"It is so much worse than ordinary morning sickness. Researchers now believe that Charlotte Bronte died from it. But most people don't understand the severity. They say: 'Morning sickness? Oh, I had that.'" (Sue Leonard)Metro.co.uk introduces us to a new Brontëite: Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief:
'And I love the Brontës; anything with a big house where crazy things are going on and someone's locked up in the attic,' she enthuses. (Tina Jackson)Helen Mead writing in The Telegraph & Argus makes a terrible confession:
I’m taking a deep breath now, as I admit to another glaring gap in my education – I’ve never read a book by a Bronte. Dare I show my face in Haworth again?Fortunately, these kinds of things are easy to solve :)
Hace años, visitando el pequeño cementerio inglés en donde yacen las hermanas Brönte (sic), leí en una lápida cercana una inscripción que, traducida del inglés, decía así: “En donde tú estás ahora estuve yo; donde yo estoy ahora tú estarás”. (Google translation)Vana Hipi posts in Estonian about the the current production of Wuthering Heights by the Vanemuine Theatre (or rather we think so).
Five years after Gurinder Chadha's Bollywood version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, another classic Victorian tale is getting an Indian makeover. Emily Bronte's tale of passion, revenge and destiny - Wuthering Heights - has been adapted in a Bollywood-style musical for the West End.Bookslut interviews author Hannah Tinti and asks her the following question:
Playwright Deepak Verma says, "People who love Wuthering Heights, people who love Bollywood films or don't know any of them, would still relate to this."
The northern moors of Yorkshire have become the sandy deserts of Rajasthan in the Indian version. The main characters, Heathcliff and Cathy are now Krishan and Shakuntala. The script is laced with a few Hindi expressions and the actors lip synch to pre-recorded songs in true Bollywood style.
Youkti Patel who plays Shakuntala says, "I found lip synching new and tough and as I love to sing, I had to resist the temptation of singing. I had to get breathing right and all."
Pushpinder Chani who plays Krishan adds, "It's been a fun experience."
Wuthering Heights is currently playing in West London until the end of May. The team hopes to capitalise on the new found appeal of Bollywood after the success of Slumdog Millionaire.
Gurinder Chadha adapted Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice on celluloid and added songs and sequins to it. Now Bronte's Wuthering Heights will have Rajasthani deserts and lehenga cholis. One wonders what Emily Bronte would have made of this. (Akanksha Banerji)
The description of Ren [a character in her book The Good Thief] falling into the book, body and soul, is so visceral. Is this an experience you had with a first loved book?City Brights, an SFGate blog, has found out that Star Trek's Scotty, who is supposed to be a Scotsman, is actually played by an Englishman, Simon Pegg, on the new film.
I’ve had that experience with many books. My parents always read to my siblings and myself before we went to bed, and that created a real love of literature among us. Roald Dahl’s books certainly made me feel this way, as did fairy tales, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Brontës. (Teresa Burns Gunther)
Now our Scotty is being played by an Englishman, Simon Pegg. Now we know how Uzbekistan felt when their hero Borat was played by another Englishman. What is it with the English? Aren't they happy enough playing Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights on KQED every week?Then he, of course, has to make a joke about the classical Scotty, played by James Doohan, being played by a Canadian.
Scotty for the Scottish! (Alan Black)
When, in 1947, MGM optioned Brideshead and his friend Christopher Sykes mentioned other great writers who'd survived screen versions, Waugh replied: 'I'm not Shakespeare or Thackeray or Emily Brontë. They lived out of the age of films. They are immune from the contagion. I am not.'Sky News also talks about the new Julian Jarrold version of Brideshead Revisited and quotes Emma Thompson, Lady Marchmain in the film, saying:
"I don't really know what all the rumpus is about because we've adapted so many books," she told Sky News, referring to the countless film versions of classic novels.Another Emily Brontë mention in The Guardian can be traced today in this article about the return of TB:
"How many times has Jane Eyre been done and why can't you do it more than once?" (Matt Smith)
At the height of the disease's prevalence in the 18th and 19th centuries it claimed the lives of as many as 100,000 Britons every year. Prominent victims included John Keats, Emily Brontë and Robert Louis Stevenson - associations that gave it an aura of romance and poetry. However, for anyone who has witnessed the disease at close hand, there is nothing romantic about TB, and today it is back with a vengeance. (Mark Honigsbaum)The Portsmouth Herald interviews author Hannah Tinti, another Brontëite:
Q: What three books would you bring to read while stranded on a desert island?Baltimore Sun recommends Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon's Novel Destinations.
