Posted on: December 17, 2008
Dino Campana
The tragic case. The artist apart. Mixing dreams with metaphors of wandering in and out of dreams. Mixing ancient, primal scenes, Mediterranean blood, the gods and goddesses of our imagination with the teeming cities and futurism of the early 1900s. Never able to quite express it. Never able to stay fully enough in the moment to be rationally, carefully mad. Rationally, carefully behind the words as the world engulfs you. Because of the world. Because of woman.
Dino Campana is one of the most remarkable poets of the 20th century. His Canti Orfici ranks with Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Rilke’s Duino Elegies for visionary, hallucinatory power. All of these lyric poets were inveterate wanderers, almost at home with homelessness, able to get close enough to the Other without destroying it or losing it … except for Campana.…
[More...]
Posted on: December 14, 2008
F. W. Murnau (1888 – 1931) was one of the greatest film makers of the Silent Era. Born in the province of Westphalia, Germany, he made his most famous movie, Nosferatu, in 1922. Hollywood soon beckoned, and he emigrated to America in 1926. He made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans in 1927.
F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise
Much of the planning for Sunrise was done in Germany before Murnau came to Hollywood. The novella from which it was taken was German, the film script was written in Germany, and the sets were designed there. It may have been the first German-American movie.
The film won several Oscars and it’s easy to see why. Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien are the stars, and the silent format forces them to convey emotions through gesture and looks, movement and essential pauses. Their unique physicality as they move from scene to scene takes the place of vocal inflection, tone and script.…
[More...]
Posted on: December 10, 2008
I bumped into this site through the always interesting World Literature Forum. Backed by indie publisher, Canongate, meetatthegate.com seeks to become a cultural hub of choice. Interactive, innovative and new. From the intro (by the ever mysterious Gatekeeper):
Welcome to Meet at the Gate, a site that seeks to provide a dynamic and interactive forum for great writing, intelligent and lively debate, and recommendations you can trust. Although launched and hosted by the independent publishing house Canongate, Meet at the Gate is not a typical publisher’s website. Yes you can search the Canongate catalogue and find out more about the excellent and diverse array of books and writers we publish, but Meet at the Gate has much broader and bigger ambitions. It’s about the creation of a cultural hub, one that is totally independent in its spirit and content, a place with a particular focus on books, film, music and websites that will help guide you to the most interesting stuff around.
…
[More...]
Posted on: December 9, 2008
Sometimes you just have to put your records on and forget your Blues. Corinne Bailey Rae, the British songstress, helps us do that:
Put Your Records On
I love her singing and her accent and those eyes.
Soulful, dreamy, sleepy-eyed and filled with sunshine, Corinne Bailey Rae is like a new Billie Holiday for the 21st century. Smooth, sultry, adorable, with depth — an ocean of depth. Her feelings travel easily with her voice and her guitar work. Playful. Bitter sweet. Melancholy blue.
Born in Leeds, she later graduated from the university there, with a degree in English Literature. Her songwriting talents are literary in the best way … a bridge for our imaginations. She’s been compared with Sade and Norah Jones, but surprisingly, started out with Heavy Metal aspirations. As a teen she formed the group Helen, an all-girl band with its sights set on becoming an Indie answer to Led Zeppelin.…
[More...]
