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Saturday 15th Sept, 1962. 3.30pm.
The heavy cement silence and quiet of Saturday afternoon is creeping steadily here, my beloved Svetlana Gee! In Oslo, you must be getting ready after your siesta to go to the Norwegian Opera House for your Checkmate2 tonight. And then off to Stockholm. Hope my cable reaches you as you enter your dressing room, my love. Sud is very nostalgic to see his wife dance again. At the Better Bookshop in Charing X Road,3 where I had wandered to after the last patient in the afternoon for a change of atmospheres, I was fingering through various new books and came across a passage in Sir Anthony Blunt’s Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600 which revivified so intensely my experience of you dancing that I bought the book. It reads:
The crucial feature in [the] whole of Vasari’s (an Italian critic and art-biographer from 15th century) theory is the appearance of the new quality of grace, la grazia…. with Vasari it takes on a new function; it is distinguished from beauty and even contrasted with it. It is never clearly defined in the Lives, but by bringing together different passages we
Transcription and annotation by Dany Nobus, with the kind assistance of Linda Hopkins and Matt ffytche, who helped resolve some difficulties in Khan’s handwriting, and of Max Maher, who checked everything for accuracy and stylistic consistency. All words that are underlined in the original letters have been reproduced here in italics, whereas errors or idiosyncrasies in spelling have been highlighted by the insertion of [sic] after the word in question. Other insertions between square brackets have been added to improve the readability of the text.
Checkmate is a ballet in one act with choreography by Ninette de Valois and music by Arthur Bliss . It was first performed in Paris on 15 June 1937.
Better Books was a famous bookstore at 94 Charing Cross Road in London. It was established by the publisher Tony Godwin in 1946 and closed its doors in 1967. During the 1
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Transcription and annotation by Dany Nobus, with the kind assistance of Linda Hopkins and Matt ffytche, who helped resolve some difficulties in Khan’s handwriting, and of Max Maher, who checked everything for accuracy and stylistic consistency. All words that are underlined in the original letters have been reproduced here in italics, whereas errors or idiosyncrasies in spelling have been highlighted by the insertion of [sic] after the word in question. Other insertions between square brackets have been added to improve the readability of the text.
Checkmate is a ballet in one act with choreography by Ninette de Valois and music by Arthur Bliss . It was first performed in Paris on 15 June 1937.
Better Books was a famous bookstore at 94 Charing Cross Road in London. It was established by the publisher Tony Godwin in 1946 and closed its doors in 1967. During the 1