Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I finished a novel yesterday about Camille Pissarro.  Actually, more of an imagining of his orgins, especially his mother's life.  What is delightful is having the experience of seeing his paintings and then seeing them become even more vivid with the history behind them.  Alice Hoffman wrote the book, and her admiration of Pissarro is obvious.  I don't enjoy criticism when it tears down the subject.  I appreciate enthusiasm.  Pissarro's life is so extraordinary:  he was born and raised on St. Thomas, then went to Paris, then came home, then spent years in Venezuela, then to Paris again.  He married a servant, which upset his mother greatly.  Yet his mother's life was also fraught with risks, and radical departures from traditional life.  She was Jewish, yet believed in all the island magic and spirits.  After her first husband died, she married his nephew, years younger, and had still more children, one of whom was Camille.  She was strong willed and independent, yet yoked in by custom and the time.  In the end, she lived in Paris, not far from her son, and lavished love on his children that she'd seemingly withheld from him.  Hoffman makes us see her influence on her son; the patterns that parallel in both their lives.  Her magical stories became his magical canvases.  Hoffman's book brings alive the artist and the meaning of his work, and speaks up for both beautifully.