Eskişehir, Türkiye
Tuesday 16 April 2024
Above: A spectrogram (0-5000 Hz) of the sentence “It’s all Greek to me.” spoken by a female voice
World Voice Day (WVD) is a worldwide annual event that takes place on 16 April devoted to the celebration of the phenomenon of voice.
The aim is to demonstrate the enormous importance of the voice in the daily lives of all people.
Voice is a critical aspect of effective and healthy communication.
World Voice Day brings global awareness to the need for preventing voice problems, rehabilitating the deviant or sick voice, training the artistic voice, and researching the function and application of voice.
A goal of World Voice Day is to encourage all those who use their voice for business or pleasure to learn to take care of their voice, and know how to seek help and training, and to support research on the voice.
The World Voice Day was established with the main goals of increasing public awareness of the importance of the voice and alertness to voice problems.
My first experience with poetry was sugary-sweet and dripping in rhyme.
Dr. Seuss’s melodic stories captured my youthful attention, and I loved listening to how the words bounced off the page to form music of their own.
How do you read, enjoy, analyze, and remember the pieces you most love?
Do you read 10 poems in rapid succession?
One at a time?
Do you have to sit in a velvet housecoat, surrounded by mahogany bookshelves and a crackling fire, to be considered ‘someone who reads poetry’?
How do you even start?
There is no proper way to start.
Poetry is a vast ocean.
In fact, it’s multiple vast oceans.
And each ocean has thousands of beaches leading into it.
Nobody will know everything about all the poetry.
So if you’re interested, start where you are.
Poetry is a personal experience—for both the writer and the reader.
The world is full of lyrical collections and melodical prose, and the poetry canon is growing more vibrant each passing day.
Where does one even begin?
Poetry anthologies are an excellent place to start because they offer a range of voices within time periods, places, or topics.
To continuously feed yourself new poetry, you can find local literary magazines, subscribe to Poetry Magazine, or sign up for daily poetry emails.
Once you find a favorite poet, follow the trail of their influences.
How To Read A Poem
- Examine the title and the shape of the poem.
- Read the poem as you normally read anything.
- Re-read for meaning.
- Re-read for sound (out loud, if you can).
- Add context to paint a full picture.
Examine the way it takes up space on the page.
Read the title of the poem.
How does it make you feel?
How does the title fit the shape of the poem?
If the title is sad, let the shape of the poem inform the nuance of the emotion.
If it’s short and sparse, maybe it is coming from a place of desolation or desperation.
Long chaotic forms might mean it is coming from a place of confusion or anger.
Now, remove your expectations and begin reading.
Reading poetry doesn’t require a highfalutin’ approach.
You can read as you’d read anything else.
On the first pass through, absorb whatever it is that arises upon first impression. Notice where in the poem you react — maybe your stomach churns at a particular phrase, or you hold your breath at a certain line.
Explore the feelings that come up as you read.
Listen to yourself, and wonder what the poem is drawing out of you.
What is it that the poem knows about you that you don’t yet know about yourself?
Maybe it provides a bit of comfort for a part of your life that is comfortless.
Or maybe it provides challenge where you need it.
Above: The oldest love poem. Sumerian terracotta tablet from Nippur, Iraq. Ur III (Neo-Sumerian) period, 2037-2029 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul.
If the poem captivates you or rouses your emotions, you can uncover even more information on a second read through.
If you didn’t feel a connection to the piece, it is okay to skip over re-reading the poem.
You might come back years later to a particular poem, only to find that it connects to your heart in ways it didn’t before.
The second read-through is where you look up definitions and pronunciations of words you don’t know and examine any footnotes.
If there’s historical context or the poem is referencing a specific event you are not familiar with, look that up, too.
Having this knowledge adds weight to the poem and makes each reading feel like a reverence.
Look for little clues you may have missed — word choices that bolster the metaphor, repetitions that indicate a deeper theme, or unusual line breaks that alter the meaning of a phrase.
Consider the speaker of the poem.
Is it the poet themselves?
Is it an omniscient being or a single narrow perspective?
Who is the audience of this poem?
This will further illuminate its meaning (and the intention).
Look for where the poem offers a moment of surprise.
Sometimes a poem has a ‘turn’, a place where it pivots on itself.
This might be expected or it might be shocking.
Above: The Old English epic poem Beowulf, British Museum, London
Try reading the poem out loud or search for readings of the poem online.
This is where the music of a poem emerges, and you can feel the shape of each word and line as you move through it.
Poetry has music in it.
You can hear the music:
In the sounds of the words, perhaps the vowel sounds, or the rhythm, or rhyme, or the spaces in between words.
Listen to the internal music of the poem.
Sound is no accident in poetry, so consider how word choice, rhythm, and cadence make the poem feel.
Above: Statue of runic singer Petri Shemeikka at Kolmikulmanpuisto Park in Sortavala, Karelia
Return to the beginning.
How does the title play with the rest of the poem?
Does the shape of the poem have anything to do with its meaning?
Dig into the author’s history.
Look at the publication date and consider the world around the poem when it was first released.
Consider where the poem lives:
Was it released as part of the author’s poetry book or was it published in a literary magazine?
If you’re reading it as part of a collection, why do you think this particular poem was selected?
Who selected it?
What is the hunger of the poem?
Why did this poem need to be written?
What is its intelligence?
What is it yearning for?
Treating the poem with this kind of curiosity, you will find it draws on parts of your own story.
There’s always more to learn from a poem you love; just when you think you’ve gleaned everything from its meaning, it can strike you with a new insight.
Bookmark or note the poems that inspire you, and revisit them when you’re feeling lonely, homesick, or untethered.
Which poems are those, you ask?
You’ll know which ones speak directly to your heart when you read them.
Above: Divine Comedy: Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light.
Why did my parents send me to the schools
That I with knowledge might enrich my mind?
Since the desire to know first made men fools,
And did corrupt the root of all mankind.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: John Davies
The desire to know causes me to seek out what is special about this day.
I learn that today was the birthday of English poet John Davies (16 April 1569 – 1626), whose poem opens this post.
Above: John Davies
For when God’s hand had written in the hearts
Of the first parents all the rules of good,
So that their skill infused did pass all arts
That ever were, before or since the Flood,
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: The Creation of Adam (1511), Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
Learning of English statesman / poet Charles Montagu (16 April 1661 – 1715), a Wikipedia link leads to a poetry portal wherein I learn that the making of a poem involves rhythm and sound.
Above: Charles Montagu
Poetry (a term derived from the Greek word poiesis, “making“), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonoaesthetics, sound symbolism and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning.
A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.
