The Magic Isles
May. 5th, 2005 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranEvery time I hear Mozart's 40th and 41st Symphonies, the thought that "near enough is good enough" vanishes.
To me, listening to his last two symphonies is like finding a fantasy novel that's comic and action-packed and thrilling and inventive and profound and black and bittersweet all at once. And from that moment on, there wouldn't be any point in doing anything lesser any more. Even doing the same thing would only make you the second person to do it. The last two symphonies practically demand that a Beethoven should come along next and take things to the next level, to stretch the symphony into a new form that can handle something bigger than Mozart.
I've been listening to the 40th Symphony in the car and thinking about The Magic Isles, a novel I've had two cracks at in the last ten years and never got got more than a chapter into each time. A lot has changed since the early version. The protagonist has gone from male to female, his/her companion has changed to an entirely different character, and the entire world the story is set in has changed several times.
Thinking about the 40th Symphony though, I'm starting to think that maybe it needs to be a Black Comedy, less whimsical, more bittersweet, with a driving, pressing threat to harry the characters along. The new version, still forming in my head, starts with a crime instead of a wish. The crime is probably accidental, and maybe even excusable, but rules are rules and it releases a nemesis that will either chase the protagonist or be chased itself. (Hmm. This is starting to sound like The Wizard of EarthSea.) The things the protagonist sees and encounters are like rooms she runs through, while being chased by something always a step behind. The comedy she encounters is tempered by the inevitably that she'll be caught in the end and forced to face the consequences.
One day I'll be ready to write this story.
To me, listening to his last two symphonies is like finding a fantasy novel that's comic and action-packed and thrilling and inventive and profound and black and bittersweet all at once. And from that moment on, there wouldn't be any point in doing anything lesser any more. Even doing the same thing would only make you the second person to do it. The last two symphonies practically demand that a Beethoven should come along next and take things to the next level, to stretch the symphony into a new form that can handle something bigger than Mozart.
I've been listening to the 40th Symphony in the car and thinking about The Magic Isles, a novel I've had two cracks at in the last ten years and never got got more than a chapter into each time. A lot has changed since the early version. The protagonist has gone from male to female, his/her companion has changed to an entirely different character, and the entire world the story is set in has changed several times.
Thinking about the 40th Symphony though, I'm starting to think that maybe it needs to be a Black Comedy, less whimsical, more bittersweet, with a driving, pressing threat to harry the characters along. The new version, still forming in my head, starts with a crime instead of a wish. The crime is probably accidental, and maybe even excusable, but rules are rules and it releases a nemesis that will either chase the protagonist or be chased itself. (Hmm. This is starting to sound like The Wizard of EarthSea.) The things the protagonist sees and encounters are like rooms she runs through, while being chased by something always a step behind. The comedy she encounters is tempered by the inevitably that she'll be caught in the end and forced to face the consequences.
One day I'll be ready to write this story.
