The Minx's Farrago

inspiration: the music of 2011 - my top 10 albums

2011-12-31T18:20:00.000-06:00

Spoiler! #1 is Leaves' Eyes - Meredead

I don't really exist without music. So for an end of the year post, a little homage to the sounds that kept me together: my top ten albums released in 2011.

And I listen to a whole lot of everything, so I won't attempt to give this list any more of a theme than "I really liked these, you guys."

So... I really liked these, you guys.

Honourable Mention: Britney Spears - Femme Fatale (dance pop). Fave song: Criminal.
Sometimes (often) I need a little Britney. This album is totally my favourite of hers yet. Dance-pop bliss beginning to end.

10. Lovex - Watch Out! (glam rock). Fave song: Queen of the Night.
I liked their previous two albums more for reasons I can't really figure out--they were darker? Less brash? More sincere? I liked the gothy styling better than the new disco flavour? But Watch Out! is still a lot of fun with several awesome songs. Yay, sparkly glam.

9. Evanescence - Evanescence (alt rock). Fave song: Secret Door.
Long time no see, Amy Lee. (My high school self says hi!) This eponymous album feels, appropriately, really true to form, all emotionally fraught. It's much of a sameness, but a good sameness with some standout earworm moments, especially in the slow songs. And I just really like fraught. And Amy's voice. Being fraught.

8. Lady Gaga - Born This Way (dance pop). Fave song: Heavy Metal Lover.
I wish it had been a bit more like The Fame Monster, which remains my favourite Gaga, but BTW grew on me. There's super good stuff mixed in with the pretty good stuff (and the bit of facepalmingly unsubtle stuff). The variety of sounds she mashes together into one album is great, but I wish there'd been more songs like Heavy Metal Lover, because damn that's fabulous and makes the whole thing for me.

7. Elane - Arcane (dark folk). Fave song: Arcane Ride.
Each of Elane's albums have been such a lovely mix of ethereal, gothic, medieval and folk, and Arcane is no exception. It's a little less unified/more varied than usual, and a little more daring and adventurous too. Their songs are so beautifully vivid and feed the imagination like crazy.

6. Florence + the Machine - Ceremonials (alt pop). Fave song: Shake It Out.
Bit of a latecomer to the list. Took me a while to realize this had come out at the end of October. Nevertheless, though I haven't worn holes in it just yet like most of the others on the list, it's well on its way. It's the good parts from 2009's Lungs exploded into awesome layeredness and richness. Resonant organ and pounding drums and echoing choir and tinkly bits and of course Florence's voice swamping you all at once.

5. Faun - Eden (pagan folk). Fave song: Hymn to Pan.
I adore Faun. I didn't even realize they had a new album coming out this year because I've been so in love with their 2010 acoustic album (Buch der Balladen - Book of Ballads). Eden is just as amazing as ever, true to their sound yet still endlessly creative. And it's really long, which is awesome. Over an hour of being transported into a world of dark magic and wonder, where we dance all night and sleep all day.

4. VNV Nation - Automatic (synth pop). Fave song: Nova.
This is right up there with the hallowed Futureperfect as my all-time favourite VNV Nation albums. Their sound has always morphed from robotic to melodic from album to album, but I love them most when they get out the catchy hooks and really dig them in, like they do here. There's a very warm, cozy tone to the album overall. It's the Star Wars: A New Hope of dieselpunky futurepop.

3. Nemesea - The Quiet Resistance (symphonic rock). Fave song: High Enough.
The dark horse! Nemesea's album In Control from 2007 was solid and enjoyable, but it didn't grab me terribly hard. This one did. The band shines now, especially in the beautiful contrast of Manda Ophuis' fragile voice with the heavy guitars. Also, the cover art is in the Eowyn-style battle-maiden-with-sword vein. So, yeah, obviously, recommended.

2. Within Temptation - The Unforgiving (symphonic metal). Fave song: Faster.
Within Temptation has evolved from progressive/power metal to gothic metal to symphonic metal to The Unforgiving, which is... well, it's always been hard for me to pinpoint their sound. While The Silent Force era will probably always be my favourite, I really like the alt-rock stylistic turn of The Unforgiving; Sharon van Adel's voice is as wonderful on the poppier side as it is on the operatic side. I am just a big WT fan no matter what they do, and I love The Unforgiving from beginning to end.

1. Leaves' Eyes - Meredead (folk metal). Fave song: To France.
Not only my favourite album of the year but really damn close to favourite album of ever. I've loved Leaves' Eyes more and more as they've eased off on the growling and emphasized the gorgeousness of Liv Kristine's voice and medieval instruments. Their music is just as epic as ever on Meredead, but with the ratio of harshness to melody almost completely in melody's favour, it's also incredibly moving and lovely. Being thoroughly descended from various Vikings, Celts and Germanic types, I may be genetically predisposed to Leaves' Eyes, but whatever the reason, this is a very special album.

There's 2011's favourites. Can't wait to hear 2012. Especially as it's going to start with new Nightwish! ::reattaches headphones for the next 365 days::

creation: Love, Loss and Other Oddities: Tales from Saskatchewan

2011-12-13T11:30:00.001-06:00

Introducing... What I've been working on these past few months! An anthology of twenty all-new stories of love, loss, and strange happenings on the prairie from seventeen Saskatchewan authors. Includes an urban fantasy story by yours truly!

LOVE, LOSS AND OTHER ODDITIES: Tales from Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Romance Writers
Foreword by New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh

LOVE
Back for a weekend in the city where it all went wrong, Emma has reservations about everything, especially him.

LOSS
A trip to her childhood home offers a Cree woman a chance to settle more than her late father’s estate.

AND OTHER ODDITIES
When Sam appears in human form, Litha must decide between dying to be with him and living without him.

Love and loss aren’t the only things happening every day on the prairie: Saskatchewan is full of the unexpected. Seventeen regional authors explore just how strange and wonderful this province can be in these twenty stories. From historical fiction to paranormal romance, with stops along the way for contemporary adventures, suspense, and urban fantasy, this anthology is the one Saskatchewan road that won’t take you on a straightforward journey.

Nurturing local writers of popular fiction for twenty-five years, Saskatchewan Romance Writers is proud to present this collection of outstanding short stories. Come take a trip through the extraordinary prairie!

“The title is a perfectly accurate one… there is something here to suit all tastes. I have read all the stories and have been well entertained.” -- Mary Balogh, New York Times bestselling author

Ebook $4.99

Paperback $14.95

available via Lulu

More information, including the table of contents and story previews, can be found here. ♥

creation: new Victorian Poetry Prints - Emily Brontë, P. B. Shelley, A. C. Swinburne, W. B. Yeats

2011-12-01T11:45:00.006-06:00

I've been busy these past two months with a big writing project--which I'll be posting about really soon--but I've still managed to make four new Victorian poetry prints! (And then my computer died, but all is well again with no files lost. There was some panic at the time, though.)

As before, prints are $7 + shipping in my etsy shop. The four new ones feature poems by Emily Brontë, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and William Butler Yeats.

Prints & Pretties - Regency & Victorian Art & Poetry by Shakoriel

creation: Victorian Poetry Prints (+ etsy shop)

2011-09-20T12:15:00.004-06:00

Long time, no blog! I've been busy this past month with a new adventure: creating prints featuring 19th-century illustrations and poetry.

Byron - "She Walks in Beauty" - Victorian Poetry Print

These are Victorian pictorial engravings, line art that once illustrated mid-19th-century books, long out of copyright and in the public domain. I'm remixing them, giving them a modern touch by digitally hand-colouring them. Each painting takes me about eight hours. I really love breathing new life into what are already lovely works of art. I hope the original artists and engravers would be pleased to see these 21st-century adaptations of their creations.

Keats - "Bright Star" - Victorian Poetry Print

Each illustration is paired with a few lines of 19th-century poetry, mostly the Romantic poets (but my definition of 'Romantic poet' is pretty broad and non-canonical). I try to choose poems that fit the mood of the artwork, so that the one complements and illuminates the other. I wonder if the poets would be happy with the prints, too... I imagine some would think them too sentimental (Byron, I'm looking at you!)

Blake - "To See a World in a Grain of Sand" - Victorian Poetry Print

I originally began making these for myself, then thought they'd look wonderful in a neo-Victorian parlor, or a romantic boudoir, or a steampunk study. They're high quality borderless inkjet prints, 8.5" x 11", on heavy cardstock. You can find them here in my etsy shop; they're $7 + shipping. I'll be adding a new print every week or so. ♥

inspiration: "Portrait of Jacques Cathelineau" by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson

2011-07-29T13:30:00.000-06:00

PORTRAIT OF JACQUES CATHELINEAU

-- Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (late 18th-early 19th c.)
[image via Wikimedia]

inspiration: "Lucifer in Starlight" by George Meredith

2011-07-27T17:22:00.000-06:00

LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.

-- George Meredith (1883?)
[read his collected poems here, here and here]

inspiration: "Cosmic Love" by Florence + The Machine

2011-07-25T12:00:00.001-06:00

COSMIC LOVE

-- Florence + The Machine, from Lungs (2009)

inspiration: "Isolde" by Aubrey Beardsley

2011-07-22T13:25:00.001-06:00

ISOLDE

-- Aubrey Beardsley (1895)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "A Song of Sherwood" by Alfred Noyes

2011-07-20T13:15:00.000-06:00

A SONG OF SHERWOOD

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old,
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:
For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house
Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:
Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies,
And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!
Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?
Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold,
Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould,
Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,
And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together
With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.
The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.
All the heart of England hid in every rose
Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old
And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold
Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen
All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men—
Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day—

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash
Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash,
The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly,
And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves
Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

-- Alfred Noyes, in Collected Poems, Vol. I (1913)
[read this book online here]

inspiration: "Paranoid Circus" by Lyriel

2011-07-18T13:45:00.000-06:00

PARANOID CIRCUS

-- Lyriel, from Paranoid Circus (re-release 2011)

inspiration: "Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia" by Sofonisba Anguissola

2011-07-15T14:18:00.000-06:00

INFANTA ISABELLA CLARA EUGENIA

-- Sofonisba Anguissola (1599)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study" by Anna Laetitia Barbauld

2011-07-13T12:00:00.001-06:00

AN INVENTORY OF THE FURNITURE IN DR. PRIESTLEY'S STUDY

A map of every country known,
With not a foot of land his own.
A list of folks that kicked a dust
On this poor globe, from Ptol. the First;
He hopes,—indeed it is but fair,—
Some day to get a corner there.
A group of all the British kings,
Fair emblem! on a packthread swings.
The Fathers, ranged in goodly row,
A decent, venerable show,
Writ a great while ago, they tell us,
And many an inch o'ertop their fellows.
A Juvenal to hunt for mottos;
And Ovid's tales of nymphs and grottos.
The meek-robed lawyers, all in white;
Pure as the lamb,—at least, to sight.
A shelf of bottles, jar and phial,
By which the rogues he can defy all,—
All filled with lightning keen and genuine,
And many a little imp he'll pen you in
Which, like Le Sage's sprite, let out,
Among the neighbours makes a rout;
Brings down the lightning on their houses,
And kills their geese, and frights their spouses.
A rare thermometer, by which
He settles, to the nicest pitch,
The just degrees of heat, to raise
Sermons, or politics, or plays.
Papers and books, a strange mixed olio,
From shilling touch to pompous folio;
Answer, remark, reply, rejoinder,
Fresh from the mint, all stamped and coined here;
Like new-made glass, set by to cool,
Before it bears the workman's tool.
A blotted proof-sheet, wet from Bowling.
—"How can a man his anger hold in?"—
Forgotten times, and college themes,
Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes;—
A mass of heterogeneous matter,
A chaos dark, nor land nor water;—
New books, like new-born infants, stand,
Waiting the printer's clothing hand;—
Others, a motley ragged brood,
Their limbs unfashioned all, and rude,
Like Cadmus' half-formed men appear;
One rears a helm, one lifts a spear,
And feet were lopped and fingers torn
Before their fellow limbs were born;
A leg began to kick and sprawl
Before the head was seen at all,
Which quiet as a mushroom lay
Till crumbling hillocks gave it way;
And all, like controversial writing,
Were born with teeth, and sprung up fighting.
"But what is this," I hear you cry,
"Which saucily provokes my eye?"—
A thing unknown, without a name,
Born of the air and doomed to flame.

-- Anna Laetitia Barbauld (c. 1773; first published 1825)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "She" by Abney Park

2011-07-11T12:00:00.000-06:00

SHE

-- Abney Park, from Lost Horizons (2008)

inspiration: "The Sabbat of Witches" by Francisco de Goya

2011-07-08T12:30:00.004-06:00

THE SABBAT OF WITCHES

-- Francisco de Goya (c. 1797-8)

[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "The Pains of Sleep" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

2011-07-06T12:00:00.003-06:00

THE PAINS OF SLEEP

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong !
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still !
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !
And shame and terror over all !
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did :
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed : the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,--
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do !
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1803)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "Guardian Angel" by Lovex

2011-07-04T12:00:00.001-06:00

GUARDIAN ANGEL

-- Lovex, from Divine Insanity (2006)

ramble: research books bought & read, June 2011

2011-06-30T23:54:00.081-06:00

The non-fiction/classics I bought this month came from three places: the used book store, where I traded in a bunch of books from classes a while back that I preferred never to see again, ugh; the mail-order bookshop that sells cheap remaindered books (I suppose? I don't really know how it works); and the bargain book sections of local bookstores.

I am, quite obviously, a bargain hunter, even more so this month than usual, because I have flung myself back into collecting fashion dolls, and the Stuff budget has had to adjust accordingly. This is ostensibly a good thing, since I hardly have room for more books, and dolls can perch on things and in corners. However, I'm still buying the same number of books, really, just cheaper ones. I outwit even myself.

Conversely, I didn't read very many research books this month. I've been reading fiction again instead, mostly the few Georgette Heyer Regency/Georgian novels I hadn't read before because I've been saving them, but they are too awesome and I can't save them forever.

So:

Research Books Read, June 2011

The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London by Daniel Hahn (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) A very enjoyable read. Hahn has a lively style, and he skips around merrily through the titular 600 years, dishing out remarkable facts about the animals at the Tower and the people who cared for them, and fun gossip and stories to fill in the holes. I didn't know anything about the Tower Menagerie, and I couldn't have asked for a better tour. There are some tough bits to get through, though, when you're sensitive about the mistreatment of animals (which I am), but Hahn handles these episodes deftly, and they're easily skipped, anyway. But, I think, the unfortunate parts of this history are absolutely worth knowing, if only so we don't ever repeat them.
Guinevere by Norma Lorre Goodrich (HarperPerennial, 1992) This was a letdown. Goodrich is--I hate to say it, but I don't know what else to say, honestly--rather crackpotty with her theories. The book is neither literary criticism nor history, but instead inhabits an ill-defined and horribly awkward non-genre, wherein the author tries to prove that Guinevere really existed on the basis of... nothing much. She uses later medieval myths and romances to spin interesting theories about the legendary early medieval queen, sure, and I would've been well pleased had she left it at that; but instead, she insists that her theories are based on sound facts when they aren't. It actually made me a bit angry. The literature Goodrich discusses is beautiful and valuable in its own right without protestations of 'truth' and assertions of 'real history' to somehow unnecessarily 'authenticate' it. The willy-nilly mangling of sources left this reader, at least, shaking her head. Many interesting points for one to jump off into one's own research here, but overall, this is an unfortunate and frustrating exercise in wishful thinking.
Witchcraft: A Brief History of Demons, Folklore, and Superstition by Lois Martin (Constable and Robinson, 2010) This is a most excellent introduction to, or refresher on, the history of witchcraft in Europe. I have a sensitive bullshit detector when it comes to books on witchcraft, thanks to classes on medieval magic etc., and this one didn't set it off at all (the Brief History series is pretty solid, which is why I picked it up). In fact, this is a very good survey of witchcraft scholarship as well as the history itself; very evenhanded, and not prone to indulging in hyperbole. Martin succinctly distinguishes modern Wicca from medieval witchcraft, then covers beliefs in fallen angels and the devil, and the folklore surrounding witches' pacts, sabbats and powers. She also goes into the legal definitions of witchcraft and ends with a discussion of the many and futile searches for 'real' witches' cults of the Middle Ages. She includes a nice, if cursory, section of primary sources and a bibliography with lots of the major scholars. I definitely recommend this book, especially to anyone interested in learning about medieval witchcraft beliefs but unsure where to begin.

Research Books Bought, June 2011

Witchcraft: A Brief History of Demons, Folklore, and Superstition -- see above.
Victorian Girls: Lord Lyttelton's Daughters by Sheila Fletcher (Hambledon and London, 2001) A group biography of four nieces of Prime Minister Gladstone, incorporating their letters and diaries. Looks wonderful.
Marie and Mary by Nigel Tranter (Hodder and Stoughton, 2004) I've been on a Mary Queen of Scots kick, and picked up this joint biography since I know very little about her mother, Marie de Guise, another powerful yet unfortunate queen.
Love and Madness: The Murder of Martha Ray, Mistress of the Fourth Earl of Sandwich by Martin Levy (William Morrow, 2004) "The remarkable story behind the tabloid sensation of the eighteenth century." The tabloid sensation, huh? I'm super excited about this: late 18th century, cult of celebrity, mistresses, 'crimes of passion'... oh yes. Some of my favourite things!
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales ed. by Chris Baldick (Oxford University Press, 1993) A fantastic anthology of short gothic fiction--over two centuries of it, from the late 18th century to the late 20th, including authors from good old Anonymous to Edgar Allan Poe to Arthur Conan Doyle to Ambrose Bierce to H.P. Lovecraft to Angela Carter to Isabel Allende. Whew. So cool.
The Book of Guinevere by Andrea Hopkins (Saraband, 2004) I think I'll have much more success with this Guinevere book than the one above. It's an anthology of prose, poetry, and paintings about Guinevere--really all manner of art and literature that involves the legendary queen, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It's a lovely book itself: hardcover, full colour pages, beautifully designed.
The Virago Book of Fairy Tales ed. by Angela Carter (Virago, 1991) and The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales ed. by Angela Carter (Virago, 1993) I was so happy to find these. Carter's selection of fairytales encircles the world, culturally and temporally, and she categorizes the stories under such wonderful headings as 'Good Girls and Where It Gets Them' and 'Up to Something.' "Trumps Grimm," proclaims the cover of the first volume, and I believe it!

