Life, 1893-03-16 · page 5 of 16
Life — March 16, 1893 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Eleonora Duse Page Analysis This page features a portrait of **Eleonora Duse**, the renowned Italian actress, with accompanying commentary praising her artistic talent. The text defends her against scandal rumors, noting she lacks the notoriety of a "fad" despite her success on the New York stage. It emphasizes her merit as a serious artist who transcends mere "newspaper puffing," appealing to audiences through genuine artistic skill rather than publicity. The lower cartoon, titled "Insult to Injury," shows a figure at a café being struck or affected by something—likely satirizing the disconnect between Duse's serious reputation and sensationalized media coverage that plagued her public image. This appears to be early 20th-century commentary defending a legitimate artist against tabloid-style character attacks.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ELEONORA DUSE. 165 ELEONORA DUSE. HERE must be a mistake some- where. The artist whose por- trait we present this week is neither a skirt-dancer nor does any especial scandal attach to her name. She does not appear in farce-comedy and so far as reported her diamonds have not been stolen. In spite of these serious drawbacks, however, she has contrived to make a financial success in New York, This fact is all the more startling when one considers that she is not even a fad among fashionable folk. Whatever triumph she has attained has not comethrough clever newspaper puffing, but by sheer artistic merit. Laboring under the dis- advantage of playing in a foreign language she bas broueht to bear on her audiences an art which rises su- perior to mere words. She appeals to some common chord of human sympathy which makes every look a word and every gesture almost a spoken sentence. The true artist is so great a rarity on our stage that when one comes unheralded and almost unannounced, and by force of her art achieves a triumph, she is worthy of what may seem extravagant praise. The more so as she is the saving clause in a long history of un- worthy successes on the New York INSULT TO INJURY. comicbooks.com