Still Life With Remorse is a compilation of love notes to family, art, music and literature. The book explores the interior landscape of the deliriously talented author/ illustrator Maira Kalman. Israeli born, American bred, Kalman celebrates with folksy-type of drawings, “to shake off the heavy weight of remorse.” She employs short poems, vibrant vignettes, quirky illustrations, and two “musical interludes” to create nothing short of a Zen experience.
Within 50 illustrations and 39 anecdotes, Kalman shares, “an ocean of remorse” for people who shaped her “weltanschauung,” essentially individuals “long gone” who influenced her world view. Several soulful vignettes focus on family whose origins, in Belarus, would take them to Palestine and then America. Most touching in Kalman’s repertoire is the sorrow over her mother Sara.A woman of great culture Sara suffered from mental illness. She could not take care of Kalman’s sister Kika who was sent away to live in a,“Hasidic, Dickensian Orphanage.” Kalman feels pangs of remorse over her parents’ divorce, the loss of her family who remained in Belarus, “murdered in the Holocaust” and layers of remorse for her beloved husband Tibor’s premature death.
Kalman also contemplates the loss of musicians, and literary figures who affected her outlook in life. She reflects on “the geniuses of literature,” Anton Checkoff’s disastrous marriage, the discord between the great Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sophie. Kalman recalls Franz Kafka’s wretched life with his overbearing father, and feels the misery in composer Gustav Mahler’s dark symphonies and lyrics. “And yet… and yet …” Kalman writes, “If there is remorse… There should be merriment? But how can we make this happen? How to do this?” she asks. Kalman offers a bounty of whimsical artworks as a personal antidote.
She redirects her somber mood with vibrant illustrations, vases, overflowing with purple anemones, amphorae with wild cyclamen, bouncing red poppies, pink carnations and pitchers filled with fiery, orange chrysanthemums, white asters, jugs of scarlet zinnias. A music aficionado, Kalman imagines the “conviviality and bonhomie” at lunch with composers Robert and Clara Schuman snacking on kugelhopf or cherry strudel. To relief her sad moments she listens to “musical interludes” by Schubert or Handel and contemplates “a floor full of books that fill the room with everything you need.” Her colorful illustrations include, a brash pink sofa that once belonged to Vanessa Bell, a platter of green quince, portraits of French poets and studios that housed artists, Delacroix and Matisse— all positive diversions from remorse.
Kalman has known life’s disappointments and felt regret in its many iterations but when immersed in sadness, Kalman’s bold imperative boils down to this: create your own happiness, discover joy in all that surrounds you! A book open to myriad interpretations, Still Life with Remorse floods the imagination with a torrent of wisdom, amusement and amazement.