The Brooknerian

Brookner often takes us to Paris, but not so often to the Louvre. In late, late Brookner, in Strangers (2009), Sturgis gives the Louvre a miss, putting it 'definitively behind him', preferring an 'improvised existence' for which no one will take him to task (Ch. 25). In gentler, more expansive mid-period Brookner, in Fraud (1992), Anna Durrant dutifully puts in time at the museum. But it is not the 'great discordant machines of the Romantics' that claim her attention but the portraits of Ingres, 'calm, replete, satisfied with their immensely enviable situation in this world, and careless of the world to come' (Ch. 12). Anna remembers Baudelaire's remark that he found it hard to breathe when faced with an Ingres portrait: he felt as though the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere. This is evidently a favoured description, which Brookner returns to in her essays on Ingres in Soundings (1997) and Romanticism and Its Discontents (2000). Ingr...

Observer : So you've now finished the book, and you're a free woman? Anita Brookner: Very boring. Obs : You're bored? AB: Oh terribly. 2001 Observer interview I'm getting bored with my characters – my character.'  That suggests you are getting bored with yourself.  'Completely.'  What, I ask, could anyone offer to stave off that boredom?  'But you have! Meaningful conversation. I've enjoyed this. It's been rigorous.'  The afternoon light is fading – the moment of that 'slight failure of nerve'. And what will you do now, I ask, rising to leave.  'Make a cup of tea. Go and get an evening paper. Talk to the Indian newsagent. Come home. Have a bath. Watch Channel 4 News.' She gives a slight smile. 'You're getting the detail now. Then take a sleeping pill, then bed. What time? Oh, nine.'  And then tomorrow get up and do the same thing all over again?  'That's right.'  Her eyes sparkle mischievou...

Delacroix, Fantasia Arabe , Staedel Museum, Frankfurt The journey to Morocco facilitated both renewal and greater emancipation from the standards still prevalent in the studios and in the Salon [...] The brilliant sunlight of the landscape [...] the outdoor scenes have a silvery-yellow, almost Veronese light...  'Delacroix: Romantic Classicist',  Romanticism and Its Discontents Later in the same essay, written before The Next Big Thing , Brookner considers Jacob and the Angel : That other detail, of the caravan of animals and servants being sent off to Esau, represents Delacroix's last Moorish fantasy. See also the following earlier posts:  Julius and the Angel  and  A Private View .

The search for happiness, which Stendhal decided was entirely possible, has been rejected, has been replaced by the consolations of art. In the first and heroic phase of Romanticism it was possible to believe in personal fulfilment, if only in reduced circumstances. In the second and disillusioned phase the world is regarded as a vale of tears...  Romanticism and Its Discontents , Ch. 5    I always went to fiction for consolation, or indeed for company; and to be able to operate in that area seemed to me so desirable that I decided to try.  Radio interview extract, part of Radio 4 obituary programme  Last Word It is always good and surprising to hear Brookner's voice. As far as I know only the above extract and another BBC programme,  The Reunion , are available online. In the 1980s Brookner made herself more available, but recordings are hard to come by. I believe a Brookner scholar took the following stills from a TV arts show archived at ...