Poetry is a kind of spontaneous overflowing of the personality, expressed in written words but needing the physical act of sound to reproduce feeling.
The poet reaches down deep into himself to produce his poems.
A poem’s point of origin is a mysterious well of creation within the mind, spurred by the soul.
Though anyone could theoretically make poetry at any time in a kind of solitary sensitivity session, the trick mastered by only a few is to seize the poetic impulse and arrange words in an orderly and disciplined way.
Words are weapons that are blunt unless the poem praises or rouses to action through rhyme and rhythm.
A good poem can be worked at, read and re-read, and thought about over and over for the rest of your life.
You will never stop finding new things in it, new pleasures and delights and also new ideas about yourself and the world.
Above: The philosopher Confucius was influential in the developed approach to poetry and ancient music theory.
Read a poem without stopping.
Remember that any good poem has a unity.
We cannot discover that unity, the experience of the poem, until it is read in its entirety.
Read the poem out loud.
The very voice of speaking the words allow you to understand a poem’s power perfectly.
And when their reason’s eye was sharp and clear,
And, as an eagle can behold the sun,
Could have approached th’eternal light as near
As the intellectual angels could have done,
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of Canadian poet Octave Crémazie (16 April 1827 – 1879), the “father of French Canadian poetry“.
After finishing his studies at the Seminary of Québec, Crémazie went into business with his brother Joseph, a bookseller.
Their shop in Québec City, the J. et O. Crémazie bookstore, established in 1833, was instrumental in the North American dissemination of works by many Romantic writers.
It was also a meeting place for the members of what would become known as Quebec’s literary movement of 1860.
How many writers have dreamed of having their own bookshop?
How many writers have dreamed of being inside their own literary society?
While still in his early 20s, Crémazie helped found the Institut canadien, an organization devoted to the promotion of French Canadian culture.
He would later serve as the organization’s president.
Above: Flag of the Canadian province of Québec
Crémazie’s first published poems appeared in L’Ami de la religion et de la patrie (edited by his brother Jacques) and other Québec City newspapers.
Recognition for his poetry grew throughout the 1850s.
As French Canadian literature scholar Odette Condemine writes:
His nostalgic evocation of the happiness that preceded the Conquest and the miseries that followed roused his compatriots’ fervour.
“Le vieux soldat canadien” (1855) and “Le Drapeau de Carillon” (1858) were enthusiastically received and won Crémazie his title as “national bard”.
“Then he compared, seeing this shore,
Where glory often crowned his courage,
The happiness of yesteryear to the misfortunes of today:
And all the memories that filled his life.
Pressed in turn into his tender soul,
Numerous as the waves which flowed before him.”(“Le vieux soldat canadien“, Octave Crémazie)
The longing for a glorious, vanished past and the sense of estrangement from France in Crémazie’s work has prompted the critic Gilles Marcotte to describe it as “a poetry of exile“.
“As in the sweet memory of holy Zion,
Israel in exile had broken its lyre,
And, from the foreign master suffering oppression,
Threw to heaven the cry of impotent delirium,
All our proud peasants with their joyful voices
No longer awakened the the echo that slept on our banks;
Regretting and mourning the beautiful days of yesteryear,
Their songs found only plaintive notes.“
(“Le drapeau de Carillon“, Octave Crémazie)
Above: Flag of Nouveau France
There are moments when I feel like I am in exile as a Canadian working as a teacher in Türkiye while his German wife works in Switzerland.
Above: Flag of Canada
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
There the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart
Be acceptable in Thy sight here tonight
Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts
Be acceptable in Thy sight here tonight
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion“
(“By the rivers of Babylon“, Boney M)
Despite the popularity of his bookstore, Octave Crémazie’s extravagant taste for foreign commodities led to large debts and trouble with creditors.
Above: Images of Québec City
I view the stock market as I view all institutions of gambling.
If you can’t afford to lose, you can’t afford to play.
By 1862, his financial situation had become so dire that he fled to France in secret, leaving the bookstore bankrupt.
He lived at different times in Paris, Bordeaux and Le Havre under the name of Jules Fontaine, poor and isolated despite having secured a modest job and the support of a few French friends.
Crémazie’s poetic production stopped when he left Québec.
The documents that survive from his later years include his Journal du siège de Paris, a diary detailing the hardship that Parisians and Crémazie himself endured during the siege of the capital in 1870 and 1871.
Above: St. Cloud, Paris, 1871
Many of his letters to close friends and family members also survive, including his correspondence with the priest Raymond Casgrain, to whom Crémazie often expressed his ideas about literature.
Above: Abbot Raymond Casgrain (1831 – 1904)
Octave Crémazie died in Le Havre on 16 January 1879.
Above: Panorama of Le Havre
A statue depicting a French Canadian soldier stands in Montréal’s Saint Louis Square (Rue de Malines and Saint-Denis) with Crémazie’s name across the top and the years 1827–1879 (his years of birth and death).
Underneath the soldier are the words:
Pour mon drapeau je viens ici mourir
(“For my flag I come here to die“).
Above: Monument to Crémazie located at St-Louis Square in Montréal
But would Nouveau France die for its people?
Above: Coat of arms of Nouveau France
There is also a Montreal Métro station named for him on the Orange Line, located on the boulevard likewise named in his honour.
Even then to them the spirit of lies suggests
That they were blind, because they saw not ill,
And breathes into their incorrupted breasts
A curious wish, which did corrupt their will.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of French writer Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 1924).
A French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters.
He was a member of the Académie Française.
He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament“.
Above: Anatole France
France began his literary career as a poet and a journalist.
In 1869, Le Parnasse contemporain published one of his poems, “La Part de Madeleine“.
In 1875, he sat on the committee in charge of the third Parnasse contemporain compilation.
As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote many articles and notices.
He became known with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881).
Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France’s own personality.
The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the Académie Française.
In La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) France ridiculed belief in the occult.
(Story idea:
Montréal, modern day, a plongeur (dishwasher) at a St. Hubert chicken restaurant is drawn to a woman who is an ardent believer in astrology.)
In Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the fin de siècle.
He was elected to the Académie Française in 1896.
France took a part in the Dreyfus Affair.
Above: French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859 – 1935)
He signed Emile Zola’s manifesto supporting Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage.
Above: French writer Emile Zola (1840 – 1902)
France wrote about the Affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret.
France’s later works include L’Île des Pingouins (1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans – after the birds have been baptized by mistake by the almost-blind Abbot Mael.
It is a satirical history of France, starting in Medieval times, going on to the author’s own time with special attention to the Dreyfus affair and concluding with a dystopian future.
(Story idea:
Kafka’s Metamorphosis meets The Planet of the Apes – people’s personalities emerge as the animals their behaviour most emulates.)
