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Back to Balzac

2012-01-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

Banksymuse by Banksy

After a long hiatus, Club Balzac is finally back in action with it's own domain. Watch for new articles on art, literature, music and the meaning of life by two friends named Mary and David.

Please visit us at our new address, clubbalzac.com.

Quote of the day

2011-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Praetorius in The Bride of Frankenstein

I have often wondered if we wouldn't be better off if we were all devils with no nonsense about angels and being good.

- Dr. Praetorius

Israfel and I

2011-09-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

George Henry Seeley, untitled, platinum print, 1903

One evening, I sat to down to try write something. I wanted to write something beautiful and inspired and filled with passion. After several abortive attempts, I found myself lacking in inspiration and confidence. Feeling inadequate and unworthy of the task before me and lamenting my failure, I sought solace in a book and found it in a poem, a poem written about 180 years ago by a favorite author and poet, much beloved since my childhood, Edgar Allan Poe.

The poem was one called Israfel. It is unique among Poe's poems which are often melancholy expressions of the grief of love lost, an emotion Poe knew only too well having lost his mother and stepmother in childhood, followed by the tragic loss of his wife as an adult. The poem Israfel expresses a different kind of emotion, a different kind of grief, the grief of the frustrated artist, unable to fulfill his desire, to achieve his dream, to create something worthy of his own ideal.

Israfel

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";*
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say(the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love's a grown-up God-
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely–flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder
note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

- Edgar Allan Poe, 1831

*And the angel Israfel, whose heart strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. - Koran

The footnote is Edgar Allan Poe's. However, Israfel is never mentioned in the Koran by name, but is referred to several times as the archangel who blows his trumpet at the day of last judgement.

In Islamic tradition Israfel(The Burning One) is one of the four archangels. After creating the world, God commanded the archangels to gather dust from the four corners of the earth. Only Israfel succeeded in his mission. The dust he collected was used by God to create Adam.

Israfel stands closest to God with his eyes averted in fear of God and holds his trumpet to his lips throughout the centuries awaiting the order to blow it announcing the day of last judgement. The first time he blows his horn every creature in heaven and earth will instantly fall to the ground unconscious. The second time he blows his horn all creation will stand at attention to await the judgement of god.

In Sufism the greatest saints are said to be those who have heart resembling the heart of Israfel.

- David

Quote of the day

2011-03-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Lucifer by Franz von Stuck, 1891

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

- Jean Genet

Phenomena

2011-03-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Final Drawing for Phenomena by Pavel Tchelitchew, 1938

This amazing painting by Pavel Tchelitchew was mentioned in a comment on the previous post. The cloud emanating from the volcano on the right bears an uncanny resemblance to a mushroom cloud with a face although it was painted several years before Hiroshima. The entire painting evokes a sense of disaster and chaos and is filled with a myriad of disturbing details. A very curious painting indeed. I am tempted to describe it as a sort of post apocalyptic Heironymus Bosch.

Many thanks to Makifat for pointing out this fascinating painting and artist.

Be sure to visit Makifat's wonderful literary blog Bibliophilia Obscura for more revelations.

I like explosions

2011-01-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

Let all form become formless, and chaos swallow the structure of the world in a gigantic maelstrom. Let there be tremendous commotion and noise, terror, and explosion, and then let there be eternal silence and total forgetfulness. And in those final moments, let all humanity has felt until now, hope, regret, love, despair, and hatred, explode with such force that nothing is left behind. Would not such moments be the triumph of nothingness and the final apotheosis of nonbeing?
- E.M. Coiran

We like explosions that leave you feeling good. We like ideas that change the world for good.
- Devo

Sources:

On the Heights of Despair by E.M. Coiran, translated by Ilinka Zarifopol-Johnston

New Traditionalists(LP) by Devo

Dregs

2011-01-09T04:08:00.000-08:00

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900)

DREGS

The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof
(This is the end of every song man sings!)
The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,
Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;
And health and hope have gone the way of love
Into the drear oblivion of lost things.
Ghosts go along with us until the end;
This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.
With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the dropt curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.

- Ernest Christopher Dowson

Source:

The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson by Ernest Christopher Dowson, with a memoir by Arthur Symons.

Something beautiful

2011-01-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

A superb performance of Beethoven's Symphony #7, 2nd Movement, conducted by the great Herbert von Karajan.

To -

2011-01-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

George Henry Seeley, Nude - The Pool, photogravure, 1910

I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath-little of earth in it-
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:-
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.

-Edgar Allan Poe

Phosphorus and Hesperus

2010-12-21T21:11:00.000-08:00

Phosphorus and Hesperus, oil on canvas, Evelyn de Morgan, 1882

This beautiful painting by Evelyn de Morgan depicts the greek gods Phosphorus and Hesperus. Phosphorus(gr. Eosphoros, l. Lucifer) and Hesperus(gr. Hesperos, l. Vesper) are brothers, sons of the rosy fingered goddess of dawn, Eos (latin: Aurora).

Phosphorus is the planet Venus when it appears as the morning star. Hesperus is the planet Venus when it appears as the evening star. The early greeks believed these to be two distinct astronomical bodies and assigned two distinct dieties to the planet as it appeared respectively in the morning and evening. The later greeks adopted the Babylonian view that the morning and evening star were a single wandering star and associated it with the goddess Aphrodite(l. Venus).

Like the goddess Venus and the stars themselves, Phosphorus and Hesperus are eternally young and beautiful. Only their mother Eos(Dawn) and her sister and brother, Selene(the moon) and Helios(the Sun), shine more brightly in the heavens.

It is Phosphorus, the bringer of light, who wakes his mother Eos from her sleep in the depths of the sea each morning and ushers in the dawn. It is Hesperus who ushers in the evening at dusk. Hesperus brings all good things home at the end of the day. He is the god of the hearth and domestic happiness. One might curse Phosphorus when getting up in the morning to go to work and bless Hesperus in the evening when returning to the comfort of home.

Eos, oil on canvas, Evelyn de Morgan, 1895

Evening, thou that bringest all that bright morning scattered; thou bringest the sheep, the goat, the child back to her mother. - Sappho

Above is a literal translation of a fragment of Sappho's poetry referring to Hesperus, translated by Henry Thornton Wharton in his book Sappho: Memoirs, text, selected renderings and a literal translation(1895). Below I've selected several translations of the same fragment from the book for comparison.

Hesperus brings all things back
Which the daylight made us lack,
Brings the sheep and goats to rest,
Brings the baby to the breast.

Edwin Arnold, 1869

Hesper, thou bringest back again
All that the gaudy daybeams part
The sheep the goat back to their pen,
The child home to the mother's heart.

Frederick Tennyson, 1890

Evening, all things thou bringest
Which dawn spread apart from each other;
The lamb and the kid thou bringest,
Thou bringest the boy to his mother.

J.A Symonds, 1883

Here Sappho's fragment is imitated by Byron in the third canto of Don Juan.

O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things-
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest,
Thou bring'st the child too to its mother's breast

I have always been a night person myself.

Hesper, whom the poet called the Bringer home of all good things.

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, Frederick Tennyson, 1886

Dawn (Aurora Triumphans), oil on canvas, Evelyn de Morgan, 1886

Finding a literary reference to Phosphorus was rather more difficult. Finally I stumbled across this passage from Virgil's Eclogues in which the arcadian shepherd Damon greets the day leaning against an olive tree playing his flute and singing a song bemoaning the coming of dawn for today is the day of his beloved Nysa's wedding to his rival Mopsus. In the last stanza Damon vows to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff into the sea.

In this translation, Phosphorus is called Lucifer, Eos is called Eota and Hesperus is simply called the evening star.

Damon's song:

Rise, Lucifer, and, heralding the light,
Bring in the genial day, while I make moan
Fooled by vain passion for a faithless bride,
For Nysa, and with this my dying breath
Call on the gods, though little it bestead-
The gods who heard her vows and heeded not.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Ever hath Maenalus his murmuring groves
And whispering pines, and ever hears the songs
Of love-lorn shepherds, and of Pan, who first
Brooked not the tuneful reed should idle lie.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Nysa to Mopsus given! what may not then
We lovers look for? soon shall we see mate
Griffins with mares, and in the coming age
Shy deer and hounds together come to drink.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Now, Mopsus, cut new torches, for they bring
Your bride along; now, bridegroom, scatter nuts:
Forsaking Oeta mounts the evening star!

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
O worthy of thy mate, while all men else
Thou scornest, and with loathing dost behold
My shepherd's pipe, my goats, my shaggy brow,
And untrimmed beard, nor deem'st that any god
For mortal doings hath regard or care.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Once with your mother, in our orchard-garth,
A little maid I saw you- I your guide-
Plucking the dewy apples. My twelfth year
I scarce had entered, and could barely reach
the brittle boughs. I looked, and I was lost;
A sudden frenzy swept my wits away.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Now know I what Love is: 'mid savage rocks
Tmaros or Rhodope brought forth the boy,
Or Garamantes in earth's utmost bounds-
No kin of ours, nor of our blood begot.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Fierce Love it was once steeled a mother's heart
With her own offspring's blood her hands to imbrue:
Mother, thou too wert cruel; say wert thou
More cruel, mother, or more ruthless he?
Ruthless the boy, thou, mother, cruel too.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Now let the wolf turn tail and fly the sheep,
Tough oaks bear golden apples, alder-trees
Bloom with narcissus-flower, the tamarisk
Sweat with rich amber, and the screech-owl vie
In singing with the swan: let Tityrus
Be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest-glade,
Arion 'mid his dolphins on the deep.

Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Yea, be the whole earth to mid-ocean turned!
Farewell, ye woodlands I from the tall peak
Of yon aerial rock will headlong plunge
Into the billows: this my latest gift,
From dying lips bequeathed thee, see thou keep.
Cease now, my flute, now cease Maenalian lays.

Virgil, Eclogue VIII, translator unknown

In legend Sappho is said to have committed suicide by jumping off a cliff into the sea as well. Though it is unknown how Sappho really died.

The Field of the Slain, oil on canvas, Evelyn de Morgan, 1916

The paintings of Evelyn Pickering de Morgan (1855 - 1919) show the influence of Pre-Raphaelites such as Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and especially John Rodham Spencer Stanhope, who was her uncle. Like other Pre-Raphaelite painters, she often took her subjects from literature and mythology. Yet her paintings are often discussed in comparison with Symbolist painters because of her use of allegorical symbolism to express metaphysical ideas and comment on social issues. Her later paintings, like the one above, often had an anti-war theme.

Evelyn de Morgan portayed women as beautiful, robust and athletic. Her women are strong heroic figures embodying the power of creative optimism, in stark contrast to Edward Burne-Jones wilting goddesses who all suffer from a fatal melancholia. The women in their paintings are thus as different as Hesperus and Phosphorus, that is to say, as night and day.

- David

Sources:

Sappho: Memoirs, text, selected renderings and a literal translation by H.T. Wharton, 1895.

The Eclogues, Virgil, 37 b.c.e.

The De Morgan Foundation website.

The Tenth Muse

2010-11-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

The Favourite Poet by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1888

Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine ;
A tenth is Lesbian Sappho, maid divine. - Plato

Plato called Sappho the tenth muse and never was a poet more deserving of deification. In Sappho's poetry the emotions of the individual found their first true expression. Sappho is the poet of love and the pure beauty of her verse remains unsurpassed even to this day.

Although highly revered in classical times, Sappho's works were widely burned in the middle ages along with those of the other lyric poets because of their paganism. Her work has been condemned, censored, and suppressed ever since because of the love for other women expressed in many of her poems. Only one complete poem and a few fragments remain. It's speaks of the power and beauty of her words that some of them have survived to be admired by us today.

I am currently reading Sappho: Memoirs, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation by Henry Thornton Wharton. First published in 1895, Wharton nobly endevoured in this book to collect and translate all the known extant fragments attributed to Sappho. He also collected and analysed all the biographical information from the classical sources and included the best of earlier translations. New translations were contributed by such notables as Charles Algernon Swinburne and John Addington Symonds.

In the 1880's Renee Vivien had published the first uncensored french translation of Sappho inspiring popular interest in Sappho's poetry. Wharton sought to provide as reliable and complete a translation and biography as possible for english readers.

The book itself is very beautiful, featuring a frontispiece by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and a gilt decorated cover with a lyre motif designed by Aubrey Beardsley for the third edition.

Here is my current favorite of the translations.

Blest as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile.

'Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For while I gazed, in transport tost,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost:

My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.

In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
My blood with gentle horror thrilled;
My feeble pulse forgot to play;
I fainted, sank, and died away.

Translation by Ambrose Phillips, 1711

And John Addington Symond's version.

Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful
Man who sits and gazes at thee before him,

Close beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee

Silverly speaking, Laughing love's low laughter.

Oh this, this only

Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble!

For should I but see thee a little moment,

Straight is my voice hushed;

Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me

'Neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling;

Nothing see mine eyes, and a noise of roaring

Waves in my ear sounds;

Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes

All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,

Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,

Lost in the love-trance.

Translation by John Addington Symonds, 1883

Some Sapphic sources:

Sappho: Memoir, text, selected renderings, and a literal translation by Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895

The Sappho Page, Department of Greek and Roman Classics, Temple University

Who is Ferragus?

2010-11-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

Detail from Ruggiero rescuing Angelica
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1819

In The History of the Thirteen, Ferragus XXIII is the Chief of the Companions of the Order of Devorants, a secret society known as The Thirteen. He uses the alias Henri Bourignard and also poses as a Portugese count. But who is Ferragus and who are the Thirteen?

In the various legends based on the exploits of Charlemagne, Ferragus is alternately a giant or a Saracen knight.

From Thomas Bulfinch's Legends of Charlemagne:

Orlando, or Roland, particularly distinguished himself by his combat with Ferragus. Ferragus was a giant, and moreover, his skin was of such impenetrable stuff that no sword could make any impression upon it. The giant's mode of fighting was to seize his adversary in his arms and carry him off, in spite of all the struggles he could make. Roland's utmost skill only availed to keep him out of the giant's clutches, but all his efforts to wound him with the sword were useless. After long fighting, Ferragus was so weary that he proposed a truce, and when it was agreed upon, he lay down and immediately fell asleep. He slept in perfect security, for it was against all the laws of chivalry to take advantage of an adversary under such circumstances. But Ferragus lay so uncomfortably for the want of a pillow, that Orlando took pity upon him, and brought a smooth stone and placed it under his head. When the giant woke up, after a refreshing nap, and perceived what Orlando had done, he seemed quite grateful, became sociable, and talked freely in the usual boastful style of such characters. Among other things, he told Orlando that he need not attempt to kill him with a sword, for that every part of his body was invulnerable, except this; and as he spoke, he put his hand to the vital part, just in the middle of his breast. Aided by this information, Orlando succeeded, when the fight was renewed, in piercing the giant in the very spot he had pointed out, and giving him a death-wound. Great was the rejoicing in the Christian camp, and many the praises showered upon the victorious paladin by the Emperor and all his host.

In Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Ferragus is a Saracen Knight named Ferrau rather than a giant. In the beginning of this glorious epic he loses his knightly helmet in a stream. After an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve his knightly helmet, the angry ghost of the brother of the fair Angelica, from whom Ferrau captured the knightly helmet after defeating him in a previous glorious battle, rises from the water, knightly helmet in hand reclaiming his rightful property post mortem.

The ghost then promptly informs Ferrau that he must wear no other knightly helmet until he captures the one that Orlando is wearing, which was captured by Orlando from a Saracen knight named Almontes, whom he defeated in a previous glorious battle. Ferrau swears an oath to do this. Fighting without a knightly helmet is no problem for Ferrau, who, like the giant Ferragus, is invulnerable, except for his belly button.

Incidentally Ferrau is one of Orlando's many rivals for the love of the fair Angelica. They will fight many a glorious battle. In the end of this glorious epic neither one of them has been able to defeat the other. But we know that Orlando is destined to defeat Ferrau in a future glorious battle because the Saracens always lose in these glorious epics. Angelica, for her part, is in love with some other guy and has no interest in Orlando, Ferrau, or her numerous other admirers.

Ruggiero rescuing Angelica by Jean
Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1819

But what does any of this have to do with the Ferragus in The History of the Thirteen? Who is Ferragus and who are the Thirteen, The answer to this question may lie in Balzac's political views.

The History of the Thirteen was written in 1833 during the early days of the July Monarchy. A liberal constitutional monarchy which began with the overthrow of the restoration government of Charles X in the July Revolution of 1830.

Under the July Monarchy government Louise-Phillipe of the Orleans branch of the house of Bourbon was crowned king. This regime, dominated by the haute bourgeois, was bureaucratic, inefficient, and very corrupt. Only the wealthiest members of society could vote. Common people did not have the right to vote or assemble. Republicans who supported a democratic goverment were considered enemies of the state and in 1834 the very word Republican was made illegal. Consequently a host of secret societies and clubs like the Thirteen formed during this era of conspiracies and intrigues.

Balzac was a conservative and supported Charles X as the legitimate monarch, but with some reservations. While criticizing the aristocracy for it's self interest and it's failure to perceive political realities, Balzac wanted to restore the monarchy and the church to what he considered their proper place as the social, political, and moral leaders of society.

At the time Balzac wrote The History of the Thirteen he was deeply involved in politics and was even considering running for public office. Balzac thought France needed a man of vision such as himself to restore balance and harmony to society. In The History of the Thirteen he is making of a study and critique of french society as a vehicle to express his political views.

In Ferragus, the first of the three novella that make up The History of the Thirteen, Balzac uses a story about a young baron's selfish pursuit of a respectable married borgeois lady as a analogy for the political situation in France during the July Monarchy.

The characters in the story are types representing entire classes of society. A young baron represents the younger generation of aristocrats, selfishly courting the favor of the borgeois government of Louise-Phillipe without considering the consequences. His aunt, a dowager duchess, represents the old aristocracy, too out of touch to perceive the situation until it is too late to prevent a calamity. A respectable married borgeois lady represents the borgeois government whose reputation may be ruined by the selfish ambitions of young aristocrats. A pretty young gizette represents the third estate, disenfranchised, used, and abused.

But who are Ferragus and the Thirteen? My theory is that Ferragus and the Thirteen represent the rationalists of these clandestine republican clubs. He must have perceived rationalism and the liberal democratic ideas of these clandestine clubs as amoral and atheistic, the cause of years of bloodshed during the Revolution and Napoleonic wars, an infidel invasion analagous to the Saracen invasion in Charlemagne's day. Ferragus is Orlando's invincible adversary. Perhaps Orlando is Balzac himself using his pen as a sword to save France and Angelica is France herself, a damsel in distress.

- David

Balzac's girlfriend

2010-11-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

Eveline Hańska by Holz von Sowgen, miniature on ivory, 1825.

The portrait above is from a minature on ivory in the Maison de Balzac Museum. The lady in the portrait is Madame Eveline de Hańska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska, a Polish noblewoman.

In 1832, Madame Hańska wrote an anonymous letter to Honoré de Balzac expressing her displeasure at the negative portrayal of women in his novel La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Asses Skin). She left no return address and signed the letter simply L'Étrangère (the foreigner).

Balzac responded by placing a personal ad in the Gazette de France in hopes that the author of the letter would see it and respond. Thus began a correspondence of over fifteen years and a legendary literary romance.

It was Madame Hańska, in one of her letters from 1832, that first suggested to Balzac the idea of a series depicting every aspect of Parisian and Provincial Society, which he first called Etudes de Moeurs before adopting the title La Comédie humaine.

Balzac met Madame Hańska for the first time in 1833. This letter reveals how deeply smitten Balzac was with her.

Our love will bloom always fairer, fresher, more gracious, because it is a true love, and because genuine love is ever increasing.

It is a beautiful plant growing from year to year in the heart, ever extending its palms and branches, doubling every season its glorious clusters and perfumes; and, my dear life, tell me,branches, doubling every season its glorious clusters and perfumes; and, my dear life, tell me, repeat to me always, that nothing will bruise its bark or its delicate leaves, that it will grow larger in both our hearts, loved, free, watched over, like a life within our life...

Balzac had fallen in love with a respectable married lady. It is interesting that around this time he was writing Ferragus, the first of the three novellas of The History of the Thirteen, in which a man's selfish obsession with a respectable married lady causes a series of tragedies.

In 1835 Balzac dedicated the novel Seraphita to Madame Hańska.

Here is the work which you asked of me. I am happy, in
thus dedicating it, to offer you a proof of the respectful
affection you allow me to bear you. If I am reproached for
impotence in this attempt to draw from the depths of mysticism a
book which seeks to give, in the lucid transparency of our
beautiful language, the luminous poesy of the Orient, to you the
blame! Did you not command this struggle (resembling that of
Jacob) by telling me that the most imperfect sketch of this
Figure, dreamed of by you, as it has been by me since childhood,
would still be something to you?

Apparently Madame Hańska had asked Balzac to write the Swedenborgian novel Seraphita after having a dream about it.

Reading Balzac's letters to Madame Hańska, it soon becomes apparent that her influence on Balzac and his work was profound. In a letter from 1836 Balzac writes to her -

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them.

I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

As for my heart, there you will always be - very much so. I have a delicious sense of you there. But my God, what is to become of me, if you have deprived me of my reason? This is a monomania which, this morning, terrifies me.

In 1841 Madame Hańska's husband died. In 1843 Balzac visited her at her country estate in the Ukraine. His rival for her affections at this time was none other than the composer Franz Liszt. She must have been quite a lady to have Balzac and Liszt competing for her.

Madame Hańska chose Balzac, doubtless due to his way with words, and they traveled together through Germany and Italy. Afterwards Balzac wrote La Cousin Bette(1847) in which the character Madame Hulot is modeled on Madame Hańska.

In 1848 Balzac returned to the Ukraine and after overcoming many obstacles, including a prohibition from the Tsar, Madame Hańska became Madame Balzac on March 14, 1850. Balzac wrote in a letter to a friend - three days ago I married the only woman I ever loved.

On the wedding trip Balzac suffered from serious heart trouble. Sadly, he passed away just five months later on August 18, 1850. The story of Madame Balzac is a romance not unlike some in her husband's novels, except that the heroine of this romance survived. Madame Balzac lived for another 32 years after Balzac's death.

Bibliography:

The Letters of Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hańska born Countess Rzewuska afterwards Madame de Balzac (1833-1846) by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley(1900).

-David

Bisclavret - The Lais of the Werewolf

2010-10-31T21:38:00.000-07:00

Bisclavret is a tale from The Lais of Marie de France, a collection of twelve short narrative poems called Breton Lais, written in anglo-norman, probably around the late twelth century, by the poet Marie de France.

The true identity of Marie de France has been lost to history. We know her as Marie de France from a single line in one of the Lais, My name is Marie and I am from France. She wrote in several languages and translated Latin. In addition to the Lais, she also wrote a collection of fables and translated Aesop into anglo-norman.

It is difficult enough for any artist to express themselves during any period. For a woman to have succeeded as a poet, author, and intellectual during the middle ages is nothing short of miraculous. Marie de France was almost certainly an aristocrat to have been so very highly educated and accomplished during this period.

It has been suggested by some scholars that Marie de France was member of the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who were both famously fond of literature. I like to imagine Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine discussing books.

The Lais are based on ancient breton tales sung by troubadours who traveled from place to place singing for their supper. Were-wolf tales were very popular in the middle ages and Bisclavret is the Lais of the Werewolf. It is one of the earliest werewolf tales, being preceded in remote antiquity by a were-wolf in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Here for your enjoyment is the entire text of Bisclavret, a prose translation by Katherine Prescott Wormeley.

THE LAY OF THE WERE-WOLF

Amongst the tales I tell you once again, I would not forget the Lay of the Were-Wolf. Such beasts as he are known in every land. Bisclavaret he is named in Brittany; whilst the Norman calls him Garwal.

It is a certain thing, and within the knowledge of all, that many a christened man has suffered this change, and ran wild in woods, as a Were-Wolf. The Were-Wolf is a fearsome beast. He lurks within the thick forest, mad and horrible to see. All the evil that he may, he does. He goeth to and fro, about the solitary place, seeking man, in order to devour him. Hearken, now, to the adventure of the Were-Wolf, that I have to tell.

In Brittany there dwelt a baron who was marvellously esteemed of all his fellows. He was a stout knight, and comely, and a man of office and repute. Right private was he to the mind of his lord, and dear to the counsel of his neighbours. This baron was wedded to a very worthy dame, right fair to see, and sweet of semblance. All his love was set on her, and all her love was given again to him. One only grief had this lady. For three whole days in every week her lord was absent from her side. She knew not where he went, nor on what errand. Neither did any of his house know the business which called him forth.

On a day when this lord was come again to his house, altogether joyous and content, the lady took him to task, right sweetly, in this fashion, "Husband," said she, "and fair, sweet friend, I have a certain thing to pray of you. Right willingly would I receive this gift, but I fear to anger you in the asking. It is better for me to have an empty hand, than to gain hard words."

When the lord heard this matter, he took the lady in his arms, very tenderly, and kissed her.

"Wife," he answered, "ask what you will. What would you have, for it is yours already?"

"By my faith," said the lady, "soon shall I be whole. Husband, right long and wearisome are the days that you spend away from your home. I rise from my bed in the morning, sick at heart, I know not why. So fearful am I, lest you do aught to your loss, that I may not find any comfort. Very quickly shall I die for reason of my dread. Tell me now, where you go, and on what business! How may the knowledge of one who loves so closely, bring you to harm?"

"Wife," made answer the lord, "nothing but evil can come if I tell you this secret. For the mercy of God do not require it of me. If you but knew, you would withdraw yourself from my love, and I should be lost indeed."

When the lady heard this, she was persuaded that her baron sought to put her by with jesting words. Therefore she prayed and required him the more urgently, with tender looks and speech, till he was overborne, and told her all the story, hiding naught.

"Wife, I become Bisclavaret. I enter in the forest, and live on prey and roots, within the thickest of the wood."

After she had learned his secret, she prayed and entreated the more as to whether he ran in his raiment, or went spoiled of vesture.

"Wife," said he, "I go naked as a beast."

"Tell me, for hope of grace, what you do with your clothing?"

"Fair wife, that will I never. If I should lose my raiment, or even be marked as I quit my vesture, then a Were-Wolf I must go for all the days of my life. Never again should I become man, save in that hour my clothing were given back to me. For this reason never will I show my lair."

"Husband," replied the lady to him, "I love you better than all the world. The less cause have you for doubting my faith, or hiding any tittle from me. What savour is here of friendship? How have I made forfeit of your love; for what sin do you mistrust my honour? Open now your heart, and tell what is good to be known."

So at the end, outwearied and overborne by her importunity, he could no longer refrain, but told her all.

"Wife," said he, "within this wood, a little from the path, there is a hidden way, and at the end thereof an ancient chapel, where oftentimes I have bewailed my lot. Near by is a great hollow stone, concealed by a bush, and there is the secret place where I hide my raiment, till I would return to my own home."

On hearing this marvel the lady became sanguine of visage, because of her exceeding fear. She dared no longer to lie at his side, and turned over in her mind, this way and that, how best she could get her from him. Now there was a certain knight of those parts, who, for a great while, had sought and required this lady for her love. This knight had spent long years in her service, but little enough had he got thereby, not even fair words, or a promise. To him the dame wrote a letter, and meeting, made her purpose plain.

"Fair friend," said she, "be happy. That which you have coveted so long a time, I will grant without delay. Never again will I deny your suit. My heart, and all I have to give, are yours, so take me now as love and dame."

Right sweetly the knight thanked her for her grace, and pledged her faith and fealty. When she had confirmed him by an oath, then she told him all this business of her lord—why he went, and what he became, and of his ravening within the wood. So she showed him of the chapel, and of the hollow stone, and of how to spoil the Were-Wolf of his vesture. Thus, by the kiss of his wife, was Bisclavaret betrayed. Often enough had he ravished his prey in desolate places, but from this journey he never returned. His kinsfolk and acquaintance came together to ask of his tidings, when this absence was noised abroad. Many a man, on many a day, searched the woodland, but none might find him, nor learn where Bisclavaret was gone.

The lady was wedded to the knight who had cherished her for so long a space. More than a year had passed since Bisclavaret disappeared. Then it chanced that the King would hunt in that self-same wood where the Were-Wolf lurked. When the hounds were unleashed they ran this way and that, and swiftly came upon his scent. At the view the huntsman winded on his horn, and the whole pack were at his heels. They followed him from morn to eve, till he was torn and bleeding, and was all adread lest they should pull him down. Now the King was very close to the quarry, and when Bisclavaret looked upon his master, he ran to him for pity and for grace. He took the stirrup within his paws, and fawned upon the prince's foot. The King was very fearful at this sight, but presently he called his courtiers to his aid.

