In Memoriam. William Hurt

First of all, ABC News and many, many other sites report the sad news of the death of actor William Hurt (1950-2022).  He played a memorable Mr Rochester in Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation of Jane Eyre. May he rest in peace.

It's an adaptation worth rewatching even if it doesn't make it onto Vogue's list of '12 Elegant Period Dramas To Rewatch Now' which does include

Wuthering Heights (2011)

Elemental and erotic, Andrea Arnold’s reimagining of Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel drips with longing. It casts Solomon Glave and James Howson as younger and older incarnations of Heathcliff — the first time the Byronic hero has been played by Black actors — and Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario as the wild and wayward Cathy. As childhood friends, they run through misty marshes and windswept hilltops together but as adults, their love soon proves to be mutually destructive. (Radhika Seth)

The Grammy Awards website features Cécile McLorin Salvant:

Salvant conveys the maddening feeling of isolation and being trapped in one's thoughts on her haunting original, "I Lost My Mind," the desire to flee an oppressive romance with "Obligation" and the anguish of a crumbled relationship on "Ghost Song." The album also offers some striking covers, like Kate Bush's extravagant pop hit, "Wuthering Heights," Sting's cinematic "Until" and Gregory Porter's soothing soul-jazz ballad, "No Love Dying."  

Salvant's penchant for imbuing her work with literary references then delivering them in inventive, deeply personal ways that are empathetic and translucent reaches a height on Ghost Song. References to Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo intermingle with selections from The Wizard of Oz and Robyn O'Neil's "Modern Arts Notes" podcast. [...]

Explain how the works of Proust, Brontë, and Dumas filter into the album.

There are ways in which you can't have control over what filters into your work. You sometimes think you have control on that as a songwriter. You can say, "Let me transcribe this and see if I can make something similar or let me keep this [literature] in mind." But I think ultimately the most real stuff is that stuff that happens through osmosis — when it just becomes a part of your life and culture, and you don't necessarily actively think about it. 

There is no coincidence that something like Wuthering Heights and À la recherche du temps perdu are heavily about memory, thinking, neurosis, and [the act of] really spiraling in your thoughts, memories, self-consciousness and desires — this album is about that.

But that the same time, I wonder if I read those books because I was already attracted to those notions; and I wanted to read something that felt familiar and were better versions of things that I think of, because [those books] contain more eloquent and elegant ways of distilling these really specific feelings that I have, and many other people have. (John Murph)

A contributor to The Gospel Coalition mentions reading Jane Eyre:

Later, I read grown-up classics like Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and Madame Bovary, and their words altered the way I understood the world and the way I understood myself. God used all these words to show me more about who he is as the Word, the creator of language, and the author of the one true, good story. (Karen Swallow Prior)

An article on TB in The Critic quotes from Charlotte Brontë's opinion of it being a 'flattering malady'. 'Two Brontë Anniversaries And A Love Of Cats' on AnneBrontë.org.