Les dieux ont soif (1912) is a novel, set in Paris during the French Revolution, about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and his contribution to the bloody events of the Reign of Terror of 1793 – 1794.
It is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism and explores various other philosophical approaches to the events of the time.
La Revolte des Anges (1914) is often considered France’s most profound and ironic novel.
Loosely based on the Christian understanding of the War in Heaven, it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d’Esparvieu.
Bored because Bishop d’Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the Bishop’s books on theology and becomes an atheist.
He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels, and meets the Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God.
Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless “in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy laldabaoth“.
“Laldabaoth“, according to France, is God’s secret name and means “the child who wanders“.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.
On 31 May 1922, France’s entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books“) of the Catholic Church.
He regarded this as a “distinction“.
Above: Coat of arms of the Holy See
France had socialist sympathies and was an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
However he also vocally defended the institution of monarchy as more inclined to peace than bourgeois democracy, saying in relation to efforts to end the First World War that:
“A king of France, yes a king, would have had pity on our poor, exhausted, bloodlet nation.
However democracy is without a heart and without entrails.
When serving the powers of money, it is pitiless and inhuman.”
In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party.
In his book Lys Rouge, France famously wrote:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.”
I don’t entirely subscribe to Anatole’s POV.
The evil isn’t democracy but rather excessive capitalism.
The solution isn’t Communism but rather it is social democracy.
He died on 13 October 1924.
He is buried in the Neuilly sur Seine Old Communal Cemetery near Paris.
Above: Neuilly-sur-Seine Cemetery, Hauts-de-Seine, France
For that same ill they straight desired to know;
Which ill, being nought but a defect of good,
And all God’s works the devil could not show
While man their lord in his perfection stood.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens (1615) depicting both domestic and exotic wild animals such as tigers, parrots, and ostriches co-existing in the Garden
I think of Irish writer John Millington Synge (16 April 1871 – 1909).
Synge was born in Newtown Villas Raathfarnham, County Dublin, the youngest of eight children of upper-middle-class Protestant parents.
Synge’s father died from smallpox in 1872 at the age of 49.
He was buried on his son’s first birthday.
Above: John Millington Synge
His mother moved the family to the house next door to her own mother’s house in Rathgar, County Dublin.
Although often ill, Synge had a happy childhood there.
He developed an interest in bird-watching along the banks of the River Dodder and during family holidays at the seaside resort of Greystones, County Wicklow, and the family estate at Glanmore.
Above: Greystones harbour, Ireland
In 1893 he published his first known work, a poem, Kottabos: A College Miscellany.
Above: John Millington Synge
After graduating from Dublin’s Trinity College, Synge moved to Germany to study music.
He stayed in Koblenz during 1893 and moved to Würzburg in January 1894.
Owing partly to his shyness about performing in public, and partly to his doubt about his ability, he decided to abandon music and pursue his literary interests.
Above: Flag of modern Germany
He returned to Ireland in June 1894, and moved to Paris in January 1895 to study literature and languages at the Sorbonne.
Above: Coat of arms of the University of Paris
He met Cherrie Matheson during summer breaks with his family in Dublin.
He proposed to her in 1895 and again the next year, but she turned him down on both occasions because of their differing views on religion.
This rejection affected Synge greatly and reinforced his determination to spend as much time as possible outside Ireland.
Above: Flag of Ireland
In 1896, he visited Italy to study the language before returning to Paris.
He planned on making a career in writing about French authors for the English press.
Above: Flag of France
In that same year he met W. B. Yeats, who encouraged him to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work.
Above: Irısh writer William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Above: The Aran Islands
In 1899 he joined with Yeats, Isabella Augusta (Lady Gregory) and George William Russell to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which later established the Abbey Theatre.
Above: Lady Gregory (1852 – 1932)
Above: Irısh writer George William Russell (1867 – 1935)
He wrote some pieces of literary criticism for Gonne’s Irlande Libre and other journals, as well as unpublished poems and prose in a decadent fin de siècle style.
In 1897, Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkin’s, after which an enlarged gland was removed from his neck.
He visited Lady Gregory’s home, at Coole Park near Gort, County Galway, where he met Yeats again and Edward Martyn.
Above: Irısh playwright Edward Martyn (1859 – 1923)
He spent the following five summers there, collecting stories and folklore, perfecting his Irish, but living in Paris for most of the rest of each year.
He also visited Brittany regularly.
Above: Flag of Brittany
During this period he wrote his first play, When the Moon Has Set which he sent to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1900, but she rejected it.
The play was not published until it appeared in his Collected Works.
Synge’s first account of life on the Aran Islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 and his book, The Aran Islands, completed in 1901 and published in 1907.
Synge considered the book “my first serious piece of work“.
Lady Gregory read the manuscript and advised Synge to remove any direct naming of places and to add more folk stories, but he declined to do either because he wanted to create something more realistic.
The book conveys Synge’s belief that beneath the Catholicism of the islanders, it was possible to detect a substratum of the pagan beliefs of their ancestors.
His experiences in the Arans formed the basis for the plays about Irish rural life that Synge went on to write.
Synge left Paris for London in 1903.
He had written two one-act plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen, the previous year.
These met with Lady Gregory’s approval.
The Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903.
Riders to the Sea was staged at the same venue in February the following year.
The Shadow of the Glen formed part of the bill for the opening run of the Abbey Theatre from 27 December 1904 to 3 January 1905.
Both plays were based on stories that Synge had collected in the Arans.
He also relied on Hiberno-English, the English dialect of Ireland, to reinforce its usefulness as a literary language, partly because he believed that the Irish language could not survive.
The Shadow of the Glen is based on a story about an unfaithful wife, and was criticised by the Irish nationalist leader Arthur Griffith as “a slur on Irish womanhood“.
Years later Synge wrote:
“When I was writing ‘The Shadow of the Glen’ some years ago I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in the kitchen.”
Griffith’s criticism encouraged more attacks alleging that Synge described Irish women in an unfair manner.
Riders to the Sea was also attacked by nationalists, this time including Patrick Pearse, who decried it because of the author’s attitude to God and religion.
Pearse, Griffith and other conservative-minded Catholics claimed Synge had done a disservice to Irish nationalism by not idealising his characters, but later critics have stated he idealised the Irish peasantry too much.
A third one-act play, The Tinker’s Wedding, was drafted around this time, but Synge initially made no attempt to have it performed, largely because of a scene in which a priest is tied up in a sack, which, as he wrote to the publisher Elkin Mathews in 1905, would probably upset “a good many of our Dublin friends“.
