Kurai Extravaganza

What a gruesome interest which mankind takes in the seamy sides of life, of history. Surely the victories are great. Howerever it are the negatives which bring the fascination. Hadn't the beautiful Romanov grand duchesses not een brutaly murdered and dumped, they wouldn't have been known better than a name and a picture in a family tree. Hadn't little baroness Vetsera died together with the crownprince of Austria-Hungary, no one would ever have heard of her name. It is death which makes a person truly immortal.

It are the tragedies which truly speak to our minds and hearts. Certainly a part of our interest is pity. But it is also a story of wonder. We marvel at what might have grown out of those eyes on the photo's while looking at young girls in marvelous dresses. And it is also quite the mystery which attracts us. Did Marie-Antoinette's little son really live under another name? Did Anastasia, did Alexej really escape the guns of their murderers?

Photo of Tatjana Nicolajevna Romanov

The story of the Lisbon sisters, which is quite adequately transfered from book to screenplay by Sophia Coppola, has fascinated me since my twelth or thirteenth year. And it fascinated me because of the group suicide these girls committed.

Would they have been real people, and not have died, they would have become housewives, members of community. But they would never had the fascination on the boys whom are trying to discover the why. And neither would they have fascinated me.

So, is it safe to say that it is death itself which fascinates people? They say that one recognizes something of oneself in the stories which they are fascinates by.

So, seeing which stories fascinate me, would that mean I have simply a deathwish? You tell me...