Archibald MacLeish - Baccalaureate

 

“Baccalaureate” is the oldest poem in Archibald MacLeish: Collected Poems 1917-1982:

 

 

A year or two, and grey Euripides,

And Horace and a Lydia or so,

And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,

Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees,

The nose and Dialogues of Socrates,

Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,

How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,--

All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other, magic things,--

The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,

The rotton harbor smell, the mystery

Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,

The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings

About the college yard, where endlessly

The dead go up and down. These things shall be

Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.

And these are more than memories of youth

Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;

These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,

Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,

Symbols of those same verities that play

Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Baccalaureate -- Archibald MacLeish

http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2006/08/baccalaureate-archibald-macleish.html

August 13, 2006

One of the universals of the "college experience" - and pretty much everyone I know who has attended college agrees with me - is that the actual classroom education is the least part of it. Of course, that's not precisely true; it's just that lectures are seldom the stuff of which memories are made, and therefore loom progressively less significant in nostalgic reveries. Nonetheless, college remains one of life's defining experiences, and it is interesting to see what poets have made of the memories that *do* linger and tint the time thereafter.

Today's poem tackles the theme head-on, with MacLeish's characteristically beautiful phrases flowing like a wash of colour over the contrasting aspects of college life. The sequence of images is exquisite; I'm tempted to say that this is a poem that is more about atmosphere than message, but the atmosphere is definitely part of the message here, and the list format works very well indeed. And not just the imagery either - there is a slight weightiness to the language that helps enhance the academic feel, perhaps most evident in the phrase "symboks of those same verities", but present throughout.

The other noteworthy thing is the painstaking attention MacLeish pays to the sound of his poetry. With some poets, this is easy to see - the music of the words takes over, and leaps out at the reader. MacLeish's verse is usually more quietly euphonious, but none the less beautiful, and none the less perfect for not being showy.

Martin 

* * * * * * * * * * *

Archibald MacLeish’s Early Poems

http://www.lorenwebster.net/In_a_Dark_Time/2002/12/03/archibald-macleishs-early-poems/

Loren Webster

December 3, 2002 

Reading the entire works of a poet from beginning to end is in some ways like reliving the poet’s life, even a little like growing with him as his insights and philosophy grow. In addition, you gain insights into his poetry because you can follow shifts in his style while simultaneously seeing how his style was influenced by those around him. You can also follow the development of images and symbols that become vital to a fuller understanding of the poet’s work.

Baccalaureate is the oldest poem in Archibald MacLeish: Collected Poems 1917-1982:

BACCALAUREATE

A year or two, and grey Euripides,
And Horace and a Lydia or so,
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,
Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees,
The nose and dialogues of Socrates,
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go, -
All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other, magic things, -
The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,
The rotten harbor smell, the mystery
Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,
The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings
About the college yard, where endlessly
The dead go up and down. These things shall be
Enchantment of our hearts' rememberings.

And these are more than memories of youth
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
These are youth's symbols of eternal truth,
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
Symbols of those same verities that play
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.

While I found it only mildly interesting in itself, I found the symbols, the “magic things” that lie at the heart of his poetry quite interesting. Of course, the idea that symbols will live while the ideas of great writers like Socrates and Quixote will disappear could merely be attributed to the fact that MacLeish is a poet and not a philosopher or novelist. On the other hand, the “symbols” he chooses are “experiences” that are “eternal” precisely because they are a part of nature and do not rely on human interpretation. In terms of MacLeish’s poetry itself, the symbolism of “the sunny green” and, in particular, “moonlit elms” become increasingly significant as you read his works.

While I was not particularly impressed by most of MacLeish’s early poems, there are several interesting lines and images to be found in them. The following images appear in from the long poem The Happy Marriage (1924):

The Happy Marriage

Man is immortal for his flesh is earth,
And save he lives forever -- why, he dies:
Woman is mortal, for her flesh will rise
In each new generation of her birth.
She is the tree: we are the feverish
Vain leaves that gild her summer with our own
And fall and rot when summer’s overblown

Now though I’m not sure it’s politically correct today to ascribe the child only to the woman, I found the comparison of woman to the tree and man to the leaves particularly interesting, considering the constant reference to trees and leaves in MacLeish’s poems. Strangely enough, Germanic creation myths also suggest that woman was derived from the elm tree. Of course, in Germanic myth man is also a tree, an ash, and not the leaves of the elm tree. But it is always the poet’s personal adaptation of myths and symbols that is most interesting, not the use of myth per se.