"Lords," cried he, "hasten hither, and see this marvellous thing. Here is a beast who has the sense of man. He abases himself before his foe, and cries for mercy, although he cannot speak. Beat off the hounds, and let no man do him harm. We will hunt no more to-day, but return to our own place, with the wonderful quarry we have taken."

The King turned him about, and rode to his hall, Bisclavaret following at his side. Very near to his master the Were-Wolf went, like any dog, and had no care to seek again the wood. When the King had brought him safely to his own castle, he rejoiced greatly, for the beast was fair and strong, no mightier had any man seen. Much pride had the King in his marvellous beast. He held him so dear, that he bade all those who wished for his love, to cross the Wolf in naught, neither to strike him with a rod, but ever to see that he was richly fed and kennelled warm. This commandment the Court observed willingly. So all the day the Wolf sported with the lords, and at night he lay within the chamber of the King. There was not a man who did not make much of the beast, so frank was he and debonair. None had reason to do him wrong, for ever was he about his master, and for his part did evil to none. Every day were these two companions together, and all perceived that the King loved him as his friend.

Hearken now to that which chanced.

The King held a high Court, and bade his great vassals and barons, and all the lords of his venery to the feast. Never was there a goodlier feast, nor one set forth with sweeter show and pomp. Amongst those who were bidden, came that same knight who had the wife of Bisclavaret for dame. He came to the castle, richly gowned, with a fair company, but little he deemed whom he would find so near. Bisclavaret marked his foe the moment he stood within the hall. He ran towards him, and seized him with his fangs, in the King's very presence, and to the view of all. Doubtless he would have done him much mischief, had not the King called and chidden him, and threatened him with a rod. Once, and twice, again, the Wolf set upon the knight in the very light of day. All men marvelled at his malice, for sweet and serviceable was the beast, and to that hour had shown hatred of none. With one consent the household deemed that this deed was done with full reason, and that the Wolf had suffered at the knight's hand some bitter wrong. Right wary of his foe was the knight until the feast had ended, and all the barons had taken farewell of their lord, and departed, each to his own house. With these, amongst the very first, went that lord whom Bisclavaret so fiercely had assailed. Small was the wonder that he was glad to go.

No long while after this adventure it came to pass that the courteous King would hunt in that forest where Bisclavaret was found. With the prince came his wolf, and a fair company. Now at nightfall the King abode within a certain lodge of that country, and this was known of that dame who before was the wife of Bisclavaret. In the morning the lady clothed her in her most dainty apparel, and hastened to the lodge, since she desired to speak with the King, and to offer him a rich present. When the lady entered in the chamber, neither man nor leash might restrain the fury of the Wolf. He became as a mad dog in his hatred and malice. Breaking from his bonds he sprang at the lady's face, and bit the nose from her visage. From every side men ran to the succour of the dame. They beat off the wolf from his prey, and for a little would have cut him in pieces with their swords. But a certain wise counsellor said to the King,

"Sire, hearken now to me. This beast is always with you, and there is not one of us all who has not known him for long. He goes in and out amongst us, nor has molested any man, neither done wrong or felony to any, save only to this dame, one only time as we have seen. He has done evil to this lady, and to that knight, who is now the husband of the dame. Sire, she was once the wife of that lord who was so close and private to your heart, but who went, and none might find where he had gone. Now, therefore, put the dame in a sure place, and question her straitly, so that she may tell—if perchance she knows thereof—for what reason this Beast holds her in such mortal hate. For many a strange deed has chanced, as well we know, in this marvellous land of Brittany."

The King listened to these words, and deemed the counsel good. He laid hands upon the knight, and put the dame in surety in another place. He caused them to be questioned right straitly, so that their torment was very grievous. At the end, partly because of her distress, and partly by reason of her exceeding fear, the lady's lips were loosed, and she told her tale. She showed them of the betrayal of her lord, and how his raiment was stolen from the hollow stone. Since then she knew not where he went, nor what had befallen him, for he had never come again to his own land. Only, in her heart, well she deemed and was persuaded, that Bisclavaret was he.

Straightway the King demanded the vesture of his baron, whether this were to the wish of the lady, or whether it were against her wish. When the raiment was brought him, he caused it to be spread before Bisclavaret, but the Wolf made as though he had not seen. Then that cunning and crafty counsellor took the King apart, that he might give him a fresh rede.

"Sire," said he, "you do not wisely, nor well, to set this raiment before Bisclavaret, in the sight of all. In shame and much tribulation must he lay aside the beast, and again become man. Carry your wolf within your most secret chamber, and put his vestment therein. Then close the door upon him, and leave him alone for a space. So we shall see presently whether the ravening beast may indeed return to human shape."

The King carried the Wolf to his chamber, and shut the doors upon him fast. He delayed for a brief while, and taking two lords of his fellowship with him, came again to the room. Entering therein, all three, softly together, they found the knight sleeping in the King's bed, like a little child. The King ran swiftly to the bed and taking his friend in his arms, embraced and kissed him fondly, above a hundred times. When man's speech returned once more, he told him of his adventure. Then the King restored to his friend the fief that was stolen from him, and gave such rich gifts, moreover, as I cannot tell. As for the wife who had betrayed Bisclavaret, he bade her avoid his country, and chased her from the realm. So she went forth, she and her second lord together, to seek a more abiding city, and were no more seen.

The adventure that you have heard is no vain fable. Verily and indeed it chanced as I have said. The Lay of the Were-Wolf, truly, was written that it should ever be borne in mind.

From The Lais of Marie de France, translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley.

Here is a link to a downloadable e-text of French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France at Project Gutenberg:

French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France, translated by Eugene Mason, 1911.

Balzac and Picasso

2010-08-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

Balzac, etching, 1952, Pablo Picasso

In 1927 Picasso was commissioned to do a series of illustrations for a novella by Balzac called The Unknown Masterpiece or The Hidden Masterpiece(Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu ). After reading the novella Picasso became obsessed with this uncanny tale of a painter's obsession to create a masterpiece.

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Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937

Picasso identified with the painter Frenhofer and became obsessed with The Unknown Masterpiece. In 1934 he moved into a house that he and his friends believed was the actual setting of Balzac's story. There he painted his most famous work, Guernica, in 1937. Some art historians have suggested he conceived Guernica as his own unknown masterpiece.

Picasso would later claim he was haunted by Balzac. Themes from Balzac's story appear in many of Picasso's works over the years. The etching above is one of a long series of Balzac portraits done by Picasso in 1952.

A drawing from 1934 was discovered in a junk shop in 1972. The 1934 drawing may offer a key to symbolism in many of Picasso's paintings. Contraversy regarding interpretations of the drawings symbolism and it's authenticity has been ongoing for years. The 1934 drawing has become known as Picasso's Unknown Masterpiece.

1934 drawing

Art historian Mark Harris has written a brilliant comprehensive analysis of the symbolism in Picasso's Unknown Masterpiece. Visit his website to read all about it and visit the Picasso Conspiracy website for up to date information on the ungoing battle to authenticate Picasso's Unknown Masterpiece.

The Balzac Conspiracy:

http://web.org.uk/picasso

The Mark Harris Picasso site:

http://www.strangemusic.com/philostone_picasso.htm

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

2009-10-31T07:12:00.000-07:00

Carmilla is one of the the greatest vampire tales ever told. It inspired Bram Stoker to write his famous novel Dracula. The image of the vampire in literature and popular culture would not be the same had it not been written.

Carmilla was first published in The Dark Blue magazine and then in a collection of short stories by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu entitled In a Glass Darkly in 1872. The tales are presented to the reader as "true" stories taken from the casebooks of one Dr. Hesselius, a "metaphysical doctor". Like the ficticious Dr. Hesselius, Le Fanu was himself deeply interested in the supernatural and many of his stories have a basis in traditional folklore and accounts of the supernatural which he collected in his researches.

Le Fanu drew his inspiration for Carmilla from a historical account of a real vampire case in an eighteenth century study of vampirism and ghosts called A Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits, and on the Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, etc. by Dom Augustin Calmet (Paris 1751), translated by Henry Christmas as The Phantom World : or, the Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, etc. (London 1850). Calmet's treatise contains several accounts of vampire cases in which the civil and ecclesiastical authorities became involved during the vampire epidemics that plagued Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century.

Calmet relates an account of two priests from the cathedral at Olmütz (Olomouc) in Moravia , who traveled to the village of Liebava 'to take information concerning the fact of a certain famous vampire, which had caused much confusion in this village some years before.'

The priests questioned witnesses who testified that the vampire 'had often disturbed the living in their beds at night, that he had come out of the cemetery, and had appeared in several houses three or four years ago; that his troublesome visits ceased because a Hungarian stranger, passing through the village at the time of these reports, had boasted that he could put an end to them, and make the vampire disappear. To perform his promise, he mounted on the church steeple, and observed the moment when the vampire came out of his grave, leaving near it the linen clothes in which he had been enveloped, and then went to disturb the inhabitants of the village.

The Hungarian, having seen him come out of his grave, went down quickly from the steeple, took up the linen envelops of the vampire, and carried them with him up the tower. The vampire having returned from his prowlings, cried loudly against the Hungarian, who made him a sign from the top of the tower that if he wished to have his clothes again he must fetch them; the vampire began to ascend the steeple, but the Hungarian threw him down backwards from the ladder, and cut his head off with a spade. Such was the end of this tragedy. (Phantom World, volume ii, p. 209-210)

According to the legend, Vampires can not rest without their burial shroud. This real life account of an alleged vampire plagueing a Moravian village was the basis for Carmilla.

Carmilla is one of the first stories to portray a vampire as genteel and attractive. Earlier tales portray vampires as ghoulish fiends who look like walking corpses with long teeth and claws. Carmilla appears to be a very beautiful aristocratic young lady.

Carmilla is also the first homoerotic vampire tale. It is one of the earliest works of literature to imply lesbianism. It predates even Les Diaboliques(1874) by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, which is generally considered the first portayal of lesbianism in literature since classical times.

Carmilla chooses only females as her victims. She lusts after her victims and seduces them. Some of the dialogue is quite provocative for it's time.

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever".

Carmilla has inspired many films. Most notably Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr, although it bears very little resemblance to Le Fanu's story. My favorite of the many campy B movie adaptations is the Hammer Films version called The Vampire Lovers(1970). It stays pretty close to the original story while licentiously playing up the lesbian vampire angle.

Carmilla has had a great influence on literature and popular culture. More importantly it's a really great story, masterfully told by one of the greatest storytellers of all time. It's the perfect vampire tale to read for Halloween.

Illustrations for Carmilla by David Henry Friston and Michael Fitzgerald from the 1872 edition of In a Glass Darkly. Illustration from The Phantom World by Albert Decaris.

Raphael and La Fornarina

2009-05-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

La fornarina by Raphael, c. 1518-1519

The painting above was found in Raphael's studio at the time of his death. The painting is known as La fornarina(the bakeress) and the woman in the painting is thought to be Raphael's roman mistress, Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker from Seina.

La velata by Raphael, 1514-1515

The same woman posed for another portrait known as La velata or La donna velata(the veiled woman) painted about three or four years earlier. She wears the same pearl bauble in her hair in both portraits. The name Margherita means "pearl" in Italian. A contemporary account refers to the woman in the La velata portrait as "the woman Raphael loved until he died". Margherita Luti is thought to have been the model for both of these portraits and many of Raphael's other works.

Among the other works Margherita Luti is thought to have modeled for are several Madonnas including the Madonna della Seggiola (known as Madonna of the Chair), painted around the same time as the La velata portrait.

In the La fornarina portrait she is wearing a wedding ring and an armband on which is written the name Raphael of Urbino. Myrtle branches, symbolic of love and marriage, fill the background. These details were discovered recently when a restoration of the portrait revealed that these symbols had been painted over, apparently by Raphael's assistants after his death.

Madonna della Seggiola by Raphael, c. 1514

According to Giorgio Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, Raphael was so in love with his mistress that he could not focus on his painting if separated from her. She accompanied him everywhere and even had to be smuggled in to live with him in secret so that he could complete his frescoes at the Villa Farnesina, the pleasure palace of his wealthy friend, the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi. In some versions of the legend Raphael's mistress is also smuggled into the Vatican to live with him there so that he can finish his frescoes for Pope Leo X. And thus the legend of Raphael the sex maniac was born.

A marriage to a mere peasant girl, the daughter of a baker, would have seriously damaged Raphael's reputation with the Roman and Florentine aristocracy, quite probably ending his career as a painter.

Self Portrait by Raphael, 1506

Around the time the La velata portrait was painted, Raphael was being pressured by the Cardinal of Bibbiena to marry one of his nieces, a woman named Maria Bibbiena. Raphael didn't refuse the Cardinal, but put off the matter, saying he wanted to wait three or four years before marrying. After the four years had passed, Raphael agreed to the marriage, but he kept putting off the wedding with excuses.

Finally Maria Bibbiena died from an illness and the wedding never took place.

The frescoes Raphael painted at the Villa Farnesina are filled with depictions of love and marriage suggesting that Raphael's friend Agostino Chigi may have helped arrange a secret marriage around the time he smuggled Margherita into the Villa to reunite his lovelorn friend with his beloved so that he could finish his frescoes.
Vasari takes great pains to discredit Raphael's relationship with Margherita Luti, never referring to Margherita by name, but as the "mistress", or the object of a "light attachment". But even Vasari admits that Raphael could not focus on his painting when seperated from her, and that although he sent her away shortly before his death, he made financial provisions for her future.

Vasari attributes Raphael's death to overindulgence in sex with his mistress, based on the medieval theory that having too much sex could disturb the humours of the body. Vasari's Life of Raphael helped create the legend of Raphael's death. In some versions of the legend, Raphael's mistress is even blamed for causing his early death.

After Raphael's death, his assistants found the La fornarina portrait hanging in his studio, and apparently soon thereafter painted over the nuptial symbolism in the painting to preserve the reputation of their beloved master and prevent a scandal that would put an end to their own work at the Vatican and consequently bankrupt them. The symbolism in the painting would have been immediately obvious to anyone at the time to mean "this is my wife whom I love".

Vasari contributed to the coverup in his Life of Raphael which reads like the life of a saint. Vasari's Lives of the Painters is a veritable hagiography of Rennaissance Art.

Raphael and La Fornarina by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1814

After reading between the lines of Vasari's Life of Raphael and seeing the portraits many artists have become obsessed with the intrigueing and romantic legend of Raphael and La Fornarina.

