how heaven is a slaughterhouse

emily. 20s. medievalist.

[seasonofhorror]

CARRIE

1976, dir. Brian De Palma

[tereshkina]

Giselle holding Albrecht's sword by the blade <3

(1. Beryl Goldwyn 2. Marianela Nuñez 3. Anna Pavlova 4. Irina Kolpakova)

[symeonae]

The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[odetopictorialism]

Edwin Bower Hesser • Esther Ralston (Follies girl and silent actress) 1926

[shisasan]

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June [originally published 1986]

[consecrationoftheflesh]

Le Vampire de l’Opium (1911)

[frostedmagnolias]

Dress

c. 1905

Bodice and skirt of green chiffon overlaid with green cotton, trimmed with lilac artificial flowers

unknown maker

Victoria and Albert Museum

[petaltexturedskies]

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? (…) In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all that they could.

Mary Oliver, from West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

[pmamtraveller]

Yelizaveta Savina - “Princess Tamara,” a triptych based on M.Y. Lermontov's poem “The Demon.”

[metmuseum]

Claymore. 16th–17th century. Credit line: Bequest of Alan Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, 1954 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/27515

[redhairclara]

Dorothy Knapp photographed by Florence Vandamm for the Broadway production Fioretta, 1929. From my collection.

[aperfumedpearl]

early 20th century France

[roadmotel]

Franz Wright, The New Jerusalem

[bebemoon]

carol kane

[corpsecoded-deactivated20250106]

Mysterious Skin, Scott Heim

[charnel-grounds]

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) - Untitled, Boulder, CO. (Self-Portrait), c. 1972-75

gelatin silver print

[majestativa]

I saw the image of my dream lover before my eyes, clearer than life—much more clearly than I could see my own hand. I talked to it, cried before it, cursed it; I called it [...] Beloved and foresaw its ripe, all-fulfilling kiss, called it devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It lured me into the most tender and beautiful dreams, and into vile shamelessness; nothing was too good and precious for it, nothing too low and bad.

— Hermann Hesse, Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth, transl by Damion Searls, (2013)