating tennis match the narrator suffers at the hands of her mother-in-law, or the squirming date in the Sony Centre cinema.
But for every such scene where the form seemed to support the function, there were numerous others where the opposite was true. With Milkman, the prose style, though initially baffling, had the longer-term effect of drawing me closer into a sort of secret communion with the narrator. With this book I found the effect was eventually a distancing one. Sophie Lewis, the translator, says in her note at the end that she fell in love with the narrator, but she paints a picture of her that I genuinely did not recognise. Maybe this is a failing on my part! Blue Self-Portrait carves a very intense, intricate and sometimes fascinating pattern on the surface, but it didn’t go very deep for me.
There are definitely some interesting excursions into its subject matter. The way it dissects male visions of art, genius and (inevitably female) muse is devastating and often funny. But as other people have noted, the book’s stylistic/syntactic/structural signature is its real attraction or distraction. A few scenes (and the memories the narrator flips through like a slideshow do feel like scenes!) are A+ arguments for how formally daring prose can be worth the effort - like the humiliating tennis match the narrator suffers at the hands of her mother-in-law, or the squirming date in the Sony Centre cinema.
But for every such scene where the form seemed to support the function, there were numerous others where the opposite was true. With Milkman, the prose style, though initially baffling, had the longer-term effect of drawing me closer into a sort of secret communion with the narrator. With this book I found the effect was eventually a distancing one. Sophie Lewis, the translator, says in her note at the end that she fell in love with the narrator, but she paints a picture of her that I genuinely did not recognise. Maybe this is a failing on my part! Blue Self-Portrait carves a very intense, intricate and sometimes fascinating pattern on the surface, but it didn’t go very deep for me.
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