Lord of the Dance: TK

Opening in Venice, perhaps around the mid 1950s, Temporary Kings, the eleventh novel in Anthony Powell’s Dance To The Music of Time, is immediately more spacious, more relaxed, than previous novels.  Both the setting and the action is more modern, more cosmopolitan, though not without disturbing hints of darker forces beneath – such as threatening relations between East and West.  Nick is in Venice for a literary conference, and meets new characters but also, as always, links backwards in time to understand more of Trapnel, Widmerpool, and others he has known – and known of – all his life.  Understanding grows, but the questions multiply as well; but as new themes are introduced, you also know that the story will not be finished, ever – or rather that you will not be here for the finish.  Your regret at planning to leave early, so to speak, is added to by the regret of others leaving, early as it seems.  But the book is not melancholy, just comprehending and knowing the limits to comprehension.

·     “Do you think the soubrette is his mistress, or his great-granddaughter?  ... They seem on very close terms.  Perhaps both.”

 

·     “Why do the British always ask [about a man’s background]?”  “One of our foibles.”  “That’s not what Americans do.”  “But we’re not Americans.  You must humour our straying from the norm in that respect.”

 

·     [A committed admirer of the USSR on modern art at the Venice Biennale]:  “I can guarantee that the only sanctuary from subjectless bric-à-brac here will be in the national pavilions of what you no doubt term the Iron Curtain countries.”

 

·     “... he remains essentially American in believing that all questions have answers, that there is an ideal life against which everyday life can be measured ...”

 

·     “Well, I mustn’t waste the whole morning coffee-housing on this vile instrument [the telephone]”

 

·     Reunion dinners, to the point of morbidity, gave the chance of indulging in ... reminiscent scrutinies.

Comments

[glo]

This is one of the most jaw-dropping book I have ever read, for both the writer's invention and the the way the story and the events are told. It was not love at first sight - or first reading, in this case - because I didn't like much the beginning of the novel; too much descriptions and digressions at the beginning kill the reader's interest. But I recognise that it is one of the best among the 12 books. To be really honest, I think now that I may have been somehow shocked by what I discovered and read. And Powell goes very, very far, and he gives all peculiar details.
My goal is still want to comment carefully and precisely each volume of the saga - and I want to start with the first one - when I have time to go back to my notebook, and write something serious about them. That's why I haven't said much about each novel yet.