Re: saccharine morality - Dickensian, wrote Feuchtwanger in one letter, and that's it, imo, because Chaplin throughout his life remained such a Victorian (and because that life took so long, it's easy to forget he really was a child of the Victorian age). And then he never claimed that his movie persona was himself (in his film scenarios, and also in his memoirs, he always writes "the tramp", never "me"), as opposed to many a film star. And his own background - crazy starving mother, orphanage, rags to riches - is the Victorian tale per se. (When the memoirs came out, people thought he might be exaggarating, until journalists did some research, and if anything, he was making the childhood period more harmless than it was.) Which as opposed to Victorian tales did not leave him even tempered but with a chip on his shoulder and, like Scarlet O'Hara, determined never to go hungry again. And yes, absolutely, much with the temper. The man ruled his film productions like an absolute monarch.
Feuchtwanger's correspondance is already partly published - the entire correspondance with Arnold Zweig, and the letters to and from the Brothers Mann, Brecht, Kantorowicz and the other literati, for example.
"Er" is Polycrates in "Der Ring des Polycrates", based on the Greek myth of the same name, ballad by Friedrich Schiller. Which Schiller wrote in the magical ballad year he was exchanging poems with Goethe on a weekly basis, practically. I think the Egyptian king he was talking to was an equally mythical one called Rhadamantis, not an actual historical one.
Since you liked the Chaplin, here is Oona, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, being a bit catty about the Brits in the coronation year:
“We went to London for ten days and I personally returned feeling rather bored with the English. Nothing much goes on in any cultural way – the theater is dull and the plays are bad, and really they don’t seem to even publish any books that one wants to read. And this being the Coronation year the whole atmosphere is quite insane. Charlie thinks that Princess Margaret is pretty which annoys me no end, but I remind myself that his English blood has to assert itself occasionally. In any case, London is till a beautiful and romantic city.”
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-09-12 11:00 pm (UTC)Feuchtwanger's correspondance is already partly published - the entire correspondance with Arnold Zweig, and the letters to and from the Brothers Mann, Brecht, Kantorowicz and the other literati, for example.
"Er" is Polycrates in "Der Ring des Polycrates", based on the Greek myth of the same name, ballad by Friedrich Schiller. Which Schiller wrote in the magical ballad year he was exchanging poems with Goethe on a weekly basis, practically. I think the Egyptian king he was talking to was an equally mythical one called Rhadamantis, not an actual historical one.
Since you liked the Chaplin, here is Oona, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, being a bit catty about the Brits in the coronation year:
“We went to London for ten days and I personally returned feeling rather bored with the English. Nothing much goes on in any cultural way – the theater is dull and the plays are bad, and really they don’t seem to even publish any books that one wants to read. And this being the Coronation year the whole atmosphere is quite insane. Charlie thinks that Princess Margaret is pretty which annoys me no end, but I remind myself that his English blood has to assert itself occasionally. In any case, London is till a beautiful and romantic city.”