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Today in History
November 4 is Common Sense DayEvery day we see complete fails of Common Sense, stupid and fantastic examples of the horror that can occur when someone just… refuses… to think. Sometimes it’s a matter of hubris, people thinking that their over-inflated sense of self-importance can overcome the laws of physics. Other times it’s just a complete failure to take a moment to really think a thing through, and thus do something monumentally stupid ...
Use your common sense day was established by Bud Bilanich, a career mentor with a reputation for focusing of being “The Common Sense Guy.” He’s been featured on some of the most prominent TV stations and magazines, and has written 19 books that emphasize how to succeed at your life, and how the application of common sense is absolutely vital to that success.
Common Sense as a concept is ancient, first being codified by Aristotle in describing the raw analysis of the animal mind of the five specialized sense perceptions. This was then carried forward in the Roman interpretation, which presents the concept as ideas and perceptions held by the common man. A sense of the common.
Through a long and twisty development, and through many future interpretations, common sense has come to be the knowledge of simple, sensible things… Like not putting your iPhone in the microwave to recharge it.
The simplest way of celebrating Use Your Common Sense Day is to simply do what’s on the tin. Namely, use your common sense! Take a little more time to stop and consider your options before acting on impulse. Before you decide that something is a good idea, be sure to stop, take a breath, and look it over and make sure you aren’t about to become an object lesson.
Further, to hone your use of common sense, take the day to identify monumental failures of common sense. There are plenty of sites out there that will give you ample resources for determining what true failures of common sense look like. Perhaps by observing their examples you’ll be able to prevent yourself from making them yourself.
Source: daysoftheyear.com
The most famous book on Common Sense
The Common Sense of Thomas Paine
42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success (2nd Edition): A Common Sense Guide to Career Success
I read Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings, very interesting and not what I’d expected.
November the 5th …Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot…
Known as Guy Fawkes Night or Fireworks Night, Gunpowder Day focuses on the plot by Guy Fawkes and other conspirators to blow up Britain’s parliament in 1605. Rebelling against the persecution of Catholics by King James I, they planned to kill the monarch during his visit to parliament. But the scheme was foiled and the traitors executed.
On Gunpowder Day, families construct an effigy of Guy Fawkes to be burned on a bonfire that evening. Fireworks are also set off to add to the celebrations. Public displays are also held and the biggest celebration of Gunpowder Day is in Lewes in East Sussex, England.
Six bonfire societies host their own fireworks displays and gargantuan bonfires. After sunset, a large procession of all of the societies moves through Lewes. Many members carry flame torches and a river of fire can be seen flowing through the town during the evening.
This is one of the first nursery rhymes I learned when I started learning English ...
«Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!»
The Gunpowder Plot
November, 2019 is “Novel Writing Month”We’re all full of stories, each of us with our own tales to tell, but we never quite seem to find the time to make it happen, do we? There’s always too much to do today, the feeling isn’t right, the story just isn’t there, or we just don’t feel good enough.
Thoughts like these are why some of the most influential books in history never got written, and procrastination is the great killer of artistic expression. National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo by its adherents is your opportunity to bring out your inner tales!
Novel Writing Month brings your excuses to a halt by encouraging everyone to take this one month of the year to try their hand at the grand art of storytelling. 50,000 words in one month is the goal, a number that seems quite daunting until you realize that over a span of 30 days it’s just 1700 words a day. To put that into perspective, that’s about three times the length of this article!
Established in 1999, NaNoWriMo was July back then, and the heart of it was the magical city of San Francisco. That year there were only 21 people involved, and they were at the heart of a revolution, though perhaps not the heart of the one they imagined. Fifteen years later thousands of people all over the world are participating in this amazing event, resulting in volumes of creative expression unlike the world has ever seen.
NaNoWriMo has a thriving and supportive community of people who love getting together, physically and digitally, to support each other and offer encouragement and inspiration to drive the creative endeavor. At homes, restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and schools all over the world, NaNoWriMo takes all these places by storm. You can pop into nanintoo.org and find yourself a local “write-in” near you to help you get your write on!
Obviously, whether you join these folks or not, the whole point of NaNoWriMo is writing. So dig an idea out of your head and start writing, and hold yourself to 1700 words a day throughout the entire month of November. Don’t worry about editing, rewriting, or any of the little fiddly things one does when finishing a novel, that all can wait until after you’re done. The goal now is to get 50,000 words down on the page by the end of the month!
Don’t let November go by without taking your greatest novel idea and turning it into a reality! Mind you! I don’t like novels much … I prefer non fiction writing. Do you know why? I think that there already so many “bad & good novels” around the world in the today’s media. But I do love writing, it helps me with understanding what I think and who I am. So, carry on thinking, reading and writing!
Source: nanowrimo.org
The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century
The month of November is in the centre of this poem “There’s Nothing Like the Sun,” by Edward Thomas. Thomas began writing poetry late in his life, at the age of 36. Less than four years later, in 1917, he was dead, killed at the Battle of Arras. This poem was written in 1915, after he’d been posted to Hare Hall Camp by the army, where he served as a map-reading instructor for recently commissioned officers.
His early death, and the way it brought to an end an astoundingly rich (even if brief) run of poetry, certainly imbues the poem with urgency and pathos. We discover in these lines a feeling of presence, not a concept, as far as poetry is concerned. One feels Thomas’s presence, his living, breathing responsiveness, most strongly in the middle part of the poem. It starts with the phrase “The south wall warms me,” as if the felt energy recorded there transmits itself into the complex perception that follows.
