cameo_club

I’m thrilled to announce
the new project
in addition to the Oscar Wilde Club
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/07/01/oscar_wilde_club~2551806
and the Golden Age Club
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/08/14/golden_age_salon~2804337
as a part of Anthony Blanche Fan Blog--
Cameo Boys Club
at Revue_Blanche

What is the Cameo Boys Club? This is a club, dedicated to cameo boys. Who is a cameo boy? It’s Antinous, who was depicted in cameos many times over centuries, as well as other boys, whose beauty was eternalized in this way at least once.
http://www.antinoos.info/antinous.htm

If Bjorn Andresen was depicted in a cameo, he would be our cameo boy. If Eddie Furlong or another beautiful boy is depicted in a cameo some day, he will be our cameo boy.
“Cameo is a method of carving, or an item of jewellery made in this manner. It features a raised (positive) relief image; contrast with intaglio, which has a negative image. The effect of "cameo" also refers to a proof coin that has frosted lettering and features, providing attractive contrast with the mirrored fields of the coin. The terms "deep cameo" and "ultra cameo" describe cameo coins having the boldest, most attractive contrast. A cameo can be made of two types of material, commonly precious or semi-precious stone. One material is carved into a figure, the most common type being a profile portrait of a person's head. This is then set upon the other type of material which provides a background of another colour to offset the figure. This is called an assembled cameo.”

Antinous was a stunning physical beauty, but he had a host of other beautiful things about him. A young athlete and hunter, he's possessed a keen intellect; he was intensely spiritual; he was talented and well spoken; he inspired passion in a powerful man. Mortals usually hate persons who've got the whole package going on like that. I know yet more reasons to believe his death of a result of assassination. I am an ardent votaress of this less popular theory of explanation of his death, because it is my firm belief. I seek support and other devotees of the theory. There are the mentions of the theory, which I have found--they are not numerous as you can see:
"…the death carried by an unknown hand". (Marconi)
"The boy [Antinous] was killed before Hadrian had time to declare him as a successor". (Gore Vidal, novel "Julian", translation of the citation is mine)
«"Ricky said, "That's not a good reason." He stomped away. Walter locked up and noted Ricky scowling and sprawled on the couch. He was watching some show involving squealing tires and gunshots. Walter picked up a book, "Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous". Walter was pages into the book before he finally realized that he was reading about a passionate love affair between a youth and the Emperor Hadrian. Great. Wonderful choice. He kept reading though; he hadn't seen this before and he enjoyed history. Hmm, well, maybe Ricky wasn't all that young after all. Antinous was beautiful. Walter wondered if the youth had been murdered? The writer didn't think so, saying he had no enemies. The investigator in Walter snorted at that. That's what people said in a hell of a lot of murder cases. Show him a person who had no enemies and Walter was sure he'd be at his or her funeral"». (thriller A Garden of Earthly Delights by Ursula)
That’s all for the time being. And these are my favorite mentions of Antinous from other sources:

“The thyme with its wooly tufts, the white lily, the purple hyacinth, the flowers of blue celandine, yes, and the rose which unfolds to the zephyrs of spring, but not before, surely, has the earth brought to bloom the flower named fore Antinous”.-- Pancrates (“…Pancrates, a poet of those regions whom we knew, showed the Emperor Hadrian when he visited Alexandria the rosy lotus as a great wonder, alleging that it was the one which should be called Antinoeios, since it sprang, so he said, from the earth when it received the blood of the Mauritanian lion which Hadrian had killed when hunting in the part of Libya near Alexandria; it was a huge creature that for a long time had ravaged the whole of Libya, of which this lion had made many places uninhabitable. Hadrian, therefore, pleased at the originality and novelty of his thought, granted him the favour of maintenance in the temple of the Muses. The comic poet Cratinus, also, calls the lotus a wreath plant in Odysseis, since all leafy plants are spoken of as wreath plants by the Athenians. So Pancrates in his poem says, not without elegance: “The thyme with its woolly tufts, the white lily, the purple hyacinth, the flowers of blue celandine, yes, and the rose which unfolds to the zephyrs of spring; but not before, surely, has the earth brought to bloom the flower named for Antinous.”-- Athenaeus , Deipnosophistae, Book XV)

“In regards to the Antinoeion Flower:
Neither the Athenian narcissus, nor the Lacedaemonian hyacinth, nor the crocus was from the beginning a flower; and neither child Hylas in Thrace, nor the cypress tree in Crete, nor the daphne was from the beginning a plant. But Crocus was a Sicilian lad, child Hylas was a beautiful Thracian, and Cypress was a beautiful boy. Daphne was a young virgin maiden, daughter of the river, Narcissus was a beautiful Boetian boy, and Hyakinthos was a young Spartan man in the bloom of his youth. Herakles had Hylas, and Dionysus took him. Crocus joined Dionysus in his Bacchic revels. Nymphs seized Narcissus, and Apollo took Hyakinthos and Daphne. Nymphs killed Crocus, nymphs carried away Hylas, Cypress threw himself down from rocks and the earth received Daphne when she was fleeing. Narcissus in his arrogance loving himself like another killed himself. Only one flower, the flower of Antinous, is sweeter than all by far, not pale like the narcissus, pained by his taking; and not pale like the hyacinth, imitating the color of a corpse. Someone will gather garlands of lamented names, and will lament more the youth of the dying men.”-- The Tebtynis Papyrus

