People That You Admire

[mariab]

The Archives Nationales at the Marais is like my second home. As next though I have only Ripperological research to do there, not anything pertaining to my job at this stage.
A steady contract I've never seen in my life so far, and it won't happen in my line of work, before I complete a habilitation procedure and manage to find a job as a Professor (if it works, he he). Unless I get a tenure-track job in the US, which won't happen anytime soon. But there are upsides to having different, everchanging appointments, firstmost the variety.
I love the Paris cemeteries, esp. Père Lachaise (where most of the composers I research are burried). Museum de l'Histoire Naturelle is a bit too crowded for me, but I guess it's great for you, if you have a kid. The most beautiful parc in Paris might be Parc Montsouris, but it's way too far from where I live. I mostly go to the Jardin du Palais Royal, or to the garden of the Notre Dame, which is by the river.
Fencing sounds really cool, but probably expensive.

[Abby Normal]

I'm surprised Annie Besant and the match strike girls haven't come up. Or W.T. Stead. Or some of the other people who come up a lot in Ripper studies who truly did change the world.

I'm assuming Jesus hasn't appeared on any lists because he's generally (and appropriately) thought of in a class all his own, even by misguided atheists. Regarding Mary Magdelene, the reason why she should certainly be included is because had her role in the forming of Christianity not been played down so much by the early church, there probably wouldn't have been a need for 20th century feminism as we know it.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

He was on mine. But not as a god, but a man.

[mariab]

Interesting, Abby. Another atheist/agnostic?
I'm just emailing my South African friend who's very religious, and asking her about her view on Mary Magdalene. And afterwards we'll have pasta with my friends. :-)

[Adam Went]

Archaic:

Yes, thanks for that. There was of course many people who showed some kindness to the Jews who were being persecuted in Nazi-occupied territories, but far too few who went to the extent of the likes of Oskar Schindler and Irena Sendler, etc.

From a journalistic/writers point of view, the likes of Dickens, Conan Doyle and W.T. Stead are very high on my list as well.

Cheers,
Adam.

[mariab]

Dickens and the Bronte sisters (not Ann, though) are among my favorite authors, but admire them to death? Not. Shakespeare is the sole author I admire “to death“. As he's perfect, always.

[jason_c]

Queen Elizabeth the first

Lyndon B Johnson

Robert the Bruce

Admiral Thomas Cochrane

Marshal Ney

[Chris]

Marshal Ney

As they used to say - "Ney, Ney, Thrice Ney!"

[mariab]

I'm also reminded of Ney's “freedom fries“ contribution to the American-English vocabulary.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Dickens and the Bronte sisters (not Ann, though) are among my favorite authors, but admire them to death? Not. Shakespeare is the sole author I admire “to death“. As he's perfect, always.

See, the grass is always greener. As an Englishman, I remember studying Shakespeare and Chaucer at college and thinking this is ****, really ****. Utterly incomprehensible and outdated. I much prefered the American books, somehow they seemed rooted in the everyday world, whereas Shakespeare was something from another planet. To be fair, we've produced some meaningful books on this planet, too. William Golding's Lord of the Flies is an absolute classic that tells you everything you need to know about human beings.

At school (14 years old) we studied Of Mice and Men, To Kill A Mocking Bird, I Know Why The Caged Birds Sings. Now, in your formative years, these are the books you need to be reading (at least 2 are American, possibly one South African), far and away more meaningful than Shakespeare.

Interestingly someone mention Wilfred Owen. I love WW1 history, but I do feel that Siegfried Sasson's 'Reconciliation' is a superb piece of poetry that eclipses the rest:

WHEN you are standing at your hero’s grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
Remember, through your heart’s rekindling pride,
The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done; 5
And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
But in that Golgotha perhaps you’ll find
The mothers of the men who killed your son.

[Archaic]

WWI Poetry

Hi Fleetwood. I'm the one who mentioned Wilfred Owen. I discovered his poetry when I was 14 or 15 and it got me hooked on WWI Poetry.

I admire the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon too, but Wilfred Owen is still my favorite... the emotional truth of his poetry is utterly staggering. His death was a tragic loss for the whole world. Wilfred was killed in November 1918, just 7 days before the long war ended. His parents lived in Shrewsbury and were celebrating the Armistice when their doorbell rang- it was a telegram telling them that their son was dead. It makes one wonder what other brilliant young artists, authors, scientists and thinkers were sacrificed... most so young that there's little left of them besides faded old photographs.
I also admire the poetry of Rupert Brooke. I have a treasured first edition of one of his books of poetry. Brooke, like Owen, died very young in "The War To End All Wars".

