Judith part III - Adah Isaacs Menken
Jan. 30th, 2013 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricStand back!
I am no Magdalene waiting to kiss the hem of your garment.
It is mid-day.
See ye not what is written on my forehead?
I am Judith!
I wait for the head of my Holofernes!
Ere the last tremble of the conscious death-agony shall have shuddered, I will show it to yet with the long black hair clinging to the glazed eyes, and the great mouth opened in search of voice, and the strong throat all hot and reeking with blood, that will thrill me with wild unspeakable joy as it courses down my bare body and dabbles my cold feet!
My sensuous soul will quake with the burden of so much bliss.
Oh, what wild passionate kisses I will draw up from that bleeding mouth!
I will strangle this pallid throat of mine on the sweet blood!
I will revel in my passion.
At midnight I will feast on it in the darkness.
For it was that which thrilled its crimson tides of reckless passion through the blue veins of my life, and made them leap up in the wild sweetness of Love and agony of Revenge!
I am starving for this feast.
Oh forget not that I am Judith!
And I know where sleeps Holofernes.
(This is a re-post from![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
poetry, where I posted this a while ago)
According to Virginia Blain (ed, Victorian Women Poets: A New Annotated Anthology, Adah Isaacs Menken identified herself in public as Jewish and/or Spanish at various times, but plausible scholarship suggests her ancestry was that by a Creole mother and a 'free man of colour'.
The biography at Poetry Foundation emphasises her marriage to a Jewish man, Alexander Menken, and adoption of his faith (according to the San Francisco museum, although she was strongly religious, she was never a conservative figure, and Menken left her after seeing her smoking cigarettes). Blain notes, however, that during her travels in the US as an actress she acquired several husbands, some bigamously. After touring the US and establishing herself on Broadway, Menken moved to London, where her only book of poetry was published in 1868 (although she had been writing for some time, including as a columnist for the Liberty Gazette in Texas during the 1850s). Her early social bent was feminist; after her marriage to Menken she became a vocal activist against anti-semitism.
Adah died in Paris shortly before Infelicia, her collection of poetry, was published. Her publisher omitted his own name and the details of the printer, evidently because the content was shocking; it was trashed left right and centre by various reviewers. Blain says of her that she was 'actor first, poet second (though in many ways she would probably have preferred it the other way round)'.
I am no Magdalene waiting to kiss the hem of your garment.
It is mid-day.
See ye not what is written on my forehead?
I am Judith!
I wait for the head of my Holofernes!
Ere the last tremble of the conscious death-agony shall have shuddered, I will show it to yet with the long black hair clinging to the glazed eyes, and the great mouth opened in search of voice, and the strong throat all hot and reeking with blood, that will thrill me with wild unspeakable joy as it courses down my bare body and dabbles my cold feet!
My sensuous soul will quake with the burden of so much bliss.
Oh, what wild passionate kisses I will draw up from that bleeding mouth!
I will strangle this pallid throat of mine on the sweet blood!
I will revel in my passion.
At midnight I will feast on it in the darkness.
For it was that which thrilled its crimson tides of reckless passion through the blue veins of my life, and made them leap up in the wild sweetness of Love and agony of Revenge!
I am starving for this feast.
Oh forget not that I am Judith!
And I know where sleeps Holofernes.
(This is a re-post from
poetry, where I posted this a while ago)According to Virginia Blain (ed, Victorian Women Poets: A New Annotated Anthology, Adah Isaacs Menken identified herself in public as Jewish and/or Spanish at various times, but plausible scholarship suggests her ancestry was that by a Creole mother and a 'free man of colour'.
The biography at Poetry Foundation emphasises her marriage to a Jewish man, Alexander Menken, and adoption of his faith (according to the San Francisco museum, although she was strongly religious, she was never a conservative figure, and Menken left her after seeing her smoking cigarettes). Blain notes, however, that during her travels in the US as an actress she acquired several husbands, some bigamously. After touring the US and establishing herself on Broadway, Menken moved to London, where her only book of poetry was published in 1868 (although she had been writing for some time, including as a columnist for the Liberty Gazette in Texas during the 1850s). Her early social bent was feminist; after her marriage to Menken she became a vocal activist against anti-semitism.
Adah died in Paris shortly before Infelicia, her collection of poetry, was published. Her publisher omitted his own name and the details of the printer, evidently because the content was shocking; it was trashed left right and centre by various reviewers. Blain says of her that she was 'actor first, poet second (though in many ways she would probably have preferred it the other way round)'.