A little bit of Paradis

Paradis | November 28, 2009

William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father, John, was a lawyer, and he encouraged his 5 children to pursue learning. When Wordsworth’s mother Anne died in 1778, young William was sent to attend grammar school away from home, five years later he lost his father too.

The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life. With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.

Wordsworth’s financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic ‘Lucy’ poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life. Wordsworth’s happy home life turned to tragedy when two of his four children died within a year.

In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England’s poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.

Dorothy Wordsworth

English prose writer, the younger sister of poet William Wordsworth, famous for her diaries and ‘recollections’. Several of Dorothy Wordsworth’s own poems or notes in her journal were included in various editions of her brother’s poetical works. She published nothing during her lifetime, and spent the last twenty five years struggling against physical and mental illness.

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Paradis | November 9, 2009

Ralph Waldo Emerson attended one of Dickens’ public readings in Boston during Dickens’ American tour. Emerson said, ‘he was afraid that Dickens possessed too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set to rest. . . He daunts me! I have not the key.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which created misery for the class of low-paid workers and gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office he was well paid but often ended in financial troubles.

In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. He worked in a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his family was in Marshalea debtor’s prison in 1824. The years as a journalist left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious attitude towards unjust laws.

His sharp ear for conversation helped him reveal characters through their own words. Dickens’s career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodical. His Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick papers were published in 1836.

In the same year he married the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, Catherine Hogart. Though, some people suspected that he was more fond of her sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837. Dickens requested that he be buried next to her when he died and wore Mary’s ring all his life.

Another of Catherine’s sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens had 10 children with Catherine but they were separated in 1858.
Dickens died in 1870 and is buried in Poets corner in Westminster Abbey.

Ellen Ternan

Dickens had a long liaison with the actress, Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s. The Ternan family comprised Frances Eleanor Ternan (nee Jarman, 1803-1873) and her three daughters, Frances Eleanor Ternan (1835-1914); Ellen Lawless Ternan (1839-1914); and Maria Susannah Ternan. Their brother, Thomas Ternan, died young. All four members of the family made their early careers as actresses in London. The eldest daughter Frances went as a governess to the family of Thomas Augustus Trollope (1810-1892), and subsequently married him. She wrote numerous novels, articles and translations.

Ellen Ternan met Charles Dickens in 1857 whilst she and her mother and sister were acting in a charity production of The frozen deep, and was his mistress until his death in 1870.
She later took 14 years off her age and married a schoolmaster, the Rev George Wharton Robinson, with whom she had two children and ran a school and nursery garden. Maria Ternan married a brewery manager named Taylor, left him, and spent the rest of her life travelling the world and writing articles.

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Tags: Biographies, Dickens

Paradis | October 14, 2009

Bob Dylan…

is one of the greatest American musicians that ever lived. He never intended to be a great singer, but he makes you listen to the song. He is known as the singing poet, and he makes music to get your attention. Most artists will cite Dylan as an inspiration to them, and many artists have performed or recorded his work. His lastest album, Thunder on the Mountain is testiment to the fact that he still has what it takes.
Born, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Dylan’s first song was Blowin in the Wind, and, Like a Rolling Stone, was his first number one.

Like a Rolling Stone was the song that first brought my attention to  this gravel voiced singer with a guitar. I never took to the Blowin in the Wind style. But Rolling Stone had such depth and feeling. It’s odd really, that the media always insist he wass the voice of protest, while he states often, that he never was that, and was just doing his thing, singing the songs his way. He has many different styles, sometimes he is soulful, sometimes romantic and sometimes he is very whimsical (Listen to, All I really want to do, especially live to catch his humour)

He has a knack that just happens, words tumble out (Listen to Thunder on the Mountain or Idiot Wind) he is so at ease with what he sings, it is as if the song and him are one whole thing. There is no song (To use a Matrix pun) there is just Dylan opening his mouth.

But somehow the people heard him speak to them. I did too, but never from a protest point of view, I only felt that he didn’t need to try, it just was. But it was his songwriting that captured me, he is just so talented with words. Dylan is also known for his free form poetry, which also influences his songwriting. The words below are a poem he wrote about the JFK assassination:

the colors of Friday were dull
as cathedral bells were gently burnin
strikin for the gentle
strikin for the kind
strikin for the crippled ones
an strikin for the blind

It went on to be incorporated into, Chimes of Freedom’.
Not too many people know about Dylan’s poetry, but he was writing it at the beginning of everything, and he cites French poet, Rimbaud as one of the best.

