1 August 2004

Delibes' very fine ballet-score Sylvia on my little CD-player; Delibes has been rather underrated, or simply derided for the local-color follies of Lakme. TWB laughed at my affection for Delibes; he said it was the sort of music his grandmother liked--but he was quite wrong in that, as in so many things: Sylvia and of course Coppelia are really outstanding--here is the confident grandeur of the opening march.
Friday, a party in celebration of J and S' recent marriage, their dance friends and a former neighbor gathered around, J and I comparing notes about the merits and grave woes of academic life in the present moment, both of us fearing for the future. She warned me that I ought to have modest goals, but I tried to assure her that--at least so far as my use of this degree was concerned--none could have goals more modest than I, and that I have Plans B, C, and D in store. I brought a handful of brilliantly solar-colored flowers--drenched yellows, sanguinous reds, enamel oranges-- and crackers and cheese--certainly the humblest of offerings. One of these was a Gouda, and as I set it down, I said, "Trader Joe's assures me that this Gouda has a 'nutty, mature flavor.' So, for the record, do I."
Saturday afternoon to a suitably mad dancing-master's gig: four-and-twenty darling young ladies, who had spent the rest of the weekend in a light bath of "Jane Austen" culture--genteel drawing, bonnet-making, and a host of other activities that would doubtless have made Austen herself wild with boredom. They had made their own gowns--rich and fantastical extravaganzas, well beyond the means of Austen herself, more in the Bingley or de Burgh line--and knew nothing of the forms or traditions of the dance. With some effort, and a good deal of repetition, we danced "Heartsease," "Ore Boggy," "The Comical Fellow," and "Freeford Gardens," I bellowing over the sound system, directing the traffic, walking up and down, stopping and restarting. All of us liquefying--I in my tuxedo, they in their silks, cottons, and unspeakably modern cotton-poly blends. They, despite the general condition of glassy-eye that prevailed in the room, assured me that they had had a grand time.
Away to dinner with EC, who made us a simple and irresistible dinner, he, despite cares of his own, offering his splendid supports. Today, off to the movies with PK--the eminently forgettable Catwoman, a kind of study in the supplementation--overthrow? of actors by computer-animation, or perhaps just a long commercial for the forthcoming computer game. Halle Berry's computerized doppelganger, however, somehow did not move as a character sufficiently constrained by gravity, supernatural powers notwithstanding--she began to look like "Frieda's boneless cat" on heavy stimulants.
Ah, the theme of Sylvia!--the great theme of Sylvia, the fanfare of les Chasseresses, Diana's Academy for Bloodthirsty Young Ladies. If only Wagner had written music so fine for *his* aggressive nymphs, perhaps it all would have turned out better for Wotan's family, and the world would not have ended in sad rubble after all.