WINTER 2022 | Vol. 7

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"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people:

that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."



Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet

The great French writer Marcel Proust once wrote, “If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”

During these past two years it seems that we have had more time than ever to dream, because what else could we do? Things like traveling for leisure, concerts, opera and theater became highly restricted. We sat at our dining room tables, alone or with a partner and began to imagine what we would do as things opened up. A weekend in Paris, an opera at the Met, Beethoven at Symphony Hall. We looked at photos taken prior to 2020 showing audiences gathered together listening to beautiful music or watching a great play. And we were saddened. 

This Travel and Culture Newsletter was created as an antidote for this longing. We had time on our hands, so we asked ourselves, "Where were the classic novels we had never finished, the old movies from the 1930's and 1940's? How about some Medieval history?”  Diving into culture in this way we sought to awaken in you these same latent passions. After all, how much yoga can can one person do?

Now as things are opening up, do we drop these dreams? Or do we dangerously carry on and dream more?

Happy Valentine's Day to one and all ❤️!

Karin

P.S. Please see the end of the newsletter for information on upcoming classes and workshops I am teaching, including my birthday class! 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was fashionable in aristocratic circles in France and England to celebrate Valentine’s Day with flirtatious entertainments. Young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their Valentine would be. They would then wear the name on their sleeves for one week.

One of Charles d’Orleans's most famous poems “Le Printemps” is still taught in schools in Europe. It’s a simple poem depicting the arrival of spring:

Le temps a laissé son manteau.

De vent, de froidure et de pluie,

Et s’est vêtu de broderie,

De soleil luisant, clair et beau.

Il n’y a bête, ni oiseau

Qu’en son jargon ne chante ou crie :

Le temps a laissé son manteau.



Rivière, fontaine et ruisseau

Portent en livrée jolie,

Gouttes d’argent d’orfèvrerie, 

Chacun s’habille de nouveau :

Le temps a laissé son manteau.

The season has removed its coat. 

of wind, cold and rain,

And dressed up in embroidery,

Of glistening sunshine, clear and bright.

There isn’t an animal or bird

That in it’s language doesn’t say:

The season has removed its coat.

Rivers, fountains and brooks

Wear lively sparkling pearls, 

 And bright beads of silver jewelry,

Everyone dresses in new clothes:

The season has removed its coat.*

*The English translation above is not literal but is meant to give a sense of the poem

This interpretation of "Le Printemps" is set to music and sung by French singer-songwriter Michel Polnareff

NINOTCHKA

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch & Sidney Franklin

Screenplay by Melchior Lengyel, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder & Walter Reisch

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939

110 minutes

"Nobody understands anymore that ‘less is more.’”

Nicola Lubitsch, daughter of Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch and I have some things in common. He didn't eat cheese and he didn't want his wife to eat it either. Ok, I'm not married. His father had a woman's clothing shop in Germany (see the movie The Shop Around the Corner). My father had a men's clothing shop in Chicago. He was indifferent to things and objects in his house, but he loved putting them in his films. I don't make films, but anyone who has been at The Loft gets this. Lastly, he managed to make Greta Garbo, known for her seriousness and sometimes grimness, laugh uncontrollably in one of the funniest scenes in his iconic masterpiece Ninotchka. Let's say the comparison stops here. The only time I ever saw Greta Garbo in person was when my brother almost knocked her over in the corridor of an ocean liner on its way to Sweden in 1946. She didn't laugh then.

Some people say that it was so unlike Garbo to laugh in that manner, she must have been dubbed, but Billy Wilder, one of the writers, confirmed it actually was Garbo laughing on her own. Playing the role of Nina Ivanovna Yakushova, nicknamed Ninotschka, an agent from Soviet Russia, she has been ordered to Paris to check on three emissaries who were sent to sell some jewels which once belonged to the Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), and which were confiscated by the Bolsheviks. Influenced by the strictness and severity of Russian culture at the time, she goes to a worker's restaurant to have lunch. The waiter asks her what she wants, and she replies, “Raw beets and carrots.” He answers back, "Madame, this is a restaurant not a meadow!"  

The French playboy, Count Leon (Melvin Douglas) who has been after her ever since he met her on a Paris street corner, walks into the restaurant and finds her there “by surprise.” He tries to engage her with one joke after the other. Ninotchka, who is trying to avoid him, coldly pushes back when he tries to flirt with her.  Then in his last attempt to make her smile, he tells a joke he himself finds so funny that he inadvertently falls off his chair. The restaurant is in an uproar and Ninotchka finally succumbs.

This movie is a love story between Garbo's Ninotchka and Douglas's Count Leon. It is also a satire about the clash of two cultures: the stringent and doctrinaire way of life in Soviet Russia in the late 30's and the luscious and sensuous way of life in Paris during the same period. 

