~*Revue_Blanche*~

The vamp vamps up.
Here's a little quizzy thingy. It’s fun and pleasant. Quizzes make me feel like I’m being interviewed:

What is your sexual appeal?

Sophisticate
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Oscar Wilde club and Revue_Blanche present:
*Writing in the Margins*
Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov. I don’t know whether anybody tried to compare them. On the face of it, there is no need to do it--but I’ll try to, because, when you come to think of it, the biographies of these two great writers have at least several attributes in common with each other. First and most, both of them lived at the same historical period--confer: Wilde (1854-1900), Chekhov (1860-1904). Wilde’s essays, dedicated to Dostoevsky’s novels are known, and most likely he heard of other Russian writers, and of the new writer of the name of Anton Chekhov. Undoubtedly, Chekhov knew of Oscar Wilde, though we can’t find his mentions of Wilde in his letters, but the Wilde trial had reverberations at some levels of Russian society, especially at the literary set and in the midst of intellectuals. According to Professor of Russian literature at Princeton Nina Berberova (co-author of the article “Death of Tchaikivsky”), the most part of the contemporary Russian newspapers regarded the trial as an “example of a hypocritical persecution”, and reading the newspapers Chekhov thought of the writer of the name of Oscar Wilde, though he did not share his thoughts on the subject with his younger brothers and sister, so they could not leave their evidence of that. Both of them were tall and handsome men. Looking narrowly at their photos I can see their eyes bear resemblance, just Chekhov’s eyes, these screwing up, myopic eyes are a bit smaller that Wilde’s, yet the same all-understanding and all-forgiving. Both of them succeeded in the career of a writer; both of them wrote plays; both of them mingled in the theater circles; both of them lived a life of a super-star. Anton Chekhov was my first literary love. I read his all works and his Letters (if I did not want, nobody in the world could make me do it); I don’t believe his stories or plays are boring--if my reader read his early writings, all humorous stories of his early period then he would understand Chekhov’s attitude towards life, his views and tastes much better, as much as I know him. Soon after I read his all works, I had got access to the works by other great writer, Vladimir Nabokov, and Nabokov had become my supreme authority of good literary taste--true, the taste was a little bit snobbish. . Then I learned of the works and life of Oscar Wilde, and Wilde still is my idol--one of my idols, godfather and holy patron of all of us, the aesthetes. My reader knows all about Wilde’s life and death, therefore let’s talk of the life of Anton Chekhov. With all my acceptance of his person, I’d like to ask the question that I don’t believe to be detractive or improper: does my reader know that Chekhov was a morphine addict for the last four years of his life? He was seriously ill; it was consumption. Morphine could be prescribed by a doctor, as the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on the upper part of his lungs, but Chekhov was a doctor himself. He took morphine to sleep and to relive pain (he suffered a major haemorrhage of the lungs). Fairly soon he became a drug addict; without morphine he could neither sleep, nor eat nor breathe. His last portraits as a well-dressed gentleman and famous writer were portraits of a morphine addict. In respect of his sexual orientation, it was obvious, and yet something odd I find in his relationship with women. As a super-star he had many friends, men and women; sexually, he preferred swift liaisons, and once, he turned down the love of the uncommonly beautiful and well-educated young women of noble birth, whom his sister, his brothers and parents dearly loved, and whom his friends and relatives intended as his wife. The young woman’s heart was broken by his frigidness to her, and shortly soon she went abroad along with other writer, other handsome man who was married and who broke his heart too. As for Chekhov, the story of the young woman, who loved him to distraction, had become a small plot of his new play The Seagull, no more. That’s an oddest episode of his sexual life in my view. He settled down to married life much later, at the age of forty-one, that is 3 or 2 years before his death. Once he wrote in a letter to his older friend: “By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto--that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her… give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day.” In 1901 he married Olga Knipper--quietly, owing to his horror of weddings--she was the young actress and rising star, whom he had first met at rehearsals for The Seagull, and the letter cited above proved to be prophetic of Chekhov's marital arrangements with Olga: he lived largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing her acting career. The more I am looking at her photos now, the more I am surprised how much she looked like Wilde’s wife Constance. The same boyish features, the same slender, boyish body. Amazing. In 1902, Olga suffered a miscarriage; and Donald Rayfield has offered evidence, based on the couple's letters, that conception may have occurred when Chekhov and Olga were apart. There is no evidence and nobody suspected he was homosexual, but he was a doctor and a man of letters who was able to understand and understood much, , for example, homosexuals and other victims of nineteenth-century materialism and moral self-righteousness, therefore, I submit, he was straight but not narrow-minded. He was an aesthete at heart. “A human must be beautiful…”--these words is his small timid bow to aestheticism; a timid one, and may be the only, because he did not dare to declare himself as an aesthete openly, he feared to do it. What or who did he fear? The contemporary Russian newspapers and public opinion that accused him and his writings of lacking both principles and ideas. “The more refined one is, the more unhappy”, he said, and it sounds as though he told about himself; the undiscovered Chekhov could say it. Wilde wrote the essay The Soul of Man under Socialism--Chekhov wrote: “Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women”…--and so forth, and so forth. In short--this will be brief and to the point, for “brevity is the sister of talent”, as my reader knows--everyone can find yet more evidence that Anton Chekhov has essentially a lot in common with Oscar Wilde and other fin-de-siecle aesthetes, at least in some respects.
P.S.
A little more about the similarity. Chekhov’s books were and are loved by British readers--in his turn Wilde, soon after he was sentenced, had become most popular in Russia, and event more: he had become a national Russian writer in a way. How so? Because he had become a martyr, a real martyr in the view of Russian writers, and they in the old Russia loved martyrs. Thus, the epoch-making literary exchange took place: Britain gave as a present Oscar Wilde--Russia gave as a present Chekhov. For, really, Tchaikovsky’s music and Chekhov’s stories and plays is all that Russia has to take pride in (we won’t mention of Nabokov’s brilliant works in this regard, because they belong rather to the whole world, it is rather a cosmopolitan phenomenon, and Nabokov is rather a great American writer).

