Beau Geste 1926

Barban and Nicole continue their walk along the deck. They discuss the respective merits of English and French languages for expressing heroism and gallantry with dignity, and the expression of these qualities in movies, such as the 1926 American film Beau Geste, starring Ronald Coleman. Miguel Mota and Paul Tiessen: The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry: A Scholarly Edition of Lowry's "Tender is the Night

Beau Geste was directed by Herbert Brenon, stars Ronald Colman and Neil Hamilton, with support from Noah Beery (Sr.), Mary Brian, William Powell and Victor McLaglen. The plot concerns a valuable gem, which one of the Geste brothers, Beau, is thought to have stolen from his adoptive family.

Ronald Colman plays the title role in the first of several screen adaptations of Christopher Wren's tale of adventure in the foreign legion. Beau is the youngest of three brothers who fall into an ethical dilemma when their aunt resorts to stealing valuable jewelry from the family's collection to pay off her home. Beau takes the blame for the crime and, before he can be put in jail, flees the country, with his brothers John (Ralph Forbes) and Digby (Neil Hamilton) in tow. The Geste Brothers eventually join the French Foreign Legion, where they suffer under the tyrannical leadership of the cruel Sgt. Lejaune (Noah Beery Sr.). Unknown to Beau, Lejaune is in cahoots with men who want to capture the Geste Brothers and bring them to justice, but when Arab forces attack the Legion compound, the valiant Gestes fight with such bravery that even Lejaune is impressed with their selfless courage. It's said that Ronald Colman considered his performance in Beau Geste the finest work of his career; lip readers might get a chuckle out of some of Noah Beery Sr.'s non-subtitled dialogue, which today would have pushed the film into an R rating if it were audible. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide



A corking picture, but as a road show special not entirely surefire. The idea is that it will have to hold to just a few cities outside of New York to have a chance at $2. As a straight program leader it can't miss, although the running time of 129 minutes may keep it from equalling house records".

It's a "man's" picture, much more so than "The Big Parade." The story revolves around three brothers and their love for each other. And a great looking trio--Colman, Hamilton and Forbes. Beyond that the love interest is strictly secondary, practically nil. Which brings up the question as to how women are going to like it.Review from Variety, September 1, 1926

Read more on the the film at ERBzine and Stanford University

The best resource materials on the film can be found at Demonoid.me including contemporary magazine articles on the making of the film.

You can watch the film on You Tube:

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

... we see Central Park again, changed from winter to spring and almost into another kind of Breughel, with bushes and trees in bloom, and young lovers wandering through it, children playing, little ducks swim, as church bells ring The cinema of Malcolm Lowry: a scholarly edition of Lowry's "Tender is the Night"

... in a Breughel garden with dogs & barrels & vin kegs & chickens & sunsets & morning glory with an approaching storm & a bottle of half wine. And now the rain! Let it come, seated as I am on Breughel barrel by a dog's grave crowned with dead irises. Letter to Albert Erskine 10 August 1948


The first in a series of posts in which I will be exploring Malc's references to paintings and artists in his work.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch pronunciation c. 1525 – 9 September 1569) was a Flemish renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so called genre painting). He is sometimes referred to as "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which Bruegel is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel. Read more on Wikipedia

Babylon Revisited

In the Lowry's Notes on a Screenplay for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, they discuss the names of 2 Cafés on Page 91 of their film script which reads:

Now we are in the Rue Blanche and we pass Zelli's and the Poet's Cave and stop where the two great mouths of the Café of Heaven and the Café of Hell yawn across the street at each other.

The Lowry's were concerned about the use of the names of the Cafés in their filmscript which had been obtained from Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited' because there were unsure about the historical realism and the use of the English names:

The Poet's Cave had disappeared, but the two great mouths of the Café of Heaven and the Café of Hell still yawned--even devoured 'Babylon Revisited'

Their note says:

Fitzgerald's original intention here was undoubtedly Babylonian but with the accent on damnation and spiritual emptiness, rather than psychical, as in the story. So also the notion of 'Babylon' in the sequence - though a metro sign is not copyright - could go, if the suggestion of the infernal can somehow remain.

