Marisabidilla: n., Span. A know-it-all girl with an answer for everything.
Marissabidilla: n., Amer-Span. The blog of a girl with an answer for some things
and a question for most things.
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Quote courtesy of NaPlWriMo and my dad, who noted that it echoed my statement "I'd better fall in love with my play so deeply that I can't not write it."
But, knowing how many misattributed quotations are out there, I decided to try to find the quote in the original French--that would teach me if it was authentic or not.
Seems like someone else has already done the work, dredging up Saint-Exupéry's poem "Dessine-moi une navire" ("Design me a ship") which expresses the same concept, but somewhat less evocative language.
Créer le navire,
ce n'est point tisser les toiles,
forger les clous,
lire les astres,
mais bien donner le goût de la mer.
To create a ship is not at all to weave the sails, forge the nails, read the stars, but rather to give a taste for the sea. (my translation)
The popular English version is perhaps an improvement--but it ain't-exactély Saint-Exupéry.
I was talking to a fellow playwright last night and we got to lamenting the fact that while modern playwrights may create fantastic worlds on the page, our everyday lives tend to be quiet and constrained. We go to college and then get MFAs; we hole up somewhere and write a play; we submit it to contests; we format everything in that regimented one-page-equals-one-minute style... "Why don't we live back when playwrights actually did things?" we cried. These were the kind of adventurous writers we were thinking of, who don't seem to exist anymore:
Christopher Marlowe, who is thought to have worked as a royal spy, which might explain his mysterious murder in a tavern
Aphra Behn, one of my heroes (obviously!) who worked as a spy for Charles II in Antwerp in 1666, before turning to playwriting
Samuel Beckett, who worked heroically as a courier for the French Resistance
Vaclav Havel (another of my heroes, obviously!) whose plays, other writings, and political activism helped defeat Communism in Czechoslovakia
I especially like knowing this about Beckett. Sometimes he seems like such a distant and untouchable figure--the craggy sage whose plays espouse such a bleak, lonely vision--that he needs to be humanized, a little. So it's good to know that he fought for the French Resistance. And intriguing that his rejection of James Joyce's daughter Lucia helped drive her to schizophrenia. And comforting to visit his grave in Montparnasse Cemetery and see him buried next to his partner of 50 years, Suzanne--to know that despite the loneliness of his writing, in life and death he was not alone.
Photo from Wikipedia.
And I've always been intrigued by the notion of spying, à la Behn and Marlowe. They say Behn's spying contact, William Scott, was her lover--I hear that and I start imagining a scenario straight out of Hitchcock's Notorious, one of my all-time favorite movies. It also might be the most realistic espionage film ever made: it has no wacky James Bond gadgets, no superhumanly strong and intelligent spies, no shadowy government organizations. Just three heartbreakingly real and flawed people, and the shadowy mysteries of the human heart.
But of course, even if its emotions run deeper and its characters are more human than in a typical spy film, it's still a glossy '40s Hollywood product, and more exciting than anything I am ever likely to experience. Which brings me back to the beginning: what ever happened to the time when being a writer meant being adventurous...meant being notorious?
There's a wonderful tribute post on Into the Woods up at Edward Copeland on Film right now. The show opened 20 years ago today and, while it was somewhat overshadowed that season by The Phantom of the Opera, the intervening years have shown it for the truly clever, entertaining, moving work of art that it is. Woods will be around for a long time to come...Phantom has already turned into a joke.
And Into the Woods will always hold a special place in my heart because just a year ago, I played "Lucinda" (one of the stepsisters) in the Vassar production. It was a thrill to fulfill my dream of performing in a Sondheim show before I give up acting to focus wholly on playwriting. In a way, I don't want to act in any other show, because it would feel anticlimactic after Into the Woods. I like the idea of going out on a high note surrounded by knotty Sondheim harmonies. I don't want the magic to vanish!
Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra. Photo from jurgenfauth.com
One of the many cultural artifacts I am incorporating into my new play is Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 movie of Cleopatra starring Claudette Colbert. After all, the premise of my play is Hallie Flanagan and a bunch of Vassar girls performing Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1934, so how could I not mention it?
