Reviews for Madonna of the Future

The average rating for Madonna of the Future based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-19 00:00:00 Sam Rosas Henry James wrote the long short story "The Madonna of the Future" (1873) at the age of thirty, but although it features his early, relatively straightforward style, it is subtle in the way it combines its themes: America's discovery of Europe, the American artist's particular challenges, the representations of woman in art (as contrasted with actual women), and the plight of the cerebral and tentative artist who wraps himself in preparatory notes and theorizing, afraid to begin the work which summons him now. The narrator is a Mr. H', an American, "a clever man who had seen much of men and manners," who relates an after-dinner story of an artist he met during his first trip to Italy. While taking a walk his first night in Florence, he encounters Theobald, another American, a painter, who guides him'on this night and subsequent nights'to some of the great artistic wonders of the city. He also speaks of the dilemma of the American artist: "We are the disinherited of Art!" he cried.  "We are condemned to be superficial!  We are excluded from the magic circle.  The soil of American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit.  Yes! we are wedded to imperfection.  An American, to excel, has just ten times as much to learn as a European.  We lack the deeper sense.  We have neither taste, nor tact, nor power.  How should we have them?  Our crude and garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness in saying so!  We poor aspirants must live in perpetual exile." Eventually, he shares with his young friend some knowledge of his one great work, a painting of the Madonna, and even introduces him to Serefina, his model for the painting. The young Mr. H' is surprised and disappointed to observe that she is something less than aetherial ("She had been that morning to confession," he tells us, "she had also been to market, and had bought a chicken for dinner"). But the most dismaying thing about her'though she is undeniably beautiful--is her appearance. Theobald'ever theorizing, ever taking notes--has too long delayed the completion of his painting: his perfect Madonna Serafina has grown old. The rest of the story is melancholy, but moving and instructive. It haunts me, for I am a would-be novelist, given to too much note-taking. Who knows? Perhaps this story will haunt you too.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-28 00:00:00 Vicki Ramsey The Madonna of the Future is a longish short story whose resonance right now is audible, at the least. The story is an account of an American who has fallen in love with Florence and haunts it as he studies its art--notably Raphael's Madonna of the Chair in the Uffizi Gallery--and prepares himself to paint his own madonna, using a woman whose image as a young woman lingers with him even as she ages...and he cannot bring himself to paint her. Years pass, and he talks about his intentions with visiting Americans as he guides them around Florence, but no one has ever seen his work...until our narrator makes an especially close connection with him and he is introduced to the aging woman, a handsome enough lady, and ultimately is able to see that she puts up with Theobald, as the artist is called, even though the only thing he has produced is a quick, lovely sketch of a child she lost long ago. The actual canvas upon which he intends to paint what James refers to as the Madonna of the Future is primed but unpainted; it bears not a single brushstroke. Theobald claims he's been preparing himself diligently; he's been studying; and well...perhaps he is only half a genius, the kind who at least thinks even if he cannot act, but thinks well, thinks brillliantly, and has a response in mind that will match the Raphael that so enchants him. What's the resonance today? The resonance, it seems to me, is that this is another one James's stories focused on Americans in Europe who have arrived only to be confronted by old Europe's staggering glories...which neither Europeans nor Americans can now match. The one continent is too old, the other too young. And these last few years in particular have placed a lot of tension on the trans-Atlantic relationship for similar reasons. We are each other's closest friends and kin, but neither of us knows exactly what to do about it. Unfortunately Britain leaped into Iraq with the U.S., and just as unfortunately, all of NATO embroiled itself in the long war in Afghanistan. Tragic misadventures. Now we hear talk of a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the E.U. Well, how can there not be such a thing already? Because our cultures don't quite match up: because there are French fears we'll flood their movie market (more than we have?); and because there are little countries that could see whole industries wiped out if U.S. goods were cheaply available. So we pivot to Asia? I'm all for Asia, but having lived in Europe for many years, I find James's image of an unpainted canvas to be a painful symbol of what we don't seem to be able to do with the civilization that gave us birth. It's beyond our imagination...and perhaps weighs down Europe's imagination, too. Mixing Henry James in with free trade and Iraq makes for an odd cocktail, I'll admit, but his perplexity and sense of diminished capacity in the trans-Atlantic sense remains apposite. We're crippled in a two-sided political paralysis and Europe is fragmented ten times more than that. James wasn't the kind of literary artist who, confronted with today's dilemmas, would deal with them broadly, but in this odd little story, he's got it about right: after all these years, and wars, and tourism, and talk, talk, talk... the madonna lingers beyond the horizon of the future. For more of my comments on classic and contemporary fiction, see Tuppence Reviews (Kindle).