.
Night in Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown for Detroit Publishing Company, c. 1905; image by Trialsanderrors, 14 July 2008 (Library of Congress)
Nothing that he expected but surprises,
Seeking surprise like one at Luna Park
(All the grand ohs as genuine as a claque,
Cigars and dolls, exploded booby prizes);
Given each thing except the thing he wanted
(Like a rich girl who wants to be a boy)
Though what he wanted was the joy of joy
-- If it was that -- since each desire counted
For naught but the false hope that here, at last!...
-- And now? While new illusion shines and rains
Like a bad Spring, what famous game remains?
To praise unmaskers and unmasking, do
With love what they did, trying to be true,
Before the shows and sketches have been passed.
Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966): When Many Hopes were Dead and Most Disguises, from Vaudeville for a Princess, 1950
Luna Park at night: photographer unknown for Detroit Publishing Company, between 1903 and 1906; image by Trialsanderrors, 16 May 2011 (Library of Congress)
Luna Park at night: photo by Samuel H. Gottsho, 1906; image by Alcmaeonid, 6 May 2011 (New York Times Photo Archive)
Bridge of Laughs, Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, n.d.; image by Fordmadoxfraud, 2 April 2008 (Library of Congress)
Fatty Arbuckle rides on The Whip in the 1917 Paramount film Coney Island image by Postdif, 1 September 2007
Riding a Camel, Luna Park, Coney Island: photographer unknown for Detroit Publishing Company, c. 1908; image by Martin H., i July 2010 (Library of Congress)
Loop the Loop, Luna Park, Coney Island: photographer unknown for Detroit Publishing Company, 1905; image by JustSomePics, 3 February 2012 (Library of Congress)
Vintage postcard depicting entrance to Luna Park, Coney Island: photographer unknown, early 20th century; image by Heresthe casey, 23 February 2008
The Dragon's Gorge (an enclosed roller coaster), Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, n.d.; image by Hugh Manatee, 2009
Shooting the Chutes at Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, postcard published by Hamlin and Moskowitz, 1907; image by Hugh Manatee, 2009
Helter Skelter slide, Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, postcard published by the Illustrated Postal Card Company, 1906; image by Hugh Manatee, 2009
Luna Park, Surf Avenue, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, postcard published by C.S. Woolworth and Company, 1913; image by Hugh Manatee, 2009
Elephant ride in Luna Park, Coney Island, New York: photographer unknown, 1906; image by Hugh Manatee, 2009
What a great pairing--and what an amazing series of images. For a minute I thought the bag head of the following post was part of it too, as a kind of end of the new illusions and games.
ReplyDeleteNin,
ReplyDeleteEvery mid-o-night, a new set of illusions and games -- and then...
poof! The Trauma Center.
The Luna Park Ghost Amusement Zone, as Delmore would have known it from his childhood, may have vaporously lurked on, much like the Zone of Concern around Chernobyl, after the closing of the original LP in 1944.
Luna Park, Coney Island, 1903
It’s the final elephant ride postcard that does it for me, cementing as it does the artifice/artificial vs. what it really looked like aspect of this Luna Park retrospective.
ReplyDeleteThat is to say, that even if the real Luna Park viewed in person looked faker (like theater or movie scenery as it does in the colored illustrations) than in the splendid black & white photos, it must have been really something.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen the dreadful South Street Seaport development in Manhattan or the big multi-use sports emporium they built on the lower Hudson, the replacement Wollman Rink or the new Barclay’s arena in Brooklyn, but today that’s all we have in Manhattan (I’m leaving out the new Yankee Stadium because it’s in the Bronx) and they aren’t a patch on this.
The sad abstractions of the Schwartz poem and its formal structure convey so well the lost in thought (and every other receding thing) mood of this post, which should be a book on its own.
Shooting the chutes must have been great (and I don't like rides much), but Fatty Arbuckle always scares me to death.
Curtis
Poor brilliant precocious mad Delmore, who gave us "Far Rockaway" in poems and dreams like movies in which were born responsibilities that are real if ill-defined: friend of Lowell, Berryman: Harvard teacher of the best minds of their generation (circa 1948). Let us takge this occasion to reread his great stories, such as "The World is a Wedding.
ReplyDeleteDelmore's ghost does a charming, slightly self-conscious stage bow, and thanks Curtis and Lord Charlie for coming to his private party at Coney Island.
ReplyDeleteAll the dead can ask from us is to remember them, as we too shoot the chutes.