Previous Lists: May 2011, April 2011, January-March 2011

* Bookplate image via The Graphics Fairy (modded by me, obviously)

inspiration: portrait of Wilhelmine Encke by Anna Dorothea Therbusch

2011-06-27T14:45:00.000-06:00

PORTRAIT OF WILHELMINE ENCKE, SINCE 1794 COUNTESS WILHELMINE VON LICHTENAU, MISTRESS OF FREDERICK WILLIAM II OF PRUSSIA*

-- Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1776)
[via Wikimedia here]

*whew

inspiration: "Fairy-Land" by Edgar Allan Poe

2011-06-24T12:42:00.000-06:00

FAIRY-LAND

Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again—again—again—
Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places—
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down—still down—and down,
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be—
O'er the strange woods—o'er the sea—
Over spirits on the wing—
Over every drowsy thing—
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light—
And then, how deep!—O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like—almost anything—
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before—
Videlicet, a tent—
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

-- Edgar Allan Poe (1829)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "Like a Rose on the Grave of Love" by Xandria

2011-06-22T12:00:00.001-06:00

LIKE A ROSE ON THE GRAVE OF LOVE

-- Xandria, from India (2005)

inspiration: "The Witch's Daughter" by Frederick Stuart Church

2011-06-20T12:30:00.000-06:00

THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER

-- Frederick Stuart Church (1881)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "Hermaphroditus" by Algernon Charles Swinburne

2011-06-17T12:30:00.001-06:00

HERMAPHRODITUS

I

Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,
   Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;
   Of all things tired thy lips look weariest,
Save the long smile that they are wearied of.
Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough,
   Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best;
   Two loves at either blossom of thy breast
Strive until one be under and one above.
Their breath is fire upon the amorous air,
   Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire:
And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair,
   Two things turn all his life and blood to fire;
A strong desire begot on great despair,
   A great despair cast out by strong desire.

II

Where between sleep and life some brief space is,
   With love like gold bound round about the head,
   Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,
Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his
To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;
   Yet from them something like as fire is shed
   That shall not be assuaged till death be dead,
Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.
Love made himself of flesh that perisheth
   A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;
But on the one side sat a man like death,
   And on the other a woman sat like sin.
So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath
   Love turned himself and would not enter in.

III

Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light
   That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes?
   Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies,
Or like the night's dew laid upon the night.
Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right,
   Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise
   Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs,
Or make thee woman for a man's delight.
To what strange end hath some strange god made fair
   The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?
Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair,
   Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers,
Given all the gold that all the seasons wear
   To thee that art a thing of barren hours?

IV

Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear.
   Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know;
   Or wherefore should thy body's blossom blow
So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear
Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear—
   Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,
   Though love and life and death should come and go,
So dreadful, so desirable, so dear?
Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise
   Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
   Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs;
   But Love being blind, how should he know of this?

Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863.

-- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems & Ballads (First Series, 1866; 1917 edition)
[read the whole book here]

A photo of the very sculpture of Hermaphroditus that inspired Swinburne is below (and is possibly NSFW)

Sleeping Hermaphroditus, aka the Borghese Hermaphroditus, in the Musée du Louvre

[image via Wikimedia here (larger version)]

inspiration: "In Passing" by Indica

2011-06-10T13:03:00.000-06:00

IN PASSING

-- Indica, from A Way Away (2010)

inspiration: "Four Cats" by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

2011-06-08T12:00:00.002-06:00

FOUR CATS IN DIFFERENT POSES

-- Utagawa Kuniyoshi (mid-19th century?)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull" by Lord Byron

2011-06-06T13:04:00.000-06:00

LINES INSCRIBED UPON A CUP FORMED FROM A SKULL

Start not—nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaff’d, like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up—thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet’s shape
The drink of Gods, than reptile’s food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others’ let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst: another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not? since through life’s little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.

-- George Gordon, Lord Byron (1808)
[via Wikisource here]

ramble: Eliza Haywood, remarkable 18th-century author

2011-06-03T12:00:00.001-06:00

Eliza Haywood (c. 1693-1756) was one of the first English novelists. Yet she is not at all as well known as the male authors who followed her, those who wrote what are widely considered some of the first English novels--for example, Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748), or Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749). In fact,

"William B. Warner has argued that Richardson and Fielding set out rather consciously to disavow, absorb yet erase, and obliterate their female predecessors, including Haywood, whose work is essential to the history of the novel. Feminist critics including Margaret Doody, Jane Spencer, and Ros Ballaster give her credit for initiating major forms of the novel [and] key character types." (Oxford DNB)

Haywood's earliest novels are perhaps best classed as 'amatory fiction'--sexy, daring tales of adventure in the bedroom and the streets--which is perhaps another reason why they have not until recently received as much attention, acclaim, or study as the more formal, serious novels by her male contemporaries. However, she wrote in many genres, crafting plays, poetry, literary criticism, political essays and conduct books as well as novels. She even translated a number of works from the continent, and founded several periodicals aimed at an educated female audience. With all these ventures, it is not surprise that her tone ranged widely, too. For example, by the 1750s, her books were more moralistic and domestic, and rather less titillating, in tone.

Fortunately, Haywood's oeuvre has indeed experienced a renaissance in the past few decades, and many of her books are back in print. And they are most worthy of our attention. Not only are they well-crafted, entertaining, exciting stories, but they give us insight into the lives, tastes, ideals, and social structures of the 18th-century woman. She was certainly well-known and well-read in her day: she and the earlier women authors Aphra Behn (1640-1689) and Delarivier Manley (c. 1670-1724) were known by the mid-18th century as the 'Fair Triumvirate of Wit.' Haywood was truly

"a professional woman author--she lived by her pen, as the saying goes--writing popular fiction, and it was very popular." (Introduction, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, 7)

Haywood's books are the sort of thing that the grandmothers and mothers of Regency women may have read, and perhaps passed down to (or hid from) their daughters. They are the precursors to the novels of such Regency and Victorian luminaries as Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and the Brontë sisters.

"As Christopher Flint remarked, 'Haywood, more than any other eighteenth-century writer ... bridges the fictional narratives of Behn or Defoe and the works of Burney and Austen' (Family Fictions, 219)." (Oxford DNB)

Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Inquiry, published in three parts in 1719-1720, was Haywood's first novel. It draws influence from French romances and develops those themes into a romp filled with vibrant, surprising characters. The protagonist is D'Elmont, a gentleman who is in fact fairly gentlemanly, and numerous women, all quite remarkable--Amena, Alovisa, Melantha, Ciamara, Camilla, Violetta and the superior Melliora--through whom Haywood explores conceptions of feminine and sexual identity. These ladies and their suitors go through a host of adventures, misadventures, affairs, and intrigues that are both charmingly fun... and cleverly complex.

"[B]luntly, it is a bodice ripper. It is also an emotionally charged soap opera of brutal ambition, adulterous passion, and abuses of power. Again, it is a cautionary young-adult novel tracing the love-lives of impressionable young women in a violent, male-dominated world. ... Any novelist would kill to write a novel with such broad appeal." (Introduction, Love in Excess, 23)

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, published in 1751, is quite a different novel. It follows the not-too-subtly-named heroine through wayward girlhood, problematic marriage, and finally wise(r) maturity. It is a fiction that is also a conduct manual for girls pondering their own marriages--but it is also entertaining in its way, with multiple plotlines and an ensemble cast of characters who are mere types on the surface but actually illuminate the nature of those types. And, read critically, it also serves as a cautionary tale:

"the story of an intelligent, independent, wilful woman discovering the full force of the disciplining, transforming forces that create the subdued woman for whom society's gendered commands become willed behaviour." (Oxford DNB)

Haywood's Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze (1725), a novella, is rather more ambiguous than either of these two novels, and in its interplay of adventure and didacticism it is, I think, the most interesting example of her fiction. Its heroine decides to try living like those other, scandalous women do, and puts on a series of disguises in order to do so (wealthy courtesan, country maid, recent widow). She finds pleasure but also learns unpleasant lessons, as when she seduces her lover in each of her disguises and receives his letters to each persona, all of which plainly illustrates his cheating ways. There is a moral of sorts to the story, and yet the ambiguities remain; it is a fascinating portrait of the contradictory standards women were socially expected to live up to. Fantomina exemplifies Haywood's belief that

"the most interesting and instructive stories occur when passion is intensified sufficiently to overcome prudence." (Introduction, Fantomina and Other Works, 16)

Haywood herself is almost as much of an enigma as Fantomina (indeed, "female authorship was widely considered to be the literary equivalent of prostitution" [Introduction, Fantomina and Other Works, 9]). There is not a great deal known about her life, at least not in comparison with her contemporaries Fielding and Richardson; the most widely disseminated tidbit about her is that she was mocked by Alexander Pope in his Dunciad (1728). But we must remember that

"[t]hough we now know little about the private woman behind [her] conspicuous success, our ignorance is not proof of her obscurity. ... Haywood was solidly enmeshed in the literary scene of her day." (Introduction, Love in Excess, 8)

She was born in Shropshire, married early (her maiden name was Eliza Fowler) and widowed probably by 1719/20, then lived with the poet Richard Savage, by whom she had a child. Beginning in 1724, she lived with William Hatchett, a bookseller and playwright, and had a son with him. She was an actress as well as author: her career on the stage began in 1715. While she began to write fiction in 1719, she continued to act for another two decades. Haywood was a vigorous and brilliant women whose prolific output in all kinds of literary and dramatic fields is incredible. She was active in other ways, too: she participated strenuously in politics, to the point of being brought in for questioning over her statements. She was a truly remarkable woman whose experimental and unconventional life and works are well worth reading as precedents of and precursors to the women authors, and women readers, of the later 18th and the 19th century.

Sources:
-- Paula R. Backscheider, 'Haywood, Eliza (1693?–1756),' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Sept 2010. [link]
-- Eliza Haywood, Fantomina and Other Works, ed. Alexander Pettit, Margaret Case Croskery, and Anna C. Patchias (Broadview Press, 2004). [link]
-- Eliza Haywood, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, ed. Christine Blouch (Broadview Press, 1998). [link]
-- Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess, ed. David Oakleaf (Broadview Press, 2000); 2nd edn. [link]
-- Haywood's Wikipedia page [link] has a list of her major works and a list of resources, including a modern biography.

[This was a guest post for Lesley-Anne McLeod's Regency blog; many thanks to her for that opportunity, and for allowing me to repost it here at home. Thanks go to her, too, for finding the images.]

inspiration: "To France" by Leaves' Eyes

2011-06-01T12:00:00.001-06:00

TO FRANCE

-- Leaves' Eyes, from Meredead (2011)

ramble: research books bought & read, May 2011

2011-05-30T12:00:00.001-06:00

This month's list of the non-fiction and classics I've read and bought is somewhat abbreviated, partly because I went mad at last month's book sale and spent all my money, and partly because I was sick for a few weeks and thus capable of doing little more than staring, half-conscious, at the internet.

So, anyway:

Research Books Read, May 2011

Blenheim: Biography of a Palace by Marian Fowler (Penguin, 1991) I adore Fowler's voice; she could make a grocery list into a majestic, sweeping, emotional affair. Here she tells the story of Blenheim, one of England's grandest country houses, through several of its masters, while treating the palace like a (very ominous) character itself. The story starts with the first Duke of Marlborough, ends with Winston Churchill, and makes numerous stops in the 18th-20th centuries in between. Couldn't recommend it more.
Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz (Basic, 2005) This is easily one of my favourite non-fiction books of the past year, if not ever. It's exactly the style of biography/history-seen-through-individual-eyes crossed with literary criticism that I love, and try to write (see: my thesis... or, uh, don't, it's nowhere near as good), and wish I found more often. Blend that with the Napoleonic wars, fairy tales, feminist theory, and the lives of numerous remarkable storytelling women, and I think it's clear why I've been cradling this book to my heart and cooing at it. Paradiz makes each chapter into a fairy tale of its own, drawing parallels between the contents of particular Grimm tales and the stories of the women who had, in fact, told them to the Grimms in the first place. Truly awesome.
Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet (Faber and Faber, 2002) "Delving into such Victorian passions as advertising, interior decoration, sex scandals and serial killers, Matthew Sweet shows us that we are not so far removed from the Victorians as we would like to think." Indeed. Sweet tackles and dismantles all the ridiculous stereotypes we have of the Victorians (they were prudes; they were hypocrites; they were uber-religious; they were boring). Because, well, they weren't. This book is a totally delicious romp.
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft by Claire Tomalin (Penguin, 1992; revised edition) A thoroughly enjoyable biography of the famous proto-feminist (and mother of Mary Shelley). She was even more unconventional than I'd thought, and this book does justice to such an amazing woman. Also, great information on the literary scene in late 18th-century London and Revolutionary politics in Paris.

Research Books Bought, May 2011

The Works of P.B. Shelley (Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994) These are my favourite poetry anthologies, and I finally found Shelley for my slowly growing collection of them. Need more!
Dragons, Elves, and Heroes ed. by Lin Carter (Ballantine, 1969) This is a curious little anthology of excerpts from various ancient and medieval texts on the fantastical and magical. It includes bits of Beowulf, the Volsunga Saga, the Mabinogion, the Grettir Saga, the poems of "Ossian", Le Morte d'Arthur, the Kiev Cycle, the Kalevala, Mandeville's Travels, Shakespeare, The Faerie Queene, and the Gesta Romanorum. I may have missed some. It's an eclectic selection and includes some of my favourite works and some I've not read before.

Previous Lists: April 2011, January-March 2011

* Bookplate image via The Graphics Fairy (modded by me, obviously)

inspiration: two portraits of Mme de Pompadour by François Boucher

2011-05-25T12:00:00.001-06:00

MADAME DE POMPADOUR

-- François Boucher (1758, 1759)
[images via Wikimedia here and here]

inspiration: "Stars" by Emily Brontë

2011-05-23T12:30:00.000-06:00

STARS

Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
   Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
   And left a desert sky?

All through the night, your glorious eyes
   Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
   I blessed that watch divine.

I was at peace, and drank your beams
   As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
   Like petrel on the sea.

Thought followed thought, star followed star
   Through boundless regions, on;
While one sweet influence, near and far,
   Thrilled through, and proved us one!

Why did the morning dawn to break
   So great, so pure, a spell;
And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek,
   Where your cool radiance fell?

Blood-red, he rose, and, arrow-straight,
   His fierce beams struck my brow;
The soul of nature sprang, elate,
   But mine sank sad and low!

My lids closed down, yet through their veil
   I saw him, blazing, still,
And steep in gold the misty dale,
   And flash upon the hill.

I turned me to the pillow, then,
   To call back night, and see
Your worlds of solemn light, again,
   Throb with my heart, and me!

It would not do—the pillow glowed,
   And glowed both roof and floor;
And birds sang loudly in the wood,
   And fresh winds shook the door;

The curtains waved, the wakened flies
   Were murmuring round my room,
Imprisoned there, till I should rise,
   And give them leave to roam.

Oh, stars, and dreams, and gentle night;
   Oh, night and stars, return!
And hide me from the hostile light
   That does not warm, but burn;

That drains the blood of suffering men;
   Drinks tears, instead of dew;
Let me sleep through his blinding reign,
   And only wake with you!

-- Emily Brontë, in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
[via Wikisource here; read the whole book here]

ramble: a gathering of books on the Pre-Raphaelites

2011-05-20T08:00:00.002-06:00

Mariana by J. E. Millais, 1851

I've always been in love with the Pre-Raphaelites. To me, their paintings represent "good" art: art that turns all of life into beauty, even the sorrowful bits, and makes that beauty into an emotion. Whether that's actually an appropriate definition of "good" art (or if there is any such thing as definably "good" art) is another debate entirely, but for me artistic beauty is most definitely exemplified in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

To contemporaries, however, the Pre-Raphaelites' works were ugly, blasphemous, and retrograde. The controversy the Pre-Raphaelites caused, and the drama of their private lives, are subjects as interesting as their creations.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood formed in 1848 as a group of seven artists, poets, and artistic/literary critics. The founding trio consisted of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt.

There were several other artists and writers of the period loosely associated with them, or influenced by their style and ideals, including Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and John William Waterhouse. Women also belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite circle: they participated as painters and poets, as well as models and supporters. They included Elizabeth Siddal, Jane Morris, Christina Rossetti, Fanny Cornforth, Effie Gray, Marie Stillman, and Louise, the Marchioness of Waterford. (There is a detailed list of associates here.)

The art the Pre-Raphaelites created was as varied as they were. Though they promoted medievalism, realism, and romanticism, personal creativity was paramount and obviously their ideals sometimes clashed. Nevertheless, their work was a strong and vibrant response to the formal artistic traditions that had developed in Europe since the early 16th century, and they remain popular today; just check out any poster shop. (Or every last one of my walls.)