The story of Raphael's legendary love for his model inspired Ingres to paint this portrait around 1814 depicting Margherita Luti sitting on Raphael's lap as he gazes Pygmalion like at the La fornarina portrait in progress, having apparently taken a break from his work to make love to his beautiful model. In the background a drawn back curtain reveals a view of the Vatican through the window and behind the easel a hand is holding a copy of Vasari's Life of Raphael. Leaning against the wall in the back is the Madonna della Seggiola. The man with the book behind the easel is Ingres reading between the lines.

Etching by Pablo Picasso, 1968

In 1968, at the age of 87, Pablo Picasso created his 357 series of twenty five pornographic etchings inspired by the legend of Raphael and La Fornarina. In the final etching in the series, Raphael is depicted having sexual intercourse with La Fornarina while Michelangelo watches, hiding under the bed.

Thanks to the research of Italian art historian Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and his associates the La fornarina portrait has now been restored revealing the truth about their relationship. Curuz and his associates have also uncovered documents suggesting that Raphael and Margherita Luti were indeed secretly married and that four months after Raphael's death the "widow" Margherita entered a convent in Rome.

We owe a debt to Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and his associates for finally bringing the true story of Raphael and Margherita Luti to light.

- David

Sources:

The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari (translated by Julia Conway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella), Oxford, 2008 *

Was Raphael Married? by Melissa Snell, 2005

Margherita as La fornarina by Lavalle Linn, 2009

Raphael, the artist killed by too much sex? by Jonathan Jones, 2009

The painter meanwhile did not abandon the light attachment by which he was enchained, and one day on returning to his house from one of these secret visits, he was seized with a violent fever, which being mistaken for a cold, the physicians inconsiderately caused him to be bled, whereby he found himself exhausted, when he had rather required to be strengthened. Thereupon he made his will, and, as a good Christian, he sent the object of his attachment from the house, but left her a sufficient provision wherewith she might live in decency.*

The master lived in the strictest intimacy with Bernardo Divizio, Cardinal of Bibbiena, who had for many years importuned him to take a wife of his selection, nor had Raphael directly refused compliance with the wishes of the Cardinal, but had put the matter off, by saying that he would wait some three or four years longer. The term which he had thus set approached before Raphael had thought of it, when he was reminded by the Cardinal of his promise, and being as he ever was just and upright, he would not depart from his word, and therelore accepted a nieceof the Cardinal himself for his wife. But as this engagement was nevertheless a very heavy restraint to him, he put off the marriage from time to time, insomuch that several months passed and the ceremony had not yet taken place.*

Raphael was a very amorous man who was fond of women, and he was always quick to serve them. This was the reason why, as he continued to pursue his carnal delights, he was treated with too much consideration and asqcuiescence by his friends. When his dear friend Agostino Chigi commissioned him to paint the first loggia in his palace, Raphael could not really put his mind to his work because of his love for one of his mistresses; Agostino became so desperate over this that, through his own efforts and with the assistance of others, he worked things out in such a way that he finally managed to bring this woman of Raphael's to come and stay with him on a constant basis in the section of the house where Raphael was working, and that was the reason why the work came to be finished.*

Schalken the Painter by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

2009-04-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Lady with a Candle

I first learned of Schalken the painter while reading Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's terrifying supernatural tale Green Tea, in which a scene is vividly described as resembling one of Schalken's portraits.

I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken's, before its background of darkness.

Intrigued, I began to research this dutch painter. I found that his name is spelled alternately Godfried Schalcken or Gottfried Schalken and Le Fanu calls him Godfrey Schalken.

Godfrey Schalken was born in the Netherlands in 1643 at Dordrecht where he studied under Samuel van Hoogstraten before going to Leyden to study at the studio of Gerard Douw(Gerritt Dou 1613-1675), a famous pupil of Rembrandt. Like his master Douw, Schalken specialized in small candlelit scenes, a popular technique among the painters of the Fijnschilders(fine painting) school, known for their highly polished and intricately detailed style.

Much to my delight, I discovered that Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu had written a story about Godfrey Schalken entitled Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, one of a collection of supernatural tales published as the Purcell Papers, being ostensibly the papers of one Francis Purcell, a parish priest in the south of Ireland, and a curious and industrious collector of old local traditions.

The story of Schalken the Painter is one these old local traditions. It begins with Purcell's recollection of a visit to his friend Captain Vandael, whose father had served King William in the Low Countries.

I had often been struck, while visiting Vandael, by a remarkable picture, in which, though no connoisseur myself, I could not fail to discern some very strong peculiarities, particularly in the distribution of light and shade, as also a certain oddity in the design itself, which interested my curiosity.

‘There are some pictures,’ said I to my friend, ‘which impress one, I know not how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. When I look upon that picture, something assures me that I behold the representation of a reality.’

Captain Vandael responds:

‘Your fancy has not deceived you, my good friend, for that picture is the record, and I believe a faithful one, of a remarkable and mysterious occurrence. It was painted by Schalken, and contains, in the face of the female figure, which occupies the most prominent place in the design, an accurate portrait of Rose Velderkaust, the niece of Gerard Douw, the first and, I believe, the only love of Godfrey Schalken. My father knew the painter well, and from Schalken himself he learned the story of the mysterious drama, one scene of which the picture has embodied. This painting, which is accounted a fine specimen of Schalken’s style, was bequeathed to my father by the artist’s will, and, as you have observed, is a very striking and interesting production.’

Vandael proceeds to tell Purcell the terrible story behind the painting, the tragic story of Godfrey Schalken's ill fated love for his master Gerard Douw's niece, Rose Velderkaust.

Girl with a Candle

The characters in the story are Godfrey Schalken(Godfried Schalcken), Gerard Douw(Gerritt Dou), Rose Velderkaust, and Mynher Vanderhauseny of Rotterdam, a wealthy, but not quite human gentleman from Rotterdam who bears a striking resemblance to a carving in the Church of Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam. The story itself is the traditional dutch legend of Schalken the painter. It is the story of how Godfrey Schalken became so notoriously disagreeable.

There are few forms upon which the mantle of mystery and romance could seem to hang more ungracefully than upon that of the uncouth and clownish Schalken—the Dutch boor—the rude and dogged, but most cunning worker in oils, whose pieces delight the initiated of the present day almost as much as his manners disgusted the refined of his own; and yet this man, so rude, so dogged, so slovenly, I had almost said so savage, in mien and manner, during his after successes, had been selected by the capricious goddess, in his early life, to figure as the hero of a romance by no means devoid of interest or of mystery.

Who can tell how meet he may have been in his young days to play the part of the lover or of the hero—who can say that in early life he had been the same harsh, unlicked, and rugged boor that, in his maturer age, he proved—or how far the neglected rudeness which afterwards marked his air, and garb, and manners, may not have been the growth of that reckless apathy not unfrequently produced by bitter misfortunes and disappointments in early life?

Like a Dutch master, Le Fanu uses words to paint in vivid detail the scenes and characters in Schalken the Painter with the same dimly lit effect of mystery and romance that so distinguishes Schalken's paintings. Art history, legend, and great storytelling converge exquisitely in this fantastic tale.

This tale is traditionary, and the reader will easily perceive, by our studiously omitting to heighten many points of the narrative, when a little additional colouring might have added effect to the recital, that we have desired to lay before him, not a figment of the brain, but a curious tradition connected with, and belonging to, the biography of a famous artist.

After the death of his master Gerard Douw in 1675, Schalken returned to Dordrecht until 1691 when he settled in The Hague. He visited England from 1692-1697 where he painted many portraits, including a famous portrait of William III.

Schalken was as famous for the quality of his candlelit portraits as he was infamous for his uncouth manners and bad temper, which mortified the english. Consequently He was not very well received socially in England and returned to The Hague where he lived and painted until his death in 1706.

This self portrait by Schalken provides an ideal example of the uncouth manners and vulgar sense of humour for which he was so renowned. Look at his right hand. Your eyes do not deceive you...and yes that gesture did mean the same thing then. I can almost hear the gasps of the stuffy english aristocrats.

The painting mentioned in the story does not exist. It is an amalgamation of themes in many of Schalken's paintings including the ones on this page.

The Purcell Papers were published in three volumes in 1880. A complete edition has never been reprinted and the first edition is rare and extremely costly. Arkham House published a one volume selection of the stories, but this is not complete and does not include Schalken the Painter. Facsimile reprints of the complete three volume text can be ordered from print on demand publishers. Fortunately the entire text is available for download or online reading at these links.

Works by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu at The University of Adelaide Library

Works by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu on Gutenberg

Poems of a Penisist by Mutsuo Takahashi

2009-02-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

Recently a friend sent me a link to Jeffrey Angle's interview with the poet Mutsuo Takahashi in which Takahashi recounts his memories of an evening he spent with his friend Yukio Mishima about two months before Mishima attempted to incite a military coup in 1970, afterwards committing ritual suicide with a young man named Morita Masakazu on the grounds of the Japanese Defense Forces. I had never heard of Mutsuo Takahashi and was immediately intrigued.

In the interview, Takahashi speaks of meeting Mishima and his friend Morita for a few drinks and afterwards accompanying them to a sauna. He recalls details of their conversation which in retrospect foreshadowed what Mishima was planning to do. It's a fascinating interview to anyone interested in Mishima's life and his dramatic and violent death.

Mentioned in the interview was a volume of poems by Mutsuo Takahashi entitled Poems of a Penisist. Already intrigued enough by the interview, I made a note of the poet's name and the compelling title. The book proved to be somewhat hard to find. A few months later I was quite surpised when I found a copy listed for sale online by my local used bookstore.

The following day I headed for the used bookstore, wondering if the little old lady who runs the place, a retired librarian, was going to give me a funny look when I asked her about the book. On arriving at the bookstore, I managed to ask for the book without giggling and the little old lady smiled and located the book for me without batting an eyelash. I must pause here to pay tribute to our librarians, so often the unsung champions of free speech.

Upon returning home, I opened the book and, much to my delight, discovered some of the most beautiful homoerotic poetry I've ever read, more like Walt Whitman than Yukio Mishima in it's honest celebration of the male body. In Mutsuo Takahashi's poems sex between men is treated as a holy sacrament. His poems are sacred liturgies unfettered by any hint of self loathing or guilt. He has given us a pure and beautiful expression of his sexuality and his profound love. For this Mutsuo Takahashi deserves a place in the canon of homosexual saints.

Photo of Takahashi Mutsuo by Hosoe Eikoh, 1970.

From Poems of a Penisist

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler

The God Statue I Love

Your body is made of lily and sex
Piles of strong-smelling, night-illuminating lilies
Upon them your pageboy has spread the ointment of nard
For the lower half of your body you wear a bullfighter's tight
costume
The elegant joints of your big fingers press on the brocaded
arabesques
Beneath the costume, between the two overpowering thighs
Wrapped in highly fragrant clouds
Sleeps a beautiful lion cub, I think
The gentle beast is made of particularly splendid lilies
The suspenders press into your dark chest
The night sky framed by the lions silky hair
Hooked to the chain of stars a medal shines like the moon
One arm, gathering the flow of muscles, like a river
Leisurely hangs towards the center of the earth
The hand grips a whip
The leather lash of the whip snake-coils on the ground
You will suddenly jerk it up and imprint a swift welt on the
air
From the wound brilliant blood will spurt
I will put your standing figure
On the horse's fluffed buttocks, in the shining sky at dawn
On your shoulders
I shall put the wrestler's head as thoughtful as a forest
(I clipped it from the pictures in a sports magazine)

In the name of
Man, member,
And the holy fluid

Amen

Mikhail Vrubel: The Head of the Demon

2009-01-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait 1904-05

Mikhail Vrubel is generally considered the greatest of the Russian Symbolist painters. The departure from realistic naturalism in russian painting that had begun with Mikhail Nesterov's enigmatic painting The Visitation realized it's full expression in the work of Vrubel. His unique style and great talent are evident in this fantastic self portrait in pencil from 1904-1905.

In 1890, Vrubel painted a series of black and white watercolour illustrations for Mikhail Lermontov's romantic poem The Demon. Later that year Vrubel exhibited a large oil painting called The Seated Demon in Moscow. The painting caused a great deal of controversy. At first the work was condemned by conservative critics. Some even called it ugly. But later art patron Savva Mamontov praised Vrubel's genius and commissioned him do some paintings for his private opera house. The scandal made Vrubel famous.

I have posted The Seated Demon and the watercolour illustrations here with some excerpts from Mikhail Lermontov's The Demon.

The Seated Demon 1890

His way above the sinful earth
The melancholy Demon winged
And memories of happier days
About his exiled spirit thronged;
Of days when in the halls of light
He shone among the angels bright;
When comets in their headlong flight
Would joy to pay respect to him
As, chaste among the cherubim,
Among th' eternal nebulae
With eager mind and quick surmise
He'd trace their caravanserai
Through the far spaces of the skies;
When he had known both faith and love,
The happy firstling of creation!
When neither doubt nor dark damnation
Had whelmed him with the bitterness
Of fruitless exile year by year,
And when so much, so much...but this
Was more than memory could bear.

Head of Demon 1890-91

Outcast long since, he wandered lone,
Having no place to call his own,
Through the dull desert of the world
While age on age about him swirled,
Minute on minute - all the same.
Prince of this world - which he held cheap -
He scattered tares among the wheat....
A joyless task without remission,
Void of excitement, opposition -
Evil itself to him seemed tame.

Tamara Dancing 1890-91

So by the midnight star I swear
By blazing East and beaming West
No Shah of Persia knew her peer
No King on earth was ever blessed
To kiss an eye so full and fine.
The harem's sparkling fountain never
Showered such a form with dewy pearls!
Nor had mortal fingers ever
Caressed a forehead so divine
To loose such splendid curls;
Indeed, since Eve was first undone
And man from Eden forth must fare
No beauty such as this, I swear,
Had bloomed beneath the Southern sun.

The Demon did see.... For one second
It seemed to him that heaven beckoned
To make his arid soul resound
With glorious, grace-bestowing sound -
And once again his thought embraced
The sacrosanct significance
Of Goodness, Beauty and of Love!
And, strangely moved, his memory traced
The joys that he had known above
A chain of long magnificence
Before him link on link unfolding
As though he watched the headlong flight
Of star on star shoot through the night....

The Rider 1890-91

Swift as a stag still runs the horse
Snorting as though he held his course
In some fierce charge, now plunging on
Now pulling up as though to harken
His nostrils flared to sniff the wind:
Then leaps up and comes ringing down
On all four hooves, sets sparking
The stones and, in his mad career,
His tangled mane streams out behind.
A silent rider he does bear
Who lurches forward now and then
To rest his head in that wild mane.
The reins lie slack in useless hands,
The feet are deep-thrust in the stirrups,
And on his saddle-cloth the bands
Of blood are broadening as they gallop
Ah gallant steed, your wounded master
You bore from battle swift as light
The ill-starred bullet sped yet faster
And overtook him in the night!

