Dorian Gray – Page 14 – { feuilleton }

The Feminine Sphinx

Colette.

Work this week designing a CD of readings from Colette had me searching books for pictures of the author. Of the few I found this is the most interesting, one of several Colette portraits made by photographer Leopold Reutlinger and one of at least two from 1907 which Colette used to promote her Moulin Rouge pantomime, Rêve d’Égypte. (You can see another one here.) The Egyptian theme explains the sphinx pose and her costume but there’s no indication as to whether the pose was borrowed from Franz Stuck’s famous painting (below) or whether the resemblance is coincidental.

The Sphinx by Franz Stuck (1889).

Stuck produced two nearly identical paintings on this theme; the other version is here in a rather muddy copy. I like the frame design for this one which explains in pictures the secret of the famous riddle which the Sphinx asks of Oedipus, “Which creature goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three in the evening?” Stuck painted another sphinx picture three years earlier, The Kiss of the Sphinx, which portrays a less feminine and distinctly more rapacious hybrid.

Ida Rubenstein.

Colette was famously bisexual and so too was dancer Ida Rubenstein. In the same book as the Colette picture, there’s this photo of Ida recumbent in a sphinx-like pose in a very exotic boudoir. Photographs such as these are the material connection between the extravagances of the fin de siècle and the Decadent strain of early cinema in works such as Cabiria (written by Ida Rubenstein’s friend Gabriele D’Annunzio), Intolerance and (of course) Alla Nazimova’s Salomé.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Heidi Taillefer
• Dorian Gray revisited
• Beardsley’s Salomé
• Lussuria, Invidia, Superbia
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé
• The art of Giulio Aristide Sartorio, 1860–1932

Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian

Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni (c. 1616).

The Agony and the Ecstasy is an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, based around Guido Reni’s paintings of the martyr, six of which are on display.

This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare directly the six masterpieces which are coming from all over the world to join the St Sebastian owned by Dulwich Picture Gallery. The paintings are coming from New Zealand, South America, Madrid, Genoa and Rome.

The claim for masterpieces is stretching the truth when art experts apparently believe that only two of the martyr paintings credited to Reni are original—the Genoa picture above and the Dulwich’s own version—the rest being later copies. The Genoa version became a favourite of Oscar Wilde and it was a Sebastian by Guido Reni that also excited the illicit passion of the 12 year-old protagonist in Yukio Mishima’s novel Confessions of a Mask. Wilde used the name Sebastian when he went into exile in Paris but he never took his identification with the saint as far as Mishima who adopted the typical pose in the famous photo taken shortly before the writer’s suicide. Wilde had no need of borrowed martyrdoms, his own was more than enough.

Yukio Mishima (1970).

The Agony and the Ecstasy runs until 11 May 2008. For further images of Saint Sebastian, this site is as comprehensive as it gets.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dorian Gray revisited
• Beardsley’s Salomé
• The art of Takato Yamamoto
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé
• Fred Holland Day
• The Poet and the Pope
• The Picture of Dorian Gray I & II

Dorian Gray revisited

Today’s book purchase was an edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray published in 1945 by the Unicorn Press, London. It’s rather battered and the spine is stained by some unknown brown fluid that may be blood (which would suit a sanguinary tale such as this) but which is most likely something less dramatic.

The cover is a cropped version of the design drawn by the wonderful Charles Ricketts (1866–1931) for the original Ward, Lock & Co edition of 1891. More about his work below. Ricketts designed and illustrated a number of Wilde’s books and was far closer to Wilde than Aubrey Beardsley, despite the latter’s permanent association with the writer via Salomé. Ricketts’ title design for Dorian Gray was originally lettered in full and the pattern beneath it extended further down the board. The reversed “y” is a unique touch, something I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else.

Continue reading “Dorian Gray revisited”

The Chronicles of Clovis and other sarcastic delights

This week’s book purchase (yes, dear reader, it never ends, there are merely lulls between one indulgence of the vice and the next) is a small Bodley Head volume that comprises part of the collected works of Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), or “Saki” as he’s better known. I have Saki’s complete works already in a big fat Penguin collection but I like these small books that were the common format for portable reading prior to the invention of the paperback. Over a number of years I’ve managed to collect about half of the Tusitala Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s complete works which are similarly-sized blue volumes (one in a rare leather binding), simply through chance finds in secondhand shops.