Thanks to my longstanding interest, I've amassed a collection of books about the Pre-Raphaelites' lives and art, and so I thought I'd relate them for the delectation (I love that word) of others who share my interest, or are looking for sources to start with. There's an overwhelming amount of Pre-Raphaelite titles both in and out of print!

The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle ed. by Cecil Y. Lang (second edition)
A lovely anthology of Pre-Raphaelite poetry (both Rossettis, William Morris, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and George Meredith). From the back:

"Lang's introduction describes briefly the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, discusses each of the Pre-Raphaelite poets, both individually and in relation to the others, and grapples with the questions of definitions of Pre-Raphaelitism and the similarities between its painting and poetry. The book is appropriately illustrated with thirty-two works by D. G. Rossetti, John Ruskin, William H. Hunt, and other Pre-Raphaelite artists."

The Pre-Raphaelite Dream: Paintings and Drawings from the Tate Collection by Robert Upstone
A beautiful, oversized, full-colour catalogue of the Pre-Raphaelite collection of the Tate Gallery. From the back:

"The Pre-Raphaelite Dream showcases the range, virtuosity, and vision of the artists aligned with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Familiar, iconic pictures such as Rossetti's Proserpine, Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience and Millais's Mariana, are brought together with undeservedly less well-known paintings by the major artists.... Exceptional but rarely exhibited Pre-Raphaelite drawings, including major Rossetti and Burne-Jones works on paper that are unique to the Tate Collection, are also highlighted, as are a small group of prints."

Pre-Raphaelites at Home by Pamela Todd
A wonderfully engrossing group biography of the leading members. From the jacket flap:

"[A]uthor Pamela Todd conjures vivid impressions of the lives of [Dante Gabriel] Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and their immediate circle. We learn how and where they lived and, crucially, with whom, in this intimate study of their often complex social arrangements. Thoroughly researched and beautifully presented, the book draws on extensive collections of poetry and prose, as well as revealing diaries and letters of the time."

The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy by William Gaunt (revised edition)
A classic general history of the Pre-Raphaelites, with many colour illustrations. From the back:

"In this account of the Pre-Raphaelite movement William Gaunt describes the various paths taken by the main protagonists, their adventures and trials in pursuit of their aims: Hunt repairing to Palestine in search of the truth of religious expression; Millais turning his skill to more popular themes; Rossetti as poet and painter becoming obsessed by visions of a romantic past in which woman played an ideal or tragic part."

The Pre-Raphaelites by Timothy Hilton
An in-depth work of art history and criticism. From the back:

"This is the first critical history specifically of Pre-Raphaelite painting to have appeared for seventy years. Placing the movement in its historical setting, it relates the individual painters and their art to the larger concerns of nineteenth-century society. Virtually every major Pre-Raphaelite painting is both illustrated and discussed, as well as many works by the movement's minor talents."

Rossetti by John Nicoll
A detailed biography of the most famous Pre-Raphaelite of all. From the jacket flap:

"Many books have featured Rossetti the poet, but none, until now, has exclusively featured Rossetti the painter. Here is the first full account of the life of one of England's major painters and of the impact of his work on nineteenth-century art. ... Here, for the first time, Rossetti's secret sources of inspiration for his paintings are revealed."

Christina Rossetti: A Biography by Frances Thomas
And a biography of the "other" Rossetti (the one who's always the "other" because she's female*). From the back:

"Why is Christina Rossetti, one of the finest nineteenth-century poets, still so invisible today? This is the central question addressed in this important new biography. ... [T]his perceptive study, drawing on many previously untapped sources, enables us to piece together a more complete picture of this passionate, contradictory and enigmatic woman."

And finally,
Pre-Raphaelites by K. E. Sullivan (Discovering Art series)
A great basic introduction, with tons of colour illustrations and eight full-page pull-out prints in the back!

Out of the vast number of Pre-Raphaelite books published, there are many still on my Must-Read-Someday list:

Also a 2009 BBC
miniseries, starring a
whole lot of gorgeous
people, including
Aidan Turner.

Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle
Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter and Poet by Jan Marsh
Christina Rossetti: A Literary Biography by Jan Marsh
Jane Morris: The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty by Debra N. Mancoff
Pre-Raphaelites in Love by Gay Daly
Pre-Raphelite Sisterhood by Jan Marsh
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn
The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites by Elizabeth Prettejohn
The Pre-Raphaelites and Their World by Rachel Barnes

I would love to hear opinions on any of these books, and recommendations for more, from other Pre-Raphaelite devotees. ♥

* sigh

inspiration: "In The Dark" by The Birthday Massacre

2011-05-18T12:35:00.000-06:00

IN THE DARK

-- The Birthday Massacre, from Pins and Needles (2010)

inspiration: "The Magic Circle" by John William Waterhouse

2011-05-16T11:45:00.001-06:00

THE MAGIC CIRCLE

-- John William Waterhouse (1886)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "When I set out for Lyonnesse" by Thomas Hardy

2011-05-15T23:52:00.000-06:00

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
   A hundred miles away,
   The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
   A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
   While I should sojourn there
   No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
   While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
   With magic in my eyes,
   None managed to surmise
What meant my godlike gloriousness,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
   With magic in my eyes.

-- Thomas Hardy, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)
[read the collection here]

inspiration: "Locked Within the Crystal Ball" by Blackmore's Night

2011-05-09T11:45:00.001-06:00

LOCKED WITHIN THE CRYSTAL BALL

-- Blackmore's Night, from Secret Voyage (2008)

inspiration: the Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

2011-05-06T11:45:00.002-06:00

THE RAINBOW PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH I

-- Isaac Oliver (or possibly Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger) (c. 1600-1602)
[via Wikimedia here]

inspiration: "One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted -" by Emily Dickinson

2011-05-04T11:45:00.002-06:00

One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —
One need not be a House —
The Brain has Corridors — surpassing
Material Place —

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting —
That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase —
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter —
In lonesome Place —

Ourself behind ourself, concealed —
Should startle most —
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.

The Body — borrows a Revolver —
He bolts the Door —
O'erlooking a superior spectre —
Or More —

-- Emily Dickinson (no. 670, c. 1863)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "Shot in the Dark" by Within Temptation

2011-05-02T12:01:00.000-06:00

SHOT IN THE DARK

-- Within Temptation, from The Unforgiving (2011)

ramble: research books bought & read, April 2011

2011-04-29T11:45:00.002-06:00

This month's list of the non-fiction and classics I've read and bought is heavy on the latter. For, alas, the local symphony just held its annual secondhand book fair to raise funds and to torment all nearby bibliophiles.

So, as my lair-slash-library, the Bookcave, requires regular feedings of paperbacks and hardcovers (or it demands human sacrifice instead), I... bought more than fifty books.

(Hey! It's self-preservation! I must satisfy the Bookcave! I don't want to get eaten!)

So now I have no money 'til, oh, the end of time or thereabouts, but--totally worth it.

I think my haul ended up about two-thirds non-fiction/classics and one-third fiction (lots of fantasy/paranormal novels), but I'm just listing the former. As usual, since I don't finish (or even get very far into) books I don't like, the 'books read' part of this undertaking is really a list of recommendations; the 'books bought' bit is pure adventure.

Off we go:

Research Books Read, April 2011

Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj by Marian Fowler (Penguin, 1988) This is an absolutely beautifully written exploration of four nineteenth-century aristocratic British or American women and their experiences in India. The author is adept at both sketching their lives and providing cutting insights into the racism, classism, and sexism of their time and place.
The Age of Scandal: An Excursion Through a Minor Period by T. H. White (Oxford University Press, 1950 [rpt 1986]) Yes, that T.H. White. I loved this jolly little book about eighteenth century Europe (mostly England). It's a commentary on gossip, but also a book of gossip. Mr White is crotchety, chatty and catty. It's just awesome. I acquired this from my mum; good luck to her in getting it back. (No, never mind, it's okay; she said I could have it!)
Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney (Dell, 1981) I've been interested in Nikola Tesla, and this book, while almost too exhaustive for me (listings of patent numbers?!), is a fascinating study. I acquired this from my dad; good luck to him in getting it back. (He said I could borrow it; maybe he'll forget I have it...)

Research Books Bought at the Massive Secondhand Book Fair, April 2011

* Poetry

English Poetry of the Mid and Late Eighteenth Century ed. by Ricardo Quintana and Alvin Whitley (Alfred A. Knopf, 1963)
The Faber Book of Irish Verse ed. by John Montague (Faber and Faber, 1974) All the way from the earliest medieval to the modern day.
Selected Writings of William Blake ed. by Robert F. Gleckner (Meredith, Crofts Classics, 1967)
The Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Oxford University Press, 1913 [rpt 1959]) "Poems and translations, 1850-1870: together with the prose story ʻHand and Soul.'"
The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle ed. by Cecil Y. Lang (University of Chicago Press, 1975 [2nd ed.]) Anthology of poetry and paintings.
The Works of Sir Walter Scott; The Works of Christina Rossetti; The Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne; The Works of W.B. Yeats (all four are Wordsworth editions, 1994-1995) My favourite poetry editions are these, published in the 1990s by the Wordsworth Poetry Library. I also have Byron, Keats, and the Brontë sisters, and will hopefully continue to find more from the WPL series, because they're wonderfully done.

* Mythology, Folklore & Fairytales

The Quest of the Holy Grail trans. by P.M. Matarasso (Penguin Classics, 1969 [rpt 1981])
Arthurian Romance: A Short Introduction by Derek Pearsall (Blackwell, 2003)
Guinevere by Norma Lorre Goodrich (HarperCollins, 1992)
The Mabinogion: A Facsimile Reproduction of The Complete 1877 Edition by Lady Charlotte Guest (John Jones, 1977) I am very excited about this. Not because Lady Guest's translation is very good (it's not, and she leaves out all the juicy bits) but because I LOVE facsimile editions!
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories by A.S Byatt (Vintage, 1995)
A Book of Fabulous Beasts: Old Stories Retold by A.M. Smyth (Oxford University Press, 1939 [rpt 1949]) Including barnacle geese!
Silver Birch, Blood Moon ed. by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Avon, 1999) I love this series: anthologies of fairytale retellings by modern fantasy authors. I'm trying to get them all, so this was a welcome find.
Twice Upon a Time ed. by Denise Little (Daw, 1999) An awesome little anthology of fairytales retold from the perspectives of the villains, secondary characters, etc.
British Folktales by Katharine Briggs (Pantheon, 1970 [rpt 1977])
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford (Arkana [Penguin], 1993)

* Classic Literature

Anthology of British Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day ed. by Dale Spender and Janet Todd (Pandora, 1990)
Middle English Romances ed. by A.C. Gibbs (Northwestern University Press, 1966 [rpt 1988])
The Portable Renaissance Reader ed. by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (Viking, 1953 [rpt 1967]) Love this series--cute, compact little anthologies of snippets of important texts from different time periods. I also have the Elizabethan Reader and the Age of Reason Reader, so I figure I should keep collecting them.
Short Fiction of the Seventeenth Century ed. by Charles C. Mish (W.W. Norton & Co, 1968)
Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding (World's Classics: Oxford University Press, 1980)
The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin (Penguin Classics, 1986)
Victorians on Literature and Art ed. by Robert L. Peters (Prentice-Hall, 1961) A collection of essays on such things as "The Shaping of Art" and "The Public Voice" by late-19th-century authors and critics including John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, William Morris, and lots of others.
Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones by Erica Jong (W.W. Norton & Co, 1980 [rpt 2003]) I really don't quite know where to file this extraordinary novel, but I think it fits best here, as it aims to mimic the style of 18th-century amatory fiction (one of my favourite genres), but with a modern feminist's insight. I'm so excited to finally have a copy and to finally read it.

* Biography

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (HarperCollins, 1977 [rpt 2002])
The Dragon Empress: The Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi (1835-1908), Empress Dowager of China by Marina Warner (Cardinal, 1974)
Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir (Ballantine, 2006) This is historical fiction, but Alison Weir is a wonderful historian and biographer too, so I have no doubts about how awesome this will be.
My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger (Modern Library, 2002)
Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox (Emblem, 2009)
Mary Wollstonecraft: The Outstanding Biography of a Brilliant and Radical Woman by Claire Tomalin (Penguin, 1992 [revised edition])
The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser (Viking, 1989) The full subtitle is "From Britain's Queen Boadicea to Elizabeth I, from Catherine the Great to the twentieth-century triumvirate of Meir, Gandhi and Thatcher--the paradox, the politics, the legend and the lives of the sovereign women who have led their nations in war" which pretty well says it all.
The Queen's Necklace: Marie Antoinette and the Scandal that Shocked and Mystified France by Frances Mossiker (Phoenix, 1961 [rpt 2004])

* History

Kings and Queens of Early Britain by Geoffrey Ashe (Academy Chicago, 1982 [rpt 1998])
A Treasury of Royal Scandals by Michael Farquhar (Penguin, 2001) "The Shocking True Stories of History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors" -- um, yay!
Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet (Faber and Faber, 2002) I am beyond excited to read this. "Delving into such Victorian passions as advertising, interior decoration, sex scandals and serial killers, Matthew Sweet shows us that we are not so far removed from the Victorians as we would like to think."
The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London by Daniel Hahn (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004)
Legends and Lies: Great Mysteries of the American West by Dale L. Walker (Forge, 1999)

* Odd/Old Books

The Broken Spoke by Edward Gorey (Dodd, Mead & Co, 1976) I love Gorey's work and buy ANYTHING that bears his name. I think this is a first edition, so that's very exciting!
Shorter Novels of the Eighteenth Century: Rasselas, The Castle of Otranto, Vathek (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1903 [rpt 1948]) Everyman's Library no. 856. A very nice wee hardcover (Everyman's Library made good stuff) with Gothic novels by Johnson, Walpole, and Beckford.
The Odes of Horace: the Latin Text with Conington's Translation, in Two Volumes: Vol. II: Books III & IV (G.P. Putnam, 1900 [Ariel Booklets]) A lovely small red leatherbound book, with rough-cut pages gilded along the top. It's a facing page translation, which I would have killed for back when I was studying the Odes in Latin and wanting to die.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (George G. Harrap & Co/Riverside Press) A little slim hardcover, delicately printed in black with decorations in a pale ochre, with numerous tiny exquisite watercolour prints set in at intervals. I am in love with it, especially with the illustrations. I haven't yet been able to figure out when it was published, though. It's kind of an enigma and it's clearly going to take more research!

Research Books Bought at Bookstores, Because of Course I Went to Them Too, April 2011

Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo (Harper, 2006) Bizarre and morbid, just the way I like it.
Woman as Hero in Old English Literature by Jane Chance (Wipf and Stock, 2005 [reprint]) Thesis research.
The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter (Penguin, 2011 [reprint]) Finally, finally found a copy of this book--and it's a beautiful new edition with a gorgeous cover, too.

Previous Lists: January-March 2011

* Bookplate image via The Graphics Fairy (modded by me, obviously)

inspiration: "Portrait of a Lady with a Book" by Antoine Vestier

2011-04-27T11:45:00.001-06:00

PORTRAIT OF A LADY WITH A BOOK, NEXT TO A RIVER SOURCE*

-- Antoine Vestier (c. 1785)
[image via Wikimedia]

* what an extraordinarily prosaic title

inspiration: "Mad Song" by William Blake

2011-04-25T11:45:00.001-06:00

MAD SONG

The wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs enfold:
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling beds of dawn
The earth do scorn.

Lo! to the vault
Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
And with tempests play.

Like a fiend in a cloud
With howling woe,
After night I do crowd
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east
From whence comforts have increased;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.

-- William Blake, Poetical Sketches (1783)
[via Wikisource here; read the whole work here]

inspiration: "I Surrender" by In Strict Confidence

2011-04-22T11:45:00.002-06:00

I SURRENDER

-- In Strict Confidence, from La Parade Monstrueuse (2010)

inspiration: "Come, now a roundel" by Arthur Rackham

2011-04-20T12:45:00.000-06:00

"COME, NOW A ROUNDEL"*

-- Arthur Rackham (1908)
[via Wikimedia here]

* Illustration for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

recommendation: "Red Riding Hood" (2011 movie)

2011-04-18T11:30:00.002-06:00

Red Riding Hood surprised me. The only marketing for it that I caught emphasized a love triangle and... and... um, not much else. Love triangle mashed into the Red Riding Hood fairytale. And sure, this was indeed enough to snare me. I like a good love triangle (emphasis on good love triangle); I like fairytales: done.

But I was expecting only a semi-realized fantasy, with a mopey, whiny love triangle and some half-assed worldbuilding. I wasn't expecting a lush, mysterious dark fantasy with astonishingly lovely visuals, beautiful costuming, a wicked cool soundtrack, and a strong plot centered around a strong woman. And that's what Red Riding Hood turned out to be.

Valerie (Red Riding Hood, played wonderfully by Amanda Seyfried) is not in love with two men and as such there is no real love triangle. She loves one man, and both of the men interested in her ultimately respect that (despite moments of understandably human disappointment and/or demandingness). Valerie is also no damsel in distress. The small forest village in which she and her family live is a hunting ground: for as far back as she can remember, a wolf has stalked its inhabitants, but she is still not afraid to venture out into the woods. The movie begins with the death of Valerie's sister at the wolf's hand (um, paw) and suddenly Valerie's problems are bigger than just her arranged marriage to the man she doesn't love.

