Chapter Summary (Part II)
We are still at Nora's and the conversation continues between Nora and the Doctor, with Nora's unceasing account of her nights with Robin. This continual rehashing of the same events (much narration with very little plot movement) typifies modernist writing.
In her agony, it is almost as if Nora expects the Doctor to save her - or to rescue her from her tortured love and existence. Throughout their interaction Nora and the Doctor increasingly spin around each other's frantic words.
(Throughout the book, we hear little from Robin herself in terms of desire and perspective - in this way, she remains eternally elusive.)
The Doctor has enough of Nora's wailing at some point and leaves. He goes to the his regular café and laments the fact that "they all come to me" - to wring out their sadness. The chapter ends with his cursing the people in the bar for their cruelty and harsh judgment.
Nora:
"Sometimes, if she got tight by evening, I would find her standing in the middle of the room, in boy's clothes, rocking from foot to foot, holding the doll she had given us - 'our child' - high above her head, as if she would cast it down, a look of fury on her face." (p. 133)
The Doctor:
"Do you think Robin had no right to fight you with her only weapon? She saw in you that fearful eye that would make her a target forever. Have not girls done as much for the doll - the doll - yes, target of things past and to come? The last doll, given to age, is the girl who should have been a boy, and the boy who should have been a girl! The doll and the immature have something right about them, the doll, because it resembles, but does not contain life, and the third sex, because it contains life but resembles the doll. The blessed face! It should be seen only in profile, otherwise it is observed to be the conjunction of the identical cleaved halves of sexless misgiving! Their kingdom is without precedent. Why do you think I have spent near fifty years weeping over bars but because I am one of them! The uninhabited angel! That is what you have always been hunting!" (p. 134)
"Pray to the good God, she will keep you. Personally I call her 'she' because of the way she made me; it somehow balances the mistake." (p. 135)
Nora to the Doctor:
"You know what none of us know until we have died. You were dead in the beginning." (p. 137)
The Doctor:
"The more you go against your nature, the more you will know of it - hear me, heaven!" (p. 146)
suppuration (p. 138): the formation or discharge of pus
zenith (p. 138): highest point or state; culmination
propinquity (p. 138): nearness in time and place
Chi vuol la Zingarella (p. 139): from the classical Opera Zingari in Fiera by Giovanni Paisiello
Sonate au Crépuscule (p. 139): Beethoven
Der Erlkönig (p. 139): a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who is Sylvia (p. 139): F. Schubert
gaol (p. 143): jail
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Nightwood Chapter 7 | Go Down, Matthew (Part I | 112-130)
Chapter Summary
The Doctor visits Nora, who is still lamenting her relationship with Robin. Nora writes incessantly to Robin and the Doctor beseeches her to stop - to put down her pen. He launches into his twisting and turning speech and tells the tale of a whore in London and speaks of his own struggle with sexuality - of his battle with God in it. He implores at a church while exposing himself (he takes out his 'Tiny O'Toole), "I am not able to stay permanent unless you help me, O Book of Concealment! C'est le plaisir qui me bouleverse!" (It is pleasure that shatters me!) (p. 120).
Nora recounts the final hours of her relationship with Robin. Nora goes to visit Jenny Petherbridge. Jenny's house is a haunt of Robin - a picture of Robin as a baby hangs on the wall (which had gone missing from Nora and Robin's) and a baby doll on the bed. Of the doll Nora says, "We give death to a child when we give it a doll - it's the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane..." (p. 128) She goes on:
"When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, 'It is over - I can't go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can't stand it anymore."
"She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, 'Have you nothing to say to me?' She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river - and flung herself out of the door." (p. 128)
Terra damnata et maledicta! (p. 113): Damned and cursed earth
papelero (p. 114): stationer
Saxon-les-Bains (p. 114) - Switzerland
Madame de Staël (p. 114): a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (p. 116): a 6-volume work by Edward Gibbon
grue (p. 118): crane (literally in french)
prie-Dieu (p. 119): a worshiping bench in a church
Turdus musicus (124):
peritoneum (p. 125): In higher vertebrates, the peritoneum is the serous membrane that forms the lining of the abdominal cavity — it covers most of the intra-abdominal organs
'Dead March' in Saul (p. 127): Funeral march by Handel
The Doctor visits Nora, who is still lamenting her relationship with Robin. Nora writes incessantly to Robin and the Doctor beseeches her to stop - to put down her pen. He launches into his twisting and turning speech and tells the tale of a whore in London and speaks of his own struggle with sexuality - of his battle with God in it. He implores at a church while exposing himself (he takes out his 'Tiny O'Toole), "I am not able to stay permanent unless you help me, O Book of Concealment! C'est le plaisir qui me bouleverse!" (It is pleasure that shatters me!) (p. 120).
