*Life imitates art--so do I*
The green carnation, Oscar Wilde’s attribute, as we know, though his favorite colour was vermillion, this artificial flower appears in books here and there. Many writers have a dig at it as well as its owners--“It is said, a wild flower smells warmer if it’s smashed”--and the green carnation has become the first symbol of people, who declare their homosexuality, a precursor to the rainbow flag.
Despite the widespread opinion, the green carnation became a gay emblem after Oscar’s death and not before. Wilde's descendent Merlin Holland (in his “Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess”) adduces the logical argument: if the carnation were used as a symbol for a declaration of the sort in Wilde’s lifetime, then the Marquis of Queensberry, in his prosecution of Wilde, had no need to prove anything, searching hints between lines of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The green carnation could do what the white lilies and sunflowers could not--the flowers which made Wilde a target of caricaturists and which were but creations of nature. The green carnations as such did not exist in Wilde’s times. As far as I know, usual carnations were placed in a special nutritive liquid, which lent them the “Irish” colour. A good example of ennobling Life by Art. According to Richard Ellmann, the green carnation first came into being or rather appeared in public at the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892, February 20. That night Wilde asked several friends and an actor to put green carnations in their buttonholes. “What does it mean?” asked Robertson. Wilde replied: “Nothing. Let everyone rack brains over it.” [my inverse translation]
In 1894 was first published the scandalous novel The Green Carnation by Robert Hichens whose lead characters are closely based on Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (aka Bosie). The book features the characters of Esme Amarinth (Wilde), and Lord Reginald (Reggie) Hastings (Douglas). The words put in the mouths of the hero and his young friend in the story are mostly gathered from the sayings of their originals. Robert Hichens spent nearly a year "in the company of the men" and was able to accurately recreate the atmosphere and relationship between Oscar and Bosie. The book was believed to be a satire to aestheticism, and at the same time it proved to be a non-fiction depicting, an uncomplimentary characterization of the “chevalier of the green carnation”, however, this did not prevent many from ascribing its authorship to Wilde, which necessitated him to write an official refutation: “…Yes, I’ve invented this delightful flower. But I have nothing to do with the common second-rate book that has misappropriated the flower’s weirdly beautiful name. The flower is a work of art. The book is not by any means.” [my inverse translation]
The weird flower took root not only in Britain; in the early 20th century, describing exteriors of Russian aesthetes, the Moscow reporters frequently mentioned the green carnations in ears or hair.
The book The Green Carnation was withdrawn from circulation in 1895, but by that time the damage had been done. Wilde soon stood three consecutive trials for Gross Indecency and was sentenced to two years at hard labor. The book was one of the works used against him by the prosecution. The Green Carnation was republished in 2006 as a hardcover.
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entertaining read
“…The distant view of his past and youth, the diamonded cosmos which history finished off in one”.
(V. Nabokov, “Pnin”)
The novel Pnin is one of my favorite books of Nabokov--however I love his all books with the exception of two: Look at the Harlequins! and Ada or Ardor. Lately I reread the book. It is, without a doubt, the funniest serious novel of the 20th century.
The book follows a Russian-born professor named Timofey Pnin living in the United States. This is Nabokov’s second novel written in English. Most interesting is the frequent use of Pnin's own name to describe our protagonist's various foibles and conceits--the name is used as early as Chapter 1 ("Pnin in the meantime had yielded to the satisfaction of a special Pninian craving. He was in a Pninian quandary."), and is evoked whenever Pnin commits some action that, to our narrator, is a product of his “Slavic eccentricity”.
Pnin, as a character, is a cliché: the simple-hearted fool, the confused foreigner, the academic with no life skills. No desire for adventure; he is an innocuous dreamer whose great ambition is a complication-free life, in the Pninian sense of the words. We are allowed to labor under the misapprehension that Pnin-character and Pnin-novel are a comedic exercise in buffoonery. It is only when Liza Wind, the former Mrs Pnin is introduced that we are nudged towards sympathy for the old scholar. Her cruel treatment, her dismissal of his sentiments, her treachery and deceit mirror closely the attitude of the narrator and reader prior to her introduction. It is all too easy to write Pnin off as a joke; but his nostalgia is real, as is his love of the woman who tortures him and the son who may not be his. We now have a new aspect to the Pninian character, one that becomes more and more important as the narrative unfolds: he is pathetic, and as sad as any character in English literature.
