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| Exhibition Review | 'A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy': At the Morgan, the Jane Austen Her Family Knew “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy,” a new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, includes many personal letters and early manuscripts by the author. feeds.nytimes.com |
Friedrich von Schiller: the Romantic lover Film and biographies mark 250th anniversary of passionate 'Ode to Joy' poetHe is the "rebel from Arcadia", the author of the lyrics to the modern European anthem, Ode to Joy, and a passionate champion of free spirits. But for some time Germany seemed to forget all about the man who was arguably the country's most famous Romantic thinker. Not any more. Friedrich von Schiller is back, along with a new fascination with his tumultuous love life.Just as Britain has been rediscovering the attraction of its Romantics, after documentaries about Byron by actor Rupert Everett and the release of Bright Star, the new Jane Campion film about Keats, Germany is also enjoying a romantic revival. And the 250th anniversary of Schiller's birth has given scholars the chance to rediscover one of its most distinguished poets and philosophers.A racy new film, Schiller, portrays the poet as a dashing, flame-haired womaniser, mixing high philosophy with simple lust, and dramatises his feverish search for recognition and success as an author.Meanwhile, a string of biographies have revealed, among other things, that piano music and foul apples inspired Schiller to write, that a brothel visit probably triggered his first passionate scribblings ("Your glances, when they smile love, could stir marble to life"), and that the loves of his life were two aristocratic sisters to whom he penned a joint love letter.Birgit Lahann, author of Schiller: Rebel from Arcadia, describes how the poet became the "pop star of his time" and a "cult throughout Germany": the author of Ode to Joy, which Beethoven set to music in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, and of the plays Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans and Don Carlos. His charm lay as much in his disorganised, chaotic appearance as in his brilliance. "He was scruffily dressed and had unkempt hair," writes Lahann: a kind of 18th-century role model for high-minded rebellion.But most intriguing of all is what she refers to as his "double-love" – "his relationship to two women which was the stuff of the best type of scandal".Detailed in Volker Hage's book, From a Fireball to a Classic, is the "dare-devil" Schiller's erotic obsession focused on two sisters, Charlotte, 21, and Caroline von Lengefeld, 24, the latter of whom was unhappily married. Schiller, then 29, spent the summer with them in 1788 – "a summer which he so didn't want to end he dragged it out until November until the concerned mother of the young ladies told him it was time to go home," according to Hage.Schiller, who died at 45 in May 1805, expressed his love to the women whom he referred to as "the angels of my life". The phrase was coined in a single letter in which he wrote: "To be able to live only in the two of you, and you in me – oh, that is an existence which would put us above all other humans." He eventually married the younger Charlotte and had four children with her. Schiller said the marriage brought him the "harmonious parity" he needed to be able to write.Some of his love letters are on display in the newly reopened Schiller National Museum, located in his birthplace, Marbach in southern Germany. The museum boasts 700 exhibits, including a sample of the green wallpaper in his workroom that scientists have discovered contained lead, copper and arsenic that might have contributed to his chronic lung complaint and premature death.Also on show are his shoe buckles, spoons and hand-warmers. Restored by the British-based David Chipperfield architects, the museum places on display everything from the writer's toothpicks to his blue-and-white-striped silk stockings.The most disappointing aspect of the commemorations for enthusiasts – albeit a stark illustration of the lengths Schiller experts have been prepared to go to find out as much as possible about him – is the discovery that the skull that his great friend Goethe displayed on his desk, apparently believing it to be Schiller's, did not belong to him.Extensive forensic investigation over years, costing tens of thousands of euros, including taking DNA samples from Schiller's descendants, has revealed that the skull is probably a fake.Rüdiger Safranski, a Schiller expert, has delivered a fresh and touching account of the friendship between the two poets, and how they inspired each other, in Goethe and Schiller: History of a