This particular book is a 1929 reprint of The Chronicles of Clovis collection first published in 1911 and, like the Stevenson volumes, has the author’s signature blocked in gold on the cover. The introduction is by AA Milne and I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it in full below, partly out of laziness and partly because he does a good job of presenting the man and his work.

Continue reading “The Chronicles of Clovis and other sarcastic delights”

The Poet and the Pope

Irony never rests in the world of religion these days. I suspect Oscar would be pleased by this attention, he had an audience with Pius IX when he was a young man and wrote a poem, Urbs Sacra Aeterna, to celebrate the occasion. As noted earlier, a recent Out.com article explored rumours that the Vatican may be more friendly with Dorothy than is usually supposed.

Vatican comes out of the closet and embraces Oscar
Although Oscar Wilde had a gay relationship, the Vatican is championing his razor-sharp moral maxims, not his lifestyle.

Richard Owen
Friday, January 5th, 2007
The Times

Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, gay icon and deathbed convert to Catholicism, has been paid a rare tribute by the Vatican. His aphorisms are quoted in a collection of maxims and witticisms for Christians that has been published by one of the Pope’s closest aides.

Wilde (1854-1900) had long been regarded with distaste by the Vatican — a dissolute and disgraced homosexual who was sentenced for acts of gross indecency over his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.

The book, compiled by Father Leonardo Sapienza, head of protocol at the Vatican, includes such Wildean gems as “I can resist everything except temptation” and “The only way to get rid of a temptation is yield to it” — hardly orthodox Catholic teaching.

Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion’s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity to Wilde because he was a “writer who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us some razor-sharp maxims with a moral”. The book also includes contributions from the Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

Father Sapienza said that Wilde had been a great writer of powerful force and dazzling intelligence who was now chiefly remembered not for his promiscuity but for plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband as well as moral tales such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a vain young man pays a terrible price for selling his soul to gain eternal youth.

Father Sapienza said that he wanted to “stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles”. Christianity was intended to be a radical cure, not a humdrum remedy for the common cold: “Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.”

“What a surprise!” La Repubblica’s said. “A homosexual icon has been accepted by the Vatican.” Orazio La Rocca, a Vatican watcher, described the book as a bombshell.

Pope Benedict XVI is a stern opponent of gay marriage and has reinforced Catholic teaching that homosexuality is a disorder. On the other hand he has belied his reputation as a hardliner since his election, reserving most of his fire for apathy and relativism in an attempt to revive Christian faith in Europe.

Wilde, who was married and had two children, was arrested and tried in 1895 over his relationship with Lord Douglas (known as Bosie), son of the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused Wilde of sodomy. The writer sued Queensberry but lost and was sentenced to two years’ hard labour.

He displayed a long fascination with Catholicism, once remarking: “I am not a Catholic — I am simply a violent Papist.” He was born in Dublin to a Protestant family but fell under the spell of Catholicism at Oxford. He even made a journey for an audience with the Pope, but declared: “To go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great Gods: Money and Ambition.” The way for Wilde’s rehabilitation was paved six years ago by a Jesuit theologian, Father Antonio Spadaro. On the centenary of Wilde’s death, he raised eyebrows by praising the “understanding of God’s love” that had followed Wilde’s imprisonment in Reading.

Father Spadaro said that at the end of his life Wilde had seen into the depths of his own soul and in his last works, such as De Profundis, had made “an implicit journey of faith”. He said that Wilde had come to see that God was capable of “breaking hearts of stone and entering into them with mercy and forgiveness”.

The wit and wisdom of Wilde

• Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
• I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage.
• One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead. I see an intimate connection between the life of Christ and the life of the artist. Christ’s place indeed is with the poets.
• I can resist everything except temptation.
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
• It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
• Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
• Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
• In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
• What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gay for god
• The Picture of Dorian Gray I & II