ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

BACK HOME! When something good – like my seaside fortnight’s holiday – comes to an end, we tend to draw a balance . To be honest, I must confess, I didn’t expect much. What I really wanted was just to relax and to recover my energies after the last never-ending school year. And, indeed, this is what I got: relax, long night sleeping and also afternoon naps, long reading sessions under the sun with consequent tan, long evening walks, pleasant boat-trips to wonderful places – Capri, Positano, Amalfi. By the way, do you want to see my photos of Positano and Amalfi ? Here they are!

These were the pros, of course. What about the cons? I definitely ate too much and I’m not used to that and I put on weight (HELP!) and , since I’m not very good at going on diets … (DOUBLE HELP!) Then, I stayed in a hotel so, let’s say, I was spoilt a bit: no cooking, no housework, none of that! How can I re-start with all that without feeling sad?
So, you see, there have been lots of pros and very few – if any – silly cons. I was even able to go on posting, though I really had little time for blogging in general. Now, still two weeks off then … BACK TO WORK!

P.S. Just wanted to let you know that I had started reading Anne Bronte’s “THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL” but something happened which scrambled my plans. I bumped into Nick Hornby’s SLAM in one of my evening walks. I’d better explain: I was having a look around in a small bookshop, I saw it, I bought it and started reading it – just to see what it was like – as soon as I came out of the place. I was there, sitting on a bench, waiting for my husband and son gone for an ice cream, and couldn’t stop reading and smiling and laughing. I kept on reading it in bed that night and … finished it in a couple of days.
What was it like? Great fun! It was warm, witty, wise and touching. Lovely, indeed. Nick Hornby is super! Now I’ll dive back to the Regency time, when the more serious “Tenant” is set.

P.S. 2 You want to know what SLAM is about? Yeah, you’re right, of course. The protagonist is Sam, 16 years old, a skater. Mind, there’s no ice: skating= skateboarding. Life is ticking along nicely for Sam: his mum’s got rid of her rubbish boyfriend, he’s thinking about college after his GCSE and he has just met someone. Alicia. Then a “little accident” happens, one with big consequences for someone just finding his way in life. Sam is trapped, he can’t run nor skate away from this one. He’s a boy facing a man’s problems and the question is – Has he got what it takes to confront them? Tony Hawks , the world famous skate-boarder, will help him through in an odd and rather unbelievable way…

From tomorrow back to my old life. At 7.00 o'clock MY FAVOURITE WALK !!!

WAITING FOR THE NEW EMMA or ...the ambiguous pleasure of liberty

Eagerly waiting to see the new BBC EMMA 2009 with Romola Garay and Jonny Lee Miller (sob! Why not Richard Armitage?!?), I’ve been re-reading parts of the novel and comparing the different film versions of it: I saw for the first time

1. BBC Emma (1972)

2. ITV Emma (1996)

then I re-watched the film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam (1996).

This “Emma marathon” was my second task for the EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE.

First of all, let's have a look at the atmosphere of the new EMMA. Here's the official BBC trailer.

When , in January 1815, Jane Austen began to write her fifth novel, EMMA, she stated that she was working at creating a heroine that nobody but herself would be able to like ("I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.")
Emma Woodhouse is beautiful, clever and wealthy (the only Austenean heroine to own all these “virtues”) but also spoilt and a bit snob. Readers, especially Austen’s contemporary readers, shouldn’t like her much since Emma definitely lacks the common sense, balance and measure of other heroines. Yet, even with her faults and her mistakes, the character of Emma is drawn to get sympathy and understanding; the reader tends to forgive her and to side with her in a totally irrational way. Emma’s defects, constantly underlined in the text, make her the perfect anti-heroine: she is not particularly accomplished, she has been educated by too an indulgent father
and too a friendly governess, she has great self-esteem and tends to misinterpret reality according to her wishes. In a few words, she is not “by the book”, if we think of the 18th century “conduct - books” about the education of girls belonging to high society. But , of course, Jane Austen, is mocking those clichés, so her Emma is not only beautiful and intelligent but , above all, free. It is Mr Knightley himself to acknowledge that Emma is perfect with all her imperfections. And it is for her being so humanly imperfect that we still like her so much nowadays.