A fleeting glimpse of one or two late-season plums falling from a branch at the same time as a few drops of rainwater, all shaken from the bough by the mere singing of a bird.These lines have something of the heightened perception of a great haiku. And their syntactical flex and compression, their rhythmic variability, are like nothing else in the poem.
“There’s Nothing Like the Sun”
There’s nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and birds and beasts and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountainside or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning’s storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March’s sun,
Like April’s, or July’s, or June’s, or May’s,
Or January’s, or February’s, great days:
August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said—
Or, if I could live long enough, should say—
"There’s nothing like the sun that shines today."
There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead.
Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.
Edward Thomas: Selected Poems
November 8, 1674: John Milton dies. His masterpiece is Paradise Lost, a long narrative poem about the Fall of Man and Satan’s role in bringing it about, published in 1667. It introduced the world to the word ‘pandemonium’, which Milton coined (with a capital P) as the name of the capital city of Hell.
Pandemonium’s title encompasses intersecting notions of sound, place, and narrative. Milton invented the word in Paradise Lost (1667) as the proper name for, “the high Capital Of Satan and his Peers.” His coinage plays with the Latin suffix “-ium” used to indicate “the setting where a given activity is carried out,” as in “gymnasium” or “sanatorium.” It lends a sense of categorical correctness to someone or something’s belonging in a location. Pandemonium, then, denotes a place where demonic activities, or evil deeds, are most fitting. Mary Shelley’s more figurative use in Frankenstein (1818) captures a tension between an individual’s longing to belong and feeling demonized within a moralizing system.
In nineteenth-century travel writing, pandemonium came to signify noisy and chaotic places often with racial and primitivizing connotations. Several of the Oxford English Dictionary’s modern usages elide the term with rhythm and percussion in African-diasporan or nonwestern music. A passage in Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) reads, for example: “A great multitude of natives from several islands had kept the palace grounds well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with their howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing.” [86] From its beginning, pandemonium classified beings in space along moral and civic lines. Its modern meaning points to ways in which noise has since been constructed to represent ‘immoral’ or ‘uncivilized’ elements in social hierarchies.
Source: The Source of Milton's Pandemonium, Rebecca W. Smith
Modern Philology, The University of Chicago Journals
The Connell Guide to John Milton's Paradise Lost. Caroline Moore
On the night of November 9, 1989 ...… massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
It was an accident.
In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist's eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin.
We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC's Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control.
Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.
The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
Mod
Interesting, especially because, even if in the last part of it, it shows as, after having hoped that the fall of the wall could represent the beginning of a better world, it actually started a lor of violence, wars, nationalism and nowa days there are in the world a lot more walls than in 1989!
http://turismo.comune.perugia.it/arti...
November 12It’s the birthday of philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes born in Cherbourg, France (1915). Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology, and post-structuralism.
He greatly expanded the scope of cultural studies, and it is partially thanks to him that college students can now take classes on subjects like Bugs Bunny. His essays are collected in books such as Mythologies (1957) and Empire of Signs (1970). A Lover's Discourse, at its 1978 publication, was revolutionary: Roland Barthes made unprecedented use of the tools of structuralism to explore the whimsical phenomenon of love.
Rich with references ranging from Goethe's Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover's Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.
“Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”
“You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...
Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my desire.
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished, for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation; for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: I have been fulfilled (all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction).”
Source:
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
Mod
It’s the birthday of philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes born in Cherbourg, France (1915). Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semioti..."
The first time I've heard him mentioned was in a song of a famous Italian singer, Francesco Guccini, Via Paolo Fabbri, 43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzR9d...
He says "Think if only Roland Barth reviewed my songs"
It took me years to actually learn who this man was!!!!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "November 12It’s the birthday of philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes born in Cherbourg, France (1915). Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, cri..."
Thank you LauraT for this memory. A happy meeting: Music & Structuralism ...
Mod
It’s the birthday of philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes born in Cherbourg, France (1915). Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher..."
LOL! Guccini, together with Fabrizio de Andrè and Roberto Vecchioni, has written some of the most beautiful songs of Italian contempoary music!
November 13, World Kindness Day!Kindness Day isn’t just about adopting all the children from your local orphanage – it’s about the little gestures of kindness too. Helping others can restore a sense of humanity, not to mention giving you that warm fuzzy glow inside.
Kindness Day was born when a collection of humanitarian groups came together on November 13, 1997 and made a “Declaration of Kindness”. Likewise, on Kindness Day everyone is encouraged to make a similar declaration. Donating books, food or clothes to your local community is a great way to celebrate.
However, pledging to commit just one act of kindness is no less worthwhile: hold the door open for a stranger, compliment your neighbour on their collection of garden gnomes, let your partner have control of the TV remote for the evening.
However you decide to celebrate remember that the best thing about Kindness Day is that it doesn’t cost a thing!
Here is The Declaration at the link: http://wavesofkindness.org/o-u-r-decl...
Source: www.wavesofkindness.org
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
14th November is Guinness World Records Day.World Records aren’t set every day, but world records for new types of things can be. Whether you’re trying to spend the most time hovering a table tennis ball over your mouth (6.35 seconds is the current record) or spend the longest time holding your breath (22 minutes, held by Stig Severinsen) Guinness World Record Day encourages you to stretch the ends of human endurance and creativity, and set that new world record!