A: "Jane Eyre," The Bible, "Remembrance of Things Past"
A whole new webpage has been added to the website of the Brussels Brontë Group. On our Picture Gallery page, you will discover a new album, called Old Prints & Lithographs. It consists of several pages, showing wonderful images of Brussels and the surrounding area of the 1830’s and 1840’s. Some you may never have seen before. (Selina Busch)The blogs bring a new Spanish translation of a Charlotte Brontë poem (Regret) in El Espejo Gótico and a visit to Haworth by a life in books and music.
IT'S A snowy day in Leeds, and the man responsible for the world's longest-running musical is giving advice to the dancers of Northern Ballet Theatre (NBT). They nod appreciatively before resuming their rehearsal, incorporating his comments into their movement.China Daily interviews Yang Jia, elected as a model for Chinese working women for 2009 by the All-China Women’s Federation:
Yet just a few years ago, Claude-Michel Schönberg was "not interested in ballet". He was far more at home in the world of blockbuster musicals such as Les Misérables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre – all three of which he composed. Two things catapulted Schönberg from a ballet virgin to a veritable expert: he was asked to write the score for a dance version of Wuthering Heights and married Charlotte Talbot, a former principal dancer with NBT.
Today, both husband and wife are helping the company restage the show that brought them together. Originally created in 2002, with Talbot in the lead role of Cathy, the ballet takes Emily Brontë's 19th-century novel and transforms it into two hours of passionate dance. Although choreographed by NBT's artistic director David Nixon, it was Schönberg who came up with the initial structure for the piece.
"I was not a ballet expert before, but I thought that the best version would be the simplest one," he says. "So I read the book again and watched the films, and I thought the Laurence Olivier version was the most straightforward and clear in terms of storytelling, so I used that to write the script of the ballet."
It took Schönberg nine months to write the score, working eight hours a day in the south of France."This ballet was a completely new experience for me," he says. "But I looked at a lot of other ballets before I started writing, and I began to understand that it's not miming, it's using the body to express what's happening in the story and the spirituality of the characters." (Read more)
When the curtain rises and Heathcliff sweeps Cathy up into his arms, what's going through Talbot's mind? "Dancing Cathy was absolutely the highlight of my career," she says. "And when I listen to Claude-Michel's music I still feel it in my body. But I don't wish it was me up there on the stage – I just remember the feeling I had back then and I'm happy with that." (Kelly Apter)
She imagined herself as the strong-willed and independent Jane Eyre, who struggles to be her own individual, or as the rich and beautiful Tonia Tumanova from the Russian novel How the Steel was Tempered.The Progress magazine talks about International Women's Day.
Instead, Yang said, she ended up more like the blind characters in those same books - Jane Eyre's love Mr. Rochester, or Pavel Korchagin, the hero who fought against his disability to achieve success. (Yang Guang)
The anti-feminist nature of our society is to blame for this. It has two main, damaging characteristics: female hypersexualisation, and the idea that women are irrational, illogical and hysterical. The latter is rooted in a long history of literature and language. From Shakespeare's Ophelia to the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, literature's image of the hysterical woman is as stubborn as it is ugly. (Gary Nunn)Renaissance of Reading interviews Hannah Tinti, Brontëite:
Who were some of your favorite authors growing up and who are you currently reading?PRWeb reports that the CliffsNotes-To-Go series, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, are now available to download on the iTunes Apps store. A teacher who uses Facebook to teach Wuthering Heights in the Jackson Free Press. The Reader Online posts about Anne Brontë's poem The Captive Dove, the Kindred Spirits Book Group announces that April's reading will be Agnes Grey, Spacebeer reviews Wuthering Heights and Randomness and All write with coffee... Jane Eyre.
I loved the Bronte sisters. I re-read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights every few years. I am currently reading Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, which just won The Story Prize.