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more essays
Homosexual Culture and Nabokov:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/homoerotic_nab.doc
The Darling of Fortune love story:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/26/love_story~2520121
I saw the Night… this is my view of the story of Hadrian and Antinous. The essay was first published on the Net in 2006:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/night2.doc
Mystery of Antinous this is my view of the death of Antinous. The essay is an excerpt from my novel The Ageless Man; it was first published on the Net in 2005:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mystofA.html
The Obituary of my kitty who died in 2006:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mykitty_eng2.doc
humor:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/27/sundries~2173391
translation:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/16/a_little_bit_of_gay_literature~2466104
The Needs of the Navy by Aleister Crowley:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/navy.doc

This poem is for a very special person who really makes my life most enjoyable. He is a vital part of my life and I cannot imagine my days without him, the man of the name of Anthony Blanche:

I am at the mercy of your imagination.
It is beautiful.
You’ll live in my novels for ever.
And I’ll dissolve
in streams of the world and my consciousness,
and in madness of gaudy flowers of eloquence
thrown about.
The flowers sing of your beauty,
on the dreams, in which you live,
and on the dreams living in you.
2006

*Kiss Yourself! Kiss!*
Your image is triune, and it is always on my mind. It consists of the image from Evelyn Waugh’s book, Nickolas Grace’s performance in the English T. V. series, and the image, which I’ve hymned in my writings. Harold Acton, the prototype of Evelyn Waugh’s personage was born in 1904, the personage came into the world in 1945, the English movie was made in 1981, and the first vision of yours I saw in 2003. Anthony. Your image is not my second self, though yes, I’d say that it is my second self, if I were not afraid to be too daring. One day I was enthralled, and now there is no need of disenthralling.
Next time, when I’ll meet you in reality or in my dream, I’ll embrace your knees and say:
“Help me. I’ll make you immortal. You are immortal as you are. Help me. Save me. For I fear”.
And your silent presence will cure me relieving my ache. And Jocelyn, one of the most beautiful boys in the world will be sitting near by and looking at us, for he knows whatever is going on, whatever you did in the past, and whatever happens to both of you in the future, “in that bewitched place on the top of the forest a little boy and his teddy-bear will always be playing”. Knowing I know of that you will permit me to worship you. I have nothing to ask my deity about. I have all I want; if I have no anything then I’m not in need of it, and at the same time none of mortals can help me but a supernatural power, hitherto unknown to me and dangerous to know.
Have I ever told how wonderful you are? Many times. Your heart contains a quality of charm from an era long gone, which makes your heart impenetrable and impassive to anybody here below. An entire male and true gentleman that shines like a rare gem enough to adorn a cloud of crimson roses in bloom--I’m ready to shout to the world how much I love you, how much I adore you. Your soul is not that of an angelic moonflower with the odd impression of spirited cherubs. One day I’ll look into your eyes and will be bestowed a graceful kiss of content showing your love and telling about your fiendish essence that consumes my being. I never laid my head upon your chest to sleep forever in your arms, but I know the fervid temperament of your manhood. I am at impasse and yet my every thought is yours. You are my life--my glandules and hormones, and my sad, indomitable heart love you.
I am at impasse and yet happy because I am with you or rather because you are on my mind. An unapproachable man, who has been initiated in many mysteries, you have the supernatural power and irresistible charm, one and only, which the floating time can’t change, and you know that I am crying at times because I am hurt and frightened--but I don’t think you care. Though you care about me as your devotee and a votary of your tribe, and you appreciate all the things that I’ve done in your name. So I exist in your life. And you need me; I know it and I can feel it, and you may not let me know. I want something. To love me? Not at all. All I want is a little care.
2007

Revue_Blanche presents:
Golden Age of Detective Fiction
There is a good though too verbose and only remotely relevant quotation as one of the possible epigraphs:

“You seem to hint that we should all keep the dark secret of his success, which is to travel second-class with a third-class ticket--or if my simile is not sufficiently clear--to pamper the taste of the worst category of the reading public--not those who revel in detective yarns, bless their pure souls--but those who buy the worst banalities because they have been shaken' up in a modem way with a dash of Freud or "stream of consciousness" or whatnot--and incidentally do not and never will understand that the pretty cynics of today are Marie Corelli's nieces and old Mrs Grundy's nephews.” (Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight)

my new essay
*Why do I Love Reading Detective Stories?*
Detective fiction are not humane literature, if you like, rather it is a craft that doesn’t need a good pencraft--so what?--I enjoy reading it and love some books of the great writers of detective stories. My favorite detective fiction authors are Rex Stout, John Dixon Carr, Ross Macdonald, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie and a few more British writers of cozies. As we know, early archetypes of these stories were the three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe; later a sort of a whodunit is found as a sub-plot in the vast novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens; when I was a schoolgirl I liked reading Dostoevsky’s thick volumes because of the highly criminal plot of some of them. No doubt, the first and greatest of English detective novels was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.
I love detective stories not because each other kills in the stories but because normality always triumphs in their imaginary and implausible reality--intellectual, social, juridical and moral normality--and evil, that is abnormality, is destroyed. This is human romanticism of this genre. The investigator--a salaried investigator or a police officer, a detective, either professional or a gifted amateur, a private eye or a forensic specialists--is quite in his place as a defender of ill-fated persons, the insulted and humiliated. He is a new savior, a last hope for an atheist, agnostic or hedonist; he successfully helps readers to escape the depression of reality. In Golden Age of Detective Fiction between the wars and later, detective fiction corresponded to important needs of society, and it still does it now to a certain extent. Reading a whodunit or other detective fiction, personally I learn a lot of the law and human rights in general as well as of the laws of the states, where I’ve never been; also I can see highly curious and sometimes fascinated scenic pictures: it’s so nice to visit an English country house, or to see a realistic depiction of a police officer's routine. Self-sufficient, a detective novel doesn’t poke and pry; it solves its own problems and answers it own questions. A good detective novel is a lot like barley-break or hide-and-seek, yet the play is not between a man and a woman who are in love with each other, but between the investigator and the criminal, and more often the two are of the same sex, more often again they are males, so the play is often tinted with homosexuality, at least slightly, at least for a short while, at least in my fastidious view. I have much against a traditional love story as a part of a detective novel. As Mr. Somerset Maugham said, “I’m ready to admit love makes the world go round but not the world of detective novels: this world it makes go somewhere in a wrong direction…” In the modern day world, where weary nerves strained, and mind is exhausted with the taxing, monotonous everyday solicitudes, it’s so good to be distracted from the boring daily round, to experience a joy of unraveling of mystery, a breath-taking suspense and sense of empathy along with personages of a book. A small, distinctly set and gracefully solved problem is opposed to the dreadful and oppressive chaos of the real world. Really, it’s so good to forget of the complicated, unsolved and fearsom problems of being and to rack brain over the "locked room mystery"--while reading you feel as though you’ve entered a shady park after a long wandering about a jungle--and your sleep is better after the rational guesswork and those detective simplifications that are not less moral, virtuous and effective than Socrates’ teaching. As for the scenes of violence and greediness, they make a reader think of his own deeds and his own temper, in this regard detective stories exert a therapeutic effect. Crime and punishment. Crime and punishment are inseparable. As an average citizen I am interested in punishment of a criminal; reading detective fiction or watching the true crime stories on TV and knowing of various crimes I learn how to avoid a crime to become neither a criminal nor a victim. As Mr. Anthony Blanche said, “Brutality--as organized atrocities, which we meet in the world, or as its individual manifestations--is not a fruit of an irrational essence of man but the growing immatureness in our relationship with nature, of which lords we are believed to be”. Also he said: “The civilized mankind fears predators, especially bipedal ones: they remind it of the former life in the forests”. Such we, detective fiction lovers are--gods bless our pure souls.

