And not one in ten thousand knows your name

[sovay]

Copied from conversation with erzebeta, because it highly, highly amuses me.

I move to award Algernon Charles Swinburne geek points in retrospect for being a Peter Jackson hobbit.



From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

*accidentally conflates Proserpine and Galadriel and needs to lie down*

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I move to award Algernon Charles Swinburne geek points in retrospect for being a Peter Jackson hobbit.

Good heavens, so he is.

Now I'm trying not to imagine the Elvish Spanking Academy....

Nine

[sovay]

Very Secret Diaries of Middle-Earth, eat your heart out . . .

[kraada.livejournal.com]

Actually, those diaries tend to eat other parts of the anatomy.

But Frodo will be safe, for if Sam hears JOZYXQE, Sam will surely kill the diaries . . .

[sovay]

Actually, those diaries tend to eat other parts of the anatomy.

What the hell are you reading them with?

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never

Clearly, a hobbit who hasn't done his homework. But then, that itself is very hobbit-like.

I can't see Celeborn as Hades; I just can't.

[sovay]

I told you I had to go lie down . . .

What I also find curious is that this sketch is perhaps the only piece of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's work where the subject looks as though they might, well, look like themselves rather than a Rossetti Person. Compare his painted portrait of Swinburne, where you can clearly tell this isn't Jane Morris—no matter how often he gave her different-colored hair—but he doesn't make you think "Swinburne!" so much as "Rossetti!"* This is Alexa Wilding, but she and Jane Morris have the same mouth, the same nose. Sigh. I liked Rossetti a lot less once I noticed this tendency . . .

But all is not lost. This is still a pretty damn cool Dante.

*And "Hair!" I swear Rossetti had a thing for hair. Look at his "Lilith" if you had any doubt . . .

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

...but it still looks disturbingly like Jane Morris.

[sovay]

In all fairness, that might still be better than looking like Doré's Dante, who seems to have toured the underworld perpetually sucking on a lemon.

(Although this illustration wins a serious point for being titled "Dante Addresses Pope Nicholas III." Snerk.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Am now picturing you as Overcome on the Divan, waving a palm-leaf under your nose and sighing sorrowfully. This seems the only appropriate response to the thought of Celeborn as Hades, at any rate.

[sovay]

See fleurdelis' comment: my brain just won't go there.

But if I could still get the palm leaf, that would be lovely, thank you.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I say Dante sucking on a lemon trumps Jane Morris not sucking a lemon, when resemblence to Dante is what's being looked for.

Besides, it's not an unreasonable expression to have while lecturing a pope who's upside down and on fire and mistakes you for his successor, who participated in the political machinations that got you thrown out of your native city on pain of being burned.

I do always wonder, though, why his Beatrice isn't better-looking.

[sovay]

It's not his expression while talking to an up-ended flaming pope; it's the perennial lemon-sucking that gets me. I begin to wonder if Dante has ever been pictured in any way other than dyspeptic.

This one's all right. But it helps that there's a hellmouth and terrace of souls and angels.

Eh. Maybe Doré only liked drawing grotesques?*

*And speaking of grotesque, I think Dante's holy carpet dust gives Eva Perón's body a run for her postmortem weirdness money.