Remembering the greatest singer ever. Ella Jane Fitzgerald, born on April the 25th, 1917. 

 

 
On this day, April the 25th, the Nazi army surrenders and leaves the Northern Italy, freeing it from its occupation, after an insurrection by Italia's resistance movement. It was 1945. On this symbolic day we celebrate the liberation of the country.   

          

What would have been like?

"Humanity is made of both men and women, it has to be represented by both sexes."

Rita Levi Montalcini was born in Turin, on April the 22nd, 1909. She won the Nobel prize in 1986 (Medicine) because of her studies in Neurology, the National Medal of Science (Biology) in 1987 and she's the first woman scientist to win the Max Weinstein prize. 

Even though both parents encouraged the girl's intellectual research, her father thought that a professional career could not coexist with the duties of a mother and a wife. But Rita did go to University, graduate and continued her researches in the neurology fields, and never got married nor had kids, choosing to dedicate her life to science.

Her research opened the doors of the understanding of the cellular and organic growth, playing an important role in the fight against cancer, and diseases such as Alzheimer and Parkinson. 

"My body can do whatever it wants. I'm not the body; I'm the mind."

Now she's 103 years old.

"I want to grow away from all the petty little world we exist in. I want to leave it all behind, all the petty little thoughts about unimportant little things, things that'll be forgotten a hundred years from now anyway. There's a level somewhere where everything is solid and important. I'm going to try to reach up there and find a place I know is pretty close to perfect, a place where this whole messy world should be, could be, if it'd just take the time to learn."

(James Byron Dean, 08/02/1931 - 30/09/1955)

So, I am about to watch the 2011 movie "Hysteria", directed by Tanya Wexler, with Maggie Gyllenhaal (I adore her).
Just waiting for my pop corn to be ready.

Well well well. I had NO CLUE it was such an ancient device, (ignorance mode: ON). I seriously thought its birth was pretty modern. It seems that I was wrong. Quite wrong. 

Apparently some... experts claim that Cleopatra herself had one (calabash filled with buzzing bees... I SWEAR I haven't gone crazy! Check this here:  http://www.health24.com/sex/Sex_toys/1253-2616-3503,32082.asp) 

Furthermore, the grandfather of all modern dildos is kept in China, at the Ancient Sexual Culture Museum in Shanghai. It is supposed to be 4000 years old.  

After I managed to get the mental image of this thing filled with buzzing things out of my head (I'm hating the fact that I cannot help imagining everything I read right now!), I continued my little research. Ok, so since most ancient times women had to deal with this sort of disease called Hysteria (the word comes from the greek for "Uterus" (Hustéra), so it seems only females were affected by it), which caused irritability, discomfort, nervousness and so on. The female genre got  lucky then, because men did their best to find a cure. What they've found, as a cure, was the genital massage (Eureka.). Theurapetic, dont' get them wrong, as they were so sure it had nothing to do with pleasure and sex, since there was no penetration involved.

Doctors used this method for centuries, and in the end their poor hands started to get tired (I'm feeling so sorry, that I am devastated), so some dude came to rescue them. This guy (almost impossible to state who he was) introduce electricity as a new player in this game, and of course it started doing its job offering some relief to doctors' exhausted hands. It seems that the first vibrating device was French, called "tremoussoir". It was 1734, and there was no electricity involved yet, but a spring. Maybe it didn't work that well, as doctors continued using their own fatigued hands. Then, in 1864, an American man used steam, and invented a machine called "Manipulator". 

The machine we see in the movie, invented in 1883 by Granville, is stated to be the first vibrator in history (using electricity). And 1899 was year of the first vibrator with batteries. 

During the 20's, though, the vibrator appeared in porn movies, so it became impossible not to associate it  with sexual practices, and could no more be described as a medical cure. The vibrator as it is known today (wireless) appeared in 1968. 

 

Now, there's no such thing as Hysteria anymore, we talk about a wide range of affections instead, for example depression, with related therapies.

"I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past."

(Virginia Woolf)

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on January the 25th 1882, and was one of the first writers to start Modernism in literature, with classics such as Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). She was a member of the well known Bloomsbury group, a group of intelletcuals which used to meet in London's Bloomsbury area, from the early 1900's until the 1930's. They demostrated to be extremely open minded for their time, and sexually free, as Virginia herself was bisexual and had a passionate relationship with another group member, Vita Sackville-West. Among many, she wrote a classic of gay fiction, Orlando (1927), stating that love knows no gender. 

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

(A room of one's own, Virginia Woolf, 1929)   

 

The American song writer and singer Cole Albert Porter was born on June the 9th 1891. He achieved success during the 1920's, becoming in the next decade the most important songwriter on the Broadway scene, writing both lyrics and music.
He died on October the 15th 1964, and rests in Mount Hope Cemetery, in native Peru (Indiana).

"I don't photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be."

Robert Doisneau (14/04/1912 - 01/04/1994)

 

Heart-breaking love letter written by a young Zelda Sayre, in 1919, to her future beloved husband F. S. Fitzgerald.

Sweetheart,
   Please, please don’t be so depressed – We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever – and until we are, I am loving, loving every tiny minute of the day and night – Maybe you won’t understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it’s hardest to write – and you always know when I make myself – Just the ache of it all – and I can’t tell you. If we were together, you’d feel how strong it is – you’re so sweet when you’re melancholy. I love your sad tenderness – when I’ve hurt you – That’s one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels – and they bothered you so – Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget -

   Scott – there’s nothing in all the world I want but you – and your precious love – All the material things are nothing. I’d just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence – because you’d soon love me less – and less – and I’d do anything — anything — to keep your heart for my own – I don’t want to live – I want to love first, and live incidentally – Why don’t you feel that I’m waiting – I’ll come to you, Lover, when you’re ready — Don’t don’t ever think of the things you can’t give me — You’ve trusted me with the dearest heart of all — and it’s so damn much more than anybody else in all the world has ever had –

   How can you think deliberately of life without me – If you should die – O Darling – darling Scott – It’d be like going blind. I know I would, too, – I’d have no purpose in life – just a pretty – decoration. Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered – and I was delivered to you – to be worn – I want you to wear me, like a watch – charm or a button hole boquet – to the world. And then, when we’re alone, I want to help – to know that you can’t do anything without me.

