Many years agone I spent a summertime successful southeastern Poland. One day, connected a hike, I came upon a gathering successful the precocious greeting sun. A radical of radical had assembled connected a meadow conscionable extracurricular a village, an assemblage successful waiting arsenic it turned out, lasting softly against the backdrop of the Tatra Mountains. The craggy scarps were distant and blue, afloat successful the bladed dove-grey haze of aboriginal September. The musicians were arriving, 1 by one. All of them men, each of them with a moustache, astir of them elderly—or truthful it seemed to maine astatine the time.
Some of them carried battered achromatic instrumentality bags, others came cradling their shiny trumpets, French horns and trombones successful their arms. A brass band. They each wore stiff acheronian woollen clothes, excessively lukewarm for the play and the sun, I thought. And they wore hats, astatine slightest that’s what my representation tells maine now, achromatic bucket-style hats, possibly made from felt, water-repellent and cosy, suitable for each sorts of outdoor pursuits. It took a portion for each instrumentalist to instrumentality up his spot astatine the bottommost of a gentle slope facing the audience. Everybody isolated from maine seemed local. They knew what to expect. Occasionally idiosyncratic successful the assemblage shouted encouragement oregon the sanction of a portion of euphony they wished to hear, oregon possibly a joke, oregon immoderate their contented whitethorn person recommended for the occasion.
The astir striking diagnostic of their euphony seemed to maine its clasp of a definite dissonance, its reliance connected an constituent of friction which was ne'er jarring.
I had truthful acold shunned brass bands and wouldn’t beryllium capable to accidental wherefore my curiosity prevailed determination and then. But soon I realised that not conscionable the outfits and scenery acceptable them isolated from the parades I had occasionally happened connected erstwhile I was a kid successful West Germany. No stomping rhythms here, nary shrill blasts successful unison, nary sweaty masculinity souring the air, nary reddish faces. Each of the men successful their acheronian woollen outfits spun his ain thread of sound, and each of them knew however to weave his recognisable thread into the shared texture of a melody. The astir striking diagnostic of their euphony seemed to maine its clasp of a definite dissonance, its reliance connected an constituent of friction which was ne'er jarring.
Rather, it emphasised a melancholy undercurrent that was anchored not successful the melody but successful the tiny tonal interstices which opened up wherever the tuning diverged ever truthful slightly, small gaps and cracks, each telling their ain wordless tales of immoderate past oregon contiguous affliction and sorrow. It was an unexpected acquisition successful dissonance arsenic an constituent of beauty.
As I work ‘Air Ride’, the 2nd section of her novel, it was possibly this constituent of dissonance successful Rosalind Belben’s penning that brought backmost my memories of the brass set successful agrarian Poland galore decades earlier. There were nary gondolas successful Poland, nary gleaming tubas successful the sunshine arsenic acold arsenic I remember, but determination was quality (whatever that whitethorn mean these days), determination was landscape, determination were mountains, determination was history, and with past inevitably besides melancholy.
Beauty is simply a conception arsenic immense arsenic it is vague.
In borderlands the crushed is ever disturbed by history, and south-eastern Poland is nary exception. Traces of combat ing, oppression, demolition and of the unspeakable horrors of genocide overlap and mingle. Everything is infused with melancholy, the unfailing indicator of the cardinal rift betwixt humans and their earthy environment. The talkative protagonist successful this section tries to find the connection for this precise rift: ‘Nature listens, but quality is helpless to act, quality is astatine the mercy.’
At the mercy of what? The condemnation trails off. History comes into the representation (‘These mountains person seen a batch of fighting’), arsenic does quality unwillingness, oregon inability, to perceive to thing different than one’s ain voice. However poignant the speaker’s statements, they permission gaps, they’re unfinished, disjointed, dissonant, marked by omissions. Lacunae person a poetic value of their own. Through the cracks successful Sepp the tuba player’s monologue, readers whitethorn effort to drawback a glimpse of the taciturn listener stuck successful the gondola with him. The gondola swings backmost and distant and ‘swims’ erstwhile Sepp gets agitated. ‘Air Ride’ echoes crossed the Alpine scenery arsenic aerial raid; a traumatic past and an unresolved struggle are mentioned without being specified. Other chapters—such arsenic ‘The Summer Child’—suggest a scenery and events associated with Alto Adige and its fraught past of being torn betwixt Austria and Italy.
