Monday, 2 May 2016

Peter's favourite work of art

It's really hard to pick just one thing as my favourite work of art. There are many works of art that I love: Homer, a lot of Picasso, not so much da Vinci, Rembrandt, Mozart, Shakespeare's King Lear, and so on, and on, and on. But I have an advantage because, since I wrote decided it, I have already thought a bit about this question and my answer to it.

If I had to pick one work of art as my favourite, it is Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. My first introduction to Austen's work was in high school, when I was forced to read Emma. This was bad both for Emma and for me. At the time, I was obsessed with mathematics and starting to read philosophy, so wasn't much interested in the weird interpretation and analysis that our English master wanted us to apply to Austen's novel. Yet somehow, I realised that there was something good here. The language is only two-hundred years old, so much easier than Shakespeare, at 400 years of age. 

After high school, when I was at university studying mathematics and physics before deciding to major in philosophy, with some dead languages as extras, I read a lot, and remembered that Austen had seemed to hold some promise, so reread Emma. I loved it. So naturally read all of her other novels, but Pride and Prejudice was special. I enjoyed its many perfections so much that my first copy soon fell apart. I now have six copies on my bookshelves from different publishers, including three of the Oxford University Press edition. Most are falling apart from having been read so many times. It never bores, but gets better with each reading as I notice new unifying contrasts in the plot, the characters and language. Like looking at one of Picasso's great pieces, it just keeps on getting better and better with greater familiarity.

Unusually, there is also a TV adaptation that is very good. The BBC's version, starring Colin Firth follows the plot and copies exactly a lot of Austen's language, making it an excellent piece of television. I'm not sure about the scene where Firth as Mr. Darcy jumps into the lake on his estate  in his underwear, but at least he wasn't naked. And this scene seems to have help to attract a lot of attention to this great piece of art. Austen's novel version is still vastly better, but the TV series is also well worth watching, a few times. In contrast, the film versions I've seen are pretty much crap. Perhaps if I didn't compare them to the original, they wouldn't be so bad, but who could not compare them?
The novel's famous opening sentence is at 1:55. 

1 comment:

  1. Frankly speaking, I have no idea to give any response or comment on your favorite work of art--Jane Austen's novel--because normally I am not into any kinds of novel. Although I used to be forced to read them or tried reading them, I still never change my mind successfully. It seems to me that I often have difficulty understanding the story and remembering the name of characters or things—either reading in Thai or English. Plus, it sounds a bit weird to say that I cannot concentrate on reading novel for long time. When I return to continue reading for the other chapters, I usually forget most of what I have already read before, and thus rereading again and again. Even so, if there are some parts which I do not follow or which are kind of enigmatic, I have to read something repeatedly. I do not want to skip them and read the next ones. Sound pretty crazy? Perhaps, I am a person who is really not suitable for this kind of book or the similar ones.

    But for some lovers like you, I know such novel or even others never bore you; rather, you enjoy reading them several times with different interpretation. That’s fantastic. I can’t do like that. What a pity! Anyway, if novel books include some pictures, it might help me to read it a lot; the TV or movie versions are much and much better for me. And fortunately enough, that would not enable me to wish to compare book versions to TV or movie ones since if there are those two versions, I will definitely choose the latter.

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