Scarbo

When I encountered Scarbo the dwarf in Steven Millhauser's "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon," the second story in his 1993 Little Kingdoms the other day, I thought immediately of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. I guess Steven Millhauser was thinking of it as well.

And today in the last novella in the collection, which is presented as an analysis of a series of paintings (some of them portraits) Robert Schumann's opus 9 "Carnaval" and his opus 12 "Fantasiestüke," musical portraits and collections of images themselves, made an appearance. Also today Rat Krespel (otherwise known as Councillor Krespel) in "The Cremona Violin," one of my favorite E.T.A. Hoffmann stories, got his portrait painted in prose by Millhauser.

I am one happy reader these days.