Even this MacLeish poem about death contains references to trees, in particular “elm” trees:

SOME ASPECTS OF IMMORTALITY

The alley between the elm trees ends
In nothing, abruptly, as a life ends.

Down that straight avenue I stare
At the final blank, the abyss of air.

A nursemaid with a carriage steers
Across the vista, pushes, nears
The brink, goes over, disappears.

Too ignorant, think I, for fears.

There’s a startling contrast between the ancient elms and the nursemaid with the child in the carriage, but even more startling is his perception of the end of the row of elms as the final abyss, death. When we go beyond the trees we encounter the nothingness of death. Of course, this fear is balanced against the irony of the final line, for we surely know that it’s not the nursemaid that’s “too ignorant,” but, rather, the narrator that has been overcome by an “irrational” fear.

MacLeish’s poetry from 1917 to 1928 seems largely derivative. His long early poems seem to owe much to T.S.Eliot, even going so far as to borrow an opening line from The Golden Bough. Ezra Pound is also a major influence. Even the much-anthologized “Ars Poetica” seems derivative and atypical, somehow borrowed from the imagist movement that was sweeping the world of poetry.

In fact, it is only in the section serendipitiously named “from New Found Land (1930) that MacLeish seems to have discovered his own voice. It is, to be sure, a melancholic voice that has been echoed in many of his earlier poems, but finally MacLeish seems to have discovered his “own” vision. He effectively combines two of the images from the earlier “Baccalaureate” to create a vision of beauty underlaid by an impending sense of loss:

MEMORY GREEN

Yes and when the warm unseasonable weather
Comes at the year's end of the next late year
And the southwest wind that smells of rain and summer
Strips the huge branches of their dying leaves,

And you at dusk along the Friedrichstrasse
Or you in Pans on the windy quay
Shuffle the shallow fallen leaves before you
Thinking the thoughts that like the grey clouds change,

You will not understand why suddenly sweetness
Fills in your heart nor the tears come to your eyes:
You will stand in the June-warm wind and the leaves falling:
When was it so before, you will say, With whom?

You will not remember this at all: you will stand there
Feeling the wind on your throat, the wind in your sleeves,
You will smell the dead leaves in the grass of a garden:
You will close your eyes: With whom, you will say,

Ah where?

Perhaps this philosophical conjunction is merely the natural result of having come of age in the optimistic roaring twenties and suddenly finding yourself in the middle of America’s greatest Depression, but MacLeish seems to make it uniquely his own. It is precisely this inability to understand “why suddenly sweetness/ Fills in your heart nor the tears come to your eyes” that seems to haunt modern man. We have lost our innocence and are too often unable to experience life’s joys directly and fully because of the awareness that sorrow and misery lurks not too far away.

The poem “You, Andrew Marvell” should instantly recall memories of Marvel’s famous “To His Coy Mistress” with its classic statement on carpe diem. MacLeish’s poem, emphasizes how swiftly time flies by, but, unlike Marvell, seems incapable of celebrating the moment with such knowledge:

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on.

The phrase “the always coming on,” to me, at least, conveys a sense of impending doom although literally, of course, the poem merely describes the night moving from east to west. It’s probably not entirely accidental, though, that the first city described, Ecbatan, is an ancient Persian city long since vanished. Time, after all, can be measured not only by the day but by the century. It is not a peaceful darkness that encompasses Ecbatan, but, rather, a “flood” of darkness that lies about the “knees” of the trees.

