The musings of a writer during his apprenticeship. Rilke (18751926) spent two and a half years, from 1898 to 1900, keeping a diary at the suggestion of his lover, Lou Andreas- SalomÇ. This intrinsically private work takes shape as an impassioned miscellany, including drafts of poems, gossip about Rilke's friends and acquaintances, direct observations of place, his reflections on art and architecture from the Renaissance to Rodin, and fictional tales. Mixed in with this stimulating hodgepodge is some blather. ``Every day is the beginning of life,'' exulted Rilke in 1900. ``Every life is the beginning of eternity.'' But the youthful Romantic could be witty as well as narcotically lyric. One of the diary's climactic moments comes as he commits to paper his adventure of trying to visit and impress Count Leo Tolstoy at the great man's country estate with Lou: ``A dog comes right up to us, trusting and friendly, as we stand there in front of the small glass door. I bend down to the white dog and as I straighten up again I see behind the glass, vague and distorted by the flaws of the pane, a pair of searching eyes in a small grizzled face. The door opens, lets You [Lou] in and slams sharply against me, so that I, only after the Count has already greeted You, come in and now also stand before him, feeling awkwardly large.'' Rilke's actual visual sense takes the measure of Florence evocatively: ``The ornamentation that nestles up against the columns is in the best instances unobtrusive and straightforward, a beautiful thought or a tender feeling elicited by the column.'' The poems included are languorously unfinished reveries, brimming with girls, flowers, and boyish, transcendent emotion. But Rilke was not always sacramentally poetic; even ``a dachsund with the demeanor of a sphinx'' could catch his eye and spur his sentences. Platitudes, poetry, and revelations for Rilke's many American admirers—translated for the first time into English. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-04553-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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