History of Guinness World Record Day. In 1951 an argument was held between Sir Hugh Beaver and his fellow hunting mates in North Slob in County Wexford, Ireland. What was the argument about you ask? Which bird was the fastest game bird in Europe, of course.
While we now know that the fastest game bird is the plover, it cast light on an issue about available reference books. None of them compared flight speeds of various birds, something we can’t imagine he was terribly surprised by. This was something that Sir Hugh was determined to change, and change it he did.
He got together with Norris and Ross McWhirter to create the first ever compilation of record, well, everything they could get their hands on. So it was that the first 1000 copies of the Guinness Book of Records were printed in 1954. The book was hugely successful, and thus the legacy that is the Guinness Book of World Records was born and has continued to be reprinted every year, ever since.
Guinness World Record Day was established to give people a day to focus on challenging existing records or putting forth a new record to be put into the books. That latter is for the truly ambitious, but it’s entirely possible! How to celebrate Guinness World Record Day.
In fear of being redundant, one celebrates Guinness World Record Day by attempting to break a world record! Some of them you won’t be able to do in one day, so consider this holiday to be your starting gun. You can head on over to Guinness World Records to find out what the latest records are, or just spend some time looking up things like the fastest land mammal, or longest ping pong game ever held!
Source: guinnessworldrecords.com
Guinness World Records 2020
November 15 - It’s the birthday of poet Marianne Moore, born in Kirkwood, Missouri (1887). She studied history, law, and politics at Bryn Mawr College, and though she didn’t major in science, she took some courses in biology and developed an appreciation for animals as well as an almost scientific precision in her use of language. She started publishing her poems professionally in 1915, moved to New York City in 1918, and became friends with other poets, such as William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot.
She became something of a character among the literati of New York, appearing at parties in a black cape and tricorn hat. She favored the tricorn because it concealed the defects of her head, which she claimed resembled a hop-toad’s. She was a great fan of sports, and wrote the liner notes for Cassius Clay’s spoken-word album, I Am the Greatest! (1963). She threw out the first pitch for the Yankees’ 1968 season, and soon after had the first of a series of strokes that would eventually claim her life in 1972.
She once told a New York Times interviewer: “I never knew anyone with a passion for words who had as much difficulty in saying things as I do. I seldom say them in a manner I like. Each poem I think will be the last. But something always comes up and catches my fancy.”
The Mind is an Enchanting Thing - Marianne Moore
is an enchanted thing
like the glaze on a
katydid-wing
subdivided by sun
till the nettings are legion.
Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti;
like the apteryx-awl
as a beak, or the
kiwi's rain-shawl
of haired feathers, the mind
feeling its way as though blind,
walks with its eyes on the ground.
It has memory's ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope's fall,
truly unequivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,
it is a power of
strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory's eye;
it's conscientious inconsistency.
It tears off the veil; tears
the temptation, the
mist the heart wears,
from its eyes - if the heart
has a face; it takes apart
dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck's
iridescence; in the
inconsistencies
of Scarlatti.
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it's
not a Herod's oath that cannot change.
Source:
The Poems of Marianne Moore
It was on this day, November 16 in 1913 that the first volume of Marcel Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time" was published. He’d begun work on it in 1909, after taking a nibble of a French pastry cookie dipped in tea. He took it to several publishers, and it was turned down by each one of them. The editor of a prestigious French literary magazine advised that it not be published because of syntactical errors. And one editor said, “My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can’t see why a chap should need 30 pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.”
------
Here is of my favourite excerpts and it is one sentence, from
"Swann's Way"
It must be remarked that Odette’s face appeared thinner and more prominent than it actually was, because her forehead and the upper part of her cheeks, a single and almost plane surface, were covered by the masses of hair which women wore at that period, drawn forward in a fringe, raised in crimped waves and falling in stray locks over her ears; while as for her figure, and she was admirably built, it was impossible to make out its continuity (on account of the fashion then prevailing, and in spite of her being one of the best-dressed women in Paris) for the corset, jetting forwards in an arch, as though over an imaginary stomach, and ending in a sharp point, beneath which bulged out the balloon of her double skirts, gave a woman, that year, the appearance of being composed of different sections badly fitted together; to such an extent did the frills, the flounces, the inner bodice follow, in complete independence, controlled only by the fancy of their designer or the rigidity of their material, the line which led them to the knots of ribbon, falls of lace, fringes of vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her own, found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely buried.
Source:
In Search of Lost Time
November 17, 2013: Doris Lessing dies. The oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Lessing was awarded the prize in 2007. We remember her with some of her wittiest and wisest quotations.
Doris Lessing’s “The Golden Notebook” was published on 16 April, in 1962. Here are ten of the best quotes from this landmark novel, and from the wise and wonderful Lessing in general.
Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you’ve written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won’t have to write it. – The Golden Notebook
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. – The Golden Notebook
There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best. – The Golden Notebook
The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. – The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country. […] I was really astounded that some people were shocked. – quoted by BBC World Service
Parents should leave books lying around marked ‘forbidden’ if they want their children to read. – The Times interview, 2003
You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. – New York Times interview, 1984
It’s heart-breaking how often I have to say when I’m giving talks, ‘This book is out of print. This book is out of print.’ It’s a roll call of dead books. – Salon interview, 1997
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way. – The Four-Gated City, 1969
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. – The Times interview, 2003
Source: interestingliterature.com
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook After Fifty
November 18 is the birthday of Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood (1939) best known for her searing explorations of feminism, sexuality, and politics.Margaret Atwood is one of the most popular and enduring literary novelists of the late twentieth century. This introduction covers Atwood's work from the 1970s to the present, drawing out her recurring themes of Canadian identity and the wilderness, the representation of women and female bodies and history and its narration. Winner of the Margaret Atwood Society Best Book in 1997, the second edition is thoroughly revised and updated and includes four new chapters covering Atwood's recent novels Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, her 2002 book on writing Negotiating with the Dead and her latest novel Oryx and Crake, published in 2003.