Nora recounts the final hours of her relationship with Robin. Nora goes to visit Jenny Petherbridge. Jenny's house is a haunt of Robin - a picture of Robin as a baby hangs on the wall (which had gone missing from Nora and Robin's) and a baby doll on the bed. Of the doll Nora says, "We give death to a child when we give it a doll - it's the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane..." (p. 128) She goes on:
"When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, 'It is over - I can't go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can't stand it anymore."
"She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, 'Have you nothing to say to me?' She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river - and flung herself out of the door." (p. 128)
Terra damnata et maledicta! (p. 113): Damned and cursed earth
papelero (p. 114): stationer
Saxon-les-Bains (p. 114) - Switzerland
Madame de Staël (p. 114): a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (p. 116): a 6-volume work by Edward Gibbon
grue (p. 118): crane (literally in french)
prie-Dieu (p. 119): a worshiping bench in a church
Turdus musicus (124):
peritoneum (p. 125): In higher vertebrates, the peritoneum is the serous membrane that forms the lining of the abdominal cavity — it covers most of the intra-abdominal organs
'Dead March' in Saul (p. 127): Funeral march by Handel
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Gentry Lane
Everyone! Remember! We will have the pleasure of having Gentry Lane, MFA (specialization: expatriate artistic communities in Paris between the wars) with us on Monday, October 6 to discuss Natalie Barney and her illustrious literary salon. Please be on time for Monday's class.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Group 4: Rue de L'Odeon pictures
Caitlin, Matt, Simone
7, rue de l'Odeon
12, rue de l'Odeon
Plaque at 12, rue de l'Odeon
7, rue de l'Odeon
12, rue de l'Odeon
Plaque at 12, rue de l'Odeon
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Rue de L'Odéon | Booksellers
Odéonia: The Country of Books | (Paris Was a Woman) Chapter 1
_Andrea Weiss
Twenty-three year old Adrienne Monnier realized a childhood dream in November 1915 when she opened a small bookshop on the rue de l'Odéon in the sixth arrondissement. Its location in the heart of the artistic and intellectual centre of Paris was no accident:
"The Left Bank called me and even now it does not cease to call me and to keep me. I cannot imagine that I could ever leave it, any more than an organ can leave the place that is assigned to it in the body." (Adrienne Monnier)
The story began in Paris on a cold, gusty March afternoon in 1917. A shy young woman named Sylvia Beach hesitated at the door of a Left Bank bookshop and lending library, La Maison des Amis des Livres. The owner, a self-assured young French writer and publisher named Adrienne Monnier, got up quickly from her desk and drew her visitor into the shop greeting her warmly. The two talked the afternoon away, each declaring love for the language and literature of the other.
In 1921 Shakespeare and Company moved around the corner so that it was almost directly opposite Adrienne's bookshop, and Sylvia moved into Adrienne's apartment a few doors away. After that, Bryher felt that:
"there was only one street in Paris for me, the rue de l'Odéon. It is association, I suppose, but I have always considered it one of the most beautiful streets in the world. It meant naturally Sylvia and Adrienne and the happy hours that I spent in their libraries."
The sister bookshops on the rue de l'Odéon soon became a cultural centre of Europe, serving as a gathering place where writers from all over the world met, collected their post and read the latest in the proliferation of literary magazines.
NIghtwood: Chapter 6 | Where the Tree Falls
Chapter Summary
We see the reintroduction of Baron Felix and his son, Guido, in this chapter. Felix is concerned about his son, who is described as, "Mentally deficient, and emotionally excessive, an addict to death; at ten, barely as tall as a child of six, wearing spectacles, stumbling when he tried to run, with cold hands and anxious face, he followed his father, trembling with an excitement that was a precocious ecstasy." (p. 96)
Guido is interested in entering the church and this disturbs Felix. He writes a long letter to the Pope comparing religious and cultural styles between Italy and France. As expected, he recieves no answer. He decides to return to Austria, hoping that Guido's religious career can transpire there. Before leaving Paris, Felix seeks out the doctor and finds him at Cafe de la Mairie du VIe. They go to dine in the Bois together.
