Merely Players

And now comes a modern sculptor who takes this Medusa mask and makes it the vehicle of expression of ideas and emotions to which antiquity was a stranger, for they are the bitter fruitage of that sky-hiding tree we name "modern civilization." -on artist Oskar J. W. Hansen Claude Bragdon was an architect and stage designer who dabbled in theosophy and the occult... and wrote about all his expansive experiences with spirit, passion, and a penetrating insight. This 1929 collection of compulsively readable essays is a fascinating journey through life in the theater, the meaning of modern art, diverse traditions of spirituality coming together in contemporary culture, and the fascination with the paranormal that gripped Bragdon and his times. The impressive range of Bragdon's erudition serves as a fascinating overview of the popular intellectualism of the early 20th century. Other works by Bragdon available from Cosimo Classics: Oracle, The Eternal Poles, Yoga for You, Four-Dimensional Vistas, Projective Ornament, The Beautiful Necessity, Architecture and Democracy, Episodes from An Unwritten History, and A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension). American architect, stage designer, and writer CLAUDE FAYETTE BRAGDON (1866-1946) helped found the Rochester Architectural Club, in the city where he made his greatest mark as a building designer with structures including Rochester Central Station, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the First Universalist Church; he also designed Peterborough Bridge in Ontario. In later life, Bragdon worked on Broadway as scenic designer for 1930s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Hamlet, among others.