Tamara and Demon 1890-91

I am he to whom you barkened
In the stillness of the night,
He whose thought your mind has darkened,
He whose sadness you have felt,
Whose image haunts your waking sight,
Whose name the end of hope has spelt
To every soul with whom I treat.
I am he no man may love,
A scourge to all my mortal slaves,
The ill in nature. Enemy
To Heaven and all the powers above.
Lord of knowledge, liberty.
And, as you see, I'm at your feet.
Moved beyond all that I have known
I would speak softly in your ears
Quiet prayers of love. Tell of my pain,
My first on earth, and my first tears.
Ah hear me out, for pity's sake!
One word from you would quite restore me.
Robed in the love of your pure heart
I might again resume my part
In the angelic ranks and take
An aspect new and a new glory.
Ah, hear me, hear me I implore you,
I am your slave and I adore you!
No sooner did I see you than
I felt a sudden, veiled revulsion
For immortality and power;
And I was drawn by strange compulsion
To envy the frail joys of man;
Life without you became a torment
To be apart from you - a horror.
A living ray of warmth, a portent
Of fair renewal touched my heart
And set the cold blood coursing. Sorrow
Beneath the scar stirred like a serpent
Awakening an ancient pain.
For, tell me, without you what gain
Is there in my infinity?
Endless dominion, majesty?
Loud, empty words - a spacious fane
Devoid of all divinity!

Tamara Lying in State 1890-91

My life is wondrous full and new,
The crown of thorns I proudly cast
With my own hands from off my brow.
All that I have been shattered lies:
My heaven and hell are in your eyes.
I love you with a passion vast.
You cannot love as I love you,
With all the ecstasy and power
Of deathless thought and dreams sublime.
Since the beginning of all time
Your image on the eternal air
Has gone before me - till this hour.
My soul has long been troubled by
The sweet sounds of the name you bear;
And in my days of blessedness
You were my only lack.

And most gently he
Did touch his burning lips to hers;
Full of seduction were the words
In which he soothed her soft repining;
His mighty gaze held fast her eyes
And burnt her.- In the cloistered shade
He glinted poised above her, shining.
Inevitable as a blade.
The evil spirit overcomes her.
His kiss, like deadly poison, numbs her
And stills the heart within her breast.
One terrified and anguished cry
Aroused the silent night from rest.
It was a last, a desperate plea
Yet full of love, live agony,
Hopeless farewell, finality...
To her young life a last good-bye.

Demon and Angel with Tamara's Soul 1890-91

Circled by the strong arms which bore her,
Tamara's sinful soul shrank close
To the protecting angel's side
Seeking in prayer her fear to hide.
Now, once again, he stood before her
But - Heavens! Who would know him now?
His gaze so brooding and morose
So venomous with hate eternal...
It seemed a death-like cold infernal
Lay on that frozen face and brow.
"Spirit of darkness, get thee gone!"
Heaven's messenger then made reply:
"The victory has been yours for long
Enough, and now the end is nigh.
Just is the judgement of the Lord!
The days of trial are over, past:
With the frail flesh, know. she has cast
Off all the claims of evil too!
For long now we have waited for her:
Her soul was of those very few
Who at the price of martyr's pain
Endured one moment long attain
To tasting joy beyond compare.
The Maker spun its living thread
Out of the finest, purest air
Not for the dull world was she made
No more that it was made for her.
She has redeemed at cruel price
Her wavering faith in powers above.
She suffered, loved, laid down her life -
And Heaven opened to her love!"

The angel bent his gaze severe
Upon the Tempter, eye to eye,
Then joyful soared ... to disappear
Into the boundless, shining sky.
The Demon watched the heating wings
Fading triumphantly from sight
And cursed his dreams of better things,
Doomed to defeat, venting his spite
And arrogance in that great curse....
Alone in all the universe,
Abandoned, without love or hope!...

Like Lermontov's Demon, Vrubel had his Tamara as well. In 1896, he fell in love with the famous opera singer Nadezhda Zabela and they were married. She sang the parts of the Snowbird, the Swan Princess, and the Princess Volkhova in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera's. Vrubel designed stage sets and beautiful costumes for her. She was his fairy tale princess. He painted this beautiful portrait of her as the Swan Princess during this happy period.

Swan Princess 1900

Sadly, Vrubel's fate would be as tragic as that of Lermontov's Demon. In 1901, he suffered a nervous breakdown at an exhibition of the painting Demon Downcast, and was taken to a mental clinic where he was hospitalized. His mental illness was caused in part by syphilis. Eventually he became completely blind due to the disease.

Demon Downcast 1902

Vrubel continued to create some of his greatest work for a few years, until his vision loss and mental illness became too severe. This incredible painting called The Perl is one of his later works.

The Perl 1904

From the same period, this simple still life of a fresh cut rose in a glass of water is a wonderful example of the genius of Vrubel's unique technique and style.

The Rose 1904

This is another portrait of Nadezhda Zebela-Vrubel from this later period.

Portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel 1904

This unfinished portrait of the poet and novelist Valery Briusov, a close friend of Vrubel's, is the last large work he attempted before he gave up painting in 1906 due to his increasing loss of vision and mental illness. He died four years later.

Portrait of Valery Briusov 1906

Read the entire text of Mikhail Lermontov's The Demon at www.friends-partners.org.

The tragic life of Simeon Solomon

2008-11-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

A generation before Oscar Wilde's famous trial and imprisonment, another brilliant career was tragically cut short by the homophobia and intolerance of victorian english society.

On February 11th, 1873, two men were arrested for attempted sodomy in a public lavatory in Stratford Place Mews, off Oxford Street, in London. One of the men was Simeon Solomon, a promising young artist, then 33 years old, whose work had been exhibited at the Royal Academy. The other man was a 60 year old stableman named George Roberts. Both men were sentenced to 18 month's hard labor, the same sentence that destroyed Oscar Wilde 20 years later. Simeon Solomon served only 2 weeks of his sentence before being released on bail. Thanks to the help of Myer Salaman*, a wealthy cousin, his sentence was reduced to police supervision and a £100 fine a month later. George Roberts served his entire 18 month sentence.

Although he was released from jail, Solomon was ostracized by proper english society and his promising career abruptly ended, almost as if he had died. He fled to France after his release, but in 1874 he was arrested again in Paris and sentenced to 3 months in prison.

Simeon Solomon was thus thrust into obscurity just as he was achieving fame as an artist.

Love In Autumn 1866

Born on October 9th, 1840, he was the youngest of eight children from a respectable middle class Jewish family. His father was a prominent east end merchant named Michael Meyer Solomon. His mother, Catherine Levy Solomon, was an artist and nurtured an interest in the arts in her children. An older Brother, Abraham (1823-1862), and an older sister, Rebecca (1832-1886), were also artists.

Young Simeon showed precocious talent and his brother Abraham began teaching him painting around 1850. In 1852 he entered Carey's Art Academy. His sister Rebecca had her first exhibition at the Royal Academy the same year. Four years later Simeon would have his own exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Bacchus 1867

His early works are mostly religious scenes or depictions of Orthodox Jewish rituals. Solomon begins to show subtle traces of his sexuality in some of these works.

As a student Solomon was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. The work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in particular was a strong influence on the young student. Around 1858, Solomon met Rossetti, who introduced him to other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, such as the painter Edward Burne-Jones, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, and the critic Walter Pater.

Love Dreaming By The Sea 1871

Solomon was embraced by these prophets of aestheticism and became a disciple of art for art's sake. He moved out of his brother's studio around this time and the theme of his work shifted from religious subjects to classical mythology. Solomon's expression of his sexuality in his work increases dramatically at this stage. Sexually ambiguous androgenous youths, showing the influence of Burne-Jones, start to fill his canvases, expressing a homosexual aesthetic more openly and bravely than any artist had ever dared before. His work receives some harsh reviews, but is championed by Swinburne, Pater, and others within the Aesthetic Movement leading to more exhibitions of his work.

In the late 1860's, Solomon begins traveling to Italy to study classical painting. In 1867 he is accompanied on one of these trips by his lover, Oscar Browning, who would later become headmaster of Eton. The couple visit Rome and Genoa again in 1870, but their second trip is cut short, probably due to legal problems resulting from their same sex relationship. On their return to England the relationship apparently ends. Solomon starts to drink heavily around this time.

An Angel aka Love 1887

While in Italy, Solomon began composing a poem in defense of same sex love called A Vision of Love Revealed In Sleep. It was completed and published after his return to England. Imagery in the poem corresponds to iconography in many of Solomon's works in which he depicts love as an angelic young man.

Although praised by critic John Addington Symonds, the poem was otherwise universally condemned. However Solomon continued to paint and exhibit and his fame grew until the tragic events of 1873-74 abruptly ended his public career.

Love And Lust date unknown

After his downfall, Solomon was abandoned by most of his friends and patrons. A loyal few attempted to continue their friendship with him, including Walter Pater and his cousin, Myer, who gave him some commissions during this period. Little is known about his life after the arrests.

In 1885, Solomon moved into the St. Giles Workhouse, a sort of homeless shelter, where he continued to work and live for the last 20 years of his life. He was reduced to begging and selling matchsticks on the street. Unable to afford paint and canvas, he usually worked with pastels and charcoal on salvaged scraps of cardboard and paper. Yet he created some of his most beautiful work in this late period.

Angel Boy 1895

On August 14th, 1905, Simeon Solomon collapsed and died at the St. Giles Workhouse. The cause of death was listed as heart failure due to complications of bronchitus and alcoholism. He was buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

Almost immediately after his death, Solomon's work began to receive recognition for the first time in decades. There were two memorial exhibitions of his work in 1906, one at the Royal Academy and one at the Baillie Gallery. In 1908 Julia Ellworth Ford wrote a book about him entitled Simeon Solomon: An Appreciation. However Solomon was soon forgotten again and faded into obscurity until research in gender studies renewed interest in his work in the 1990's, nearly a century later.

Untitled 1905

An online Simeon Solomon Research Archive has been created by art historian Roberto C. Ferrari. This site is the repository of Ferrari's years of extensive research on Simeon Solomon's life and work.

Also a wonderful book called Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon And The Pre-Raphaelites has recently been published.

*Myer Salaman's name is often mispelled as Meyer Solomon. According to a family legend the confusion over the spelling began when Myer's branch of the family changed the spelling from Solomon to Salaman after a sign painter mispelled the name of the family business and they stuck with it.

The photograph of Simeon Solomon is by David Wilkie Wynfield (ca.1860).

Alfred Kubin: Drawings 1897-1909

2008-09-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

An exhibition of Alfred Kubin's drawings 1897 - 1909 will be held by the Neue Galerie in NYC, September 25th, 2008 - January 26th, 2009. It will be the first exhibition of Kubin's graphic work in North America. A fantastic illustrated catalogue is available for purchase.

Here are a few samples from the exhibit. First, The Last King 1902. This was chosen as the front cover of the catalogue. Next, brace yourself for Self-Observation 1901-2, one of those indelible disturbing grotesques of Kubin's that may cause irreversible psychic trauma, forever etched unto your mind's eye. Below you will find Dying 1899. A nice example of the melancholia and macabre weirdness that infects all of Kubin's work like a morose virus.

The Last King 1902

Self-Observation 1901-2

Dying 1899

In addition to the Neue Gallery exhibition, the Fine Arts Museum Of San Francisco has a large collection of Kubins work posted for online perusal. Both websites are on my Links Of Interest list.

Homoeroticism In The Art Of John Singer Sargent

2008-09-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Was John Singer Sargent a homosexual? It has been suggested by art historian Trevor J. Fairbrother that the gentle eroticism of Sargent's male nudes is evidence of his homosexual tendencies.

This beautiful portrait of the 28 year old dandy W. Graham Robertson from 1894 has been much discussed as an example of an homoerotic aesthetic in Sargent's portraits of elegant young gentlemen.

Sargent was much sought after as a portrait painter among the elite of society because he made men look dashing and women look beautiful. The sensual beauty of his portraits of both men and women caused some comment. Some even called his portraits indecent.

Because of it's depiction of an apparently sexually liberated woman in a low cut gown, his portrait of New Orleans socialite Madame Pierre Gautreau caused quite a scandal in 1884. Sargent later changed the title to Portrait of Madame X to protect the models reputation and fled to England.

While in exile abroad Sargent associated with such flambouyant homosexuals as the great Oscar Wilde and the famous dandy Robert de Montesquiou.

By all accounts a quietly reserved and intensely private man, Sargent is said to have had close friendships with men and flirtations with women but no great relationships to speak of. His letters and other personal papers were destroyed by his family after his death. Therefore the only evidence we have about his sexuality is his work itself.

These sketches of male nudes were never exibited during Sargent's lifetime. They provide compelling evidence for Mr. Fairbrother's hypothesis, which I must say I am inclined to agree with.

The erotic quality of Sargent's male nudes is undeniable. Much of this work was never shown, although Sargent's murals in public buildings often feature a few writhing naked men.

Painted near the end of his life, this masterpiece called Nude Study Of Thomas E. McKeller, was found in Sargent's studio at the time of his death. It's a nude portrait of one of his favorite models and is one of the most compelling examples of homoeroticism in all of his work.

I can't help wondering why his family destroyed all his letters and personal papers after his death.

Melmoth The Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin

2008-07-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

Charles Robert Maturin ( b. Sept 25, 1782 - d. Oct 30, 1824) was an Irish Protestant clergyman ordained by the Church Of Ireland. After attending Trinity college in Dublin, has was ordained curate of Loghrea in 1803. He married the acclaimed singer Henrietta Kingsbury, sister of Sarah Kingsbury, whose daughter Lady Jane Wilde was the famous Irish nationalist poet known by the
pseudonym Speranza and was the mother of Oscar Wilde. Maturin was therefore the great uncle of Oscar Wilde by marriage.

Maturin's early works were commercial and critical failures but were noticed by Sir Walter Scott who recommended Maturin's work to Lord Byron. Thanks to the support of these two literary giants, Maturin's play, Bertram, was a success, running 22 nights on Drury Lane.

The play caused considerable scandle and was denounced by Samuel Coleridge as "melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind". Although Maturin had been writing under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy, he had dropped the nom de plume to collect the profits from Bertram. When the Church Of Ireland discovered the identity of the plays author, he was forever barred from advancement as a cleric.

Unable to support his family on his meagre salary as a curate and having spent the profits from the play to help his unemployed father and a bankrupt relative, Maturin was forced to make his living by writing.