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sex crime story
*Porphyria’s Lover*
The rain set early in to-night, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight she shut the cold out and the storm, and kneeled and made the cheerless grate blaze up, and all the cottage warm; which done, she rose, and from her form withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, and laid her soiled gloves by, untied her hat and let the damp hair fall, and, last, she sat down by my side and called me. When no voice replied, she put my arm about her waist, and made her smooth white shoulder bare, and all her yellow hair displaced, and, stooping, made my cheek lie there, and spread, o’er all, her yellow hair, murmuring how she loved me--she too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour, to set its struggling passion free from pride, and vainer ties dissever, and give herself to me forever. But passion sometimes would prevail, nor could to-night’s gay feast restrain a sudden thought of one so pale for love of her, and all in vain: so, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise made my heart swell, and still it grew while I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good: I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily opened her lids: again laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress about her neck; her cheek once more blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, only, this time my shoulder bore her head, which droops upon it still: the smiling rosy little head, so glad it has its utmost will, that all it scorned at once is fled, and I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now, and all night long we have not stirred, and yet God has not said a word!
(Robert Browning)
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P.S.
The writing in blogs looks much like writing in the style ”following the pencil” that used to be popular amidst the ancient China writers. The following the pencil style implied literary miniatures, poems, abstruse or playful thoughts, snatches of random musings, abstract reasoning, brief or verbose aphorisms, and so forth. The ancient China writers as though reflected while writing, following their pencil--that’s what we in the blogosphere do now.
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stolen from prydwen
1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? I thought:
I’m fresh as rosebud at dawn.
2. Favorite planet?
Mercury.
3. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
Nobody.
4. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?
Loosing my Religion.
5. Do you “label” yourself?
Admirable Admiral (butterfly).
6. What does your watch look like?
Black face, black wristlet, like a black bracelet.
7. What were you doing at midnight last night?
I always sleep at midnight. I sleep at the time when you enjoy the nightlife of a big town.
8. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?
“I want you”.
9. What's a word or phrase that you say a lot?
…, in my view, …
10. Last furry thing you touched?
My new kitty. In a month of stay at my household, without going out to make love she proved to be impregnate--the little cub like she, well that’s odd. But I am very fond of cats, taking them as they are.
11. Favorite age you have been so far?
15-16 (!) Since I’ve begun surfing the Internet I feel 16-year old again.
12. Your worst enemy?
Old age.
13. What is your current desktop picture?
The night sky, the white moon and the words: La Lune Blanche.
The novel La Lune Blanche:
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=935938
“Published at last! Published at last! Thank God Almighty, I am published at last!”
14. What was the last thing you said to someone?
can’t recall.
15. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?
Money.
16. Are you in love with someone?
My life is an incessant narcissistic dream. The hero who I love is a narcissist too.
17. The last song you listened to?
The wind in the old poplars outside my window.
18. What time of day were you born?
On some sapphire morn I was born…
19. What's your favorite food?
The delicious salads that I cook.
20. Where did you live in 1984?
right in Orwell’s anti-utopia that has become a parody of itself by 1984, in the country I lived in.
21. Are you jealous of anyone?
a pathologically jealous woman.
22. Is anyone jealous of you?
I think so.
23. Where were you when 9/11 happened?
At home.
24. Do you consider yourself kind?
It depends.
25. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?
Wouldn't want one.
26. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?
French.
27. Would you move for the person you loved?
Yes.
28. What's your life motto?
Welcome and keep out.
29. What's your favorite town/city?
Parnu (Estonia).
30. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?
Once, last year.
31. Can you change the oil on a car?
No, I can’t.
32. Your first love:
A boy about 8 or 10, who I loved from afar, admiring him as he played with his playmates at the public garden where I was brought by hand, when I was 6.
33. Do you collect anything?
Books.
34. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?
A dress of a princess that I made by myself when I was 4.
35. Have you been burned by love?
Yes, when I was 24.