They discuss Robin (Guido's mother). Felix says, "I find that I never did have a really clear idea of her at any time. I had an image of her, but that is not the same thing. An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties." (p. 100)
He asks the doctor why Robin married him and then tells the doctor that Jenny Petherbridge had come to see him. While there, Jenny spoke of the little girl, Sylvia, who had been at her home with Robin. Jenny tells of how this little girl had fallen in love with Robin and in the end, Robin treated the child with abandon - a story which distresses young Guido. Felix confesses his fears about his son to the doctor and they end the discussion with Robin.
The chapter ends in Vienna, where Guido and Felix are met by Frau Mann. The odd triangle sits in a cafe and the Baron cannot escape his own obsessions with the higher classes and ranks.
What is the symbolism behind Jenny Petherbridge's desire to purchase one of the portraits of Baron Felix's grandparents?
litanies (p. 97): prayers consisting of a number of petitions
chasubles (p. 97):
the Credo (p. 97): statement of religious belief
Kabyle (p. 99): an ethnic group in Algeria
Grand Marnier (p. 100): is a liqueur created in 1880 by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle
Sections to think about:
"There was in her [Robin] every movement a slight drag, as if the past were a web about her, as there is a web of time about a very old building. There is a sensible weight in the air around a thirteenth-century edifice that is unlike the light air about a new structure; the new building seems to repulse it, the old to gather it." (p. 107)
Felix asks the doctor what Robin writes when she writes to him from America. "She says, Remember me. Probably because she has difficulty in remembering herself." (p. 109)
We see the reintroduction of Baron Felix and his son, Guido, in this chapter. Felix is concerned about his son, who is described as, "Mentally deficient, and emotionally excessive, an addict to death; at ten, barely as tall as a child of six, wearing spectacles, stumbling when he tried to run, with cold hands and anxious face, he followed his father, trembling with an excitement that was a precocious ecstasy." (p. 96)
Guido is interested in entering the church and this disturbs Felix. He writes a long letter to the Pope comparing religious and cultural styles between Italy and France. As expected, he recieves no answer. He decides to return to Austria, hoping that Guido's religious career can transpire there. Before leaving Paris, Felix seeks out the doctor and finds him at Cafe de la Mairie du VIe. They go to dine in the Bois together.
They discuss Robin (Guido's mother). Felix says, "I find that I never did have a really clear idea of her at any time. I had an image of her, but that is not the same thing. An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties." (p. 100)
He asks the doctor why Robin married him and then tells the doctor that Jenny Petherbridge had come to see him. While there, Jenny spoke of the little girl, Sylvia, who had been at her home with Robin. Jenny tells of how this little girl had fallen in love with Robin and in the end, Robin treated the child with abandon - a story which distresses young Guido. Felix confesses his fears about his son to the doctor and they end the discussion with Robin.
The chapter ends in Vienna, where Guido and Felix are met by Frau Mann. The odd triangle sits in a cafe and the Baron cannot escape his own obsessions with the higher classes and ranks.
What is the symbolism behind Jenny Petherbridge's desire to purchase one of the portraits of Baron Felix's grandparents?
litanies (p. 97): prayers consisting of a number of petitions
chasubles (p. 97):
the Credo (p. 97): statement of religious belief
Kabyle (p. 99): an ethnic group in Algeria
Grand Marnier (p. 100): is a liqueur created in 1880 by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle
Sections to think about:
"There was in her [Robin] every movement a slight drag, as if the past were a web about her, as there is a web of time about a very old building. There is a sensible weight in the air around a thirteenth-century edifice that is unlike the light air about a new structure; the new building seems to repulse it, the old to gather it." (p. 107)
Felix asks the doctor what Robin writes when she writes to him from America. "She says, Remember me. Probably because she has difficulty in remembering herself." (p. 109)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Stein & Hemingway | contributed by: Elizabeth
The following passage reminded me of the quote we talked about last class: "As they violated the rules of sex, they obeyed those of gender." I think the following passage really describes her relationship with her lover and how they would stick to their designated gender roles within their relationship.
"Miss Stein was very big but not tall and was heavily built like a peasant woman. She had beautiful eyes and a strong German-Jewish face…She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.
