Plundery & Restoration

Arifa Akbar,"War poet Robert Graves 'stole work from his mistress'," Independent, 4 July, reports the findings of Mark Jacobs, a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University. Jacobs has spent two decades looking into the relationship of Graves and his American mistress, Laura Riding Jackson. After their relationship ended in 1939, she charged that Graves was a"robber baron," who"sucked, bled, squeezed, plucked, picked, grabbed, dipped, sliced, carved, lifted the body of my work." There's a fascinating story in her life. In the 1920s, Laura [Reichenthal] Riding was a poet associated with the American Fugitives and her first husband was the historian Louis Gottschalk. Hat tip.

"Key Scenes Rediscovered," Die Zeit, 2 July, and David Kleingers,"Lost Scenes Restore Lang's Original Vision of 'Metropolis'," Der Spiegel, 4 July, explain why, 80 years after the silent film's production, the recovery and restoration of lost scenes from Fritz Lang's masterpiece, Metropolis, is important for the history of film. Here is a 10 minute clip from the remastered film, to which a score and sound, but obviously not the lost scenes, have been added.