And Valerie realizes this, and deals with it without running away from it. Yes, she still longs to be with her beloved, but this is only part of her story, part of her life. Her story encompasses more than romance, but the fact that it does encompass romance is important. A badass chick can be badass and still long to love and be loved.

But there's a time for love and a time for badassery, and Valerie tackles both. (This is an explicit point made by the movie: one of the first scenes alludes to Valerie killing a rabbit in the company of her best friend/future lover, and one of the final scenes depicts her handling a human corpse--in the company of her lover.) As the villagers struggle to identify and kill the wolf, whom they suspect is a werewolf and probably one of them,* Valerie struggles, too--to deal with her grief, her concern for the safety of her loved ones (especially her grandmother, who lives just outside the village), and the way the villagers turn on her when they suspect she is connected to the wolf.

However, Valerie doesn't just fight, in the sense of flailing around wildly with nunchucks/a giant mace/whatever because that's what badass chicks are supposed to do. When she has no opportunity to escape, she accepts her fate with dignity. When she does have the chance to escape, she accepts help with grace. When she has a choice, she takes what actions she can, trying to protect and preserve her family and friends, not just her own desires.

And she doesn't have superduper magical smackdown powers; she is just a girl. This is so important. She isn't strong in spite of being a girl, and she doesn't need to be a Supergirl to be strong, either. She is strong because she is female and because of her limitations and because she is a person with very little except a powerful heart, mind and spirit. Because to be strong, that's all you need.

In fact, Valerie is a grown woman with (here comes more feminist theory**) agency, who makes her choices according to one guiding virtue: honesty. She is honest with herself, with those who love her, and she faces tough truths without bowing to her very real fear. Bravery is not measured by fearlessness; it is measured by action in the face of fear, and so Valerie is an exceptionally brave character. And, in a story with such a frightening current of Trust No One, Valerie is truly our heroine because she always trusts herself, and is always true to herself.

Now this is a fairytale I believe in.

The movie does have its flaws. The story could have been resolved in multiple ways; I don't think I would have chosen the existing conclusion, though I wasn't terribly unhappy with it.*** There were many moments where the story could have been pushed further, into more sensuous, gorier, crueler realms. But there'd have to be a non-PG-rated cut if I was to get all the symbolic explorations of blood, sacrifice, lust and consumption that I always want (especially in a tale about Red!). The humiliation via iron wolf mask is just one such gorgeous, troubling metaphor in a torrent of much bigger questions about identity, otherness, and betrayal, and I'm so glad it was included and even briefly dwelt on, but oh my, I really wanted to see so much more in the unsettling vein of Eat me up!

But that's what imagination is for. And Red Riding Hood is visual candy for the imagination. The setting, costuming, and cinematography all combine to create a fairytale world that looks like the "real world," but not quite, inspired by medieval Europe, but not trying to be "accurate." Unsurprisingly, I'm sure, I think it would be fabulous to be Valerie for Hallowe'en, in one of her beautiful long soft pale woolen dresses and her armwarmers and her sweeping red cloak. Some of the shots of her in particular are just breathtaking, all red and snow and moon. The soundtrack, with two songs by Fever Ray (one [below] for a crazy awesome paganesque bonfire dance party), is totally fabulous, both uneasy and dreamy.

The style and feel of Red Riding Hood is ultimately richer than its substance, but all of it together created for me a place of bliss and wonder and peace (weirdly enough). Basically, this movie took the Happy Place of Faerymagickalness out of my dreams and made it real, and this totally made me cry--because it made me super happy. My inner five-year-old and fifteen-year-old were as delighted as my current self. This is something to be celebrated. Fairytales aren't really for adults just like they aren't really for children. They're simply for people--people open to adventure and to fantasy and to belief.

People who, like Valerie, may feel trapped and insignificant, but who still walk through the world dressed in red, eating everything up.

[The official site has a lot of lovely behind-the-scenes stuff, high-res desktop wallpapers, and other pretty things.]

* I thought this mystery was well done, though I'm a superbly gullible moviegoer and can't usually figure out the villain/perpetrator/wolf/etc anyway, even if s/he hits me in the face repeatedly.
** Note that I'm not trying to argue that this is a feminist movie, because "feminist" doesn't work that way. It isn't an adjective; it's a lens through which we can view things. Like movies. And I think that this version of Red Riding Hood is particularly ripe for feminist analysis, especially when compared to its source (but that would be some other post).
*** Not really a spoiler, but I'll make it tiny: I wanted the whole village to become werewolves and run around doing wolfy things together forever, but hey, there's always room for a sequel, if only in my head.

inspiration: "In an Artist's Studio" by Christina Rossetti

2011-04-15T11:45:00.003-06:00

IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel – every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

-- Christina Rossetti (1856)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "Paperboat and Silverkite" by Elane

2011-04-13T11:45:00.001-06:00

PAPERBOAT AND SILVERKITE

-- Elane, from The Silver Falls (2008)

inspiration: "The Red Dragon" by Yoshitsuya Ichieisai

2011-04-11T11:45:00.002-06:00

THE RED DRAGON

-- Yoshitsuya Ichieisai (c. 1860)
[image via Wikimedia]

inspiration: "The Vagabonds" by E. Pauline Johnson

2011-04-04T11:45:00.001-06:00

THE VAGABONDS

What saw you in your flight to-day,
Crows, awinging your homeward way?

Went you far in carrion quest,
Crows, that worry the sunless west?

Thieves and villains, you shameless things!
Black your record as black your wings.

Tell me, birds of the inky hue,
Plunderous rogues—to-day have you

Seen with mischievous, prying eyes
Lands where earlier suns arise?

Saw you a lazy beck between
Trees that shadow its breast in green,

Teased by obstinate stones that lie
Crossing the current tauntingly?

Fields abloom on the farther side
With purpling clover lying wide—

Saw you there as you circled by,
Vale-environed a cottage lie,

Girt about with emerald bands,
Nestling down in its meadow lands?

Saw you this on your thieving raids?
Speak—you rascally renegades!

Thieved you also away from me
Olden scenes that I long to see?

If, O! crows, you have flown since morn
Over the place where I was born,

Forget will I, how black you were
Since dawn, in feather and character;

Absolve will I, your vagrant band
Ere you enter your slumberland.

-- E. Pauline Johnson, in Flint and Feather (1912)
[via Wikisource here; read the whole work here]

ramble: research books bought & read, January-March 2011

2011-03-31T23:50:00.002-06:00

I love non-fiction. Thanks to (in spite of?) almost seven years of university education in the humanities, research is my sixth sense. And so, a very great portion of the books I read for pleasure are social histories, biographies, literary criticism, feminist essays, costume books, art histories... and on... and on. You file it in non-fiction and I'll pore over it. I also tend to count classic literature under my 'research' heading, as I read such books as much for the insight into historical periods they provide as for the stories they tell (though really you can't separate it like this, though that's a different post).

So I have decided it would be diverting to take note of all the research books I read and buy, month by month. This list is going to be a very wide-ranging one, as I'm always researching more than one thing at a time, and I'm interested in... everything, basically. I'm sure I'll use the knowledge for something someday, if only for uh, future blog posts.

Since I don't finish (or even get very far into) books I don't like, the 'books read' part of this undertaking is really a list of recommendations (the 'books bought' bit is pure adventure and may indeed end badly). If something really stands out to me, I might give it its own, fuller recommendation post someday.

Okay, let's do this. If nothing else, it'll be amusing for me, but I hope it might help others to find new titles on favourite subjects.

(I should have started this at the beginning of the year. Belated idea is belated. But I have a memory that works like a bear trap for inconsequential things, so I'm pretty confident I can reconstitute the past three months. I'm also going to include holiday gifts, just because.)

Research Books Read, January-March 2011

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos (Penguin Classics, 1961) This witty, scandalous, and truly quite horrifying 1782 French classic is brilliant. The characters are either shockingly innocent or shockingly wicked, the plot spirals into a depraved abyss, and one reads with breath held at the emotional perversity of it all. Truly great in terms of story and as an example of the epistolary novel.
Casanova's Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved by Judith Summers (Bloomsbury, 2007) A biography of Casanova--only not exactly. His life is revealed via the stories of several of his lovers. The remarkable lives of these very different women are warmly told and give great insight into little niches of eighteenth-century European history.
The Death of Kings: A Medical History of the Queens and Kings of England by Clifford Brewer (Abson, 2000) Short biographies of pretty much every monarch and all sorts of weird and morbid medical details (based on both written accounts and physical remains, with some well-grounded speculation). It gets rather gross in places and I loved it.
The Lives of the English Rakes by Fergus Linnane (Portrait, 2006) Oh my god, libertines. I'm obsessed. This is a great sweeping study of them, spanning several centuries, and focusing on the big guns like Charles II, the Earl of Rochester, George IV, and Edward VII. Lots of skullduggery, frivolity, blasphemy, violence, obscenity, and everything else unsavoury.
Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature by Stacy S. Klein (University of Notre Dame, 2006) Thesis research book. Really great literary criticism--examining the portrayal of queens in Beowulf and a lot of other texts too.
A Brief History of the Samurai by Jonathan Clements (Running Press, 2010) Great introduction to the samurai and his changing position throughout Japanese history. This is really a history of Japan itself from the military perspective and includes lots of interesting details of battles, coups, etc. Focuses on prominent samurai, and gets into social history, too.
Mr Langshaw's Square Piano: The Story of the First Pianos and How They Caused a Cultural Revolution by Madeline Goold (Bluebridge, 2009) Amazing book. The narrative winds through economics, society, music, biography, and even includes short stories based on both the real, nineteenth-century Mr Langshaw and the modern-day author's adventures in restoring his piano.
Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times by John Whitney Hall (Charles E. Tuttle, 1971) Useful, though dated, basic introduction to Japan's history.
Literary Hoaxes: An Eye-Opening History of Famous Frauds by Melissa Katsoulis (Skyhorse, 2009) An exploration of all sorts of strange liberties with authorship.
Japanese Art by Joan Stanley-Baker (Thames & Hudson, 1984) Really gorgeous book, though most photos are black and white. Very thoughtful discussion of artistic trends.
Soul of the Sword: An Illustrated History of Weaponry and Warfare from Prehistory to the Present by Robert L. O'Connell (Free Press, 2002) History told via the tools and machines that made its bloodiest episodes so bloody. Lots of weapons I'd heard of and plenty I hadn't. Also an interesting exploration of theories of violence. It's heavy on the modern period (post-1800).
Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey by Karen Wilkin (Pomegranate, 2009) A brief biography of Gorey, including many quotations from the man himself, followed by a lovely pictorial catalogue of some of his more remarkable and obscure works.
Becoming Queen Victoria: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain's Greatest Monarch by Kate Williams (Ballantine, 2010) Half of this book is about Princess Charlotte, George IV's daughter, she who would have been England's queen regnant. The paired biographies serve to illustrate how Victoria's life and reign was affected by the princess she never knew, the princess whose death allowed her that reign in the first place. Great double study of Charlotte's and Victoria's childhoods and early adulthoods.
Samurai Women 1184-1877 by Stephen Turnbull (Osprey, 2010) Very brief illustrated book containing some remarkable tales--a good starting point for further research.
Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright (Henry Holt, 2009) A fascinating biography from a very specific perspective: reading Oscar Wilde's life via the contents of his library. Explores the books Wilde studied, enjoyed, treasured, and gave to others, and how he constructed his very self out of their words.

Research Books Bought, January-March 2011

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits by Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack (Henry Holt, 1999) Compendium of wicked spirit lore. I love me some demons.
All Under Heaven: A Complete History of China by Rayne Kruger (Wiley, 2004) Introductory history, going right back to the beginning (I'd been searching for something like this, as most books seem to leave out the really early centuries).
Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn (Vintage, 2005) Bloody Mary, Queen of Scots! Object of my fascination, especially regarding her relationship with Elizabeth.
The Marquis de Sade by Simone de Beauvoir (New English Library, 1972) This book contains a translation of de Beauvoir's essay "Must We Burn Sade?" plus some selections from de Sade's works. I've read the essay (which is absolutely genius) but still need to read the selections.
The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok by Richard Matheson (Forge, 2009) A novel, but it can join this list because it looks well-researched and anyway, I just love Wild Bill.
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson (St Martin's Griffin, 2006) Again not technically non-fiction, but Erickson is a renowned historian and I really like this kind of gently (I hope) fictionalized history.
Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France by Lucy Moore (Harper, 2006) Six biographies of political women (including the famed Mme de Stael) intertwined to illuminate women's roles during the French Revolution. The hardcover I bought is absolutely massive and so glorious.
Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria by Julia P. Gelardi (St Martin's Griffin, 2006) Another collection of biographies about political women (I have a fatal weakness).
Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz (Basic, 2005) Fairy tales + discussion of authorship and gender? Another fatal weakness. I am so looking forward to this one.
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm (Wordsworth Classics, 1993) I needed a cheap paperback copy of the Grimm stories and this has all the major ones plus darling illustrations by Walter Crane.
Bawdy Verse: A Pleasant Collection ed. by E. J. Burford (Penguin, 1982) Yesss, raunchy poetry. Medieval to fairly modern.
Christina Rossetti by Frances Thomas (Virago, 1994) I adore Christina Rossetti and have always wanted to read a full biography.
Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day by Anne Somerset (Castle, 2004) Surprise! More biographies of women in positions of power.
Devils and Demons: A Treasury of Fiendish Tales, Old & New selected by Marvin Kaye (Doubleday, 1987) And back to demons. A wide range of short stories, both classics and modern-day, some I know, some I've never heard of. Looks fab.
Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China by Lin Yutang (Elek, 1961) A lovely wide-ranging history with lots of photos.

* Bookplate image via The Graphics Fairy (modded by me, obviously)

inspiration: "April Rain" by Delain

2011-03-30T11:45:00.003-06:00

APRIL RAIN

-- Delain, April Rain (2009)

inspiration: "Lady with Unicorn" by Raphael Sanzio

2011-03-28T11:30:00.001-06:00

LADY WITH UNICORN

-- Raphael Sanzio (c. 1505-6)
[image via Wikimedia]
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

inspiration: "Spleen (When the low heavy sky...)" by Charles Baudelaire

2011-03-24T11:45:00.006-06:00

SPLEEN (WHEN THE LOW HEAVY SKY...)

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison bars stretch down the thin,
Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
Their meshes in the caverns of the brain,

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
As ’twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument,
File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,
Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

-- Charles Baudelaire, in The Flowers of Evil (1861; translated by Sir John Squire, 1908)
[via Wikisource here; read the whole work here]

ramble: the Wildest West, or 19th-century Deadwood in photographs

2011-03-22T11:30:00.003-06:00

Deadwood's main street in 1876

The short-lived HBO show Deadwood is one of my favourite TV series. It's a western in the very best tradition of westerns: there are no black or white hats (just grey ones), bad things happen, good things rarely do, and people struggle to survive a harsh world (hey, that sounds just like real life!*).

In fact, the show's town and its rough-and-lovely characters are based on the real thing.

And, being a real thing in the post-camera era, there are photos--really amazing, fascinating photos.

Deadwood, South Dakota, was settled illegally in the 1870s, contrary to the American government's treaty with the Lakota people of the Black Hills. The town's population soared after the 1874 announcement that gold had been found in the hills.

Seth Bullock, sheriff and co-owner of the Deadwood hardware store

The Black Hills Gold Rush created a truly Wild West town, overflowing with all manner of shady characters, shady deals, shady operations, and far less glamour than we like to attribute to such outside-the-law's-reach situations.

The Gem Theater in 1878 (owner Al Swearengen sits in the buggy at the left)

Deadwood was a rough, tough place.

Sol Star, co-owner of the Deadwood hardwood store, and later, town mayor

Smallpox epidemics, organized and not-so-organized violence, mistreatment of women, racial minorities, and all other disadvantaged people, miserably hard labour, and devastating fires were all common facets of life in Deadwood.

The Deadwood stagecoach in 1889

Its inhabitants carved out their lives in the ways they deemed best, often at the expense of their neighbours.

Wild Bill Hickok, famed gunfighter, shot and killed in Deadwood in 1876

Eventually, Deadwood settled into a mining town, with a railroad and a somewhat steady pace. (The HBO series is set in rowdy 1876-77, before the situation had stabilized).

Parade in Deadwood in 1888, celebrating the completion of a section of the railroad

Today, it's an American National Historic Landmark. Its dusty origins remain vivid, though, with the help of photographs like these.

Calamity Jane, frontierswoman and resident of Deadwood from 1876-81

* And in Deadwood, as in our day, everyone swears all the time. (See this discussion of the deliberately anachronistic cussin'!)

