2.27.2003
[Posted 2:55 PM by James Panero]
THE NEW CRITERION’S PRECIS FOR MARCH, 2003:
While we at The New Criterion always seek to offer you a broad range of
essays on culture, politics, and the arts, it often happens–by
accident, it seems–that certain leitmotifs appear throughout a single
issue. Quite different articles by different authors will
“rhyme” with each other, senendipitously dwelling on certain
themes or figures. The March number of the magazine is one occasion
where we focus on a single period that has long fascinated us.
Something remarkable happened in the years surrounding 1900. Part
Symbolist and part spiritualist, the arts (for a time) followed a path
that remains to this day mysterious, inviting, and largely unknown. With
the overtones of Mallarm� and Debussy, this month The New Criterion take
on some of the major artists of the age with essays on Paul Val�ry and
Marsden Hartley at one end, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso at the
other. Roger Kimball begins with an appraisal of the painter Eduard
Vuillard, now enjoying a major revival in a new exhibition at the
National Gallery in Washington. (For details on how to download an
advance PDF of this article, “Vuillard’s mysteries” see
below.) We hope you will join us in enjoying this rich number.
CONTENTS:
* “Notes & Comments” (page 1). “Squeals from the
nursery” on the bad behavior of bad-boy poets; “If they holler
. . . ” on the latest lawsuit over a treacherous nursery rhyme;
“Oleo olio” on the oleaginous artist Matthew Barney at the
Guggenheim Museum, New York.
* “Vuillard’s mysteries” (page 5). Roger Kimball looks into
the depth of this enigmatic painter:
“We come to Vuillard as we come to his pictures, askew, missing
part of the plot. His pictures tend to occupy that capacious, half-lit
storeroom of feeling where pre-eminence is guaranteed more by affection
than by dispassionate evaluation. They are part of the
family: somehow OUR family, once-removed.”
(We have placed an advance, full-text PDF file of Roger Kimball’s
article at a special address on our website. We invite you to download
it now [420K-case sensitive]: https://www.newcriterion.com/vuillard.pdf)
* “RABBIT-PROOF FENCE: a ’true story’?” (page 12): Keith
Windschuttle tracks down the holes in Phillip Noyce’s current film
RABBIT-PROOF FENCE.
“RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is ostensibly an adventure story of female
bravery and ingenuity in which three Aboriginal girls escape from an
oppressive institution in Western Australia and make a
fifteen-hundred-mile journey back to their home. In reality it is a work
every bit as politically committed as Graham Greene’s. If anything, the
anti-Australianism of the latter film outdoes the anti-Americanism of
THE QUIET AMERICAN.”
* “The intimate abstraction of Paul Val�ry” (page 17). Upon
the publication of an English-language version of Val�ry’s
CAHIERS/NOTEBOOKS, Joseph Epstein praises the late Symbolist’s
evanescent touch.
“The name Paul Val�ry carries its own music. For those who know
something of what lies behind it, the music deepens, is suggestive, and
always richly complex. ’Complex,’ said Ravel, about his own artistic
aims, ’never complicated.’) To know Val�ry
only from his melodious but difficult poems–’Le Cimitiere marin,’ ’La
Jeune Parque,’ and others–turns out to be to know him scarcely at
all.”
* “Peter Taylor today” (page 26). Upon the publication of two
critical works, Richard Tillinghast weigh the achievement of this
twentieth century novelist.
“The territory Peter Taylor staked out for himself may be summed up
easily and neatly enough. His characters are primarily
upper-middle-class and upper-class people from the upper, as opposed to
the ’deep,’ south, living in the middle decades of the twentieth
century. Just as William Faulkner made the state of Mississippi his
theater of conflict and revelation, Peter Taylor focused on Tennessee,
with its three distinct regions: west, middle, and east. Taylor had
roots in all three provinces and in his writings the state becomes a
’paysage moralis.’”
* New poems by Andrew Frisardi & Justine Cook (page 33).
* “London journal: A tale of two Tonies” (page 36). John Gross
takes little comfort in the difficulties facing Tony Blair, from his
international policy for the war against Iraq, to internal problems
including immigration, trade unions, and the soft economy.
* Theater: “Aging youth & a meatless sandwich” (page 39).