After writing a couple of unsuccessful plays, Maturin switched back to novels. In 1820 he published his masterpiece, Melmoth the Wanderer.

The story is based on the medieval myth of The Wandering Jew, in which a man who taunts Christ while he is carrying the cross to Golgotha is cursed by Jesus to walk the earth until the day of last judgement.

The central character of the novel is Melmoth himself, the ultimate byronic-satanic antihero. He has made a pact with the devil. In exchange for 300 years of immortality, he must surrender his soul and be damned forever unless he can find someone who is willing to take his place before his 300 years have expired.

As his deadline approaches, Melmoth searches the earth for someone desperate enough to give up their soul. He seeks out the utterly hopeless in the throes of despair and poverty, in the cells of the madhouse, and the dungeons of the inquisition.

Maturin uses various documents such as letters and memoirs to relate the stories of those who encounter Melmoth in what becomes an indictment of mans inhumanity to man and the tyranny and intolerance of the church and of society in general. Melmoth's long experience with mankind's cruelty has made him world weary, cynical, and nihilistic.

Maturin's prose waxes sublime and eloquent in his condemnation of humanity. Melmoth is the voice of those outcast from society and damned by god.

Maturin has been much condemned as anti-catholic and anti-religious. Perhaps the victims of persecution by organized religion throughout history to the present day would consider his characterization of the church as an evil institution justified. Maturin himself would suffer for his courageous criticism of religious intolerance until his early death at the age of 42, amidst rumours of suicide.

Melmoth The Wanderer has been criticized for it's complicated plot and for Maturin's often long winded and pedantic style. Some have even butchered Melmoth in an attempt to make it "more readable". Persevering through the multiple subplots of Melmoth pays rich rewards. Maturin's writing style builds suspense and atmosphere to a unique level of intensity.

Melmoth is considered one of the great archetypal characters of all time. Honore de Balzac called Melmoth "the most disaffected character in literature" and even wrote a short sequel titled Melmoth Reconciled.

Oscar Wilde himself apparently related to the outcast from his relative's novel. He used the alias and nom de plume Sebastian Melmoth during his Parisian exile in the last tragic years of his life after his release from Reading Gaol.

Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

2008-04-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) has become obscure, although at the height of his fame as an author in the nineteenth century he was second only to Dickens, who was a close friend, in publication. In addition to writing prolifically, he was a member of parliament and secretary of state of the colonies, and was also a friend and protege of Benjamin Disraeli. He was a founding member of the English Rosicrucian Society and is supposed to have initiated Eliphas Levi during a mysterious visit to his estate in England.

His anachronistic victorian prose have made him largely unread and even the subject of ridicule in our time. San Jose State University holds a contest for the worst beginning to a novel, called the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, inspired by the much maligned opening line-“It was a dark and stormy night...” , from his novel Paul Clifford.

Bulwer-Lytton coined many phrases which are still familiar today, such as; “the great unwashed”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, and “The pen is mightier than the sword”. His name is forgotten, but his words have endured.

I've recently read Edward Bulwer-Lytton's occult transformational novel Zanoni- A Rosicrucian Tale. This book might include a warning label such as "may cause disturbing hallucinations". An occult initiation in novel form, this book incorporates an exercise which can cause a personality split in which the fear and desire of the id and ego(to use Jungian terms) become manifest as a malevolent being called The Dweller On The Threshold. To cross the "threshold" it is necessary to annihilate the ego and overcome fear. Talk about a literary device, this monster can jump out of the book to menace you in...reality! The process for summoning the dweller on the threshold is explained in Rudolf Steiner’s textbook for initiates, Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds. The biblical parallel to this phenomenom is the temptation of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Sometimes called a fire trial, this exercise has been used as a test of courage and character since ancient times. Some form of this test exists in many mystic traditions. It is described in Buddhist and Sufi literature. A similar test was used by the ancient cults of Eleusis and Isis and by the legendary cult of assassins.

Once released this fiendish spectre haunts the rest of the novel causing individual tragedy and death and influencing events as an underlying evil principal at work in the reign of terror of Robespierre. The dweller uses fear and hatred to control the mob and Robespierre himself. Thus evil is portrayed as an active force using men unawares to create the hell on earth that was the reign of terror.

The novels hero is Zanoni, an immortal 4000 year old sage . He voluntarily gives his life in an attempt to save his wife and child. His christ like self sacrifice brings an end to the reign of terror. In this way love triumphs over evil.

This novel illustrates brilliantly the way in which the principals of good and evil struggle for dominance in each individual and how these internal struggles within each individual influence events in society collectively. Where men are not motivated by noble purpose, evil finds an opportunity to bring violence and chaos into the world.

This theme of evil as an active principal in society causing violence and war is also explored in Alfred Kubin’s disturbing novel The Other Side and in Gustav Meyrink’s novel Walpurgisnacht in which the mob of Prague rise in revolt to the beat of a drum made of human skin.

If the students and faculty of San Jose State University could stop giggling at the unfamiliar literary style of another century and get over their own egoism, they might discover some valuable truths in the work of Bulwer-Lytton.

The Forge Of Vulcan By Diego Valazquez

2008-01-22T16:01:00.000-08:00

This painting by Velazquez from 1630 depicts the god Vulcan appearing as a beautiful youth to the swarthy blacksmiths making armour at his forge deep within the volcanic bowels of the earth. I make no assertions as to the sexuality of Velazquez and have no information on that subject. I simply wish to point out the great beauty of his naturalistic renderings of the male figure. Just look at the play of light and shadow on the sinewy muscles of those masculine men. It's enough to make any connoisseur of the male figure giddy.

This painting of the god Mars further illustrates Velazquez's mastery of naturalistic depictions of manly subjects. I like that leather daddy moustache Mars is sporting. One wonders about the proliferation of sexy men in seventeenth century Spain.

In addition to painting mythological and religious subjects and portraits of royalty (the standard fare of artists in this period), Velazquez also painted the dwarves( an archaic term in our thankfully more civilized epoch) of the spanish court. These paintings are among Velazquez's most beautiful portraits. I find these of particular interest because they portray persons who overcame the prejudices of the brutal and barbaric world they lived in by exploiting those very prejudices with impressive cunning and tenacity to rise to positions of great wealth and influence.

Graffitti artist "Banksy" makes social commentary with art

2008-01-05T15:57:00.000-08:00

If you visit London and go for a stroll, you may notice some very interesting graffitti adorning the sides of buildings and garbage dumpsters.

This graffiti art is done clandestinely by a man known only by the signature "Banksy" on his work. His true identity is a mystery.

The images always make powerful social and political statements. Here are some images from Banksy's website to give you some examples. Shown here are cops kissing, a cop frisking a little girl, a Guantanamo prisoner, and one called Macdonna which shows the madonna expiring in despair after polishing off an extra value meal.

In addition to these graffitti masterpieces, Banksy has surreptitiously placed paintings in some of the world's snootiest museums. He has walked into museums such as The Metropolitan Museum Of Art and MOMA in broad daylight wearing a hat, overcoat, and a fake beard and glued his paintings to the wall next to multimillion dollar Vermeers and Picassos.

On Bansksy's website there are even videos of him in disguise with his face blurred sneakily hanging paintings in museums. He hangs a small painting of a caveman chasing a shopping cart in the middle of a cave painting exhibit at the natural history museum. He even goes to Disneyland and plants an inflatable dummy dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner near one of the rides. A choo choo train speeds by a few times before the ride is shut down for "security reasons".

Who is this art superhero? Is he a millionaire with plenty of cash for attorneys? Like a fictional superhero he keeps his true identity a secret in order to fight war, poverty, and social injustice. He reminds us of arts potential to call attention to the important issues in a world where most people are more interested in Britney Spear's lack of parenting skills than in how many people are dying of hunger, being tortured, or dying in wars.

He denies claims in the British tabloids that celebrities have purchased his work for huge sums of money. On his website he says he does not sell signed screen prints. Although at a recent exhibition at the Vanina Holesek Gallery in Manhattan signed prints were offered for sale. All the proceeds went to charity (I believe it was an organization that feeds starving children or some such noble cause). I should add that on his website he has a store where everything is free (to download and print). Available for free are posters, art prints, and a t-shirt design that says simply "Destroy Capitalism". Bravo Banksy! It's good to know art is not dead after all. Maybe art can save the world if others are inspired to follow his example. I hope so. This is what art is supposed to be about to begin with.

Visit the Banksy website:
http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Vathek by William Beckford

2008-01-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

William Thomas Beckford was born in 1760. His father was a member of parliament, a former Lord Mayor of London, and a very wealthy man. William was instructed by tutors at home, and was later a pupil of Mozart. He excelled in painting, composing music, languages, and writing.

On the death of his father, Beckford became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Beckford was a great patron of the arts and collector. Today museums around the world are filled with paintings, furniture, and objects d'art from his collection.

Beckford learned arabic as a young man and became fascinated by the culture of the Islamic world. He conceived a fantasic novel about a caliph named Vathek.

Vathek is a hedonistic voluptuary with an insatiable appetite. His ambitious and completely amoral mother Carathis spends her time at the top of a great tower burning sacrifices to the forces of darkness in hopes of satisfying her uncontrollable lust for power and wealth.

Carathis strikes a deal with a supernatural being called the Gaiour. In exchange for committing atrocious crimes in honor of the Gaiour, Vathek will be granted the throne and treasure of the kings who ruled the world before Adam.

Carathis rouses her son from his constant feasting to tell him of the Gaiour's generous offer. They fulfill the first requirement of the deal by sacrificing the one hundred most beautiful boys in the kingdom to the Gaiour.

Carathis then packs her son off to Istakhar(the ruins of Persopolis) where the subterranean palace of the pre-adamite kings is located to claim his throne and treasure, reminding him to commit as many crimes as possible along the way to appease the hideous Gaiour and to remember the Gaiour's warning not to accept anyones hospitality on the journey.

What follows is a marvelous story of amazingly evil crimes committed by Vathek and his mother in a world populated by supernatural beings. The novel is beautifully and poetically written and filled with often very accurate references to Islamic history, customs, and mythology.

Beckford intended to combine the novel with episodes in which several characters who await their punishment at a place of eternal damnation, called the palace of subterranean fire, tell the others of the sins that brought them there. The novel Vathek and The Episodes Of Vathek would never be printed together as Beckford originally intended.

A scandal caused by gossip of an alledged homosexual love affair between William Beckford and the young William Courtenay, the future ninth Earl of Devon, sent Beckford into exile after marrying Lady Margaret Gordon.

Soon after his self imposed exile the man to whom Beckford had entrusted the translation of Vathek, it was originally written in french, published Vathek prematurely without Beckford's permission. Then the death of the charming Lady Margaret while giving birth to their second daughter contributed even further to Beckford's melancholy.

The first episode tells the story of a homosexual love affair between two young princes. We will never know to what extent the rumoured relationship with Courtenay inspired this story. Beckford later attempted to heterosexualize the first episode by making one of the princes a woman disguised as a boy.

Beckfords immense wealth and power did protect him somewhat from the scandal. He returned to england and commissioned the architect James Wyatt to build an enormous gothic palace called Fonthill Abbey to house his huge collection of art. Central to the abbeys design is a tower over one hundred feet tall, reminiscent perhaps of Carathis great tower.

High praise from Lord Byron, who wrote a poem called The Giaour with references to Vathek, made the novel a bestseller in the early nineteenth century and inspired the popular wave of orientalism that encouraged study of Islamic culture in the west and led to the translation of works like The 1001 Arabian Nights.

The original first episode of Vathek and some of the other episodes including an incestuous relationship between a prince and princess have miraculously survived to our time among Beckford's papers. Recently an edition published by Broadview Literary Texts and edited by Kenneth Graham has finally united Vathek with the episodes in a form as close as possible to Beckford's original intention.

It took over two hundred years for this literary and historical treasure to see the light of day. Don't miss an opportunity to experience this beautifully written and wonderfully decadent story which includes extensive footnotes on the mythological and historical details referred to in the story.

L'ecole de Platon By Jean Delville

2007-12-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting painting by Jean Delville, circa 1898, titled L'ecole de Platon (tr. The School of Plato or Plato and his Disciples). The painting is of course a depiction of a homosexual Jesus and twelve very effeminate and affectionate disciples. The title no doubt prevented the inevitable lynching that would have occurred had Delville entitled it "Jesus and his Disciples", but also allegorizes connections between homosexuality, platonism, and early christianity which form part of the canon of aestheticism. Besides the painting is dripping in purple wisteria blossoms which match Jesus' blouse perfectly.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

2007-11-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

The Master and Margarita is one of the most unusual books ever written. Because of the fantastic nature of the story it has been labeled magical realism. But the story is so original and bizarre it really defies any such catagorization.

This book is frequently recommended by one friend to another by word of mouth. I was told about it by a friend who had been told about it by a friend and I in turn have told several friends. This story is so unique and liberating that it inspires enthusiasm to tell others. It is so compelling that everyone who starts it is hooked and cannot put it down until the end. Often people even reread the book immediately.

The title of the first chapter of the book gives us the moral of the story, Never talk to strangers. Bulgakov lived and wrote in Moscow during Stalin's reign and this warning very aptly describes the atmosphere of suspicion in the U.S.S.R. in those days.

The story begins with two men sitting on a park bench on a hot summer day in a park called Patriarchs Pond (a real place close to where Bulgakov lived in the 1920's). The park, usually crowded at this time of day, is strangely deserted. The men on the bench are Mikhail Berloiz, editor of an important literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the largest literary associations in Moscow called MASSOLIT, and a young poet named Ivan Nikolayevich who writes under the pen name of Homeless.

Berloiz feels frightened for no apparent reason and his heart skips a beat, then suddenly an apparition of an incredibly lean man over seven feet tall wearing a jockey cap on a tiny head and a checked jacket much too short for him appears before him as if woven of air. The apparition vanishes and Berloiz assumes it was an hallucination due to heat stroke.

The two men begin a conversation. Berloiz has commissioned Homeless to write a long antireligious poem about Jesus Christ. Berloiz wants Homeless to rewrite the poem because he says it makes it sound as if Jesus existed. Berloiz insists Jesus never existed and provides impressive historical and intellectual proofs to that effect.

A mysterious stranger appears, sits on the next bench, and enters the conversation uninvited. The stranger is tall, clean shaven, and appears to be in his forties. He wears a grey suit, grey shoes, and a gray beret worn at a jaunty angle over his ear. He has platinum crowns on one side of his mouth and gold crowns on the other side. His right eye is black and his left eye is green. One eyebrow is higher than the other, he has a twisted grin, and he carries a cane with a black handle in the form of a poodles head.

