William Vollmann - Kissing the Mask - Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, ... Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines

K. OTHER ITEMS

183. —, The Epic of Gilgamesh , trans. N. K. Sandars (New York: Penguin, 1972; Akkadian Semitic text based on Sumerian from early 2nd. millennium B.C.).

184. Kevyn Aucoin, Making Faces (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1997).

185. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature , trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953; orig. Swiss [German-lang.] ed. 1946).

186. Willis Barnstone, comp. and trans., Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets (New York: Schocken, 1988 rev. & expansion of 1962 ed.).

187. Hans Bellmer, Little Anatomy of the Physical Unconscious, or, The Anatomy of the Image , trans. Jon Graham (Waterbury Center, Vermont: Dominion, 2004; orig. French ed. 2001).

188. Heinrich Böll, Adam and the Train , trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970).

189. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Letters to Atticus (works in 28 vols., vols. XXII–XXIV), trans. E. O. Winstedt (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1980–87 reprs. of 1912–18 eds.; orig. letters B.C. 65–44).

190. Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series XXXV 2; 1990 repr. of 1972 pbk; orig. text of A. W. Mellon Lectures 1953, augmented ca. 1956).

191. Dominique Collon, The Queen of the Night (London: The British Museum Press / British Museum Objects in Focus ser., 2005).

192. Edwin Denby, Dance Writings , ed. Robert Cornfield and William Mackay (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986; original essays 1936–65).

193. Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter, Greek Beauty (New York: Assouline, 2003; orig. French ed. n. d.).

194. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Handbook of the Antiquities Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2002).

195. Pat Getz-Gentle, Personal Styles in Early Cycladic Sculpture , with a chapter by Jack de Vries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001).

196. Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001; orig. ed. 1989).

197. Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).

198. [Jayadeva.] Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda , ed. and trans. Barbara Stoler Miller, 20th anniversary ed. (New York: Columbia University Press / Columbian Asian Studies ser. [Translations from the Asian Classics], 1997 rev. repr. of 1977 ed.; orig. Sanskrit text ca. 1205).

199. David Kunzle, Fashion and Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body Sculpture (Phoenix Mill / Sparkford, U.K.: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2006 repr. of 2004 rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1982).

200. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books , trans. and sel. with intro. by R. J. Hollingdale (New York: New York Review Books, 2000; orig. Penguin ed. 1990; orig. German notebooks wr. bef. 1800).

201. André Malraux, The Voices of Silence , trans. Stuart Gilbert (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series XXIV A; 1990 repr. of 1978 reissue; orig. 3-vol. ed. 1949–50).

202. Henri Matisse, Frauen: 32 Radierungen (Munich: Im-Insel Verlag, Insel-Bücherei Nr. 577, n. d., inscribed in flyleaf 1956).

203. William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories (New York: Library of America, 2008).

204. John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition , ed. Scott Elledge (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975; orig. poem 1674).

205. Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007).

206. Novalis [Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg], Henry von Ofterdingen , trans. Palmer Hilty (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974 repr. of 1964 ed.; orig. posthumous German ed. 1802).

207. Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago , trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari; “The Poems of Yurii Zhivago” trans. [from the Russian] by Bernard Guibert Guerney, revs. to trans. by Pantheon Books, 1958 (New York: New American Library of World Literature, Inc., Signet Books, 7th pr. 1961; orig. Italian ed. 1957; Russian ed. was later).

208. Giovanni Giovano Pontano, Baiea , trans. Rodney G. Dennis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, the I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2006; orig. poems fifteenth cent.).

209. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past , trans. C. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Vintage, 1982; orig. French ed. 1954); 3 vols.

210. James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library , 3rd rev. ed., trans. and introduced by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990).

211. Saadi [Sheikh Muslihuddin Saadi Shirazi], The Rose Garden (Gulistan), trans. Omar Ali-Shah (Reno, Nevada: Tractus Books, 1997; orig. Persian ed. ca. 1260).

212. William Kelly Simpson, ed., The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology ofr Stories, Instruction, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry , 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

213. The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats , ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1977 7th repr.; orig. copyright 1940).

214. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press / Bison Books, 1964; orig. Viking ed. 1943).

Periodicals and DVDs

215. Allure magazine. New York: Condé Nast Publications.

216. Harper’s Bazaar magazine. New York: harpersbazaar.com.

217. InStyle magazine. Group publisher, The Style Collection, Lynette Harrison Brubaker. New York: instyle.com.

218. Marie Claire magazine. New York: Hearst Communications and Comary, Inc.

219. New Beauty magazine. Boca Raton, Florida: Sandow Media Corporation.

220. San Francisco Chronicle .

221. Sophisticate’s Black Hair Styles and Care Guide magazine. Chicago: Associated Publications, Inc.

222. Vogue magazine. www.vogue.com.

Never winning permission to photograph any Noh performances or rehearsals, I made sketches instead. Hopefully these will give some indication of stage layout and choreography.

The geishas who danced for me were more permissive. You will find their performances documented here, even if inadequately.

Even a high-quality color photograph of a Noh mask, printed on the best glossy stock, would fail to serve, given the subtleties of mask painting, and, more important, the power that these works of art possess of seeming to alter expression with angle. I refer you to the bibliography for several beautifully illustrated works on this topic; likewise for portraits of geishas.

As for Kabuki, that is scarcely represented here in either text or images. My apologies.

I would have liked to reproduce images of Stiff White Ladies, Genji Picture-Scrolls, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga paintings, Noh fans, cosmetic advertisements and the like, but “commercial considerations” advised against it.

Finally, I want to assure you that even though my made-up face appears in a couple of illustrations herein, I lack illusions as to my attractiveness. It seemed germane to show how different makeup artists addressed the same problem. Smeary reproductions on rough paper stock may well improve the originals.