The Libertine

Attentive readers will remember that the link John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (also at right), has been on my blog since its inception. Wilmot ranks up there with John Donne and Andrew Marvell as one of the most interesting British literary figures of the 17th Century (always overshadowed by Milton, Dryden, Bacon, Ben Jonson, and earlier 17th c. religious poets). I highly recommend following the link to learn more about Wilmot, if for nothing else a good laugh and rude shock. Although he eventually won critical acclaim for his mastery of poetic forms, wit, and metaphor, he was a libertine, and so discretion is advised for young/sensitive eyes.

I was secretly scheming to write a short piece on Wilmot and submit it to Exquisite Corpse in May (the plan is from February, and I've yet to start it, unfortunately). Well low and behold, I was pleasantly surprised to see a whole article about Wilmot in the April edition of The New Criterion. (April is the poetry edition, which includes notable criticism on Eliot's The Waste Land [with a reminder that April is the cruelest month, of course] and John Wilmot, what looks like interesting pieces on Richard Wilbur's metaphysics and a reconsideration of Chekhov/Tolstoy [which I haven't read yet], and reviews of Greenblatt's latest Shakespeare biography and the controversial Camille Paglia's latest book on English etymology.)

At any rate, reading the article in TNC, I learned about the movie The Libertine, which recounts the life of Wilmot and stars Johnny Depp and John Malkovich. The movie is based on the play by Stephen Jeffreys, and so perhaps this means the movie's subject matter and cinematic portrayal might actually be just. A release date has not been set in the U.S., but the writer in TNC actually thinks it has promise from what he's heard (seen? It wasn't clear). Like most period pieces, especially the ones on bizarre and controversial authors and historical figures, I'm anxiously awaiting its release.

I hope it is much better than Quills, a pathetic portrayal of the Marquis de Sade, and The Count of Monte Cristo, one of Dumas's masterpieces that in the novel had all the action our society would require to sit through a "literary" movie yet was hacked. We shall see how The Libertine does.