Hear Classic Readings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vincent Price, James Earl Jones, Christopher Walken, Neil Gaiman & More

in Audio Books, Literature | October 31st, 2023

It can seem that the writ­ing of lit­er­a­ture and the the­o­ry of lit­er­a­ture occu­py sep­a­rate great hous­es, Game of Thrones-style, or even sep­a­rate coun­tries held apart by a great sea. Per­haps they war with each oth­er, per­haps they stu­dious­ly ignore each oth­er or oblique­ly inter­act at tour­na­ments with acronymic names like MLA and AWP. Like Thomas Pynchon’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the polit­i­cal right and left, schol­ars and writ­ers rep­re­sent oppos­ing poles, the hot­house and the street. That rare beast, the aca­d­e­m­ic poet, can seem like some­thing of a uni­corn, or drag­on.

…Or like the omi­nous talk­ing raven in Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous of poems.

The divide between the­o­ry and prac­tice is a recent devel­op­ment, a prod­uct of state bud­get­ing, polit­i­cal brinks­man­ship, the relent­less pub­lish­ing mills of acad­e­mia that force schol­ars to find a pigeon­hole and stay there.… In days past, poets and scholar/theorists fre­quent­ly occu­pied the same place at the same time—Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, Per­cy Shel­ley, and, of course, Poe, whose peren­ni­al­ly pop­u­lar “The Raven” serves as a point-by-point illus­tra­tion for his the­o­ry of com­po­si­tion just as thor­ough­ly as Eliot’s great works bear out his notion of the “objec­tive cor­rel­a­tive.”

Poe’s object, the tit­u­lar crea­ture, is an “arche­typ­al sym­bol,” writes Dana Gioia, in a poem that aims for what its author calls a “uni­ty of effect.” In his 1846 essay “The Phi­los­o­phy of Com­po­si­tion,” Poe the poet/theorist tells us in great detail how “The Raven” sat­is­fies all of his oth­er cri­te­ria for lit­er­a­ture as well, such as achiev­ing its intent in a sin­gle sit­ting, using a repeat­ed refrain, and so on.

Should we have any doubt about how much Poe want­ed us to see the poem as the delib­er­ate out­come of a con­cep­tu­al scheme, we find him three years lat­er, in 1849, the year of his death, deliv­er­ing a lec­ture on the “Poet­ic Prin­ci­ple,” and con­clud­ing with a read­ing of “The Raven.”

John Mon­cure Daniel of the Rich­mond Semi-Week­ly Exam­in­er remarked after attend­ing one of these talks that “the atten­tion of many in this city is now direct­ed to this sin­gu­lar per­for­mance.” At that point, Poe, who hard­ly made a dime from “The Raven,” had to suf­fer the indig­ni­ty of hav­ing all of his work go out of print dur­ing his brief, unhap­py life­time. Mon­cure and the Exam­in­er there­by fur­nished read­ers “with the only cor­rect copy ever pub­lished,” pre­vi­ous appear­ances, it seems, hav­ing con­tained punc­tu­a­tion errors.

Nonethe­less, for all of Poe’s pedantry and penury, “The Raven“ ‘s first appear­ances made him semi-famous. His read­ings were a sen­sa­tion, and it’s a sure bet that his audi­ences came to hear him read the poem, not deliv­er a lec­ture on its prin­ci­ples. Oh, for some pro­to-Edi­son in the room with an ear­ly record­ing device. What would it be like to hear the mourn­ful, grief-strick­en, alco­holic genius—master of the macabre and inven­tor of the detec­tive story—intone the raven’s enig­mat­ic “Nev­er­more”?

While Poe’s speak­ing voice has reced­ed irre­triev­ably into his­to­ry, his poet­ic voice may live close to for­ev­er. So mes­mer­iz­ing are his meter and dic­tion that many great actors known espe­cial­ly for their voic­es have become pos­sessed by “The Raven.”

Like­ly when we think of the poem, what first comes to the mind’s ear is the voice of Vin­cent Price, or James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Lee, or Christo­pher Walken, all of whom have giv­en “The Raven” its due.

