SARAH BERNHARDT AND HER WORLD

by Joanna Richardson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1977

She will always be one of the permanent and beautiful guesses of mankind,"" wrote the Divine's 1933 biographer, Maurice Baring, and that aura of provocative mystery is gloriously rampant in this volume's wanton display of period cartoons, portraits, and photographs. The hair-haloed face and spirally-draped body look bewilderingly, beguilingly different from page to page: Semitic in profile, Parisienne when full-face, fearfully gaunt as Phèdre but all belly and hips as Lady Macbeth, suddenly matronly in 1903 (at 59), then magically rejuvenated as nineteen-year-old Jeanne D'Arc six years later. Richardson's once-over-lightly text generates far less drama, breezily splicing fact and legend with just the faintest touch of irony as ""Dona Sol"" or ""Notre Dame de Belle-île"" (her Brittany retreat) feuds with the ComÉdie FranÇaise, abandons lovers, sculpts, paints, writes, tours, and dies dramatically (inspiring a new idiom, faire sa Sarah) again and again. Gobs of contemporaneous quotes (the negative reviews along with the hosannas) help by breaking up the bland narrative, but readers mesmerized by the face in those pictures will probably want to plunge into the tapestry of Skinner's Madame Sarah rather than dally with Richardson's doily.

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977

Categories: NONFICTION