Now let’s go back to my overdose of Emma. Let’s see…The oldest version, Bbc 1972, is the nearest to the original text but the ITV adaptation is the one I liked best, though I didn’t mind the film with Gwyneth Paltrow at all. For a more deatailed and technical review of all the adaptations there’s a very good blog HERE.
What I want to propose to you now is a comparison between the 3 different final proposals. Watch the three clips and decide which is your favourite one. I’m in a crisis ‘cause I can’t choose between Mark Strong’s and Jeremy Northam’s versions of the scene. Which Mr Knightley do you prefer?

1. MR KNIGHTLEY ‘S PROPOSAL (BBC 1972)

Doran Godwin & John Carson

2. MR KNIGHTLEY'S PROPOSAL (ITV - 1996)

Kate Beckinsale & Mark Strong

3. MR KNIGHTLEY'S PROPOSAL (Film 1996)

Gwyneth Paltrow & Jeremy NorthamEMMA ADAPTATIONS BLOG

Capri: "La vita è bella" or "La dolce vita"?

I haven’t had enough time to read the blogs I usually follow and I haven’t been commenting so much. Forgive me but , as I already told you, I am in Ischia at the seaside on holidays and … I am reading a lot, I managed to write reviews of the books I read, but nothing more. I’m enjoying the beach, the sea, the sun, the swimming-pool, evening walks and, today , I’ve even been on a one-day trip to CAPRI. YES, the island of the vips! I actually liked its natural beauties more than its glamour and saw know vip at all- apart from their photos on some of the shop-windows around the famous Piazzetta. Have you ever been there? No? Then , you can have a look at it in my slide.
These are just a few shots from today’s trip. Enjoy them.

AGNES GREY by ANNE BRONTE

For someone like me, whose job is teaching and educating teenagers and young people, it’s easy to sympathizze with the protagonist of this novel. Let’s see what she will get from you.
After reading much about Victorian stiff, inflexible education to young innocent children - often treated like little pets to be tamed if not worse - in Charles Dickens’s novels , i.e. David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Hard Times , AGNES GREY has made me have a completely different vision of the issue.
Anne Bronte, like her most famous elder sister Charlotte, worked as a governess and used her personal experience to draw Agnes’s touching story. Charlotte Bronte had done the same in her works: her most famous heroine, JANE EYRE, is a governess (but a very lucky one!) and in SHIRLEY, one of her characters, Mrs Pryor, a former governess, complains about the difficult tasks and unfair treatment these unfortunate ladies often had to face.
AGNES GREY is a deeply moving account which seriously discusses the contempt and inhumanity shown towards the poor though educated women of the Victorian Age, whose only resource was to become a governess.

Would you ever bear to have to cope with such terrible pupils?

1. First experience – At the Bloomfields’
Master Tom Bloomfield , 7 years old
(…)
“Traps for birds”
“Why do you catch them?”
“Papa says they do harm”.
“And what do you do with them when you catch them?”
“Different things. Sometimes I give them to the cat; sometimes I cut them in pieces with my penknife; but the next I mean to roast alive.”
“And why do you mean to do such a horrible thing?”
“For two reasons: first, to see how long it will live – and then, to see what it will taste like.”
“But don’t you know it is extremely wicked to do such a thing? Remember, the birds can feel as well as you; and think how would you like it yourself?
“Oh, that’s nothing! I’m not a bird , and I can’t feel what I do to them”.

Mary Ann Bloomfield, 6 years old

(…) “preferred rolling on the floor to any other amusement. Down she would drop like a leaden weight; and when I, with great difficulty, had succeeded in rooting her thence, I had still to hold her up with one arm, while with the other I held the book from which she was to read or spell her lesson.”

Do you think older pupils might be better?

2. Second position – At the Murrays’ household

“Miss Murray,otherwise Rosalie, was about sixteen when I came, and decidedly a very pretty girl; and in two years longer, as time more completely her form and added grace to her carriage and deportment, she was positively beautiful; and that in no common degree. (…) I wish I could say as much for her mind and disposition as I can for her form and face.”

“Miss Matilda Murray… She was about two years and a half younger than her sister: her features were larger , her complexion much darker. (…) As an animal, Matilda was all right, full of life, vigour, and activity; as an intelligent being, she was barbarously ignorant, indocile, careless, and irrational; and consequently, very distressing to one who had the task of cultivating her understanding, reforming her manners, and aiding her to acquire those ornamental attainments which, unlike her sister, she despised as much as the rest.”