The night moves on, passing Palmyra, another ancient city in Syria, where there are “wheel ruts in the ruined stone.” Finally, this dark force swiftly and secretly “comes on,” throwing a long shadow over the narrator. Strangely enough, though, the narrator is lying “face downward in the sun,” suggesting that he has already given in to the night long before the night actually arrives. Perhaps that’s appropriate for a series of poems written in the middle of the Depression.

* * * * * * * * * * *

eNotes Critique

http://www.enotes.com/archibald-macleish-criticism/macleish-archibald-vol-8

* * * * * * * * * * *

Biography of Names

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euripides

Euripides (A ncient Greek: Εὐριπίδης) (ca. 480 – 406 BC) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds)^[1] and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined^[2][3] — he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander.^[4] 

Bust of Euripides:
Roman marble copy of a 4th-century

Greek original (Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome)

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets",^{[nb 1]} focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown.^[5][6] He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates",^[7] and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.^[8]

 

He was also unique among the writers of ancient Athens for the sympathy he demonstrated towards all victims of society, including women.^[5][9] His conservative male audiences were frequently shocked by the 'heresies' he put into the mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea:

 

Sooner would I stand

Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,

Than bear one child!^[10]

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Whereas Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence, Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia.^[11] Recent scholarship casts doubt on ancient biographies of Euripides. For example, it is possible that he never visited Macedonia at all,^[12] or, if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists.^[13]

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace

Horace, as imagined
by Anton von Werner

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as almost the only Latin lyrics worth reading, justifying his estimate with the words: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."^{[nb 1]}

Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Sermones and Epistles) and scurrilous iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are playful and yet serious works, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings".^{[nb 2]} Some of his iambic poetry, however, can seem wantonly repulsive to modern audiences.^[1]

His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from Republic to Empire. An officer in the republican army that was crushed at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became something of a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep")^[2] but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".^{[3][nb 3]}

His poetry became "the common currency of civilization", and he still retains a devoted following, despite some stigmatization after World War I (perhaps due to popular mistrust of old-fashioned patriotism and imperial glory, with which he was identified, fairly or unfairly).^[4] Horatian studies have become so diverse and intensive in recent years that it is probably no longer possible for any one scholar to command the whole range of arguments and issues.^[5]

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo

Angelo is an Italian and Greek masculine given name meaning "angel", or "messenger". Angelo is also an Italian surname that has many variations: Angeli (disambiguation), Angela (disambiguation), De Angelis, D'Angelo, Angelini, Angelino (disambiguation), Angelina (disambiguation), Angelucci, Angeloni, Angeletti (disambiguation).

Angelo as a given name may refer to:

• Angelo Bronzino (1503–1572), Italian Mannerist painter
• Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (1454–1494), Florentine classical scholar and poet

As a surname it may refer to:

• Michelangelo

* * * * * * * * *

Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Bronzino

 Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken attempts also have been made in the past to assert his name was Agnolo Tori and even Angelo (Agnolo) Allori), was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his relatively dark skin.^[1]

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni^[1] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer.^[2] Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Portrait of Michelangelo by Jacopino
del Conte  (after 1535) at the age of 60

His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.^[3] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").^[4] One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

Darwin, aged 45 in 1854, by then
working towards publication of
On the Origin of Species

 

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist.^[I] He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors,^[1] and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.^[2]

 

Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.^[3][4] By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.^[5][6] In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.^[7][8]

Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science.^[9] His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.^[10]

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection.^[11] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority.^[12] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.^[13] Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.^[5] In 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.^[14]

In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence as a scientist, he was honoured by a major ceremonial funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.^[15] Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.^[16][17]

 * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergilius

Depiction of Virgil, 3rd-century AD,^[1]
"Monnus-Mosaic", Rheinisches
Landesmuseum Trier

Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil /ˈvɜrdʒəl/ in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him.

Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and arrive on the shores of Italy—in Roman mythology the founding act of Rome. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably the Divine Comedy of Dante, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through hell and purgatory.

* * * * * * * * *

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

Socrates

Socrates ( /ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [sɔːkrátɛːs], Sōkrátēs; c. 469 BC – 399 BC)^[1] was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.^[2]

Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed.