Source:
Margaret AtwoodI Was Reading a Scientific Article
by Margaret Atwood
They have photographed the brain
and here is the picture, it is full of
branches as I always suspected,
each time you arrive the electricity
of seeing you is a huge
tree lumbering through my skull, the roots waving.
It is an earth, its fibres wrap
things buried, your forgotten words
are graved in my head, an intricate
red blue and pink prehensile chemistry
veined like a leaf
network, or is it a seascape
with corals and shining tentacles.
I touch you, I am created in you
somewhere as a complex
filament of light
You rest on me and my shoulder holds
your heavy unbelievable
skull, crowded with radiant
suns, a new planet, the people
submerged in you, a lost civilization
I can never excavate:
my hands trace the contours of a total
universe, its different
colours, flowers, its undiscovered
animals, violent or serene
its other air
its claws
its paradise rivers
“I Was Reading a Scientific Article” by Margaret Atwood from Selected Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
November 20th is National Absurdity Day. What is National Absurdity Day?A day that makes no sense. That’s actually the point. National Absurdity Day celebrates the unexpected, the incompatible, and the downright weird. Absurdity doesn’t match. It doesn’t fit. It’s incongruous, like a man wearing a suit and a bunny mask. ‘Absurd’ comes from the Latin word “absurdus”, which means “out of tune”. It can be disturbing, but it can also be hilarious.
In literature and on the stage, philosophical absurdism portrays life as meaningless and humankind’s fate as struggling for meaning in an indifferent universe. This movement became more popular after the atrocities of World War II, but absurdist elements appeared in literature as early as the late 1800s, like in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. But don’t think only of these absurdities. Think also of the absurdities we meet day by day ...
Source:
The Age Of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy
November 21, 1748: The first instalment of the “dirty” novel Fanny Hill is published. Subtitled “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure”, John Cleland’s novel is considered the first example of an original work of literary pornography written in prose in the English language. The novel was heavily censored when it was first published, and a full, unexpurgated version would not appear in print until 1963 – over two centuries after it was written. Astoundingly, the novel would find itself in a similar position to Lady Chatterley’s Lover several years before, and the man selling the book was put on trial. He lost, and the book would not be reprinted until 1970.
The most famous English erotic novel of the eighteenth century set in an 18th century London. The protagonist Fanny loses her "innocence" at the age of 15 and learns to use her graces to survive and make her way in the world. John Cleland does not use all the flour of his English narrative sack. Indeed, he draws inspiration from French fashion for the erotic narrative of the time. And it couldn't be otherwise! The trend is the kind in vogue then for the autobiographies of prostitutes whose life was a warning against the torments arising from sexual indulgence. The author does not intend to punish Fanny for his promiscuity and the book ends with the happy marriage of the heroine.
It must be said that Fanny is not a pornographic figure, in the modern sense. In fact it rejects heterosexual acts and thus proves to be a "conservative". She is disgusted with lesbian encounters and male homosexuality. This book has survived three centuries of infamy and is an important work for the development of the novel's narrative genre. In comparison to such vulgar and free contemporary sexual literature, it seems to me, reader in the third millennium, like a book for boarders .
Sources: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
November 22, 1963: Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis die on the same day as John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Consequently, and predictably, the deaths of these two writers were given scant media coverage. Aldous Huxley had taught his fellow dystopian writer George Orwell at Eton, while C. S. Lewis and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien, both tutors and professors at the University of Oxford, had a curious approach to dressing up for parties.
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963
A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis
Aldous Huxley: A Biography
23 November is Fibonacci Day There are sequences that appear in nature time and time again, ones that seem to define the very basis of our reality and coordinate how everything comes together. One of these numbers is the Fibonacci sequence, and it can be found in the most surprising of places. Fibonacci Day commemorates this sequence and the man who brought it to our attention in 1202.
Who’s the man? That would be Leonardo of Pisa, known today as Fibonacci. He was not the first to think of it however, just the first to bring it to the European world and bring awareness to its importance in the furthering of science. The sequence itself first appeared in Indian Mathematics, known as Virahanka numbers, and was connected with Sanskrit prosody. The number sequence is also tied to the golden ratio and the golden triangle, both of which appear again and again in nature, as does the sequence itself.
Where might you ask? It is in the most fundamental of things, from the petals of the yellow chamomile, the complex and seemingly random branching of a trees limbs, and these are just a few. Look deeper and you’ll find them within the pine cone and the shape of an unfurling fern, and in a truly strange one, it describes the family tree of bees and is deeply important to apiarists as a result. The sequence has also inspired songs, such as that by the illustrious Doctor Steel, simply called “Fibonacci Sequence”. It’s definitely worth taking the time to check out, and then listen to the rest of his stuff!
Celebrating Fibonacci Day is best done by studying and researching the Fibonacci sequence, and going out in nature and finding where it exists, which is everywhere! You can even look in your own home and yard and find places where the Fibonacci sequence structures the world around you. You can also take some time to research the great man himself, and all of those who have built off his work.