The movie is a rather bizarre mix of tones. Sometimes it's very stilted, the dialogue clumsily "rhetorical," too much emphasis placed on DeMille's eye-popping spectacle. At other times, the characters are very modern and earthy--sometimes jarringly so. In one Roman party scene the dialogue could pass for 1930s cocktail banter and the ladies' "togas" could pass for stylish Art Deco evening gowns.
But this made me think of the intriguing website The Cleopatra Costume, which investigates what the real Cleopatra might have worn, and how she has been costumed in movie and stage versions of her story. The conclusion? Cleopatra's costume nearly always reflects the fashions of the day. Colbert's Deco-style gowns are just one example.
Hallie Flanagan definitely would have approved of this. In her 1934 production, Cleopatra wore a sleek turquoise velvet sheath dress, and the soldiers wore white uniforms based on the uniforms of Mussolini's troops in North Africa. Hallie scorned "historical or archaeological" designs, and wanted to make the play immediately accessible to her audience. She preferred to capture the essence of "Seductive Queen" or "Soldier" rather than getting trapped in irrelevant historical detail.
I'd heard of NaNoWriMo before and now it seems that authors of other genres are jumping on the bandwagon. For dramatists, there's now NaPlWriMo...write a play of at least 75 pages between 12:00 AM November 1 and 11:59 PM November 30.
I'd be tempted to become an official NaPlWriMo writer, because that's basically what I need to do for my senior thesis play...write it this month. (I've been slacking off, to my chagrin.) However, I don't qualify, because I've been thinking about this play and doing research for years, I have some scenes already started, and I don't really feel like "reporting to the forums every week on my process." Maybe that's meant to be encouraging...but writing's always been a solitary activity for me. I get self-conscious. And also, paranoid that other writers are going to steal my ideas.
Think of me, then, as the "shadow" NaPlWriMo participant. It will get done--and it'll be more than 75 pages, because it needs to be that length--but I know I can do it. Last December I wrote 40 pages in 4 days. Fueled by lots of caffeine and greasy diner food.
Now I've just got to motivate myself to plug away at it. And, preferably, fall in love with my play so deeply that I can't not write it. Pep talks encouraged in the comments!
Greta Garbo as Camille. Photo from stanford.edu/~brooksie
She's a venerable figure in 19th-century literature, beautiful, self-sacrificing, redeemed through suffering and love: the tubercular heroine, and specifically the tubercular courtesan. The lady who began it all is Marie Duplessis, a real-life courtesan who died of tuberculosis just after her 23rd birthday, and whose lovers had included Alexandre Dumas fils. Dumas turned her into Marguerite Gautier, his Dame aux camélias (Lady with the Camellias, aka Camille), Verdi adapted this into La Traviata featuring Violetta Valéry, and they inspired Baz Luhrmann's "Satine" in Moulin Rouge. (The DVD features reveal that his original plot was even closer to the Camille/Traviata story than it is in the final film--Christian and Satine had an idyllic interlude in the country, etc.)
These ladies may die, but their story is deathless: modern-day academics analyze the trope of the tubercular heroine and lately, I've been thinking about it too. I dressed up as Marguerite Gautier for Halloween, as well as two other times in the past year. And I'm jealous that one of my dearest friends is named Marguerite Camille--wouldn't I love to be named after a literary heroine!
I read the original novel last year for a music course focusing on how works of literature get adapted into operas. Of course it's a sentimental tearjerker, and the hero, Armand Duval, is annoying, weak, and whiny. If Dumas was like this in real life, I wouldn't want to have known him! But Marguerite is always vivid and sympathetic (Verdi had the right idea to make her the central character) and the book has an interesting narrative strategy. Like Wuthering Heights, it's one of those 19th-century novels where narrations nest within one another. The first narrator is an unnamed man who hears that courtesan Marguerite Gautier has died, and becomes intrigued by her life. Then he encounters Armand, Marguerite's lover, who tells his sad story to Narrator #1. Then the climax of the story comes in Marguerite's confessional letter to Armand--a third nested narrator.
