Maira Kalman’s lovely new volume, Still Life with Remorse, appears at first to be a simple book of illustrated family stories. In reality, it is a lush and magical meditation on the shapes and colors of remorse, the complicated part it plays in human interactions, and how art can help define it.
After beginning the book with two luscious renderings of Paul Cezanne’s and Giorgio Morandi’s art studios, Kalman goes on to riff on Leo Tolstoy’s famous quote about the happiness (or unhappiness) of families: “Happy families./Unhappy families. All the same, right?/ Ach. Ach. Ach.” From here, Still Life With Remorse delivers page after page of family lore and legend, most of it — but by no means all of it — Kalman’s own.
Throughout the book, Kalman describes her father’s family’s escape from Belarus to Tel Aviv during World War II, her family life in the Bronx (e.g., she has an aunt who eats only chicken fat sandwiches), and debilitating accidents and arguments. These stories are intermingled with equally poetic tales about the married lives and deaths of famous authors like Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, a tongue-in-cheek phone call between herself and Franz Liszt, and her suspicion that Franz Kafka’s gastrointestinal problems likely affected his writing.
Twice during this delightful sojourn, Kalman asks, “ … wouldn’t it be nice to have a little musical interlude?” The very next page features lyrics and hand-drawn sheet music to George Frideric Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” from Serse 1738. Twenty pages later, beside a painting of her late husband Tibor playing the piano, she wonders, “Could this be a good time for another … ” and illustrates Franz Schubert’s “Lachen und Weinen” (“Laughter and Tears”) in much the same way.
Alongside her beautiful paintings — paintings of rooms devoid of people but full of furniture; depictions of overflowing fruit bowls and vibrant vases of flowers; and portraits of luminaries such as Mallarme and Sarah Bernhardt — Kalman ruminates on the nature of remorse itself. After telling the story of an uncle who once drifted far out into the ocean in an inner tube and was rescued, she writes, “He could have been swept out to sea./But he was not./But he could have … This is what we call the possible/probable remorse tense.”
Serving as the book’s core are the sweetness and sadness found in Kalman’s family stories. Opposite Yellow Vase with Two Flowers, for example, she places the story “Dinner with My Father.” Here, Kalman confides, “Not far from a vase of flowers like these,/my father told me that his death/would be on my head.” She takes a breath, then offers an italicized “nice.”And across from her painting Green Chair Pink Chair is a story called “Tibor.” Kalman writes, “In a room not unlike this one/I had a wretched fight with my husband/… Over what?/ Over something and nothing/And then he died/… Not right after the fight/… But not so many years later.”
Anyone who has ever experienced a stab of guilt, had a wish unmet, or felt regret for a thing said or unsaid will find Still Life with Remorse a sad and tender read, made all the more pleasurable because of Kalman’s exquisite artwork and her plain and gentle telling of precious family tales.
Judith Katz is the award winning author of two novels, The Escape Artist and Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound.