Dylan’s song writing talent is superb, and artists such as; U2, Clapton, Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Beach Boys, and a miriad of others, have all recorded Dylan songs. In fact it totals around 3,000 artists, quite a feat for this grandfather, and father of six.  One of his sons is Wallflowers lead singer, Jakob Dylan, another, Jesse Dylan is a director.

Best album? Well I am biased of course, but I like Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks.

Paradis

Category: Biographies, The World of Music |
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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, to actor parents. His parents died before he was 3 years old, and Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan and brought up partly in England. Never legally adopted, Poe took Allan’s name for his middle name.

His childhood was quite uneventful, although he studied for 5 years in England. In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia, but stayed for only a year. He was a good student, but wouldn’t pay gambling debts he ran up, so his adoptive father Allan prevented his return to the university and broke off Poe’s engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. So Poe enlisted in the army, and by this time, he had already written and printed his first book,Tamerlane and Other Poems written in the manner of Byron.

Poe suffered from bouts of depression and madness, and he attempted suicide in 1848. In September the following year he disappeared for three days after a drink at a birthday party and on his way to visit his new fiancée in Richmond. He turned up in a delirious condition in Baltimore gutter and died on October 7, 1849. Poe was best known for his poems and short fiction, including the famous poem, ‘The Raven’ and has had a worldwide influence on literature.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born on Dec. 5, 1830, in London, the youngest of the four Rossetti children. Educated entirely at home, she spoke English and Italian with ease and read French, Latin, and German. When her father died in 1854, Christina became the close companion of her mother and followed her older sister’s example in becoming a devout Anglican.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Jelaluddin Rumi was born in Balkh, in 1204, which is the present day Afghanistan. His father, Baha Walad, was a well known scholar and Sufi and the author of a fascinating collection of meditations on the intimacy of divine love. Baha Walad took his family to Anatolia in about 1220, when the impending Mongol invasion made it dangerous to remain in eastern Iran. He settled in Konya in present-day Turkey, where he continued his career as one of the best known ulama of the time. When he died in 1231, his son Jelaluddin became his successor.

Before long Jelaluddin was recognized as a great professor and preacher. He combined studies of the legal and theological sciences with the more inward and spiritual orientation of Sufism, but he was not yet known as an authority in the Sufi sciences, nor did he compose poetry.

The great transformation in Rumi’s life began in 1244, when he was forty (in Islamic lore, forty is the age of spiritual maturity and prophecy. In this year an enigmatic figure called Shams al-Din of Tabriz appeared in Konya. He and Rumi quickly became inseparable. Shams seems to have opened Rumi up to certain dimensions of the mysteries of divine love that he had not yet experienced.

Their closeness led some of Rumi’s students and disciples to become jealous, and eventually Shams disappeared. Some thpught that he had been murdered, but Rumi himself does not seem to have believed the rumours. Shams’s disappearance became the catalyst for Rumi’s extraordinary outpouring of poetry.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Percy Shelley was born in the 4th of August 1792, near Sussex in England, and was known as Britain’s romantic poet. He was born into an extremely wealthy family, Percy became heir to the 2nd baronet of Castle Goring in 1815. He received his early education at home, tutored by Reverend Thomas Edwards of Horsham. A radical young fellow, Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 when he published The Necessity of Atheism. His early poems advocated social reform, reflecting the influence of the philosophical writings of William Godwin.

Shelley eloped to Scotland, on August 28, 1811 Percy marrying Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of John Westbrook. Once married, Shelley moved to the Lake District to write. Shelley, unhappy in his marriage, travelled to Ireland, and fell in love with Godwin’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary, who later gained fame as the author of Frankenstein. In July 1814 they eloped to Europe, crossing France and entering Switzerland. They later returned to England, publishing an account of this voyage. Shelley was lost at sea in 1822, while sailing off the coast of Italy.

Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English writer who is, perhaps remembered as the wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, written in 1818

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Encountering Robert Walton aboard his ship, the monster expresses overwhelming remorse for his frightful catalogue of misdeeds, the deaths of William, Clerval, Elizabeth, and his creator.

The Monster tells explorer Robert Walton, “Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. . . . the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. . . . I am quite alone”

The creature informs the explorer that he will destroy himself in the frozen north, and disappears in the icy waves. The tragedy of Frankenstein and his monster is complete.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

One of the greatest figures in Western literature is German poet, novelist, playwright, and natural philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther, but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, Faust.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt, the first child of a lawyer Johann Caspar Goethe, and Katherine Elisabeth Textor, the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt. Goethe had a comfortable childhood and he was greatly influenced by his mother, who encouraged his literary aspirations.