Friendship. The two men even composed poems together, despite the difficulties they had in reconciling their different daily rhythms – Goethe was a morning person, Schiller, because of the cramps he suffered at night, decidedly a nightbird. Goethe, he relates, was nonplussed at Schiller's insistence on maintaining a drawer full of rotten apples in his workroom, claiming he needed their decaying scent in order to be able to write.The new Schiller revival, believes Safranski, may be a short-lived and bittersweet affair, in the best Romantic tradition. Safranski, who also wrote Romanticism – A German Affair, points to the nation's current mediocre capacity for the grandeur of Schiller's passions, observing: "From a romantic point of view, we've reached the end. Romanticism is dead, our sense of possibility is dried out."Friedrich SchillerGermanyPoetryTheatreKate Connollyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Roy Greenslade: Cudlipp's Mirror history, Publish and be Damned!, is republished Hugh Cudlipp, the architect of post-war British tabloid journalism, has a very short and wholly inadequate entry on Wikipedia. I guess that no young digital native knows enough, or cares enough, to compile a proper wiki biography of the great man.A great man? Yes, the hyperbole is deserved. For all his faults, Cudlipp was a towering figure in popular journalism, masterminding the editorial formula that made the Daily Mirror of the 1950s and 60s not only the nation's best-selling daily national paper but one with real social and political clout.Cudlipp never edited the Mirror. But, as editorial director, he pulled the strings. He was the inspiration behind the whole concept, the design, the campaigns, the promotional stunts and the gimmicks that involved reader participation. He also wrote many of its iconic headlines.A Fleet Street editor by the age of 24 (the Sunday Pictorial, later the Sunday Mirror), he was appointed as editorial director of Mirror Group in 1952.He was so sure of himself, and of the Mirror's status, that just a year later he wrote a history of the paper and, for the title, borrowed Wellington's famous quote to a former mistress who threatened to publish his love-letters to her: "Publish and be damned!" Cudlipp's Publish and be Damned!, out of print for many years, has now been republished by Revel Barker. It is a text all journalists should read because it explains the nature of newspaper populism.There are many telling moments. Here's one I like best, partly because it reflects much of the current debate about the political influence (or not) of the Mirror's populist successor, The Sun: When the paper achieved the world record daily sale of four millions in post-war years The Economist commented: 'The success of the Mirror is a sore reflection upon a democracy, sometimes called educated, that prefers its information potted, pictorial and spiced with sex and sensation.'Yet in 1945 this same excellent journal, The Economist, expressed the opinion that the Mirror was one of the decisive influences in the general election, since it preached to many of the unconverted.Can a newspaper be 'potted, pictorial and spiced' and 'a decisive influence' at one and the same time? The answer is Yes: the Mirror reflects life as it is, but it has always shown an awareness of the world as it might be.Cudlipp, who died aged 84 in 1998, was the remarkable product of a remarkable family. One brother, Percy, edited the London Evening Standard (1933-38) and the Daily Herald (1940-53). And the other, Reginald, edited the News of the World (1953-59).Hugh's wife, Jodi, is still with us, of course, and always attends the annual Cudlipp lectures at the London College of Communication (former speakers include Michael Grade, Alastair Campbell, Paul Dacre and Rebekah Brooks).So modern journalists are certainly aware of Cudlipp's legacy. Now, who will do him the honour of writing a proper Wikipedia entry?Daily MirrorSunday MirrorAlastair CampbellPaul DacreRebekah BrooksMichael GradeRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Me, Paul Bowles and that forgotten night in Tangier A documentary on the American author triggered a memory of a disturbing night at the writer's apartment that had been suppressed for 40 yearsIn 1998, at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I was happily watching the documentary Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, when the weirdest thing happened to me. While the 87-year-old author was being interviewed in his apartment in Tangier, I had a strange feeling of deja vu. An African mask on the wall triggered the sense that I had been in that apartment before. Was that possible? Maybe I had seen a photo of it somewhere. I had come to the film without any pre-conceived notions, nor