The Mystic in the Theatre: Eleonora Duse (Arcturus Books, Ab108)

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent view of a supreme artist.......2000-10-01

The spirit of Eleonora Duse fills this excellent little book. Eva Le Gallienne, a master in her own right, clearly loves Duse, and she unapologetically deifies her. Weaving together histories, analyses, personal recollections, quotes, reviews, and theological musings, Le Gallienne creates a vivid image of the woman, and made me mourn that I could not see her myself. She even addresses that, responding to a young actor with the same complaint (with pity). But I did feel, after reading the book, that I had connected with Duse in some small way; In this, Le Gallienne is an actor on the page, guiding her audience to the character without forcing it upon them.

The message I got was that Duse was a person first. Other actors are full of life when on the stage, and switch off once the curtain falls. For Duse, theatre was an extension of her life. Her craft (so strong that she seemed to have none) and her spirit filled the stage, but no more than it filled her life.

Book Description

A new biography, the first in two decades, of the legendary actress who inspired Anton Chekhov, popularized Henrik Ibsen, and spurred Stanislavski to create a new theory of acting based on her art and to invoke her name at every rehearsal.

Writers loved her and wrote plays for her. She be-friended Rainer Maria Rilke and inspired the young James Joyce, who kept a portrait of her on his desk. Her greatest love, the poet d’Annunzio, made her the heroine of his novel Il fuoco (The Flame). She radically changed the art of acting: in a duel between the past and the future, she vanquished her rival, Sarah Bernhardt. Chekhov said of her, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Looking at Duse, I realized why the Russian theatre is such a bore.” Charlie Chaplin called her “the finest thing I have seen on the stage.” Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish watched her perform with adoring attention, John Barrymore with awe. Shaw said she “touches you straight on the very heart.”

When asked about her acting, Duse responded that, quite simply, it came from life. Except for one short film, Duse’s art has been lost. Despite dozens of books about her, her story is muffled by legend and myth. The sentimental image that prevails is of a misty, tragic heroine victimized by men, by life; an artist of unearthly purity, without ambition.

Now Helen Sheehy, author of the much admired biography of Eva Le Gallienne, gives us a different Duse—a woman of strength and resolve, a woman who knew pain but could also inflict it. “Life is hard,” she said, “one must wound or be wounded.” She wanted to reveal on the stage the truth about women’s lives and she wanted her art to endure.

Drawing on newly discovered material, including Duse’s own memoir, and unpublished letters and notes, Sheehy brings us to an understanding of the great actress’s unique ways of working: Duse acting out of her sense of her character’s inner life, Duse anticipating the bold aspects of modernism and performing with a sexual freedom that shocked and thrilled audiences. She edited her characters’ lines to bare skeletons, asked for the simplest sets and costumes. Where other actresses used hysterics onstage, Duse used stillness.

Sheehy writes about the Duse that the actress herself tried to hide—tracing her life from her childhood as a performing member of a family of actors touring their repertory of drama and commedia dell’arte through Italy. We follow her through her twenties and through the next four decades of commissioning and directing plays, running her own company, and illuminating a series of great roles that included Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Marguerite in Dumas’s La Dame aux camélias, Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Hedda in his Hedda Gabler. When she thought her beauty was fading at fifty-one, she gave up the stage, only to return to the theatre in her early sixties; she traveled to America and enchanted audiences across the country. She died as she was born—on tour.

Sheehy’s illuminating book brings us as close as we have ever been to the woman and the artist.

Customer Reviews:

An actress beyond compare.......2004-06-22

The difficulty of describing delicacy in acting is one that Helen Sheehy has not entirely overcome, but otherwise she seems to have read and swallowed everything written about the great Duse and here, in this big Knopf biography (a genre all its own) she arranges the facts in that big sumptuous Knopf manner, with creamy photographs and the touch of class big book buyers love. Basically a conservative book, this book leads us to believe that no one of today is fit to tie Duse's shoes.

Sometimes Duse was foolish about men and about writing, and according to the standards of the day she was a bad mother, but other than that, she was sublime in every way. Sheehy claims that her appeal was a plastic one, that her rich warm smile illuminated her face, and took away the slightly doughy and overdone shadows her photos cast in composure. She loved to walk, to relieve stress, and she made one half-hour motion picture, back in the days before exhibitors' demands froze the motion picture into being more or less ninety minutes long. Sheehy says it's great, but by this time, the reader isn't sure whether or not to believe her, because everything is so superlative the tone is pitched too high.