Mark Steyn reviews “Kimberly Akimbo” at the Manhattan Theatre
Club and “Shanghai Moon,” produced by the Drama Dept. at the
Greenwich House theater.
* Art: Karen Wilkin reports ringside from the “Matisse
Picasso” bout at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (page 44):
“The show is essentially an expansion of that tantalizing epilogue
to the Matisse retrospective–the core of the exhibition is once again
the pairing of LES DEMOUSELLES and BATHERS WITH A TURTLE–extended to
span the period between the two young artists’ initial awareness of each
other’s work, in the first years of the twentieth century, and 1954, the
year of Matisse’s death.”
* Art: James Panero goes native at the Marsden Hartley survey in
Hartford, Connecticut (page 49):
” No painter has come to embody better the brooding vigor and new,
native spirit of American modernism at the turn of the century as
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943). In mind as well as action and body, the
painter from Lewiston, Maine, a woebegone member of the Stieglitz 291
circle, came to epitomize the dark mysteries and contradictions of his
literary antecedents: . . . Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe.”
* Music: “New York Chronicle” (page 53). In another busy
month Jay Nordlinger reviews the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
and several talented artists: the British soprano Jane Eaglen and the
pianists Arcadi Volodos, Radu Lupu, and Garrick Ohlsson. He also enjoys
a rare tenor recital and takes two trips to the Met for a new production
of Janacek’s JENUFA and Mozart’s “Turkish” opera THE ABDUCTION
FROM THE SERAGLIO.
Opera note: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes! James F. Penrose fears Greeks
even bearing gifts at Berlioz’s LES TROYENS at the Met (page 57).
* The media: “Himalayan self-righteousness” (page 59). James
Bowman laments the smugness of the media, the protesters, and the poets
in opposing the war against Iraq.
* Books: Peter Wood DIVERSITY: THE INVENTION OF A CONCEPT reviewed by
John Derbyshire (page 64);
–Hermann Kurzke THOMAS MANN: LIFE AS A WORK OF ART: A BIOGRAPHY
reviewed by Jeffrey Meyers (page 68);
–Doris Lessing THE SWEETEST DREAM reviewed by Paul Hollander (page
71);
–Christie Davies THE MIRTH OF NATIONS reviewed by Kenneth Minogue (page
74).
* Notebook: “Cliquez ici for Alexandria” (page 77). Theodore
Dalrymple explores Alexandria’s library and the city itself, hometown of
Cavafy.
FORTHCOMING IN THE NEW CRITERION:
In April, a very special section on poetry, including essays by David
Barber, Dick Davis, Adam Kirsch, Eric Ormsby, & David Yezzi; The
achievement of Stephan George, by John Simon; The Peloponnesian war, by
Victor Davis Hanson; Simon Raven, by Brooke Allen; The vocal recital
today, by Patrick J. Smith; Theodore Dreiser by Jeffrey Hart.
NEWS:
* “Art in The New Criterion” from our December issue is now
available in a special 36-page reprint. Copies of this important
re-publication may be purchased directly through the website for $3 (+$2
S+H). Follow this link for an order form:
https://www.newcriterion.com/constant/art.htm
* TNC AUDIO: On December 9, 2002, Hilton Kramer delivered a speech in
New York on his career as an art critic. The speech was recorded on
audio track. This is a reminder that we are now giving our supporters
and recipients of The New Criterion mailing list an exclusive chance to
listen to ten clips from this talk. We have placed a special audio start
page at a non-public address on our website. The address is:
https://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/audio/audio.htm
We invite you to open this start page. Please bear in mind that due to
the size of the audio files, a high-speed internet connection is
recommended. Files are offered in Windows Media format (.wav). On the
start page, we include information on how to download the free Windows
Media player to your computer.
* A thank you to everyone who has contributed already to The New
Criterion annual fundraising drive. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization, The New Criterion relies on your extra support to publish
each month. If you have yet to receive our fundraising letter, please
email us at [email protected].
* The Editors of The New Criterion are pleased to announce that Charles
Tomlinson is the winner of the third annual New Criterion Poetry Prize.
His book SKY-WRITING AND OTHER POEMS will be published by Ivan R. Dee,
Chicago, in the fall of 2003.
* For a free digital look at portions of the March issue, please do not
forget to visit the website at https://www.newcriterion.com. The issue will post on
the first of the month.