Synge’s next play, The Well of the Saints, was staged at the Abbey in 1905, again to nationalist disapproval, and then in 1906 at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin.
The setting is specified as “some lonely mountainous district in the east of Ireland one or more centuries ago“.
Martin and Mary Doul are two blind beggars who have been led by the lies of the townsfolk to believe that they are beautiful when in fact they are old and ugly.
A saint cures them of their blindness with water from a holy well and at first sight they are disgusted by each other.
Martin goes to work for Timmy the smith and tries to seduce Timmy’s betrothed, Molly, but she viciously rejects him and Timmy sends him away.
Martin and Mary both lose their sight again.
When the saint returns to wed Timmy and Molly, Martin refuses his offer to cure their blindness again.
The saint takes offence and the townsfolk banish the couple, who head south in search of kinder neighbours.
The critic Joseph Holloway asserted that the play combined “lyric and dirt“.
Synge’s widely regarded masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, was first performed on 26 January 1907, at the Abbey Theatre.
A comedy about apparent patricide (the act of killing your father), it attracted a hostile reaction from sections of the Irish public.
The Freeman’s Journal described it as “an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood“.
Arthur Griffith, who believed that the Abbey Theatre was insufficiently politically committed, described the play as “a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform“, and perceived a slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood in the line “… a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts …”
At the time, a shift (undergarment worn next to the skin beneath a dress) was known as a symbol representing Kitty O’Shea and her adulterous relationship with Charles Stuart Parnell.
It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father.
On the west coast of County Mayo Christy Mahon stumbles into Flaherty’s tavern.
There he claims that he is on the run because he killed his own father by driving a loy (spade) into his head.
Flaherty praises Christy for his boldness.
Flaherty’s daughter (the barmaid), Pegeen, falls in love with Christy, to the dismay of her betrothed, Shawn Keogh.
Because of the novelty of Christy’s exploits and the skill with which he tells his own story, he becomes something of a town hero.
Many other women also become attracted to him, including the Widow Quin, who tries unsuccessfully to seduce Christy at Shawn’s behest.
Christy also impresses the village women by his victory in a donkey race, using the slowest beast.
Eventually Christy’s father, Mahon, who was only wounded, tracks him to the tavern.
When the townsfolk realize that Christy’s father is alive, everyone, including Pegeen, shuns him as a liar and a coward.
To regain Pegeen’s love and the respect of the town, Christy attacks his father a second time.
This time it seems that Old Mahon really is dead, but instead of praising Christy, the townspeople, led by Pegeen, bind and prepare to hang him to avoid being implicated as accessories to his crime.
Christy’s life is saved when his father, beaten and bloodied, crawls back onto the scene, having improbably survived his son’s second attack.
As Christy and his father leave to wander the world, having reconciled, Shawn suggests that he and Pegeen get married soon, but she spurns him.
Pegeen laments betraying and losing Christy:
“I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.”
A section of the audience at the opening rioted, causing the third act to be acted out in dumbshow (mime).
The disturbances continued for a week, interrupting the following performances.
(Story idea:
A possible modification to my novel, The Donkey Trail, wherein the protagonist is accused of being a “playboy” for desiring to be separated from his wife.)
Although the writing of The Tinker’s Wedding began at the same time as Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen, it took Synge five years to complete and was not finished in 1907.
Riders was performed in the Racquet Court theatre in Galway on 4 – 8 January 1907, but not performed again until 1909, and only then in London.
The first critic to respond to the play was Daniel Corkery, who said:
“One is sorry Synge ever wrote so poor a thing, and one fails to understand why it ever should have been staged anywhere.”
Above: John Millington Synge
Synge died from Hodgkin lymphoma at the Elpis Nursing Home in Dublin on 24 March 1909, aged 37.
He was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, Dublin.
Above: The entrance to Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin
John Masefield, who knew Synge, wrote that he “gave one from the first the impression of a strange personality“.
Masefield said that Synge’s view of life originated in his poor health.
In particular, Masefield said:
“His relish of the savagery made me feel that he was a dying man clutching at life, and clutching most wildly at violent life, as the sick man does.”
Above: English poet John Masefield (1878 – 1967)
Yeats described Synge as timid and shy, who “never spoke an unkind word” yet his art could “fill the streets with rioters“.
Richard Ellmann, the biographer of Yeats and James Joyce, stated that Synge “built a fantastic drama out of Irish life“.
Above: American literary critic / biographer Richard Ellmann (1918 – 1987)
Yeats described Synge in the poem “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory“:
“…And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apartIn a most desolate stony place,
Towards nightfall upon a race
Passionate and simple like his heart.“
Above: W. B. Yeats
Synge was a political radical, immersed in the socialist literature of William Morris, and in his own words “wanted to change things root and branch“.
Above: English writer William Morris (1834 – 1896)
So that themselves were first to do the ill,
Ere they thereof the knowledge could attain;
Like him that knew not poison’s power to kill,
Until, by tasting it, himself was slain.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of English comic actor, filmmaker and composer Charlie Chaplin (16 April 1899 – 1977) who rose to fame in the era of silent film.
He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry’s most important figures.
His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.
Above: Charlie Chaplin
Chaplin’s childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship.
His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before age 9.
When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum.
Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian.
At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States.
Above: English comedian Frederick John Westcott (aka Fred Karno) (1865 – 1941)
He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios.
He soon developed the Tramp persona and attracted a large fanbase.
He directed his own films and continued to hone his craft.
By 1918, he was one of the world’s best-known figures.
Above: Chaplin as the Tramp
In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films.
His first feature-length film was The Kid (1921), followed by A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925) and The Circus (1928).
He initially refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) without dialogue.
His first sound film was The Great Dictator (1940), which satirised Adolf Hitler.
The 1940s were marked with controversy for Chaplin, and his popularity declined rapidly.
He was accused of Communist sympathies.
Some members of the press and public were scandalised by his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women.
An FBI investigation was opened.
Chaplin was forced to leave the US and settle in Switzerland.
He abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which include Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), A King in New York (1957) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).
Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in and composed the music for most of his films.
He was a perfectionist and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture.
His films are characterised by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramp’s struggles against adversity.
Many contain social and political themes, as well as autobiographical elements.
He received an Honorary Academy Award for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century” in 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work.
He continues to be held in high regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator often ranked on lists of the greatest films.
I have watched and rewatched Chaplin’s Tramp films and thoroughly admired his closing speech in The Great Dictator.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor.
That’s not my business.
I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white.
We all want to help one another.
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other’s happiness — not by each other’s misery.
We don’t want to hate and despise one another.
In this world, there is room for everyone.
And the good Earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical.