Unsatisfyingly distant.......2004-04-12

I've been a fan of the many theatre books published in recent years by Knopf under the astute editorship of Victoria Wilson and other editors at Knopf. This is not one of their more compelling. Even allowing for the absence of living witness interviewees still available for biographers of, say, the Lunts, I persistently sensed the writer of this book coalescing her picture of Duse from a psychological "mezzanine," rather than "front row," perspective. It is a strangely cold, unhumanized retelling of a striking human being that was anything but. Sheehy is either too awed and respectful of Duse, too afraid of the pitfalls of the so-called pathobiography, or just too uninsightful to bring Duse to life as a three-dimensional personality. She settles for a textbook writer's air of intimate remove, of calculated decorous unfamiliarity with the personality, rather than a biographer's symbiotic fusion that makes the reader feel emotionally with the biographee, whether the biographee's character is admirable or disreputable. Her quotation of Charles Chaplin describing a performance of Duse is in a few paragraphs a far clearer evocation of what specifically and technically made Duse compelling as an actor than anything Sheehy writes of Duse anywhere else in her book. The testimonials she recites of Lee Strasberg, Chekhov, et al. are offered as thirdhand hearsay, generalities to be taken on faith rather than evoking for the reader a clear, singular picture like Chaplin's. The book also reads somewhat desultorily and does not endow Duse's life with a sense of driving drama-- quite a shortcoming for a book about such a great actor. I started to read this book with great expectations and hopes and finally abandoned it more in disappointment than in anger, just wishing it had been better.

A dove in flight.......2003-12-27

My interest in the art of Eleonora Duse grew urgently while I studied the theater of Gabriele D'Annunzio. Strangely Duse's legend had not done more than tantalyze me hitherto. Vague photographs in sepia written words in passing had so far only configured a distant actress that was oddly lackluster. My fascination had remained with the likes of Adrienne Lecouvreur and with Rachel long dead players at the Comedie Francaise. I had lusted for Andromaque and Athalie living feverish candlelit nights among Corneille Moliere and Racine. I had imagined attending one of Sarah's histrionic performances. It was while I read 'La Citta Morta' and 'Francesca da Rimini' that D'Annunzio made me glance closer at the great Duse, shy and transparent with her understated genius for acting. Unhurriedly this seemingly intangible donna assoluta was letting me know that Eleonora Duse was no theatrical bandwagon. She now haunted me a fascinating dove in flight. Her's she claims with a grin, is not the boom enchantment one orders with a Byzantine impetuosity the enraptured hand to the brow. Or the hot stage tear that streaks the bright rouged cheek. That in a scene all Duse is willing to offer is a sigh. Her signature is a beguiling penchant to vanish. This biographical account by Helen Sheehy is like her masterful biography of Eva LeGallienne, a triumph. Both biographies are the product of an inspired and consummate writer. Please look up her life story of LeGallienne if you want quality. Other sources are 'Duse' by William Weaver and 'The Mystic in the Theatre' by Eva LeGallienne herself a great actress and writer. Eleonora wants to say that her's and her's alone is the thespian refinement you invoke with a glance and the faintest of tragic smiles. Many believe Duse to be the parent of modern acting. Both Sheehy and LeGallienne narrate how Eleonora started in the theater from the smallest age, playing with her family of itinerant actors. Duse's was a ragged and browbeaten Commedia dell'Arte peddling town to town in late nineteenth century Italy. I believe poverty and this early perambulating scarred her. There were times when Eleonora watched local urchins tormenting her father, who was neither talented nor enterprising. Her first liaison was with Arrigo Boito who along with Verdi wrote for the opera. They had a daughter. Then soon appeared Gabriele D'Annunzio a genial master of words who enraptured Eleonora with his exquisite theater. Perhaps he loved La Duse he clearly benefitted from her for by the time their convoluted idyll paled she was the most discussed actress in Europe. The philandering playwright and the sublime actress were now both monstruously famous. Sheehy narrates brilliantly her support and torment for Gabriele, as well as her theatrical conquest of America. How lucky are we cinematography captures today in perpetuity the inspirations of our gifted actresses. Locked in a box for all to watch. How sad that time a beast has gobbled up the classical performances of the great Rachel and the incomparable theater of Eleonora Duse. The Italian actress who wore neither makeup nor camellias while portraying Dumas fils. The humble woman who inspired Chekhov and resurrected Ibsen. The one who showed Stanislavski what acting should be. All those theater nights are lost. But if you hold your breath and close your eyes you can see her. How easy it is to imagine Elenora on stage, betrayed and broken as Silvia Setalla in D'Annunzio's 'La Gioconda' Eleonora so evocative in 'La Femme de Claude' droll pert sinewy as Mirandolina in Goldoni's comic 'La Locandiera'. Duse, playing her beloved Ibsen in 'A Doll's House' and 'Hedda Gabler'. Later, an ecclectic and transcendent Eleonora as if transformed by the ocean in 'The Lady from the Sea' Go ahead, go on, you can do it, she'll again appear magically within your mind. Take a deep breath close your eyes and you'll soon find her, fey deft doomed wistful unforgettable, a devastating Marguerite in 'La Dame aux Camellias' a darting cloud in chiffon. Amid applause triumphing and shining, among tremedous curtain calls glowing, so evoking every French romantic nuance as she takes many bows. Regaling a teary audience with tragic glimpses and she gives up Armand. So naturally sketching every enchantment emoting every painful heartbeat. After Isadora Duncan's children died in Paris the dancer went about Europe desperately, hearing words of sympathy urges to be strong. Then she went to stay with Eleonora in her villa in the vicinity of Viareggio. By then Duse was semi-retired notorious for her books and a penchant for solitude. Cry cry, Duse told her, I'll sit by you in silence and won't interrupt your tears. I find this Helen Sheehy's biography, as well as Eva LeGallienne's account of the Duse she knew personally, the best informed and most sensitive protrayals of this unique woman.