Can you imagine how terrible it could be to teach such tyrannical pupils , especially if they had over-indulgent parents? Nightmarish. And it was not all: “The servants, seeing in what little estimation the governess was held by both parents and children, regulated their behaviour by the same standard.”
I found this novel by Anne Bronte extremely brave in denouncing the unjust treatment governesses had to undergo in order to get a living. Her social satire reminds Jane Austen’s ironic portrait of the country gentry and of their habits but Anne’s work is far more bitter. Impossible to smile at the deceitful ends of the two disdainful young misses Murrays whose selfishness will spoil any chance of happiness for poor, good – hearted, naive Agnes Grey.

READ AGNES GREY ON LINE

THE BRONTE SISTERS WEB

RUTH by ELIZABETH GASKELL

"If she consents to let us take care of her , we will never let her stoop to request anything from him, even for his child"

This summer I made up my mind to read some Victorian novels I’ve always heard or read about. I’m particularly interested in the age of Queen Victoria and love the fiction of those years. I read and reviewed SHIRLEY by Charlotte Bronte (HERE) not long ago and now I’ve just finished my second book, RUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell.
When RUTH was published in 1853, Mrs Gaskell was sure it would be too disturbing for the Victorian readers, it would be surely condemned as “unfit subject for fiction”. Instead her bravery and mastery were rewarded by the favourable, thoughtful and often lengthy notices her second novel received. She had already published MARY BARTON in 1848 describing the appalling living conditions of factory workers and their families in Manchester. RUTH, instead, is about a fallen woman, seduced and abandoned with child. The challenge issued by Elizabeth Gaskell was not in introducing such a woman as a character in one of her novels but in placing her not at the margins (where many such women appeared in Victorian fiction) but rather at the centre of the story, since Ruth Hilton is, in fact, the heroine of this novel.
The Victorian frame of mind was characterised by extreme prudery and strict morals and the fate of the so-called “fallen” women was being rejected, living as outcasts with their children, being very often forced to get a living from prostitution. What Gaskell tries to convey is sympathy with a conventionally unsympathetic character and situation. She dared defy the stiff perbenism of her middle-class readers writing a tale based on the real-life events experienced by a young unmarried mother whose cause she had personally taken up.
RUTH tells the story of a girl of respectable parentage, now orphaned and apprenticed to a dressmaker, who is seduced by a young squire, Henry Bellingham. When Bellingham abandons her in the Welsh village where she and her lover have been living, Ruth, pregnant and despairing, is rescued from attempted suicide by a dissenting minister, Mr Benson. He and his sister, Faith, subsequently take Ruth into their home in the northern English parish of Eccleston where Mr Benson serves, passing her off as Mrs Denbigh, a relative and widow. Under the shelter and tutelage of the Benson family home, Ruth enjoys a respectable existence for many years, bringing up her son, Leonard, and acting as daily governess to the children of Mr Benson's foremost parishioner, Mr Bradshaw. Ruth's identity and history are exposed however when, by unlucky coincidence, Bellingham (now Mr Donne) is returned as Member of Parliament for Eccleston. Following her own, and the Bensons' disgrace, Ruth devotes herself to caring for the victims of a typhus epidemic in the town and is finally acknowledged as a very generous kind creature.

The cruelty of Victorian morality's hypocritical "double standard" is depicted by Gaskell in several episodes and characters in this novel:

· Sally, the Bensons’ faithful servant, immediately understands Ruth’s real situation but accepts silently the fact that her beloved master has brought her into their home. Anyhow, she decides to punish the girl cutting all her beautiful locks and proposing her to wear a widow’s cap (p.121)
· Miss Faith Benson’s suffered acceptance of Ruth and her illeggitimate child must be worked on by her brother, Mr Banson, who seems Mrs Gaskell’s spokesman in more than one moment (pp. 100 -101)
· Mr Bradshaw’s harsh words express all his contempt – and that of the majority of the Victorian middle-classes - as soon as he discovers that the kind angelic woman, Mrs Denbigh aka Ruth, whom he trusted and appreciated so much as his own daughters’ governess, had had her child out of marriage .(pp.277-279)

These are just few examples of the attempt of the authoress to oppose the prevailing cruel hypocrytical outlook on the problem. Her opinion comes out in several pages and it is evidently pervaded by her strong sincere Christian faith.

Other beautiful classic novels proposing tragic stories of fallen women, also published in the Victorian Age, are THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850) and TESS OF THE D’URBEVILLES by Thomas Hardy (1891).

