How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Our family was no different from the other families in our building except for this book. So extraordinary a thing was this book. Masterworks of the Impressionist Period it was called. No one knew we had it. We were never allowed to speak of it because my grandmother was afraid someone would come and try and take it away from her. The paintings were by Pissarro, Bonnard, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Cézanne, hundreds of paintings. The colors we saw at night while she turned the pages were miraculous. Every painting we were to study. Every one she said was something that deserved great consideration. There were nights that she only turned two pages and I'm sure it was a year before I had seen the book in its entirety." (7.122)
Fyodorov (the guy who gives this speech) must have aced art history. But he learned something even more important from his grandmother's book: how to pay attention to something beautiful and how to surrender to the amazement beauty brings. That's why he's so in love with Roxane's voice, and why he plucks up the courage to tell her about it.
Quote #8
"Every now and then she wouldn't bring out the book at all. She would say she was tired. She would say that so much beauty hurt her. Sometimes a week or even two could pass. No Seurat! I remember feeling almost frantic, such a dependency I had come to feel for those paintings. But it was the rest from it, the waiting, that made us love the book so madly. I could have had one life but instead I had another because of this book my grandmother protected," he said, his voice quieter now. "What a miracle is that? I was taught to love beautiful things. I had a language in which to consider beauty. Later that extended to the opera, to the ballet, to architecture I saw, and even later still I came to realize that what I had seen in the paintings I could see in the fields or a river. I could see it in people. All of that I attribute to this book." (7.122)
Maybe the last Monet you saw didn't change your life. It was probably kinda fuzzy. But for Fyodorov, painting was the way he fell in love with beauty. It's given him the ability to be in awe of beauty wherever he finds it. Bel Canto seems to be telling us that seeing beauty this way is a talent in itself, almost as amazing as making beauty.
Quote #9
He did not compare himself to her. There was no comparison. She was the singer. He was only a boy who loved her by singing. Or was it singing he loved? He could no longer remember. He was too far inside. He closed his eyes and followed his voice. Somewhere far away he heard the piano tailing him, then catching up, then leading him ahead. The end of the aria was very high and he had no idea if he would make it. It was like falling, no, like diving, twisting your body through the air without a single thought as to how it might land. (9.8)
Maybe Olympic diving and Pavarotti don't seem too similar, but Cesar thinks of them as connected. Metaphor alert! Like a fancy dive, opera requires a lot of courage and a lot of twists and turns. And like a diver, a singer has to have a certain recklessness to plunge into the difficult and athletic music of opera. Sounds like that recklessness comes from the amazement Cesar experiences while singing or listening to Roxane.