Our cleverness, hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all.
Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers!
Don’t give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder!
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!
You are not machines!
You are not cattle!
You are men!
You have the love of humanity in your hearts.
You don’t hate!
Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers!
Don’t fight for slavery!
Fight for liberty!
In the 17th chapter of St. Luke, it is written:
“The Kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men!
In you!
You, the people, have the power — the power to create machines.
The power to create happiness!
You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power!
Let us all unite!
Let us fight for a new world — a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future, and old age a security.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power.
But they lie!
They do not fulfill their promise — they never will.
Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!
Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!
Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.
Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers!
In the name of democracy, let us all unite!“
(The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin)
I have visited the Charlie Chaplin Museum and gravesite in Vevey, Switzerland.
I love Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of the great actor in Chaplin.
Even so by tasting of that fruit forbid,
Where they sought knowledge, they did error find;
Ill they desired to know, and ill they did,
And to give passion eyes, made reason blind.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of the American writer of children’s stories Gertrude Chandler Warner (16 April 1890 – 1979).
She was most famous for writing the original book of The Boxcar Children and for the next 18 books in the series.
Above: Gertrude Chandler Warner
When she was 5, Warner dreamed of being an author.
Later, she accomplished that dream and started writing The Boxcar Children.
She began writing in ten-cent blank books as soon as she was able to hold a pencil.
While growing up, Warner loved to read.
Her favorite book was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
However, because of her frequent illnesses, Warner never finished high school.
After leaving, she studied with a tutor and finished her secondary education.
In 1918, while she was teaching Sunday School, Warner was called to teach first grade, mainly because male teachers were being called to serve in WW1.
Warner continued teaching as a grade school teacher in Putnam from 1918 to 1950.
Warner was a lover of nature.
While growing up, she had butterfly and moth collections, pressed wildflowers, learned of all the birds in her backyard and other places, and kept a garden to see what butterflies were doing.
She used these interests in teaching her grade school students, and also used nature themes in her books.
For instance, in The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island, the Alden children make a nature museum from the flowers, shells and seaweed they have collected and the shapes of birds they have observed.
One of her students recalled the wildflower and stone-gathering contests that Warner sponsored when she was a teacher.
As well as her books in the The Boxcar Children series, Warner wrote many other books for children, including The World in a Barn (1927), Windows into Alaska (1928), The World on a Farm (1931) and Peter Piper, Missionary Parakeet (1967).
With her sister, Frances Lester Warner, she cowrote “Life’s Minor Collisions“, a series of essays about humorous conflicts of temperament among friends and families.
Warner never married.
She lived in her parents’ home for almost 40 years, then moved to her grandmother’s house.
In 1962, she moved to a brown-shingled house and lived there with her companion, a retired nurse.
In her later life, before she died at age 89, Warner became a volunteer for the American Red Cross, a Cancer Society and other charitable organizations to help kids and adults in need from suffering.
She is buried in Grove Street Cemetery, in Putnam.
Warner once said that she did much of her writing while convalescing from illnesses or accidents, and that she conceived the idea of The Boxcar Children while sick at home.
Of this, she said:
“I had to stay at home from school because of an attack of bronchitis.
Having written a series of eight books to order for a religious organization, I decided to write a book just to suit myself.
What would I like to do?
Well, I would like to live in a freight car, or a caboose.
I would hang my wash out on the little back piazza and cook my stew on the little rusty stove found in the caboose.“
Warner once acknowledged that The Boxcar Children was criticized for depicting children with little parental supervision.
Her critics thought that this would encourage child rebellion.
Her response was, however, that the children liked it for that very reason.
In her books, Warner “liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do“.
On 3 July 2004, the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum opened in Putnam, Connecticut.
It is located across the street from Warner’s childhood home and is housed in an authentic 1920s New Haven R.R. boxcar.
The museum is dedicated to Warner’s life and work, and includes original signed books, photos and artifacts from her life and career as a teacher in Putman.
Included is the desk at which a 9-year-old Warner wrote her first story titled Golliwog at the Zoo.
There is also a re-creation of the living space created by the Aldens – the Boxcar Children themselves.
For then their minds did first in passion see
Those wretched shapes of misery and woe,
Of nakedness, of shame, of poverty,
Which then their own experience made them know.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: Adam and Eve (1628), Peter Paul Rubens
I think of Québec novelist Germaine Guèvremont (16 April 1893 – 1968), best known for her novel Le Survenant (The Outlander).
Above: Germaine Guèvremont
Sainte-Anne-de-Sorel is a village located near Sorel.
A strnager asks for a meal and a place to spend the night.
In the days that follow, without ever revealing his name or his origins, he helps carry out farm work and proves to be a good worker.
Old Didace, the father of the family, offers him a home in exchange for his work.
His son Amable-Didace and his daughter-in-law Alphonsine take a dim view of the intrusion of this “outlander” into the family, especially since he eclipses them with his strength and his hard work.
Winter is coming.
Having travelled widely and being an outstanding storyteller, the “grand god of the road” has such a strong attraction on the inhabitants of the hamlet that everyone rushes to the Beauchemin house to hear him.
They are sedentary people, anchored in their traditions, who know very little about the vast world.
Angélina, a neighbor who has rejected all the suitors in the neighborhood, falls in love with him and the Outlander seems to respond to her love.
Winter passes and the Outlander seems to want to stay in the village.
The friendship of the father, who would like to have a son like him, and the frank love of the neighbor make him forget the pettiness to which he is subjected in this closed and resolutely traditional environment.
We admire his strength and his skill at work, but we criticize his fighting temperament and his penchant for alcohol.
Summer is coming again.
The hero finds himself at a crossroads:
To stay or to go?
If he stays, it’s the house, the security, the economy in everything and everywhere, the small land of 27 acres, nine perches, and the constant worry of big money.
If he, on the other hand, goes, it is freedom, the race in the mountains with its mystery of decline.
And suddenly:
A cowbell in the wind.
The bark of a dog.
A twist of smoke.
About ten houses.
Strange faces.
From the new country.
The road.
The wide world.
Realizing that he will never really be part of the “mean little world” that is the village, he gives in to the call of the road that has tormented him since the spring.
At the beginning of autumn, a year after his arrival, he leaves as he came, without even a goodbye for Angélina or Father Didace who had become his allies.
The Outlander changed the lives of the main characters of the story:
Father Didace, a widower, falls in love with Acayenne, also a widow, and despite his advanced age, decides at the end of the story to marry and to start a new family.
His son Amable and her daughter-in-law Alphonsine, who have been trying to start a family for a long time, expect their first child.
Angélina, by falling in love with the Outlander, frees herself from her shell.