did I know much about Bowles, merely that he had written The Sheltering Sky, a book I had not read. I had seen Bernardo Bertolucci's film adaptation of it, which I had not much liked. That was the sum of my knowledge of Bowles.The more the documentary continued, the more I became convinced that I had been in Bowles's apartment in Tangier and not just seen photos of it. It was too potent a sensation. While I watched the film, I struggled to understand why I had this certitude. Gradually, some images started to emerge from my unconscious mind, and then the whole story came flooding back. I had what I can only call a flashback to an incident that had taken place more than four decades earlier.When I was 17 years old, a friend of mine, known as Frog, and I had decided to take a year off between school and university to travel around Europe very cheaply, hitch-hiking, staying in youth hostels and getting odd jobs where we could. We had managed to hitch rides down through Spain and had crossed on the ferry from Gibraltar to Tangier.On our first night, after getting a room in a run-down hotel, we sat at an outdoor cafe nursing glasses of beer. After a while, two middle-aged men sat down at the table next to us. I immediately recognised one of them as Richard Wattis, a supporting actor in dozens of British films and TV shows, mostly playing officious civil servants. I caught myself staring at him. He smiled at me, and introduced himself as Dickie and his friend as Monty. They offered to buy us more beer and asked if we would like something to eat. As we had been living mostly on bread for the week, we accepted gladly.After our meal, and a couple more beers, Dickie and Monty asked if we would like to visit the famous author Paul Bowles, of whom neither of us had heard. We could hardly refuse. Now rather tipsy, we followed our newfound friends through endless back streets, then climbed some winding stairs. Dickie rang the bell of an apartment. A young Moroccan dressed in a djellaba opened the door. There were a few other young men lounging on sofas and a strange smell in the air.My friend and I were introduced to a tall, thin man in his late 40s. He was sitting in a cane chair and smoking a pipe. An African mask was on the wall above him. Ignoring Frog, whose looks had engendered his nickname, he asked me some questions and seemed to take an unusual amount of interest in my naive answers. Then he offered us some peculiar-looking cigarettes. Though neither of us smoked, it would have been impolite to refuse. I took a few puffs, not knowing then that the cigarettes must have been kif, as hashish is known in Morocco.The next thing I knew was that I woke up in a bed wearing a djellaba with nothing underneath. I looked around and saw Frog, fully dressed, dozing in a chair. My clothes were at the foot of the bed. It was early morning. I remember feeling more confused than shocked. I just knew I had to get dressed and out of there as fast as possible. I woke Frog and we made our way quietly out of the bedroom. There didn't seem to be anyone around. Luckily, the front door was open. We ran out into the street and tried to find our way back to our hotel.I had no recollection of what had happened between my taking the kif and waking up. I asked Frog if he knew, but he didn't, having fallen asleep after smoking the kif. I still wonder what took place during those few hours after I blacked out. Who had undressed me and put me in a djellaba, and why? Had I been abused? I think I would have known if I had. All I felt on waking up was a rather nasty headache.It was curious, however, that I had eliminated the episode from my conscious mind until it had been aroused by the documentary more than 40 years later. I had heard about repressed and recovered memory, but had always been rather skeptical about it. There was another peculiar side-effect. Ever since the memory came back, I struggle to remember Bowles's name.Incidentally, I've since read everything I could by him in the vain hope that I would appear somewhere in his writings where the mystery would be solved. Bowles's best writing drew me into an exotic, perverse, nihilistic world in which one of the dominant themes was the destruction of innocence. What impressed me and disturbed me most was his second novel, Let It Come Down (1952), set almost entirely in Tangier among the louche ex-pat community. It ends with the main character, Nelson Dyar, a soulless American high on hashish, hammering a nail into the ear of his sleeping Arab friend.DocumentaryRonald Berganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Cultural Studies: Elizabeth Edwards Teeters on Her Pedestal Elizabeth Edwards, considered a saint after her husband’s affair was exposed, is recast as a bully. feeds.nytimes.com |