Lubitsch, who came to America in 1922 was the principal filmmaker who, according to Jean Renoir, “invented the modern Hollywood.” He helped shape and deeply inspired many of the great directors who came after him including Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, Max Ophuls (see my review of “The Earrings of Madame D.”) and even Hitchcock and Renoir. David Niven called him “the master's master.” He is known for his economy of means, which, to continue his daughter Nicola’s remark quoted above, "There are no extra words, no extra scenes, everything is there because it needs to be." He is also known for his rhythmic dialogue and rhythmic use of the camera. He broke through, in Peter Bogdanovich’s words “the Puritanical square sexual mores in America at the time,” and brought the sensuality and romantic sophistication of European culture, and explored the deeper complexity of feelings between men and women.

Most importantly he brought into the world of film something called “The Lubitsch Touch.'' I have read many definitions of this expression, but I think the best appeared in an interview with film critic Joseph McBride responding to the question about whether this was just a marketing term:

 "…[it] implies a delicacy of treatment and his films are very delicate and very subtle. But what it really refers to is his elliptical way of story telling. He hated filming obvious scenes. The way of showing the essence of the scene instead of showing the actual scene… It is more the reactions and the ramifications of something..."   

Lubitsch was famous for his use of closed doors behind which the action was taking place. The audience surmised what was going on by the sounds, and the reactions of the other characters, but never saw exactly what was happening. Lubitsch trusted his audience. As Nicola explains: "...he expected you to be intelligent...and to get it and that to me is 'The Lubitsch Touch.'"

Oh for a little of that “touch” to rub off on me when I sit down to write! If and when that happens, I can then say that "I have one more thing in common" with this great filmmaker. In the meantime I encourage you to see this movie and observe how he does it, and how Garbo moves us both towards hilarity and sadness in her brilliant rendition of Ninotchka!  

THE MERCURY VISIONS OF LOUIS DAGUERRE

by Dominic Smith

Washington Square Press

New York, 2006

Paperback, 304 pages

A VISION OF PARIS

The Photographs of Eugene Atget

The Words of Marcel Proust

The Macmillan Company

New York, 1963

Hardcover, 211 pages

The relationship between a photographic image and reality is at best tenuous. It is partially this tension between the photograph and its subject that creates art out of what essentially could be seen as a document. The blurred boundary around this interaction is why it is appropriate that author Dominic Smith has chosen to blend history and fiction in his novel The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) discovered one of the first methods of creating a stable photographic image from focused light. The daguerrotype was made with a thin sheet of copper which was plated with light sensitive silver oxide and developed with mercury vapors. 

Smith’s novel imagines a rich life for his character Daguerre, in which time and light, the main components of photography, are major themes, perhaps even characters in their own right. 

A twelve year old Daguerre falls in love with light when a small rip in the curtain in his dim sick room creates a camera obscura, projecting the image of a tree outside the window onto the opposite wall. On the same day he falls in love with the servant girl who becomes the love of his life. The book follows his ongoing obsession with both, and takes place mostly in Paris, the city of light. In his later years Daguerre has visions as well as physical symptoms resulting from his exposure to toxic mercury gases. After receiving an apocalyptic prophecy, he forms a list of ten things he must photograph before the end. They include a naked woman, galloping horses and the perfect Paris boulevard. 

Daguerre’s lifetime coincided with the Revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Restoration eras, and the social, cultural and political events of the time are integrated playfully into the novel. In my favorite scene, a middle aged Daguerre attends a wild party hosted by his young friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and his gang of bohemian artists. The party takes place in an abandoned squatter-mansion, complete with beheaded statuary and an overgrown orangerie. On his way in Daguerre notices a man with a beret walking his pet lobster on a leash - a reference to writer Gérard de Nerval - the book is full of details like this. Later that evening, Daguerre is invited up to the Poet’s Corner, where VIPs are being served cannabis infused oil and then observed by a “doctor.”

Smith’s writing is cinematic as well as sensorial - the large and the intimate are equally rendered - and as such allowed me to inhabit the time and space of the characters. (I really enjoyed that party). Books rarely make me cry, and this one did. It is after all a love story, a tragic one, but it ends with a hint of redemption and hope. It seems appropriate, in this book about Daguerre, that light wins.

The French government purchased the rights to the daguerreotype process, and in return Daguerre received a pension for life. But the reception to the invention was mixed. People just didn’t know what to make of it, and for a long time its use was heavily influenced by the way painting had been used, but photography lacked an identity of its own. When Eugene Atget opened his photography business in Paris in 1898, the sign outside read, “Documents Pour Artistes.” Atget (1856-1927) started out making images for artists who used them as reference images for their paintings. But like the fictional Daguerre he fell in love with light and photography and with the city of Paris itself. He began creating a collection of images documenting the beauty of Paris. Like Smith’s Daguerre, Atget saw the changes occurring in his city because of modernization and wanted to record what he saw before it was lost to history. Unlike the pioneer Daguerre, Atget was a bit of an anachronism. He used heavy glass plates for negatives and a huge camera with a lens that did not correct for distortion, even though more modern and less cumbersome methods existed. Also, unlike Daguerre, Atget did not receive recognition for his work until after his death. Now he is considered to be a forerunner of modern photography.