And so have many oth­er nota­bles, such as the great Stan Lee, Poe suc­ces­sor Neil Gaiman, orig­i­nal Gomez Addams actor John Astin, and ven­er­a­ble Beat poet/scholar Anne Wald­man (lis­ten here). You will find those recita­tions here at this round-up of notable “Raven” read­ings, and if this some­how doesn’t sati­ate you, then check out Lou Reed’s take on the poem, the Grate­ful Dead’s musi­cal trib­ute, “Raven Space,” or a read­ing in 100 dif­fer­ent celebri­ty impres­sions.

Final­ly, we would be remiss not to men­tion The Simp­sons’ James Earl Jones-nar­rat­ed par­o­dy, a wor­thy teach­ing tool for dis­tract­ed young visu­al learn­ers. Is it a shame that we now think of “The Raven” as a Hal­loween yarn fit for the Tree­house of Hor­ror or any num­ber of enjoy­able exer­cis­es in spooky oratory—rather than the the­o­ret­i­cal thought exper­i­ment its author seemed to intend? Does Poe rotis­serie in his grave as Homer snores in a wing­back chair? Prob­a­bly. But as the author told us him­self at length, the poem works! It still nev­er fails to excite our mor­bid curios­i­ty, enchant our goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, and maybe send a chill or two down the spine. Maybe we nev­er real­ly need­ed Poe to explain it to us.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017. We’re bring­ing it back for Hal­loween.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Super­nat­ur­al Poem to 3D Paper Life

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Behold Gustave Doré’s Illustrations for Rabelais’ Grotesque Satirical Masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel

in Art, Books, Literature | October 26th, 2023

When François Rabelais came up with a cou­ple of giants to put at the cen­ter of a series of inven­tive and rib­ald works of satir­i­cal fic­tion, he named one of them Gar­gan­tua. That may not sound par­tic­u­lar­ly clever today, gar­gan­tu­an being a fair­ly com­mon adjec­tive to describe any­thing quite large. But we actu­al­ly owe the word itself to Rabelais, or more specif­i­cal­ly, to the near­ly half-mil­len­ni­um-long lega­cy of the char­ac­ter into whom he breathed life. But there’s so much more to Les Cinq livres des faits et dits de Gar­gan­tua et Pan­ta­gru­el, or The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el, whose endur­ing sta­tus as a mas­ter­piece of the grotesque owes much to its author’s wit, lin­guis­tic vir­tu­os­i­ty, and sheer brazen­ness.

Nor has it hurt that the books have inspired vivid illus­tra­tions from a host of artists, one of whom in par­tic­u­lar stands out: Gus­tave Doré, whom Richard Smyth calls “one of the most pro­lif­ic — and most suc­cess­ful — book illus­tra­tors of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.”

Here at Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the art he cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny the work of Dante, Cer­vantes, and Poe, each a writer pos­sessed of a high­ly dis­tinc­tive set of lit­er­ary pow­ers, and each of whom thus received a dif­fer­ent but equal­ly lav­ish and evoca­tive treat­ment from Doré.

For Rabelais, says the site of book deal­er Herib­ert Ten­schert, the 22-year-old artist pro­duced (in 1854) “100 images that oscil­late between the whim­si­cal and the uncan­ny, between real­ism and fan­ta­sy,” a count he would expand to 700 in anoth­er edi­tion two decades lat­er.

You can see a great many of Doré’s illus­tra­tions for Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el at Wiki­me­dia Com­mons. The simul­ta­ne­ous extrav­a­gance and repug­nance of the series’ medieval France may seem impos­si­bly dis­tant to us, but it can hard­ly have felt like yes­ter­day to Doré either, giv­en that he was work­ing three cen­turies after Rabelais.

As sug­gest­ed by Herib­ert Ten­schert, per­haps these imag­i­na­tive visions of the Mid­dle Ages — like Balza­c’s Rabelaisian Les con­tes dro­la­tiques, which he also illus­trat­ed — “res­onat­ed with Doré because they remind­ed him of the mys­te­ri­ous atmos­phere of his child­hood, which he had spent in the mid­dle of the medieval city of Stras­bourg.” What­ev­er his con­nec­tion, Doré cre­at­ed images that still bring to mind a whole range of descrip­tors: somber­ly joc­u­lar, rig­or­ous­ly volup­tuous, com­pelling­ly repel­lent, and above all pan­ta­gru­elist. (Look it up.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

The Adven­tures of Famed Illus­tra­tor Gus­tave Doré Pre­sent­ed in a Fantasic(al) Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

