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Revelatory Letters to Nina Cassian/ Maurice Edwards, Author By Eve Berliner |
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Photograph by Sergey Lovochko Maurice Edwards, a
renaissance man in the spheres of the 21st century. |
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Revelatory Letters to Nina
Cassian/ Maurice Edwards, Author By Eve Berliner “Revelatory Letters to Nina Cassian,” a Proustian
exploration, a work of memory, intellectual journey,
stream of conscious; a symphony of language and art and dance and music and
literature; at times a cacophony! Maurice
Edwards, its author, a man of voracious knowledge, steeped in art, culture,
music, literature, theatre; the poet,
Nina Cassian, his Muse, his wife, to whom he dedicates his letters, his love
and his inspiration. Edwards,
a grand man of letters, a renaissance man, co-founder of the renowned
experimental theatre Cubiculo, artistic director of the acclaimed Brooklyn
Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of the great Lukas Foss, a unique
tragi-comic, rich presence on the stages of Broadway, in small off beat
theatres, and on the stage of life. The
Second World War took its awful toll on Maurice, infantryman in the 69th Division, First Army, in pursuit of the
retreating Germans. The Colonel, shot
through the head, died in his arms. He
ended up in post-war Paris, 1945-46, deep into the romanticism, the history,
the creative aura of the city and he became friends with Gertrude Stein and
Alice B. Toklas and he became close to them -- “Gertrude seated exactly in the pose Picasso painted her in”
-- traveling in their literary salons
and intellectual circles. The
greatest tragedy of his life was the sad trick fate played upon him when he
fell in love and married the young, artistic, high-spirited woman named Ann
who bore him a beautiful son, Jacob.
Ann’s life was to slowly come apart, afflicted by mental aberration
and tortures of the schizophrenic mind, delusions and madness, and the
urgencies and emergency hospitalizations and harrowing horrors came to
dominate -- “as I pulled her and Jacob
with difficulty out from under the piano, and she asked that I take her to
the hospital, “ -- Ann ending
up in Pilgrim State Hospital in Nassau County, a dungeon of misery. The child, Jacob, touched by fierce bursts
of temper, strange animalistic rollings on the floor and mental sufferings. He
was to become something of a recluse, a hoarder and died suddenly at the age
of 53 of heart failure. The
life of the theatre became Maurice’s playhouse as actor, director, producer, performing in
the original Broadway casts of Fiddler
on the Roof, Threepenny Opera, and with
the The Classic Theatre in Dostoyevsky’s
Notes from the Underground. He
portrayed “The Father” in the enchanting, lyrical long running
musical, The Fantasticks, and also
went on to stage several operas and perform his own cabaret programs of
Weill/Brecht songs. The
book is a life of the mind and the artistic spirit. He has
known the greats and the near greats, languages of the world, cultural icons and read the great literature
and been enthralled by the music of the ages.
At 90 years old, he is still at the opening of the odyssey. ________________________________ “Revelatory Letters to Nina Cassian,” by Maurice Edwards is
published by |