The 2 Cafés definitely existed next door to each other in Pigelle - Le Café de L'Enfer and Le Café de Le Ciel. I can only assume Malc was unfamiliar with these 2 Cafés from his time in Paris as I am sure that he would have reveled in their existence and included them in his work!



“A hot spot called Hell’s Café lured 19th-century Parisians to the city’s Montmartre neighborhood—like the Marais—on the Right Bank of the Seine. With plaster lost souls writhing on its walls and a bug-eyed devil’s head for a front door, le Café de l’Enfer may have been one of the world’s first theme restaurants. According to one 1899 visitor, the café’s doorman—in a Satan suit—welcomed diners with the greeting, “Enter and be damned!” Hell’s waiters also dressed as devils. An order for three black coffees spiked with cognac was shrieked back to the kitchen as: “Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!” National Geographic



The exterior facade appears to be molten rock surrounding misshapen windows and dripping off the building while inside, caldrons of fire and ghostly bodies of humans and beasts covered the walls and ceiling. From an account published in Morrow and Cucuel‘s Bohemian Paris of Today (1899):

Red-hot bars and gratings through which flaming coals gleamed appeared in the walls within the red mouth. A placard announced that should the temperature of this inferno make one thirsty, innumerable bocks might be had at sixty-five centimes each. A little red imp guarded the throat of the monster into whose mouth we had walked; he was cutting extraordinary capers, and made a great show of stirring the fires. The red imp opened the imitation heavy metal door for our passage to the interior, crying, – “Ah, ah, ah! still they come! Oh, how they will roast!”





Quite a site! (In an epic battle of good and evil, another entrepreneur opened Le Ciel—”Heaven”—next door that was filled with clouds, angels, and harps.) Archpaper

However these 2 Cafés may have predecessors called according to a fascinating book called Roses and Thorns of Paris and London (Anonymous) - Café de La Mort on the Boulevard Clichy and the Cabaret du Ciel. See Roses and Thorns for full details. Though they maybe the same places? ( Popular theatre: a sourcebook By Joel Schechter)





What about the Lowry's mention of the use of the Metro sign? This would have been familiar to Malc as he spent time in the Montparnasse area in 1934.



Sèvres-Babylone is a station on lines 10 and 12 of the Paris Métro. It is located at the intersection of the Boulevard Raspail and the Rue de Sèvres, on the border of the 6th arrondissement and 7th arrondissements, near le Bon Marché department store.

The line 12 platforms opened as line 10 Sèvres on 5 November 1910 as part of the original section of the Nord-Sud Company's line A between Porte de Versailles and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. On 27 March 1931 line A became line 12 of the Métro. It is named after the Rue de Sèvres which in medieval times ran from Paris to Sèvres, and the Rue de Babylone, named in 1673 after the Bishop of Babylon. The line 10 station was opened by the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris on 30 December 1923 as part of the first section of the ligne circulaire interieur (inner circular line) from Invalides (now on line 13) to Croix Rouge (a station east of Sèvres - Babylone, which was closed during World War II).

At the start the line 10 station was named Babylon, while the nearby line 12 station was still named Sèvres. Shortly after the opening of line 10, the city forced the two companies to form a common station, but the sign for line 10 read Sèvres-Babylone (emphasizing Babylone), and that of line 12 by contrast read Sèvres-Babylone (emphasizing Sèvres). Wikipedia

Would the metro sign have conveyed the same intensity of the infernal as the 2 Cafes? You can see where the Lowrys are coming from using the sign to link to Fitzgerald's story of dissipation after the Great Crash of 1929 and the symbolism of Babylon as the city of evil which ties in with Malc's ideas of Liverpool - 'that terrible city whose main street is the ocean' and Enochvilleport - Vancouver.



"Babylon Revisited" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post. It was later adapted into a movie called The Last Time I Saw Paris.

The story is set in the year after the crash of the 1929, just after what Fitzgerald called the "Jazz Age". Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz age itself. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.