Her companion had a pleasant voice, was small, very dark with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the Boutet de Monvel illustrations and had a very hooked nose. She was working on a piece of needlepoint when we first met them and she worked on this and saw to the food and drink and talked to my wife. She made one conversation and listened to two and often interrupted the one she was not making. Afterwards she explained to me that she always talked to the wives." (8)
Another passage I found interesting was that in which Hemingway was recalling a previous conversation with Gertrude Stein in which she says to Hemingway, "The main thing is that the act male homosexuals commit is ugly and repugnant and afterwards they are disgusted with themselves. They drink and take drugs, to palliate this, but they are disgusted with the act and they are always changing partners and cannot really be happy…In women it is the opposite. They do nothing that they are disgusted by and nothing that is repulsive and afterwards they are happy and they can lead happy lives together." (13)
Excerpts from A Moveable Feast (memoirs by Hemingway)
"Miss Stein was very big but not tall and was heavily built like a peasant woman. She had beautiful eyes and a strong German-Jewish face…She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.
Her companion had a pleasant voice, was small, very dark with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the Boutet de Monvel illustrations and had a very hooked nose. She was working on a piece of needlepoint when we first met them and she worked on this and saw to the food and drink and talked to my wife. She made one conversation and listened to two and often interrupted the one she was not making. Afterwards she explained to me that she always talked to the wives." (8)
Another passage I found interesting was that in which Hemingway was recalling a previous conversation with Gertrude Stein in which she says to Hemingway, "The main thing is that the act male homosexuals commit is ugly and repugnant and afterwards they are disgusted with themselves. They drink and take drugs, to palliate this, but they are disgusted with the act and they are always changing partners and cannot really be happy…In women it is the opposite. They do nothing that they are disgusted by and nothing that is repulsive and afterwards they are happy and they can lead happy lives together." (13)
Excerpts from A Moveable Feast (memoirs by Hemingway)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Nightwood: Chapter 5 | Watchman, What of the Night?
Chapter Summary
Late one night, Nora goes to seek the advice of the Doctor. She makes her way up the six flights of stairs in his run-down building to the tiny room he rents. When she arrives at his door and hears (from the novel): "his 'come in' she opened the door and for one second hesitated, so incredible was the disorder that met her eyes...In the narrow iron bed...lay the doctor in a woman's flannel nightgown. The doctor's head, with its over-large black eyes, its full gunmetal cheeks and chin, was framed in the golden semi-circle of a wig with long pendant curls that touched his shoulders...Nora said, as quickly as she could recover herself: 'Doctor, I have come to ask you to tell me everything you know about that night.'" (p. 70-71)
The Doctor spends a large portion of the chapter delving into his thoughts about 'the night' - in its many senses, according to him. At the outset of their conversation, he asks Nora her thoughts on the night. She says, "I used to think that people just went to sleep, that they were themselves, but now, now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep." (p. 72) The Doctor prods on. He asks, "Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries - in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then...I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on a long time." (p. 73)
There is always dissonance between the Doctor's long monologues and Nora's short responses - as if they do not hear one another at all. The Doctor's long ramblings are difficult to plow through, but once you do, you will find beauty in small passages - like poetry. For example, "Burn Rome in a dream, and you reach and claw down the true calamity. For dreams have only the pigmentation of fact. A man who has to deal in no colour cannot find his match, or if he does, it is for a different rage. Rome was the egg, but colour was the tread." (p. 77) This is lyrical writing - but nonsensical on a certain level. (Like Stein).
At the end of a very long tale of many things at the same time, the Doctor comes to the question at hand and speaks of the night of Nora's inquiry. He tells Nora of where Jenny and Robin first met - at an Opera - Rigaletto. Even the Doctor is no fan of Jenny. He says, "She has a longing for other people's property, but the moment she possesses it the property loses some of its value, for the owner's estimate is its worth. Therefore it was she took your Robin." (p. 87) He goes on, "I have always thought I, myself, the funniest looking creature on the face of the earth; then I laid my eyes on Jenny - a little, hurried decaying comedy jester, the face of the fool's stick, and with a smell about her of mouse-nests."
