A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve volume roman à clef by Anthony Powell, published between 1951 and 1975. Critically acclaimed on its publication, its satire on English political and cultural life in the mid 20th century seems to have fallen rapidly into public neglect, despite being adapted by Hugh Whitemore for a TV mini-series in 1997.
The sequence takes the form of the reminiscences of the narrator Nick Jenkins who falls into a reverie at the beginning of the first volume (A Question of Upbringing, 1951) while lighting a fire of garden leaves. Over the course of the following twelve volumes, he recalls the people he met over the previous half a century. Little is told of Jenkins' personal life outside his encounters with the great and the good, with events, such as his wife's miscarriage, only being related in conversation with the principle characters.
The title is taken from a painting by Nicolas Poussin, on which Jenkins reflects in Chapter 2 of A Question of Upbringing:
- These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognizable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
The novels
Principal characters
more to be done