The story is based on a true incident regarding Fitzgerald, his and his wife Zelda's daughter "Scottie", and Zelda's sister Rosalind and her husband Newman Smith (a banker based in Belgium, who as a colonel in the U.S. Army in World War II would be in charge of worldwide strategic deception for the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), on whom Marion and Lincoln Peters are based. Rosalind and Newman had not been able financially to live as well as Scott and Zelda had lived during the 1920s, and they had always regarded Scott as an irresponsible drunkard whose obsession with high living was responsible for Zelda's mental problems. When Zelda suffered a breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium in Switzerland, Rosalind felt that Scott was unfit to raise their daughter and that Rosalind and Newman should adopt her. Wikipedia

Text of Babylon Revisted

Life Magazine 'A Round Table on the Movies' 27 June 1949

In 1950, Malc wanted to see his film script of Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night turned into a movie. Frank Taylor was keen to produce the movie which can be seen from the several letters written by Malc to Taylor.

In one letter dated 12 April 1950, Malc refers to an article in Life magazine about a conference on movies which included a round-table discussion involving Alistair Cooke who had been a contemporary of Malc's at Cambridge University.

You can read movie report in Life 27 June 1949.

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"

Nicole and Barban dance to a jazz version of "Carry me back to Old Virginny" while Dick goes on drinking. The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry: 'Tender Is the Night' Ed. Miguel Mota & Paul Tiessen

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" is a song which was written by James A. Bland (1854 – 1911), an African American minstrel who wrote over 700 folk songs. Written in 1878, soon after the American Civil War, when many of the newly freed slaves were struggling to find work, the song has become controversial in modern times. Read more on Wikipedia



Carry me back to old Virginny,
There's where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where the old darke'ys heart am long'd to go,
There's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.

CHORUS

Carry me back to old Virginny,
There's where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where this old darkey's heart am long'd to go.

Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live 'till I wither and decay,
Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
There's where this old darke'ys life will pass away.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.

Read more about the song here

Here is a jazz version of the song from Benny Carter:

Las Mañanitas

Some lovely singing is coming out of the church: it is Las Mañanitas The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry: 'Tender Is the Night' Ed. Miguel Mota & Paul Tiessen

Las Mañanitas is a traditional Mexican song that is sung on birthdays and other important holidays. It is often sung as an early morning serenade to wake up a loved one. At birthday parties it is sung before the cake is cut.

As a traditional song with a long history, there are variations of Las Mañanitas, with many different verses. At most Mexican parties only the first two verses are sung, but I have included some additional verses that are occasionally sung, particularly when the song is performed by mariachis.

Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David,
Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti,
Despierta, mi bien*, despierta, mira que ya amaneció,
Ya los pajarillos cantan, la luna ya se metió.

Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte,
Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte,
Ya viene amaneciendo, ya la luz del día nos dio,
Levántate de mañana, mira que ya amaneció.

Translation:

This is the morning song that King David sang
Because today is your saint's day we're singing it for you
Wake up, my dear*, wake up, look it is already dawn
The birds are already singing and the moon has set

How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you
We all came with joy and pleasure to congratulate you
The morning is coming now, the sun is giving us its light
Get up in the morning, look it is already dawn

* Often replaced with the name of the person who is being celebrated

George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma

Lowry mentions George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York where this play is showing.

The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard Shaw first staged in 1906.

The Doctor's Dilemma, a comedy about egocentricity and medical ethics, was first produced in New York by Arnold Daly in 1915. The first major revival was by the Theatre Guild in 1927 with a remarkable cast that included Helen Westley, Dudley Digges, Earle Larimore, Fontanne, and Lunt as Dubedat.

In the play a number of dilemmas crop up, of which the main one is that of a doctor who has developed a new cure for tuberculosis, but has only enough of it for one patient. He then has to choose which patient he is going to give it to: a kindly poor medical colleague, or an extremely gifted but also very unpleasant young artist with a young and vivacious wife with whom the doctor is somewhat in love, which makes it even harder for the doctor to separate his motives for the decision. The extensive preface to the play points out that there is another dilemma: poor doctors are easily tempted to perform costly but useless (and in the best case harmless) operations or treatments on their patients for personal gain. "Can this man make better use of his leg than I of fifty pounds?" Read more on Wikipedia

Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

Lowry mentions Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York where this play is showing.