He ends with a final description of what happened in the carriage that night between Jenny and Robin, "And then I saw Jenny sitting there shaking, and I said: God, you are no picture! And then, Robin was going forward, and the blood running red, where Jenny had scratched her, and I screamed and thought: 'Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two were buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.'" (p. 95)
"...and there is a metallic odor, as of beaten irony in a smithy." (p. 71)
connivance (p. 73): the act of coniving
the palaces of Nymphenburg (p. 73): was the summer residence of the rulers in Bavaria (in Munich)
Ah, Mon Dieu! La nuit effroyable! La nuit, qui est une immense plaine, el le coeur qui est une petite extrémité! Notre Dame-de-bonne-Garde! (p. 74): Ah, My God! The night is horrifying! The night, which is an immense plain, and the heart which is a small extremity! (Notre Dame...Name of a church in Longpont-sur-Orge \ Dept. 93 outside of Paris)
bretelle (p. 76): suspenders/strap
cantiques (p. 76): hymn
L'Echo de Paris (p. 80): A literary journal published between 1884 and 1944
Misericordia (p. 81): mercy (in the religious sense)
pissoirs (which in the 1920s in Paris were ubiquitous) (p. 81):
garrulity (p. 81): excessive talkativeness
pteropus (p. 82):
mortadellas (p. 84): a large smoked sausage made of beef, pork, and pork fat and seasoned with pepper and garlic
profligate (p. 84): the wildly extravagant
Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) (p. 85): archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father
Parsifal (p. 86): an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner
The Lily of Killarney (p. 86): an opera in three acts by Julius Benedict
Ocarina (p. 87): an ancient flute-like wind instrument
"Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart, between Newgate and Tyburn (p. 87): Tyburn was a village in the county of Middlesex close to the current location of Marble Arch. The two places referencing execution and death. Executions took place at Tyburn until the 18th century.
saltarello (p. 87): was a lively, merry dance first mentioned in Naples during the 13th century
corbeille (p. 89): basket
"Adam's off ox" (p. 91): an older American phrase meaning somebody you don't know
Don Antonio and Claudio (p. 92): the reference is from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"So Cibber put it, and I put it in Taylor's words: 'Did not Periander think fit to lie with his wife Melissa after she had already gone hent to heaven" (p. 93): Periander was the second tyrant of Corinth, Greece in the 7th century BC. Among his acts were sending young boys from Corcyra to be castrated in Lydia, and the murder (and possible necrophiliac rape) of his own wife, Melissa.
Montaigne (p. 92): one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance (16th c.)
Catherine of Russia (p. 93): reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from 1762 until her death 1796
Crupper (p. 94): a piece of tack used on horses and other equids to keep a saddle, harness or other equipment from sliding forward
Late one night, Nora goes to seek the advice of the Doctor. She makes her way up the six flights of stairs in his run-down building to the tiny room he rents. When she arrives at his door and hears (from the novel): "his 'come in' she opened the door and for one second hesitated, so incredible was the disorder that met her eyes...In the narrow iron bed...lay the doctor in a woman's flannel nightgown. The doctor's head, with its over-large black eyes, its full gunmetal cheeks and chin, was framed in the golden semi-circle of a wig with long pendant curls that touched his shoulders...Nora said, as quickly as she could recover herself: 'Doctor, I have come to ask you to tell me everything you know about that night.'" (p. 70-71)
The Doctor spends a large portion of the chapter delving into his thoughts about 'the night' - in its many senses, according to him. At the outset of their conversation, he asks Nora her thoughts on the night. She says, "I used to think that people just went to sleep, that they were themselves, but now, now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep." (p. 72) The Doctor prods on. He asks, "Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries - in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then...I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on a long time." (p. 73)
There is always dissonance between the Doctor's long monologues and Nora's short responses - as if they do not hear one another at all. The Doctor's long ramblings are difficult to plow through, but once you do, you will find beauty in small passages - like poetry. For example, "Burn Rome in a dream, and you reach and claw down the true calamity. For dreams have only the pigmentation of fact. A man who has to deal in no colour cannot find his match, or if he does, it is for a different rage. Rome was the egg, but colour was the tread." (p. 77) This is lyrical writing - but nonsensical on a certain level. (Like Stein).
At the end of a very long tale of many things at the same time, the Doctor comes to the question at hand and speaks of the night of Nora's inquiry. He tells Nora of where Jenny and Robin first met - at an Opera - Rigaletto. Even the Doctor is no fan of Jenny. He says, "She has a longing for other people's property, but the moment she possesses it the property loses some of its value, for the owner's estimate is its worth. Therefore it was she took your Robin." (p. 87) He goes on, "I have always thought I, myself, the funniest looking creature on the face of the earth; then I laid my eyes on Jenny - a little, hurried decaying comedy jester, the face of the fool's stick, and with a smell about her of mouse-nests."
