With one voice, the six blind men from Breughel's famous sixteenth-century painting "The Parable of the Blind" narrate their adventures on the day they are to be painted

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The idea behind this implacably bleak fable is deeply engrossing, if not wholly original. The inspiration is the elder Breughel's harrowing painting, The Parable of the Blind. Yet the Flemish master is not the central figure; the six blind men of the picture dominate the canvas. They occupy our attention as they move toward their historic destiny on that day in the late 16th century when they served as models for the painter. Who are these men, the novel asks, and what were they like? What did they do, say, feel, think, sufferthose pariahs whose eyes were pecked out by ravens, as they stumbled, fell, screamed and clawed at each other? Why did they cry out to the coarse, taunting peasants: "You're beasts; we're the Lord's elect"? Imagining backward from the great painting to its subjects and themes, the German novelist's "parable" may numb us with its brutal repetition, but it also provides a plausible explanation of what Breughel might have seen as he took up his brushes. January 24
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On the surface this deceptively simple narrative is the story of how the blind beggars came to be painted by Pieter Brueghel. His painting was also called "The Parable of the Blind." Cast in prose, the parable evokes an even more distressing picture of the fate of man. The words more variously and pathetically image the condition of humanity, which lives "in darkness, so to speak, forever." Hofmann, a German writer, manifests an essential skepticism of the "ways of the world" and how people interact and communicate with one another. In this most understated of satires he has created an eloquent allegory of the modern age, a spare but revealing picture of alienation, confusion, and insensitivity. Recommended for all literature collections. Carol J. Lichtenberg, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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