Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts

The Last Leaf, by O. Henry

 

Film (minute 41:24)

SUMMARY

Greenwich Village was, and is, a quarter in New York where artists like to live. They could be famous artists or poor artists, but all of them strove to produce a masterpiece. However, in order to make booth ends meet, they had to do menial works, usually related to decorative arts.

In a building in this place, there lived a pair of young women, Johnsy and Sue. As most of the artists there, they had their own difficulties with money; but money wasn’t the only trouble: that year, November was very cold, and Johnsy caught a pneumonia. In the beginning of the twentieth century, a pneumonia was a serious illness and sometimes a fatal one.

The doctor visited Johnsy and gave her some remedies, but she didn’t get better, and according to the doctor, it was because she was in low spirits, she didn’t have the strength of mind to overcome her disease and she felt depressed and suspected she was going to die soon; in short, she imagined that her life depended on the number of leaves of an old ivy vine that climbed the wall opposite her window; as fewer leaves were left in the vine, less life was left for her. So, falling leaves were a kind of final countdown for her.

Sue and Johnsy had a neighbour, old Behrman. He was also a poor artist trying to start to paint what had to be his masterpiece; but he never could find the inspiration. Although he was in want all the time, he tried to help his neighbours artists and sometimes posed for them.

Sue told old Behrman about Johnsy’s illness and about her strange obsession with the falling leaves, and perhaps he thought about her strange superstition.

Well, in the end, the vine had only a leaf left. Johnsy believed it was her last hope to live: if the leaf fell, she would die; if the leaf stood stuck to the vine, she would live.

That night was windy and snowy, so her chances to live were few, and her friend wouldn't allow her to be watching the last leaf during the night.

But the next morning, the leaf was still there: it had withstood all the attacks of the tempest. And because of this, Johnsy recovered her spirits and her desire to live, and soon she felt better.

When she was a bit stronger, Sue told her a piece of bad news: her good old neighbour was found dead on the snow, on the street below their window, the night of the tempest, with his painting tools near him.

What was he doing there?


QUESTIONS


-A big question: what is art? Or better: what is art for you?

-Are you superstitious? What can be a definition of superstition? Do you know a superstition that has a scientific basis?

-Johnsy didn't have spirits to fight for her life. When a disease can be considered psychosomatic?


VOCABULARY

paid on account, gable, pewter, bishop sleeves, duffer, smote, Ducht window, jew's harp, goosey, imp, hem, daub, juniper berries




Extradited from Bohemia, by O. Henry


 Audiobook



SUMMARY

Miss Medora Martin, a middle-aged woman who lived happily in a village near Harmony, wanted to be an excellent painter. Although her village was beautiful and she had a fiancée, she went to New York to study art.

In the big city, she took painting lessons with professor Angelini, a former barber who had learnt his job in a dancing academy and whose teaching, as you can imagine, was very poor in quality. Nevertheless, she thought she could become a great artist.

But one day, things went awry: she didn’t get her money from home, she had to take back some pictures because the art dealer couldn’t sell them, she was hopeless about her talents, etc. So, at this moment, she was ready to give up all her illusions.

But, in the middle of her calamity, she got a lucky strike: one of her boarding house mates, a Mr Binkley, a fishmonger that was keen on art and attended meetings of people connected with the beaux arts, invited her to a café where the Broadway Bohemian artists usually meet.

Mr Binkey was admitted to the group because he had lent ten pounds to one of the artists.

These people talked and talked and talked about art and artists. And Medora immediately felt entrapped in that Bohemian atmosphere and discovered what was actually her calling: to live as a real artist.

She decided to sever all connection with her past, and immediately wrote to her suitor in the village, telling him to forget her because she was under the spell of the artistic life and had to live in the Bohemian world; so she couldn’t go back to the country anymore.

But some days after, her fiancée came to New York to take her back to Harmony. However, she said she was engulfed in Bohemia and couldn’t move. He didn’t pay attention to her wishes and told her she had to pack her things and go with him.

What did she do eventually?

 

QUESTIONS

-Who were Bastien Le Page, Gérôme, Rosa Bonheur, Giotto, Henry James, Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza?

-Give some information about the Columbus Circle, the magazine Puck, Würzburger, Basilisk, St Regis decorations.

-In the text we find the sentence “We are short, and Art is long”, that is an adaptation of “Life is short, and art is long.” What is its meaning?

-And what do you know about “The die is cast”?

 

VOCABULARY

easel, brickbats, pans out, whooped, pebble grain, panhandler, pail, shucks!


A Service of Love, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary and analysis

SUMMARY

This is a story of true love.

Joe Larrabee and Delia Caruthers wanted to be artists: the boy, a painter, and the girl, a musician. Both of them went to New York from their villages in search of opportunities.

They met in a club where people talked about art and artists, and they fell in love and got married straight away. Happier couldn’t they be: they had their art and they had each other. But they had to live in poverty. Their love was “through thick and thin”.

They attended lessons to improve their art; Joe painted in the great Magister workshop, and Delia’s teacher was Rosenstock.

But the money didn’t last as much as they would like, and they had to do something to earn their living; so Delia looked for pupils to teach piano classes, and Joe had to sell his paintings to any redneck that came from the country, for example, Peoria; but neither of them allowed the other to abandon their art.

So they went on being short of money for a while. Every day they told each other their daily routine and how they did in their jobs. But one day, Delia came home with her hand bandaged; she told her husband she got burnt serving a dish to her pupil at her house (according to Delia, the pupil was a General's daughter). But Joe knew where the cloth for the bandage came from and started questioning Delia. At the end, she had to tell the truth, and so he also had to confess his secret. Was this disclosure going to kill their love?

 

QUESTIONS

What is love? Can you give us an ultimate definition? Do you think sexual love is essentially different from friendly love?

How do we know if they had or didn’t have talent? Are there any hints in the text?

How do you know if a person has any talent?

Tell us something about Émile Waldteufel, oolong, Joseph Rosenstock, Benvenuto Cellini.

Do you believe in living “through thick and thin”? Do you have any anecdotes about this romantic ideal?

 

VOCABULARY

chipped in, atelier, A sharp, janitor, dresser, mantel, sandbag, switchman, chafing dish, hatchet, scalloped, trump, veal, goatee, freight depot, Welsh rarebit [rabbit, sic], iron, make up