Playing to the Gods
Page 26
CHAPTER SEVEN
“a sadness without a name”: Eleonora Duse, letter to Cesare Rossi, Nov. 26, 1885.
“Boito . . . sent to her by some higher power”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 39–40.
“The supreme power”: Paul Radice, Eleonora Duse–Arrigo Boito: Lettere d’Amore (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1979), 225.
“It is said that Signora Duse”: William Archer, review of Cleopatra in Theatrical World, June 28, 1893.
“We only thought about one thing”: Radice, Eleonora Duse–Arrigo Boito, 290.
“A hateful country”: Ibid., 624.
“hacks” and “painted dolls”: Ibid., 736.
“There are no scenes written for effect”: Weaver, Duse, 70.
“Does he have a fungus on the brain?”: Ibid., 387.
“grand poseur”: Catherine Schuler, Women in Russian Theatre: The Actress in the Silver Age (New York: Routledge, 1996), 13.
“No, it is we who must bow to you”: Gottlieb, Sarah, 111.
“such a natural . . . and life-like manner”: Laura Hansson, Six Modern Women: Psychological Sketches (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896), xv–xvi.
“La Duse is a truly remarkable artist”: Weaver, Duse, 88.
“I have just seen the Italian actress”: Ibid., 89.
“Duse’s emotionally lacerated heroines”: Schuler, Women in Russian Theatre, 14.
“Duse devotes herself to men”: Ibid., 14.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“To hear Mme. Bernhardt tell of her tour”: New York Times, November 30, 1891.
“By all means see Sarah Bernhardt”: “La Dame de Challant and the Acting of Sarah Bernhardt,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 1891.
“This cherished blood of Israel”: Gottlieb, Sarah, 120.
“Ah, Sarah! Sarah!”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 232.
“It is a miracle of impudence”: quoted by Petra Dierkes-Thrun, Salome’s Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2012), 4.
“Eleonora Duse is now reading Salomé”: Quoted in John Stokes, Michael R. Booth, Susan Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in Her Time (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 248.
“It is an arrangement in blood and ferocity”: Guy Willoughby, Art and Christhood: The Aesthetics of Oscar Wilde (Teaneck NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993), 151.
“Her poses . . . had melted into a sort of radiance”: Marcel Proust, quoted in Roberta Mock, Jewish Women on Stage, Film, and Television (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
“The idealized Phèdre”: Stokes, Booth, Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse, 52.
“The moment I have put on the veils of Phèdre”: Adolphe Brisson, Phèdre et Mme Sarah Bernhardt (Paris: Revue Illustrée, 1895), 36.
CHAPTER NINE
“No theatricalities!”: Paul Kuritz, The Making of Theatre History (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988), 316.
“It was held that the stranger the situation”: Ibid., 328.
“an old Norwegian pharmacist”: Radice, Eleonora Duse–Arrigo Boito, 706.
“She stands by the fireplace”: Hansson, Six Modern Women, 108.
“There was enough horror”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 207.
“Ibsen very soon went out of fashion in Italy”: Noccioli, Duse on Tour, 24.
“she came out always pale”: Weaver, Duse, 93.
“She plays the gaiety that is not happiness”: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Eleonora Duse, eine Wiener Theaterwoche,” in Werke. Prosa, vol. I, (Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer, 1936).
“There are five kinds of actresses”: Mark Twain, quoted by Pia Catton, “Why Bernhardt Was the Best of Her Generation,” New York Sun, Dec. 13, 2005.
“Jewess-Catholic-Protestant-Mohammedan-Buddhist-Atheist-Zoroaster-Theist-or-Deist”: Bernhardt, My Double Life, 367.
“When I set foot in America”: Weaver, Duse, 97.
“whether she is silent or talkative”: Paul Schlenther, “Eleonora Duse,” The Looker-On, March 1896.
“I have always found it possible to succeed”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 42.
“the hermit of Murray Hill”: Ibid., 43.
“Sir, I do not know you”: “Mme. Eleonora Duse Has Something to Say,” New York Dramatic Mirror, January 28, 1893.
“the muse of the newspaper”: Gottlieb, Sarah, 81.
“half empty house”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 43.