The most surprising part of the book is the true meaning of Marguerite's famous camellias. I'd always assumed they were purely symbolic--their virginal whiteness denoting that although Marguerite is a courtesan, she has an unstained and noble heart. But actually, the camellias serve a much more mercenary function...
Every time a new play opened, one was sure to see [Marguerite] there, with three things she never left behind [...] : her lorgnette, a bag of bonbons, and a bouquet of camellias. For twenty-five days out of the month the camellias were white, and for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason for the change in color, which I mention without being able to explain it. (my translation)
Oh Narrator, stop being so coy! You know the reason perfectly well--we all do. Yes, you wrote at a time when people were supposed to pretend that women don't menstruate or indeed have any bodily functions--but your novel is about a woman who sells her body! So stop with the faux innocence. It's tipped over the line into salaciousness. (Anyone want to add "wearing red camellias" to the list of euphemisms like "visiting Aunt Flo" or "on the rag"?)
After his novel became a success, Dumas adapted it into a play that served as a star vehicle for many actresses including Sarah Bernhardt (see the beautiful Alphons Mucha poster at left--image from art.com).
Now, when I was in France, my fantastic host family insisted that I throw a dinner party for my friends, and, naturally, I chose French Theatre for its theme. Everyone had to dress up as a character from a French play, and I went as Marguerite Gautier. After all, it's an incredibly easy costume--all you have to do is look pretty and wear camellias. I couldn't find any cut camellias (only potted bushes) in Paris flower shops, so I made do with a silk flower in my hair. I wore it with a black skirt and a black silk top with a small white floral print. None of my friends guessed who I was, which disappointed me.
Then, last week, a French professor held a Halloween party at his apartment where everyone had to dress up as a French literary or historical figure. Out came the Dame aux Camélias outfit again! This time, I had more silk camellias--two in my hair, one in my sash, one at my neckline--and wore them with a red velvet dress that I bought in France. And I did my makeup more elaborately, aiming for that consumptive complexion, pale with very flushed cheeks. I was a "modern" Marguerite--I didn't have a big froufrou 1850s gown, but I tried to catch the character's essence. It was kind of like Anna Netrebko's costume in this video of the "Brindisi" from La Traviata--not that I claim to look like Ms. Netrebko, opera's glamour-girl!
More people guessed who I was this time, and one of my friends even chastised me for not carrying around a big bloodstained handkerchief and coughing into it. And I suppose if someone had asked me to do a "trick" to get a "treat," I'd have sung "Sempre libera," albeit very poorly and with much fudging of lyrics. Certainly not like Angela Gheorghiu, whose great rendition seems to have become the YouTube standard for this aria:
Yesterday, my Tubercular French Courtesan outfit got yet another airing, because one of the dorms on campus had a "Moulin Rouge"-themed party and I helped distribute free crêpes for the French Club. This time, I made the costume less the ethereal, self-sacrificing Marguerite, and more the fun-loving bohemian cancan girl, by tying up the skirt of my red velvet dress with a red ribbon to make it shorter, and wearing black lace stockings. My friend (the same one who'd said I needed a bloody handkerchief) now told me that my drapey tied-up skirt looked "very Poiret," which I took as a great compliment.
This story all comes full circle, though, because my inspiration for buying that red dress in the first place was... Moulin Rouge! The movie came out when I was 13, the perfect age to fall in love with it; it quickly became my all-time favorite and I still adore it. (Further IMDB-review thoughts here.) Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor have never looked better nor had to cover so much ground in a performance--singing, dancing, comedy, tragedy... And as soon as Kidman stepped out in that gorgeous red satin gown, I got a craving for a red dress of my own--even though it's not my best color.
The more direct reason I bought my red dress is that the other student who lived with my host family in France was throwing his dinner party a month after mine, with a "Red" theme. In between the two parties, I'd fallen out with this guy and his friends, so I was not exactly looking forward to the occasion. But damn it, it gave me the excuse to buy the red dress I'd always wanted, and when I walked into La Redoute, and saw the deep-red velvet dress massively marked down, and available in my size only...well, it was meant to be, n'est-ce pas? I knew I'd be the best-dressed party guest--overdressed perhaps, but I didn't care. (Isn't there a whole history of red dresses symbolizing defiance? See Gone with the Wind or Jezebel.)