The stranger begins to debate with the two men insisting that Jesus Christ had existed. Even talking as if he had known Jesus personally. He offers them a cigarette asking what brand they would like. When he opens his cigarette case it contains their brand as if by magic. The two men are suspicious, taking the stranger for an informant. They demand to see his papers.

The stranger offers to show them his papers and tells them he is a polyglot and specialist in black magic. He says he has come to Moscow to decipher the manuscripts of the tenth century necromancer Herbert D' Aurillac for the state library.

The stranger predicts that Berloiz's head will soon be cut off by "a russian woman, a member of the young communist league." He says that Berloiz will not be able to keep his appointment for a meeting at MASSOLIT that evening because " Annuska has already bought the sunflower oil, and not only bought it but spilled it too. So that the meeting will not take place."

As chapter one ends the stranger says in regard to the issue of Jesus," There is no need for points of view...he simply existed, that is all." Then he says in a low voice: "Everything is very simple: In the early morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood red lining and walking with the shuffling gate of a cavalryman..."

Chapter 2 begins a second narrative relating a first hand account of the trial and crucifixion of Yeshua (Jesus) from Pilates perspective. It begins:

"In the early morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood red lining and walking with the shuffling gate a calvaryman, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, came out into the covered colannade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great."

Later we learn that the mysterious stranger is traveling under the name Professor Woland and that he is none other than his majesty Satan himself. He is accompanied by two henchmen. One is the tall lean man in the checked jacket. He says his name is "..let's say Koroviev." The other is a tomcat as big as a man named Behemoth who is a crack shot with a beretta pistol.

The trio proceed to cause all kinds of mayhem in Moscow. Professor Woland performs a magic show where among other "tricks" a man is decapitated. Woland and his minions move into an "evil apartment" (a real apartment where Bulgakov lived) where all kind of strange phenomenom take place and people keep disappearing without a trace.

Later we are introduced to the Master (based on Bulgakov himself), who is writing the story of Pontius Pilate. The Master meets a beautiful, intelligent, and good woman named Margarita (based on Bulgakov's third wife). Margarita and the Master fall in love. When the Master tries to burn the manuscript he has been working on, Margarita rescues it from the fireplace and glances at the first page. It begins with the already familiar words: "In the early morning of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood red lining and walking with the shuffling gate of a calvaryman..."

The Master and Margarita are separated. Margarita desperately tries to find the Master. She runs into another of Professor Wolands bizarre sidekicks called Azazello who gives her a jar of his special cream. Margarita goes home, strips naked, and rubs it all over her body. The cream enables her to fly and renders her invisible. Margarita flys out the window and gleefully flys around Moscow playing practical jokes on people who are behaving badly and deserve a kick in the behind. This chapter is great fun and is very liberating. Everyone who reads this book says they want a jar of Azazello's cream.

Margarita then flys towards the river per Azazello's instructions. There a flying car awaits to chaffeur her to Satans Ball where all the great composers of history perform for all the great villians of history.

This is very fun story to read. Bulgakov's characters turn the Moscow bureaucracy upside down and dispatch petty officials unceremoniously, avenging every bad experience you've ever had at a government office or perhaps calling your telephone company. The story is absurd and over the top, Yet it is an amazingly accurate depiction of life in the soviet regime or in any modern bureaucracy. This brilliant illustration of the absurdity of modern societies and the systems that govern them speaks of Bulgakov's genius and the importance of this novel as a masterpiece of world literature.

Several translations are available. The translation by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O' Conner is the most accurate and complete. Earlier translations were based on the censored 1967 soviet edition. The Burgin/O'Conner translation has the complete text and the benefit of thirty years of Bulgakov scholarship.

Middlebury college has created a wonderful website with all kinds of background information on the characters and locales in the novel. I recommend using this site as a reference when reading the book. However it is not necessary as everyone relates to this story without any background information.

This book has a cult following and the "evil apartment" in Moscow where Bulgakov lived has become a shrine for fans and even satanists in Moscow.

Read this book. You'll be glad you did, and remember to "never talk to strangers".

The illustration of Berloiz, Homeless, and Professor Woland on the park bench above is by Charlie Stone. See more of his wonderful illustrations at the Middlebury website.

Visit The Master and Margarita website at Middlebury College:
http://cr.middlebury.edu/public/russian/Bulgakov/public_html/index.html

The Fiery Angel by Valery Bruisov

2007-11-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

Valery Bruisov is an interesting character in literary history. He lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when revolution was brewing in Russia and the people were rejecting traditional beliefs and cultural conventions.

Spiritualism, the occult, and fin de siecle decadence were fashionable among the Russian intelligensia in this era. Bruisov himself was an authority on the occult. He performed seances and magic rituals and was even rumoured to use witchcraft against his enemies.

He is described as having had a very mephistophelean appearance with arching mongol eyebrows and a black pointed beard on his chin. He cut a very satanic figure as the self created leader of the poets, novelists, and artists of the russian decadent and symbolist movements. He was considered a magus, an expert in the black arts, and some considered him a villian. There are stories of magical battles and a duel.

The Fiery Angel is his masterpiece. A historical novel set in medieval Germany, it is the story of a knight named Rupprecht who has just returned from the new world. He stops at an inn to rest for the night. He hears a womans cries coming from the next room. When he investigates he finds a woman lying on the floor convulsing wildly, apparently possessed by devils.

After the convulsions pass the woman tells Rupprecht that her name is Renata and that she has been visited since childhood by a beautiful angel with fiery golden hair and blue eyes. She says the angel came to her in human form using the name Count Heinrich. They had been married, she claimed, and gone to live in his castle. Recently the Count had changed suddenly and left her and she was desperately trying to find him. She implored Rupprecht to help her and not to leave her alone because devils or evil spirits pursued her and might attack and possess her again at any moment.

Rupprecht falls for Renata immediately and sets off with her to help her find her Count Heinrich. A series of misadventures follows in which Rupprecht and Renata study occult manuscripts and perform a complex ritual in a magic circle in an attempt to enlist the aid of the spirit world in Renata's desperate quest.

Further adventures include a flight to a witches sabbat, after liberally applying hallucinagenic flying ointment, where Satan himself, addressed as Master Leonard, holds a black mass complete with orgy. Later our knight Rupprecht visits the famous Magus, Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, and meets Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles, becoming their traveling companion.

The story is told in a style similar to Boccaccio's bawdy and amusing Decameron and is filled with more accurate historical detail and medieval occult arcana than you can shake a satanic stick at, and there's lots of sex.

There is a wonderful afterword to the book written by Gary Lachman, a founding member of Blondie, filled with lots of juicy details about Valery Bruisov's fascinating life and about the real life love triangle that inspired the one between Rupprecht, Renata, and Count Heinrich in the book .

The Fiery Angel was translated by Igor Montague and Sergei Nalbandov and is yet another lost classic rescued for us by Dedalus Books. God love em..or in this case perhaps, Satan.

Monsieur de Phocas by Jean Lorrain

2007-10-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Jean Lorrain was born Paul Duval, the spoiled only child of a wealthy bourgeious merchant from Normandy. He was a sickly child and had a smothering mother. He adopted the nom de plum, Jean Lorrain, at the request of his father who didn't want the family name soiled by the scandal of a literary career.

He was called the "sole disciple" of his mentor the Barbey D' Aurevilly who had turned the lifestyle of the original dandy Beau Brummel into a philosophy and way of life a generation before and then popularized it with his novel Les Diaboliques which openly portrayed lesbianism for the first time since classical times.

He was a close lifelong friend of J.K. Huymans, whose novel A Rebours probably inspired Oscar Wilde to write A Picture of Dorian Grey. Huysmans novel La Bas, partly a biography of the infamous fifteenth century fuedal lord and child murderer, Gilles de Rais, made satanism fashionable in Paris cafe society.

Jean Lorrain lived openly as a homosexual in the late nineteenth century. He was devilishly witty, and fabulously attired and his fingers were always covered in huge jewels. He smoked opium and hashish, drank ether, injected morphine, and had a cultivated taste for rough trade.

Aristocratic dandys like his nemesis the Comte de Montesquiou didn't consider Lorrain a real dandy because he was not of noble birth. Montesquiou and the others were as flamboyantly homosexual as he was, and although his wealth allowed him to live as lavishly as any of them, his common birth always bothered him.

His novels were closely autobiographical. He was the quintessential dandy in his novels. The close resemblance of his characters to real persons and events led to him being sued for libel and challenged to duals. He had to dual Marcel Proust on one occasion, but it was over a review Lorrain had written attacking Prousts work rather than a novel.

In the beginning of the book. The infamous Monsieur de Phocas, the Duc de Freneuse arrives at the home of a young author unannounced. At their interview the bejeweled Phocas gives the young author his personal memoirs to edit and publish, explaining that he is quitting Paris and traveling to the orient never to return.

After this point the story is presented in the form of Phocas' journal entries. He begins explaining an obsession with eyes and masks, his contempt for people in general and his desire to commit murder.

"..I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes. The eyes of portraits should be plucked out."

"To kill, to kill someone, oh how that would soothe me! That would extinguish my fever. I feel that I have the hands of an assassin."

He soon meets an artist named Claudius Ethal who has fled London and come to Paris allegedly because of a scandal following the deaths of some society women shortly after he painted their portraits. There had been rumours that he gave poison to his models so their skin would have a pale deathly pallor.

Ethal claims to have suffered from the same obsessions. He shows Phocas an exotic collection of masks and promises to cure him of his dangerous malady.

Ethal soon begins trying to push Phocas further and furthur into the abyss rather than curing him. He even suspects Ethal is trying to drive him to commit murder.

Ethal invites Phocas to his studio to see his work. As Phocas studies a sculpture of an emaciated adolescent, Ethal tells him how he met the model and created the sculpture ;

"His thinness interested me immediately, and the peculiar cast of his features - that expression of ardent languor which idealizes every consumptive face, furnishing them with such artistry. to cut a long story short, I approached Angelotto, confessed my interest and led him away to my lair..."

"I ought to have used him more sparingly rather than requiring him to repay my hospitality so quickly, but I sensed that he was living on borrowed time and might easily slip through my fingers."

"..I was besotted with the wild look in his huge suffering eyes. Angelotto posed, resignedly for hours on end. That hateful stupor - in which I sometimes thought I read a hint of reproach - never left his eyes, and his mouth was sealed by such mute defiance!"

"I took care of him the best I could between sittings. He never thanked me, but did exactly as he was told without saying a word. He died in my arms after twenty days.."

Ethal referring to the finished sculpture of the aforementioned "model";

"...but you must admit I have a masterpiece here."

Ethal introduces Phocas to the most decadent and dissolute denizens of Paris whom he calls larvae. He invites Phocas to a party at his studio that quicky becomes an orgy when two javanese servants bring everyone pipes filled with opium and then strip nude and dance to exotic music as the larvae smoke;

"The javanese servants had provided each of us with a small pipe crammed with greenish paste. A negro dressed entirely in white, who suddenly appeared between the tapestries, lighted each of them in turn with brightly glowing charcoals from a little silver brazier. Seated in a semi-circle on cushions set upon the Asian carpet, with our hands resting on squares of embroidered silk or Persian velvet, we smoked in silence, concentrating our whole attention on the progressive effects of the opium."

"While they silently shook themselves, with slow and cadenced undulations of their entire bodies, the scallop-shell breast-plates slipped gently from their torsos, and the jade rings slid along their bare arms. The two idols gradually divested themselves of their garments. Their finery accumulated at their feet with a slight rustling sound, as of seashells falling on sand. The tunics of white silk followed the slow fall of the jewellery. Now, as they stood on tiptoe, very slender in their exaggerated nakedness, it was as if two long black serpents shot forth from the cones of the two diadems had begun a lugubrious dance within the bluish vapors."

I don't want to give away too much of the story. It suffices to say, I loved this book. As far as I know only one other book by Jean Lorrain has ever been translated into english - Dairy of an Ether Drinker which is long out of print. I hope more will be translated soon.

Decadent novels like this one speak volumes about what life was like for homosexual men and women in those days. Nineteenth century decadence was a reaction to the hypocritical bourgeious morals of the victorian era. It was the sexual revolution of it's time. Homosexuals who were lucky enough found a sort of haven in the blase circles of the parisian sophisticates. They lived couragously at great personal risk. The decadents sounded the death nell of the old world of the romantic era before the dawn of twentieth century. Humanity owes the decadents tribute as brave champions of individual freedom and nonconformity, and as the creators of some of the greatest art, poetry, literature, and music in all of human history.

Jean Lorrains Monsieur de Phocas has been translated beautifully by Francis Amery and published by the wonderful Dedalus Books, whose mission it is to translate and publish european classics little known to the english speaking world and in many cases, such as this one, never before translated, as well as long out of print decadent literature.

The Other Side by Alfred Kubin

2007-10-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

One day as I was searching around the internet minding my own business, innocent and unsuspecting of any imminent peril, I stumbled upon a webpage called The Strangest Books Ever Written. There was a list for strange fiction and a list for strange nonfiction. Right there close to the top of the strange fiction list was The Other Side by Alfred Kubin.

After a bit of research I discovered that he was an early twentieth century expressionist artist and illustrator. He had a very gloomy life to match his macabre artwork. The Other Side was the only novel he wrote and it was widely considered to be one of the most unusual and macabre books ever written.

I was hooked, so I ordered it. It was available in a new english translation by Mike Mitchell from Dedalus Books.

In the beginning of the story a mysterious stranger arrives at the Munich home of a artist and his wife. After introducing himself the stranger explains the reason for his visit.

"I am not speaking in my own name, but for a man whom you, perhaps, have forgotten, but who still remembers you well. This man has at his disposal what is by European standards, untold wealth. I am speaking of your former classmate, Claus Patera. Please do not interrupt me! By a strange chance, Patera came into possession of what is probably the largest fortune in the world. Your old friend then set out upon the realization of an idea for which access to fairly inexhaustible financial resources is absolutely prerequisite. He resolved to found a dream realm. This is a complex matter, but I will be brief.

First of all a suitable tract of some 1,200 square miles was acquired. One third of the area is mountainous, the rest consists of plains and hills. A lake, a river and large forests divide up this small realm and add variety to its landscape. A city was established, villages, and farms. The latter were sorely needed as even the initial population was 12,000. The present population of the Dream Realm is 65,000."