“mannered gesticulation”: “A New Actress from Italy,” New York Times, Jan. 24, 1893.
“forgive Italy for the organ grinders”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 124.
“It was set down in the agreement”: Ron Grossman, “Hottest Ticket in Town? When Sarah Bernhardt Took Chicago by Storm,” Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2016.
“SARAH BERNHARDT’S LATEST FREAK”: The Barrier Miner, Dec. 28, 1892.
“Like all French plays”: The San Francisco Call, June 3, 1902.
“only a part of the tremendous passion”: New York Herald, Feb. 5, 1893.
“passing out into the fresh air”: William Archer, Theatrical World, 1893, 125–27.
“You know that next year I am resting,” Weaver, Duse, 106.
“Giacosa—and others of your friends”: Ibid., 125.
“To describe her art”: Ibid., 96.
“The Parisians had little patience”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 255.
CHAPTER TEN
“The contrast between the two Magdas”: George Bernard Shaw, Shaw’s Dramatic Criticism (1895–98), ed. John F. Matthews (New York: Hill & Wang, 1959), 81.
“large vehicles for expression of the absolute self”: Max Beerbohm, The Incomparable Max (London: Heinemann, 1962), 113.
“One suspects that the man who made love”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 258.
“My prevailing impression”: Jane Milling, Peter Thomson, Joseph Donohue, The Cambridge History of British Theatre, vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 354.
“Art is Bernhardt’s dissipation”: Willa Cather, The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893–1896 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 119.
“The great French actress looks”: Rockland County Messenger, Jan. 23, 1896.
“I like all the characters that I play”: The Journal, Jan. 13, 1896.
“She is still the greatest of living actresses”: New York Times, Jan. 21, 1896.
“The role takes her to the extreme limit”: New York Times, Feb. 18, 1894.
“She is at times a tiger, a panther, a snake”: Thomas A. Bogar, American Presidents Attend the Theatre: The Playgoing Experience of Each Chief Executive (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 176.
“The moment the curtain descended”: Ibid.
“the sad and innocent look of a street-girl”: Stokes, Booth, Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse, 54.
“She stood with heaving breast”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 264.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“As if she were preparing for a new role”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 137.
“My soul is no longer impatient”: Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 198.
“That diabolical—divine d’Annunzio?”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 134.
“the very personification of Italian decadence”: Jonathan Galassi, “The Writer, Seducer, Aviator, Proto-Fascist, Megalomaniac Prince Who Shaped Modern Italy,” New Republic, February 8, 2014.
“He accepts . . . the whole physical basis of life”: Arthur Symons, in his Introduction to Gabriele d’Annunzio: The Child of Pleasure (New York: Richmond & Son, 1898), vi.
“I have felt your soul and discovered mine”: d’Annunzio, Il fuoco, 184.
“communion between his own soul”: Ibid., 52.
“I ask . . .that my soul not suffer”: Weaver, Duse, 136, 138.
“Madame, you are positivel
y d’Annunzian”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 273.
“retained all the sparkle and fire of youth”: Berton, Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her, 342.
“I still have hope for you”: Eleonora Duse, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Come il mare io ti parlo (Collected Letters: 1894–1923) (Milan: Bompiani, 2014), April 23, 1897, 114.
“When will you give me the dream?”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“It was more of a collision than a meeting”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 271–72.
“We must see some material evidence”: Jean-Philippe Worth, A Century of Fashion (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), 215–16.
“the all-powerful, magnanimous artist”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 49.
“her nervousness betrays her at every step”: Victor Mapes, Duse and the French (New York: Dunlap Society, 1898), 19.
“going into ecstasies”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 50.
“ruins her lovers by making them buy macaroni”: Francisque Sarcey, quoted in William Weaver, Duse, 155.
“A great fire burns in the fireplace”: Jules Huret, Le Figaro, Ibid., 153.
“rather have choked her than hugged her”: New York Times, Feb. 1, 1925.
“It is a matter of theatrical history”: Ibid.
underlined that direction three times: Stokes, Booth, Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse, 157.
“What fly is biting her?”: Francisque Sarcey, quoted in Frances Winwar, Wingless Victory—A Biography of Gabriele D’Annunzio and Eleonora Duse (Worcestershire, UK: Read Books Ltd, 2013), 201.