Monument to Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, 1891

Images:
- All from Wikimedia [link]

Sources:
- Wikipedia [link (town) and link (TV show)]
- Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills, by showrunner David Milch (Bloomsbury, 2006). [Amazon link] A truly fabulous book with gorgeous photos and plenty of tales of both TV show and town.

inspiration: "Witness" by Jakalope

2011-03-18T11:30:00.001-06:00

WITNESS

-- Jakalope, from Things That Go Jump in the Night (2010)

inspiration: "Mr and Mrs William Hallett" by Thomas Gainsborough

2011-03-15T15:39:00.000-06:00

MR AND MRS WILLIAM HALLETT

-- Thomas Gainsborough (1785)
[image via Wikimedia]
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

inspiration: "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats

2011-03-02T00:41:00.001-06:00

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried—"La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

-- John Keats (original version, 1819)
[via Wikisource here]

inspiration: "Karuna" by Faun

2010-08-16T16:31:00.000-06:00

KARUNA

-- Faun, from Totem (2007)

inspiration: "Miranda (The Tempest)" by J. W. Waterhouse

2010-08-10T02:40:00.001-06:00

MIRANDA (THE TEMPEST)

-- John William Waterhouse (1916)
[image via Wikimedia]
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

inspiration: "Robin Hood's Good-Night" by Nora Chesson

2010-08-02T20:14:00.000-06:00

ROBIN HOOD'S GOOD-NIGHT

read the poem here at the Robin Hood Project

-- Nora Chesson (1906)

inspiration: "The Vampire Waltz" by Hannah Fury

2010-07-26T20:48:00.000-06:00

THE VAMPIRE WALTZ

-- Hannah Fury, from The Thing That Feels (2000)

ramble: I am busy, so have a King Arthur comic

2010-07-25T19:47:00.000-06:00

Too busy to ramble this weekend. Instead I share this comic from the brilliant Married to the Sea (which you ought to read daily, because it's always this hilarious):

marriedtothesea.com

recommendation: "Drawing the Head and Figure" (1963 book)

2010-07-21T19:00:00.000-06:00

Drawing the Head & Figure by Jack Hamm is my favourite art how-to and reference book. Though it's relatively old, it's the only such book I've found that best satisfies the art questions I encounter when drawing/painting. Whenever I'm stuck on something, this is where I turn first.

Its cover (I have the 1983 paperback reprint) says it's "A how-to handbook that makes drawing easy. ... Offers simplified techniques and scores of brand-new hints and helps. ... Step-by-step procedures. Hundreds of illustrations."

Yes, hundreds. And while it hardly makes drawing "easy" (drawing is never easy, c'mon now), it certainly does help when you can't figure out how a shoulder attaches from that angle or how lips look from that other angle. It's pretty retro/vintage/choose-your-dated-but-still-hip-term, with its chiseled menfolk and coiffed ladyfolk--but since we're not using this as a fashion reference, it's really quite charming.

The sections are (so you can see just how in-depth and fantastic this book truly is): Introduction to the Head, The Facial Features, The Hair, Head Patterns and Comparisons, Youth and Age, Fundamentals of the Figure, The Torso and the Figure, Principles of Figure Drawing, The Neck and Shoulders, The Arm, The Hand, The Leg, The Feet, and Clothing. In each, Hamm doesn't just go over the basics--he illustrates a lot of tricky things and describes how to tackle frequently problematic areas. The hundreds of illustrations are truly great: some are sketches, some focus on perspective or action, some show muscles or bones, and some are fully finished illustrations for comparison. His captions and explanations are clear and friendly.

So thanks, Mr Hamm. Saving the world from weirdly garbled proportions and unfortunate limb alignment disasters for almost fifty years!

inspiration: "Knight, Death and the Devil" by Albrecht Durer

2010-07-19T21:32:00.000-06:00

KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL

-- Albrecht Dürer (1513)
[image via Wikimedia]
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

ramble: I love Robin Hood, film edition

2010-07-19T00:06:00.000-06:00

I love Robin Hood. I love the hazy green bliss of Sherwood, the sounding of the hunting horn, the camaraderie and adventure and starry-eyed idealism. I love sly Will Scarlett and loyal Little John and brilliant Maid Marian and witty Alan-a-Dale and wicked Guy of Gisbourne and all the side-characters unique to one version of the tale or another. And most of all, I love wry, brave Robin himself. I love the man and I love the legend and I love the retellings.

I've loved it all since I was little. I collect Robin Hood books (up to nearly thirty now), from picture books to scholarly works to novels (a post for another time). I've attended academic sessions and panels on the history and myth of the dashing outlaw. I've learned archery because of my love of the hooded man (and though I've never split an arrow myself, I've seen friends accomplish the feat!).

Oh, Robin, you scoundrel. The things you've made me do!

And, unsurprisingly, I'll watch any and every Robin Hood movie and TV version. While I certainly haven't seen them all (or even close to all; just search for Robin Hood on IMDb! good god!), I've seen a respectable number. Here's a brief overview of the standouts, both good and bad. Oo-de-lally! Let's go to Sherwood!

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

One of the classics, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Dashing and charming. This portrayal really shaped my vision of Robin.

Robin Hood (1973)

Everyone's seen this Disney animated version, even those who don't know anything about Robin Hood. And surely everyone loves it. It's perfectly wonderful. Foxy little Robin and Marian! The anthropomorphic characters could not suit the tale better. And who could forget Sir Hiss? And the songs--especially "Oo-de-lally"?

Robin and Marian (1976)

This movie is such a disappointment. Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as Robin and Marian sounds absolutely wonderful, but it's wretched. It's not that I mind seeing older, jaded, tired versions of our heroes--it's that Sean Connery's portrayal is simply not Robin Hood. Too brusque, too thoughtless, too presumptuous, and treats Marian with no respect. None of that is Robin at any age. I would like to forget this exists.

Robin of Sherwood (1984-1986)

This three-season TV series is my favourite portrayal of the Robin Hood story. Nothing will ever supersede it in my heart. We get two versions of the hooded man, following the two major threads of the legend: the yeoman outlaw (Michael Praed as Robin of Loxley) and the noble outlaw (Jason Connery as Robert of Huntingdon). They're both breathtakingly gorgeous and absolutely marvellous. The whole show is enchanting, from its blending of Celtic mythology with medieval Christian magic to its powerful and moving storylines. Nothing is forgotten.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Another disappointment. Kevin Costner's portrayal is another that is not Robin. Even the awesome cast (Morgan Freeman, Alan Rickman, Christian Slater!) can't rescue this for me. There are moments I enjoy, but overall this movie's got far too much empty action and not enough mystique or depth to the worldbuilding to be a true retelling of the legend. Leaves me cold.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

I love this movie (and Cary Elwes!) so much. Anyone who enjoys weird humour in the Monty Python vein [full disclosure: I laugh so hard at Monty Python that I make myself ill] loves this, Hood-fans or not. There is so much hilarity: the praying mantis! the portcullis with the garage-door opener! the chastity belt! So tasteless. So hilarious.

The Princess of Thieves (2001)

In this movie is another washed-up, worn-out Robin, but this one I love and want to root for. And this is the movie that made me a Keira Knightley fan! She had the spunky heroine thing down even at sixteen years old, here playing Robin's daughter, Gwyn. And Stephen Moyer [sigh] is in this! Yes, perhaps I am more charmed by the cast than by the story, but they absolutely nailed a light-hearted take on the legend and made daydreaming teenagers like me very very happy.

Robin Hood (2006-2009)

This three-season BBC series is a very close second to Robin of Sherwood. Very close. The two aren't really comparable, though; this one is a total rollicking romp that plays with the story in delightful ways. The cast is stellar (in particular, Richard Armitage as Guy [sigh] and Lucy Griffiths as Marian) and the characters are magnetic, each one eliciting love and hatred sometimes within the same episode. Strong and emotional--the most vibrant Robin Hood I've ever seen, and I adore it.

Robin Hood (2010)

And I haven't seen this yet! Though I like Russell Crowe and love Cate Blanchett, they don't fit my Hood-vision right off. But I am super excited to see it anyway: there's always room in my heart for more Robin.

recommendation: "Labyrinth" (1986 movie)

2010-07-15T01:08:00.001-06:00

You remind me of the babe. (What babe?) The babe with the power. (What power?) The power of voodoo. (Who do?) You do!

What happens when dreams come true?

This is the question at the heart of Labyrinth, a funny, creepy, lovely story of temptation, trust, and self-discovery. Sarah wants a different life, a fantasy. "It's not fair!" she cries. Reality is miserable. It's wretched. It sucks. But as Jareth, the Goblin King, replies: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is."

What is better than reality? Labyrinth is one of the few movies I would dare to call magical, and no doubt--it was made by a very literal dream team, including Jim Henson, Brian Froud, Terry Jones, George Lucas, David Bowie, and Jennifer Connelly, all vastly talented.

And every scene is a wonder. My imagination can't even keep up. Each creature, from the Worm ("'allo!") to dear monstrous rock-caller Ludo is a self-contained marvel, a fully-developed person, thoughtful and strange and devious and gentle. The labyrinth itself has countless depths, countless worlds, countless symbols.

Where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.

In the labyrinth, who do we trust? Jareth is wickedly beautiful. (David Bowie reaches jaw-popping, heart-killing aesthetic nirvana.) The masquerade ball is just the same, and breaks my heart every time. It's the scene that encapsulates the movie: a ball within a ball, a bubble of loveliness within a bubble of sly forgetfulness, layers upon layers, just like the Goblin King. The masks and the costumes are gorgeous beyond belief--and they're only so gorgeous because they hide malice underneath. Such unbearable beauty can only be dashed.

The world comes down. But, like Sarah, we forget, and begin again....

Labyrinth is a story about finding love (of someone, of something, of things tangible and intangible and things hoped for and things longed for), a story about learning what you'll surrender for your desire. Both Sarah and Jareth are in pursuit, but neither realizes what they're truly chasing until the last moment. Sarah thought she wanted her baby brother back, but in fact, she discovers herself. Jareth thought he could rule everything, including himself, but he discovers that no one can walk through the world untouched. Their hearts lead them in different directions, and to be together means one must submit to the other.

Look what I'm offering you--your dreams. I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.

There is nothing equal about the relationship between creator and created. And how can one be both? Even dreams have realities, and they too can be harsh. When we struggle through the labyrinth to discover what is in our hearts--that's when the bubble breaks. We learn that to dream is to think in paradox. Nothing is what it seems: whose world is whose? To imagine is to live, but to imagine is to hurt.

I have been generous up until now, but I can be cruel.

Dreams give, but dreams take. If we fall for our dreams, we're in their power; we belong to them as much as they do to us. Can we risk falling?

Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city; for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great. You have no power over me.

Sarah is strong. She learns how to open the right door. She accepts weakness, and in doing so, finds balance. She says to her dreams, "I don't know why, but every now and again in my life, for no reason at all, I need you." She is the one with the power.

It's so hard to be strong.

inspiration: "Our Lady of the Twilight" by Alfred Noyes

2010-07-12T23:50:00.003-06:00

OUR LADY OF THE TWILIGHT

Our Lady of the Twilight
    From out the sunset-lands
Comes gently stealing o'er the world
    And stretches out her hands,
Over the blotched and broken wall,
    The blind and fœtid lane,
She stretches out her hands and all
    Is beautiful again.

No factory chimneys can defile
    The beauty of her dress:
She stoops down with her heavenly smile
    To heal and love and bless:
All tortured things, all evil powers,
    All shapes of dark distress
Are turned to fragrance and to flowers
    Beneath her kind caress.

Our Lady of the Twilight,
    She melts our prison-bars!
She makes the sea forget the shore,
    She fills the sky with stars,
And stooping over wharf and mill,
    Chimney and shed and dome,
Turns them to fairy palaces,
    Then calls her children home.

She stoops to bless the stunted tree,
    And from the furrowed plain,
And from the wrinkled brow she smooths
    The lines of care and pain:
Hers are the gentle hands and eyes
    And hers the peaceful breath
That ope, in sunset-softened skies,
    The quiet gates of death.

Our Lady of the Twilight,
    She hath such gentle hands,
So lovely are the gifts she brings
    From out the sunset-lands,
So bountiful, so merciful
    So sweet of soul is she;
And over all the world she draws
    Her cloak of charity.

-- Alfred Noyes, in Collected Poems, Vol. II (1913)
[read this book online here]

ramble: Sophia Baddeley, 18th-century courtesan

2010-07-11T18:02:00.004-06:00

Sophia Baddeley (1745-1786) was a terrible actress.

This, however, hardly held her back. She became one of the wealthiest and most popular of the notorious women of mid-eighteenth-century London.

But though she is a vibrant character and we may wish to see her life as self-determined, we should remember, as Katie Hickman writes (in her book Courtesans), that "[f]or all the power which her beauty and desirability conferred, a courtesan, even the most fashionable one at the very height of her career, was still negotiating in a man's world" (p. 53). Sophia shone brightly, but she played a dangerous game in order to do so.

Sophia came from a middlingly well-to-do family, but her elopement with actor Robert Baddeley (when she was nineteen) meant she'd chosen her course (though the pair hardly got along and soon separated). Though her acting was apparently wretched, she was a lovely singer, and her popularity skyrocketed. As her friend Elizabeth Steele, who wrote her memoirs, said:

"Such persons as have moved in a conspicuous line of life naturally excite the curiosity of the world. The public has always had it's [sic] favourites, and since the Drama has been known on the English stage, merit in that line has been the best road to acquire it's [sic] favour" (The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Vol. I, pp. 2-3).

After all, fame need not necessarily grow from talent. Indeed, in the eighteenth century, actress was still nearly synonymous with courtesan, though respectability was becoming more and more possible (Hickman, pp. 40-3). Sophia, however, was not respectable. She went through an extravagantly long string of men (including Lord Melbourne and the Duke of Northumberland), living with some, teasing others. "A pattern was already emerging in her life: a pattern of love affairs and unscrupulous admirers, of reckless extravagance, debt--and laudanum" (Hickman, p. 38).

Nothing in Sophia's world was stable, and her lovers always fluctuated as wildly as did her expenditures. Her only constant companion was Elizabeth, who stayed with her and tried to protect her from the men around her and from herself. As Amy Culley writes in her article on the Memoirs,

"[T]hroughout the Memoirs their connection remains highly ambiguous: perhaps a sentimental friendship, a lesbian relationship, or a business arrangement in which Steele acted as Baddeley’s procuress" (p. 679).

But Elizabeth could not, ultimately, keep Sophia safe.

As the entry for Robert Baddeley in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica notes, "[Sophia's] beauty and her extravagance rendered her celebrated, but the money which she made in all sorts of ways was so freely squandered that she was obliged to take refuge from her creditors in Edinburgh." There she became very ill, and took more and more laudanum in order to cope.

She died when she was only forty-one. But she acted (still terribly? perhaps!) until the very end.

"Sophia Baddeley had neither moral strength nor level-headedness. She was vain, spoilt, impetuous, lazy, spendthrift, only moderately intelligent, and possessed of a great deal of sexual energy. She was also warm-hearted, affectionate, funny, mercurial, and generous to a fault" (Hickman, p. 33). She sounds like she would have been fascinating to spend time with--and indeed, her vast popularity proves that she was.

Image:
- Sophia Baddeley as Joan of Arc [via link]

Sources:
- Culley, Amy. "The Sentimental Satire of Sophia Baddeley." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Summer 2008): pp. 677-692. [via Project Muse]
- Hickman, Katie. Courtesans. London: Harper Perennial, 2003.
- Steele, Elizabeth. The Memoirs of Mrs Sophia Baddeley, Late of Drury Lane Theatre. 6 vols. London: 1787. [read online: vols 1-2, vols 3-4, vols 5-6]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Baddeley, Robert." 1911. [via Wikisource]
- Wikipedia [link]

recommendation: "Doctor Who Series 5" (2010 TV series)

2010-07-07T22:07:00.001-06:00

I've loved Doctor Who for several years now, but have I ever loved Doctor Who this much?

My Doctor is the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant's Doctor. The first episode I saw was Series 3's "Blink" (ah, terror). Then I watched Series 1 with the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, and adored it, especially "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances."* But the conclusion to Series 3 is right up there with my most beloved episodes. The Tenth Doctor is simply unspeakably fabulous.

Companions are a trickier matter. Though I haven't seen all of Series 2, Rose is my favourite. I also love Martha, for very separate reasons. If I could be any companion, I'd be Martha. But then there was Series 4, and Donna. Oh, Donna. I wanted to like Donna. But I didn't really like Donna. I liked that Donna had opinions, and that she wasn't unnecessarily gaga over the Doctor, but I did not like that Donna always had to be right, could never be quiet for a second, and had to tell everyone all the time that she really definitely wasn't in love with the Doctor.

So, Series 5. New Doctor, new companion. I was hesitant about Matt Smith because I am still extremely attached to David Tennant. I really liked the first episode, especially the fishsticks. And then I really liked the second episode (those Smilers? dear god). I liked the revisited Weeping Angels, at least until they started contradicting their own rules.** I liked the dinosaur people (I like anything with dinosaurs, so this may not be a useful judgement) and I loved both "Vincent and the Doctor"*** and "The Lodger"+ in two entirely different ways.

And then I really liked Amy, the new companion, who's Rose/Martha/Donna blended with kooky, so that's awesome, even if she did inherit a bit of Donna's annoyance factor. I liked the purpose River Song serves in the narrative, even though I found her by turns badass and grating (River, you cad, stop toying with me!). And then I absolutely loved Rory, companion number two, with a fiery blazing passion. OH RORY. OH RORY. ♥

I was clearly teetering on the brink. Then, in episode eight, the Doctor said, "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up," and I was done for. I was all Eleven's. He's so young and sprightly and so old and curmudgeonly; he's weird, but it's not a Tennantesque wacky. He's entirely new and yet entirely familiar and I love him. He speaks to me: "Never underestimate a Celt!"++

So after some reflection, soul-searching, and salving of my guilty conscience: I'm sorry, Ten, you're still my Doctor, but my tent is now firmly pitched in Eleven's camp. And Series 5, with its excellent use of the funny, the emotional, the strange, the wondrous, and the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff (the finale! I did not know true glory until I watched that finale!), might just be my favourite, too.