But then grew reason dark, that she no more
Could the fair forms of good and truth discern;
Bats they became, that eagles were before,
And this they got by their desire to learn.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of Turkish writer Mehmet Behçet Gönül (aka Behçet Necatigil) (16 April 1916 – 1979).
He is one of the leading poets of modern Turkish poetry.
He did not join any literary movement.
He was an independent poet and intellectual.
Apart from poetry, he produced works in many fields of literature, from theater to mythology, from lexicography to novel translations and radio plays.
He contributed greatly to the adoption of radiophonic play as a branch of literature in Turkey with his plays, translations and adaptations.
The artist, who is known as the “Poet of Houses“, is also known for his identity as a teacher as well as his literary work.
Above: Mehmet Behçet Gönül (aka Behçet Necatigil)
People have built houses for centuries.
They built wooden houses and masonry houses,
Large and small,
Different from each other.
People were born and died,
People came and went,
The inside of the houses changed from time to time.
The outside of the houses were windows and walls.
Black-hearted people lived in the houses glorified by the looters who were shot.
Those poor people lived in houses destroyed by daily fears.
Most of the houses became old and could not be repaired.
Most of the houses could not be depicted properly.
Some seemed satisfied with life.
Some kept up with the times.
Inside the houses there is sadness room by room,
Outside the houses there are windows and walls.
Happiness bubbled like soap in the houses:
It came from outside, like a pomegranate,
It increased and did not decrease.
Disasters swept through the houses like storms:
Like storms older than fate,
They never ceased.
Peace and order in most of the houses have become a memory of the past.
Don’t seek to please,
To respect,
To remember.
Children are rebels against the family,
An avalanche breaks out because of sadness.
Many murders were committed in houses,
People didn’t even feel it.
Family secrets within four walls,
So many children,
So many men,
So many women
Fed with tears.
In whose houses are the little ones instead of the big man?
Crowded families whose children rushed to work.
Fateless offspring of school ages,
Sweat flowing from tiny palms in the evenings,
It replaced salt in the food of homes.
The fate of people obviously depends on the houses:
Rich houses looked down on the poor from a very high level,
Houses at their level gave and took girls.
Some of them missed the higher life,
They struggled to climb higher
They did not leave the houses
The smoke of the stoves was just rising
“Woman’s greatest power is in man’s work”
The men ran away,
The women escaped
(“Evler“, Behçet Necatigil)
He was born in a mansion in Atikalipaşa in the Fatih district of Istanbul.
The mansion where Necatigil was born burned down in the Great Fatih Fire in 1918.
His mother’s illness, who was suffering from severe stomach fever, was aggravated by the effect of this trauma.
Mehmet Behçet, who was only two years old, lost his mother that year.
Above: Hagia Sophia, Fatih, İstanbul
For a while, he lived in his grandmother Emine Münire Hanım’s house in Karagümrük district.
His father, Mehmet Necati Efendi, who married Saime Hanım, the daughter of a palace officer, and had two daughters in this marriage, lived in Beşiktaş district.
Due to his grandmother’s illness, Necatigil moved to his father in 1923 and received primary education at Cevriusta School in Beşiktaş.
The family moved to Kastamonu after his father got a job as an inspector at the Singer Sewing Machines company.
Necatigil completed his primary education at Kastamonu Male Teacher Training School.
He started his secondary education at Kastamonu’s Abdurrahmanpaşa Lisesi.
He began to be interested in literature in Kastamonu in 1927.
He published the magazine Küçük Muharrir in his own handwriting, so his first readers were his friends and relatives.
The person who motivated him was his Turkish teacher, the poet Zeki Ömer Defne.
He used the name Küçük Muharrir (Little Writer) in the newspaper Akşam in which his poems, short stories and anecdotes were published between 1931 and 1932.
However, he had to interrupt his education due to “adenitis tuberculosis” due to malnutrition and neglect.
Above: Kastamonu
The family moved to Istanbul.
After his treatment, Necatigil started again in the second grade of secondary school at Kabataş Lisesi.
His first poem Gece ve Yas (Night and Mourning) was published in the magazine Varlık when he was a high school student.
In the following years, his poems and translations were published in the famous magazines Varlık, Türk Dili, Yeditepe, Oluş, Gençlik, Yeni Dergi, Yeni Edebiyat, Yelken, Ataç, Yenilikler and Yeni İnsan.
His articles were published in the newspaper Cumhuriyet.
Above: Kabataş Lisesi, Beşiktaş, İstanbul
After graduating from high school, he received higher education at the Turkish Language and Literature Department of the Higher Teacher Training School.
He completed his higher education in 1940 and started teaching.
His first place of duty as a literature teacher was Kars Alpaslan Lisesi.
Above: Images of Kars
After having difficulty adapting to the climatic conditions and falling ill, he was appointed to Zonguldak Mehmet Çelikel Lisesi in 1941.
Here he collaborated with Turkish poets Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu and Rüştü Onur.
His poems were published together with these poets in Öcak, one of the newspapers of Zonguldak, in Kara Elmas and Değirmen magazines, published in Istanbul.
Above: Zonguldak
When adenitis tuberculosis appeared again because of the polluted and damp weather in Zonguldak, he was appointed to İstanbul Pertevniyal Lisesi as a literature teacher in March 1943 at his request.
The poet left Istanbul two months later due to his military service.
He did his military service in Ankara and İstanbul as a reserve officer between 1943 and 1945.
He was appointed to Kabataş Lisesi when he returned.
He spent the longest period of his teaching career at this school.
He became the teacher of writers and poets, such as Demir Özlü and Hilmi Yavuz, at Kabataş.
He was instrumental in the publication of the magazine Donum at this school.
His first poetry book, Kapalı Çarşı (“Grand Bazaar“), was published in 1945.
He carried out teaching and poetry simultaneously throughout his life.
The poet published Çevre (“Environment“) (1951), Evler (“Houses“) (1953) and Eski Toprak (“Ancient Land“) (1956) between 1945 and 1955.
The poems in these books were poems that directly expressed his observations and experiences and associations.
He changed his poetics in 1955.
He wrote books with little story element and full of evocative poems.
He started writing radio plays in 1963.
He became one of the hardest workers in Turkey and collected his works in this field in four volumes.
He also translated the books of many German and Norwegian writers and poets, such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Miguel De Unamuno, Knut Hamsun, August Strindberg, Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig into Turkish.
In addition to his poems, radio plays and translations, he wrote Edebiyatımızda İsimler Sözlüğü (“Dictionary of Names in Our Literature“) (1960), Edebiyatımızda Eserler Sözlüğü (“Dictionary of Works in Our Literature“) (1979) and 100 Soruda Mitologya (“Mythology in 100 Questions”) (1969).