In this rainy day, a song by The Lady.

That old New York City...

There is no turning back time

but still, we received a gift:

Illusions.

Paris, I am longing for you... 

 

I've found this book yesterday in the biggest library in the town I am currently living in (which could be compared to the smallest library in whatever big city out there), after seeking it quite for a while. After reading so much of her brilliant husband's work, I was definitely curious to read something written by his muse and beloved wife.

 
Save me the Waltz, by Zelda Fitzgerald, was published in 1932. I haven't finished it yet, but I have to say it has surprised me. I was expecting a simple prose, simple sentences, simple concepts. It's not what I am constantly finding in this novel as I am reading it. This fascinating woman has a peculiar talent in writing metaphors and simile, and manages to express in charming colourful images what goes on in the characters lives, and minds.

Reading some of her biographies (being the 20's junkie freak that I am), it is impossible for me not to sympathize with this lady.
Born in the South of the United States, on July the 24, 1900, in Montgomery (Alabama). She spent her childhood and teenage years scandalizing the poor defenceless narrow minded city, before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance, marrying him (even though she waited before he became a successful writer, therefore rich, and did hang out with other guys before taking a serious commitment) and moving to New York, where they became the embodiment of the Roaring Twenties, jumping from one party to another, drinking and spending. 

No doubt Scott's incredible success as a writer helped them affording such a lifestyle.
But taking a look in the insides of their relatioship, they were ups and downs. Scott strongly critized her first novel, saying it was too openly autobiographical (although he did the same in his stories, especially in Tender is the night) and Zelda never published anything again, he had problems with an alcohol addiction and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
She died in 1948, on March the 10th, when a fire broke out in the hospital she was currenlty getting medical care for her menthal problems, killing her and other 9 women, while she was writing another novel, which remained unfinished.  

Absolutely in love with this song. A Room with a View, by Noël Coward (1928).

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was born on December the 16th 1899. He was an exceptional multitalented man, who was not only a composer and a singer, but also a playwright, a director and an actor. He wrote more than 40 plays during his life (including Easy Virtue, The Vortex, Nude with Violin) and many musicals plays and comedies, like a revue in collaboration with Ronald Jeans of London calling! Not mentioning his more than 300 songs, including Mad about the boy and I'll see you again.

 

Behold! Afar where sky and waters meet

A white-robed Figure walketh on the sea

(Peace goes before Him and her face is sweet)

As once He trod the waves of Galilee

He comes again the tumult sinks to rest,

The stormy waters shine beneath his feet.

He sees the dead rose lying the sand,

He lifts the dead rose in His holy hand

And lays it at His breast. 

(Chartres, Annie Vivanti)

As a poet and a writer, Anita Vivanti (Annie) can not be classified into a single literary genre only, nor into a single cultural movement. Born in London, on April the 7th 1866, she grew up in contact with the English culture, and later travelled all over the world, starting to feel at home while in Italy, and getting in contact also with both Germanic and American worlds, assimilating all the different cultures and joining them together in her works, making it quite unique and original. 

She got house arrested during the Anglophobic shift in the Italian fascist policy (she was living in Italy, and embraced Italian nationalistic cause, as well as she and her husband supported the Irish independence cause), but Mussolini allowed her to go back to her home in Turin, where she died on February the 20th 1942, soon after finding out about her daughter's suicide, Vivien (child prodigy of the violin).

She is buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Turin. On her tombstone are engraved the words the Italian poet Carducci dedicated to her: 

Batto alla chiusa imposta con un ramicello di fiori

Glauchi ed azzurri come i tuoi occhi, oh Annie.

(I knock on the enclosed shutter with a slender branch of flowers 

that are sea-green and blue like yours eyes, O Annie.)  

 

A wonderful book written by a wonderful writer. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (1929).

When I woke I looked around. There was sunlight coming in through the shutters. I saw the big armoire, the bare walls, and two chairs. My legs in the dirty bandages, stuck straight out in the bed. I was careful not to move them. I was thirsty and I reached for the bell and pushed the button. I heard the door open and looked and it was a nurse. She looked young and pretty. 
(A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway)

When searching the net for Baudelaire, Hugo, Mallarmé, it is not unusual to find "[...] photographed by Nadar" written under their pictures. But who was Nadar? The question just popped into my head while noticing how many great personalities this name has photographed.

Nadar was the pseudonym used by a man named Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, born on April, the 6th 1820 in the city of Paris, where he died in 1910 and rests now in the Père Lachaise cemetery. Not only he photographed almost tens of poets, writers, painters during his life, he was also the first photographer to take aerial photos and use artificial lighting. 
In France, the prix Nadar is a photojournalism prize given in the photographer's name.  
Plus, he is definitely someone those who love Impressionism should be grateful to. 30 impressionist painters first exposed their works in an exhibition which took place in Nadar photo studio. Among these, there were Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and Cézanne. Manet refused to participate.

Just a short list of personalities photographed by Nadar:

Charles Baudelaire

Victor Hugo

Gioacchino Rossini 

Sarah Bernhardt

Gustave Courbet

Eugène Delacroix

Alexandre Dumas (father)

Jules Verne

Franz Liszt

Stéphane Mallarmé