Death House Letters

Robert Warshow on the Rosenbergs (1953):

On July 4, 1951, Julius clipped a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the New York Times and taped it to the wall of his cell. "It is interesting," he writes to Ethel, "to read these words concerning free speech, freedom of the press and of religion in this setting. These rights our country's patriots died for can't be taken from the people even by Congress or the courts." Does it matter that the Declaration of Independence says nothing about free speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion, and that Julius therefore could not have found it "interesting" to read "these words" in that particular document? It does not matter. Julius knew that America is supposed to have freedom of expression and that the Declaration of Independence "stands for" America. Since, therefore, he already "knew" the Declaration, there was no need for him to actually read it in order to find it "interesting," and it could not have occurred to him that he was being untruthful in implying that he had just been reading it when he had not. He could "see himself" reading it, so to speak, and this dramatic image became reality: he did not know that he had not read it.

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Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido

After several years of searching, I finally learned the name of the painter and the title of the work I noticed in The Limits of Control . Very little is available in English on Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, but it was his painting, a portrait of his daughter in a hallway, that triggered a need to know more about his work. A substantial article in Spanish can be found here . Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, painter and poet, was born in 1881 in Villacarrillo, a city in the south-central province Jaén in Spain. He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Cordoba with Rafael Romero Barros and then in San Fernando in Madrid with Alejandro Ferrant. From 1902 to 1914 he lived in France, Belgium and Holland, studying under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1910 he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. In 1917 he won third prize, and in 1920 Tierras de labor won second prize. In 1925 he participated in the exhibition and in the manifesto of the Iberian Artists Hall,

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Grape Lights

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