The Dro­lat­ic Dreams of Pan­ta­gru­el: 120 Wood­cuts Envi­sion the Grotesque Inhab­i­tants of Rabelais’ World (1565)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What Makes James Joyce’s Ulysses a Masterpiece: Great Books Explained

in Books, History, Literature | October 17th, 2023

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve often fea­tured the work of gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne, cre­ator of the chan­nel Great Art Explained. Not long ago we wrote up his exam­i­na­tion of the work of René Magritte, the Bel­gian sur­re­al­ist painter respon­si­ble for such endur­ing images as Le fils de l’homme, or The Son of Man. Payne uses that famous image of a bowler-hat­ted every­man whose face is cov­ered by a green apple again in the video above, but this time to rep­re­sent a lit­er­ary char­ac­ter: Leopold Bloom, the pro­tag­o­nist of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It is that much-scru­ti­nized lit­er­ary mas­ter­work Payne has tak­en as his sub­ject for his new chan­nel, Great Books Explained.

Indeed, few great books are regard­ed as need­ing as much expla­na­tion as Ulysses. It was once described, Payne reminds us, as “spir­i­tu­al­ly offen­sive, anar­chic, and obscene,” yet “in the hun­dred years since, the book has tri­umphed over crit­i­cism and cen­sor­ship to become one of the most high­ly regard­ed works of art in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

The strength of both this acclaim and this con­dem­na­tion still today inspires a mix­ture of curios­i­ty and trep­i­da­tion. But as Payne sees it, Ulysses is ulti­mate­ly “a nov­el about wan­der­ing, and we as read­ers should feel free to wan­der around the book, dip in and out of episodes, read it out aloud, and let the words wash over us like music.” It’s also “an exper­i­men­tal work, often strange and some­times shock­ing, but it is con­sis­tent­ly wit­ty, and packed with a tremen­dous sense of fun.”

That lat­ter qual­i­ty belies the sev­en years of lit­er­ary labor Joyce put into the book, all of it dis­tilled into the events of a sin­gle day in Dublin, June 16, 1904, as expe­ri­enced by Bloom, an “ordi­nary adver­tis­ing agent” and a Jew among Catholics; the “rebel­lious and mis­an­throp­ic intel­lec­tu­al” Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter-ego and the hero of his pre­vi­ous nov­el A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Leopold’s “pas­sion­ate, amorous, frank-speak­ing” wife Mol­ly. (Payne rep­re­sents Dedalus with Raoul Hauss­man­’s The Art Crit­ic and Mol­ly with Han­nah Höch’s Indi­an Dancer.) In this frame­work, Joyce deliv­ers kalei­do­scop­ic detail, from the quo­tid­i­an to the mytho­log­i­cal and the sex­u­al to the scat­o­log­i­cal, all with a for­mal and lin­guis­tic brava­do that has kept the read­ing expe­ri­ence of Ulysses fresh for 101 years and count­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load as a Free Audio Book & Free eBook

Why Should You Read James Joyce’s Ulysses?: A New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Every­thing You Need to Enjoy Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses on Blooms­day

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Read the Orig­i­nal Seri­al­ized Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1918)

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch a Strange Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Voted the 24th Best Cartoon of All Time (1953)

in Film, Literature | October 17th, 2023

Ani­ma­tion stu­dio UPA—United Pro­duc­tions of America—is best known these days as the stu­dio that gave us Mr. Magoo and Ger­ald McBo­ing Boing (which inspired a cer­tain web­site). But the stu­dio, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by three for­mer Dis­ney employ­ees, want­ed to broad­en hori­zons back in the 1950s, and cre­at­ed this quite dis­turb­ing adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by the ven­er­a­ble James Mason.

Due to its adult sub­ject mat­ter, it was the first ani­mat­ed film to receive an “X” rat­ing
(or “suit­able for those aged 16 and over”) in the UK. Though not intend­ed for chil­dren, many undoubt­ed­ly saw the film as kids and were pro­found­ly affect­ed by it. The film, designed by Paul Julian, bor­rows both from Dali-esque sur­re­al­ism and Ger­man expres­sion­ism.