He ends with a final description of what happened in the carriage that night between Jenny and Robin, "And then I saw Jenny sitting there shaking, and I said: God, you are no picture! And then, Robin was going forward, and the blood running red, where Jenny had scratched her, and I screamed and thought: 'Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two were buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.'" (p. 95)
"...and there is a metallic odor, as of beaten irony in a smithy." (p. 71)
connivance (p. 73): the act of coniving
the palaces of Nymphenburg (p. 73): was the summer residence of the rulers in Bavaria (in Munich)
Ah, Mon Dieu! La nuit effroyable! La nuit, qui est une immense plaine, el le coeur qui est une petite extrémité! Notre Dame-de-bonne-Garde! (p. 74): Ah, My God! The night is horrifying! The night, which is an immense plain, and the heart which is a small extremity! (Notre Dame...Name of a church in Longpont-sur-Orge \ Dept. 93 outside of Paris)
bretelle (p. 76): suspenders/strap
cantiques (p. 76): hymn
L'Echo de Paris (p. 80): A literary journal published between 1884 and 1944
Misericordia (p. 81): mercy (in the religious sense)
pissoirs (which in the 1920s in Paris were ubiquitous) (p. 81):
garrulity (p. 81): excessive talkativeness
pteropus (p. 82):
mortadellas (p. 84): a large smoked sausage made of beef, pork, and pork fat and seasoned with pepper and garlic
profligate (p. 84): the wildly extravagant
Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) (p. 85): archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father
Parsifal (p. 86): an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner
The Lily of Killarney (p. 86): an opera in three acts by Julius Benedict
Ocarina (p. 87): an ancient flute-like wind instrument
"Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart, between Newgate and Tyburn (p. 87): Tyburn was a village in the county of Middlesex close to the current location of Marble Arch. The two places referencing execution and death. Executions took place at Tyburn until the 18th century.
saltarello (p. 87): was a lively, merry dance first mentioned in Naples during the 13th century
corbeille (p. 89): basket
"Adam's off ox" (p. 91): an older American phrase meaning somebody you don't know
Don Antonio and Claudio (p. 92): the reference is from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"So Cibber put it, and I put it in Taylor's words: 'Did not Periander think fit to lie with his wife Melissa after she had already gone hent to heaven" (p. 93): Periander was the second tyrant of Corinth, Greece in the 7th century BC. Among his acts were sending young boys from Corcyra to be castrated in Lydia, and the murder (and possible necrophiliac rape) of his own wife, Melissa.
Montaigne (p. 92): one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance (16th c.)
Catherine of Russia (p. 93): reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from 1762 until her death 1796
Crupper (p. 94): a piece of tack used on horses and other equids to keep a saddle, harness or other equipment from sliding forward
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Romaine Brooks | Natalie Barney
excerpt from Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho and Art - The Lives of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks
_Diana Souhami
In Paris in 1905 Romaine bought a house in the Avenue du Trocadéro in the sixteenth arrondissement. In decoration, she used muted effects and scarce colour to reflect her sense of self. At roof level she had a glass studio with views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. She wanted each room, and all the furniture and paintings to provide backgrounds for her paintings.
Most of her portraits were of women: Woman in Black Hat, Woman in Green Hat, The Flowered Hat...In 1910 Romaine had her first solo exhibition, it opened on 2 May at the Galéries Durand-Ruel. She covered the red walls with beige and showed thirteen of her portraits.
They schmoozed together and called it 'dancey prancey.' Romaine was Angel, or Angel Birdie, Natalie was Nat Nat. They were 'Darling' to each other. When they met, in 1915, Romaine was forty-one, Natalie thirty-nine. Together they read Freud and Jung, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, 'but not his novels.'
Natalie was drawn to Romaine's strangeness and vulnerability. She said Romaine had no disguise, no pose and was a 'a real head and soul in an unreal world.' She tirelessly told her she was beautiful and a genius, her singing voice perfect, her paintings immortal. Romaine was, she said, dearer to her than her own life. 'I love my Angel better than anyone else in the world and prove it.' In return, she asked that Romaine should need her above all others.
For Romaine, Natalie's warmth and kindness were an unfamiliar gift. Natalie was not judgmental, nor did she recoil from the drama of Romaine's life, but the relationship was based on an understanding that Romaine must be above comparison. Romaine said that Natalie 'had an unusual mind of the best quality,' but she decried her Friday salons as gatherings of drunkards and society women; it was not a fair description of Gertrude Stein, Colette, Sylvia Beach, Lily de Gramont et al.
In 1920 she did a portrait of Natalie with nothing wild or Amazonian about it apart from a small model of a prancing horse in tribute to Gourmont's views. She made her look comfortable and friendly.
Their lives entwined. In Paris they lazed about on the grass by the lilac bushes in Bois de Boulogne. On Capri they stayed in the Villa Cercola, which Romaine acquired in 1918; it had terraced gardens, guest apartments and furniture made by local craftsmen...They opened a joint bank account. Natalie talked of their being together for the rest of their lives and of sharing the same grave: 'My angel is my only real companion and friend.'