Under these heaven-sent atmospheric conditions, it didn’t take much imagination to picture the girls still there, writing stories that more than 150 years of history would later declare them to be the single most talented literary family that ever lived.The Guardian publishes an article about the current exhibition at the British Library: Points of View. Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs and attributes to Charlotte Brontë a pioneer role:
Although our book-loving 12-year-old daughter Holly read every exhibit, she was was probably a touch too young to fully appreciate the jewels of information before her, still less her younger sister, Madison, now six.
But the finer details don’t matter. What counted on the day, was that they were having the opportunity to embrace the Bronte’s lifestyle as they would have known it, isolated from metropolitan life by a character-defining mixture of harsh landscape, stone walls and invasive climate.
This is what continues to make Haworth so special, lifting it above and beyond the experience you will get at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, or Jane Austen’s house at Alton, Hampshire.
Whenever they read books like Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights (both 1847) or Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) in the future, they will know that they’ve been there. (Graham Young)
Charlotte Brontë, who seems to have been the first novelist to use "daguerreotype" as a verb, was also an enthusiast. In Shirley, published in 1849, Caroline Helstone, encountering her would-be lover unexpectedly, finds his image is "struck on her vision with painful brightness . . . as vividly as if daguerreotyped". The implication is that somehow the photographic image would be even more real, more intense, than his physical presence. It was this truthfulness, the potential of "nature's own transcript of herself", to offer a moral purity beyond human fallibility that appealed to the more thoughtful early Victorians. (...)Also in the Guardian we find the first of this year's Christmas's book lists. William Boyd recommends Tormented Hope: Nine hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon.
It was not long before the supposed objectivity of the camera came into question. As a sceptical Mark Twain pointed out: "You can't depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus." Besides Eastlake's vision of ever expanding truth and Charlotte Brontë's endorsement of the emotional force of the image, there was always another, more shadowy, reality. (...)
As the century wore on, a certain disillusionment set in. Trollope thought the photograph much less useful to the novelist than Charlotte Brontë had. "Let daguerreotypers do what they will," he wrote in Barchester Towers, "they will never achieve a portrait of the human face divine." (Rosemary Hill)
is a short but fascinating study of literary and other celebrated hypochondriacs. These engrossing glimpses of the "fit unwell" include Charlotte Brontë, James Boswell, Andy Warhol and Marcel Proust (who must surely be the undisputed king of this particular neurotic hill). Written with great elegance and shrewd understanding, it illuminates a condition that probably all of us will suffer from at some time in our livesand Joyce Carol Oates, Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler:
Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre (Penguin) is an ingeniously imagined, meticulously researched and beautifully composed novel that immerses us in the seemingly fragile, secretly iron-willed character of the remarkable Charlotte Brontë.Svenska Dagbladet talks about the current performances of Martina Monteliu's Jane Eyre adaptation in Stockholm, Sweden: (Picture: Lars Pehrson (Source))
Ett gigantiskt lakan bildar en strut in mot en stängd dörr och ger ett spöklikt, klaustrofobiskt intryck. Julia Dufvenius i enkel röd klänning och flätor är tioåriga Jane Eyre som ska lämna Gateshead, huset där hon växte upp. Rasande säger hon till sin elaka moster att hon minsann ska minnas hur fruktansvärt hon behandlats.The San Jose Mercury News talks with writer and Brontëite Hannah Tinti:
Så blir det scen- och klädbyten. Jane är på stränga internatskolan Lowood, Jane kommer som guvernant till Thornfield. Efter paus till sist det många läsare har jublat över: Michael Nyqvist, herr Rochester, går ned på knä.
–Säg Edward, uppmanar han.
–Edward, heter du Edward? fnittrar Jane.
Det är 160 år sedan brittiska Charlotte Brontë skrev sin 500 sidor långa debutroman, den fiktiva självbiografin Jane Eyre. Sedan dess har berättelsen om den föräldralösa, kaxiga flickan och hennes väg till mötet med Thornfields bryske ägare Mr Rochester fängslat läsare. Många har häpnat över Charlotte Brontës djärvhet, att hon skrev om en ung kvinna som trots att så många ville beröva henne friheten stod upp för sig själv.
Regissören Ellen Lamm läste Jane Eyre när hon var i 20-årsåldern och blev drabbad.
–Jag tyckte själva livsresan var så teatral. Jane går igenom något redan uppställt, som om livet stod där färdigt och hon bara kan kliva in i de olika situationerna. Det har vi tagit fasta på i pjäsen.
