Word: helene
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...gave utterance to these lines was, of course, the Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania. Last week, she and her daughter-in-law, Princess Helen, mother of Baby King Mihai, jointly received in audience the new Peasant Prime Minister of Rumania, Juliu Maniu - he who has just overthrown the corrupt, oligarchical gov ernment of onetime Prime Minister Vintila Bratiano (TIME, Nov. 12 et seq.). To the Dowager Queen and the Princess-Mother-of-a-King, Peasant Maniu revealed a truly staggering state of affairs. He declared that upon coming into power, last fortnight, he found in the Royal Treasury a cash...
...Story. Hugo von Hofmannsthal* did the text for Strauss' Helen and laid the scene in Egypt. Helen and Menelaus are headed home. Troy has fallen. Hector and Achilles are dead. So is the graceful Paris, and by the same curved sword Helen too must die as an atonement to the Greeks. A sorceress learned all this from Muschel, a psychic shell which reported in a bold contralto a vision of Menelaus stealing hugger-mugger into the ship's hold, knife ready. Aithra, the sorceress, had strange powers. Just then she managed a mighty storm to stay the murderer...
...kill or not to kill-Menelaus was distracted. Out came his knife and Helen smiled as poets have had her smile, until, hypnotized, he dropped it. But smiling might not always save her and Aithra mixed a potion that would bring forgetfulness and safety. Menelaus drank and Helen became for him a phantom he could love, one who had never sinned against him and his countrymen. He was happy for a moment, would start at once for home but Helen had her qualms. She remembered. So did all Greeks and again she appealed to Aithra and again Aithra made magic...
There Menelaus woke, distracted still. Helen was pure, but just a shadow Helen. The real one he had killed, just as he killed Paris, just as he would kill anyone who dared rest his eyes on her. Death, Helen decided, was better than a half-mad Menelaus who thought her just a shadow creature, and perhaps death would not come so long as she could smile. Packed away there was another potion that might restore him. Aithra warned her but she took no notice, clapped for wine and balsam and herself brewed the cup of quietude that proved...
...Frau ohne Schatten. She was his Salome, his Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier). He saw her in Max Reinhardt's revival of Offenbach's Belle Hélène and an idea was born. It simmered and swelled until last winter he finished for her his Helen...