And while it does fea­ture some tra­di­tion­al cell ani­ma­tion, there’s a mix of tech­niques that keep the film in the realm of the dream­like and avant-garde: sud­den zooms, shad­ows that fade in and out, flat­tened per­spec­tives, inven­tive use of chiaroscuro. In this film, one can see both the future careers of Roger Cor­man and Dario Argen­to, both grab­bing influ­ences left and right.

In fact, though design­er Paul Julian is best known for his back­ground work at Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tion stu­dios (he also is known as the cre­ator of the Road Runner’s beep-beep sound), he wound up pro­vid­ing direc­tor Roger Cor­man with art­work for movies like Demen­tia 13 and The Ter­ror.

UPA con­tin­ued to pro­duce films with its mod­ern and flat space-age aes­thet­ic dur­ing the ‘50s, but it nev­er real­ly hit these adult heights again. The ‘60s how­ev­er, would pick up from where UPA left off.

Julian’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” was vot­ed the 24th great­est car­toon of all time, in a 1994 sur­vey of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. It was also nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into dis­tur­bia. It will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 Clas­sic

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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David Foster Wallace’s Famous Commencement Speech, “This is Water,” Gets Animated on a Whiteboard

in Animation, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature, Philosophy | October 16th, 2023

Author David Fos­ter Wal­lace titled his famous address to Keny­on Col­lege’s Class of 2005 “This is Water,” a ref­er­ence to its open­ing joke — self-mock­ing­ly framed as a “didac­tic lit­tle para­ble-ish sto­ry” that is “a stan­dard require­ment of US com­mence­ment speech­es:”

There are these two young fish swim­ming along and they hap­pen to meet an old­er fish swim­ming the oth­er way, who nods at them and says “Morn­ing, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then even­tu­al­ly one of them looks over at the oth­er and goes “What the hell is water?”

Mark Wood­ing, founder of After Skool, a YouTube chan­nel “com­mit­ted to find­ing the most pow­er­ful con­tent and deliv­er­ing it in the most engag­ing way pos­si­ble” gave his white­board ani­ma­tion of the speech a dif­fer­ent title: “Your Mind is an Excel­lent Ser­vant, but a Ter­ri­ble Mas­ter.”

It’s the “old cliche” Wal­lace invoked mid­way through, not­ing that “like many clichés, so lame and unex­cit­ing on the sur­face, (it) actu­al­ly express­es a great and ter­ri­ble truth:”

It is not the least bit coin­ci­den­tal that adults who com­mit sui­cide with firearms almost always shoot them­selves in: the head. They shoot the ter­ri­ble mas­ter. And the truth is that most of these sui­cides are actu­al­ly dead long before they pull the trig­ger.

Wal­lace him­self died by sui­cide a lit­tle more than three years after deliv­er­ing the speech, prompt­ing author Tom Bis­sell to write in an essay for the New York Times that “the ter­ri­ble mas­ter even­tu­al­ly defeat­ed David Fos­ter Wal­lace, which makes it easy to for­get that none of the cloud­less­ly sane and true things he had to say about life in 2005 are any less sane or true today, how­ev­er trag­ic the truth now seems:”

This Is Water does noth­ing to lessen the pain of Wallace’s defeat. What it does is remind us of his strength and good­ness and decen­cy — the parts of him the ter­ri­ble mas­ter could nev­er defeat, and nev­er will.

We braced a bit won­der­ing how Wood­ing would han­dle this por­tion of the speech.

It would have been a good time for one of his more abstract flights of fan­cy.

In truth, some­times Wooding’s dry erase draw­ings clut­tered our head­space unnec­es­sar­i­ly, dis­tract­ing from Wallace’s mes­sage. Isn’t that iron­ic? A large part of the speech deals with choos­ing what to pay atten­tion to, and how to pay atten­tion to it.

In an attempt to fol­low Wallace’s advice and push back against the “basic self-cen­tered­ness …that is our default set­ting, hard-wired into our boards at birth”, we’ll con­cede that Wood­ing’s ani­ma­tion may help the speech land with those who’d give a pass on lis­ten­ing to an audio record­ing or read­ing a tran­script.

As Wood­ing told the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, “Some peo­ple are visu­al learn­ers, some learn by hear­ing things, some have to do it… what I’ve tried to do with After Skool is com­bine every style of learn­ing to make the ideas as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, to take ideas that are kind of com­plex and make it so that an eighth-grad­er can under­stand it.”

