Pola Negri

Asta Nielsen und die Sprechbühne

This little booklet was given to Joop van Dijk by the Divine Asta herself. It is signed and dated 7-9-64. 

Front and Back Cover

Title page and dated signature

(Via)

Stunning Silent Film Stills

Lloyd Hughes in The Stolen Bride, 1927

Blanche Sweet in The Palace of the King, 1923

Alice Brady in The Gilded Cage, 1916

               

Lillian Gish in Way Down East, 1920

Forgetfulness with Love

Recently coming to terms with one's preferences can be rocky and emotional, but uplifting. This becomes more baffling while being in a relationship with someone of the same sex.

My adolescence was a jittery fever-dream of years rolling on by carelessly with the internet as a connection of the majority of my social interaction. I was reserved and withdrawn in my later years after spending a small time attempting to make a group of friends. It wasn't fruitful, and I attracted compulsive liars who rejected me passive aggressively after denying to stroke their egos. I indulged in anime, music and speaking to people off message boards, and attempting to be creative. I still do all these activities sans Japanese cartoons, and now listening to the music I enjoyed while battling my desires and preferences has lit a spark of nostalgia.

I forced myself to speak of men as often and as much as my two best friends (and future fiancee) who, granted, were going through the same - simply attempting to find themselves. They were enthusiastic with each other, freely sharing their preferences - I was the straggler, I knew. And I just sat there like an idiot typing smileys and links, repeating and mimicking their vocalisations. I never really wanted to speak about what I liked sexually because it didn't match their preferences, nor the preferences of everyone around me. So I sat there, alone - burning off my frustration by looking at what I enjoyed, alone - in a cycle of indulgence and repression that carried on for years. Couple this with a bout of bulimia and suicidal tendencies, and it becomes even worse. I feel today that this has only added to my being sexually crippled in my fantasies which has fueled insecurity and self-harm.

This wouldn't be possible without my betrothed and with hand squeezing and wooing out myself from the proverbial and quite blatant closet. It still was hard, and a very harsh turn of events in the past months shook me to the reality that I couldn't force myself to be or act in a way that didn't mirror what I truly was. So I was frank, and I felt cheap and ripped off. It's getting better now, as I revisit what I truly like. And not hiding it anymore, especially as I have come to terms with myself while being in said relationship, is exalting, alleviating, and fulfilling.

The Poetry of Lord Alfred Douglas

In Praise of Shame

Unto my bed last night, methought there came
Our lady of strange dreams, and from an urn
She poured live fire, so that mine eyes did burn
At sight of it. Anon the floating flame
Took many shapes, and one cried, 'I am Shame
That walks with Love, I am most wise to turn
Cold lips and limbs to fire; therefore discern
And see my loveliness, and praise my name.'

And afterward, in radiant garments dressed,
With sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips,
A pomp of all the passions passed along,
All the night through; till the white phantom ships
Of dawn sailed in. Whereat I said this song,
'Of all sweet passions Shame is loveliest.'

 Two Loves

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's wilful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall, o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.'
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight,
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

Smoke by Lydia Davis

Hummingbirds make explosions in the dying white flowers—not only the white flowers are dying but old women are falling from branches everywhere—in smoking pits outside the city, other dead things, too, are burning—and what can be done? Few people know. Dogs have been lost in more than one place, and their owners do not love the countryside anymore. No—old women have fallen and lie with their cancerous cheeks among the roots of oak trees. Everywhere, everywhere. And the earth is sprouting things we do not dare to look at. And the smoking pits have consumed other unnamable things, things we are glad to see go. The smoke, tall and thick as mountains, makes our landscape. There are no more mountains. Long ago they were gone, not even in the memory of our grandfathers. The cloud, low over our heads, is our sky. It has been a long age since anyone saw a sky, saw anything blue. The fog is our velvet, our armchair, our bed. The trees are purple in it. The candles of flowers are out now. The fog is soft, it has no claws, not yet. Our grandmothers’ purple teeth crave. They crave things we would not even recognize anymore, though our grandmothers remember—they cry out at a bridge. Too many things to name are gone and we are left with this clowning earth, these cynical trees—shadows, all, of themselves. And we, too, are beyond help. Some only are less cancerous than others, that is all, some have more left, of their bones, of their hair, of their organs. Who can find a way around the smoking pits, the greedy oaks? Who can find a path to take among the lost and dying dogs back to where the hummingbirds, though mad, still explode the flowers, flowers still though dying?

The Poetry of Ogden Nash

Everybody Tells me Everything

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

The Terrible People

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it,
And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it.
I dont' mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it,
But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
But no, they insist on being stealthy
About the pleasures of being wealthy,
And the possession of a handsome annuity
Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duity.
You cannot conceive of an occasion
Which will find them without some suitable evasion.
Yes indeed, with arguments they are very fecund;
Their first point is that money isn't everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second.
Some people's money is merited,
And other people's is inherited,
But wherever it comes from,
They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from.
Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing,
But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing.
The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure,
Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.
Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny --
Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

A Lady Who Thinks She is Thirty

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda? 

Jazz Age

It started with the old antique telephone from the 1920s.

"Yes, it works," My grandmother said, setting it on the table. "You can use it to call your mother if you like. I'll hook it up later."

I gazed at it in excitement, taking the ear-piece and putting it to my ear, whispering orders for Chinese food into the receiver while rolling the number dials. It was beaten up, its star-spangled banner pattern fading and revealing the material underneath. But it was still wonderful, it still stood in its stateliness a fading charm.

My grandmother's apartment smelled funny. This was among one of the first times I saw her after we left for a bigger house, and I slept over the weekend. Along her dresser she had old perfume bottles, long faux pearl necklaces, a small porcelain doll of baby Jesus, lace and a jewelry box. On the walls old photos of herself and her late husband, my pianist grandfather. Her fading books of spirituality and the occult were on her bedside table, relics of gods along a shelf. And it was all fading, the flicker of her youth, in her possessions and in her face and movements. She still fades today, with less fire in her gut and softer voice.

It was there that my interest in the Jazz Age sparked. My grandmother had a fondness for it as well, keeping her special low waisted dress and loud shawl. I dressed up frequently in them, loud clown-like lipstick on my cheeks and lips and looking at myself in the mirror. It was grand, and when I was fifteen I would be like those pretty ladies with the short hair and straight skirts. When I was older my interest in them shifted mostly because I could hide my curves and breasts in such clothing. I was terribly overweight and self-conscious about my body, and wore baggy things in particular. My only gripe was that it would involve skirts, and I detested them with a passion. I let it go and started wearing them later.

It was the phone, her belongings and Houdini - oh, Houdini! His spectacles entranced me, and so did his dealings with the occult. My grandmother spoke to me of esotericism in great detail, speaking of vast dissipating deserts and becoming one with the universe, the salvation of Christ and archangels. Spirits and hauntings, the prophecies of Nostradamus - it all meshed and intertwined together, leaving undone threads of memories collecting into a spindle to weave out my recollections.