In memoriam : "Dance of the Vampires."
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday July 31, 2009
Again with the…
| ALLURE |
at The New York Times.
For previous notes on
allure at the Times, see
St. Luke’s Day, 2008,
and its links.
Teaser at the top of
this afternoon’s Times’s
online front page:
“Vampires Never Die:
In our fast-paced society,
eternity has a special
allure.” (With fanged
illustration)–
Yesterday’s afternoon entry was
related to both the July 13th death
of avant-garde artist Dash Snow
and the beauty of Suzanne Vega.
A reference to Vega’s album
“Beauty & Crime” apppeared here
on the date of Snow’s death.
(See “Terrible End for an
Enfant Terrible,” NY Times,
story dated July 24.)
The Vega entry yesterday was, in
part, a reference to that context.
In view of today’s Times
teaser, the large picture of
Vega shown here yesterday
(a detail of the above cover)
seems less an image of
pure beauty than of, well,
a lure… specifically, a
vampire lure:
What healthy vampire
could resist that neck?
To me, the key words in the
Times teaser are “allure”
(discussed above) and “eternity.”
For both allure and eternity
in the same picture
(with interpretive
symbols added above)
see this journal on
January 31, 2008:
This image from “Black Narcissus”
casts Jean Simmons as Allure
and Deborah Kerr, in a pretty
contrast, as Eternity.
For different approaches to
these concepts, see Simmons
and Kerr in other films,
notably those co-starring
Burt Lancaster.
Lancaster seems to have had
a pretty good grasp of Allure
in his films with Simmons
and Kerr. For Eternity, see
“Rocket Gibraltar” and
“Field of Dreams.”
For less heterosexual approaches
to these concepts, see the
continuing culture coverage of
the Times— for instance, the
vampire essay above and the
Times‘s remarks Monday on
choreographer Merce Cunningham–
who always reminded me of
Carmen Ghia in “The Producers”–
Related material:
“Dance of the Vampires”
in “At the Still Point”
(this journal, 1/16/03).
Comments Off on Friday July 31, 2009
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Wednesday April 26, 2006
Charm
– Today’s New York Times
“‘Lestat,’ the maiden Broadway production of Warner Brothers Theater Ventures, is the third vampire musical to open in the last few years, and it seems unlikely to break the solemn curse that has plagued the genre. Directed by Robert Jess Roth from a book by Linda Woolverton, the show admittedly has higher aspirations and (marginally) higher production values than the kitschy ‘Dance of the Vampires’ (2002) and the leaden ‘Dracula: The Musical’ (2004), both major-league flops.” — Ben Brantley
Related material:
See Log24,
St. Patrick’s Day 2004:
“I faced myself that day with
the nonplused apprehension
of someone who has
come across a vampire
and has no crucifix in hand.”
— Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,”
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
“For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross.”
— Thomas Pynchon,
Gravity’s Rainbow
See also
Comments Off on Wednesday April 26, 2006
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Thursday January 16, 2003
ART WARS
At the Still Point
“At the still point, there the dance is.”
— T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets
Humphrey Carpenter in The Inklings, his book on the Christian writers J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, says that
“Eliot by his own admission took the ‘still point of the turning world’ in Burnt Norton from the Fool in Williams’s The Greater Trumps.”
— The Inklings, Ballantine Books, 1981, p. 106
Carpenter says Williams maintained that
It is the Christian’s duty to perceive “the declared pattern of the universe” — the “eternal dance” of Williams’s story The Greater Trumps — and to act according to it.
— Paraphrase of Carpenter, pp. 111-112
“The sun is not yet risen, and if the Fool moves there he comes invisibly, or perhaps in widespread union with the light of the moon which is the reflection of the sun. But if the Tarots hold, as has been dreamed, the message which all things in all places and times have also been dreamed to hold, then perhaps there was meaning in the order as in the paintings; the tale of the cards being completed when the mystery of the sun has opened in the place of the moon, and after that the trumpets cry in the design which is called the Judgement, and the tombs are broken, and then in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done. Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known. It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead.”
— The Greater Trumps, by Charles Williams, Ch. 14
If we must have Christians telling stories, let them write like Charles Williams.
Note that although Williams says the Fool Tarot card has no number, it is in fact often numbered 0. See
See also Sequel — about the work, life, and afterlife of Stan Rice, husband of Anne Rice (author of The Vampire Chronicles) — and the following story from today’s N.Y. Times:
The New York Times, Jan. 16, 2003:‘Dance of the Vampires,’
|
The death and arrival at heaven’s gate
of The Producers‘ producer, Sidney Glazier,
on Dec. 14, 2002, is described in the web page
Eight is a Gate.
Comments Off on Thursday January 16, 2003