The wick­et grows a bit stick­i­er when Wood­ing delves into the long pas­sages where­in Wal­lace unleash­es a tor­rent of grouchy self-serv­ing thoughts born of bore­dom, rou­tine and pet­ty frus­tra­tion… as an “exam­ple of how NOT to think”, he says in an aside.

Wal­lace pre­sent­ed this unvar­nished ugli­ness as a set up, some­thing to throt­tle back from — an illus­tra­tion of how our lizard brains’ snap judg­ments need not get the final word:

… if you’re aware enough to give your­self a choice, you can choose to look dif­fer­ent­ly at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the check­out line. Maybe she’s not usu­al­ly like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights hold­ing the hand of a hus­band who is dying of bone can­cer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehi­cle depart­ment, who just yes­ter­day helped your spouse resolve a hor­rif­ic, infu­ri­at­ing, red-tape prob­lem through some small act of bureau­crat­ic kindness…If you’re auto­mat­i­cal­ly sure that you know what real­i­ty is, and you are oper­at­ing on your default set­ting, then you, like me, prob­a­bly won’t con­sid­er pos­si­bil­i­ties that aren’t annoy­ing and mis­er­able. But if you real­ly learn how to pay atten­tion, then you will know there are oth­er options.

We wish Wood­ing had leaned out rather than in when Wallace’s bad mood makes him view the peo­ple suf­fer­ing through traf­fic jams, crowd­ed aisles, and long check­out lines with him as “repul­sive”, “stu­pid”, “cow-like”, and “dead-eyed”.

Know­ing that Wal­lace was wind­ing up to reveal these knee jerk assess­ments as the fab­ri­ca­tions of a testy, self-absorbed mind oper­at­ing on autopi­lot, the illus­tra­tions might have bet­ter served the mes­sage had they been a step or two ahead of the mes­sen­ger. Doo­dles depict­ing these peo­ple as far more neu­tral look­ing than the delib­er­ate­ly vit­ri­olic por­trait Wal­lace was paint­ing could have added some dimen­sion.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that these visu­als aren’t ani­mat­ed in the tra­di­tion­al sense. They’re manip­u­lat­ed time lapse draw­ings. Unless Wood­ing breaks out the eras­er and dou­bles back to make mod­i­fi­ca­tions, they’re fixed on the white­board and in our minds.

This may explain in part why the fed up mom in the check out line appears to get a fair­er shake in The Glos­sary’s live action adap­ta­tion of excerpts from the same speech, below.

If you’d rather not gild the lily with white­board ani­ma­tion, you can lis­ten to Wallace’s speech and read the tran­script here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Sylvia Plath’s Ten Back to School Commandments (1953)

in Life, Literature | September 22nd, 2023

plath commandments

Before her lit­er­ary fame, her stormy rela­tion­ship with Ted Hugh­es and her crip­pling bat­tles with depres­sion, Sylvia Plath was an enthu­si­as­tic stu­dent at Smith Col­lege. “The world is split­ting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy water­mel­on,” she wrote to her moth­er. “If only I can work, work, work to jus­ti­fy all of my oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

Dur­ing her junior year, she broke her leg on a ski­ing trip in upstate New York. The acci­dent land­ed her briefly in the hos­pi­tal and she wound up with a cast on her leg. Her mood dark­ened.

Psych­ing her­self out for her return to col­lege, she wrote in her diary a pair of lists.

The first list is a short series of rules about how to behave around her new beau, Myron Lotz. All three points are good advice for any­one who is utter­ly smit­ten, par­tic­u­lar­ly num­ber two – “I will not throw myself at him phys­i­cal­ly.” In the end, Plath’s rela­tion­ship with Lotz didn’t amount to much. She report­ed­ly com­mem­o­rat­ed him with­in her poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” with the refrain “I think I made you up inside my head.”

The sec­ond list is a col­lec­tion of “Back to School Com­mand­ments.” These com­mand­ments includ­ed ask­ing her Eng­lish prof Robert Gorham Davis for an exten­sion; con­sult­ing with her Ger­man teacher Marie Schnieders (“Be calm,” she writes mys­te­ri­ous­ly, “even it is a mat­ter of life & death.”); and com­plet­ing her appli­ca­tion to be a guest edi­tor for Made­moi­selle mag­a­zine. (She nailed that last task.)

