Kontrapunkt
In Counterpoint (1928) by Aldous Huxley, a novel inspired by musical counterpoint, the lives of London's intellectual elite in the 1920s intertwine through parallel stories of love, death, art and the search for meaning.
The novel has no linear plot, but rather a modulation of similar motifs from different perspectives: emotional, intellectual, religious, and metaphysical.
The central characters are the writer Philip Quarles, Huxley's alter ego, a wise man who returns from India with his wife Eleanor and son; Eleanor is tempted by the fascist demagogue Everard Webley; Mark Rampion, a holistic idealist similar to D. H. Lawrence, advocates a balance of mind, body, and spirit; the young journalist Walter Bidlake is involved in a love triangle with Marjorie Carling and Lucy Tantamount.
The aging painter John Bidlake faces cancer and a creative decline; his son Denis Burlap, a hypocritical editor, uses Christian rhetoric for greed. The nihilist Maurice Spandrel conducts an "experiment" to challenge God: he collaborates with Illidge in the murder of Webley, ending with suicide alongside Beethoven, seeking proof of divinity. The death of Quarle's young son from meningitis emphasizes the meaninglessness of suffering.
The novel satirically criticizes the fragmentation of modern life: the conflict between passion and mind, the hypocrisy of society, the decline of art and political extremism. Through novels à clef (characters inspired by real-life acquaintances), Huxley explores the chaos in which personal desires collide with social forces, leaving harmony elusive. A classic hit, a forerunner of postmodernism in literature.
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