Lovely! ‘Though I recall crazed, leftie Meryl Streep who melts down anytime someone mentions ‘Republican’ or ‘Trump’ - played Blixen in the movie…not sure if I could stomach watching her for that long again…best to just read the book.
Meryl Streep is one of the rare actresses who are capable of shedding their politics to inhabit a role. You see this in her brilliant turn (Academy Award-winning) as Margaret Thatcher in "Iron Lady" (2011). No British actress from the overwhelmingly left creative intelligentsia in the UK that I know could do the same. The actresses who played Thatcher in "The Audience," for example, made her into a ludicrous cartoon.
It was a commonplace in the ancient world to quote and paraphrase the apothegm: "Count no man happy until he is dead." One variant occurs in Sophocles' "Trachiniae," where the wife of Herakles says:
"“λόγος μὲν ἔστ’ ἀρχαῖος ἀνθρώπων φανεὶς
ὡς οὐκ ἂν αἰῶν’ ἐκμάθοις βροτῶν, πρὶν ἂν
θάνῃ τις, οὔτ’ εἰ χρηστὸς οὔτ’ εἴ τῳ κακός·
“There has long been a saying among men
That you could not be sure about the life of mortals, until
One dies, whether he had a good one or a bad one;”
Blixen flips the script in a manner the ancients could not. Faith promises the end will be good, even if we do not live to see the stork.
Lovely! ‘Though I recall crazed, leftie Meryl Streep who melts down anytime someone mentions ‘Republican’ or ‘Trump’ - played Blixen in the movie…not sure if I could stomach watching her for that long again…best to just read the book.
Meryl Streep is one of the rare actresses who are capable of shedding their politics to inhabit a role. You see this in her brilliant turn (Academy Award-winning) as Margaret Thatcher in "Iron Lady" (2011). No British actress from the overwhelmingly left creative intelligentsia in the UK that I know could do the same. The actresses who played Thatcher in "The Audience," for example, made her into a ludicrous cartoon.
Beautiful essay.
It was a commonplace in the ancient world to quote and paraphrase the apothegm: "Count no man happy until he is dead." One variant occurs in Sophocles' "Trachiniae," where the wife of Herakles says:
"“λόγος μὲν ἔστ’ ἀρχαῖος ἀνθρώπων φανεὶς
ὡς οὐκ ἂν αἰῶν’ ἐκμάθοις βροτῶν, πρὶν ἂν
θάνῃ τις, οὔτ’ εἰ χρηστὸς οὔτ’ εἴ τῳ κακός·
“There has long been a saying among men
That you could not be sure about the life of mortals, until
One dies, whether he had a good one or a bad one;”
Blixen flips the script in a manner the ancients could not. Faith promises the end will be good, even if we do not live to see the stork.