The list’s final com­mand­ment comes off bleak­er than the mild­ly pan­icky moti­va­tion­al tone of the rest of the list. “Atti­tude is every­thing: so KEEP CHEERFUL, even if you fail your sci­ence, your unit, get a hate­ful silence from Myron, no dates, no praise, no love, noth­ing. There is a cer­tain clin­i­cal sat­is­fac­tion in see­ing just how bad things can get.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

via The Excel­lent Lists of Note book

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Revised List of The 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Only Color Picture of Tolstoy, Taken by Photography Pioneer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

in History, Literature, Photography | September 18th, 2023

The pho­to above depicts Lev Niko­layevich Tol­stoy, bet­ter known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world as Leo Tol­stoy. It dates from 1908, when he had near­ly all his work behind him: the major nov­els War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na, of course, but also the acclaimed late book The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His own death, in fact, lay not much more than two years before him. (See footage of the final days of his life here.) This did­n’t offer much of a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to the chemist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who had recent­ly devel­oped a pho­tog­ra­phy process that could cap­ture the great man of let­ters in “true col­or” — and who under­stood that such a por­trait would score a pro­mo­tion­al coup for his inno­va­tion.

“After many years of work, I have now achieved excel­lent results in pro­duc­ing accu­rate col­ors,” Prokudin-Gorsky wrote to Tol­stoy ear­ly that same year. “My col­ored pro­jec­tions are known in both Europe and in Rus­sia. Now that my method of pho­tog­ra­phy requires no more than 1 to 3 sec­onds, I will allow myself to ask your per­mis­sion to vis­it for one or two days (keep­ing in mind the state of your health and weath­er) in order to take sev­er­al col­or pho­tographs of you and your spouse.” After receiv­ing that per­mis­sion, Prokudin-Gorsky spent two days at Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s fam­i­ly estate, where he took col­or pic­tures of not just the man him­self but his work­ing quar­ters and the sur­round­ing grounds.

“A few months lat­er, in its August 1908 issue, The Pro­ceed­ings of the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety ran the fol­low­ing announce­ment describ­ing ‘the first Russ­ian col­or pho­to­por­trait,’ a col­or pho­to­graph of L. N. Tol­stoy,” accord­ing to Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal. The result­ing fame drew Prokudin-Gorsky an invi­ta­tion to show his work to Tsar Nicholas II, who sub­se­quent­ly fur­nished him with the resources to spend ten years pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ing Rus­sia in col­or. “To this day, nobody knows exact­ly what cam­era Prokudin-Gorsky used,” writes Kai Bernau at Words that Work, “but it was like­ly a large wood­en cam­era with a spe­cial hold­er for a slid­ing glass neg­a­tive plate, tak­ing three sequen­tial mono­chrome pho­tographs, each through a dif­fer­ent col­ored fil­ter.” This appears to be a tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dant of the process devel­oped in the ear­ly eigh­teen-six­ties by Scot­tish physi­cist-poet James Clerk Maxwell, cre­ator of the first col­or pho­to­graph in his­to­ry.

To view that pho­to­graph, Maxwell “pro­ject­ed the three slides using three dif­fer­ent pro­jec­tors, each affixed with the same col­or fil­ter that had been used to pro­duce the slide.” Prokudin-Gorsky, too, had to project his pho­tos, though he did lat­er make col­or prints; “he also pub­lished it, in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers, as a col­lectible post­card,” says Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal, adding that the ver­sion seen here is a scan of one such post­card. “How accu­rate­ly a lith­o­graphed repro­duc­tion like the one above of Tol­stoy rep­re­sents the ‘real’ col­ors of Prokudin-Gorsky’s orig­i­nal pro­ject­ed image is debat­able”; the basic tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fer­ence between “sub­trac­tive” lith­o­g­ra­phy and “addi­tive’ pro­jec­tion means that we can’t be see­ing quite the same pic­ture of Tol­stoy that the Tsar did — but then, it’s a good a like­ness of him as we’re ever going to get.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

The Very Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Poem, “The Moon and the Yew Tree”

in Literature, Poetry, Travel | September 15th, 2023

Court Green, the rur­al Devon prop­er­ty Sylvia Plath called home for six­teen months toward the end of her life is a pop­u­lar pil­grim­age for Plathophiles, seek­ing to wor­ship at the well­spring of some of her best known poems — The Bee Meet­ing, Dad­dy, Lady Lazarus, and many oth­er works posthu­mous­ly pub­lished in 1965’s Ariel.

