Posted by zeugma on December 20, 2007, at 21:48:59
I was shopping for holiday cards today, I am constantly attracted to the inappropriate ones of course. I mean the only cards I like are non-holiday related (bad news is always in season). I bought some innocuous ones, then bought a fantastic card with the original 1932 illustration of Huxley's novel for myself (why is my enthusiasm always for the things that I won't send, can't send?) .
Book covers were really more beautiful back then, I think. The illustration was almost better than the book itself.
Art nouveau black and white, an airplane in the center superimposed over a map with lots of Mercator distortion, enormous Greenland and Spitzbergen, the plane was flying over a condensed Africa, just where the Luftwaffe and the RAF would duel a mere decade later, you could see the storm clouds over Europe gathering, and the shrunken West about to turn on itself. Art nouveau turned apocalyptic.
And we are in the same world, are we not?
It reminds me again of those lines that have always haunted me by Auden- "The right song For the wrong time of year."
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:801840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20071130/msgs/801840.html