* Due, of course, to Captain Jack Harkness. I need say no more.
** I don't want to spoil anything, but seriously. You close your eyes, they attack you. That is incontrovertible.
*** I haven't cried that hard at the TV for a while, and I cry at the TV with alarming regularity. I'd start a New Who newcomer with this episode. Crazy adventure, fascinating historical personage, ooky-looking alien, heartbreak, and quiet truth: yes to all. Beautiful.
+ The Doctor trying to be "normal." I need say no more here, either.
++ Cue me squealing.

inspiration: "Remedy" by Little Boots

2010-07-05T19:08:00.001-06:00

REMEDY

-- Little Boots, from Hands (2009)

ramble: damask, the aristocratic, immortal textile

2010-07-03T02:09:00.002-06:00

Damask is a figured, reversible textile, usually silk satin or velvet, historically used to make tablecloths, napkins, curtains, wall coverings, furniture coverings, gowns, waistcoats, robes, etc. The most familiar damask patterns are stylized florals or are otherwise organic in appearance--acanthus leaves, scrolls, pinecones, pomegranates, and shells are all common--but the motifs may also be of animals or even detailed scenes.

Damasks could be any colour dyes allowed. Most damasks are monochrome, with a shiny pattern against a dull background (vice versa when flipped over), but polychromes, including those with metallics, are also possible.*

The name "damask" supposedly refers to the city of Damascus, but this, of course, may be apocryphal. Technically, the term refers to a particular weaving technique, one of five traditional types in the early medieval Middle East. However, some early damasks (simple checkerboard patterns) date from the Roman era and the technique itself may have truly originated in eastern Asia.

Damask weaving fell out of fashion in Europe in the high medieval period, but by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the textiles were being produced in Italy. Thereafter damasks became fashionable throughout Europe. In England, for example, King Richard II wore silk damask, and in the mid-fifteenth century, one of King Edward IV's sumptuary laws decreed that no one below the rank of knight could wear the fabric. Damasks became especially popular in Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Today, damask motifs conjure up images of the boudoirs of doomed queens and languishing courtesans.

I compulsively buy damask fabrics when I come across them and turn them into curtains, pillowcovers and tablerunners. I also own damask plates, mugs, candles and heaven knows what else. The recent interior design trend, which involves putting the pattern on everything, is hardly new! For damask inspiration, try a search of the Victoria & Albert Museum; you'll turn up all manner of textiles displaying various permutations of the motif. Take a look at this glorious Chippendale chair from 1772, covered in green damask. Ah, to dream of luxury.

* The pictured crimson-and-black damask is a modern damask from my fabric stash. It's really a false damask--it's faux-satin printed with faux-velvet, and it is not at all reversible. I don't think a real damask could even be stark black-on-red like this; reversible weaving just doesn't work that way (though I am not entirely sure, not being a weaver myself).

Here instead are two examples of lovely authentic monochrome damasks: crimson silk (1680-90, Italian) and yellow silk (1710, Chinese or English).

And (you may have noticed!) my blog's background is a damask-inspired motif designed and drawn by yours truly.

Sources:
- Morgan, Krystal. "Satin Damasks of Renaissance Europe." Complex Weavers' Medieval Textiles 37 (Sept. 2003): 1-6. [available as a .pdf at link]
- V&A Collections [link]
- Wikipedia [link]

recommendation: "Fables: Legends in Exile" (2002 graphic novel)

2010-06-30T19:25:00.003-06:00

Fables is an ongoing urban fantasy comic book series written by Bill Willingham. Legends in Exile is volume one (the collected issues one to five), with art pencilled by Lan Medina.

The stories follow the lives of refugee Fables who settle in modern-day New York City after the mysterious Adversary drives them from their Homelands. Fables are fairytale people and creatures of every sort, and as you might imagine, they find life in New York isn't easy. It's especially hard for Snow White, who's acting as mayor of the Fable community. She says,

"We barely have enough money and manpower to run the most basic of underground government services. ... The Mundanes may look to their government to solve their problems, but in the Fable community, we expect you to be able to run your own lives.

"Our only concern is that ... no fable shall, by action or inaction, cause our magical nature to become known to the Mundane world. If you can't maintain a normal human appearance or purchase a concealing glamour from one of our witches--our rules mandate that you be relocated upstate to the Farm, where all the other nonhuman Fables live." (p. 9)

This law certainly poses difficulties for the shapeshifting sorts--like the Beast, who's having trouble maintaining human form due to marital difficulties with Beauty. The others aren't doing particularly well in their personal lives, either: Snow White and Prince Charming have divorced, thanks to Charming's womanizing. The characters are all written this way--fondly and cleverly, with a lot of wicked sarcasm.

Things go even more sour when Snow White's hard-partying sister, Rose Red, disappears. The Big Bad Wolf ("Bigby," please, who's not bad; he lets the Three Little Pigs crash at his place) investigates, and the clues point to murder. Suspicion falls on Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Rose's hapless boyfriend, and Mister Bluebeard, who's somehow managed to remain fantastically wealthy.

And there's the matter of the phrase "No More Happily Ever After" written in blood on Rose Red's living room wall....

The art is just as fantastic as the story. It's a very sharp-and-clean American-superhero style--no manga influence (and though I love manga, the art absolutely suits this tale). The Mundane world is harsh and dirty, whereas scenes in Fabletown and memories of the Homelands overflow with fantastical detail. Flashbacks bear baroque frames, and lovely, ornate scrolls open each chapter/issue. The original cover of each issue is reprinted in this collection, and each one is beautiful, done in dreamy pastels (my favourites are chapters two and four).

Legends in Exile is the only volume I've yet read, but I can't wait to read more (the series is up to twelve volumes now). The Fables are adaptable folk, but not so smart that they can stay out of trouble for long.

Says the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: "Fables is a must-read for any aficionado of fantasy in a contemporary setting." Indeed!

inspiration: "Phaethon" by Gustave Moreau

2010-06-29T04:30:00.005-06:00

PHAETHON

see high-res image here at the Art Renewal Center

-- Gustave Moreau (1878)
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

ramble: the Mabinogi, or the beautiful maze of Welsh myth

2010-06-25T15:49:00.009-06:00

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi (in Middle Welsh, Pedeir Keinc Y Mabinogi) are the four classic tales of medieval Welsh mythology, more commonly known as the Mabinogion (which is actually a scribal misspelling in one of the sources [image above], but has become basically accepted). They are recorded in two main manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest, both dating to mid/late-thirteenth-century Wales. However, the tales themselves are much older, having been preserved piecemeal in various other earlier manuscripts (and no doubt passed down orally long before even that).

The Mabinogi were first translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid-nineteenth century. In her edition she included eight other related mythological tales from the manuscripts (Arthurian stories and romances whose plots also show up in the works of Chrétien de Troyes), but the Mabinogi proper are only the Four Branches. Lady Guest's translation leaves out all the good (naughty and gory) parts, so if you're inclined to read the tales for yourself, do choose another version. I highly recommend the online translation by Will Parker linked at the bottom of this post; it's the one we used for study in my (badass) Celtic literature class.

The Four Branches are an interconnected series of stories in which the pseudo-hero Pryderi is the recurring character (though not always the main character). I don't want to totally spoil the tales, but I will try to whet your appetite.

The First Branch: Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed

We meet Pryderi's parents (his father Pwyll, exchanges places with Arawn, the Lord of the Otherworld, for a year, then meets the mysterious Rhiannon on her unearthly-fast horse) and are given the story of his birth and baby-napping. Affairs include a magic bag, a monster, and a case of mistaken identity including the giving of the fabulous pseudonym Gwri Golden-Hair. [read the First Branch here]

The Second Branch: Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr

This story is barely Pryderi-related, but rather a story of British-Irish conflict. British Branwen is mistreated by her Irish husband Matholwch, partly because her brother Efnisien was a poor sport and took out his displeasure over the marriage on Matholwch's horses. The giant Bendigeidfrân, king of Britain, takes vengeance for Branwen. Pryderi fights with the British in the battle, which involves a revivifying cauldron and a lot of head-crushing. Bendigeidfrân's enormous head, however, lives on in Britain, which is gross and awesome. [read the Second Branch here]

The Third Branch: Manawydan, Son of Llŷr

Back in a curiously depopulated and mist-beset Dyfed, we follow Pryderi, his wife Cigfa, his mother Rhiannon, and his stepfather Manawydan on a quest to restore the realm. Pryderi and Rhiannon both act like fools and fall for a trap; Manawydan and Cigfa have to solve riddles to save them (which is a pretty sweet reversal, and also why it's hard to see Pryderi as a hero). [read the Third Branch here]

The Fourth Branch: Math, Son of Mathonwy

The fourth branch is my favourite, so I'll go into a little more detail. It takes place during Pryderi's reign in Dyfed (southern Wales) but is set in Gwynedd (northern Wales), where Math is king. Math has issues: he requires his feet to be held by a virgin at all times. His nephews, Gilfaethwy and Gwydion, rape the current footholder. Math is furious, marries the girl, and curses the brothers with the best punishment ever. They become a male/female pair of deer in the first year, a pair of pigs in the second, and a pair of wolves in the third--and they breed with each other. Twisted and fantastic! This branch is a long and convoluted one. After Gwydion and Gilfaethwy are thoroughly schooled, the story goes on to tell of the search for a new virgin footholder, the testing of the brothers' clever sister Aranrhod, the birth of a new hero called Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and the creation of Blodeuwedd, Lady of the Flowers. [read the Fourth Branch here]

As is no doubt obvious, there are fascinating things happening in the Mabinogi with regard to family dynamics, sexual relationships, and gender roles. The magic items and curses are woven seamlessly into the tales. This is a medieval Wales heaving with wonders so rich they're almost banal again; strange events are everyday, and the everyday, in our terms, is nonexistent. The characters are vivid and changeable, passing in and out of hero/villain status. The Mabinogi are incredibly rewarding to study, but they're also purely vibrant storytelling, beautiful in their labyrinthine twists, made to tell around a bright fire.

Image:
- The illustration at the beginning of the First Branch in the 1877 edition of Lady Guest's translation [via Sacred Texts at link]

Sources:
- The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, trans. Will Parker [full text available at link]
- The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, trans. Patrick K. Ford [Amazon link]
- The Mabinogion, trans. Lady Charlotte Guest [full text available at Sacred Texts: link]
- What is the Mabinogion? (an introduction plus recommended editions) [link]
- A brief introduction to medieval Welsh prose via UBC [link]
- mabinogistudy.co.uk [link]
- Wikipedia [link] and [link]

recommendation: "The Assassin's Cloak" (2001 book)

2010-06-23T23:00:00.003-06:00

"A diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen." -- William Soutar

I've never kept a diary. I'm not sure why, but I'm more interested in writing about things I've learned, enjoy, or dream about than about my life directly (as this blog no doubt indicates).* But I love reading others' journals. I'm shamelessly seduced by the voyeuristic thrill of reading something personal and private--or even something meant for publication that only plays at secrecy (or those that don't even pretend, like blogs!). Whether it's hidden with the author's knickers or aired out for all to see, there isn't anything closer to brain-on-paper than a diary.

The Assassin's Cloak, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor (the edition I have is the giant, wrist-snapping hardcover published by Canongate Books in 2001), is a day-by-day anthology of the diaries of writers, artists, politicians, and other famous folks--admirable, reprehensible, most just in between. We are given glimpses into the lives of people like Lord Byron, Beatrix Potter, Franz Kafka, Noël Coward, Virginia Woolf, and Evelyn Waugh (to name just a few of the 170 writers whom I found most fascinating). The entries are generally post-seventeenth-century and mostly English-language, but some are in translation. From the jacket:

"Along the way we meet cads and charmers, sailors and psychopaths, rock stars and prima ballerinas, gossips, drunks, snobs, lechers and lovers. There is humour and tragedy, history and the humdrum, often recorded on the same day or in the same entry."

This emotional clash is what makes the anthology so attractive: the switchbacking path it takes you down is weird and conflicting, yet never jarring, and always enthralling.

There are several excerpts per day, so that you can see what was happening in the minds and worlds of people centuries and countries apart. You can't really follow the day-to-day activities of any one person, as his or her journal might be excerpted only a handful of times over the course of the year. But it's amazing when a familiar pen does crop up again and you get a look at the author's life in a different year, a different place, a wholly different emotional state. The author's name isn't given until the end of the entry, which adds to the fun: you become familiar with the voices, friends (or enemies), and events belonging to each person and can often identify who's writing before you reach the end.

The Assassin's Cloak is an inspiring daily journey, one that provides introductions to people you never thought you'd meet.

"No doubt diary-keeping is also a kind of vanity. One has the sauce to believe that every thought which comes into one's head merits recording."** -- James Lees-Milne (June 23, 1973)

* However, I love Twitter. There's something about as-it-happens commentary, rather than end-of-day recapping, that totally seduces me into participation. You will pry my Twitter from me only if you wish to contend with my bared fangs. How I wish all of these diarists had had Twitter!
** Which--unsurprisingly, considering my affection for Twitter--I absolutely agree with. Writing is the alchemical process that turns raw thoughts into precious things; we don't know what is precious until we've created it.

inspiration: "The Damp" by John Donne

2010-06-21T17:47:00.005-06:00

THE DAMP

read the poem here at Luminarium

-- John Donne, in Songs and Sonnets (1633)
[read the whole work here]

ramble: the art of a good book cover

2010-06-20T00:47:00.001-06:00

I'm a visual person. My initial attraction to something (or, romantically speaking, someone*) is based on its exterior. I love beautiful things (and I don't mean beautiful by objective or traditional standards, but personal ones). Beautiful music turns into visuals in my head. So do beautiful words--they run past me like a film. This visuality does not make me shallow** or biologically male***--it's just part of who I am as an artist and a writer, someone heavily reliant on sight not just for daily functioning, but for inspiration, for emotion, for connection.

This applies to my book purchasing, of course. I like to browse in bookstores, and what makes me pick something up? A pretty cover combined with specific keywords (demon! vampire! queen! masquerade! dandy! magic! courtesan! poison! any overly wordy phrase! etc). I want a book that appeals to me visually, and then delivers on that visual promise when read. I often buy knowing nothing of the book beyond its cover, its title, and its back cover copy. Most of the time, I don't even read the first page.

Here are four books I bought without any knowledge of the author, purely because their covers seduced me into the reading the back. Those blurbs lived up to the covers' promise, so now the books are sitting on my shelves.+ I haven't read any of them yet, but based on what I've seen so far, I have high hopes.

Misfortune
by Wesley Stace
cover design by Susan Koski Zucker & illustration by Kathleen Bartoletti

I love this juxtaposition of romantic painting with stark, graphic layout. I love the painting itself: according to the cover flap, it's Lady Caroline Ponsonby Lamb--one of Lord Byron's lovers--by Thomas Phillips (1770-1845). I adore the delicate little drawn-on mustache. It's so graceful and almost textual, like the little flourish you might see in ink below someone's signature. I don't even like yellow, but this deep mustard colour suits the title perfectly--ironically happy? Or jaundiced?

Maledicte
by Lane Robins
cover design by David Stevenson, based on photographs by Nigel Silcock & Peter Mason

I love masks. This is a photograph that looks like a painting. The white skin and red lips are an aesthetic I adore. The mass of feathers makes me think of fairy-creatures or plumage to go with some fantastical costume just out of sight. The blank, empty eyes are both frightening and serene. Is this a person or just a mannequin?

Whitechapel Gods
by S. M. Peters
no cover artist credited++

Jack the Ripper back from Hell, I presume? Love the evil steampunk vibe, the blazing fires behind his stark ribs, the gears crawling up over them. Is he being consumed or just running on his usual fuel? The tip of his hat is probably not a good sign. And the spider is just nasty. Awesome.

Gossamer Axe
by Gael Baudino
no cover artist credited+++

I like this kind of clearly-defined semi-stylized semi-realistic business. And, um, rockstar sidhe. I could stop right there. Her robes are gorgeous--her cloak even has a Celtic pin. Her long, red hair is glorious. And her electric guitar is incredible. The warped wood looks almost alive. Look at her raised brow, her milky eyes, her little smirk! I want to be her.

* This has been and continues to be problematic.
** I require substance to follow, or I will be off fawning over the next pretty thing.
*** As numerous bullshit studies would have us believe.
+ Interestingly, these titles don't contain any of my pickituprightnow keywords. But I also like non sequiturs and words that start with M.
++ This is maddening. Credit your artists!
+++ Likewise.

recommendation: "True Blood" (2008-present TV series)

2010-06-16T16:37:00.002-06:00

I was thrilled two years ago when I heard True Blood was to become an HBO series--not because I'd read the books, but because I adore vampires, the bloodier and lustier the better. And True Blood promised to the bloodiest and lustiest of all. I still haven't read the books (by Charlaine Harris; I've bought the first few, and still haven't gotten around to reading them*), but I've been watching the show with glee. Because that gory, delicious, cravingly hawt glory it promised? It delivered. Splat.

My love for vampires started in high school, as it (so I hear...) frequently does, thanks to my wicked-badass friend (HELLO!) encouraging me to read Anne Rice. My obsession has only grown since, and I doubt I'll ever outgrow it; indeed, I want even messier, swampier, sexier versions of beautiful Louis and smirking Lestat. Is such a thing even possible? True Blood, set in the modern-day American South, fulfills my every wish and is set to continue fulfilling--the third season has just started, and its popularity only seems to be growing, making me very relieved. I need my V!