(Her ex-hus­band Ted Hugh­es wrote his col­lec­tion, Crow, there as well, not long after Plath died by sui­cide. Some­thing tells us his wid­ow, Car­ol, a staunch defend­er of her husband’s lega­cy, doesn’t exact­ly roll out the wel­come mat when she sees star­ry eyed devotee’s of her husband’s first wife tromp­ing around the perime­ter of the prop­er­ty where she still lives…)

Plath schol­ar Dor­ka Tamás made the trip to St. Peter’s, the North Taw­ton church abut­ting Court Green. Plath took plea­sure in describ­ing its grounds in let­ters to friends and fam­i­ly, and immoratl­ized its mas­sive yew in “The Moon and the Yew Tree”:

I looked around the Vic­to­ri­an grave­stones, slow­ly pass­ing the souls of the dead. The beau­ti­ful green trees could not con­trast more with the Neo-goth­ic church. I knew at first sight which one is the yew tree in Plath’s poem. I was search­ing for the win­dow of Court Green, Plath’s office win­dow, from which she could have an expan­sive view of the yew…North Taw­ton has been an ambigu­ous place for both Plath and Plathi­ans. In the year she spent in the iso­lat­ed vil­lage, she pro­duced her best and most well-known poems, but it was also a place where she expe­ri­enced extreme iso­la­tion after Hugh­es left her. Nev­er­the­less, the coun­try life pro­vid­ed plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for Plath to explore her cre­ative, aes­thet­ic, and domes­tic inde­pen­dence, such as horse rid­ing in the field of Devon, exper­i­ment­ing with bee­keep­ing, paint­ing her children’s nurs­ery elbow chair, and mak­ing apple pie from the apples of her gar­den. The poet­ry and fic­tion Plath wrote between autumn 1961 and win­ter 1962 are embed­ded in the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment in Devon and com­mu­ni­ty, places, and non-human life of North Taw­ton. 

Poet David Trinidad, an avid col­lec­tor of Plath-relat­ed mem­o­ra­bil­ia, whose sou­venirs include a vial of dust from the stu­dio she occu­pied dur­ing a res­i­den­cy at Yad­do and a fac­sim­i­le of a blue pat­terned Lib­er­ty of Lon­don scarf she gave her moth­er dur­ing a 1962 vis­it to Court Green, prizes his cut­tings from St. Peter’s yew:

Plath wrote The Moon and the Yew Tree on Octo­ber 22, 1961, less than two months after mov­ing to Court Green. Every­thing in the poem is true: her prop­er­ty was sep­a­rat­ed from an adja­cent church by a row of head­stones; on Sun­day eight bells would toll; an ancient yew tree grew in the church grave­yard. …She doesn’t men­tion the yew tree specif­i­cal­ly in any of her let­ters; she saved that for the poem.

God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith, whose sou­venirs run more toward Polaroids, wrote of vis­it­ing Plath’s grave in her mem­oir, M Train, and iden­ti­fies the poet as some­one who makes her want to write.

Her per­for­mance of “The Moon and The Yew Tree,” above, is more straight­for­ward than Plathi­an, allow­ing the dark­ness of the work–which The Mar­gin­a­lian’s Maria Popo­va calls “one of (Plath’s) finest poems and one of the most poignant por­traits of depres­sion in the his­to­ry of literature”–to speak for itself.

As Popo­va notes, the poem was writ­ten dur­ing a dif­fi­cult peri­od, in an attempt to ful­fill a writ­ing exer­cise sug­gest­ed by Hugh­es, “to sim­ply describe what she saw in the Goth­ic church­yard out­side her win­dow.”

Who would dare fault Plath for obey­ing the impulse to edi­to­ri­al­ize a bit?

The New York­er had accept­ed but not yet pub­lished “The Moon and the Yew Tree” when Plath took her own life on Feb­ru­ary 11, 1963. It was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in a two-page spread along with five oth­er poems six months lat­er. You can read it online here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in a 1962 Record­ing

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read 12 Poems From Sev­enth Heav­en, Her First Col­lec­tion (1972)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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