The Mother of Modern Acting.......2003-09-22

Lee Strasberg, Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, and dozens if not hundreds of others who had the privilege of seeing Duse on stage describe it as if they saw a saint, someone supernatural in her ability to convey thought, feeling, emotion, subtext and that extra something that's finally indescribable. The name Duse has been synonymous with the highest possible attainment in acting, even though she is little known outside the theater. Helen Sheehy has written a detailed, even scholarly biography that stands head and shoulders over the other previous bio in English, by William Weaver. Sheehy succeeds, as far as one can, at analyzing and dissecting otherworldly Genius. But the excellence of Sheehy's book also makes it an unbearable tease. Duse was a stage actress. No traces of her greatness remain, save one thirty minute film that is maddeningly difficult to obtain; for some reason, showings of the film are as rare as UFO sightings. In my mind the film has attained the status of a relic. And I've yet to see it. Frustration aside, Sheehy does much to unveil the very private views of her subject on art and life. I certainly wouldn't recommend this bio to anyone with only a casual interest in acting or theater; however, for anyone with a substantial interest in dramatic art, this bio is simply a must.

Insightful, artful biography of the mother of modern acting.......2003-09-08

As the New York Times has called this an "exemplary biography", there seems little reason to add a review by the average reader. However, you do not need to be an expert in theatre history to find this book a great read.

I had never heard of Duse before Sheehy's work, yet the author makes a convincing argument why the Italian actress is one of the founders of modern acting - a woman who presented a powerful, natural style of acting that George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chapin, and John Barrymore found overwhelming to behold. Duse created a compelling counterpoint to the highly stylized form perfected by Sarah Bernhardt and she presented a standard of a new acting for all performers in the twentieth century to emulate. Today, we are unaware as we watch film or television, that we are watching Duse's heirs.

Sheehy goes beyond her central thesis of Duse's acting career to describe a very flawed woman. Sheehy enumerates Duse's poor choices in lovers, her neglect of her daughter because of the girl's physical resemblance to Duse's discarded husband, her indulgence in self-pity and hypochondria, and her manipulative use of society friends for favors and loans. Sheehy does not shy away from her hero's defects, but neither does she wallow in them.

Book Description

Drawing on a wealth of unpublished letters, diaries, and personal papers, Weaver brings alive the legend of Italian actress Eleanor Duse, one of the greatest actresses in the history of the theater. Index; photographs.

Bernhardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in her Time

Average customer rating:

Bernhardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in her Time
John Stokes , Michael R. Booth , and Susan Bassnett
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Duse on Tour: Guido Noccioli's Diaries, 1906-07

Average customer rating:

Duse on Tour: Guido Noccioli's Diaries, 1906-07
Guido Noccioli
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0870233696

Average customer rating:

Duse, a biography
William Weaver
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0151266905

Average customer rating:

Eleonora Duse
Edouard Schneider
Manufacturer: Bernard Grasset
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

French | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Nonfiction | French | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

All French Books | French | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: B000TXVVQU

Product Description

TEXT IN FRENCH. This book describes the life and art of Eleonora Duse. Bound in paper and containing many references and sources cited, it is a valuable, if delicate, resource for anyone who is interested in her.