The story follows Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a telepathic waitress at a bar owned by Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell). In this altered-reality Louisiana (and indeed, world) vampires have come out of the coffin, as they say, and live among humankind. Sookie falls for 160-year-old vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer)--but this is no happily-forever-after, especially once 1000-year-old Eric (Alexander Skarsgård), owner of the club Fangtasia, swaggers in. Sookie is no whimpering damsel, Bill is no flawless saviour, and Eric is... really hot** (I shut down and start gibbering when confronted by Eric). Disasters ensue. Mess follows mess. Our hazy-grey, tenuously-admirable anti-heroes and anti-villains take every opportunity to feed on, savage, murder, double-cross, lie to, and, most often, seduce each other, leading to ever more tangled plots, disgusting bloodsplosions, and violently sexy encounters.

True Blood is also clever. Its commentary on fundamentalist religion, homophobia, and racial prejudice is delightfully unsubtle. It rubs its message, like everything else, in your face. The mocking jabs at bigots and hypocrites always have me hissing hell yes, tell 'em, bitches! at the screen. True Blood has no inhibitions--not about exploring the dirtier, grittier, sweatier, juicier side of life, nor about calling out those who would hide their own dirt behind fake moral veneers.

This show is exactly the kind of thing I love: it lays itself bare, isn't afraid to go there, and then sasses you behind your back. Leave your conscience in the dirt, because True Blood will suck your heart out, turn your stomach, and casually maul whatever delicate sensibilities you might still be clinging to.

Have my favourite song from the soundtrack; it perfectly sums up the show--

* But even if I had, I'd be recommending the TV show on its own merits anyhow. As I've said before, I don't mind when a version of a story told in a different medium departs from its source material as long as it's executed with style and sincerity.
** "Is there blood in my hair?"

inspiration: "For What It's Worth" by Placebo

2010-06-14T21:50:00.001-06:00

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

-- Placebo, from Battle for the Sun (2009)

ramble: the Lady of Shalott in literature, art, and music

2010-06-12T02:54:00.005-06:00

I am half-sick of shadows...

The Lady of Shalott and her longing for Sir Lancelot summon up images of Arthurian legend, of Victorian romance, of tragic fantasy. She is a paradoxical figure of love unrequited, beauty idolized, innocent voyeurism, thankless sacrifice, forced passivity, and fate confronted. Who is the victim, who the pursuer? Who is the beloved, who the lover? The Lady's femininity and elusive power is perplexing and enthralling.

The Lady is Elaine of Astolat (or Elaine the Fair), part of medieval Italian and French Arthurian legend cycles of the 13th-15th centuries, including Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Elaine loved Lancelot from afar; in Malory's version (an episode in Book 18 of Caxton's 1485 edition), she persuades him to carry her token in a jousting tournament, but he refuses to engage further with her, and she dies broken-hearted.

She is best known, however, in her altered Victorian form--she made frequent appearances in 19th-century literature. She is known especially via Alfred Tennyson's 1833 poem (revised in 1842); she also appears in Tennyson's 1859 The Idylls of the King.

In the poem, she does not meet Lancelot while she lives, for she is cursed to remain in an island-castle prison, viewing the world only through a mirror. It is in this mirror that she sees Lancelot. Pierced by his beauty, she defies the curse, dares to venture into the world, and so discovers her end before her love.

The three paintings here are all versions of her by John William Waterhouse (1888, 1915, and 1894, respectively), but Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Sidney Harold Meteyard, Arthur Hughes, Arthur Rackham, Howard Pyle, and many other Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist artists drew and painted their impressions of her.

She has also been referenced in song. Emilie Autumn tells the story in her own words, accompanied by a harpsichord that captures an aching mix of hope, anger, and despair:

And Loreena McKennitt's beautiful adaptation of Tennyson's poem has never yet failed to break my heart and bring me to tears. Here is a live version:

I first discovered the Lady through Anne of Green Gables: Anne, in love with the poem, attempts to recreate the Lady's dying journey down the river, an adventure which of course goes terribly awry. Oh, how I longed to have a suitable river and boat in which to try it for myself! The Lady will always fascinate me, for as she watched piecemeal reflections of the world and spun them into dreams, I, dreaming, see parts of myself reflected in her.

Lancelot mused a little space; / He said, "She has a lovely face; / God in his mercy lend her grace, / The Lady of Shalott."

Images:
- All via Wikisource [link] [link] [link]
- Some further images can be found at the Camelot Project [link]

Sources:
- Elaine of Astolat/The Lady of Shalott at the Camelot Project [link]
- Summary of Book 18 of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur [link]
- Full text of Caxton's edition of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (link starts you at the Astolat episode of Book 18) [link]
- Full text of both versions of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" [link] or [link]
- Full text of "Lancelot and Elaine" in Tennyson's The Idylls of the King [link]
- Wikipedia [link] and [link]

recommendation: "Quills" (2000 movie)

2010-06-09T18:55:00.001-06:00

Quills is the story of the Marquis de Sade, scandalous author of erotica (or pornography? that is another debate altogether) in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century France. He is confined to an insane asylum, but continues to write, to the dismay and delight of his public.

"You're not the Antichrist. You're nothing but a malcontent who knows how to spell!"

At least, this is the tale the movie promises us, but much like the Marquis' own work, it delivers something entirely different underneath the lewd veneer. Just as de Sade explored philosophy through perversion (or normalcy? that, too, is another debate), Quills explores philosophy through the man himself. The movie is a meditation on writing, reading, and the power inherent in both.

"It's not even a proper novel! It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions!"

Quills' exquisite cast plays out a four-part character dynamic in all its painful nuance. De Sade (Geoffrey Rush) is the writer, Maddy (Kate Winslet) the reader, the Abbé de Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix) the healer, Doctor Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) the corrector. Who are our heroes and who are our villains? The Abbé is the hero--or is he? Is naivety and goodwill enough to form a hero, or are they seeds that will blossom into unspeakable maturity? Maddy is our heroine, is she not? But is she so desperate for personal realization that she will walk over others to attain it?

"The price, my coquette, is every bit as firm as I am."

The Doctor is a bleak villain, convinced of his principles: in his mind, he is the hero, and our reactions to him depend on this. "I had no time to write," he says to his prepubescent bride. In the context of the movie, his failure to touch the quill signals to us the depth of his malignancy, but once we have seen the horrors other quills have wrought, can we be entirely comfortable with our own judgement? Yet his bride's chance to lift his cruel hand comes through de Sade's words, the very words that precipitate others' fall.

And the Marquis himself--ah.

"I'll die of loneliness. I've no company but the characters I create."

De Sade is perhaps the most complicated figure of all, and yet his desire is so simple: to write the world that is in his head. It is only because he himself is so aware of his mighty contradictions and the turmoil that thrusts his hand to the quill and the quill to the page that he appears to us with such bleak force and engages both our revulsion and our compassion.

"And then they started burning it!" "That's the peril of composing such incendiary prose."

Quills shows us just how much agency rests in the apparently inert object of the book. Books are nothing without their writers and their readers, and yet they harbor ideas just like the humans that cradle them. Books are born, persist, survive, remain, perish. Books burn. Books set fires. Books are flammable beings, just like we are.

"My writing LIVES!"

Through the course of the movie, we see it happen. Words grow from ink on paper to wine on bedsheets to blood on clothing to sounds passed from lips to ears to, finally, shit smeared on prison walls. Words are images, sustenance, coverings, conversation, excrescence. Words flourish and words die. What do their makers and their recipients do? And how greatly do they influence each other?

"I've all the demons of Hell in my head. My only salvation is to vent them on paper."

The Marquis believes his salvation lies in writing, but is he saved? And Maddy says, "Reading's my salvation," and yet her voracious desire for stories leads her, too, into destruction. Is writing ever more than a breath away from someone's destruction--do we destroy in the very act of creation? What do we destroy when we create? Can one put words in, yet take only words out, or do words become actions the moment they pass our lips, our pens, our keyboards? Quills begins with wit and fun, sex and sly glances, but devolves into pure, choking horror. Such a perfect descent does not assure us of anything.

"How easily, dear reader, does one turn from predator to prey."

Quills is one of my favourite movies. It asks us to read between the lines as we consider pleasure and pain, truth and fiction, morality and immorality, gift and curse, grace and annihilation. These things thrive in symbiosis, and our words can make all the difference. Do we, too, swallow the rosary, or do we continue to scrawl through feverish despair in the hope that someone out there is listening?

What do we do if someone is?

inspiration: "Flirt" by Alphonse Mucha

2010-06-07T17:12:00.003-06:00

FLIRT

see high-res image here at the Art Renewal Center

-- Alphonse Maria Mucha (1899)
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

ramble: absinthe, or that accursed green fairy

2010-06-04T02:48:00.003-06:00

"The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things." -- Oscar Wilde (as told to John Fothergill, and quoted in Absinthe: History in a Bottle by Barnaby Conrad III, pp. viii-ix)

Absinthe: the spirit that was the darling of the nineteenth-century bohemian world, from France to America, she who was la fée verte, the "green fairy" (memorably personified in Moulin Rouge! by an adorable Kylie Minogue). Many fell under its spell, fora spell it seemed to them to be: just read Ernest Dowson's 1899 poem "Absinthia Taetra" [link] or Raoul Ponchon's 1886 poem "Sonnet del'Absinthe" [via link]. Absinthe is one of the, if not the most, romantic and deliciously forbidden drinks--even today, it retains its mystique and the misconception that it is hallucinogenic, poisonous, and possibly fatal lingers.

Absinthe is a pale green spirit that tastes of anise (licorice), first created in 1792 by a Frenchman in Switzerland. It is distilled from a variety of herbs, including hyssop, mint, coriander, and chamomile.

The most notable ingredient is, however, wormwood: a psychoactive chemical, thujone, comes from this plant. However, there is relatively very little thujone present in absinthe, certainly not enough to cause the kind of hallucinations and mental disturbances attributed to it. Rather, it is likely absinthe's high alcohol content (up to 72-74%) that is the foremost danger; one would be dead of alcohol poisoning before one had consumed enough wormwood to poison oneself (Conrad, p. 154).

However, this, too, is no danger for the casual absinthe-drinker: the spirit is traditionally "louched," that is, taken diluted with water poured over a sugar cube placed on a slotted spoon across the lip of the glass (the sugar provides a counterpoint to the bitter anise flavour).*

But not all absintheurs were casual. Despite its logically innocent composition, abinsthe inspired, enraged, maddened, and destroyed a great many men and women on both sides of the year 1900 (it was eventually banned in 1914).** It was both a mark of bohemian society and its curse, each magnifying the other's supposed corruption to onlookers only too ready to condemn them both.

Artists Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Monticelli, and poets Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and, of course, Wilde, are some of the notable bohemians who were partial to absinthe. Partial might not be the word to describe Verlaine and Rimbaud's allegiance to the spirit:

"By most accounts, Verlaine and Rimbaud were besotted on a nearly full-time basis. For Rimbaud, drinking was not a pleasure but a necessary form of flagellation to make the nerves sing like harp wires. Verlaine had a different temperament. When absinthe percolated through his system, he behaved with loathsome brutality, taking out a deep-seated anger on his passive wife Mathilde. He beat her, set fire to her hair and clothes, and even slashed her with a knife. Rimbaud urged Verlaine on...." (Conrad, p. 26)

Absinthe: the symptom and the excuse, not the cause, of the behaviour of young bohemians like this pair--who were the ones to give all the rest, and their drink of choice, such a bad name. Absinthe: the outlet of frustrated dreamers whose wickedness and promise of sweet transport came from the drinker, not the drink. The green fairy holds up a mirror, and the reflection can be lovely--or terrible.

* I confess, I have never tried absinthe. I would love to, but it's hard to find--especially a good, faithfully crafted variety, not one of the many imitators.
** Production resumed in fits and starts in the late twentieth century. Today, in most countries the drink is, finally, legal once more.

Images:
- 1896 poster advertising Absinthe Robette, by T. Privat-Livemont [via link] (I have this on my wall)
- The preparation of absinthe [via link]
- La Muse Verte by Albert Maignan (1895) [via link]

Sources:
- Raoul Ponchon, "Sonnet de l'Absinthe" [via link]
- Ernest Dowson, "Absinthia Taetra" [link]
- Conrad, Barnaby III. Absinthe: History in a Bottle. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.
- Wikipedia [link]

recommendation: "The Golden Age of Erotica" (1965 book)

2010-06-02T15:22:00.002-06:00

The Golden Age of Erotica by Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1965; though I am here using and quoting from the 1969 paperback reprint by Tandem) is still my favourite sourcebook for the rowdy and raunchy side of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries*--though I suppose it is considered rather dated (to which I say pshaw). From the back:

Painstakingly culled from yellowed manuscripts and the vaults of collectors, the erotic excerpts presented in this unique volume reveal a ribald, bawdy and lusty era that connoisseurs of more up-to-date erotic literature will relish. THE GOLDEN AGE OF EROTICA so vividly brought to light by this book includes the 17th and 18th centuries--the age of FANNY HILL,** TOM JONES, rakish monks and dissolute royalty. In England, France and the new world of America, sin, corruption and immorality ran rampant, making this period one of the most delightfully garish, joyously gaudy and outrageously sexual epochs in history.***

Hurwood tackles this vast subject (and as he notes in his preface, "[p]aradoxically, there was so much erotica produced between the 1660s and the 1890s, that most of it passed into obscurity") from both historical and literary perspectives. He examines a wide variety of erotic art--novels, poetry, drama, paintings--and real-life sexual practices like flagellation and the fad (really) of adultery. He begins with "Poets, Pranksters and Rakehells," which is, I feel, the way one could approach anything and have it immediately become ten times better. Here are some choice quotations from the following chapters (I will not quote from the sources directly, to spare your blushes).

On satire: the infamous Lord Rochester's play Sodom, or, The Quintessence of Debauchery--"[I]n its own peculiar way Sodom contains a reverse morality-in-profanity, for it illustrates with sickening clarity the consequences of perversion, anarchy, and unbridled licentiousness" (p. 23).

On periodicals: the notorious Rambler--"Interested parties could find informative do-it-yourself articles on sexual techniques, health, and flagellation, as well as intimate memoirs, the latest, hottest, Crim. Con. [adultery] cases, and spicy fiction galore" (p. 61).

On flagellation: "Indeed, [though] there is much to be said for those who assert that de Sade's influence accelerated the growth of flagellant literature ... it is beyond doubt that the predilection for flogging long ante-dated the arch-sadist of letters. ... [And] there is no question that the greatest quantity of this specialized erotica is peculiar to the English language ... Perhaps it was the cold climate which originally aroused in Englishmen a desire for whipping" (p. 105).

On hermaphroditism (a subject I'm very interested in): "It greatly appealed to jaded individuals who were uncertain about their own sexual inclinations. By delving into the recondite lore of the hermaphrodite, these indecisive fence-straddlers found all the erotic stimulation they desired without any conflict at all. It simply became unnecessary for them to worry about which sex they found more appealing. Both were embodied in a single entity, thus eliminating the need for troublesome decisions" (pp. 159-60).

On female same-sex relationships: "Women with a fondness for their own sex were either not recognized as sexual deviates, or merely regarded as indulging in a passing fancy. Egotistical males invariably looked upon lesbianism as a second-rate substitute activity practiced by man-starved females" (p. 160).

On aphrodisiacs: "One popular seventeenth century formula included ants, wine, and cinnamon. Others not only included ants, but woodlice, bees, semen, blood, not to mention the genitals of every creature from the rooster to the stag" (p. 185).

Hurwood's tone is always this frank and playful; his discussion never shies prudishly away. He describes this lush and dirty fare from start to finish (ha [sorry]) with a coy tongue in his cheek, nicely shooing away those with incompatible moralities. From the preface:

"Most of the books, plays, anecdotes, and bawdy songs quoted here have been attacked at one time or another as 'indecent,' 'blasphemous,' and worse. In all probability there are still those among us who would delight in pinning similar labels on these works today ... [but] to read excerpts from them is a memorable experience. ... Lurid, fantastic, and wild are the best terms to use in describing these clandestine books of an earlier era. One thing is certain. The word dull can never be applied to them."

Wink-wink-nudge-nudge, indeed. I cannot recommend The Golden Age of Erotica enough, whether you're researching the period--erotica was such a huge part (ha [I'm so sorry]) of the period that in all conscience (look! I worked conscience into this!) you can't ignore it, and Hurwood provides a thorough bibliography--or just fascinated by its sexier angles.

* That is, their best side!
** One of my favourite novels. According to Wikipedia, it's "one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history." I'll give it its own post, trust.
*** Is this final sentence not pure blazing glory?+
+ I was born so far out of my time.

inspiration: "Sonnet" by Rupert Brooke

2010-05-31T15:28:00.006-06:00

SONNET

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls — on you —
The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But — there are wanderers in the middle mist,
Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,
And do not love at all. Of these am I.

-- Rupert Brooke, in Collected Poems (1915)
[read this book online here]

ramble: the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or necromantics

2010-05-29T03:05:00.002-06:00

I've studied a great deal of medieval necromancy--ritual magic that is not just the tired old reanimation of the dead. Folks well into the 17th century* generally considered "necromancy" to be a kind of ceremonial divination primarily (though not solely) involved with conjuring demons and/or other spirits.** A necromancer might conjure a demon to serve him (almost always him) domestically, bodily,*** by giving him a magical object,+ or by bestowing extraworldly knowledge on him.

Necromancy and exorcism were thus closely related, but the Church was not exactly cool with the former. However, clerics interested in necromancy did not usually think they were acting counter to Christian belief; the ceremonial systems are very much embedded in Christianity, and from the perspective of a practitioner, there is little difference between "religion" and "magic."

