My Actor-Husband: A true story of American stage lifeAnonymous
General
My Actor-Husband: A true story of American stage life
Anonymous
Actors -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Theater -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Fiction
The form appeared to be a kind of spiral, each step or incline complete
in itself yet suggesting a connecting thread. At first glance I was
struck with the multiplicity of figures, all nearly life size. But as my
eagerness gave way to soberer perspective, something I had overlooked
now asserted itself: _In the score of characters represented there were
but two faces--that of one man and one woman!_ That is to say, the two
faces were reproduced ... yet ... or did one's fancy play at tricks?...
I applied the magnifying glass.... Yes, there were but two faces, both
repeatedly used by the artist, but with what wondrous and illuminating
difference! Starting from the left and lowest plane--symbolic of the
theme--there was embodied in the figures of the man and maid the lowest
form of love.... The youthful prettiness of the girl, the soft roundness
of her form, the maiden breast ... all these but accentuated the
undeveloped soul. Her very attitude, the abandon as she lay smiling,
half-hid amongst the leaves and blooms ... here, indeed, was "a parley
to provocation." ... Above her towered the figure of a man. In his
spare, sinewy form, conscient of its strength, vibrant with sex, the
young male was epitomized.... "Instinct" need not be carved across the
base.... Instinct, the first and lowest form of love.
From the grassy knoll the path ascended to a rocky promontory, bleak,
arid. Straining 'gainst the fury of the storm, the man and woman
climbed; his muscles tense, confusion limned upon his face; the woman,
crouching in her fright, hiding her face in her wind-tossed hair; while
underfoot they trampled on a mask, the leering mask of former self ...
and, riding on the wind, half cloud, half god, a phantom with veiled
face laid on the lash.... Confusion.... Chaos....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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