In ‘Air Ride’, the narrator’s—and evident interlocutor’s—consistent soundlessness emphasises the erratic quality of Sepp’s elaborations connected beauty, music, frocks and landscape. The lack of an speech leaves the scholar fingering escaped threads and, successful the lack of plot, listening into tonal shifts and ruptures. Loose threads are a diagnostic of Belben’s writing; they lucifer the dissonances and, similar them, yet crook retired to beryllium the astir important portion of the fabric.
The rubric of the novel—and is it a novel? I did inquire myself from clip to time—mentions beauty. Beauty is simply a conception arsenic immense arsenic it is vague. It raises questions. Where bash we statesman with a definition? Do we request one? It is treacherous terrain successful the lack of a statement astir the norms defining beauty. Guides for the aesthetically perplexed person mislaid their meaning. Concepts of the beauteous diverge arsenic overmuch arsenic concepts of what is ‘good’ successful an ethical sense. Nature arsenic environment, arsenic landscape, arsenic a unit beyond the rational, and arsenic a spot wherever quality and a primeval lack of atrocious intentions travel together, has go either a commodity oregon an endangered space. Disturbance, distortion, demolition are the words that travel to caput erstwhile we deliberation of quality today.
Belben’s novel, however, primitively published successful 1989, doesn’t look to beryllium acrophobic with a explanation of beauty. Is quality good, asks the title. Or does it? Is the lack of a question people of significance? Is it a question astatine all? Or is it possibly conscionable a frame, a mock model offering a presumption of fragmented and occasionally absurd scenes located determination betwixt nature, goodness and the quality of humans, dogs and horses? These scenes are not designed to accommodate readers’ expectations of a storyline: what holds them unneurotic is language, idiosyncratic words which, not dissimilar fairy-tale pebbles, assistance the scholar to navigate the changing texture of the narrative.
The chapters look similar episodes, oregon fragments of episodes dispersed retired similar pieces of a puzzle, with a batch of blank abstraction betwixt them. There are fields of achromatic silence, fertile crushed for the imaginativeness to displacement them around, find matches oregon mismatches, wonderment astir sequences oregon connections. Questions astir quality and longing recur, arsenic bash keywords (such arsenic ‘password’), names, references and scenic features, but what fascinated maine astir is that successful rule each occurrence could beryllium work arsenic a small patchy beingness connected its own. There is Fritz wondering astir the effect of quality connected caput and psyche connected his regular tram journeys successful a metropolis that seems to beryllium Berlin.
Apparently helium is simply a defender astatine the Berlin Wall, observing passing pedestrians done his binoculars. Regardless of the oppression his occupation has travel to basal for, helium is acrophobic with questions of quality and its imaginable uselessness. Wouldn’t it beryllium wiser to inure oneself to aesthetic sensibilities? To sail done beingness unbothered by what 1 sees outside, taking pleasance successful small backstage comforts (coffee, biscuits, barroom aft work) without being enraptured by quality and insulted by ugliness? ‘There is small that is motivation astir beauty,’ Fritz declares. ‘Is quality good?’ helium asks, but what helium truly seems to mean is: what bully is beauty? His utilitarian pondering has a ringing of cardinal hopelessness, but it points the scholar successful an absorbing direction: is determination a transportation betwixt quality and hope? And would that marque quality good? Does it matter?
Two chapters later, a antheral called Kai remembers Fritz’s musings erstwhile he’s asked to travel up with a password successful a subject context. ‘Is quality good,’ helium proposes, and his proposition is approved and welcomed by his comrades with a hearty laugh. Both his proposition and the jolly appreciation look retired of tune with the concern ‘far from home’, which whitethorn beryllium a subject manoeuvre involving mock battles and bayonet practice, oregon a mentation for existent combat. The scholar won’t find out. Kai embarks connected meandering reflections reminiscent of Sepp the tuba player.
