Floating Children, Peony Buds, and a Deconstructed Rose

I am in the midst of reading the novel “Painting Time,” by Maylis de Kerangal. It received a rapturous review in the New Yorker, which so far I don’t find persuasive. It strikes me as massively overwritten, and I have yet to discern much of a plot. (OK, it’s not fair to compare it to Ian Rankin’s Rebus series, which I had to interrupt when “Painting Time” came in at the library.) Here are the first few lines (the full first page is one sentence):

In Sicilia: Chi pupu eri?

Marionette funeral ceremony (Korea)

In Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life, Kenneth Gross describes Sicilian puppeteer Mimmo Cuticchio’s L’urlo del mostro (The howl of the monster), a puppet theater based on the Odyssey. In one scene, Cuticchio

plays Odysseus himself, encountering the ghosts of puppets in the underworld, seeking his identity there among lost comrades and dead family members. Of one skeletal wooden figure he asks, in Sicilian, “Chi pupu eri?” (What puppet were you?).”

Absolute Music, Absolute Dance

The composer creates time, and we have to dance to it.
—George Balanchine

I haven’t been to the ballet “proper” in decades. I think the last time I went to the New York City Ballet wasn’t so very long after George Balanchine had died. This week, while down in New York City, I spotted that the New York City Ballet had a Balanchine Festival going on. For the one I could get to, the music was all Stravinsky (Apollo, Agon, Duo Concertant, and Symphony in Three Movements).