Rue Royale

I blog and reblog anything that I fancy, including Nabokoviana, Final Fantasy X and X-2, vampires, classics stuff, climbing.

[vampire-scripture]

Rice on Adaptation

What movie do you not want to see?

[rueroyale]

Or else: the constant feeling that our days here are only pocket money, farthings clinking in the dark, and that somewhere is stocked the real wealth, from which life should know how to get dividends in the shape of dreams, tears of happiness, distant mountains.

[peachpulpeuse]

It happens that over a long period you are promised a great success, in which from the very start you do not believe, so dissimilar is it from the rest of fate's offerings, and if from time to time you do think of it, then you do so as it were to indulge your fantasy—but when, at last, on a very ordinary day with a west wind blowing, the news comes—simply, instantaneously and decisively destroying any hope in it—then you are suddenly amazed to find that although you did not believe in it, you had been living with it all this time, not realizing the constant, close presence of the dream, which had long since grown fat and independent, so that now you cannot get it out of your life without making a hole in that life.

Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift

[rueroyale]

The accounting theme in Catullus 5

…value at one as…

…thousand… hundred… another thousand… hundred… again a thousand… a third hundred

…we will have lost the count…

When he knows how many…

[merciful-prince]

“His victims had always loved him. And I had always loved him, hadn't I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?”

— Lestat - Vampire Lestat (Anne Rice)

[merciful-prince]

“On the edge of the white concrete he appeared. Tall, slender figure. Short dark hair. And then he paused as if he could see me in the electric blue haze behind the glass veil. Yes, he saw me. And he moved towards me, towards the light. Agile, traveling just a little too lightly for a mortal. Black hair, green eyes, and the limbs shifting silkily under the neglected garments: a frayed black sweater that hung shapelessly from his shoulders, legs like long black spokes. I felt the lump come up in my throat. I was trembling.”

— Lestat - Vampire Lestat (Anne Rice)

[rueroyale]

This was one of the foundational moments for me. Some pieces of art I just go back to again and again and this is one of them. Must be 25 years ago now, but still, the momentum, the heat…

[garama-deactivated20140723]

and etc..

[garama]

Commission for chrissydeath (stylized version of their fantastic Armand cosplay)! (●˙▿˙●)

[rueroyale]

The Swift

Vladimir Nabokov

One night between sunset and river

On an old bridge we stood, you and I.

Will you ever forget it, I queried,

That particular swift that went by?

And you answered, so earnestly: Never!

And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,

What a cry life emitted in flight!

Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever,

You and I on the old bridge one night.

[rueroyale]

Still my fave.

[twilight-gullwing]

someone’s turning yuna into a bad girl.

who??

[ffxmtg]

Tireless Tracker Illustrator: Rui Maruyama

[ffxmtg]

Rampant Rejuvenator Illustrator: SENNSU

[ffxmtg]

Temple of Plenty Illustrator: Racrufi (Raúl Cruz)

[mappingthemoon]

"Ember hesitated, then dialled fluently. The line was engaged. That sequence of small bar-shaped hoots was like the long vertical row of superimposed I’s in an index by first lines to a verse anthology. I am a lake. I am a tongue. I am a spirit. I am fevered. I am not covetous. I am the Dark Cavalier. I am the torch. I arise. I ask. I blow. I bring. I cannot change. I cannot look. I climb the hill. I come. I dream. I envy. I found. I heard. I intended an Ode. I know. I love. I must not grieve, my love. I never. I pant. I remember. I saw thee once. I travelled. I wandered. I will. I will, I will. I will."

--Vladimir Nabokov, from Bend Sinister (1947)

[rueroyale]

Annotations:

“I am fevered.” From “The Sea Gypsy” Richard Hovey, 1896

“I am not covetous.” From Shakespeare’s St Crispin’s Day speech, Henry V.

“I am the Dark Cavalier.” From “The Dark Cavalier” Margaret Widdemer, 1918

“I intended an Ode.” From “Urceus Exit,” Henry Austin Dobson (year?)

“I Must Not Grieve My Love.” From Sonnet XLVIII of the Delia sonnets, Samuel Daniel, 1592

“I saw thee once.” From “To Helen,” Edgar Allan Poe, 1848

I’m sure these are all real poems, I just can’t find them.

[snartha]

John Shade & Charles Kinbote

[xxhellonursexx]

In the final pages of “Prince Lestat,” Louis sits under a tree at Trinity Gate, reflecting on his own words to Daniel Molloy in his own memoir, “Interview with the Vampire.”

This portion of the book also has a passage about Louis that I have, in many ways, never recovered from:

“His heart broke for all the victims everywhere of blood lust, and war, and accident, and old age, and illness, and unendurable pain.

But his heart broke a little for once for himself too.

And perhaps that was the real change in him, the change that he welcomed–that he could see himself as part now of all this great and glistening world. He was not part of some mindless force that sought to destroy it. No, he was part of it.”

[rueroyale]

I read this on plane back from Joshua Tree in 2016, a few months after having my world upended in the seminal event of my adult life. It’s not a comparable situation at all to what Louis was going through here, but something in this passage struck me and has imprinted on me ever since. I started to cry involuntarily, inexplicably, but cathartically. A crazy feeling that’s hard to describe.

On that plane ride, I felt like I turned a corner on my heartbreak by the revelation of self-compassion. Maybe just seeing someone else, even if fictional, healing himself through compassion was enough to give me purpose and give me hope for the future.

[rueroyale]

Coming back to this passage in times of turmoil. Self compassion and the idea of becoming ever more what we are, are what I’m clinging to right now.

Maybe the old ones are right. I refer now to the true immortals — the blood drinkers who've survived the millennia — who say that none of us really changes over time; we only become more fully what we are.

-QotD

[rueroyale]

I’ve reached the point where I no longer want any of my childhood media to be remade or continued or adapted.