RELATED POSTS & SITES

RUTH E-BOOK

THE GASKELL WEB

THE WOMAN QUESTION IN THE VICTORIAN AGE

MRS GASKELL'S NORTH AND SOUTH

LIGHTNESS

In these days I’ve read about - and I’m actually having - a different “perspective” on life. I’ve been reading Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millenium” . It is a book based on a series of lectures written by the Italian writer for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, but never delivered as he died before leaving Italy. The lectures were originally written in Italian and translated by Patrick Creagh. The lectures were to be given in the fall of 1985, and Memos was published in 1988. The memos are lectures on the values of literature which Calvino felt were important for the coming millennium. At the time of his death Calvino had finished all but the last lecture:
· Lightness
· Quickness
· Exactitude
· Visibility
· Multiplicity
All that is known of the sixth lecture is that it was to be on consistency.
I particularly liked the first Memo, LIGHTNESS. It’s a wonderful lesson about literature and life. He suggests lightness as a new way to interpret life. Quoting , among many other poets and writers, Paul Valéry, ``One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather'' (p. 16), Calvino hopes to convey the right idea of lightness, which is something different from frivolity: “I hope to have shown that there is such a thing as a lightness of thoughtfulness, just as we all know that there is a lightness of frivolity. In fact, thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy”. (p. 10)
According to Calvino, thanks to lightness we might be able to fly up and see things from a different perspective. Especially when life is hard, problematic, troubled. He proposes a quest for lightness as a reaction to a burdening life.
To make his bigger point , he resuscitates an obscure Kafka story about a magical bucket:
“the fuller [the bucket in Kafka's ``Der Kübelreiter''] is, the less it will be able to fly. Thus, astride our bucket, we shall face the new millennium, without hoping to find any more in it than what we ourselves are able to bring to it”.
This conception of lightness reminds me much of “my special philosophy”, again taken from one of Calvino’s complex stunning works, “The Invisible Cities”: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno,are not inferno, then make them endure,give them space”.

Now, as I said in my introduction, I actually have a different perspective on life these days, since if I look out of my window I can’t see THIS any longer

but THIS...

Got it! I’m at the seaside, in a beautiful island in the Tyrrhenian sea: Ischia. My sight is experiencing a feast of new light and colours , lots of blue and green nuances, bougainville everywhere. I’m reading a lot, relaxing alot and eating a lot! I have some problems with the Net, unfortunately, so I haven’t been able to and I won’t be blogging so much. I’ll try to do my best both at enjoying my holidays and at trying to get in touch with all of you.

I WON'T MISS THEM!

I mean, I won't miss these three good movies - at least I imagine and hope they really are good - which are going to be released at the end of this summer or at the beginning of next autumn. They are all set in the past and this is something I've always been charmed by. Good stories set in the past... period movies.

1. BRIGHT STAR - Release date 18th September 2009

I've already written about this movie not long ago. It was one among the films taking part in this year Cannes Festival directed by Jane Campion. Do you remember her? She's the director from New Zealand who won the Palme D’Or in 1993 with her wonderful THE PIANO. As I heard about it, I promised myself this film will be part of my DVD collection as soon as it will be released (with YOUNG VICTORIA, another costume film released this year, which I’m eagerly waiting to see).The movie tells the story of the tragic romance between JOHN KEATS, one othe English Romantic poets of the second generation, and Fanny Brawne. Keats has now become one of the most popular poets in the English language, but in his life, though he managed to publish his works, he wasn't either famous or rich.Keats, played by Ben Whishaw, met Fanny, Abbie Cornish in the movie, at his friend Charles Brown’s house in 1818 and soon fell in love with her. She was 18 and he was 23. He had already lost his mother for tuberculosis and his brother Tom would soon follow her, just when John himself started showing the first symptoms of the terrible desease.

GO ON READING

BRIGHT STAR OFFICIAL SITE
BRIGHT STAR AT IMDB

2. The second movie is AN EDUCATION - Release Date 9th October 2009

Starring Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina, Dominic Cooper (John Willoughby in BBC Sense and Sensibility 2008! ), Rosamund Pike and Emma Thompson, it is set in the post-war, pre-Beatles London suburbs and tells of a bright schoolgirl torn between studying for a place at Oxford and the more exciting alternative offered to her by a charismatic older man.