“I was extremely courteous and polite”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 273–74.
“La Duse then leaves victorious”: Weaver, Duse, 160.
“excitements of intrigue and cabal”: New York Times, February 1, 1925.
“La Duse . . . dressed in gray”: Weaver, Duse, 202.
“resembled little blobs of merde”: “The Mysterious Sex Appeal of Gabriele d’Annunzio,” March 26, 2013, http://www.roguesgalleryonline.com/the-mysterious-sex-appeal-of-gabriele-dannunzio/.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I have earned a few pennies”: Hughes-Hallett, Gabriele d’Annunzio, 197.
“poor deluded Duse”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 184.
“THE DUSE’S OWN SAD TRAGEDY”: Boston Record, Dec. 27, 1899.
“a part of renunciation”: Public Opinion, no. 33 (1902), 218.
“One saw her see for the first time”: Le Gallienne, The Mystic in the Theatre, 154.
“The Dead City stands alone”: William Sharp, Some Dramas of Gabriele d’Annunzio, http://sundown.pairsite.com/Sharp/WSVol_2/dannunzio.htm.
“All of Italy talked of nothing else”: Giornale d’Italia, Dec. 11, 1901.
“unique in the annals of the theater”: Tom Antongini, quoted in William Weaver, Duse, 236.
“I believe I have never suffered so much”: Luigi Pirandello, Ibid., 236–37.
“mediocre provincial dramas written in barbarous jargon”: Ibid., 238.
“I know the book, and have authorized its publication”: Ibid., 225.
“the fury of Cassandra”: d’Annunzio, Il fuoco, 151.
“troubled by cruel dismay”: Ibid., 160.
“would cause great sorrow”: William Weaver, Duse, 217.
“the most swinish novel ever written”: quoted by Professor Susan Bassnett, “A Very Venetian Affair,” http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/warwickbooks/venetian_miscellany/susan_bassnett/.
“the Song-maiden reappeared on a background of shadow”: d’Annunzio, Il fuoco, 128.
“It’s terrible”: Weaver, Duse, 225.
“filthy book”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 193.
“If you loved, then, the beautiful creature”: Eleonora Duse, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Come il mare io ti parlo, letter dated May 21, 1900.
“gained the contempt of every woman in the land”: George Tyler, quoted in William Drake, Sara Teasdale, Woman & Poet (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 34.
“every cliché and every technical error which a poem can have”: S. Foster Damon, Amy Lowell: A Chronicle with Extracts from Her Correspondence (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935), 148.
“If you could see how many roses”: Eleonora Duse, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Come il mare io ti parlo, letter dated November 5, 1902.
“very little moral danger to the spectators”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 207.
“A PLAY OF GREAT SUPERFICIAL BEAUTY BUT FUNDAMENTALLY DECADENT”: New York Times, November 8, 1902.
“positively vile”: Sacred Heart Review, no. 20, November 15, 1902.
“effaced the boundary that separates nature from art”: Arthur Symons, in the Introduction to Gabriele d’Annunzio, The Dead City (London: Heinemann, 1900).
“Time and again”: New York Times, January 8, 1903.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“nothing of interest in that dreary hole”: Wagram story told by Edmond Rostand, quoted in Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 286.
“Dear Grand Master”: quoted in Caroline de Costa, The Diva and Doctor God: Letters from Sarah Bernhardt to Samuel Pozzi (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2010), 214.
“très grande dame”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 281.
“Bernhardt’s assumption of masculinity”: Elizabeth Robins, “On Seeing Madame Bernhardt’s Hamlet,” North American Review 171 (December 1900), 908–19.
“a marvel, a tiger, natural, easy, lifelike and princely”: Maurice Baring, quoted in Benedict Nightingale, Great Moments in the Theatre (London: Oberon Books, 2012).
“a sad German professor”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 282.
“Everybody distinguished in the worlds of literature”: “Rostand’s New Play a Success,” New York Times, March 16, 1900.
“sharp pathos pierces the heart”: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “A Note on ‘L’Aiglon,’ ” The Century Illustrated, no. 64, May 1902.
“I understand. I am the expiation!”: The Outlook, no. 7, 1901.
