On This Day in Literature

For those of you interested in literary history, January 4th is a date that should be noted in the diary as being one of particular significance, marking as it does the anniversaries of the births and deaths of some giants of world literature.

Gao Xingjian

On this day in 1940, Gao Xingjian, novelist, critic and playwright was born in Jiangxi province in eastern China.  Since fleeing his native country in 1987, Gao has lived in France, where he was granted full citizenship in 1997.

Albert Camus

January 4th is also associated with another French author, Albert Camus (who died in a car crash on this day in 1960).

Interestingly, both Camus and Gao have been associated with the philosophy of absurdism, which focuses on the inherent conflict between the human desire to find meaning in life and the impossibilty of finding any such meaning.

Other literary heavyweights who died on this day are TS Eliot (1965) and Christopher Isherwood (1986).

All of the above, with the exception of Isherwood, have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Chistopher Isherwood

TS Eliot

On This Day in Literature

On this day (September 1st, 1952), Ernest Hemingway's seminal work, The Old Man and the Sea, appeared for the first time in Life magazine.

In what was an unusual move, the magazine featured the story in its entirety, a week before the book was officially published.  The gamble paid off - over 5 million copies of the magaizine sold in the first two days, and the book's first print run of 50,000 copies quickly sold out.

The Old Man and the Sea, which was written during the author's sojourn in Cuba, brought Hemingway the international acclaim he craved - the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in May of that year, and was given special mention when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

The success of this novel provoked a critical re-examining of his earlier work, with many readers gaining a new appeciation for the author's uniquely sparse writing style.  However, despite its success, The Old Man and the Sea was to be the last piece of work Hemingway would see published.  His final offering, A Moveable Feast, was published posthumously in 1964, three years after he committed suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

"To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me."

Ernest Heminway, The Old Man and The Sea, 1952.

On This Day in Art History

On this day (June 27) in 1890, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field near the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise.  He died two days later at the age of 37.

Van Gogh's suicide was the tragic culmination of years of mental and physical illness. (It has been said that he suffered from epilesy, schizophrenia, a disorder of the inner ear, among other ailments.  He was also thought to be addicted to absinthe, the mind-bending alcoholic drink, which was also known as the Green Dragon or the Green Fairy).

The artist left behind a priceless legacy of impressionist masterpieces.  His genius, however, went unrecognised in his lifetime.  He died a pauper, having only ever sold one of his paintings, Red Vineyard in Arles.

On This Day (15th July) ... in brief

1099: The city of Jerusalem surrended to the Christian Crusaders.

1606: The Dutch master, Rembrandt, was born in Leiden in the Netherlands.

1799: The Rosetta Stone (which now resides in the British Museum) was found in Egypt by soldiers in Napoleon's army.

1919: Novelist Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin.

1989: Pink Floyd, who were scheduled to play a concert in Venice, were instructed by city officials not to play at any louder than 60 decibels, to prevent any damage to surrounding buildings.

1997: Fashion designer, Gianni Versace, was shot dead on the steps of his Miami home.

2003: Roberto Bolaño, the Chilean-Spanish novelist and poet, died.

On This Day ... Samuel Pepys & The Great Plague

Samuel Pepys, the noted 17th century diarist, is perhaps most famous for his eyewitness accounts of the The Great Fire which swept through London in 1666.  But this was far from the only significant event recorded by him during this tumultuous period in the city's history. 

Although he kept a diary for only nine years (from 1660 to 1669, when he was forced to abandon it due to blindness), Pepys' writings have become an invalubale source of information for historians.  Aside from his accounts of the devastating Great Fire, his diaries have also provided commentaries on the Restoration, the Second Anglo-Dutch War and, of course, the Great Plague.

It was on this day, June 7th, in 1665, when Pepys made one of his first references to this terrible disease, which would go on the wreak havoc on the beleagured city.  He wrote:

“This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a read cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord Have Mercy Upon Us’ writ there – which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind . . . that I ever saw."

As the summer wore on, his accounts became ever more harrowing.  On August 12th, he wrote:

“The people die so, that it now seems they are willing to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not being long enough to do it."

Pepys continued to chronicle the progress of the plague and, as his diary entry for August 22nd suggests, in their efforts to deal with the burgeoning number of dead bodies, the authorities had not the time nor the resources to bestow on the deceased any dignity in death.

