Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

. . . on the day when his grandfather had turned him out of doors, (Marius) had been only a child, now he was a man. He felt it. Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has a hundred coarse and brilliant distractions, horse races, hunting, dogs, tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and all the rest of it; occupations for the baser side of the soul, at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis; he gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon creation to such an extent that he beholds God. He dreams, he feels himself great; he dreams on, and feels himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the compassion of the man who meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him, forgetfulness of self and pity for all. As he thinks of the innumerable enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls which stand open, and refuses to souls that are closed, he comes to pity, he the millionnaire of the mind, the millionnaire of money. All hatred departs from his heart, in proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never miserable. The first young lad who comes to hand, however poor he may be, with his strength, his health, his rapid walk, his brilliant eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black hair, his red lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks: work, which makes him free; and thought, which makes him dignified. [Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862), Volume III – Marius; Book Fifth – The Excellence of Misfortune, Chapter III, “Marius Grown Up.”]

Other narratives:

•   Andrea Levy, The Long Song: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), is set in “the final days of slavery in ­early-19th-century Jamaica. Packaged with a preface and an afterword purporting to have been written by Mr. Thomas Kinsman, a well-to-do black printer living in Jamaica in 1898, and occasionally punctuated by editorial suggestions from that long-suffering man, the novel is presented as the memoirs of his octogenarian mother, Miss July, who was born into slavery on a sugar plantation known as Amity.”
•   Jeanne Birdsell, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2005).
•   Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer: A Novel (Amistad, 2010).
•   Nicole Krauss, Great House: A Novel (W.W. Norton, 2010): “These narrators are marooned in a terrible place, unable to return to the safe shore of normal life, unable to follow their enchanters into the deeps where only they can breathe. Their enchanters are themselves enchanted with their own sorrows. They have been shaped around what it is they have lost, a central idea in ‘Great House’ — in fact, the meaning behind its title.”
•   Julia Franck, The Blindness of the Heart: A Novel (Grove Press, 2010).
•   Carol Anshaw, Carry the One: A Novel (Simon & Schuster, 2012), a novel that “explores the way tragedy can follow hard on celebration, binding people together even more lastingly than passion.”
•   Akhil Sharma, Family Life: A Novel (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014): a family of four struggles with resilience after a teenaged son is rendered quadriplegic.
•   Tom Malmquist, In Every Moment We Are Still Alive: A Novel (Melville House, 2018): “The novel, we’re told, is ‘based on a true story.’ It is narrated by a Swedish writer called Tom and recounts a scenario so devastating that the intimation of real-life parallels is both lure and distraction. ”
•   Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Minutes of Glory and Other Stories (The New Press, 2019): “. . . what shines through in Ngugi’s stirring pages is a hopeful message. Even after generations of foreign then domestic repression, spiritual confusion, drought and hunger, the resilient spirit — a gathering of real souls — lives on in Africa, no matter whose ghost or god is worshiped.”
•   Rebekah Frumkin, The Comedown: A Novel (Henry Holt & Company, 2018): “. . . it’s a book about crests and troughs, highs and comedowns, joys and brutalities — about how easily our lives are wrecked, but also how powerfully we’re able to survive and rebuild.”
•   Sean Adams, The Heap: A Novel (Willliam Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers, 2019), “is about a pile of trash that used to be a tower.”
•   Joyce Carol Oates, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.: A Novel (Ecco, 2020): “Jessalyn is also resilient, hopelessly so, but as anyone devastated by loss will attest, and as Oates makes achingly clear, resilience is typically more burden than blessing.”
•   Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet: A Novel (Knoopf, 2020): “Shakespeare’s Son Died at 11. A Novel Asks How It Shaped His Art.”
•   Guillermo Stitch, Lake of Urine: A Love Story (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2020) “invites you to view the world as fundamentally absurd and usually awful, but also to recognize that laughter is a mighty, and cleansing, recompense”.
•   Laird Hunt, Zorrie: A Novel (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021): “a virtuosic portrait of midcentury America itself — physically stalwart, unerringly generous, hopeful that tragedy can be mitigated through faith in land and neighbor alike”.
•   Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman, The Very Nice Box: A Novel (Mariner Books, 2021): “. . . their sparkling debut manages to expose the hollowness of well-being jargon while exploring, with tender care and precision, how we dare to move on after unspeakable loss.”
•   Banana Yoshimoto, Dead-End Memories: Stories (Counterpoint, 2022): “When can we have feelings again? Yoshimoto’s protagonists go out and act, they feel, they express, even if only to themselves. Even at their loneliest, these characters are a part of something, whether a relationship, a friendship, a family, a workplace, a society, a world.”
•   Elizabeth Graver, Kantika: A Novel (Metropolitan Books, 2023): “While ‘Kantika’ inevitably relies on tropes of Jewish immigrant literature, from questions of what and where home is to idolization of America as a land relatively unhaunted by the ghosts of European antisemitism, Graver is equally interested in the resilience of women as filtered through the lens of music, motherhood and disability.”
•   Lisa Tuttle & Amy Gentry, My Death: A Novel (2004) “is not about death at all, but about life after catastrophe: how art revives us, and how writers live on in their readers.”