As one recent commentator has put it, Plato, the idealist, offers "an idol, a master figure, for philosophy. A Saint, a prophet of the 'Sun-God', a teacher condemned for his teachings as a heretic."^[3]

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_quixote

Title page of first edition (1605)

Don Quixote ( /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/; Spanish: [ˈdoŋ kiˈxote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes. The novel follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reads too many chivalric novels, and sets out to revive chivalry under the name of Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who frequently deals with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood with a unique Earthy wit. He is met by the world as it is, initiating themes like intertextuality, realism, metatheatre and literary representation.

Published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudibras

First Collected edition of Hudibras
by Samuel Butler, 1674-1678

Hudibras is an English mock heroic narrative poem from the 17th century written by Samuel Butler.

Purpose

The work is a satirical polemic upon Roundheads, Puritans, Presbyterians and many of the other factions involved in the English Civil War. The work was begun, according to the title page, during the civil war and published in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678, with the first edition encompassing all three parts in 1684 (see 1684 in poetry).^[1] The Mercurius Aulicus (an early newspaper of the time) reported an unauthorised edition of the first part was already in print in early 1662.^[2]

Published only four years after Charles II had been restored to the throne and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell being completely over, the poem found an appreciative audience. The satire is not balanced as Butler was fiercely royalist and only the parliamentarian side are singled out for ridicule. Butler also uses the work to parody some of the dreadful poetry of the time.

The epic tells the story of Sir Hudibras, a knight errant who is described dramatically and with laudatory praise that is so thickly applied as to be absurd, and the conceited and arrogant person is visible beneath. He is praised for his knowledge of logic despite appearing stupid throughout, but it is his religious fervour which is mainly attacked:

For his Religion, it was fit

To match his learning and his wit;

'Twas Presbyterian true blue;

For he was of that stubborn crew

Of errant saints, whom all men grant

To be the true Church Militant;

Such as do build their faith upon

The holy text of pike and gun;

Decide all controversies by

Infallible artillery;

And prove their doctrine orthodox

By apostolic blows and knocks;

Call fire and sword and desolation,

A godly thorough reformation,

Which always must be carried on,

And still be doing, never done;

As if religion were intended

For nothing else but to be mended.

His squire, Ralpho, is of a similar stamp but makes no claim to great learning, knowing all there is to know from his religion or “new-light”, as he calls it. Butler satirises the competing factions at the time of the protectorship by the constant bickering of these two principal characters whose religious opinions should unite them.

These are fawning but barbed portraits and are thought to represent personalities of the times but the actual analogues are, now as then, debatable. "A Key to Hudibras" printed with one of the work's editions (1709) and ascribed to Roger L'Estrange names Sir Samuel Luke as the model for Hudibras. Certainly, the mention of Mamaluke in the poem makes this possible although Butler suggests Hudibras is from the West Country making Henry Rosewell a candidate. The witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins, John Desborough, parliamentarian general, and William Prynne, lawyer, all make appearances, and the character of Sidrophel is variously seen as either William Lilly or Paul Neale.

* * * * * * * * *

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinculo

Trinculo can refer to:

• Trinculo, a character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
• Trinculo, a natural satellite of Uranus.
• Trinculo, a crater on Miranda, which is also a natural satellite of Uranus.
• Trinculo, mentioned in the Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "Mesmeric Revelation".
• Trinculo, an English ceilidh band based in Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Who Is Archibald MacLeish?

Biography of Archibald MacLeish

http://www.poemhunter.com/archibald-macleish/biography/

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Early Years

MacLeish was born in Glencoe, Illinois. His father, Scottish-born Andrew MacLeish, worked as a dry goods merchant. His mother, Martha (née Hillard), was a college professor and had served as president of Rockford College. He grew up on an estate bordering Lake Michigan. He attended the Hotchkiss School from 1907 to 1911 before entering Yale University, where he majored in English, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and was selected for the Skull and Bones society. He then enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1916, he married Ada Hitchcock. His studies were interrupted by World War I, in which he served first as an ambulance driver and later as a captain of artillery. He graduated from law school in 1919, taught law for a semester for the government department at Harvard, then worked briefly as an editor for The New Republic. He next spent three years practicing law.