He goes on:

"Patera, he continued, feels an extraordinarily strong aversion to all kinds of progress. To be precise, to all kinds of scientific progress. Please take this literally, for in it lies the main idea behind the Dream Realm. The Realm is shut off from the rest of the world by a surrounding wall and protected against any attack by strong fortifications. There is a single gate for entry and exit, facilitating strict control of people and goods. The dream realm is a sanctuary for all those who are unhappy with modern civilization and contains everything necessary to cater to their bodily needs. It is not at all the intention of the lord of this country to create a utopia, a kind of model state for the future. Although provision has been made to ensure there are no material shortages, the whole thrust of the principal aims of this community is directed less towards the maintenance of property and goods, the population, individuals. No, definitely not! ...But I see a smile of disbelief on your lips. It is difficult I know, almost too difficult for mere words to describe what Patera hopes to achieve with his Dream Realm."

The artist and his wife think it over and decide to go. They make a very long journey to the far east ending up finally at the outer wall of the Dream Realm. They pass through the single gate and board a train that takes them across dismal swamps and forests to Pearl, the capital of the Dream Realm.

On their arrival in Pearl, they immediately discover that all is not right in the Dream Realm. To begin with the sky is always overcast. Never can you see the sun or the stars. Everything looks drab and dingy in dreary shades of greenish grey. Nothing is new here. Everything from buildings to silverware is old and worn.

We later find out that all the buildings have macabre and violent histories. Structures where horrible crimes were committed have been moved to the Dream Realm from all over the world. Even the everyday objects seem to have an unwholesome past. It seems as if an unseen force is controlling both people and events in this bizarre place.

A village adjacent to the city is the home of a tribe of blue eyed holy men who are the Dream Realms original inhabitants. These people seem all to be in a perpetual trance. We learn that Patera visited these mystics before conceiving the Dream Realm.

Things become increasingly bizarre. People start becoming violent. Murders are committed with increasing intensity. Many people die of mysterious illnesses. Plagues of insects inundate the city. Wild animals start invading the city and attacking people. Then even domesticated animals become vicious and turn on their masters.

When our hero finally does find Patera, he seems to be in a trance, and his face keeps changing into first one person then another and another until finally it seems as if faces from all over the realm and even the entire world are passing across Pateras skull.

"His eyes were like two empty mirrors reflecting infinity. The thought crossed my mind that Patera was not alive at all. If the dead could look, that is what their gaze would be like."

Any attempt to escape from the dream realm is futile. The violence continues to escalate as the evil force controlling everything consumes the city of Pearl in a chaotic apocalypse.

The book ends with our protagonist finding the "real" world too much like the Dream Realm for comfort.

"When I ventured back into the world of the living, I discovered that my god only held half-sway. In everything, both great and small, he had to share with an adversary who wanted life. The forces of repulsion and attraction, the twin poles of the earth with their currents, the alternation of the seasons, day and night, black and white - these are battles.

Kubin adds a drawing of an eyeless morbid Patera like face on the final page with the cryptic phrase:

"The Demiurge is a hybrid."

The dystopia described in this book, published in Austria in 1906, closely predicts events that occurred in the decades following it's publication, with often uncanny and disturbing similarity.

The rise of militarism and nationalism resulting in the first and second world wars, the rise of Nazism, Hitlers omnipotent god like influence on millions, the holocaust, even the horrible final hours of der fuhrer in his bunker in Berlin are closely foreshadowed in this prophetic book.

Analogies may easily be drawn to ideas like Jung's collective subconscious, the cycles of change of taoism,and the karmic principle of hinduism and jainism, and alarmingly to events in the present.

This book is a definite must read. It should be required reading in the hope that the warning signs of violent psychosis shown by an entire society may someday be heeded preventing future bloodbaths and perhaps accomplishing homosapiens next great evolutionary step into a truly self aware being, no longer controlled by ancient demons and evil forces.

Fortunately Mike Mitchell's translation of The Other Side has recently been released in a kindle ebook format for only ten dollars. Paperback copies are scarce and costly.

Georges by Alexandre Dumas

2007-10-26T21:26:00.001-07:00

I am very happy to report the publication of a great new novel...by Alexandre Dumas! How can there be a new novel by Dumas you ask? This novel has been lost and forgotten to us for more than a century. A wonderful new translation by Tina Kover has recently been printed in a beautiful hardcover edition by The Modern Library (Random House). Jamaica Kincaid has written a forward which is a masterpiece in itself.

Georges is the story of a boy from Isle de France, the son of a wealthy mulatto planter. Georges and his brother are sent to France by their father, to protect them from the wrath of the bigoted white planters on the island.

Through incredible self discipline and will power, Georges distinguishes himself intellectually and transforms himself through grueling training from a skinny ascetic to a strong and robust man, as well as a master swordsman and marksman. Georges becomes the toast of high society in Paris and London. He goes into military service and distinguishes himself courageously, being decorated with the legion of honor by the king of France.

Georges then returns to Isle de France to avenge the treatment of his noble father by the racist planters on Isle de France, intent to destroy the bigotry on the island or die in the attempt.

Not everyone is aware that Alexandre Dumas was mulatto himself, the grandson of a French nobleman and an Afro-Caribbean woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas, who had been a slave. This is the only work in his more than 300 volumes of novels, plays, and prose which deals with the subject.

In this novel Dumas explores complex issues of race in great detail. Written and set in a period when slavery had been abolished in Europe in the wake of Napoleon, but not in many other places around the world, such as the United States. It was still legal to own slaves in French and English colonies. Although slave trading had become illegal in this period, it was still being carried on by privateers.

Georges and his father owned many slaves themselves. Issues of race between the wealthy mulatto planters and the black slaves are explored extensively in addition to those between whites and people of color.

The taboo of interracial love is beautifully explored in a romance between Georges and the fiancé of his Nemesis, the despicable racist son of a white planter.

This novel deals very effectively with issues of race that are as relevant today as they were over a century ago. It also speaks volumes about a period little known to most people. The first successful slave rebellion in Haiti had just occurred inspiring victims of slavery around the world to heroically and courageously fight for their own freedom.

Even without all the socially redeeming value, Georges is one of greatest novels of the greatest storyteller of all time. This is a marvelous romantic adventure with a noble and virtuous hero avenging social injustice similar to The Count of Monte Cristo. It is, put quite plainly, a joy to read.

I will end with the irresistible beginning of Georges:

"Have you ever, on a long, cold, melancholy winter night - alone with your thoughts and the wind whistling through the hallways, the rain pounding against the windows - have you ever leaned your forehead against the mantel, absently watching sparks dance on the hearth, and longed to flee our wet and muddy Paris for some enchanted oasis? Somewhere fresh and carpeted in green, where you could lie in the shade of a riverside palm tree and doze off without a care in the world?

Well the paradise of your dreams exists! Eden awaits you; the water flows clear and bright there, falling and surging up in bright dust; the palm fronds wave gently in the soft sea breeze like feathers in a genies cap. The jambosa trees, laden with iridescent fruit, stand ready to offer you their sweetly scented shade. Come, follow me now."

The occult novels of Gustav Meyrink

2007-10-26T21:12:00.001-07:00

Gustav Meyrink was born in Vienna on January 19th, 1868, sixty years to the day after Edgar Allen Poe was born (January 19th, 1808). His father died when he was very young. He moved to Prague with his mother in 1883 and lived there for twenty years.

In 1892, at the age of twenty four, he contemplated suicide. Just as he held the gun to his head someone slipped a spiritualist pamphlet entitled Afterlife under his door. He was so stunned by the coincidence he began to study the occult. Meyrink later became involved with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He had a brief career in banking which ended in a scandal in which he was actually charged with using the occult to commit fraud.

Meyrink worked as a translator after the scandal and then began writing short stories, first in a magazine called Simplicissimus and eventually publishing three compilations of his stories. In 1915 his first novel, The Golem, was a huge success, selling 100,000 copies.

In The Golem, an artist who has lost all memory of his past is visited by a mysterious being who entrusts a magical book to him to be restored. We follow him on a quest for his lost past as he experiences a series of supernatural encounters and mystical revelations in a wonderfully described turn of the century Jewish ghetto of Prague, filled with fantastic characters and even more fantastic legends.

I love Meyrinks descriptions as well as his characters and the way he weaves mystical lessons into the plot. Meyrink uses the novel to help us learn "things that cannot be taught".

Walpurgisnacht is a novella also set in Prague. In it evil forces possess the populace, inspiring a revolt that floods the streets of Prague with blood to the beat of a drum made from human skin.

The Green Face is set in the jewish ghetto of Amsterdam. His descriptions of the ghetto there are very similar to his desriptions of the ghetto of Prague in The Golem. He uses the legend of the wandering jew in much the same way he uses the legend of the golem.

In The Angel of the West Window a descendant of Sir John Dee inherits his papers and as he begins to go through them he becomes possessed by the spirit of Dee. A large amount of John Dee's actual papers are included in the story in this way. Characters from Dee's life keep showing up reincarnated in between hallucinagenic flashbacks to John Dee's time. The story progresses from Dee's castle in england, around europe to a medieval Prague of hissing alchemist Emperor Rudolf and mysterious kaballistic rabbis as Dee is exploited by the charlatan Edmund Kelly. A sort of biography in the form of an occult novel, the story is a fitting tribute to the man who inspired Shakespeares Prospero.

The White Dominican was Meyrinks final novel. In it he gives us the essence of his unique blend of taoism, buddism, gnosticism, and kabballah. Here's a sample:

Just as we cannot comprehend the meaning of a book if we just hold it in our hand and turn the pages without reading, so we will not profit from the course of our destiny if we do not grasp its meaning. Events follow each other like the pages of a book that are turned by Death; all we know is that they appear and disappear, and that with the last one the book ends. We do not even know that it keeps being opened, again and again, until we finally learn to read. And as long as we cannot read, life is for us a worthless game in which joy and sorrow mingle. When however, we finallly begin to understand it's living language, then our spirit will open it's eyes, and will start to read, and will breathe with us.

The novels of Gustav Meyrink have recently been wonderfully translated into english by Mike Mitchell and published by Dedalus Press.

Shikasta by Doris Lessing

2007-10-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

Doris Lessing was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. She was unimpressed. She mentioned that in the 1960's a representative had been sent from the Nobel committee just to tell her that they didn't like her and that she would never win. Apparently they have changed their minds.

Doris Lessing was born on October 22, 1919 in Persia. Her father was a soldier in WW1. He had lost a leg in the war and met her mother, who was a nurse, in the hospital when he was recovering . The couple moved to Persia where her father worked as a bank clerk. Doris was born there.

In 1925, when Doris was 6, the family relocated to colonial Southern Rhodesia to make their fortune farming. Unfortunately farming turned out not to be as lucrative as they had hoped. They were not wealthy.

Doris was sent to a convent school and later to an all girls boarding school. She dropped out of school at the age of 13 or 14. Doris worked as a nanny and later as a stenographer. One of her employers loaned her books and she began a course of self education that eventually resulted in her preeminence as a leading intellectual and free thinker.

In 1950 her first novel The Grass is Singing explored the failing marriage of a colonial south african white couple and the affair of the wife with her black servant.

In her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook, a successful female author named Anna tries to live her life with the freedom of a man. Anna records her thoughts and experiences both personal and intellectual in four notebooks.

As she attempts to tie together the four notebooks in one golden notebook, Anna examines contemporary issues in the context of her own life and applies her powerful intellect to draw some very relevant conclusions. Relevant enough to make Doris Lessing famous and make The Golden Notebook required reading today.

Over the years many groups have wanted to claim Doris as one of their own. Feminists, communists, Sci fi fans, and adepts of Sufism, among others, have enthusiastically attempted to name her as their guru for decades. Doris herself has always reveled in the impossibility of catagorizing herself or her work with any kind of label.

Indeed the theme of much of her work is the individual repressed by social roles and conventions struggling to emancipate their self.

She has written powerfully about women struggling to escape sexist gender roles and social mores.

She has written extensively on racism and colonial oppression in South Africa where she grew up.

Her work examines social, sexual,and racial roles as they effect the individual and society on a level seldom explored even today.

So, Doris deserves every award they have to throw at her. However, although these days honors are being liberally lavished upon the venerable Ms. Lessing. Few have mentioned what I and many others including Ms. Lessing herself consider her best work. Shikasta!

The books full title is Re: Recolonized Planet 5, Shikasta, Canopus in Argos: Archives, and it is quite a mindblowing book to read.

After the books release in 1979, a cult following grew which resembled some kind of new religion. She later stated that if she "had invented a new cosmology, it was for literary purposes alone."

The fantastic premise of the book is based in part on principles from the teachings of sufism in the works of the mystic Idries Shah.

The book is written in the form of a report from an alien, Johor, sent from the planet Canopus on a mission to the planet Argos (earth). Shikasta, sanskrit for something that has been broken, is the name of the dimension we humans exist in on Argos.

Johor's report spans millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of human development from prehistory to the future. It is the history of earth from the point of view of an alien who has been sent to aid in the evolution of species on this planet, and to help humans to achieve their evolutionary potential to be compassionate and enlightened beings. To boost this process the Canopeans are beaming positive energy called SOWF, Substance Of We Feeling, to Shikasta.

More than one group of aliens has been dabbling on earth. A malevolent group of aliens from the planet Shammat are stealing the SOWF to power their evil empirial conquests. This is why Shikasta is broken. There isn't enough Substance Of We Feeling. Too many people and not enough SOWF. And those evil Shammatians are stealing the SOWF making matters worse.

Many aliens are sent to earth to help. Aliens incarnate on earth to accomplish their missions, being born as a human. Many of us are aliens sent here on a mission and don't know it. Desires and sorrows distract us from accomplishing our missions in life. If we do not accomplish our mission, we have to keep incarnating here over and over again until we do. If we are successful in accomplishing our mission we can hope to be sent on a mission to someplace nicer next time, as Shikasta is a particularly tough assignment, a very painful world to visit.

The report continues into some near future where superpowers collapse and global war, economic devastation, environmental disaster and chaos ensue, a little too prophetic for comfort.

After the collapse of the superpowers, the Chinese are the the only power left standing. The white race is put on trial by an international tribunal. Our friend Johar has incarnated here as George Sherban to plead a case for the defense and stop the war and bloodshed before humans wipe themselves out completely.

I wont give away the ending. I'll just say everyone really should read this book. It will alter your world view and inspire you as Doris Lessing has inspired a generation of free thinking human beings to accomplish their mission to help make the world a better place to live, to alleviate human suffering, and stop war, and that's why she deserves all our admiration and respect.

Having said that. I need some SOWF. I am really getting low lately.