Necatigil, who was appointed to Çapa Education Institute in 1960, retired from this school in 1972.
He spent his retirement days at home, concentrating on literature and working.
Above: Behçet Necatigil’s typewriter and the Turkish Language Association Poetry Award
In 1979, he died at Cerrahpaşa Hospital where he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
He is buried in Zincirlikuyu Graveyard.
Above: Behçet Necatigil Statue, Beşiktaş, İstanbul
The name of Camgöz Sokak (street), where the poet lived between 1955 and 1964 and was the subject of one of his poems, was changed to “Behçet Necatigil Sokak” in 1987.
A tram stop in Eskişehir Tepebaşı region bears the poet’s name.
Above: Behçet Necatigil tram stop, Tepebaşı, Eskişehir
Necatigil’s intern teaching days in Zonguldak were portrayed in the 2013 movie Kelebeğin Rüyası, about the poets Rüştü Onur and Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu.
Kelebeğin Rüyası (Butterfly’s Dream) is a 2013 drama film written and directed by Yılmaz Erdoğan.
The film tells the life story of young poets Rüştü Onur and Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu who live in Zonguldak during WW2.
Yılmaz Erdoğan plays Behçet Necatigil, who was a literature teacher at the poets’ Mehmet Çelikel High School at that time.
The movie begins in Zonguldak in 1941.
While two young poets, Rüştü Onur and Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu continue their civil servant lives in this newly modernizing mining city, they also live intertwined with art, literature and, most of all, poetry.
While the young Republic, which had just gotten back on its feet, was trying to modernize, WW2 was also taking place in Europe.
These two consumptive young poets, who live in a society where the appreciation of poetry and art has not yet matured, are trying to make every segment of society love poetry.
Rüştü and Muzaffer’s belief in poetry increases even more when the Mayor’s daughter, Suzan Özsöy, comes back to Zonguldak.
Muzaffer falls in love with Suzan.
Suzan, who is still a high school student, becomes close friends with two young people, despite her family’s wishes.
But tuberculosis, the plague of the 1940s, increasingly threatens the health of both young people.
Rüştü and Muzaffer try to establish their own future.
But we, their wretched offspring, what do we?
Do not we still taste of the fruit forbid,
Whiles with fond fruitless curiosity
In books profane we seek for knowledge hid?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: Dr. Fausto, Jean Paul Laurens
I think of English writer / teacher Kingsley Amis (16 April 1922 – 1995).
He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism.
Amis is widely known as a comic novelist of life in mid- to late-20th-century Britain, but his literary work covered many genres – poetry, essays, criticism, short stories, food and drink, anthologies, and several novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery.
Above: Kingsley Amis
Should you revisit us
Stay a little longer
And get to know the place…
On local life we trust
The resident witness
Not the royal tourist.
(“New Approach Needed“, A Look Around the Estate, Kingsley Amis)
Amis’s first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), satirises the highbrow academic set of an unnamed university through the eyes of a struggling young lecturer of history.
That Uncertain Feeling (1955) features a young provincial librarian (perhaps with an eye to Larkin working as a librarian in Hull) and his temptation to adultery.
I Like It Here (1958) takes a contemptuous view of “abroad“, after Amis’s own travels on the Continent with a young family.
Take a Girl Like You (1960) steps away from the immediately autobiographical, but remains grounded in the concerns of sex and love in ordinary modern life, tracing a young schoolmaster’s courtship and ultimate seduction of the heroine.
“I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone, only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.
Two’s company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one’s a crowd.“
(The Green Man, Kingsley Amis)
In The Anti-Death League, Amis showed frustration with a God who could lace the world with cruelty and injustice, and championed the preservation of ordinary human happiness – in family, in friendships, in physical pleasure – against the demands of any cosmological scheme.
Amis’s religious views appear in a response reported in his Memoirs.
To the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s question:
“You atheist?”
Amis replied:
“It’s more that I hate Him.”
Above: Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933 – 2017)
I Want It Now (1968) and Girl, 20 (1971) both depict the “swinging” atmosphere of late-1960s London, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical.
Girl, 20, for instance, is set in the world of classical (and pop) music, in which Amis had no part.
The book’s noticeable command of music terminology and opinion shows Amis’s amateur devotion to music and almost journalistic capacity to explore a subject that interested him.
“The real trouble with liars was that there could never be any guarantee against their occasionally telling the truth.“
“It’s human to choose any sort of path into the future rather than face the long road back to what you’ve left behind.“
(Girl, 20, Kingsley Amis)
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Amis regularly produced essays and criticism, principally for periodical publication.
Amis’s opinions on books and people tended to appear, and often were, conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of “the classics” and of traditional morals, but more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgement in all things.
Above: Kingsley Amis
Amis became associated with Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, which he admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with Bond, either under a pseudonym or uncredited.
In 1965, he wrote the popular James Bond Dossier under his own name.
The same year, he wrote The Book of Bond (or Every Man His Own 007), a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym “Lt Col. William (‘Bill’) Tanner“, Tanner being M’s chief of staff in many of Fleming’s novels.
In 1968 Amis wrote Colonel Sun, which was published under the pseudonym “Robert Markham“.
Amis’s literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970, with the possible exception of The Old Devils, a Booker Prize winner.
Several critics found him old-fashioned and misogynistic.
His Stanley and the Women, an exploration of social sanity, could be said to instance these traits.
Others said that his output lacked his earlier work’s humanity, wit and compassion.
The Amis Anthology (1988), a personal selection of his favourite poems, grew out of his work for a London newspaper, in which he selected a poem a day and gave it a brief introduction.
Amis was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times:
- Ending Up (1974)
- Jake’s Thing (1978)
- The Old Devils (1986)
What is this knowledge but the sky-stolen fire
For which the thief still chained in ice doth sit,
And which the poor rude satyr did admire,
And needs would kiss, but burnt his lips with it.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I think of German writer Sarah Kirsch (1935 – 2013).
Sarah Kirsch is considered one of the most important German poets.
Her poetry is open in form, mostly without rhyme and in free meter.
Nevertheless, rhythm in the sense of the tempo of breathing plays a major role, as do line breaks and line jumps, which create a flow or breathlessness.
Kirsch often combines technical or old-fashioned expressions with a casual tone.
Characteristic of her metaphors are images that have their starting point in everyday life, nature or landscapes, but are alienated or take a surprising turn.
Kirsch often contrasts precise observation of nature with the emotional life of the lyrical self or political reflection.
While early poems were predominately concerned with war and National Socialism, later landscape poems and reflections on the world crisis of civilization dominate.