_Diana Souhami
In Paris in 1905 Romaine bought a house in the Avenue du Trocadéro in the sixteenth arrondissement. In decoration, she used muted effects and scarce colour to reflect her sense of self. At roof level she had a glass studio with views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. She wanted each room, and all the furniture and paintings to provide backgrounds for her paintings.
Most of her portraits were of women: Woman in Black Hat, Woman in Green Hat, The Flowered Hat...In 1910 Romaine had her first solo exhibition, it opened on 2 May at the Galéries Durand-Ruel. She covered the red walls with beige and showed thirteen of her portraits.
They schmoozed together and called it 'dancey prancey.' Romaine was Angel, or Angel Birdie, Natalie was Nat Nat. They were 'Darling' to each other. When they met, in 1915, Romaine was forty-one, Natalie thirty-nine. Together they read Freud and Jung, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, 'but not his novels.'
Natalie was drawn to Romaine's strangeness and vulnerability. She said Romaine had no disguise, no pose and was a 'a real head and soul in an unreal world.' She tirelessly told her she was beautiful and a genius, her singing voice perfect, her paintings immortal. Romaine was, she said, dearer to her than her own life. 'I love my Angel better than anyone else in the world and prove it.' In return, she asked that Romaine should need her above all others.
For Romaine, Natalie's warmth and kindness were an unfamiliar gift. Natalie was not judgmental, nor did she recoil from the drama of Romaine's life, but the relationship was based on an understanding that Romaine must be above comparison. Romaine said that Natalie 'had an unusual mind of the best quality,' but she decried her Friday salons as gatherings of drunkards and society women; it was not a fair description of Gertrude Stein, Colette, Sylvia Beach, Lily de Gramont et al.
In 1920 she did a portrait of Natalie with nothing wild or Amazonian about it apart from a small model of a prancing horse in tribute to Gourmont's views. She made her look comfortable and friendly.
Their lives entwined. In Paris they lazed about on the grass by the lilac bushes in Bois de Boulogne. On Capri they stayed in the Villa Cercola, which Romaine acquired in 1918; it had terraced gardens, guest apartments and furniture made by local craftsmen...They opened a joint bank account. Natalie talked of their being together for the rest of their lives and of sharing the same grave: 'My angel is my only real companion and friend.'
Gertrude Stein | The Writer and Her Muse
Chapter 2: The Writer and Her Muse
_Andrea Weiss
"She was large and heavy with delicate small hands and a beautifully modeled and unique head...She had a certain physical beauty and enormous power...I was impressed with her presence and her wonderful eyes and beautiful voice - an incredibly beautiful voice...Her voice had the beauty of a singer's voice when she spoke." (p. 61, Alice B. Toklas describing her lover Gertrude Stein)
Like the rest of the world, Gertrude Stein believed genius to be male...In her relationship with Alice, she assumed the more conventionally male role, or, as Catherine R. Stimpson describes it, "As they violated the rules of sex, they obeyed those of gender." (p. 64)
"Of herself, Gertrude wrote: 'Slowly and in a way it was not astonishing but slowly I was knowing that I was a genius...It is funny this thing of being a genius, there is no reason for it, there is no reason that it should be you...' " (p. 64)
Alice and Gertrude: Gertrude's writing and Alice's 'wifely' role as nurturer and caretaker were inseparable, interdependent entities, much as Gertrude and Alice were. In one of Gertrude's notebooks, she intermingled their names, coming up with 'Gertrice/Altrude.' (p. 65)
Her writing: Gertrude created new relations between words, even between the same words. She did not call this repetition, but rather insistence, since through the repeating, meanings change...She used words, not to describe the world around her, but to reproduce that world in language and sound. Consequently, her writing seemed more and more abstract, to the point where many could not follow her. (p. 68)
A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE
She is my rose.
