[Index to the Story of My Day: Some Memoirs of Edward Gordon Craig] (By: Edward Gordon Craig) [published: January, 1982]

by Blaise Pascal

Edward Gordon Craig (1872 1966) was the most brilliant and influential stage designer this century. Always a controversial figure, he set out to revolutionise the theatre by creating a new art, the art of the theatre. Almost single-handed he formulated the principles on which a modern approach to stage design would be based. In his writings and engravings he transformed stage scenery from painted back-cloth into an abstract three-dimensional world of form and light. Craig's reputation as a designer is firmly established; his brilliance as a writer is only beginning to be recognised. Index to the Story of My Days shows him at his most self-revealing. As the original edition announced, 'Anything less like the conventional book of memoirs it would be difficult to imagine'. This 1981 reissue includes a specially written introductory essay by Peter Holland assessing the importance of Craig's career in the history of stage design.

Paperback

First published July 23, 1981

About the author

Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous Pensées (1670).

This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.

A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.

Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”

Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.

Reviews

[Louise Carlson Stowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting look into the mind and life of the man who was THE love of Isadora Duncan.