There’s so much about the Fibonacci sequence that leads to fascinating discoveries and even just reading about it is a pure joy! So get out there on Fibonacci Day, listen to some great music, and learn a bit more about the world around you.
The Fibonacci Sequence is the series of numbers:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...
The next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it.
The 2 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+1)
The 3 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+2),
And the 5 is (2+3),
and so on!
Example: the next number in the sequence above is 21+34 = 55
It is that simple!
Here is a longer list:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, ...
Can you figure out the next few numbers?
Source: daysoftheyear.com
Fibonacci
November 24, 1963 the first live murder on TV of the alleged assassin of J F Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald, by small-time nightclub owner Jack Ruby.At 12:20 p.m., in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.
On November 22, President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas. Less than an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street. Thirty minutes after that, he was arrested in a movie theater by police. Oswald was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit.
On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder.
Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer “psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced him to die.
Source: history.com
RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
November 25, 1562 Lope de Vega is born. A towering figure of Spanish Renaissance literature, he was a hugely prolific poet and playwright. Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, called Vega, his contemporary, a ‘monster of nature’, which sounds much like the seventeenth-century view of William Shakespeare as a writer endowed with natural gifts rather than one whose craft had been studiously learned. But Vega outdid even Shakespeare for his sheer volume of work. Shakespeare left behind 154 sonnets; Vega wrote over 3,000. Shakespeare wrote, or collaborated on, around forty plays. But around 1,800 plays have been attributed to Lope de Vega (of which 426 survive). Here follows one of his poems on love translated into two languages:
Desmayarse, atreverse, estar furioso,
áspero, tierno, liberal, esquivo,
alentado, mortal, difunto, vivo,
leal, traidor, cobarde y animoso;
no hallar fuera del bien centro y reposo,
mostrarse alegre, triste, humilde, altivo,
enojado, valiente, fugitivo,
satisfecho, ofendido, receloso;
huir el rostro al claro desengaño,
beber veneno por licor süave,
olvidar el provecho, amar el daño;
creer que un cielo en un infierno cabe,
dar la vida y el alma a un desengaño;
esto es amor, quien lo probó lo sabe.
—————————–
Abbandonarsi, ardire, esser furioso,
tenero, aspro, liberale, schivo,
animoso, accasciato, morto, vivo,
leale, infido, vile e coraggioso;
non trovar fuor del bene agio e riposo ,
mostrarsi altero, mite, egro, giulivo ,
stizzito, pusillanime, aggressivo,
soddisfatto, adontato, sospettoso;
voltar le spalle al chiaro disinganno,
bere veleno per liquore grato,
scordarsi del profitto, amare il danno;
creder che un cielo è in un inferno entrato,
dar l’anima e la vita a un disinganno:
quest’è amore: lo sa chi l’ha provato.
-------------------
To be fainthearted, to be bold, possessed,
abrasive, tender, open, isolated,
spirited, dying, dead, invigorated,
loyal, treacherous, venturesome, repressed.
Not to find, without your lover, rest.
To seem happy, sad, haughty, understated,
emboldened, fugitive, exasperated,
satisfied, offended, doubt-obsessed.
To face away from disillusionment,
to swallow venom like liqueur, and quell
all thoughts of gain, embracing discontent;
to believe a heaven lies within a hell,
to give your soul to disillusionment;
that’s love, as all who’ve tasted know too well.
(Translated by David Rosenthal)
Source: interestingliterature.com
Colección integral de Lope de Vega
November 26, 1922It’s the birthday of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, widely considered the most popular comic strip in the world.
Over the span of fifty years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. Some twenty years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself.
In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers—and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, “how to survive and still be a decent human being” in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate reader’s companion for every Peanuts fan.
The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life: A Library of America Special Publication
November 28, 1757: William Blake is born. William Blake has long been regarded as something of an enigma, and his poetry, although much loved by young and old, seen as esoteric and mysterious. His ‘natural supernaturalism’, personal mythology and vision can leave readers dazzled by the intensity and passion of his verse. In this outstanding work, Chesterton goes right to the heart of the matter and addresses the question of whether Blake’s genius was tainted by madness or whether his peculiar outlook on the world was the key to his success. With a detailed exposition of Blake’s life, and by weaving lucid explanations of his philosophy and religion into a discourse on his poetry, Chesterton has produced a remarkable and sensitive biography.
Source:
William Blake"The Sick Rose" is Blake’s short poem, a poem that has been described as ‘one of the most enigmatic and baffling poems in the English language. Here is the poem in full:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Some people see the rose and worm as representing different aspects of humanity, but part of the poem’s power undoubtedly lies in its ambiguity.
Mod
But I mainly love his engravings. At the tate in London there's a whole room with his works, some of which are his engravings for dante's The Divine Comedy
Long, long time ago, I remember the first year course at university, they gave us to study his poems. I'll never forget that experience ...
Antonio wrote: "23 November is Fibonacci Day There are sequences that appear in nature time and time again, ones that seem to define the very basis of our reality and coordinate how everything comes together. On..."
Oh, yes, we are very familiar with this sequence at our house!!! I have the first bunch of those numbers memorized--bit of a number geek but not a mathematician.
November 30, It’s the birthday of Johnathan Swift born in Dublin (1667).He was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms, such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier, or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
I’ll never forget the extraordinary pamphlet is "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick."
“The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed.
The author argues, by hard-edged economic reasoning as well as from a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn this problem into its own solution. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one, he argues, thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.