Above: Sarah Kirsch
What is it but the cloud of empty rain,
Which when Jove’s guest embraced, he monsters got?
Or the false pails which oft being filled with pain,
Received the water, but retained it not?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Shortly, what is it but the fiery coach
Which the youth sought, and sought his death withal?
Or the boy’s wings, which when he did approach
The sun’s hot beams, did melt and let him fall?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: The Fall of Icarus (1637), Jacob Peter Gowy
And yet, alas, when all our lamps are burned,
Our bodies waste, and our spirits spent,
When we have all the learned volumes turned,
Which yield men’s wits both help and ornament,
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
What can we know, or what can we discern,
When error chokes the windows of the mind,
The diverse forms of things, how can we learn,
That have been ever from our birthday blind?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
When reason’s lamp, which like the sun in sky,
Throughout man’s little world her beams did spread,
Is now become a sparkle which doth lie
Under the ashes, half extinct and dead;
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
How can we hope that through the eye and ear
This dying sparkle, in this cloudy place,
Can recollect these beams of knowledge clear,
Which were infused in the first minds by grace?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
So might the heir whose father hath in play
Wasted a thousand pound of ancient rent,
By painful earning of a groat a day
Hope to restore the patrimony spent.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
The wits that dived most deep and soared most high,
Seeking man’s powers, have found his weakness such;
Skill comes so slow and life so fast doth fly,
We learn so little and forget so much.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
For this the wisest of all mortal men
Said, He knew nought but that he nought did know;
And the great mocking master mocked not then,
When he said, Truth was buried deep below.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
For how may we to others’ things attain,
When none of us his own soul understands?
For which the devil mocks our curious brain,
When, Know thyself, his oracle commands.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
For why should we the busy soul believe,
When boldly she concludes of that and this;
When of herself she can no judgment give,
Nor how, nor whence, nor where, nor what she is?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
All things without, which round about we see,
We seek to know, and how therewith to do;
But that whereby we reason, live, and be,
Within ourselves we strangers are thereto.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
We seek to know the moving of each sphere,
And the strange cause of th’ebbs and floods of Nile;
But of that clock within our breasts we bear,
The subtle motions we forget the while.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass both tropics and behold the poles,
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own souls.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
We study speech, but others we persuade;
We leech-craft learn, but others cure with it;
We interpret laws, which other men have made,
But read not those which in our hearts are writ.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: The Tower of Babel (1563), Peter Bruegel the Elder
Is it because the mind is like the eye,
Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees–
Whose rays reflect not, but spread outwardly–
Not seeing itself when other things it sees?
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
No, doubtless, for the mind can backward cast
Upon herself her understanding light;
But she is so corrupt and so defaced,
As her own image doth herself affright.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: Nosce Te Ipsum (Allegory of Vanity) (1650), Jacob Neefs and Jacob Jordaens
As in the fable of the lady fair,
Which for her lust was turned into a cow:
When thirsty to a stream she did repair,
And saw herself transformed, she wist not how,
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
At first she startles, then she stands amazed,
At last with terror she from thence doth fly,
And loathes the wat’ry glass wherein she gazed,
And shuns it still, though she for thirst do die.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Even so man’s soul, which did God’s image bear,
And was at first fair, good, and spotless pure,
Since with her sins her beauties blotted were,
Doth of all sights her own sight least endure.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
For even at first reflection she espies
Such strange chimeras and such monsters there,
Such toys, such antics, and such vanities,
As she retires and shrinks for shame and fear.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: Alice entering the looking-glass
And as the man loves least at home to be,
That hath a sluttish house haunted with sprites,
So she, impatient her own faults to see,
Turns from herself and in strange things delights.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
For this, few know themselves; for merchants broke
View their estate with discontent and pain,
And seas are troubled when they do revoke
Their flowing waves into themselves again.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
And while the face of outward things we find
Pleasing and fair, agreeable and sweet,
These things transport and carry out the mind,
That with herself herself can never meet.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Yet if affliction once her wars begin,
And threat the feebler sense with sword and fire,
The mind contracts herself and shrinketh in,
And to herself she gladly doth retire,
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
As spiders touched seek their webs’ inmost part,
As bees in storms unto their hives return,
As blood in danger gathers to the heart,
As men seek towns when foes the country burn.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
If aught can teach us aught, affliction’s looks,
Making us look into ourselves so near,
Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books,
Or all the learned schools that ever were.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
This mistress lately plucked me by the ear,
And many a golden lesson hath me taught;
Hath made my senses quick and reason clear,
Reformed my will and rectified my thought.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
So do the winds and thunders cleanse the air;
So working lees settle and purge the wine;
So lopped and prunëd trees do flourish fair;
So doth the fire the drossy gold refine.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Neither Minerva nor the learned muse,
Nor rules of art, nor precepts of the wise,
Could in my brain those beams of skill infuse,
As but the glance of this dame’s angry eyes.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
Above: Hall of the Augustals (Herculaneum) – Minerva, the goddess of wisdom
She within lists my ranging mind hath brought,
That now beyond myself I list not go;
Myself am center of my circling thought,
Only myself I study, learn, and know.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I know my body’s of so frail a kind
As force without, fevers within, can kill;
I know the heavenly nature of my mind,
But ’tis corrupted both in wit and will;
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blind and ignorant of all;
I know I am one of nature’s little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
I know my life’s a pain and but a span,
I know my sense is mocked with everything;
And to conclude, I know myself a man,
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.
(“Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies)
There are those who suggest that we conform, that we become like everyone else.
Then why were we made as individuals?
Why do we read?
To know that we are not alone in the world.
Why do we write?
To know what we are thinking.
To discover who you are, read poetry.
To discover the magic of your voice, read poetry aloud.
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.
And the human race is filled with passion.
And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.
But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
To quote from Whitman:
“O me! O life!
Of the questions of these recurring
Of the endless trains of the faithless
Of cities fill’d with the foolish
What good amid these
O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
When you read, don’t just consider what the author thinks, consider what YOU think.
No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
Boys, you must strive to find your own voice.
Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.
Thoreau said:
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Don’t be resigned to that.
Break out!
Break out!
Now is the time!“
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Google Photos
- “Nosce Teipsum / Know Thyself“, John Davies
- “Le vieux soldat canadien“, Octave Crémazie
- “Le drapeau de Carillon“, Octave Crémazie
- The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin
- “Evler“, Behçet Necatigil
- “How to Read Poetry“, Emily McGowan, thegoodtrade.com, 1 April 2020
- How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
- Dead Poets Society, Tom Schulman
- “By the Rivers of Babylon“, Boney M