The play's US première was at the Garrick Theatre in New York City in October 1922, where it ran for 184 performances, a production in which Spencer Tracy and Pat O'Brien played robots in their Broadway debuts. It also played in Chicago and Los Angeles during 1923.

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (Czech: Rossumovi univerzální roboti) is a science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. It premiered in 1921 and is noted for introducing the term "robot".

The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called "robots." Unlike the modern usage of the term, these creatures are closer to the modern idea of androids or even clones, as they can be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves. They seem happy to work for humans, although that changes and a hostile robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race. After finishing the manuscript, Čapek realized that he had created a modern version of the Jewish Golem legend. He later took a different approach to the same theme in War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant class in human society. Read more



Listen to extracts from R.U.R. Sci-Fi London's reading from (Rossum's Universal Robots)

Clemence Dane's A Bill of Divorcement

Lowry mentions A Bill of Divorcement in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York.

Clemence Dane was the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton (21 February 1888 in Blackheath, England, United Kingdom – 28 March 1965 in London), an English novelist and playwright.

A Bill of Divorcement is a British play written by Clemence Dane that debuted in 1921 in London. Dane wrote it as a reaction to a law passed in Britain in the early 1920s that allowed insanity as grounds for a woman divorcing her husband. Constance Binney (seen above) starred in the 1922 UK stage version which Lowry may have seen in London.

It was made into a British silent film in 1922, and into American films in 1932 and 1940. The most well-known treatment was the 1932 film, which was Katharine Hepburn's film debut.

Francis Edward Faragoh's Pin-Wheel

Lowry mentions Pin-Wheel in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York where this show is showing.



Faragoh's Pin-wheel was performed at the Neighborhood Playhouse, NY, USA during February 1927.

John Howard Lawson was but one of the five experimental dramatists who organized the New Playwrights' Theatre in the winter of 1926-27. The others were EmJo Basshe, John Dos Passos, Francis Edwards Faragoh, and Michael Gold. While the critic Alexander Woollcott clubbed them the "revolting playwrights," the New York Times ( February 7, 1927) called the founders of the new theatre "recognized . . . advocates of the so called 'expressionistic drama.'" Dos Passos, who died recently, is well known as a novelist. Mike Gold, longtime editor of New Masses and champion of proletarian literature, died in 1967. Em Jo Basshe, like Gold, had been associated with the Provincetown Players, who produced his expressionistic Adam Solitaire in 1925. He died in 1939. Before joining the New Playwrights, Francis Edwards Faragoh had been drama editor of Pearson's Magazine and had translated Lajos Egri's expressionistic Rapid Transit. All five had had plays produced prior to the New Playwrights venture.

Most of the practical work involved in organizing the New Playwrights' Theatre was done by Mike Gold. The artistic pacesetter, however, was Lawson (and not Dos Passos as a recent study of the New Playwrights has rather unconvincingly tried to establish). Lawson's views on "the new theatre" were published in several New York newspapers as well as in the Pinwheel play-bill of the Neighborhood Playhouse (season 1926-27).

Francis Edward Faragoh was born in Budapest in 1895. Educated at the City College on New York and Columbia University.

Immigrated to the United States in 1909.

In a literary contest held by Pearson's Magazine in 1924, Faragoh's short story "Curtain" took the first prize, and his story "The Distant Street" won the fourth prize. The three judges were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, and Floyd Dell.

In 1953, the counsel to the House Un-American Activities Committee said the committee had testimony that Faragoh had been a Communist, although writer-director Robert Rossen testified that he believed Faragoh was not a party member.

Died in 1966.

Eugene O'Neill The Hairy Ape on Broadway

Lowry mentions The Hairy Ape in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York where this show is showing.

Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape was first produced by the Provincetown Players in 1922. The production, directed and designed by Robert Edmond Jones, was praised for its use of expressionistic set design and staging techniques, and was transferred to a theatre on Broadway. Actor Louis Wolheim became famous for his interpretation of Yank

Malc On Broadway

We are in the middle of posting information on movies and plays from Malc's Tender Is The Night Filmscript centred around Broadway in New York

Here is a fabulously evocative piece of film from that period:

Hit The Deck 1927

Lowry mentions Hit The Deck in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York where this show is showing.