Expatriatism

In 1923 MacLeish left his law firm and moved with his wife to Paris, France, where they joined the community of literary expatriates that included such members as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. They also became part of the famed coterie of Riviera hosts Gerald and Sarah Murphy, which included Hemingway, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, John O'Hara, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. He returned to America in 1928. From 1930 to 1938 he worked as a writer and editor for Fortune Magazine, during which he also became increasingly politically active, especially with anti-fascist causes.

While in Paris, Harry Crosby, publisher of the Black Sun Press, offered to published MacLeish's poetry. Both MacLeish and Crosby had overturned the normal expectations of society, rejecting conventional careers in the legal and banking fields. Harry published MacLeish's long poem Einstein in a deluxe edition of a 150 copies that sold quickly. MacLeish was paid US$200 for his work.

Librarian of Congress

American Libraries has called MacLeish "one of the hundred most influential figures in librarianship during the 20th century" in the United States. MacLeish’s career in libraries and public service began, not with a burning desire from within, but from a combination of the urging of a close friend Felix Frankfurter, and as MacLeish put it, “The President decided I wanted to be Librarian of Congress.” Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination of MacLeish was a controversial and highly political maneuver fraught with several challenges. First, the current Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, who had served at the post for 40 years, needed to be persuaded to retire from the position. In order to be persuaded, Putnam was made Librarian Emeritus. Secondly, Franklin D. Roosevelt desired someone with similar political sensibilities to fill the post and to help convince the American public that the New Deal was working and that he had the right to run for an unprecedented third term in office. MacLeish’s occupation as a poet and his history as an expatriate in Paris rankled many Republicans. Lastly, MacLeish’s lack of a degree in library sciences or any training whatsoever aggravated the librarian community, especially the American Library Association which was campaigning for one of its members to be nominated. Despite these challenges, President Roosevelt and Justice Frankfurter felt that the mixture of MacLeish’s love for literature and his abilities to organize and motivate people, exemplified by his days in law school, would be just what the Library of Congress needed.

MacLeish sought support from expected places such as the president of Harvard, MacLeish’s current place of work, but found none. It was support from unexpected places, such as M. Llewellyn Raney of the University of Chicago libraries, which alleviated the ALA letter writing campaign against MacLeish’s nomination. Raney pointed out to the detractors that, “MacLeish was a lawyer like Putnam…he was equally at home in the arts as one of the four leading American poets now alive…and while it was true that he had not attended a professional school of library science, neither had thirty-four of thirty-seven persons presently occupying executive positions at the Library of Congress.” The main Republican arguments against MacLeish’s nomination from within Congress was: that he was a poet and was a “fellow traveler” or sympathetic to communist causes. Calling to mind differences with the party he had over the years, MacLeish avowed that, “no one would be more shocked to learn I am a Communist than the Communists themselves.” In Congress MacLeish’s main advocate was Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley, Democrat from Kentucky. With President Roosevelt’s support and Senator Barkley’s skillful defense in the United States Senate, victory in a roll call vote with sixty-three Senators voting in favor of MacLeish’s appointment was achieved.

MacLeish became privy to Roosevelt’s views on the library during a private meeting with the president. According to Roosevelt, the pay levels were too low and many people would need to be removed. Soon afterward, MacLeish joined Putnam for a luncheon in New York. At the meeting, Putnam relayed his desire to come to the Library for work and that his office would be down the hall from MacLeish’s. This meeting further crystallized for MacLeish that as Librarian of Congress, he would be “an unpopular newcomer, disturbing the status quo.”

t was a question from MacLeish’s daughter, Mimi, which led him to realize that, “Nothing is more difficult for the beginning librarian than to discover what profession he was engaged.” Mimi, his daughter, had inquired about what her daddy was to do all day, “…hand out books?” MacLeish created his own job description and set out to learn about how the library was currently organized. In October 1944, MacLeish described that he did not set out to reorganize the library, rather “…one problem or another demanded action, and each problem solved led on to another that needed attention.”