After troubles at school, he received at home a wide education. At the age of 16, Goethe began to study law at Leipzig University and he also studied drawing with Adam Oeser. As early as eight he had already acquired some knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and Italian.

Goethe practised law in Frankfurt and Wetzlar, and In 1774 he published his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, written in the form of a series of letters. Goethe’s youth was emotionally hectic to the point that he sometimes feared for his reason. His great love was Charlotte von Stein, an older married woman. Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco on the 26th March 1874, and died in Boston on the 29th January 1963, he was one of America’s leading 20th century poets and won the Pulitzer Prize four times.

After his father’s death when young Frost was 11, the family left California and settled in Massachusetts. He taught school and worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. In 1894 he sold “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to The Independent, a New York literary journal. A year later he married Elinor White. Over the next ten years he wrote (but rarely published) poems and operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.

At the age of 38, he sold the farm and used the proceeds to take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing. His efforts to establish himself and his work were almost immediately successful. A Boy’s Will was accepted by a London publisher. His reputation as a major poet is secure.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was a Portland lawyer and congressman, and mother Zilpah, was a descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower.

Longfellow’s father was eager to have his son become a lawyer. But when Henry was a senior at Bowdoin College at 19, the college, the recent graduate was asked to become the first professor, with the understanding that he was given time in which to travel and study in Europe.

In 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter, whom he had known as a school friend, and the marriage was a happy one, until Mary died of burns. This was a very bad time for Longfellow.

Longfellow died in Cambridge on March 24, 1882 and his marble image is seen in Westminster Abbey, in the Poet’s Corner. He had the gift of easy rhyme. He wrote poetry as a bird sings, with natural grace and melody. His poems are easily understood.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Sappho is one of the greatest if not the greatest of the early Greek lyric poets.She would play the pectis (a harp) to accompany her poems.
Plato refered to Sappho as the tenth muse, her poetry was well known and often quoted well into Roman times.

Sappho was born around 615 BC on the North East island of Lesbos, during this time the Greek alphabet was invented, and the arts were payed more attention and became more important. Sappho was loved throughout the ancient times for her personal qualities and creativity.

She was born into an aristocratic and socialy prominent family, but was orphaned at the age of six. Her father was a prosperous wine merchant. Not much is known about her. Sappho had a daughter by the name of Cleis, named after her mother. Sappho’s husband died when she was thirty five.

Enough of Sappho’s poetry has survived for modern readers to appreciate her contributions to Greek poetry. Many of Sappho’s poems were preserved in fragments by the Egyptians because the poems were cut in strips and used to wrap their mummies.

In Christian times, Sappho’s poetry did not fare so well. The Church declared her whorish and her poetry immoral. Saint Gregory ordered her poems to be burned. Pope Gregory VII ordered her poems to be burned publicly. Yet her work was so highly regarded by the poets that they were preserved in part because she was so widely quoted.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England in 1809. He studied at Cambridge where he met his close friend Arthur Hallam, and he published his first poetry in 1829, but it was not well received. Two of Tennyson’s major poems wereThe Lady of Shalott and The Lotus-eaters. The Princess published in 1847, supported women’s rights and was liked by the public.

His major poetic achievement was, In Memoriam (1850) the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, which took him 17 years to complete.In that same year he succeeded Wordsworth as poet laureate

1850 also saw Tennyson marry his love, Emily Sellwood, whom he had been waiting to marry since 1836. They bought a home and farm in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight and had three children.

Tennyson spent the later years of his life creating a series of 12 Arthurian poems called Idylls of the King including Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere He was made a baron in 1884.
Tennyson died on Oct. 6, 1892 and is buried in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.

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Paradis | October 12, 2009

Carl August Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, the son of Swedish immigrants August and Clara Anderson Sandburg, and was called Charlie by the family. The elder Sandburg, a blacksmith’s helper, purchased a cottage in 1873. A year later the Sandburgs sold the small cottage in favor of a larger house in Galesburg.

He worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat, and shined shoes before travelling as a hobo in 1897. Working and travelling greatly influenced his writing and political views.

When the Spanish American War broke out in 1898 Sandburg volunteered for service, and at the age of twenty was ordered to Puerto Rico. When he returned later that year, he entered College, supporting himself as a call fireman. While at Lombard, Sandburg joined the Poor Writers’ Club, an informal literary organization whose members met to read and criticize poetry.

Sandburg met Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908. The responsibilities of marriage and family prompted a career change. Sandburg returned to Illinois and took up journalism. For several years he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Behind the home he was born in, stands a small wooded park. There, beneath Remembrance Rock, lie the ashes of Carl Sandburg, who died in 1967.

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