“I never saw him in the flesh, but I have seen images...”-- Pausanias

“…A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile”.
(from The Burden of Itys by Oscar Wilde )

“…Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories!
Sing to me of that odorous green eve when couching by the marge
You heard from Adrian's gilded barge the laughter of Antinous
And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth!”
(from The Sphinx by Oscar Wilde )

“…And it is thus, and finally, that the art of Antinous celebrates his story and his myth. The astonishing quality is its deliberate reticence. In an age in which works of painstaking realism and of contrived allegory proliferated, here was one ripe subject which the artists refused to illustrate literary or to elaborate fancifully. By refusing to be explicit, by knowing exactly where to stop, the artists charged their works with a potency and a magnetism which endure. The sculptures are content to do no more than hint variously at sorrowful devotion, serene resignation, ineluctable fate, heroic action or triumphant resolution. They exhibit the most superficial attractions but suggest the most profound experiences. They are impregnated with a beauty at once voluptuously carnal and yet austerely spiritual. Their attributes connect with fundamental themes of love and death, redemption and immortality. These lucid yet baffling works invite our questions but refuse all answers. Their tantalizing enigma may therefore conceal everything or nothing, plenitude or vacuity, the cosmos or the trivial. We can never know. Antinous remains in them, as he remains at the end of our researches and as he may always have been in life to the fascinated Hadrian, an ever-perplexing but ever-inviting mystery”.-- Royston Lambert

“One of the strengths of the belief in Antinous was its appeal to the most sensitive and inward of mystical natures as well as to the exuberant, joyous and ecstatic sides of human experience”.-- Royston Lambert

“…An article from the book Masks of Dionysus says that Dionysos does not save people from suffering in the underworld, he saves people in this life now and makes their lives better now--and this is why Hadrian and other emperors were called the neos Dionysos, the ‘new Dionysos’, because they were saviors in this life, now, for people of various cities because of the benefactions that they gave them which made their lives better and more peaceful and joyous and fruitful. And the same can be said for the Beautiful and Glorious God Antinous--he is our savior not from eternal damnation or from the pains and struggles in an afterlife, but in our lives now”.--Phillip Bernhardt-House
“…the Earth, spinning and spinning in the thrall of an aeons-old sun, which will burn out, in a solar system within a galaxy that will eventually collide with another galaxy and be destroyed, in a universe that is likely at some indeterminate time to collapse. Therefore, there really only is this very moment to cherish, the beauty and wonder of things must be appreciated now and our reward for doing so must come in our hearts, not in some future post-death state if we have followed all the rules, but rather now, with love and compassion and pleasure and understanding and knowledge and wisdom and the perception of beauty in every possible thing our senses can apprehend”.--Phillip Bernhardt-House
sources:
Beloved and God, by Royston Lambert, Viking 1984.
and
http://www.liminalityland.com/aediculaantinoi.htm
Notice: This site is being redeveloped and may not be available at the present time.

*Save me--Rette mich*
About Tokio Hotel I learnt from my friend in the yahoogroup. I saw the photos, felt curious, began searching, learnt something more about TH and as a result I am a Tokio Hotel fan now. As you know, teenagers from Germany and Central Europe are TH fans mainly--and me along with them. Four boys; two of them are lovely wunderkinds, brothers Bill and Tom Kaulitz. Tom is an angel, as his fans say. And Bill is my beloved. I can’t understand his songs in German, I hardly can cite a line from his songs, but I love his manner and divine clear voice, and his burring German “r” drives me out of my mind. The breathtakingly beautiful boy from Leipzig, he is a true artist--an ideal artist and an ideal of an artist. He is a good German boy and a true artist. I saw a video where he, a young boy was disguised as a girl or was wearing clothes that looked like female. Charm itself! Innocence itself! Mr Charm! In my view he is a new young Antinous. May be someone doesn’t agree with me, but at any rate, the divine immortal spirit of the Dionysiac artists of Rome, who venerated the god Antinous, has descended on Bill. September 1 is Kaulitz Twins’ birthday; in 2006, when he was 17, I have written a poem, dedicated to Bill, and sent my congratulation to him. I even received an e-mail reply, and then, for a week I exchanged e-mails with a boy who wrote on behalf of Bill. Personally I believe it was not Bill but a boy from the Tokio Hotel Team, for I don’t cherish vain hopes; most likely Bill himself knows nothing of my letter and poem, and yet… And yet in my heart of hearts I still have a glimmer of hope: what if it was he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn76WbjIWEI&mode=related&search=Tokio%20hotel

P. S. If you have any news of a cameo boy you’d like to share here, let me know!
regards,
Lara

http://i039.radikal.ru/0803/83/687287790114.jpg

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