“a woman is better suited”: Sarah Bernhardt, Boston Transcript, April 1, 1901.
“The Texans crowd into the tents and madly cheer and clap”: Michael Barr, “Sarah Bernhardt’s Texas Tent,” http://www.texasescapes.com/MichaelBarr/Sarah-Bernhardt-Texas-Tent.htm.
“Sardou looked a little like Napoleon”: Edmondo de Amicis quoted by Charles A. Weissert in the Introduction to his translation of La Sorcière (Boston: Gorham Press, 1917), 9.
“Suddenly Sardou climbed up on a table”: Marguerite Moreno, quoted in Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 290.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I play them well . . because I am filled with sorrow”: Olga Signorelli, Eleonora Duse (Rome: Gherardo Casini Editore, 1955), 258.
“You are free towards me as towards life itself”: Eleonora Duse, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Come il mare io ti parlo, letter dated March 31, 1903.
“without a new form of life”: Sheehy, Eleonora Duse, 205.
“I am beyond right and left”: Galassi, “The Writer, Seducer, Aviator.”
“I will never forget the sweet hours of hope”: Eleonora Duse, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Come il mare io ti parlo, letter dated July 15, 1903.
“A luminous unearthly sort of light”: Alice Nielsen, “Duse Returns to the Stage,” Theatre, January 1921.
“Her face is unchanged”: “Duse Plays in London,” New York Times, October 6, 1903.
“Never has she been more beautiful”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 291.
“When the curtain rose”: Weaver, Duse, 256.
“renounced the mission”: Ibid, 266.
“new incarnation of Marguerite”: Ibid.
“Every time she returns to Italy”: Ibid., 267.
“When she returned to France”: Berton, Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her, 241.
“If, once . . . your husband”: Aurélien-François-Marie Lugné-Poë, Sous les étoile: Souvenirs de theater, 1902–1912 (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1932), 83.
; “Your acting is hopeless! Pitiful!”: Noccioli, Duse on Tour, 53–54.
“Soon I shall go into the great darkness”: Henrik Ibsen, quoted in Michael Leverson Meyer, Henrik Ibsen: The Top of a Cold Mountain, 1883–1906 (London: Hart-Davis, 1967), 330.
“I feel and I hope that ‘a tomorrow’ ”: Weaver, Duse, 271–72.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Sarah listed under the weight”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 302.
“the performers would merely stand and pose”: Stokes, Booth, Bassnett, Bernhardt, Terry, Duse, 59.
“ten thousand dollars to use her severed limb”: Berton, Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her, 294.
“She has given her heart and soul to the French drama”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 312.
“We all sat around in a wide semi-circle”: May Agate, Madame Sarah (London: Home & Van Thal Ltd., 1946), 21.
“My beloved Docteur Dieu”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 315.
“the same voice I had heard in La Tosca”: Ibid., 316–17.
“Our generation reacted badly”: Ibid., 318.
“Don’t I make coffee every bit as well as Catulle Mendès”: Gottlieb, Sarah, 207.
“Her dedication to this cause”: Jana Prikryl, “The Dirty Halo: On Sarah Bernhardt,” The Nation, November 23, 2010.
“Her makeup was dead white”: Margaret Mower, quoted in Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 323.
“I was bowled over”: Sir John Gielgud, quoted in The Guardian, October 24, 2000.
“she is the greatest living actress”: Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 322.
“Sarah’s actors were respectful only in her presence”: Margaret Mower, quoted in Ibid., 323.
“To contend that Madame Sarah Bernhardt is still a great actress”: Ibid., 322.
“persons who are interested in the study of freaks”: Ron Grossman, “Hottest Ticket in Town? When Sarah Bernhardt Took Chicago by Storm,” Chigaco Tribune, September 23, 2016.
“Your Majesty, I shall die on the stage”: Sarah Bernhardt, quoted in Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 327.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Are they journalists?”: Sarah Bernhardt, quoted in Gold and Fizdale, The Divine Sarah, 330.
“There is but one sentence today on the lips of Paris”: “Face of Great Actress Subtle Even in Death,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1923.
“There was nothing left to her”: Mary Marquet, quoted in Susan Griffin, The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues (New York: Crown Archetype, 2002), 266.