There are hundreds of extant necromantic manuscripts. Some are wedged in among other things in miscellanies while some are standalone codices. Such ritual textbooks are often called grimoires: two well-known examples are the 15th/16th-century Key of Solomon and the 17th-century Lesser Key of Solomon. Johann Weyer's late-16th-century book De Praestigiis Daemonum is not quite in the same vein; he was responding to the growing trend of brutal witch-hunting handbooks.++ His book, especially its appendix, the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, has prevailed as a fascinating record of demonology and the necromantic practices that relied on it.

The Pseudomonarchia Daemonum is a major source for the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Ars Goetia, and itself draws on the grimoires that came before it. It lists and describes sixty-nine demons with their "ranks" or "titles" as well as the appropriate times for conjuring them. The following are three of my favourites--note how they're not necessarily intrinsically evil.+++

- Marbas, who appears as a lion, inflicts and cures illness and can shapeshift the conjurer [link to full description]
- Astaroth, who appears as a "foul angel" riding a dragon, teaches liberal arts and sciences and has bad breath [link to full description]
- Gomory, who is male but appears as a lady riding a camel, finds treasure and can get women (especially virgins) into the conjurer's bed [link to full description]

Requisite safety disclaimer: don't try conjurations at home. At least not without proper preparation and preferably an expert on hand. I'm still not responsible for what happens, mind.

* And even into the 18th and 19th centuries; the Victorian interest in spirits didn't come out of nowhere.
** As opposed to natural magic, wherein one uses animals, plants, and minerals in conjunction with the zodiacal and lunar cycles, sometimes incorporating written charms, for generally more practical ends.
*** Sexy. I mean it; some of them are hot fairy-women.
+ Like a ring of invisibility (hot fairy-women bring one in a manuscript I've studied; the conjurer then gets it on with them. Double score).
++ I haven't read the whole thing, however, so I can't say if he seems to have fully believed in the validity of ritual magic; I get different impressions from different secondary sources (however, he did at least believe in the existence of demons). Probably the fellow was (wisely) being cagey.
+++ Like any sort of technology, necromancy's a tool; it's all in how you use it.

Images:
- A "great pentacle" from the Key of Solomon [via link]
- A depiction of Astaroth from the Dictionnaire Infernal, an 1818 work on demonology [via link]

Sources:
- Biography of Johann Weyer [link]
- Full text of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum in both Latin and English at Esoteric Archives [link]
- Full text of the Lesser Key of Solomon at EA [link]
- Full text of the Key of Solomon at EA [link]
- List of demons in the Ars Goetia (slightly different from the PD) [link]
- The Dictionnaire Infernal [link] (I'll blog about this one in detail someday)

recommendation: "Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles" (2009 video game)

2010-05-28T00:54:00.001-06:00

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is a follow-up to 2007's Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, both on-rails shooters for the Nintendo Wii. I played RE:UC with my best gamer buddy and it rocked, so clearly we had to play this one. I'm also quite the fan of rail shooters. I've heard them derided as archaic, arcade-style, outmoded games, but I find them to be a very particular and very enjoyable blend of movie-like storytelling with gaming. Sometimes, I really enjoy having control of the camera and world taken out of my hands--letting the director guide me, yet still asking for my input in order to progress. It's a particularly effective mixture of relaxation and tension. And it trains you damn well for the headshot.

RE:DC is, in fact, a serious improvement over its predecessor. Lots of shaky cam and jostling about, meaning you're frequently confronted by oozing, rotting zombies RIGHT IN YOUR FACE and you'd better be damn good already at the ol' headshot. There are plenty of opportunities to upgrade your weaponry. The bowgun is silly but rad, the grenade and rocket launchers are badass, and the shotgun is still trusty (though you can't upgrade its reload speed. Realism. Sigh.) The inventory (I love a good inventory) is easy to manage; you never have quite enough ammo, of course, and rightly so. The co-op mode is fantastic. Your health and your partner's health decrease separately, and you've got to decide whose state is the critical one if you've only got one restorative herb. Sometimes, the camera will cut away to show you your partner in the third person, and you'll be unable to shoot (this happens equally for player 1 and player 2). It's massively frustrating, but in a good way, as it adds to the tension--"BEHIND YOU! I CAN'T SHOOT IT! YOU HAVE TO!"--and it allows you to ogle your exquisitely hot partner.*

You get to play as five characters from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Code Veronica: Leon Kennedy, Jack Krauser, Claire Redfield, Steve Burnside, and Chris Redfield. There are three scenarios: Operation Javier (South America), Memories of a Lost City (Raccoon City), and Game of Oblivion (Rockfort Island). The adversaries are nicely varied between the scenarios. The only real disappointment is that the scenarios are pretty short. It took us about seven hours to finish the whole thing, and this even with getting stuck on one of the bosses.** The graphics, pacing, and overall story are just so bloody*** good that it is a Major Bummer when it's over.

You can certainly have a grand old time with RE:DC without being a Resident Evil fan (though I am a wild-eyed one of both the games and the movies). You might not understand everything that's happening, but just remember: T-virus bad. T-Veronica virus bad. G-virus bad. All make BOWs (Bio-Organic Weapons)--gross mutated zombie monster things--giant toad monsters! giant plant monsters! giant turkey monsters! They're all bad. Kill them. KILL THEM ALL.

* By which I really just mean Leon Kennedy. SMOKIN' HOT, right there. Of course, your tastes may vary, but if so: you're weird. Leon is the man. He's perfect. End of. Don't argue with me on this one.
** A minor flaw: the occasional cheap trick is involved in order to off certain bosses. Relying on blind luck is no fun.
*** Seriously.

inspiration: "The Islander" by Nightwish

2010-05-25T02:49:00.001-06:00

THE ISLANDER

-- Nightwish, from Dark Passion Play (2007)

ramble: patches, or the history of the beauty mark uncovered

2010-05-21T19:50:00.003-06:00

Her patches are of every cut,
For pimples and for scars;
Here’s all the wandering planets’ signs,
And some of the fixed stars.
Already gummed to make them stick, 
They need no other sky.
-- Anonymous [via link]

In eighteenth-century Europe, beauty spots or marks were much in fashion. Marks both real (moles) and false (patches) had started to come en vogue in sixteenth-century England, first a fad among the trendy and foppish male courtiers. (Patches may initially have been used to disguise pockmarks left by disease.) Both genders began to patch themselves with fervor in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth, delicate facial marks were all the rage or--ahem--as we might say, widespread.

As few folk are graced with perfectly placed, aesthetically-pleasing moles (heaven forbid your facial mole be too prominent or, indeed, hairy), false patches were usually quite necessary. Called mouches (French for "flies"), they were made from silk, velvet, taffeta, or leather and affixed with gum. They could be of any colour and certainly did not conform in shape to a simple dot. Patches in the shape of hearts, stars, moons and yet more outrageous forms were common. A particularly elaborate--and popular!--patch design was an intricate (and no doubt sizeable) coach-and-horse!

Such extravagant facial adornments were, of course, much despised by the moralizing set, and while some infatuated souls admired their patched lovers' faces, others felt a patch (or too many patches) marred, not enhanced, beauty. In many modern films, beauty marks become a joke, a sign of neither loveliness nor dire moral corruption, but rather a marker for airheaded vanity (see: the hardly-period-appropriate-but-hilariously-awesome Prince John in Robin Hood: Men in Tights).

The popularity of beauty marks waned in the latter half of the eighteenth century and through the nineteenth, but the trend continues today, though (like so many things) it seems to be more acceptable for women than for men (Enrique Iglesias had his facial mole removed in 2003; however, take note of Prince!). Famed beauties Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Cindy Crawford all flaunt(ed) their pretty moles. The gorgeous and talented Dita von Teese has an artificial-but-permanent beauty mark on her left cheek. And, speaking of tattoos, the lovely Kat von D's smattering of stars on her left temple can be read as another manifestation of the urge to patch.

Then there's my own pale imitation: little girls' stick-on earrings make excellent, cheap-and-easy beauty marks. Or, when one is feeling a little bit more posh and moneyed, this darling little packet with its hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds would be absolutely perfect.

Image:
- The exquisite Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette in the eponymous 1938 film

Sources:
- The Costumer's Manifesto: 18th Century Makeup [link]
- Chambers' Book of Days (1869) [link]
- The Faces Behind the Masks: The "Toilette" in 18th Century England [link]
- Wikipedia [link]
- TVTropes [link]

recommendation: "North & South" (2004 miniseries)

2010-05-19T12:00:00.007-06:00

Historical drama is what keeps me breathing, by God. And I ought to be writing the BBC an annual thank-you letter for single-handedly rejuvenating my will to live.

North & South is a four-part series based on Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel (which was originally a twenty-two-part serial). I haven't read the book, but--tangent--I am not much of a stickler for accuracy. I don't really mind if a film adaptation is unfaithful to either the history or the literature on which it is based (though it's delightful when it is bang on) as long as it works on its own as a cohesive tale within a cohesive world and doesn't pretend to be a documentary or The TRUE Story. Good storytelling is good; therein my concerns end. (The key, as ever, is sincerity.) So, I haven't the faintest sense of true-to-the-bookness here, but, to be semi-appropriately referential, I don't give a damn, because it is a damn good series.

Damn good. It's the mid-nineteenth century. Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe) is from the southern English countryside, modern-yet-spoiled daughter of a dissenting minister who uproots his family to the north to stay true to his principles. John Thornton (Richard Armitage*) is the owner of a cotton mill in the northern industrial town of Milton: a strict and severe yet equally principled businessman. It is the perfect clash. Milton might as well be an alien planet for Miss Hale, a fact she realizes while trying to accept, if not enjoy, her new life. Mr Thornton is also struggling with acceptance: of his social position--a master, yet hardly aristocratic; supposedly wealthy, yet in fact in danger of losing his business--and of his developing affections for Miss Hale.

There are clashes at all levels: between masters and workers, men and women, families of differing status, the charitable and the prideful. Mr Thornton may declare his love for Miss Hale before either of them is able to deal with it, and Miss Hale may be trying to settle everyone else's problems before realizing she must first remove her own blinkers, but each is trying to do what he or she believes to be best. North & South is all about principles: not right and wrong, but rather the unique personal morality of every individual and how we must mediate it in order to live with each other.

And yet, Milton is somehow not a morally grey place. "I have seen Hell," Miss Hale says, "and it is white." The pale fairylike fluff of the cotton kills those who work in the mill and dictates the lives of everyone in Milton. It is the master, the sole livelihood for Mr Thornton and his employees alike. It is no abstracted evil; it is real. Miss Hale and Mr Thornton must learn how to cope with it when roles are reversed, responsibility must take the place of charity, and white will somehow have to meet black without either losing its purpose and clarity.

Also, there are trains. And kissing on trains. Crossings of paths and revelations in transit; where do we meet? How can we meet halfway? The emotional brilliance of North & South is positively feverish. Perfect.

* Shallow meter: savagely broken. Richard Armitage always shatters all records of SMOKIN' HOTNESS. For reference: the innumerable scenes of lurking, stalking, gazing-through-windows, pining-through-windows, brooding, angsting, and principled passion. Principled passion. Just look at the principles emanating from him in that photo. I take it back about the will-to-live thing. I AM SLAIN.

inspiration: "The Queen of the Tournament (Ivanhoe)" by Frank William Warwick Topham

2010-05-17T00:23:00.005-06:00

THE QUEEN OF THE TOURNAMENT (IVANHOE)

see high-res image here at the Art Renewal Center

-- Frank William Warwick Topham (1838-1924; exact date of painting unknown)
[see more works at the Art Renewal Center here]

ramble: book soundtrack

2010-05-14T17:42:00.001-06:00

Books ought to come with soundtracks! I don't like to write without music, so I wish I could include the same instant atmosphere for the reader. I've been messing about with this soundtrack for my WIP for a while now.* The order of the songs roughly follows the order of events. Gives an interesting impression of the story.** It's also a useful yet fun way to examine plotting, pacing, and emotional arcs. (Links are to youtube.)

1. Secret Garden - Divertimento [link]
2. Lady Gaga - Beautiful, Dirty, Rich [link]
3. HIM - Passion's Killing Floor [link]
4. Emilie Autumn - Swallow [link]
5. Bond - Duel [link]
6. Abney Park - Love [link]
7. Darren Hayes - Popular [link]
8. Icon of Coil - Love as Blood [link]
9. Nightwish - Escapist [link]
10. Edge of Dawn - Elegance [link]
11. HIM - Gone with the Sin [link]
12. Valeria - Rhythm of the Night [link]
13. Emilie Autumn - Revelry [link]
14. Blutengel - A New Dawn [link]
15. The Birthday Massacre - Unfamiliar [link]
16. Placebo - Happy You're Gone [link]
17. Unsun - Whispers [link]
18. Delain - Frozen [link]
19. Elysion - Dreamer [link]
20. Nightwish - Bye Bye Beautiful [link]
21. Jakalope - Go Away [link]
22. Hannah Fury - Meathook [link]
23. Reflexion - Twilight Child [link]
24. Placebo - Song to Say Goodbye [link]
25. Black Eyed Peas - Meet Me Halfway [link]
26. I:Scintilla - Cursive Eve [link]
27. Emilie Autumn - God Help Me [link]
28. Elane - Half Past You [alas. cannot find a link.]
29. Negative - Glory of the Shame [link]
30. Muse - Undisclosed Desires [link]
31. Lady Gaga - Paparazzi (Demolition Crew Remix) [link]
32. Tarja - Die Alive [link]
33. Secret Garden - Passacaglia [link]
34. Within Temptation - Our Solemn Hour [link]
35. Beseech - Between the Lines [link]
36. Nightwish - While Your Lips Are Still Red [link]
37. Hole - For Once in Your Life [link]
38. Leaves' Eyes - Take the Devil In Me [link]
39. The Dreamside - The Feast Is Set [link]
40. Delain - On the Other Side [link]
41. Placebo - For What It's Worth [link]
42. Emilie Autumn - Dominant [link]
43. I:Scintilla - The Bells [link]
44. Apocalyptica - Nothing Else Matters [link]
45. Garbage - It's All Over But the Crying [link]
46. The Birthday Massacre - The Dream [link]

* It is now very long. Think of it like a double album. Or triple.
** And also illustrates the fact that I love pseudo-historical movies that include modern music in their scores (see: Marie Antoinette; Moulin Rouge; A Knight's Tale).

recommendation: "Bandidas" (2006 movie)

2010-05-12T01:17:00.003-06:00

I love westerns; I love silly westerns. I also love sexy westerns, which means I knew I'd love Bandidas before I'd done more than hear about it. It's a girl-buddy-western-comedy starring the gorgeous and talented Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, both of whom I've been head over heels in love with for ages (Penelope's hair... dreamy sigh). Hayek and Cruz are best friends who'd long wanted to work on a movie together, but never had the right opportunity, so they made this one themselves.

And it's badass. Maria (Cruz) is a poor girl who's lived on her father's farm her whole life; Sara (Hayek) is a posh girl who's been educated in Europe and has only just returned to (vaguely late 1800s) Mexico. Shady New York bankers are moving in (things never change) and attempting to steal everybody's land and gold. Sara's father is murdered, and Maria's is nearly so, and the two become outlaws to avenge their families and save their country.

Both characters totally shine as their relationship grows from a cat-fightin'-bitch-slappin'-in-the-middle-of-church-sorry-Father beginning into a close trust-you-with-my-life friendship. The first token Man, Maria and Sara's weatherbeaten mentor, rides off into the sunset instead of hovering protectively, leaving the pair to kick ass on their own terms. The second Man, Quentin (Steve Zahn), is a bumbling yet endearing fool who's never particularly necessary to the action.

Maria and Sara are neither impossibly-tough-as-nails heartless female killing machines nor idealistic-and-incompetent fluttery chicks; they're just two strong-yet-flawed women on a mission, whether that mission is looting and/or blowing up banks or practicing their kissing techniques on hapless Quentin.

Sure, there's a few scenes of heaving cleavage in which a baffled Quentin clearly stands in for your stereotypical male viewer and his fantasies, but Cruz and Hayek are well aware of the game they're playing, and in those scenes I* found the focus remained on Sara and Maria, with Quentin merely their prop. This is a movie about female friendship (and tearing around on horses with guns) and neither the females nor the friendship are ultimately compromised.**

The camaraderie (stop obsessing over your hair!), hijinks (ice-skating across the alarmed floor of a vault!), and action (slo-mo gun- and knife-fight on a train!) are all fantastic, the costumes (corsets! chaps! bandanas!) are heart-attack beautiful (hello! my ideal wardrobe), and I absolutely adore the brand of crazy slapstick but heartfelt humour. In sum: Bandidas is my new favourite movie.***

* Girl who has studied far too much gender theory.

** Nor is the SMOKIN' HOTNESS ever compromised. Let me be clear about that, because it is of equal importance. (You can't be deep if you don't also have shallows. I fully own this. Sexy is fucking+ important.)

*** There are very few things in this world that are so perfectly tailored to my tastes; naturally, you may hate it. But I am no reviewer. I recommend. And this! This I highly recommend.

+ Intended.

inspiration: "The Hosting of the Sidhe" by W. B. Yeats

2010-05-10T13:00:00.011-06:00

THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE

The host is riding from Knocknarea,
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, "Away, come away;
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart."
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day;
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, "Away, come away."

-- W. B. Yeats, in The Celtic Twilight (1902)
[read this book online here or here]