In my previous post, I discussed The Goldfinch, a painting by Carel Fabritius that Tom & I were fortunate enough to see last month in an exhibit in San Francisco.  Still savoring my enjoyment of the painting several days later, it somehow brought to mind an exquisite little book I had read just before we left for California called A Month inthe Country by J.L. Carr.  Carr was completely unknown to me when I stumbled across a description of his novel online, but the plot – a young man restores an ancient mural in a village church in the English countryside – sounded altogether fetching to me & furthermore, I fell in love with the book cover illustration, a reproduction of a charming Bonnard painting.  (OK, I confess: I’m a sucker for great book covers!)  At any rate, a connection was forged in my mind between the painting I had just seen & the book I had just read.

A third link was added to this chain of thought a few days after we got home from California when I received an email from Knopf Doubleday Publishing heralding the start of Poetry Month.  By way of celebration, Knopf will send you, upon request, a poem-a-day during the month of April.  First up:  A batch of Basho, the acknowledged master of haiku.  As you probably remember from school, haiku is a Japanese form of poetry inspired by Nature & characterized by three short lines & a slew of other parameters for writing it.  I hadn’t had an occasion to encounter one in decades but here I was on April 1st, suddenly swept away by the sheer power of a handful of words to create a visual image coupled with a feeling.  I silently gave thanks to Knopf for reintroducing me to something that used to give me so much pleasure.

So now I had a painting, a book, & a type of poetry rattling around in my head.  What obviously links them together is their diminutive size:  The Goldfinch is scarcely larger than a sheet of printer paper (BTW:  We used to call it “typewriter paper.”);  A Month in the Country is about 135 pages in my edition, which hovers between novel- & novella-sized; & a haiku poem is even shorter than a limerick – & we all know how short they are!  But, of course, size alone isn’t the point; rather, it’s their relatively small size coupled with their enormous power to please us.

We’ve been conditioned to think that the largest, longest,  tallest of any category is somehow the greatest – be it a painting, book, building, whatever – so that it takes us by surprise when we encounter something of superb quality & content in a smaller-than-average format.  Furthermore, we find that this small “something” can fare quite well in comparison to its much larger or longer counterparts.  I remember how The Goldfinch held its own beside all of the other paintings in the exhibit &, in fact, outshone them, partly because of its wonderful yellow background.

Of course, we recognize that The Goldfinch would be an altogether different painting if it were larger (even if it were identical in every other respect).  I try to imagine it even twice as big & I know my experience of it would be completely different.  For one thing, it would lose some of its sense of intimacy & that would, in turn, alter its “charm factor,” for above all else, this painting is deliciously charming.  The goldfinch itself would also be considerably larger than life-size & could very well come across as menacing instead of adorable.  And that yellow background in a larger painting might very well feel too demanding of our eye.  By the same token, one experiences a poem of, say, 10 or 15 lines completely differently from how one experiences the 3-line haiku.  After all, the very idea of the haiku is to express a visual image with its concomitant feeling in a poem as brief as the moment being described.

Many times we take delight in a short or small work of art for as simple a reason as:  It demands less of us.  The Goldfinch doesn’t require knowledge of mythology or history in order to partake of its splendor & a haiku poem is as verbally straightforward as it gets!  A brilliant-but short-novel like A Month in the Country requires no great investment of time but it engages us just as completely as if it were a much weightier tome.

So the next time you spy a small painting on the wall of a gallery or in a museum, approach it with the same degree of anticipation you would have for a large one.  Take a few moments to enjoy some haiku – after all, only a few moments are required!  And dip into that modest-looking book that beckons to you.  You just might be surprised at what huge delights are in store for you.