Word: mistressful
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...piquant item dealt with sex among Communist bigwigs-particularly buxom Nilde Jotti, who is currently Togliatti's mistress, but had a long career in Red-style amore before that. The article made instructive reading at a time when the Communists, exploiting the Montesi scandal, have been rending the air with their own pretensions to morality...
...representing the artist, or creator, fleeing from the temptation and challenge of fame. The artist goes in self-exile to a desolate "honest island" with a woman who is the spirit, within himself, of learning and self-improvement. But also within him is the spirit of a former mistress, fame, still calling him to creation. Using the vitality and comfort of fortune and power as her lures, she holds behind these overt blandishments the artist's recollection of his past creations and the joy they brought him. In his withdrawal from fame and creation is the basis of his discontent...
...imperfect artist the seeds of its own downfall, this play is not particularly startling or inflammatory. One must then ask if its general obscurity and murky symbolism are quite justified. Granting Arcadia its moments of brilliant imagery, and a really fine scene between the artist and his ex-mistress, the poetry is not, intrinsically, worth the effort of picking what is good from the shielding verbiage. Neither does the authoress, V. R. Lang, enjoy so glittering a reputation that one is compelled to find out just what she means. Another poet's cry for "more substance and less...
...inspiring, Sourian matches this performance with, what seems at first (and may be, since it is consistent throughout), a generally plodding interpretation, without verve or vigor. In terms of the play this is precisely the wanted effect, and this same interpretation is perfect, meshing with the ex-mistress' calculating shrewdness, when the two finally meet. Phoebe, the symbol of fame's temptation, is admirably played by Sarah Braveman. Her Tallulah Bankhead reading of the part manages to suggest both the grossness and warmth of her character...
LOST SPLENDOR, by Prince Felix Youssoupoff (307 pp.; Putnam; $4.50), offers the memoirs of the scion of one of Rus sia's great feudal families. Prince Youssoupoff's great-grandmother was Emperor Nicholas I's mistress, and his great-greatgrandfather was a lover of Catherine the Great. The old rake was so rich he had a private theater and ballet, and so dissolute that when he waved his cane all dancers appeared on stage stark naked. Young Prince Felix married a niece of the Czar, vowed he would save the 300-year-old Romanoff dynasty by assassinating...