Poetry

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

[Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”]

Other poems:

• Maya Angelou, “The Lesson”
• J.R.R. Tolkien, “All that is gold does not glitter”

From the dark side:

• Edgar Lee Masters, “Homer Clapp”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Many musicologists might look askance at the placement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor (1902) (approx. 71-77’) within the broad category of hope and optimism. Its first three movements evoke fate, oppression and human suffering, and its fourth movement is often performed as a funeral march; a study of Mahler’s life reveals that he did not so intend it. He wrote it as a romantic ode to his beloved wife Alma. “It was in Vienna the winter prior to beginning the Fifth Symphony that Mahler met Alma Schindler, the beautiful daughter of a famous landscape painter. Mahler proposed to her in the fall of 1901, and the symphony, with its trajectory from mourning to triumph, reflects this development in its composer’s personal life.” “On 24 February 1901, the onset of severe hematochezia caused Gustav Mahler to lose a significant amount of blood. Recovery from this incident required two operations (the second intended to prevent a relapse), as well as several weeks of hospice care at a sanitarium. The seriousness of the hemorrhage—which the composer described on the following morning as a near-death experience—deeply impacted his psyche, and the concept of human mortality consequently surfaced in the music Mahler wrote over the next few months.” “With the Fifth Symphony, Mahler frankly admitted that he started over again . . . The Fifth Symphony . . . presents a life crisis in the abstract, explores its manifestations, and then overcomes its tragic nature through a courageous struggle with its most destructive aspects.” Under many conductors, the Adagietto clocks in at ten or eleven minutes, or as long as fourteen minutes. Mahler conducted it in nine minutes, utilizing tempi that express the idea of love, not death. That emergence from suffering is my reason for categorizing this symphony as music of resilience. Great performances: are conducted by Walter in 1947, Kubelik in 1951, Schwarz in 1958, Barbirolli in 1968, Levine in 1978, Karajan in 1978, Bernstein in 1987, Boulez in 1996, Barshai in 1999, Rattle in 2000, Zander in 2001, Gielen in 2003, and Gergiev in 2010.

1. Trauermasrch (In gemessenem Schritt – Streng – Wie ein Kondukt): The opening trumpet sounds ominously, and is soon joined by the orchestra, which moves before long into a funeral march in a minor key. These interplaying motives are repeated and explored at length. Many sections conclude with passages of hopelessness and despair.
2. Stürmisch bewegt, mit grosser Vehemenz: More ominous tones open this movement, this time from the entire orchestra. The vehemence calms, and voice in the woodwinds mock us in our angst. Soon, voices in the strings join in the mocking. These ideas are explored throughout the remainder of the movement, with an occasional reminder of childhood or youth adding pathos to anxiety. Rays of hope and even triumph are quickly extinguished. The movement concludes with the motives of mocking and despair.
3. Scherzo (Kraftig, nicht zu schell): The dance of life is twisted into the bizarre scherzo form, suggesting that lasting wounds that life leaves on us. As the movement proceeds, we have the sense that the protagonist has grown weary, as life’s daily struggles continue in this lengthiest of the symphony’s movements. The movement concludes with a few energetic bars that suggest something more may be coming.
4. Adagietto (Sehr langsam): And sure enough, here is the love theme. Despite the anxiety, pain and struggle, which persist throughout our lives, the human spirit endures. Like love, which need not and perhaps cannot be explained, the development of this theme of love speaks for itself throughout this movement.
5. Rondo - Finale (Allegro): This final movement opens with themes that evoke new beginnings: springtime and childhood perhaps. Has love seen us through dark days into the light? This newly optimistic tone persists throughout the remainder of the work.

