Philip Kazan
Autor(a) de The Painter of Souls
Obras por Philip Kazan
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome legal
- Vaughan-Hughes, Pip
- Outros nomes
- Kazan, Philip
- Data de nascimento
- 1964
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- Britain
- Local de nascimento
- London, England, UK
- Locais de residência
- Dartmoor, Devon, England, UK
- Educação
- London University
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425- Pip Vaughan-Hughes was born in London in 1964 and grew up in Devon. Pip also writes under the name Philip Kazan. He studied Medieval History at London University. Having been warned by his family that he should on no account ever become a freelance writer, he worked in the publishing industry in London and New York, dabbled in landscape gardening and journalism and co-owned a restaurant in Vermont, before he decided that the best advice is the advice that you ignore, and turned to writing full time. Pip now lives on the edge of Dartmoor with his wife, three children and a very large black cat.
Membros
Críticas
Listas
Eastern Europe (1)
Prémios
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 5
- Membros
- 116
- Popularidade
- #169,721
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Críticas
- 5
- ISBN
- 24
Not only does the young–and I mean young–friar run across such luminaries as Donatello and Brunelleschi as easily as rolling out of bed, they instantly recognize his talent and praise him generously, to which he rubs his sandal in the dust and utters the Italian equivalent of “Aw, shucks.” Meanwhile, the prior gives Fra Filippo every bit of leeway, impressed with his gift, which surely comes from God, and sees no reason not to let him paint church frescoes and altar pieces under the tutelage of lay artists.
Despite these happenings, which sometimes seem too good to be true, I like The Painter of Souls. What saves the novel for me is its good-natured, winning protagonist. Pippo, to his secular friends, likes a drink, a game of dice, and has sexual fantasies about the paintings of Eve that adorn church walls.
His father died when Pippo was six, and his mother has been virtually catatonic from grief ever since, leaving the boy to fend for himself. He’s learned how to beg, scrounge for food in garbage heaps, rob market stalls, fashion crude pens and ink to make drawings of passersby for pennies, and share his gains with the gang to which he belongs. Pippo comes dangerously close to letting that dead-end life swallow him altogether. Entering the church has saved him.
However, he doesn’t take well to the discipline. He wants to, but he misses too much of the outside world to accept his new surroundings, especially the restraint, which he finds excessive. The silence of the convent feels “heavy, deliberate, enforced,” its purpose to stifle noise except at prescribed times, as with bell ringing or the ponderous closing of cell doors.
Pippo loves the sky, the sights, sounds, and smells of Florence, the taste of roast meat and the good grape, the glimpse of a pretty face. Or more than a glimpse, which of course leads him to sinful daydreams. How he reconciles all that with his religious faith, his desire to believe, makes the story worthwhile. Constant contact with painters unbound by monastic rules only increases the temptations, which he tries to channel toward its acceptable object. Beauty is divine, therefore re-creating it in religious art serves God. If, however, the act of creation involves a little transgression here and there, well, He’ll understand.
Consequently, it’s not Fra Filippo’s strengths as an artist, nor his seemingly effortless rise to fame, that make The Painter of Souls worth reading. Rather, it’s Pippo’s weaknesses as a friar and a man that propel this novel–the whoppers he tells on the spur of the moment; the deals and excuses he makes with himself so that he can still feel honorable; his delight in the forbidden; and the pull his former life still exerts on him (and its vivid portrayal in Kazan’s deft hands).
Pippo understands that he’s a sinner, and though he loves nothing more than to paint, part of him fears accepting the offer of a dispensation to remain a friar while still becoming a member of the painter’s guild, a privilege offered to very few. Who is he, a sensualist with a brush, or a man of God?
Pippo has one other endearing trait that helps counteract the smoothness of his career arc. He believes that there’s good in everyone, and whenever he can, he uses social outcasts as his models, finding grace in them that no one else does. It’s hard to quarrel with that, and with The Painter of Souls, even if the story seems incredible, at times.… (mais)