#stephen walsh

[dungeonlust]

Art by • Stephen Walsh

[dreamsrecurring]

[feuillesmortes]

Si je suis digne de servir ton fils, le martyre des martyrs Mon Dieu, je te demande un signe Si je suis digne

The triumphant reverberations of Gabriel D’Annunzio’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien echo to an enormous, wordy five-act drama that, when performed with Debusssy’s music, last the best part of five hours. D’Annunzio’s actual title for the play was Le Mystère de Saint Sébastien, and it added a number of uncanonical details to what was known about the saint’s life. 

The pagan elements in D’Annunzio’s treatment may well have appealed to the dancer Ida Rubinstein, with her memories of performing Cleopatra and the Sultana Zobeïda in the Ballets Russes’ production of Scheherazade. But the handling was D’Annunzio’s contribution alone: the blurring of the division between the pagan and the Christian, the image of Sebastian as an Adonis, a Greek god led astray, as Diocletian seems to argue, or as a Roman officer almost too much loved by his men. The author shares their regret that this beautiful young man should renounce the sensual pleasures of the world for a painful death and the questionable joys of an afterlife without sin, and for the agnostic, beauty-loving Debussy, these ambiguities were surely a stimulus.

Often in this marvellous but uneven score one is conscious of Debussy’s familiar style taking on new colourings in response to the overheated strangeness of D’Annunzio’s conception, in which early Christianity is—perhaps rightly—depicted as no less remote and cabbalistic in its way than the seven planetary sorceress in their magic chamber. Sebastian dances, and is mourned, to dissonant but finely designed harmonies that take to a new pitch Debussy’s preocupation with the voicing and balancing of individual chords. Simple parallel chords like the ones that open the work crop up a number of times, often in mysterious sequences that suggest a secret and alien church. The persistent slow music occasionally drags its heels, and the choral final act, in Paradise, has the slight flatness that often aflicts the music of Heaven by composers who have no particular desire to go there.

D’Annunzio’s play, with Debussy’s music, was performed for the first time on 22 May 1911 at the Théatre du Châtelet, with Ida Rubinstein as Sebastian, choreography by Mikhail Fokine and designs by Lev Bakst. A week before the performance, the Archbishop of Paris gave the show unintentional publicity by pronouncing anathema on it and threatening Catholics who attended with excommunication, a fairly reliable way, one would think, of ensuring that they would turn up in droves.

— Stephen Walsh, Debussy: A Painter in Sound; “Theatres of the Body and the Mind”

[dungeonlust]

Art by • Stephen Walsh

[downthetubes]

In the latest episode of Strawjack: Figgerty's Gallop by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, while off the coast of France, smuggler king Strawjack espies something odd...

Strawjack: "Figgerty's Gallop" - Page 2

Strawjack: "Figgerty's Gallop" - Page 2

[downthetubes]

Steampunk comic "Figgerty's Gallop" by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page drops like a jackhammer onto the pages of downthetubes! new pages soon!

Starts Today! Strawjack in "Figgerty's Gallop"

[downthetubes]

Well, yes, I have been playing catch up. Holidays are allowed, now and again.

But I know you have all been waiting patiently, so here's Page 15 of "Strawjack: Figgerty's Gallop" by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page! Can there be restitution for the outright destruction of Strawjack's wondrous devices? A cook takes on a former role to do just that: https://crucible-comic-press.ghost.io/strawjack-in-figgertys-gallop-page-15/

[downthetubes]

In the latest episode of our gothic adventure comic, "Strawjack: Figgerty's Gallop" by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, published by the downthetubes imprint Crucible Comic Press, Strawjack's allies catch up with their confused prey: https://crucible-comic-press.ghost.io/strawjack-in-figgertys-gallop-page-12/

Strawjack in "Figgerty's Gallop" - Page 12

Strawjack's allies catch up with their confused prey...