The vamp vamps up.
Here's a little quizzy thingy. It’s fun and pleasant. Quizzes make me feel like I’m being interviewed:
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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
kiki2u
I'l see these links, thanks for share them,
xx
KK