“I went on a walk to Greenwich, on my way seeing a coffin with a dead body in it, dead of plague. It lay in an open yard . . . It was carried there last night, and the parish has not told anybody to bury it. This disease makes us more cruel to one another than we are to dogs.”

Pepys' motivation for keeping such detailed records of these traumatic events is unclear.  He certainly didn't write them for posterity; having written most of his entries in code, it is clear he never intended them to be published.  One wonders what he would have made of the fact that, over 400 years later, his scribblings are regarded by many to be the definitive authority on one of the most turbulent decades in London's long and varied history.

On This Day ... The Death of Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

On this day, May 30th, in 1593, the acclaimed Elizabethan playwright, poet and author, Christopher Marlowe, died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 29.

A contemporary of William Shakespeare (he was about 2 months older than the Bard), Marlowe was a prolific writer in the years leading up to his premature death. He published 5 plays, including The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine and Dr Faustus, as well as numerous translations including a version of Ovid's Elegies.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with controversial historical figures, he has been remembered more for the puzzling aspects of his life and the unexplained circumstances of his death, than for his outstanding literary talent.

Despite lack of any definitive proof, it has often been alleged that Marlowe worked as a spy for Elizabeth I's government.  This theory has grown out of some speculation that he was close to Thomas Walsingham, first cousin of Sir Francis Walsingham, who was a member of Elizabeth's Privy Council and who had many links to espionage networks across Europe.  Whether or not Marlowe was recruited as a spy will perhaps always remain a mystery, as will the circumstances surrounding his death, which have spawned innumerable conspiracy theories ...

On May 18th 1593, a warrant was issued by the Privy Council for Marlowe's arrest.  He was accused of having written some material that was deemed 'heretical' by the government of the day.  Upon hearing of the warrant, Marlowe duly presented himself to the Privy Council on May 20th, only to be told that the Council was not sitting on that day.  He was instructed to make daily reports of his whereabouts to the authorities until his case was heard, an obligation he fulfilled faithfully.  Until May 30th, that is, when he got involved in a bar fight over an unpaid bill, during which he was faithfully stabbed.

William Shakespeare

Perhaps the most pervasive conspiracy theory to have sprung up after Marlowe's death was with regard to the Shakespearean authorship controversy.  The has been much debate surrounding the issue of who actually wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare, with many believing the the man from Stratford had neither the education nor the social standing to produce writings that displayed such an indepth knowledge of the workings of courts across Europe.  Proponents of the Marlovian Theory argue that Christopher Marlowe faked his own death in 1593 to escape the charges of heresy, and then went one to write under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare.  This theory is, for the most part, discounted by scholars ... but it does raise an interesting question: If Marlowe had not met with a premature death on that day in 1593, would he have gone on to produce works to rival those of William Shakespeare?  If he had lived, would he have had as profound effect on the development of the English language as his contemporary?

The mind boggles at the possibilities ...

Marlowe's signature

For more about the Shakespearean authorship controversy, read:
http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2010/05/who-wrote-shakespeare-worlds-longest.html

On This Day ... The Nazis Light the Fires of Hate

Today’s Notable Anniversary continues on the theme of Nazi Germany (see below).

On this day (May 10th) in 1933, the Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Association committed an unforgivable crime against culture and literary heritage. In university towns and cities across Germany, the student arm of the Nazi party carried out book burning ceremonies, reducing 25,000 books deemed to be ‘un-German’ or ‘against the German spirit’ to ash. This purge of literary works was often accompanied by many rousing speeches from Nazi party officials, like this one from the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda himself, Joseph Goebbels.

"You are doing the right thing at this midnight hour—to consign to the flames the unclean spirit of the past…. Out of these ashes the phoenix of a new age will arise…. Oh Century! Oh Science! It is a joy to be alive!"

Joseph Goebbels delivering his speech

The list of works which were deemed ‘un-German’ is lengthy. Books by Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, HG Wells, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Charles Darwin and Marcel Proust, among many others, met a fiery end. Incidentally, German writers were not spared – works by Albert Einstein, Ludwig Renn and the 19th century Jewish-German poet Heinrich Hein, who wrote the prophetic line "Where they burn books, they will also burn people" were also committed to the flames.

Interestingly, in a much less publicized but equally significant way , the Allies were also guilty of large-scale book burning. In 1946, during the de-Nazification of Germany, millions of books and artworks by proponents of the Nazi regime were destroyed. That's not something we hear about very often, is it?