Pnin’s ultimate success is the victory of one of Nabokov's core principles: that realism in a novel matters only in the context of that novel's world, unencumbered by the laws of reality and visible nature. It is also a small victory against the tyranny of established language that Nabokov can create a word to describe his character using his character's name.
I heartily recommend the book.
The Original of Laura news:
http://www.slate.com/id/2181859/pagenum/all/
questionnaire
Why did you first read Lolita?
If you have read Lolita, what made you read it for the first time?
Answers:
a)The book is famous or considered a classic.
b)I had read other Nabokov books/short stories first, and this was a natural progression.
c)I heard it was supposed to be dirty.
d)I saw a movie version and then wanted to read the book.
e)Someone I know urged me to read it.
f)It was required reading for school.
g)The subject matter interested me.
h)The subject matter interested me due to my personal experience.
i)Other.
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the Goncourt brothers on Edgar Alan Poe’s detective stories. From Journal des Goncourt:
“After reading Edgar Alan Poe. What the critics have not noticed: a new genre of literature, a portent of the 20th century literature. A sci-fi, fairy-tale, based upon the principle A+B; a morbid literature, clear up to translucency. No poesy--imagination is verified by analysis: Zadig--a crime investigator, Cyrano de Bergerac--a pupil of Arago. There is a feeling of monomania in this. Objects play more important part than humans; love makes way for deduction and other sources of thoughts, phrases, plots and entertainment; the base of the novel is removed from the heart to the head, passes from feelings to thoughts; drama is replaced with computations.”
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sex stories
My blog activity is a storytelling mostly. In my own writings there is only one heterosexual love story--a sadomasochistic story in which I am a victim. I can’t publish it, because I’ve not translated it thus far, because I’m not sure I can do the translation correctly, because I am in difficulty talking of sex-and-relationships stuff in English. But I’ll learn to do it some day, and some day the story will be translated to English and published--and it will be something special. And today--other stories. 2 or 3 years ago I found some erotic stories on the Net. Here they are:
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/sexxx.doc
WARNING! This text contains material about homosexual relationships. If you are of legal age and open to explicit gay contents, you are welcome. . .
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*The Winged Man-Lion. One of the most beautiful youths*
The bronze statue of David by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1488). It is claimed that Verrocchio modelled the statue after a handsome pupil in his workshop, the young Leonardo da Vinci. As far as we know, Verrocchio was an artist who strictly followed nature in his works, so now, in the exterior of David we can see a portrait of Leonardo who was going on 18. Leone-ardo. His eye, his smile… Awesome. As a red-haired young man, most likely he has a milky-white skin and perhaps some golden freckles over the bridge of his nose and beneath his lower eyelids. Taking into consideration his enormous inborn curiosity I would call his face study-wearied. Obviously he sleeps few hours a day. But he smiles--and that’s delightful. Perhaps at the years of apprenticeship he begins to follow contrapposto in his art. As his biographers say, his manner of standing at a moment of repose is like the statue shows, right according to contrapposto, an Italian term meaning ‘counterpoise’, used in the visual arts to describe “a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs”. This graceful pose is simply most comfortable, as we can see. The only inexact detail is the sword in his right hand, for he is a left-hander.
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Part 1 and Part 2 of my novel La Lune Blanche have been recently published at Turner Maxwell Books. Be sure to get your copy here:
http://www.turnermaxwellbooks.com/LLB.htm
http://www.turnermaxwellbooks.com/LLB2.htm
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*gloriole of quotations*
“I will survive: if hell rejects me, there is always paradise”.--(Jocelyn Lindenridge-Blanche, our dear boy at a moment of dismals).
"To clutch life's hair, and thrust one naked phrase Like a lean knife through the ribs of time."--(from the sonnet The City of the Soul by Alfred Douglas).
“May it won't be so little that is so dear to You…"--(Marcus Valerius Martialis on a life of a beloved thing).
“If You are with me at heart, if we love each other, then Rome is wherever we live.”--(Marcus Valerius Martialis to his friend)
“Life is like the Games. Some come to compete, some--to trade, and the happiest ones--to watch”.--(Pythagoras)
“Death has nothing to do with us. While we are, death isn’t here; when death is here, we are no more”.--(Epicure)
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vampire tidings
Last year, after a long travel round the world the Vampire Lexandros, far cousin of the Vampire Armand settled in Transylvania and started his own wine-making business.
Good wine needs no ivy bush.
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