Average customer rating:

Eleonora Duse, in Life and Art
Giovanni Pontiero
Manufacturer: V.P. Lang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 3820489746

Average customer rating:

Eleonora Duse: The Story Of Her Life
Jeanne Bordeux
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Actors & Actresses | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1432615947

Rainer Maria Rilke und die Duse: Mit Rilkes "Die weisse Furstin" (Insel Taschenbuch)

Average customer rating:

Rainer Maria Rilke und die Duse: Mit Rilkes "Die weisse Furstin" (Insel Taschenbuch)
Ilsedore B Jonas
Manufacturer: Insel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

German | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

German | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Nonfiction | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

All German Books | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 3458332324

Amazon.com

More than 1,300 saints are profiled in this most readable, extensive, and enlightening of references. Curious about the saint you're named after? Attending a feast day for a saint you never heard of? Want an obscure saint to include in your historical novel? Or merely desirous of the kind of feet-up-by-the-fire perusal that only a well-written reference text can provide? David Farmer's compilation of saints includes all English saints; all saints of whom there is or was a notable cult; important saints from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the rest of Europe; and recently canonized saints. Arranged alphabetically, the dictionary starts with Abbo of Fleury, ends with Zosimus of Syracuse, and includes Pelagia of Antioch, Crispina of Tagora, Cunegund the empress, and a wide assortment of other martyrs, popes, spiritual seers, and those, such as Crispin of Viterbo, who were canonized simply for their humble lives and Christian faith. There's also a wonderful appendix of the principal patronages of saints--telling, for example, who's the patron saint of healthy dogs (Hubert) and mad dogs (Sithney), plus an index of the main iconographical emblems of saints, another of places, and a calendar of feast days. --Stephanie Gold

Book Description

This is far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints. This entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative. Critically acclaimed in its many editions, the dictionary is now reissued into the rebranded best-selling Oxford Paperback Reference series. The entries are concise accounts of the lives, cults, and artistic associations of over 1,400 saints, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. Featuring maps of pilgrimage sights in Europe and fully updated appendices, this remains the standard reference paperback in its field. Recently-added saints include the Martyrs of Korea, Vietnam, and the Spanish Civil War, Andrew of Crete, and Emily Rodat, a female hermit of the 7th century. There are also more Scottish and Irish saints, and ancient Welsh saints; more European saints from all centuries, as well as more saints from Eastern Europe; more recently canonized saints and female saints from the USA.

Customer Reviews:

Endlessly fascinating.......2007-01-17

This book is an interesting and engrossing catalogue of saints, primarily from the British Isles. Far from exhibiting the "bias" of which other reviewers accuse it, that focus on British/Irish saints was the_intent_of the book. Although the major saints of the universal Church are included, this book fills a vacuum by concentrating on the saints of the British Isles, the majority of which are obscure and of purely local interest and devotion. In the lives of these forgotten saints, Mr. Farmer has dug deeply through the layers of history to give us a fascinating snapshot of British piety and devotion since the earliest times. Although the tone of this book is scholarly rather than devotional, and some of the early legends and beliefs tend to amuse rather than edify, on the whole the lives of these saints cannot but inspire the faithful.

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints.......2006-06-16

A must for anyone who wishes to sort fact from fiction!

solid scholarship, endless entertainment.......2006-02-03

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints will not disappoint you, no matter what your reasons are for buying it.

It's an excellent reference book. David Hugh Farmer has a real gift for summarizing large amounts of material without sacrificing either natural language or the particularity of the information being summarized. He's especially good at conveying the nuances of sources and their reliability.

Also: no matter what your religious and educational background may be, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints is one of the very best bathroom books ever printed: endlessly varied, always interesting. It's a trove of self-contained little stories.

Oxford Dictionary of Saints.......2002-01-20

An excellent source for information on saints of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ortodox Church up through the Schism. It does not include saints of the Episcopal Church, but does include those popular saints such as Barbara and Christopher removed in the 1968-69 time frame. I use it in writing my monthly column for my parish newsletter.

More than Lives.......2000-10-23

An entertaining and informative dictionary of saints that not only gives the lives of the saints but also a history of their folklore, veneration and relics. Farmer includes "popular" saints like St. Werner (who was never formally canonized), desanctified saints like Barbara, and a few saints of the Orthodox traditions. Appendices list patron saints and symbols associated with the saints. You will not find every saint in this work, but the ones you do find are described in rich detail. I bought this book for a narrow purpose and soon found myself reading it from cover to cover in bed. The only bothersome thing, for me, is Farmer's Anglophilia: he gives space to many obscure English and Irish saints while ignoring some key figures from other parts of the world, like St. Diego of Alcala (for whom San Diego is named). Nonetheless, it is a useful book for either reference or entertainment.

Average customer rating:

THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SAINTS
D H FARMER
Manufacturer: CLARENDON PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SES618

Average customer rating:

THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SAINTS

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HEZWF2

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Dictionary Of Saints
David Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK9R4G

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Dictionary Of Saints
David Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK4VC4

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Dictionary Of Saints
David; Farmer, David Hugh Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK6OYM

Average customer rating:

Oxford Dictionary of Saints
David Hugh Farmer Penelope Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKUAGA

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
David Hugh Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OK14JC

Average customer rating:

Oxford Dictionary of Saints, The
David Hugh Farmer
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOHU1Y

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books