Still, I felt deeply hurt underneath my external defiance. And so when I listen to "Sempre libera" and Violetta sings "Sola, abbandonata, in questo popoloso deserto che appellano Parigi!" (Alone, abandoned, in this populous desert called Paris!) the words strike me to the heart. I know how it feels, Violetta.
And while researching this blog post I just discovered that Paul Poiret designed Sarah Bernhardt's costumes for years--including for the film of La Dame aux camélias.
In the first part of this post on how two of my all-time favorite books are being turned into movies this fall, I looked at Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, which became my favorite book when I was 9 years old. And it retained that position for quite a long time--I loved its sequels too, and there were other books I enjoyed, but I don't think it ever had a serious challenger. By the time I was in high school, though, I began thinking it silly that my favorite book was a children's novel. And when I was 15, I finally read a book that knocked The Golden Compass off its pedestal: Atonement, by Ian McEwan.
I read Atonement on a high-school trip to Cuba (a long story which I may get around to telling someday). It was 2003 and the Iraq War had just begun, so you could draw a parallel between that and the depiction of World War II in the novel, though I doubt I was conscious of it at the time. The book had gotten good reviews and was half-price at Costco, so I picked it up rather on a whim--thinking "This had better be good, or I'll be stuck in Cuba with a lousy book."
And at first I read it leisurely--the first section is slowly paced in that classic "British country house novel" way--though I was impressed with McEwen's attention to detail and shifting perspectives. And then, as the book's inexorable chain of events got set into motion, it hooked me in the same way The Golden Compass had. I'd vowed that on our bus trips through Cuba I would observe the countryside instead of reading; soon, that vow was broken. When I finished the book, I stared blankly out the bus window, feeling swelled-up with emotion and ready to cry; just then, we went down a particularly twisty road and the kid in front of me got carsick--the bus had to pull over so he could vomit out the window. That was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day--"David threw up!" Me, I barely noticed. As it has done to many other readers, that last section of Atonement knocked me flat. Devastated me.
Due to Atonement's critical acclaim and general brilliance, as well as the public's appetite for romantic dramas, I was sure it would be made into a movie someday. Still, I worry that something fundamental may get lost in the translation to the screen. *VAGUE SPOILERS* The end of the book is so powerful because you discover that it's a novel about the act of writing. In order for the twist to function the same way in a movie version, you'd have to make the older Briony a film director instead of a novelist, but I highly doubt that change took place.
*SPOILERS END*
All the same, I'm excited about the movie. I was surprised how much I liked director Joe Wright's film version of Pride and Prejudice, which looked beautiful and brought the characters' emotions to life. (You can read my IMDB review here, though it seems that some Austenites took offense at my statement "I admire Jane Austen's novels, but admire good filmmaking even more.") Screenwriter Christopher Hampton proved with Dangerous Liaisons that he can turn a difficult-to-adapt novel into a lively drama. Wright obviously enjoys working with Keira Knightley and she did a good job in Pride and Prejudice--though I wonder if she's too beautiful and glamorous to play Cecilia.
I had a bit of the opposite reaction when I heard James McAvoy would be playing Robbie. Now, as you can see from the photo above, he's not a bad-looking chap, he seems likable, decent, and sympathetic--all qualities that Robbie requires. But I'll admit I pictured Robbie as much more traditionally handsome, and rough around the edges (he's the cleaning lady's son after all) where McAvoy is wet behind the ears. Still, I have heard good things about McAvoy's acting talent and hope to be pleasantly surprised. This movie was made to fulfill Wright's and McEwan's visions, not to fulfill my own romantic dreams, you know!
I will always love Atonement, but I'm less willing to call it my Favorite Book of All Time, as I did when I was sixteen or seventeen. I now think it's a little foolish to single one book out as my all-time favorite, as well as awfully hubristic that both of my former All-Time Favorites, The Golden Compass and Atonement, were written during my own short lifetime. It's exciting, though, that two such high-profile movies based on two such great books are coming out this fall. Often I love the kind of books that would never be made into movies!
