Our friend Allen Goldberg, knowing of our mania for all things tulip, sent us news yesterday morning that the lovely Alicia Vikander, fresh off her Oscar win, will soon grace a movie entitled Tulip Fever. A quick look at the trailer reveals her to be a pearl-earring wearing young wife of a 17th Century Dutch burger played by Christoph Waltz, who allows a handsome young Vermeer-type to paint her in private, and of course you knew what happens next even before I tell you Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay.
Can’t wait. And I must say that we are somewhat relieved that it’s called Tulip Fever, not Tulip Frenzy. You see, even though our staff attorney is ready and willing to protect — and as fiercely as a wolverine — our rights to the name of this site, we kind of like the fact that young schoolchildren — doing research on the phenomenon by which the sane and even-tempered Dutch created the most famous financial bubble in history, besotted as they were with the ephemeral glories of tulips — might be led by Mr. Google to our site on a day when we’re reviewing the new album by, say, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Tulip Frenzy is many things, and at least one of them, we hope, is educational.
We honestly don’t know whence our obsession with tulips comes. It’s a pretty healthy obsession to have, don’t you think? Could be worse, right? It’s encouraged by our family, even as they know that come the first week of April we will be as fixated on area tulip beds as any truffle pig sticking his snout into the ground.
And it’s encouraged by friends like Allen who also sent us yesterday’s post in Atlas Obscura on how “The Most Beautiful Tulip In History Cost As Much As A House.” Jeez, what a day.
Read about the fixation the Dutch had with “broken tulips,” those that are, like the ones depicted above, multicolored. We are grateful to Allen for sending these stories our way, and we couldn’t be happier than we are right now reading up on The Tulip Frenzy, preparing to see Tulip Fever in July.
Well, maybe if we could see these decidedly unbroken tulips all the time.
(Pictures 1 and 3 taken with the Leica M and 50mm Noctilux. Picture 2 taken with the Leica SL and 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph.)
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Tulip Frenzy 