For those who want to read WWI poetry, be aware that the poems usually included in 'Anthologies of English Poetry' are the poems written early in the war, when the young volunteer soldiers were still hopeful and enthusiastic, and penned more "patriotic" verses. But if you get an anthology devoted to WWI Poetry, you will see what they wrote after the first youthful enthusiasm and naive belief in "glory" had worn off and they had seen their friends blown to pieces in the mud or blinded in a mustard-gas attack during a battle that accomplished nothing. These "unpatriotic" verses were repressed during the war, because they didn't exactly encourage enlistment in the armed forces.

I suggest you read the poems very slowly and let the words and images really sink in- each line is loaded, and the images aren't just "poetic imagination"; the young poets personally experienced all the horrors they describe. It's amazing to me that they could find words for it.

(Owen wrote the following poem so that it parallels a well-known love poem by Swinburne, and answers Swinburne's flowery expressions of 'Love' for a woman with a soldier's ultimate expression of Love.)

Wilfed Owen: GREATER LOVE

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,--
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,--
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.


Here's a good website about WWI poetry: http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/

You can see many original handwritten WWI poems here: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/db/r...CISOSTART=1,71

Best regards,
Archaic

[mariab]

See, the grass is always greener. As an Englishman, I remember studying Shakespeare and Chaucer at college. (...) At school (14 years old) we studied Of Mice and Men, To Kill A Mocking Bird, I Know Why The Caged Birds Sings. (...) Now, in your formative years, these are the books you need to be reading, far and away more meaningful than Shakespeare.

Hmmm. My incessant gabbing about boardsports is deceiving. I'm not American (although I work there on odd years, for part of the year), and I'm afraid I'm not in my formative years anymore, as I'm over 30, and teaching college (at the Lecturer's/Assistant Professor's level, on odd semesters, conducting research and preparing publications the rest of the time). At this stage in my job path, it's inevitable that one has to put in the long hours, which most of the time results in an incessant, never ending workload. Thus, it's safe to say there ain't too much time for “extracurricular“ reading. Still, I'll always manage to find some time for Ripperology.
I don't think that there's much from American lit that I haven't gone through, starting in my childhood years. My all time American favorites, to which I'll be returning regularly for the rest of my life, are Huck Finn, A tree grows in Brooklyn, Gone with the wind, The grapes of wrath. Faulkner, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald are not my all time favorites, although I also frequently return to them. For American theater, Tennessee Williams is an absolute winner, he stands alone, no comparison to anyone. To be quite honest, I find To kill a mocking bird overrated, clumsily constructed and too transparently “didactic“. My all favorite American “coming off age“ book is M. K. Rawlings' The yearling. It's poetic and brutal, and not too obviously “constructed“.
By the by, I was acquainted with Shakespeare since age 9, obviously with a slightly different perception and taste back then. ;-) Of mice and men more meaningful than Shakespeare? Nah. King Lear contains pretty much the entire plot and message from Of mice and men, plus about a dozen other ideas and themes.

[mariab]

Hi Archaic,
for American poetry, I don't think it can get better than Emily Dickinson. My favorite is 19th century French poetry. I need the musicality of the verse to at least match the ideas/feelings expressed. Pushkin in Russian sounds very beautiful too.

[Sister Hyde]

Hi Archaic,
My favorite is 19th century French poetry. I need the musicality of the verse to at least match the ideas/feelings expressed. .

hmmmmmm Lautréamont...i still love Baudelaire but i was force-fed with it at school during 15 years, so i don't even bother to read it anymore.

[mariab]

hmmmmmm Lautréamont...i still love Baudelaire but i was force-fed with it at school during 15 years, so i don't even bother to read it anymore.

I feel you. The Lagarde & Michard* syndrome. I still enjoy Baudelaire, and actually pretty much everything from the 19th century, even Hugo, de Vigny (La mort du loup). From the 18th/17th century I prefer the theater. Molière is still an all time favorite. But 19th century French theater I love too (Hugo, Dumas, Musset). Lorenzaccio is truly Shakespearian in its complexity and its cynical message.
This thread has now moved into lit appreciation... I wonder what comes next.

(Lagarde & Michard* is THE standard French school book discussing French lit, but it's actually very-very good.)

[Sister Hyde]

Lagard and Michard is the bible of the academists teaching litterature at the Sorbonne (which is nowadays just a lame student-factory). the only reason why i don't read baudelaire anymore is that i know it all (here you start studying baudelaire age 11 already untill you graduate from high school when you're around 18). I love Marivaux in theater, Dumas is a classic, i love Musset and his opinion that in order to live happy, you have to live hidden, and i love Raymond Queneau especially for Zazie in the metro, unfortunately i OD'ed on Breton because they force me to study Nadja 5 years in a row both in litterature and art history (it was even the subject of my final exam together with chrétien de Troyes' Percival). when i was palying theater i had a taste for russian gloomy plays that always end up in scenes of cannibalism, and i really enjoyed setting "exercices de style" as a theater play. i love the spleen of german poetry too (like goethe), and no need to say Erlkönig in opera by schubert is just orgasmic!!!