Of his Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76, CNW 28, “The Inextinguishable” (1916) (approx. 33-41’), composer Carl Nielsen wrote: “I have an idea for a new composition, which has no programme but will express what we understand by the spirit of life or manifestations of life . . .” “The title is not a program but a pointer to the proper domain of music. It is meant to express the appearance of the most elementary forces among human beings, animals and even plants. We can say: in case all the world were to be devastated by fire, flood, volcanoes, etc. and all things were destroyed and dead, then nature would still begin to breed new life again . . . Soon the plants would begin to multiply, the breeding and screaming of birds would be seen and heard, the aspiration and yearning of human beings would be felt. These forces, which are ‘inextinguishable,’ are what I have tried to present.” Grøndahl in the 1950s, Jensen in 1952, Schmidt in 1974, Karajan in 1981, Blomstedt in 1988, Vänskä in 2002, Davis in 2015, Dausgaard in 2017, and Luisi in 2022 conducted top audio-recorded performances. Paavo Järvi in 2013, Mena in 2013, and Elder in 2016 conducted video-recorded performances.

Other compositions:

• Kenneth Fuchs, String Quartet No. 5 (“American”) (2012) (approx. 27’) “is an exciting, large-scale work that explores the contrapuntal possibilities of a single ‘American’ theme”, and expresses the composer’s vision of American resilience.
• Antonín Dvořák, Piano Trio No. 2 in G minor, 26, B. 57 (1876) (approx. 32-35’): “Though Dvořák left no specific indications of his inspiration or expression intent, this trio is thought to convey a dark sorrow with flashes of rage as well as deeply felt, graceful compassion, particularly in the first three movements. With the finale, Dvořák shifts the mood to bright play and sunny dance dispelling any lingering shadow.” “In August of 1875, Dvořák lost his newborn daughter, Josefa, within days of her birth. The G minor Piano Trio was composed four months later. Written over the course of seventeen days, it was the first piece Dvořák completed following the painful loss, and it opened the creative floodgates for music to come.”
• Leonardo Balada, Symphony No. 5, "American" (2003) (approx. 24’), “follows a convincing emotional progression, from an ominous opening in his avant-garde style, through a largely serene ‘Reflection’ based on a Negro spiritual, and closing with a brilliant square-dance finale.”
• Jorge Grundman, Surviving a Son’s Suicide for string quartet, Op. 16 (2009) (approx. 18’), and for lute quartet, Op. 16a (2012) (approx. 19’), has been described as “a tonal, melodic and highly emotional piece and not as depressing as you would expect”.
• Raga Hemant is a Hindustani classical raag for late evening. “. . . it is sung on the occasions of universal festivity in the first quarter of the day in winter (Hemant) to express terror (bhayanaka) and disgust (bibhatsa)'.” Performances are by Indrajit Banerjee, Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, Nikhil Banerjee, Nikhil Banerjee & Kishan Maharaj, and Nikhil Banerjee.
• Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Violin Sonata in A Minor, 13 (1882) (approx. 21-28’): Paderewski “wrote his Violin Sonata in A minor in 1882 during a difficult time in his life: his first wife had recently died and he was trying to provide proper care for his handicapped son.” Soon after that, Paderewski would “begin his career as a touring international virtuoso pianist”.

Béla Fleck’s primary instrument, the banjo, makes bluegrass music a natural fit for him. He recorded two albums, “Drive” (1987) (48’) and “Bluegrass Sessions” (1999) (76’) before deciding in 2019 that he wished to record a third. Fleck explains that the illness of one of his band members caused him concerns about the project: “. . . Tony Rice was the only guitarist I had met who could make it possible for me to play bluegrass in the way I wanted to.” Then he started working with other performers, and found that he could do it after all. “My Bluegrass Heart” (2021) (106’) followed from those efforts.

Blues music illustrates resilience, including notably these artists:

• Later work of Big Bill Broonzy
• Blind Willie McTell
• Five Blind Boys of Mississippi

Albums:

• Michael Leonhardt Orchestra, “The Normyn Suites” (2022) (69’): two suites of music, “Two Stages of Grieving” and “Love and Loss”, exploring Leonhardt’s stages of grieving after his fifteen-year-old dog died.
• Yulianna Avdeeva, “Resilience” (2023) (74’): the album title may have been inspired by Avdeeva’s views on the war in Ukraine.

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Sung-bong Choi on Korea’s Got Talent, and in the competition final
• Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer” (lyrics)
• Rising Appalachia, “Resilient” (lyrics)
• Christina Aguilera, “Fighter” (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Salvador Dali, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening - Hope! (1940)
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Trees on a Swamp (c. 1855)

Film and Stage

• My Left Foot: based on a true storyabout a man with cerebral palsy who became a painter using his left foot
• All About My Mother, about “splendidly resilient women”
• The Cranes are Flying, about a young womanwhose lover is killed at war, and who later marries her deceased lover’s friend, who has raped her
• Shock Corridor: a man subjects himselfto the difficulties of being an inmate in a mental institution