Hit the Deck wasa musical theatre production first staged at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on April 25, 1927. It has music by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Clifford Grey and Leo Robin and book by Herbert Fields. It is based on the play Shore Leave by Hubert Osborne. It ran for 352 performances. The title refers to a nautical slang term that means to prepare for action (general) or to drop to a prone position on the ground (as a defensive response to hostile fire).

The songs:

"Hallelujah!"
"Harbor Of My Heart"
"Join The Navy"
"Loo-Loo"
"Lucky Bird"
"Sometimes I'm Happy (Sometimes I'm Blue)"
"What's A Kiss Among Friends?"
"Why, Oh Why"

Here's the trailer to the 1955 film version with some of the above songs:



Malc or his Dick Divers character may have traversed Broadway below



Both may have needed the breakfast below after a night's binge drinking:

Pabst's Secrets of A Soul

Lowry mentions Pabst's Secrets of A Soul in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas on Broadway in New York where this film is showing.

Secrets of a Soul (German: Geheimnisse einer Seele) is a 1926 silent German drama film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst.



Psychoanalysis was still a novelty to most people at the time this film was made. Pabst, who was very interested in Freud's writings, had the freedom to make any film he wanted after the major success of The Joyless Street. He decided to do a film about a neurosis. The result, the story of a man who seeks help for unwanted violent thoughts, is notable for its innovative techniques, while at the same time demonstrating a naiveté concerning its subject matter that gives it a permanently dated quality.

A professor (Werner Krauss) finds himself increasingly troubled by a murder that occurs in his neighborhood. At the same time he has learned of the return from abroad of a man who was a childhood friend both of him and his wife. After a strange intense nightmare, he begins to notice, to his horror, that the thought of murdering his wife comes frequently into his mind, and with more of a feeling of compulsion as time goes on. A chance meeting with a kindly psychoanalyst (Pawel Pawloff) leads to a long period of therapy, by which he eventually gains insight into the unconscious thoughts and motives that were causing his neurosis. He is cured, happily returning to the security of a loving marriage. Read more on Cine Scene.com

Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum 1926

Lowry mentions Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas on Broadway in New York where this film is showing.

Mare Nostrum (1926) is a silent film set during World War I. It was the first production made in voluntary exile by Rex Ingram and starred his wife, Alice Terry, in the title role.



This novel by Blasco Ibáñez, written in 1917, was conceived during the First World War and, like the other two as part of this group, set in scenes of it.

In the films relating to it (to my knowledge) there are two movies, the first of 1926, directed by Rex Ingram (the director of The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse), starring Alice Terry Seen below with Rex Ingram) and Antonio Moreno, who also participated in other films of their works.



The other version dates from 1948 and is directed by Rafael Gil and performed by Maria Felix and Fernando Rey.

The plot of the novel is an apology for "Mare Nostrum" and the immense love that the author had it, tells the story of Ulises Ferragut, deep Mediterranean character: "The Mediterranean peoples were to Ferragut, the aristocracy of humanity, powerful weather had tempered man as anywhere else on the planet, giving it a dry strength and tough, tanned and bronzed by the sun and absorption of energy from the environment, his sailors went to the state of metal "

The novel begins with the children of Ferragut and his awakening to life and the desire to be a sailor, following the profession of his grandfather. This first chapter is a lesson in Greco-Roman mythology very interesting It tells, among others, the legend of "Peje Nicolao. In the night hours passed before the boats of his grandfather, Ulysses heard of "Peje Nicolao," a man-fish from the Strait of Messina, cited by Cervantes and other authors, who lived in the water remaining on the alms of the vessels. His uncle was a relative of "Peje Nicolao. Translated from Art e Y Libertad Read more

The Flesh and The Devil

Lowry mentions Clarence Brown's The Flesh and The Devil in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas on Broadway in New York where this film is showing.

