Love and litost

In the film Belle - currently in a theater near you! - Dido, the young mulatto protagonist, is urged to play the family piano as several potential suitors look on. 'And you?' one of them asks. 'What about you?'

The young woman sits at the piano, clearly nervous. Her mother quietly tells another woman that Dido has never played in public before. But then, suddenly, the finger find the keys, and a melody begins to take shape: a handsome, coursing tune, played brilliantly. Dido, it turns out, knows her Handel.

The scene, to be sure, is almost certainly historically inaccurate. We know, in fact, almost nothing of Dido's life, beyond an acidic journal entry written by the Lord Hutchinson, the former governor of Massachusetts, who met Dido and her family at a 1779 dinner party. Less than impressed by her, he nonetheless registered her responsibilities, in withering terms. 'She is a sort of superintendent over the dairy, poultry yard, etc., which we visited.'

And yet, in more abstract terms, the scene feels fair, or somehow essentially believable. After all, even children who are granted nothing in the way of responsibility somehow manage to master new skills and to impress with their courage and ability. A small example: this morning, at about 7:10, Cleo swam across an entire swimming pool, with no assistance, no flotation aids - and no apparent alarm. Her head bobbed just above the water, her little legs kicked, her eyes shone with determination, and after about 30 seconds she was hanging from the opposite edge.

That's not to say, though, that Cleo had impressed a flock of suitors. I was delighted, to be sure, but the rest of the hotel pool was entirely empty. And in fact, if she ever gets any better at swimming, she may find that the talent can also represent an impediment: I'm thinking, for example, of the moment in a Kundera novel when a female character, a gifted swimmer, leaves her boyfriend in her wake in the salt water of the sea, simply because she cannot resist the sheer pleasure of athletic exertion. He, in turn, feels litost: a Czech word that Kundera celebrates for its sense of forlorn desire.

I don't know if Belle's filmic suitors felt anything like litost as they watched her at the piano. But at least one filmgoer in the audience did, during tonight's screening. It's wonderful to watch the young girl find her confidence. But it's almost heartbreaking, at the same time, to watch her grow into someone who no longer needs my shoulder or my aid.