A Vision of Paris combines Atget’s photographs with excerpts from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s words evoke images, while across the page Atget’s images suggest stories. The juxtaposition of the two brings out how much more Atget’s photographs are than just mere documents. Atget did not consider himself an artist, but when he went out to photograph his beloved Paris, he made choices (for example, choosing to work very early in the morning when there were no people on the streets), that are as important as the choices that Proust or any other writer makes when they select which words to put on the page. In Atget’s case, this specific choice impacts the image immensely because it dictates the quality of the light. It also impacts the stories that we as viewers create - the lack of life on the city streets elicits feelings of loss and emptiness, and nostalgia, the feeling that we have arrived late and the action has already occurred.

The book as a physical object also conjures up feelings and stories. It carries a faint smell of age, of dampness and of the places it has inhabited. The paper is uncoated and heavy, almost like smooth watercolor paper. The images are a warm brown tone that comes from Atget processing his prints with gold chloride to make them more archival. Seeing an image on a page is altogether different than seeing one on the screen. Holding it in my hands I feel a nostalgia and longing for books, and looking at the photographs inside inspires a longing for a place and time I have never known.

CHAIR POSE - UTKATASANA

Chair pose gives you a powerful way to strengthen and integrate your body from your toes to your ribs. The pose dovetails beautifully with movements you make all day, every day, like climbing stairs, sitting down, standing up and squatting. In addition, if you squeeze a block between the upper thighs while in the pose, it provides an excellent means of “compacting the hips,” as we say in Iyengar Yoga. 

What does “compacting the hips" mean? 

Well, I like to think of it as engaging the inner groin, outer hip and buttock muscles as well as your deep abdominal and hip muscles. All of these muscles work in concert to knit the upper legs to the pelvis as well as to the lower torso, integrating the legs with the rest of the body. Then, from the stability and symmetry you create, lift, lift, lift !!! 

What about the arms?

In chair pose, you may feel your shoulders lifting and a foreshortening and tensing of the back of your neck. I recommend that you slightly tuck your chin and slowly swing the arms forward and upward as if lifting a beachball up in front of your nose -- and possibly even up overhead -- then sweep the arms back, like a super-hero’s cape flowing behind you, as you squeeze your shoulder blades together and broaden your chest. This movement can help free neck tension and distract you from how tired your legs are!

What about that pinching in my low back?

One of the key pitfalls of chair pose is the tendency to jut the buttocks backwards and over-arch the lumbar spine. It is quite normal for the body to fall into this default pattern. To prevent this, try following the following steps to enter the pose:

1. Stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) with your knees slightly bent. If possible, place a block at its narrowest width between the upper thighs, close to the pelvis.

2. Place your hands on your hips and as you lift your toes to bring the weight into your heels, push the buttocks backwards and sink down, as if sitting on a low chair far behind you. Pull your knees as far back as possible, keeping your weight in your heels.

3. Maintain the depth of your knee bend as you scoop the belly in towards the spine and press your lumbar vertebrae backwards as if doing “cat” pose in your low back only, creating a posterior tilt of the pelvis. Use one hand to feel your vertebrae bristling outward behind you as your belly hollows.

4. Maintain the pelvic tilt as you sink your buttocks a little deeper, then raise your chest and shoulders towards vertical, stopping at a slight forward tilt to your spine. You can repeat these two movements, giving yourself a chance to gradually drop into a deeper knee bend. Once you are at the full depth of your seat, hold.

5. Breathe in deeply as you sweep your arms forward, palms facing the midline, as if holding that beach ball between your hands, as your shoulders drop down away from your ears. 

6. Breathe out fully as you sweep your arms down and back behind you and squeeze your shoulder blades together.

7. Hold the pose as your arms sweep slowly forward and backwards between the two positions, breathing!

8. Lastly, for a challenge, try bringing the weight into the balls of the feet and lifting your heels as you gaze at a fixed point and balance.

MY FREE BIRTHDAY CLASS - Sunday February 20th, 2022 - You can find the Zoom class login information in The Loft Winter Schedule.

YOGA AND AGING: Cultivating Resilience Program - Workshops begin February 27th ! - Learn more here.

ADVANCED ASANA WORKSHOP - Saturday March 19th and Sunday March 20th at The Lotus Pond, Tampa, Florida. Click here for more information.