An xtabay is a femme fatale in Mesoamerican mythology.
Sumac was first brought to my attention via Incredibly Strange Music (on outsider music, lounge music and space age pop), but is also listed in David Toop‘s book Exotica: Fabricated Soundscapes in a Real World. Both volumes are recommended.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeFy9S0MKp4]
I mentioned her previously here[3].
Is she a World Music Classic or a guilty pleasure?
Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy @550
The Spanish tragedy: or, Hieronimo is mad againe: Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Belimperia; with the pitifull death of Hieronimo
Publisher: London : Printed by Augustine Mathewes, for Francis Grove, and are to bee sold at his shoppe, neere the Sarazens Head, upon Snovv-hill, 1633.
When one researches the history of horror[1], one encounters the revenge tragedy in the 16th century, featured because of the genre’s cruelty. In the 1580s, an incredible series of gruesome revenge plays were performed on the stages of England.
An example of the gruesomeness of these plays:
“Enter the empress’s sons with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished.” —stage direction to Shakespeare‘s Titus Andronicus. (Chiron and Demetrius had taken Lavinia away and raped her over her husband’s body. To keep her from revealing what she has seen and endured, they had cut out her tongue and cut off her hands.)
The Spanish Tragedy (d. 1594) by Thomas Kyd is exemplary and one of the earliest items in the history of the revenge play.
The play is also noted for being an early instance of the metatheatre (play-in-play) trope. Aditionally, Thomas Kyd is also an icon in the history of counterculture (he was put on the rack for allegations of heresy).
The history of horror is an interesting subject because of its ontological and temporal issues. It starts with horror fiction and horror art and ends at the commodified terrain of the horror film and gothic fashion.
Most recently the concept of horror was explored by Collapse journal volume 4.
Happy 70th birthday Jean Rollin.
Franka Mai and Brigitte Lahaie in Fascination image sourced at imagesjournal [1]. [Apr 2005]
Jean Rollin constitutes a decisive chapter in the book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 and discovering him and his universe (which connects to the world of French “low culture”) has been a delight. But do not expect too much of his films. Seeing Jean Rollin films has been an underwhelming experience for Jahsonic. Silly is the best word for the films I’ve seen. And not enough redeeming elements.
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See prev. posts [2]
However 1
cover picture of Fascination
Rollin is a very interesting documentalist (see his work for Jean-Pierre Bouyxou’s Fascination and Eric Losfeld‘s Midi Minuit Fantastique) and connoisseur of Gaston Leroux and all literature of what he calls « second rayon ».
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Calling Rollin connoisseurs.
I am looking for the title of the following excellent short subject by Rollin:
Anyone?
P. S. If you are new to Rollin check his Google gallery and make sure SafeSearch is off.
Barbey: catholicism, sadism, mysticism
Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (portrait by Émile Lévy, ca. 1882)
Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly‘s grave.
Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (November 2, 1808 – April 23, 1889), was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in a kind of mysterious tale that examines hidden motivation and hinted evil bordering (but never crossing into) the supernatural. He had a decisive influence on writers such as Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Henry James and Proust.
Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) (1874) – Barbey d’Aurevilly [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Frontispiece for ‘Les Diaboliques’ by Barbey d’Aurevilly painted by Félicien Rops in 1886
His best-known collection is The She-Devils, which includes the cult classic Happiness in Crime and is still in print from Dedalus Books. Most recently his Une vieille maîtresse (An Elderly Mistress, 1851) was adapted to cinema by French Jahsonic favorite director Catherine Breillat: its English title is The Last Mistress.
He is variously lumped in with the Late French Romantics, The Decadents and the Symbolists and is included in the Genealogy of the Cruel Tale and The Romantic Agony. He is considered a practitioner of the Fantastique, a catholic and a dandy.
L’ensorcelée (in a Folio edition)
L’Ensorcelée (The Bewitched, 1854) is a tale by French writer Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly. It concerns an episode of the royalist rising among the Norman peasants against the first republic.
Barbey is favorably mentioned in Against the Grain (the breviary of decadence) by Joris-Karl Huysmans:
“Deux ouvrages de Barbey d’Aurevilly attisaient spécialement des Esseintes, Le Prêtre marié et Les Diaboliques. D’autres, tels que L’ensorcelé, Le chevalier des touches, Une vieille maîtresse, étaient certainement plus pondérés et plus complets, mais ils laissaient plus froid des Esseintes qui ne s’intéressait réellement qu’aux oeuvres mal portantes, minées et irritées par la fièvre. Avec ces volumes presque sains, Barbey d’Aurevilly avait constamment louvoyé entre ces deux fossés de la religion catholique qui arrivent à se joindre: le mysticisme et le sadisme. — À rebours
“Two works in particular of Barbey d’Aurevilly‘s fired Des Esseintes‘ imagination: the Prêtre marié (“Married Priest”) and the Diabolique. Others, such as l’Ensorcelé (“The Bewitched”), the Chevalier des Touches, Une vieille Maîtresse (“An Old Mistress”), were no doubt better balanced and more complete works, but they appealed less warmly to Des Esseintes, who was genuinely interested only in sickly books with health undermined and exasperated by fever. In these comparatively sane volumes Barbey d’Aurévilly was perpetually tacking to and fro between those two channels of Catholicism which eventually run into one,—mysticism and Sadism.” — Against the Grain, translation by Havelock Ellis
One often does not have a clue of the colors of painted artworks if one is an internet connoisseur. By internet connoisseur I mean someone who has gained most of his/her expertise from the internet rather than traditional media. Questions of color fidelity on the internet should be raised here.
Before October 30, 2008 the only version known to me of Géricault’s Kleptomaniac was this one:
Kleptomaniac, 1822 painting by Théodore Géricault
Compare this photo taken at its current location here:
The detail of the painting was taken with a Sony Ericsson K770i on last Thursday.
The Sony Ericsson is notorious for picking up an excess of blue, but still is a rather faithful reproduction.