It was on this day 207 years ago that the sonnet "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" was written.
Most of this poet's poems were about nature and the joy of open spaces without people. So this sonnet is surprising, because it is written about a busy city — London had about 1 million inhabitants at the time.
The sonnet reads:
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
Who is the poet? AND....a BONUS QUESTION....what literary period is this poet known for founding?
Good luck and happy reading!
Since I can't quite figure out how to create a link for a Word document on our blog, I will be emailing everyone a copy of the syllabus. This is NOT necessarily the same syllabus you will receive in September - there are a few things I think I will be tweaking - but the content will be the same. You will receive a hard copy of the syllabus in the first week of school, so don't feel the need to print it out.
....was the answer for today's literary quiz. See below for more information on the banning and trial...The banned book was a hot item on the black market, and Joyce knew he was losing a lot of money to pirate publishers. He wanted an American readership and the royalties that came with it, so his lawyers worked with the executives at Random House to bait the U.S. government into going to trial. In 1933, Random House decided to import a single version of the French edition of Ulysses, and the company had people wait at the New York docks for the book's arrival. It was a hot day and the U.S. Customs inspector didn't want to be bothered with another inspection, but the Random House people made sure that one book was seized.
A second trial, "United States v. One Book Called Ulysses," was held over the fate of that single copy of Ulysses. Judge John Woolsey ruled that the book had no "dirt for dirt's sake" and was not, in fact, pornographic. His ruling changed the standards for literary obscenity. He disregarded the traditional standard for obscenity — whether the work would "deprave and corrupt" a vulnerable young reader — and said that the proper test is whether it would "lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts" in the average adult. Also, no longer could a single line make a whole book obscene. Woolsey pointed out that the book was so difficult to understand, people would be unlikely to read it for titillation. The Court of Appeals agreed and called Ulysses "a sincere portrayal" and "executed with real art." Ulysses was safe to sell in the United States.
In his opinion for the case, Judge Woolsey wrote: "In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring."
It's the birthday of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, born in Dublin (1856). He's the author of dozens of plays, including Man and Superman (1905), Pygmalion (1912), and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938 for his film Pygmalion. He's the only person in history to receive both the Nobel and an Oscar.
He had a precise and peculiar morning ritual: According to friend and biographer Stephen Winsten, Shaw would awaken early every day, go to his sink and fill it with cold water, dip his whole face into the sink with his eyes open, splash his eyes with water seven times, and then blot his face dry with a soft bath towel. Shaw said that when he was a boy in Ireland, a peasant instructed him to do this, and he did it ever since. After his ritual washing every day, he opened up the newspaper and read the obituaries first, while eating a breakfast that did not vary from day to day.
He's considered to be the greatest English-language dramatist after Shakespeare. Even before he had written a masterpiece, Shaw was announcing this very comparison to people, and adding that he did some things in playwriting even better than Shakespeare did. Shaw knew all of the plays he had written by memory. He was also a prolific music critic and literary critic, and he's highly quotable. He liked to quote himself. He said, "My specialty is being right when other people are wrong."
He was a great letter-writer and kept up correspondences with many people, including the British actresses Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry, poet Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas and writer H.G. Wells. For 75 years, he averaged nine letters a day, every day. He was lifelong friends with G.K. Chesterton and composer Edgar Elgar.
He lived to be 94 years old, and then died not of natural causes, but from injuries after falling off a ladder while pruning trees.
Shaw wrote and said a great many memorable things, including:
"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That's the essence of inhumanity."
(Shaw biographical information courtesy of "The Writer's Almanac" from American Public Media)
Let's hope the rain goes away so we can see sunsets like this more often!
