olio

APRIL 13 -- my 2year anniversary on the website!
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2008/04/01/my-one-year-anniversary-on-the-website-3978411/

*the longest novels ever written*
The 19th century German short-story writer E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote the first German-language detective story Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle Scudéry), featuring the French writer Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701), often known as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, as the central figure of his story. By the by, one of her novels Artamène, which contains about 2.1 million words, ranks as one of the longest novels ever written. Could anybody tell whether the novel may be reckoned the first of the sort?

my 'read' shelf:

*Oops…* And I deemed I was a well-educated person! One amazing discovery evoked this exclamation, the discovery, which I was stunned by, recently on the Net. However, I should begin telling about it from afar. The point is that long ago I’ve begun searching for celebrities (writers, artists, musicians) who were born on the 26th of July that is my birthday. The wish is quite natural, isn’t it? I read diaries memoires and biographies, but in vain. Only the Internet helped me eventually. Using Wikipedia, I found some, and the most famous celebrities were Carl Jung (1875-1961), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish writer, Nobel Laureate and Oscar Wilde's contemporary, Mick Jagger (b. 1943), which was not much, I would say, not enough and not what could catch my fancy. Now, searching details for the Goodreads website recently, I stumbled upon the date of birth of one writer whose two books fascinated me ten years ago, and who was an outstanding researcher and non-fiction writer: Nina Berberova (1901–1993), Russian-born emigre writer, professor of Russian literature at Princeton, author of the books The Italics Are Mine, Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg, The Ladies from St. Petersburg, The Tattered Cloak, The Book of Happiness, The Accompanist, and who was one of few persons who was nice to Vladimir Nabokov at the Berlin period of his life. It turns out that she was born on the 26th of July, but I either did not know of it or this slipped from my memory in some extraordinary way. The latter is for wonder, since a half-dozen of facts and details of her life, which I have learnt from her biography, amazingly corresponded to those of mine, and her attitude towards research and historical facts was always a paradigm for me. In short, I always loved her and her writings, and yet I did not know that she was born on the 26th of July, or I’ve simply forgotten. Something supernatural I see in the fact. Maybe, I was too much fascinated by the impressive image of her Moura?
Maybe, Wikipedia did not give me enough info of persons born on the 26th of July? But there were the books which I read ten years back! Maybe, it’s too much online information of other sorts? It’s my supernatural absentmindedness? Perhaps, there was something in the past that made me forget of any details of her biography but her writings? All together, most probably. However that may be, today, I am thrilled to announce that I’ve found the celebrity, who was born on the same day with me--

--read on Nina Berberova:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Berberova

*time for reminiscence*
Oops again, and oddly enough, now I can’t recall when I learnt of homosexual relationship; I only remember that when aged 19 I knew nothing of this kind of love--no information on the subject, no sexual experience. True, I felt and suspected of the existence of a special tenderness, and maybe I met its traces in reality, maybe, but I knew nothing of it and was never told about it. At the age of 19 I began to verse again, after a long pause, or more truly, began to write doggerels again, and one day, among the works of the French writer Honore de Balzac, which I borrowed from the library, I met the story entitled “The Girl with the Golden Eyes”:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1659/1659.txt
It was an entertaining story, which I read with great interest, yet for the first time in my adult life I did not quite understand what I read about, like it was in my childhood, when I read some adult fiction, which I shouldn’t do. The novelette The Girl with the Golden Eyes was a mysterious story, a criminal drama full of reservations, meaningful hints and even suspense, and its end I could not understand. Why did that French lady kill the girl with the golden eyes? I reread the final part one more time, then again and again, but in vain. Suspecting that there was something subtle, complicated and forbidden in the plot, I did not understand the passions that overwhelmed the personages. It was so then. Now, in the late 1990s (being computerless in those times), I could afford leaving my work for ever, and at the same time I’ve got an access to a great amount of the books, which I was never able to read before. And then, having spent two years reading detective stories and other pulp fiction (as well as unknown classic books), I recalled of the only story by Balzac that remained an enigma to me. Apparently in the 1990s I’ve learnt some information about what was obscure to me formerly, so I understood the story completely as soon as I reread it. The cause of the murder was jealousy--I guessed right instantly--the lady was jealous of the girl with the golden eyes to one young man, who proved to be the lady’s own brother whom she saw never before and found suddenly. The brother was a young man of fashion and fiendish person, whose beautiful features bore a striking resemblance with his sister’s. I instantly understood the nature of the jealousy, and that meant that I knew of homosexual relationship at that moment, but the first information of my “new lore” slipped my memory. Something supernatural is in this, if you like, and this proves that it was only a piece of information and not an experience, which a human could remember much better.
P. S.
The reminiscence, mentioned above, was written and published in my blog in 2007. Some time passed since then, and now I know what it was. I’ve remembered the piece of information. Believe it or not, but my source was the radio BBC world service.

*from To Read List*
Ronald Firbank (1886-1926), the late Victorian writer, younger contemporary of Oscar Wilde:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/firbank_r.html
Lady Parvula de Panzoust in Firbank’s Valmouth says that "None but those whose courage is unquestionable can venture to be effeminate."
Evelyn Waugh in his Brideshead Revisited says about his Anthony Blanche: “At the age of fifteen, for a wager, he was disguised as a girl and taken to play at the big table in the Jockey Club at Buenos Aires; he dined with Proust and Gide and was on closer terms with Cocteau and Diaghilev; Firbank sent him his novels with fervent inscriptions; he had aroused three irreconcilable feuds in Capri; he had practised black art in Cefalu; he had been cured of drug-taking in California and of an Edipus complex in Vienna.”

*The Importance of Being Wilde:*
http://www.lexscripta.com/articles/wilde4.html

*The Oscar Wilde collection:*
http://www.oscarwildecollection.com/

*plea for help*
I still have not a photo of Alfred Taylor… The online encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer culture says about him: "The only hero of the Wilde trials was the procurer Alfred Taylor, who loyally refused to testify against his client and consequently shared his harsh punishment.”