To be honest, I thought this book was made just like the alphabet. A – A kind of story connected with a person with the letter A or with America. B (it should have been Latin B, because we are talking about German – our hero wrote his memoirs in it – but if we go this way, we get confused in words and letters), C … etc.
But no. (Or was there some other truth hidden from the current reader, such a book? A conceptual product almost ahead of its time? But I can’t find this book). Marlene Dietrich’s “The Alphabet of My Life” is written as a coherent text without any letters instead of chapters, it is not a “literal dictionary” as some unreliable folk encyclopedias say.
And I like this idea.
I’ll write that mini-dictionary (we, schoolchildren, in the late Soviet era, had a very thin, miniaturized notebook like a toy), compile it for him. A great dictionary or a large, elaborate alphabet of his life is beyond my power.
America. March 6, 1937 Marlene Dietrich became an American citizen. “I went to America knowing that I could return at any time. (…) I miss my home so much. And I was ready to drop everything and come back. The ship was the last bridge that connects me to my homeland, where I heard my mother tongue. Back then, I didn’t think I would be speaking in a foreign language all the time and it would be so tiring.”
Daily. Dietrich never led him, the thought of telling his life from day to day seemed insignificant, perhaps. The 20th century gave us many diaries to study, and some of them are great, but I love Dietrich’s reluctance to keep diaries. What’s more, when great fame comes to you, it probably takes everything away, running through life like a planer, just as great glaciers once swept across the North American mainland and retreated, leaving behind magnificent lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario.
M. Wrong scene. Marlene Dietrich recalled how she played a microscopic role in the ABC of My Life, very different from ABC, at the beginning of her career, quite episodic. The exit of the main actress was neatly arranged and very beautiful. He descended the wide stairs. “There was a table on the stage where four people played bridge, and I was one of them. And I had to say only two words: “I – I’m passing.” And they would dress me in an embroidered light gray dress. Imagine my surprise when I came to rehearsal and saw that only the back of the dress was embroidered. I asked when the embroidery would be completely ready. I was told that I was sitting at the table with my back to the audience and that there was no need to embroider the front of the dress.
To a question about the records for himself. There’s no point in committing to your diaries later when you’re always (and not in this episodic role) standing in the ruthless spotlight and your dress life sparkles with a cold diamond shine.
“I’ve already been photographed to death.”
I love. Here you will have to type many letters at once, some of which should appear later in alphabetical order. But we will focus only on R and X. “You seem too young to write one of the greatest novels of our time,” Dietrich told Remarque during the initial interview about his novel All Nothing New on the Western Front.
And Hemingway will later write to her in letters: “Sometimes I forget you as I forget my heart beats” (and it’s so well said), “I can’t put into words what I felt every time I hugged you. It was at home” (sometimes they told us that too), “You’re so beautiful, all the way through. you need to take paint headshots” (but this is already elegant but seems like just a wit: it’s supposedly forgotten in a heartbeat) no one’s love, for us or for us, will be no one’s curse, but pity ).
P. Paustovsky. And here our Russian heart is already jammed with a sweet, proud convulsion. We all remember the photo of Dietrich, again in a bright dress, kneeling before Konstantin Paustovsky. True, she apparently only read one of her stories, but try to write at least half of the story so that later Dietrich is in front of you half acting, half respectful.
“I was so shocked by his presence that I couldn’t find a way to express my admiration for him other than to kneel before him because I couldn’t utter a word in Russian.”
Rilke. Still, Marlene Dietrich was very logocentric. It’s just Marilyn Monroe sitting in a famous photograph and it’s like reading Joyce’s novel, which is too much even for us. I do not know if Dietrich mastered Ulysses, but from his youth he loved the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.
“I discovered Rilke one day. I say “discovered” because we did not meet his works at school. Now I have a new god, the second I believe. I found his poems so beautiful that I memorized many of them and everything encouraged me to read them aloud.
Death. Marlene Dietrich died on May 6, 1992 at the age of ninety.
Hip neck. Fifteen years before his death, Dietrich caught him and cracked (unfortunate step, falling into the orchestra pit). Therefore, the actress stopped performing and going on tour.
…when the glaciers retreated, they left their mark on many continents. Somewhere these are large lakes, somewhere on the surface there are protrusions of bedrock crystalline rocks, called “ram foreheads” or “curvy rocks”.
When the great glory recedes, the little scavengers still keep circling.
Already in Paris, a year before his death, a young paparazzi once broke into him. Norma Bosquet, her friend and secretary, recalled: “… In June 1991, when almost everyone had gone to rest, she called me after seven in the evening and said in a completely lost voice: “Someone came into my room and started taking my picture. . He only left when I pretended to call the police.”
In general, unexpectedly seeing a stranger in your apartment (apparently the doorman gave the key) is a test for everyone, not just an elderly person.
As I sat and watched TV, the man came into the bedroom (the sound of the TV, probably the one that muffled the turn of the key) and immediately started clicking. Dietrich was naturally horrified. Then she makes a poignant and painful gesture: she throws a napkin at her face.
Then, as in an afterlife beauty salon, a woman photographed dying with a napkin on her face pretends to call the police but can’t find her glasses. Most likely awkwardly with a helpless hand on the nightstand or dresser.
“I remember this story only because it made clear how unimportant each of my roles was and how useless I was.” Marlene Dietrich wrote this sentence after a memoir about a dress with one half missing embroidery. Then he was young, then he was just beginning (“What angelic host would hear my cry? Let him hear. But if he suddenly touched my heart, I would be crushed by his mighty presence at the same time. From beauty. fear begins ”, – as Rilke once wrote to his lover) – but life took a detour, and on leaving it showed him how it always seemed.