"If you realized that she worked insistently, every day, to be published the first time by a real publisher, publishing house, after she was sixty. But I wonder who will do that, who will have the insistence, you understand, the obsession, the surety, the purity of insistence to do that. No concessions. She used to tell me, 'Don't you ever dare to make concessions. Then one walks down, down, down, down." (p. 74, Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew on Stein)
Stein and Picasso had a great friendship. "She was the one who had believed in him. She was the one whom he painted. She was really his great friend and protector...Their important and volatile friendship contined for over four decades, from 1905 to Gertrude's death. Fame cost Picasso most of his other early friendships but it never came between the two. Although neither spoke nor read the other's mother tongue, they seemed to understand each other implicitly. Gertrude always felt that there was a 'particularly strong sympathy between Picasso and myself as to modern direction.' During one of the eighty or ninety sittings for Picasso's portrait of her, she mentioned that she heard with her eyes and saw with her ears. Picasso immediately agreed to this method." (p. 77)
Janet Flanner: "Her studio was the most fascinating of any place in Paris, because everyone did go there, about once a week she'd have a tea party...And she always led the conversation, well Gertrude led everything...When she laughed everyone in the room laughed. It was more than a signal, it was a contagion of good sprits...While Gertrude orated and made the pattern of the conversation, Miss Alice B. Toklas was sitting behind a tea tray. It was as if Gertrude was giving the address and Alice was supplying all the corrective footnotes." (p. 78)
Are there addresses in the reading that are relevant to our map creation? Where did Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas live? Where are the buried? Please note.
_Andrea Weiss
"She was large and heavy with delicate small hands and a beautifully modeled and unique head...She had a certain physical beauty and enormous power...I was impressed with her presence and her wonderful eyes and beautiful voice - an incredibly beautiful voice...Her voice had the beauty of a singer's voice when she spoke." (p. 61, Alice B. Toklas describing her lover Gertrude Stein)
Like the rest of the world, Gertrude Stein believed genius to be male...In her relationship with Alice, she assumed the more conventionally male role, or, as Catherine R. Stimpson describes it, "As they violated the rules of sex, they obeyed those of gender." (p. 64)
"Of herself, Gertrude wrote: 'Slowly and in a way it was not astonishing but slowly I was knowing that I was a genius...It is funny this thing of being a genius, there is no reason for it, there is no reason that it should be you...' " (p. 64)
Alice and Gertrude: Gertrude's writing and Alice's 'wifely' role as nurturer and caretaker were inseparable, interdependent entities, much as Gertrude and Alice were. In one of Gertrude's notebooks, she intermingled their names, coming up with 'Gertrice/Altrude.' (p. 65)
Her writing: Gertrude created new relations between words, even between the same words. She did not call this repetition, but rather insistence, since through the repeating, meanings change...She used words, not to describe the world around her, but to reproduce that world in language and sound. Consequently, her writing seemed more and more abstract, to the point where many could not follow her. (p. 68)
A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE
She is my rose.
"If you realized that she worked insistently, every day, to be published the first time by a real publisher, publishing house, after she was sixty. But I wonder who will do that, who will have the insistence, you understand, the obsession, the surety, the purity of insistence to do that. No concessions. She used to tell me, 'Don't you ever dare to make concessions. Then one walks down, down, down, down." (p. 74, Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew on Stein)
Stein and Picasso had a great friendship. "She was the one who had believed in him. She was the one whom he painted. She was really his great friend and protector...Their important and volatile friendship contined for over four decades, from 1905 to Gertrude's death. Fame cost Picasso most of his other early friendships but it never came between the two. Although neither spoke nor read the other's mother tongue, they seemed to understand each other implicitly. Gertrude always felt that there was a 'particularly strong sympathy between Picasso and myself as to modern direction.' During one of the eighty or ninety sittings for Picasso's portrait of her, she mentioned that she heard with her eyes and saw with her ears. Picasso immediately agreed to this method." (p. 77)
Janet Flanner: "Her studio was the most fascinating of any place in Paris, because everyone did go there, about once a week she'd have a tea party...And she always led the conversation, well Gertrude led everything...When she laughed everyone in the room laughed. It was more than a signal, it was a contagion of good sprits...While Gertrude orated and made the pattern of the conversation, Miss Alice B. Toklas was sitting behind a tea tray. It was as if Gertrude was giving the address and Alice was supplying all the corrective footnotes." (p. 78)
Are there addresses in the reading that are relevant to our map creation? Where did Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas live? Where are the buried? Please note.
Musée Carnavalet
We will venture out to Musée Carnavalet on Wednesday, September 24, after having first met in the classroom and discussing Gertrude Stein. Please have the Stein reading completed and be ready to discuss, as our time on Wednesday will be short.
Musée Carnavalet: Hôtel Carnavalet | 23, rue de Sévigné | 75003 Paris
We will be searching out a famous portrait of Nathalie Barney, "l'Amazone," painted by her most important and constant lover, Romaine Brooks (artist and painter).
Musée Carnavalet: Hôtel Carnavalet | 23, rue de Sévigné | 75003 Paris
We will be searching out a famous portrait of Nathalie Barney, "l'Amazone," painted by her most important and constant lover, Romaine Brooks (artist and painter).
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