It was presented at Berlin Film Festival 2009 and the script is signed by NICK HORNBY. Do you know him? Have you ever read any of his hilarious contemporary very-British novels? I have and did enjoy at least three of his works: ABOUT A BOY, HOW TO BE GOOD and A LONG WAY DOWN.

OFFICIAL TRAILER




AN EDUCATION AT IMDB

3. The third movie is AMELIA - Release Date: October 23rd, 2009

Starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Virginia Madsen, the story focuses on the relationship between famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her husband George Putnam.

If you want to know more about the brave Amelia and her mysterious disappearance you can find lots of information at this site dedicated to her.

To anticipate the joy of watching the return of Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor on screen have a look at the official trailer.

Amelia Earhart at WIKIPEDIA

AMELIA 2009 at IMDB

SANDITON: JANE AUSTEN'S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE COMPLETED

Had Jane Austen lived to complete "Sanditon," it would undoubtedly be as famous and treasured as her other novels. But unfinished at her death, the masterpiece has remained mysterious and overlooked. Now, author Juliette Shapiro has completed "Sanditon" in a vivid style recognizable to any Austen fan. This is what this edition of SANDITON by Jane Austen and Juliette Shapiro, (Ulysses Press, 2009) announces in its back cover. This is the first book I decided to read for the EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE.

I made up my mind to read Jane’s fragment of Sanditon (12 chapters) first in the original version I’ve got in my edition of her MINOR WORKS (including also LADY SUSAN and THE WATSONS). Then I went on reading what Sanditon has become in J. Shapiro’s hands and imagination.
You all probably know that Jane was seriously ill when she wrote the opening chapters of Sanditon; she had less than six months to live. It is thus remarkable that the book is so fresh, innovative, and original. In her last completed novel, Persuasion, Austen had depicted how men of merit and small means could rise to affluence and position by means of service in the British navy. Sanditon builds on this theme, depicting the commercial development of a small watering place and the social confusion of its society (one character is a mulatto heiress from the West Indies, Miss Lambe).

DEIRDRE LA FAYE ON SANDITON
Before writing about my impressions of this edition of Austen’s last achievement, I’ll try to give you some more information taken from my precious Deirdre La Faye , JANE AUSTEN – The World of her Novels, pp. 298 -307.
It was intended to be a long wickedly comical tale concerning a group of seaside residents, some hopeful, some foolish, some cunning, but all interested in making money by developing their little local fishing village into a smart holiday resort. These twelve chapters introduce a long list of characters, abd end with the first indication of some kind of intrigue between two of them, but after the date of March 18 at the top of the last page, the rest of it is blank .
The protagonist is Charlotte, a tall and very pleasing young woman of two and twenty, the eldest of the daughters at home, who travels to Sanditon with Mr Parker, who had happened to be involved in a carriage accident just near her house and had stopped there as a guest with his wife waiting to recover . Jane Austen does not , in this fragment, give any description of Charlotte Heywood’s appearance, but in real life she knew a Charlotte Williams, daughter of one of the Hampshire clergy and wrote to Cassandra in 1813: “I admire the Sagacity & Taste of Charlotte Williams. Those large dark eyes always judge well. – I will compliment her, by naming a Heroine after her.” So perhaps Charlotte Heywood shares large dark eyes as well as a Christian name with the intelligent Miss Williams of Hampshire.

The male hero seems to be in Jane’s intentions, Sidney Parker, Mr Parker’s younger brother, who only makes a brief appearance very near the end of the fragment. He is evidently the odd one out in this amiable foolish family, as he is “very good-looking, with decided air of Ease and Fashion, and a lively countenance”.
At Sanditon Charlotte presently meets the brisk, formidable and rather vulgar Lady Denham, who has climbed socially and gained riches from two childless marriages and is now keeping a tight hold on her purse strings; this is greatly to the disappointment of young Sir Edward Denham, who cannot be as extravagant as he feels a baronet is entitled to be - he can only drive a gig instead of a curricle - and of his discontented sister, Esther. By her first marriage Lady Denham has acquired the large and handsome Sanditon House, where she lives with a poor and beauriful cousin, Clara Brereton , as her companion. When Charlotte and Mrs Parker walk up the long drive through the grounds to call at Sanditon House, Charlotte sees through the fence and trees that Clara and Sir Edward are having what is obviously a private conversation...and this is where the fragment ends.

