Life and Lillian Gish (1932)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Also, the Intelligentsia 207 I don't know when Joseph Hergesheimer first came under the Lillian spell, but probably about the time he used her as his model for "Cytherea," which I regard as something less of a compliment than his article in the American Mercury, April, 1924. In this article, he is supposed to be talking to Lillian. "No one," I told her, "who has worked with you, has the slightest idea of what your charm really is. Two men, and not unsuccessfully, have written about it, about you . . . James Branch Cabell and myself. James thinks it is Helen of Troy; and if he is right, then you, too, are Helen. I mean that you have the quality which, in a Golden Age, would hold an army about the walls of a city for seven years." Hergesheimer was proposing a picture, in which, as he assured her, she would be "like the April moon, a thing for all young men to dream about forever . . . the fragrant April moon of men's hopes . . . 'No one, seeing you, will ever again be deeply interested in other girls.' I recalled to her the legend of Diana — how a countryman, hearing Diana's horn through the woods, lost in vague restlessness his familiar content. 'You will be the clear and unforgettable silver horn.' " It was in the guise of Jurgen that James Branch Cabell celebrated Lillian, wrote of her as Queen Helen, "the delight of gods and men, who regarded him with grave, kind eyes" . . . whom, long ago, Jurgen had loved, in "the garden between dawn and sunrise." Then, trembling, Jurgen raised toward his lips the hand of her who was the world's darling. . . . "Oh, all my life was a foiled quest of you, Queen Helen, and an unsatiated hungering. And for a while I served my vision, honoring you with