Max Ernst 127

Photograph of Ernst and Leonora Carrington by Lee Miller, c. 1939

Advertisements

Remedios Varo 109

María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga
16 December 1908 – 8 October 1963

Leigh in Shakespeare

Hamlet, 1937

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1937

Romeo and Juliet, 1940

Richard III, 1948

Antony and Cleopatra, 1951

Macbeth, 1955

Titus Andronicus, 1955

Twelfth Night, 1955

“Shaw is like a train. One just speaks the words and sits in one’s place. But Shakespeare is like bathing in the sea – one swims where one wants.”

–Vivien Leigh

Blanche DuBois

Behind the scenes of A Streetcar Named Desire

Vivien Leigh 104

Behind the scenes of Gone With the Wind

If forced to choose I would have to assert that Vivien Leigh was the greatest screen actress of all time, and that two roles alone suffice to demonstrate her preeminence: Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois. In these two colossal performances she towers above other players like a terrible goddess amid muttering drabs. She was also among the loveliest to look upon. Her feminine charms were naturally superlative but it was her tender smile and the light in her eyes, surviving age and unhappiness, that were so touching and unforgettable.

In the Beginning

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face,
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

Photo by Lee Miller
Poem by Dylan Thomas

On Alcman

Do not judge the man by the stone. Simple is the tomb to look on, but holds the bones of a great man. Thou shalt know Alcman the supreme striker of the Laoconian lyre, possessed by the nine Muses. Here resteth he, a cause of dispute to two continents, if he be a Lydian or a Spartan. Minstrels have many mothers.

Text: Antipater of Thessalonica, The Greek Anthology VII:18 translated by W. R. Paton. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1917
Image: Marble stele [MAMA XI 70 (Sebaste)], 3rd century AD, Private collection