He’s little acrophobic with the ethical imaginable of quality than with a soldier’s speechmaking of scenery arsenic a spot for shelter, inspired by associations with the pistillate body. The keyword present is longing. ‘Human beings are truthful afloat of longings,’ remarks Kai towards the extremity of the section ‘Tears for Streams’. While quality remains elusive and evades definition, it is longing which emerges arsenic the existent centrifugal of life. Longing is the Insatiable Wheel of the rubric of this archetypal portion of the novel, the small lad pedalling his tricycle astatine breakneck velocity towards the mountains, again and again, nary substance however o!en helium is intercepted and taken backmost home:
The 3rd child, says the peasant successful wide dialect, has a small tricycle, a artifact happening for precise tiny children, and helium goes pedalling disconnected connected it, for miles and miles, astatine the property of three, erstwhile nary 1 is looking, helium has the impulse to pedal miles, to the mountains, astatine the property of three, connected a baby’s tricycle; and the aged canine ever goes with him; I conscionable him miles from home, pedalling on similar a fury, and the canine moving alongside, helium slips retired erstwhile nary 1 is looking, and the canine similar his shadiness [. . .] I telephone to him, Franzi, was machst du hier?, wohin?, and helium smiles radiantly, not naughtily oregon guiltily, and says successful his babe voice, bicycling, to the mountains helium says, and the aged canine too; and I effort to explicate it’s dangerous, he’s excessively young to beryllium retired successful the state miles from location alone, and helium smiles, and smiles, and there’s nary stopping him; it’s my wheel, helium says, my instrumentality is hungry, it eats and I can’t halt it, it’s terribly hungry, maine and the canine takes it retired to eat; and helium waves to me, cheerfully helium waves to me, a three-year-old, and disconnected helium pedals . . .
His regard remains fixed connected what helium perceives arsenic cleanable beauty. The pedalling lad who ne'er gets to wherever helium wants to beryllium is quality longing personified. But wherever determination is longing, determination is besides hope.
The characters successful the caller are not introduced: they happen, and they talk. There is simply a polyphony of reflections, impressions, snippets of memories, of conversations, musings and observations, occasionally taking the scholar to the borderline of puzzling situations and predicaments whose value whitethorn gradually, partially, travel to airy successful the people of the novel. There is simply a changeless consciousness of movement, of visions and voices converging, diverging, allowing gaps and silences, but besides a consciousness of subterranean connectedness.
And with each caller miraculous signifier seemingly forming naturally, we are much inclined to anticipation that quality tin beryllium good.
As a reader, occasionally unsure whether I was speechmaking stories oregon a novel, I couldn’t assistance reasoning of a microscopic web of filaments moving underneath the textual surface, overmuch similar a web of mycelia manifesting itself successful the occasional fruiting assemblage of a mushroom but being successful itself infinitely vaster and stronger than those manifestations. The voices and visions play tricks and connection surprises, and there’s a consciousness of humour adjacent erstwhile calamity is lurking successful the wings. But they besides exposure cardinal problems of communication, the vulnerability and inconsistency of our communal currency of language, its assistance lessness. Belben’s penning catches thing astatine the basal of quality existence, a authorities betwixt imagination and crushed wherever each consciousness of belonging is suspended, making mode for longing to specify the self. It is besides a authorities betwixt words, acrophobic with the tiny stillnesses, the achromatic spaces harbouring endless possibilities without which connection couldn’t exist.
The caller is acceptable mostly extracurricular Britain, partially successful Berlin (West Berlin astatine the time), partially successful Alpine regions wherever German is spoken. Occasionally German words and expressions harvest up, without remark oregon translation. One thread that runs done the full caller is an constituent of Fremde between the lines. Fremde is a German word, hard to translate, though it shares its basal with the English ‘from’ and primitively conscionable meant ‘coming from different place’. In its modern meaning it sits determination betwixt unusual and overseas and alien, a prime that strikes maine arsenic the cleanable explanation of what makes Belben’s penning timeless. The assorted voices successful the chapters of this caller make into a choir defined by dissonances which shi” and spell circular successful circles.
Surprisingly, I came crossed Rosalind Belben’s enactment lone precise recently. Her poetic wit, her consciousness of the absurd and, supra all, her subtle consciousness of Fremde as a mode of being successful the satellite is thing I was missing successful English lit astatine the clip erstwhile this publication was archetypal published. Perhaps, having conscionable arrived successful the UK from Europe, I was looking successful different literate directions. Fremde is a overmuch underrated diagnostic of quality life, and Belben’s engagement with it is thing each scholar tin payment from, aesthetically arsenic good arsenic ethically. Reading her writing, I was sometimes reminded of a kaleidoscope successful each its deceptive simplicity: a cardboard conduit with mirrors and colourful shards astatine 1 end, the shards rearranging themselves into dazzling caller patterns with each crook of the tube. And with each caller miraculous signifier seemingly forming naturally, we are much inclined to anticipation that quality tin beryllium good.
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From Is Beauty Good. Used with the support of the publisher, New York Review of Books. Copyright © 2026 by Rosalind Belben, instauration by Esther Kinsky
English (US) ·