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3 most beautiful star boys:

Bjorn Andresen

Death in Venice:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/13/death_in_venice~2442908

Edward Furlong

Forever Eddie:
http://foreddie.tripod.com/pictures.html

Bill Kaulitz

Poem to Bill:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/23/it_s_a_miracle~2141821

“How many people fell in this abyss”, meaning “no business like show-business”. I am not a stargazer.
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/05/29/in_oriental~2352042

"Which Super Villain are you?"
Your results:
You are Juggernaut
Juggernaut - 64%
Dark Phoenix - 61%
Poison Ivy - 59%
Mystique - 56%
Lex Luthor - 51%
Apocalypse - 51%
Dr. Doom - 51%
Catwoman - 50%
Mr. Freeze - 46%
Kingpin - 44%
Venom - 39%
The Joker - 38%
Magneto - 35%
Two-Face - 32%
Riddler - 29%
Green Goblin - 24%
Your strength and determination are difficult to stop.
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...
http://www.thesuperheroquiz.com/villain
[Anybody could tell me who is Juggernaut However that may be, they flatter.]
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*Once written...*
Beauty is fearsome, you will be told.
The embroidered Spanish shawl
you’ll throw lazily on your shoulders--
the red rose is in your hair.

Beauty is simple, you will be told.
With the motley shawl you’ll cover
a nice child to cradle gently--
the red rose is on the floor.

Yet while listening, while heeding
to the words that heard around,
you will fall to thinking sadly
and speak calmly to yourself:
“I’m neither fearsome nor simple.
I’m not so fearsome to kill simply,
I’m not so simple not to know
how fearsome life is”.

ACME
At long last, a heterosexual story a true love story.
*Remembrance of Things Past*
Bursting stars from my dreams went out without a trace in the night. Missing you in the deep darkness of my memory I close my eyes to think of you. A soft moan escapes from my parted lips: it’s so difficult to make my way through a thick vista of dead years, full of pure hedonistic desire, refined perversions and in-depth knowledge--towards you in the past. Only flashes, hot flashes and aromas of love remain in my mind. The flashes appear suddenly and burn my heart, pouring their hot sweet juice on it. It hurts. So sweet. And I sink in the bottom of my memory. Your eyes. The long deep eye. Wild, crazy, avid. You drink me avidly taking me abed. Where is me? Where are you? We are one--one body, one desire, one ecstasy, one moan--face to face. I see you are looking at me with heavy-leaden intensity that makes my heart turn over and my mind scream. Overfilling me your eye overflows by tears. To remember the blue abyss of your eyes. My reflection in your pupils. The fall through into the abyss. The hot feeling in my belly. Your manhood and me. My body screams out: more! Your mouth ravishes mine preventing from breathing. The blood on the lips. Your blood? Mine? Your inner fire is within me; it hurts; it burns my femininity. Your desire bursts within me, I gasp for air within your crazy play, and my moans dies away in yours… Silence. The foliage talks with the rain outside the open window, and the night velvet envelopes our naked bodies like gentle embrace. The smell of the wet grass and the scent of your hair are aromas of my love.
The End
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