Broadway - The Great White Way

Dick walking, already all the illuminated signs of the Great White Way are in full swing. Tender Is The Night Fimscript in the Cinema of Malcolm Lowry Edited by Miguel Mota and Paul Tiessen

Lowry mentions several movies and plays in his filmscript for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night in a sequence where the character Dick Divers walks past cinemas and theatres on Broadway in New York.

Malc lists:

Flaherty's Moana
Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum
Pabst's Secrets of A Soul
Great Garbo and John Gilbert in The Flesh and The Devil
Hit The Deck
The Hairy Ape
Pinwheel
A Bill of Divorcement
Karel Kapek's R.U.R.
The Doctor's Dilemma
Macbeth

Guy de Maupassant's "Madame Parisse"

Lowry make several references to Guy de Maupassant in his film script for Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night. Guy de Maupassant stayed in Antibes on several occasions and was inspired by the place. He wrote the short story "Madame Parisse" set in Antibeswhich which is referred to by the character McKisco in Lowry's film script.

Here is an extract from "Madame Parisse":

I was sitting on the pier of the small port of Obernon, near the village of Salis, looking at Antibes, bathed in the setting sun. I had never before seen anything so wonderful and so beautiful.

The small town, enclosed by its massive ramparts, built by Monsieur de Vauban, extended into the open sea, in the middle of the immense Gulf of Nice. The great waves, coming in from the ocean, broke at its feet, surrounding it with a wreath of foam; and beyond the ramparts the houses climbed up the hill, one after the other, as far as the two towers, which rose up into the sky, like the peaks of an ancient helmet. And these two towers were outlined against the milky whiteness of the Alps, that enormous distant wall of snow which enclosed the entire horizon.

Between the white foam at the foot of the walls and the white snow on the sky-line the little city, dazzling against the bluish background of the nearest mountain ranges, presented to the rays of the setting sun a pyramid of red-roofed houses, whose facades were also white, but so different one from another that they seemed to be of all tints.

And the sky above the Alps was itself of a blue that was almost white, as if the snow had tinted it; some silvery clouds were floating just over the pale summits, and on the other side of the gulf Nice, lying close to the water, stretched like a white thread between the sea and the mountain. Two great sails, driven by a strong breeze, seemed to skim over the waves. I looked upon all this, astounded.

This view was one of those sweet, rare, delightful things that seem to permeate you and are unforgettable, like the memory of a great happiness. One sees, thinks, suffers, is moved and loves with the eyes. He who can feel with the eye experiences the same keen, exquisite and deep pleasure in looking at men and things as the man with the delicate and sensitive ear, whose soul music overwhelms. Read the full story here

Frankie Trumbauer Japanese Sandman

Sometime ago, I mentioned the above in a post on Lowry's reference to the song in his film script to Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night. Since then, I have managed to find a recording of Frankie Trumbauer's version of the song which I had mentioned in the previous post.

Stout Cortez

Lowry uses the phrase "stout Cortez" in his film script for Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night.

Lowry's reference to "stout Cortez" comes from "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" a sonnet by English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) written in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment at reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.

The poem has become an often-quoted classic, cited to demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art, and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder. Wikipedia

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.



Lowry has brought the reference into the dialogue to link to a discussion by the characters of Homer's Mediterranean as they look out on the beauty of the sea at Antibes the location of the beginning of Tender Is The Night. Antibes's beauty was appreciated, mainly because of the light, by artists such as Monet whose Sea At Antibes is shown above. This reference to Homer's Odyssey comes after discussion of a Guy de Maupassant short story called Madame Parisse in an earlier scene of the film script. I will return to de Maupassant's story in a future post.

In the film script, Lowry was returning to Cortez's exploration and conquest of Mexico which pervades Lowry's novel Under The Volcano (See Chris Ackerley's Annotations to Under The Volcano.



Lowry must have also known that George Chapman was born in Hitchin where Lowry went to school at Caldicott which adds to the many "correspondences" in Lowry's work and life. Lowry was also interested in Elizabethan drama which provides another link.

One irony with the poem's reference to Cortez is that he was not the first European to view the Pacific. Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1474 – January 15, 1519) was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.