The author offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns. He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.”
(Source: sparknotes.com)
Memories of a "provocation". When I taught students, I remember that, among the many "provocations" I proposed, (someone said that I did it with "sadism"), this "pamphlet" written by the Vicar had one of the first places. Finding it now in an Italian version has a certain effect on me. It is one thing to read Jonathan's "provocation" in English, and another to read it in Italian. But the author for me remains one of the great literature figures of all time. It is no coincidence that Swift wrote his epitaph to be engraved on his tomb when he passed:
Hic depositum est Corpus/Ionathan Swift S.T.D./Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis/Decani/Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit. Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem.
---
Here is placed the body/Of Jonathan Swift, STD /(Doctor of Sacred Theology)/Dean of this/cathedral church/Where savage indignation/Can no longer tear his heart/Go forth, traveller
And imitate, if you can,/a valiant champion/of manly freedom.
W. B. Yeats wrote these few words in his honour:
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage/indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
(My sources)
Gulliver's Travels / A Modest Proposal
December, 2019 is "Human Rights Month"Throughout history there have been instances of wanton cruelty, and a blatant violation of the rights and privileges of mankind. Whether that was based on the color of one’s skin, their nationality, religion, or merely being unfortunate enough to be living under the regime of another country, people have regularly been treated like animals, or worse. Human Rights Month is here to remind us of that day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly codified the basic human rights of every individual on the planet.
During World War II there were four basic goals stated by the Allies, that ever man and woman should know and experience four freedoms. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from fear, and Freedom from want. These ideas were set in place and upheld, but as was made clear by the atrocities committed by Hitler, they were woefully insufficient to guarantee and enforce the freedoms they represented.
So it came to pass in December of 1948 that the United nations General Assembly put forth 30 articles that cover everything from rights to education, freedom, health, and more. Since this event these articles have served to help protect civilians in time of war or dictatorship, to help bring POW’s home, and to ensure that people everywhere are allowed to live in liberty and safety.
The best way to celebrate Human Rights month is to take time to understand what exactly this codified set of freedoms does for you. Studying and researching it is a way to honor the work and lives that went into making sure this document came to exist for the good of all mankind. It’s also a great opportunity to spend some time volunteering for organizations like Amnesty International, a charity organization that works tirelessly to support and spread human rights.
Working with organizations like these will help millions of people around the world, and the ways to contribute are endless. It can start as simple as a donation drive, or grow to a continuous and concerted effort to help prisoners and the needy all throughout the world. We all benefit from the work done by these august organizations, International Human Rights Month is your opportunity to give a little back for the protections you enjoy as a citizen of the world.
Source: daysoftheyear.com
“How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.”
Inventing Human Rights: A History
December 3, 1944: Craig Raine is born. He is perhaps the most famous exponent of ‘Martian poetry’, a short-lived poetic movement that takes as its thesis the idea that the poet should explain ordinary everyday things as if seeing them for the first time – i.e. like a Martian who has just arrived on Earth. Martian poetry had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.
The poem
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.
At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
The title poem (which won the Prudence Farmer Award) is in some ways a key to the rest of the poems in this book: a uniquely innocent eye presents an odd and beautiful version of the earth, while glimpsing, almost accidentally, the sad variety of human experience. Similarly, 'Down on the Funny Farm' offers a guileless comic vision that is finally displaced by a sombre view of commonplace human tragedy, seen obliquely in a new-laid egg and a battered kitchen bowl. In 'Oberfeldwebel Beckstadt', it is only when the sergeant major's experience is refracted through his wife's innocent eye that he truly realises the damning significance of what he has done. She brings it home to him. The word 'home' sounds through the poem, and throughout the collection, which demonstrates Craig Raine's uncanny ability to present the homely in a dazzling light and to domesticate the extraordinary.
Source:
A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
It’s the birthday of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, born in Prague (1875). His family wanted him to be a lawyer and take over his uncle’s law firm. But he published some sentimental love poetry, and it inspired him to make his living as a writer. He went to Munich to be part of the arts scene, and there he met a woman. She was brilliant, she had been friends with Nietzsche, she was 15 years older than Rilke. And she took the young poet under her wing, helped him develop as a writer, persuaded him to give up writing sentimental poems and become more ambitious. He followed her all over Europe. When they broke up, he traveled around and seduced rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote. He wasn’t too handsome, but he was poetic and romantic, so women fell for him. Then he met the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis. She was older than he was, and she thought he treated other women badly, and refused to be seduced. But they became close friends and exchanged hundreds of letters, and Marie let Rilke stay in her castle in Trieste, on the Adriatic Sea. He loved it there, at the Castle Duino, and one winter while he was living there alone, he said an angel appeared. The angel started talking to him about life and death, about beauty and humanity, and Rilke went right to work on what turned out to be his most famous poems, “The Duino Elegies”.
Source: writersalmanac.org
The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror …
-----
Die Erste Elegie
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich …
Rilke begins with an intense questioning cry. Yet still an ambiguous cry. Who among the Angels would hear so small and insignificant an entity as himself crying out, since the Angels both exist and comprehend all being, encompassing it inwardly? Is that what he means? Or: who or what is there to respond to him if he cried out, as something seemingly responded to the devout who cried out in previous ages, a Saint Theresa for example? Is the Angel a real existent capable of responding, or a concept indicating ‘the world no longer from the human point of view, but as it is within the angel’ (Letter, 1915) a perspective or act of transformation which he saw as his real task …
Source: poetryintranslation.com (http://bit.ly/2OKX8ry)
Rilke's Duino Elegies: Cambridge Readings
December 11, 1922: Kurt Vonnegut is born. The American novelist is best known for such works as Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, and Breakfast of Champions. To reflect his original contribution to science fiction, he has an asteroid named after him. ‘We are here on Earth to fart around’ was his philosophy. ‘Don’t let anybody tell you any different.’
Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade
Mod
His family wanted him to be a lawyer and take over his uncle’s law firm. But he published some sentimental love poetry, an..."
Have you ever visited the Rilke's way above Duino, Trieste? A breath taking view; they say that he wrote some of his best poems there ...
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "It’s the birthday of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, born in Prague (1875). His family wanted him to be a lawyer and take over his uncle’s law firm. But he published some sentimental..."
I'm sorry, I've never been to Trieste. Have you ever tried to read the whole ten Rilke's elegies through? I can assure you, it's an even more breathtaking reading ...
Mod
His family wanted him to be a lawyer and take over his uncle’s law firm. But he published s..."
I don't think I can stop breathing that long!!!! LOL!
Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863, Löten, Norway.Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. His painting The Scream, or The Cry (1893), can be seen as a symbol of modern spiritual anguish. He died January 23, 1944, Ekely, Oslo.
----
Although almost everyone recognizes Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, hardly anyone knows much about the man. What kind of person could have created this universal image, one that so vividly expressed all the uncertainties of the twentieth century? What kind of experiences did he have? In this book, the first comprehensive biography of Edvard Munch in English, Sue Prideaux brings the artist fully to life. Combining a scholar’s precision with a novelist’s insight, she explores the events of his turbulent life and unerringly places his experiences in their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual contexts.
With unlimited access to tens of thousands of Munch’s papers, including his letters and diaries, Prideaux offers a portrait of the artist that is both intimate and moving. Munch sought to paint what he experienced rather than what he saw, and as his life often veered out of control, his experiences were painful. Yet he painted throughout his long life, creating strange and dramatic works in which hysteria and violence lie barely concealed beneath the surface. An extraordinary genius, Munch connects with an audience that reaches around the world and across more than a century.
Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream
December 13, 1797: Heinrich Heine is born. This German poet once observed that wherever books are burned, people are burned, too, in the end. His words turned out to be prophetic, as his own books would be burnt by the Nazis during the 1930s.
Heinrich Heine was a Jewish born poet who became a highly controversial figure in German literature and was also something of a visionary. He quite clearly prophesied the terrible times to come for the Jewish people in a play that he wrote in 1821. In "Almansor" he wrote about the burning of books for political or religious reasons and the line:
"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bucher verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen" translates as "That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also".
Over a hundred years later Nazi party activists raided the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and burned thousands of books on Berlin’s Opernplatz, including some of the works of Heinrich Heine.
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
Heinrich Heine died on 17 February 1856, aged 58. His body was buried at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris.
Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals
December 16, 1775Jane Austen is, of course, best-known for her six full-length novels rather than for her poems, but she did also write poetry – such as this fine verse.
‘To the Memory of Mrs Lefroy who Died Dec:r 16 – My Birthday’ was written to commemorate her friend, Anne Lefroy, who died on, of all days, Austen’s own birthday, 16 December.
To the Memory of Mrs Lefroy who Died Dec:r 16 – My Birthday
The day returns again, my natal day;
What mix’d emotions with the Thought arise!
Beloved friend, four years have pass’d away
Since thou wert snatch’d forever from our eyes. –
The day, commemorative of my birth
Bestowing Life and Light and Hope on me,
Brings back the hour which was thy last on Earth.
Oh! bitter pang of torturing Memory! –
Angelic Woman! past my power to praise
In Language meet, thy Talents, Temper, mind.
Thy solid Worth, they captivating Grace! –
Thou friend and ornament of Humankind! –
At Johnson’s death by Hamilton ’twas said,
‘Seek we a substitute – Ah! vain the plan,
No second best remains to Johnson dead –
None can remind us even of the Man.’
So we of thee – unequall’d in thy race
Unequall’d thou, as he the first of Men.
Vainly we wearch around the vacant place,
We ne’er may look upon thy like again.
Come then fond Fancy, thou indulgant Power, –
– Hope is desponding, chill, severe to thee! –
Bless thou, this little portion of an hour,
Let me behold her as she used to be.
I see her here, with all her smiles benign,
Her looks of eager Love, her accents sweet.
That voice and Countenance almost divine! –
Expression, Harmony, alike complete. –
I listen – ’tis not sound alone – ’tis sense,
’Tis Genius, Taste and Tenderness of Soul.
’Tis genuine warmth of heart without pretence
And purity of Mind that crowns the whole.
She speaks; ’tis Eloquence–that grace of Tongue
So rare, so lovely! – Never misapplied
By her to palliate Vice, or deck a Wrong,
She speaks and reasons but on Virtue’s side.
Hers is the Energy of Soul sincere.
Her Christian Spirit ignorant to feign,
Seeks but to comfort, heal, enlighten, chear,
Confer a pleasure, or prevent a pain. –
Can ought enhance such Goodness? – Yes, to me,
Her partial favour from my earliest years
Consummates all. – Ah! Give me yet to see
Her smile of Love. – the Vision disappears.
’Tis past and gone–We meet no more below.
Short is the Cheat of Fancy o’er the Tomb.
Oh! might I hope to equal Bliss to go!