Several attempts have been made in recent years to complete the story, but none with any great success, as there is really no indication how Jane Austen intended to develop the plot. Charlotte Heywood is evidently the heroine and Sidney Parker is introduced in terms which show him as the hero; Sir Eward will be a foolish and probably incompetent sort of villain, who will undoubtedly fail to seduce the astute Clara Brereton; but what with the several visitors to Sanditon who have been introduced by name and are waiting in the background, as well as the Parker family themselves, there is such a large cast of characters to be manipulated that the possibilities remain endless.

MY REVIEW

There are some aspects of the book that I would have changed.

Firstly I don’t like what Shapiro makes of Jane’s male protagonist, the hero of SANDITON, Sidney Parker. For instance, in Shapiro’s completion, Charlotte overhears Sidney revealing to his elder brother, Mr Parker, his intention to propose to her to give Sanditon an exciting event to talk about! Moreover, after his dashing entrance in Jane’s chapter 12, he is always laughing and telling silly shallow things in the following ones by Shapiro! What Kind of Austen’s hero is he? A Mr Elton? A Mr Collins? Rather improbable.
Secondly, I wish there had been more conversations between Charlotte and Sidney before … well … Their relationship is too rushed. Rather unacceptable.
Third disturbing element: there is an embarassing incident between two minor characters . Sir Edward Denham - the silly scoundrel of the story - apparently tries to attack sweet Clara Brereton, Lady Denham’s ward. Charlotte finds the poor girl on the ground in the garden without her collar. The scene is absolutely hilarious but it does not sound very Austenish to me. Such a direct reference to sexual harassment is rather improbable. I don’t remember any similar scene in her other novels. Too risqué!

Did I like anything in the book apart from Jane's infinite mastery at depicting new characters in a few lines which convinced me she could have written her most witty masterpiece - after Emma - if she had had the opportunity to live just a bit longer? YES! The painting in the front cover: THE SOUVENIR by Jean-Honoré Fragonard!

RELATED POSTS AND SITES

SANDITON in WIKIPEDIA

A DIFFERENT ATTEMPT TO COMPLETE THE FRAGMENT

JANE'S NIECE CONTINUATION OF SANDITON

A REVIEW BY PAMELA MOOMAN OF THIS EDITION

MY EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE LIST

INTO THE WILD

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

As I told you before, after a sitting marathon what I longed most was going for long walks. It has been terribly hot, unfortunately, in the last days so long walks were not recommended. Anyhow, yesterday I couldn't resist my sister's invitation to join her to a wanderful cool (in every sense) place she had gone to with her husband last Sunday. I had always heard about this splendid pond near my house but never went. I thought it was too dangerous to get there but I've just discovered it isn't . I have already shown and described my favourite walk some posts ago (HERE) and this spot is on the same route, near the monasteries, only you don't follow the main road at a certain crossroads ... Now, I absolutely want to share with you the incredible excursion my sister and I went for. It is just 3 minutes by car from my house, then ... into the wild. My eyes are still full of the green and the blue we were astonished by yesterday afternoon.

The amazing pond - St Benedict's pond it is called - we finally got to walking about half an hour after leaving the car, is formed by the river Aniene which comes out in a sudden sprinkling fall from a crevice in the mountain. Impressive. We sat there silent, watching and listening to the roaring of the water ... the voice of Nature, the sound of life. It was not hot at all, we needed a jumper and ... we were glad to be there. Glad to be alive.

I didn't know how to start this letter and now I don't know how to end it...

This afternoon my husband and I were working on our first videoclip. A home - made video clip resulted from an idea of mine and his ability with this kind of cutting and pasting software. Let's start from my idea: I wanted to unite images from the movie SYLVIA (2003) - have a look at my previos post LIFE WAS TOO SMALL TO CONTAIN HER - with Richard Armitage's reading of Ted Hughes's letters. Then have a look at the clip and ... it is the result of my husband's skills.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were two of the greatest poets of the 20th century. They were married but their relationship was never easy. They split up and, after writing her best poems, Sylvia killed herself. She was only 30. Ted Hughes wrote to Sylvia's mother after some time from her suicide. Can you imagine his sense of guilt? How difficult could it be to write such a letter? It's extremely moving. Get ready to shiver...

Related posts & sitesMy Utube ChannelLife was too small to contain herThe Ted Hughes Letters read by Richard Armitage