När hon för några år sedan bilade runt i Skottland fick hon nytt liv i idén att göra teater av boken.
–Känslorna som i romanen kan upplevas som för stora eller för vilda kändes plötsligt självklara när man stod där ute på den där heden eller bergstoppen.
Hon kontaktade Martina Montelius som blev exalterad och snabbt insåg att de enorma textsjoken innehåller stor poesi och dramatik.
–Jane Eyre har många av de viktigaste egenskaperna för teater. Den är brant, hisnande och språket har så hög densitet att varje mening är på väg att explodera.
Martina Montelius hade aldrig tidigare gjort en dramatisering men hittade snart sitt eget språk – mitt i Charlotte Brontës.
Att gestalta en så komplex person som Jane är inte enkelt. Huvudrollsinnehavaren Julia Dufvenius har funderat på om Jane kanske har en diagnos, som adhd.
–Hon har en skruv lös och vägrar att gå med på sociala spel. Hon har också en enorm inre värld eftersom hon inte har lojalitet mot människor i sin närhet. Hon har ingen mamma, ingen pappa, ingen som hon måste förhålla sig till. Hon har bara sin egen moral. Det måste vara extremt befriande.
Jane framställs genomgående som ful och färglös. Julia Dufvenius skämtar om att det därför är skönt att ta på sig lite rött läppstift efter repetitionerna.
–Jag har aldrig, under något arbete, krävt min man på så många komplimanger. Jag har frågat: ”Är inte jag ful och tråkig?” Jag har inte smink eller fina kläder på repetitionerna. Jag ler inte, pleasar inte. Jane är aldrig insmickrande.
–Hon är inte det en ung kvinna ”ska” vara, utvecklar Martina Montelius.
–Tvärtom! Det är därför man älskar henne så mycket, säger Julia Dufvenius.
Hon nämner därmed ett av alla skäl till varför Jane Eyre fortsätter fascinera. Hon har själv även fastnat för romantiken, sagan, passionen och humorn.
De tre kvinnorna tror därtill att många lockas just av utvecklingshistorien. Fast Ellen Lamm påpekar att Jane faktiskt inte utvecklas.
–Det är för att de yttre omständigheterna förändras hon kan säga: ”Här är jag och så här har jag varit sedan jag var tio, det är bara ingen som har klarat det förrän nu”.
–Självklart är vi också förtjusta i kärlekshistorien, som ju är en av världens första om att mötas som jämlika.
Blir deras relation verkligen jämställd? Ja, svarar de. Samtidigt påpekar Martina Montelius att tiden den utspelar sig i, att Jane är så mycket mer underordnad än hon skulle ha varit idag, nog är skälet till att de till slut kan leva ihop – trots att Rochester då har blivit både blind och enarmad.
–Idag skulle det ha varit så oerhört dasspappersgrått. De hade kanske medverkat i ett reportage i Amelia där Jane berättar ”så är det att leva med en enarmad man”, skrattar hon.
Mycket krut har inom forskningen även lagts på Bertha, Rochesters galna hustru som visar sig bo på vinden på Thornfield. I det litteraturvetenskapliga verket The madwoman in the attic från 1979 diskuteras huruvida kvinnan som är översexuell, vrålar, biter och har ett högt, gällt skratt är en spegel av Jane Eyre själv. Det har de tre kvinnorna också grubblat över, men blivit än mer intresserade av Berthas och Rochesters relation. Därför har Martina Montelius skrivit in en scen där de möts.
–Det är ett tillägg från mig till berättelsen.
Martina Montelius har redan fantiserat om Jane Eyre 2, om Janes och Rochesters äktenskap tio år senare.
–De har säkert skitkul! utbrister Julia Dufvenius.
