All you need is love. Maybe. But just what is love in Bel Canto? Falling head over heels? Being moved to rapture by someone's ability to create something beautiful, like, say, opera? Being touched by the art itself, regardless of the person who made it? Seems like love is a heightened state of feeling and awareness that you can achieve in a number of ways in Bel Canto: listening to the music star of your dreams, re-bonding with your wife of twenty years, or even falling for a foxy young rebel soldier. Maybe love is life at its most intense, something that sweeps us off our feet when we're not expecting it.
Questions About Love
- What does it mean to be in love? Is it a question of how you feel, what you notice, or your external circumstances? Is love more about actions or feelings in Bel Canto?
- How does love change a person?
- Is love somehow easier in strange and catastrophic situations? Would Mr. Hosokawa be able to fall in love in his regular life? Would Roxane Coss? How about Gen or Carmen?
- Are some kinds of love more able to survive in the real world than others? Is the marriage Gen and Roxane Coss end up with somehow more able to make it through the long term than the love of Gen and Carmen, or the relationship between Roxane and Mr. Hosokawa? Or is it just coincidence and not symbolism when Carmen and Mr. Hosokawa don't survive the book?
Chew on This
Love is more of a passive experience than an active choice in Bel Canto. When you fall in love, something just happens to you, and you can't really resist.
Falling in love with music is very similar to falling in love with a person in Bel Canto.