To meet thee Angel! in thy future home! –
Fain would I feel an union in thy fate,
Fain would I seek to draw an Omen fair
From this connection in our Earthly date.
Indulge the harmless weakness – Reason, spare. –
Jane Austen: A Life
Mod
Jane Austen is, of course, best-known for her six full-length novels rather than for her poems, but she did also write poetry – such as this fine verse.
‘To the Memory of Mrs L..."
She's my favourite author ever, the one that made me pass from literature for kids to adult books. But I didn't know that she wrote also poetry!!!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "December 16, 1775Jane Austen is, of course, best-known for her six full-length novels rather than for her poems, but she did also write poetry – such as this fine verse.
‘To the..."
I didn't either. Now we know it ...
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December 19, 1861The Italian writer Italo Svevo was born on this day in Trieste, Italy. He was devoted to literature but went into business, working as a bank clerk and writing a theater column and stories under one of his pseudonyms on the side. When he published his first two books, “A Life” (1893) and “As a Man Grows Older” (1898), they were ignored by readers and critics alike.
Svevo needed to improve his English for business reasons and hired a tutor who turned out to be aspiring writer James Joyce, who had come to Italy to teach. Svevo shared his books with Joyce, who felt the Italian was a neglected genius. With Joyce’s encouragement, Svevo wrote the book for which he is known, “Confessions of Zeno” (1923), a fictional memoir of a man undergoing psychoanalysis, which today is considered one of the greatest Italian novels of the 20th century.
The pliant protagonist of Italo Svevo's 1923 classic Confessions of Zeno is, among other things, a bumbling businessman, a guilt-ridden adulterer, and a hardcore nicotine addict. What Zeno Cosini most definitely is not is wordless. For the novel is in fact a dense and comically excruciating exercise in self-revelation, undertaken by the narrator as part of his psychoanalytic treatment. Zeno never finds a cure for his affliction, which seems to be a strain of continental angst. Yet his reflections remain as audacious as they are exhaustive--and, much of the time, masterfully absorbing.
As we soon discover, Zeno is a master is the convoluted rationalization. He concocts numerous reasons why his "last cigarette" needn't truly become his last; he strives endlessly to convince himself that he loves his wife; he tirelessly justifies an awkward affair, all the while vacillating between a paralysis of action and a lazy submission. "My resolutions are less drastic and, as I grow older, I become more indulgent to my weaknesses," Zeno proclaims early on. (Later he backpedals even further, confessing that his "resolutions existed for their own sake and had no practical results whatever.") As a last-ditch tactic, he transmutes his disappointments into inevitabilities--an act of creative bookkeeping that becomes steadily creepier as the narrative unfolds.
There are times, to be sure, when Zeno seems to grasp that life isn't merely feints and games, that subterfuge and dark motivation aren't the whole of human transaction. Yet he always retreats back into his extravagant, consoling fantasies. Perhaps that's why Svevo's book still has the power to discomfit: Zeno's ingenious whitewashing of an indifferent world feels alarmingly like the fictions we tell ourselves on a daily basis. --Ben Guterson
Source:
Confessions of Zeno
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The Italian writer Italo Svevo was born on this day in Trieste, Italy. He was devoted to literature but went into business, working as a bank clerk and writing a theater column a..."
If you go to Trieste, there's a really interesting itinerary along the city reminding Svevo and his writings. He is, along with Manzoni, Verga, probably the most studied novelist in Italian Literature!
LauraT wrote: "Antonio wrote: "December 19, 1861The Italian writer Italo Svevo was born on this day in Trieste, Italy. He was devoted to literature but went into business, working as a bank clerk and writing a ..."
Thanks Laura. Have a nice Holidays Time!
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Not yet!
I'll be at work till next Monday included :(!
But after that ... Holidays till the 7th!!!!
December 21-22In the Northern Hemisphere, is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It’s officially the first day of winter and one of the oldest-known holidays in human history.
Anthropologists believe that solstice celebrations go back at least 30,000 years, before humans even began farming on a large scale. Many of the most ancient stone structures made by human beings were designed to pinpoint the precise date of the solstice. The stone circles of Stonehenge were arranged to receive the first rays of midwinter sun.
Some ancient peoples believed that because daylight was waning, it might go away forever, so they lit huge bonfires to tempt the sun to come back. The tradition of decorating our houses and our trees with lights at this time of year is passed down from those ancient bonfires. In ancient Egypt and Syria, people celebrated the winter solstice as the sun’s birthday. In ancient Rome, the winter solstice was celebrated with the festival of Saturnalia, during which all business transactions and even wars were suspended, and slaves were waited upon by their masters.
We've organized our days into precise 24-hour segments but the Earth doesn't spin on its axis so precisely. So while the time from noon to noon is always exactly 24 hours the time between solar noons, the moment each day when the sun reaches its highest peak, varies. So as we move through the year the chronological time of the solar noon shifts seasonally—and so do each day's sunrises and sunsets.
Source: nationalgeographic.com
The Winter Solstice
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All About Books
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William Shakespeare (other topics)
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The author of over fifty plays – perhaps most famously, Pygmalion, which gave us Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Shaw also devised his own phonetic alphabet and was a co-founder of the London School of Economics, or LSE. Here are some wise and witty quotes from the great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him. – Preface to Pygmalion
When I was a young man I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work. – The Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. – Maxims for Revolutionists
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. – Major Barbara
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. – Saturday Review, 1895
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. – Man and Superman
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. – The Quintessence of Ibsenism
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.