France bids adieu to class act, Marcel Marceau
Did I mention that I love mimes? No, silly, not Michael Jackson ! He’s not a mime !
I love artists that recreate the very art they spent their life creating. It’s a beautiful gift, almost one that deems them worthy of something higher, a semblance of greatness we earthlings attain when only when our eyes are closed and there is very little noise.
Art worthy of being expressed and beautiful to the beholder is often born from inner suffering, the silent kind, the kind that you dare not put into words lest the hearer betray you.
I will not pretend with words to understand to emotion of a man who lost his father in Auschwitz, loved children, wives, outlived and overstepped, as well as nearly singlehandedly revived a dying art. Some have words, he held onstage a spectrum of languages clothed in silence. Offstage he was a chatty man, it is said.
Kudos to Marcel Marceau, a beautiful man, who at 82 brooms (as the French say…) passed away yesterday. March 22, 1923 to September 22, 2007
I love the French way of saying it: s’etient, like a cadles being blown out, or a crystal chandelier softly being dimmed, until the darkness gently, elegantly overtakes it.
Marcel’s going was surely anything but lackluster.
Part of a collective childhood s’etient, except for the memories. My kids are just old enough to get a thrill out of games like charades…I’ll have to look for dvd’s of Marcel Marceau so they can experience his magic.
RIP Marcel! I read that today, too…
Why do the french say _?_ brooms???
‘Balais’. It’s a metaphor for years. Silly,eh?
Thanks for the beautifully, and appropriately, poetic tribute.
I find mimes so fascinating, too! What an art that is. I wish I could have seen Marcel do his magic.