–Men har de inte en tråkig vardagsfas efter allt det romantiska? funderar Ellen Lamm och Martina Montelius går igång:
–Kan inte Jane vara otrogen? Hon blir kär i en kvinna som också är funktionshindrad! Nej, du ser, det ballar ur ganska snabbt... (Lina Kalmteg) (Google translation)
With a mother who was a librarian, Tinti, 36, grew up with classical books. Her favorites include Dickens and the Brontes, and writing an old-fashioned adventure story was appealing to her. "I wanted to use it to explore some larger issues I find interesting. God, truth, death, family. Finding a sense of belonging in the world."(Lynn Carey)Another Brontëite is theatre director Georges Pothitos in the Chronicle Herald:
He grew up in the small village of Lowton where his mother insisted her children re-read A Christmas Carol every Christmas as well as Wuthering Heights on their summer break. "I grew up reading everything the Bronte sisters wrote, and everything Dickens ever wrote. As we came up to Christmas we’d pull out the dog-eared A Christmas Carol. (Elissa Barnard)Hot Press talks about having more than one girl/boyfriend:
Without the unexpected plot turns to catch you off-guard, it can be a richer, but sometimes you can't help but wish that the narrative would veer off-course and find a new trajectory – that this time Juliet wakes up before Romeo drinks the poison or that Heathcliff and Cathy settle down to a life of quiet domesticity. (Anne Sexton)And The Province (Canada) recommends a fragrance with a Catherine touch (!):
Timeless fragrances: It's what Heathcliff's Catherine might wear, had she been the perfume-dabbing type.ABC (Spain) talks about Day Coyle's book The Talent Code and attributes practice and myelin's abundance in the success of the Brontë sisters:
An old-fashioned pocket watch-style container topped with a black bow hides solid perfume with heady scents that linger and last.
Our favourite is Lily of the Valley, infused with pineapple zest, pink jasmine and sandalwood. Also available in Cassis.
Price: $34; Homewerx, 1053 Davie St.; www.homewerx.ca (Cheryl Chan)
Coyle también encontró otros ejemplos en su periplo: el éxito de un club de tenis ruso que pese a sus precarias instalaciones forma a más jugadoras de máximo nivel que todo Estados Unidos o la rara coincidencia de las hermanas Charlotte, Emily y Anne Brontë, tres escritoras de talla internacional que crecieron en un pueblecito al norte de Inglaterra.We read on Mediaset (Italy) about a new Italian TV adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, Il mistero del lago:
Sus escritos infantiles eran «burdas imitaciones de artículos de revistas y libros de la época» pero fueron una «práctica intensa» que culminó con novelas clásicas y «sorprendentes» como «Cumbres borrascosas» o «Jane Eyre». (EFE Noticias) (Google translation)
"Suspence, un autore come James, abiti d'epoca, location suggestive: gli ingredienti ci sono tutti per appassionare": è questo il commento della protagonista femminile Ana Caterina Morariu interprete di un'istitutrice che prende a modello la Jane Eyre di Charlotte Bronte, che vive in un'atmosfera da Cime Tempestose di Emily Bronte.(Google translation)Some Twilight Zone now:
The books and movies employ the classic romance-novel formula in scores of books from Jane Eyre to Harlequin romances, says Elisabeth Gruner, an English professor at the University of Richmond who has studied the Twilight phenomenon. "Vampire stories appeal to teens because vampires are eternal teens — they stay up late, exchange bodily fluids, engage in illicit practices and live forever, and most teens think they're immortal, too." (Gannett)Il Corriere della Sera (Italy):
Questi sono alcuni dei motivi che ci hanno fatti diventare Twilight-dipendenti: 1) le storie d'amore impossibili e travagliate sono sempre dei best sellers. Sia che stiate pensando alla Verona di Romeo e Giulietta o alle Cime Tempestose di Heathcliff e Cathy poco importa. (Gabriella Savio) (Bing translation)Kvällstidningen Expressen (Sweden):
Hon pepprar böckerna med referenser till Svindlande höjder, Romeo och Julia och indirekt Jane Austens verk och Jane Eyre. (Hanna Höglund) (Google translation)A TV alert from France. A chance to listen to Michel Legrand's Hurlevant soundtrack (well, a track from it) in a live concert:
France 3 - 00h10Elle (Netherlands) has an online contest (until next December 3) giving away ten double free tickets for the Theater Artemis's Woeste Hoogten production and also copies of Emily Brontë's book. TheAgenda.nl also posts about Toneelgroep Dorst De Brontë Sisters tour.
Michel Legrand et le cinéma
Réalisation de François Goetghebeur
Chef d'orchestre : Michel Legrand
L'Orchestre national d'Ile-de-France
In the programme: «I Was Born in Love with You» («Les Hauts de Hurlevent»)
(Recorded Feburary 27, 2009)
Unless explicitly said
