Harmonious disharmony - Pär Lagerkvist and Carlo Gesualdo

This evening I finished reading the novel Dvärgen (The Dwarf) by the Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist. The novel is narrated by the dwarf of a late-medieval Italian prince, who is an extreme misanthrope and observes the world through a filter of hatred and incomprehension, interpreting the actions and natures of those around him from his vantage point of the outsider who is often mocked and ignored, yet who thereby manages to come closer to the realities of courtly life. It is a wonderful novel, but in an extremely discomforting way. Since the protagonist considers himself in opposition to the doings of humans - whom he considers a different species of beings altogether - he also breaks norms, performs impieties, and presents the twisted, childish view of the world of a supreme egotist who feels insufficiently powerful and who is dissatisfied with everything - everything but violence, that is. This contradictory nature of the protagonist runs like a jarringly discordant note through the entire novel, a note made all the more discordant because his hatred is of such a petulant nature. It has taken me significantly longer to finish this novel than I expected, and it is precisely because of this disharmony.

As I began reading the novel, I was struck by the idea that a fitting soundtrack to my reading would be something by Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), one of the most notorious composers of Renaissance music, known for his heavy use of dissonance which is in notable contrast to earlier Italian composers. It is not quite clear to me why his music came to mind, as I have not listened to it since the months following a conference in Italy back in 2013, which coincided with the anniversary of his death. Perhaps it was the late-medieval/Renaissance setting of Lagerkvist's novel that prompted the connection. Perhaps it was that like the novel's protagonist, Gesualdo also broke the norms of his day and also committed murder (I misremembered and thought he had murdered his father - I realised later that he had murdered his wife and her lover). Whatever the reason, I found that the homicidal composer's disharmonious music suited the murderous disharmony of the novel's narrator disconcertingly well, as if the two horrible human beings - one real, one fictional - echoed each other and brought something more living into the art. It was an uncomfortable exercise at times, but one that was rewarding in strange ways, as the disharmony of it all allowed me to immerse myself somewhat more deeply into the twisted reality of the novel's nameless misfit of a protagonist. And it served also as a reminder that - as shown by both the novel and the music - the idea of the Renaissance as a time of glory is a gross misconception that only survives because it fits certain grand narratives, and because we give too much credence to the art it left behind and not the circumstances in which that art was made, or by whom or to whose cost that art came into being. Although fictional, Lagerkvist's misanthropic narrator helps us remember that.