When asked regarding the novel, David Foenkinos summed it up in three words: “break, destruction, revenge.” By searching for the meaning of the word “break” in the dictionary, it means “what you cut off from something.” Perhaps Foinkins’ opinion is completely wrong regarding his novel, or, more precisely, the novel cannot be reduced to three words.
And if you reduce it to three words, it is certain that the rupture will be within it, but in the sense that you take time for a moment to understand and comprehend beauty. A moment to walk to the camel, motivated by a desire to assimilate it, not to rush over it. There is a kind of beauty that can only be understood through the pain of what befalls its owner, and there is a beauty that hides and is not seen, although one surrounds one in all its aspects except through pain. Perhaps this is the story of Antoine Doris, the hero of Foinkinus’ novel, who searched for beauty and did not understand it until he went through some pain. David Foenkinos (1974) paints a world of great complexity through the search for beauty, with two main characters, Antoine Doris and Camille. He charts a long way to the hidden beauty that we only glimpse by walking down a trail full of pain. Antoine Doris is a professor of fine arts at a university in Lyon. At one point, he decides to leave everything he’s made of his life, to work as a custodian at the Musée d’Orsay. No one understood why he worked, but deep down he was looking for beauty. He searches for the beauty within him as comfort and consolation for the estrangement with his wife. A break with his world that he left, and he saw that the best thing he might do for himself was to work as a guard in the museum, and to talk to the painting hanging in front of him. ‘Everyone seeks his own way to solace,’ said Doris, ‘can one heal himself by revealing to a painting?’ One talks a lot regarding the art of therapy and regarding creativity in order to express the perversion of mood, and to be understood through inspiration. However, this was different. The contemplation of beauty is, according to Antoine, a cover-up for ugliness (and has always been the case). So when he was feeling bad, he would go for a walk in a museum. Magnificence remains the best weapon once morest fragility.”
Doris somehow covered the ugliness of his life, by talking to a hanging painting, telling her his secrets, his feelings, his pain. He moved from his own pain to beauty in search of solace. During four chapters, Foinkins links Doris’ search for beauty with his attempt to console himself from his wife’s estrangement, but during the chapters it becomes clear that Doris’ search for beauty was the consolation for the suicide of his student Camille, who also finds in beauty the consolation of what has befallen her. Camille was raped by her high school painting teacher, to suffer severe depression that only got her out of a long trip with her mother and father to the “Musée d’Orsay”. Standing in front of the painting, she says: “I realized the power of beauty to heal wounds. In front of a painting, we are not judged, because the exchange is pure, where the work seems to understand our pain and release us in silence, and remains forever and reassuring, and its only purpose is to flood you with waves of beauty. Sorrows are forgotten with Botticelli (1445-1510), fears ease with Rembrandt (1606-1669) and worries diminish with Chagall (11887-1985).
The author summarized his novel in three words: estrangement, destruction, and revenge
Foinkins links the fates of Doris and Camille to one another, both of whom are amazed by their beauty and ability to heal wounds. But the most interesting thing regarding the work is that both of them migrate from their original place to another place, and the word walking is mentioned a lot on the tongues of both, and beauty is not reduced to one idea. He added to the idea of searching for beauty a lot, and did not reduce it to a painting or talk to it, Camille says: “One can sometimes heal with a simple geographical shift.” Perhaps this is another meaning that confirms the idea of work, which is an attempt to walk towards beauty and search for it. Both were moved by some kind of bereavement. Camille moved from the bereavement of her rape, and Doris was moved by what he thought was the reason for her suicide because he wrote her an ordinary review on one of her paintings. Many sentences are repeated, such as “Beauty makes a person stronger”, “Beauty relaxes”. Perhaps what the reader sees following completing the work is that beauty saves his personal world, filling the void around him, and this beauty may be in a painting, poem, or novel. Life is full of beauty, but to understand it, perhaps one must go through the pain of something that changes one’s idea of beauty and its effect. The estrangement may – despite its many meanings – become the road that removes dust from anyone who blinds him from seeing the beauty around him.