MacLeish’s chief accomplishments had their start in instituting daily staff meetings with division chiefs, the chief assistant librarian, and other administrators. He then set about setting up various committees on various projects including: acquisitions policy, fiscal operations, cataloging, and outreach. The committees alerted MacLeish to various problems throughout the library.

First and foremost, under Putnam, the library was acquiring more books than it could catalog. A report in December 1939, found that over one-quarter of the library’s collection had not yet been cataloged. MacLeish solved the problem of acquisitions and cataloging through establishing another committee instructed to seek advice from specialists outside of the Library of Congress. The committee found many subject areas of the library to be adequate and many other areas to be, surprisingly, inadequately provided for. A set of general principles on acquisitions was then developed to ensure that, though it was impossible to collect everything, the Library of Congress would acquire the bare minimum of canons to meet its mission. These principles included acquiring all materials necessary to members of Congress and government officers, all materials expressing and recording the life and achievements of the people of the United States, and materials of other societies past and present which are of the most immediate concern to the peoples of the United States.

Secondly, MacLeish set about reorganizing the operational structure. Leading scholars in library science were assigned a committee to analyze the library’s managerial structure. The committee issued a report a mere two months after it was formed, in April 1940 stating that a major restructuring was necessary. This was no surprise to MacLeish who had thirty-five divisions under him. He divided the library’s functions into three departments: administration, processing, and reference. All existing divisions were then assigned as appropriate. By including library scientists from inside and outside the Library of Congress, MacLeish was able to gain faith from the library community that he was on the right track. Within a year MacLeish had completely restructured the Library of Congress making it work more efficiently, bringing the library to the center to “report on the mystery of things.”

Last, but not least, MacLeish promoted the Library of Congress through various forms of public advocacy. Perhaps his greatest display of public advocacy was requesting a budget increase of over a million dollars in his March 1940 budget proposal to the United States Congress. While the library did not receive the full increase, it did receive an increase of $367,591, the largest one-year increase to date. Much of the increase went toward improved pay levels, increased acquisitions in under served subject areas, and new positions.

World War II

During World War II MacLeish also served as director of the War Department's Office of Facts and Figures and as the assistant director of the Office of War Information. These jobs were heavily involved with propaganda, which was well-suited to MacLeish's talents; he had written quite a bit of politically motivated work in the previous decade. He spent a year as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and a further year representing the U.S. at the creation of UNESCO. After this, he retired from public service and returned to academia.

Return to writing

Despite a long history of criticizing Marxism, MacLeish came under fire from conservative politicians of the 1940s and 1950s, including J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy. Much of this was due to his involvement with left-wing organizations like the League of American Writers, and to his friendships with prominent left-wing writers. In 1949 MacLeish became the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He held this position until his retirement in 1962. In 1959 his play J.B. won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. From 1963 to 1967 he was the John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer at Amherst College. Around 1969/70 he met Bob Dylan, who describes this encounter in the third chapter of Chronicles, Vol. 1.

MacLeish greatly admired T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and his work shows quite a bit of their influence. He was the literary figure that played the most important role in freeing Ezra Pound from St. Elisabeths Hospital in Washington DC where he was incarcerated for high treason between 1946 and 1958. MacLeish's early work was very traditionally modernist and accepted the contemporary modernist position holding that a poet was isolated from society. His most well-known poem, "Ars Poetica," contains a classic statement of the modernist aesthetic: "A poem should not mean / But be." He later broke with modernism's pure aesthetic. MacLeish himself was greatly involved in public life and came to believe that this was not only an appropriate but an inevitable role for a poet.

Legacy

MacLeish worked to promote the arts, culture, and libraries. Among other impacts, MacLeish was the first Librarian of Congress to begin the process of naming what would become the United States Poet Laureate. The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress came from a donation in 1937 from Archer M. Huntington, a wealthy ship builder. Like many donations it came with strings attached. In this case Huntington wanted the poet Joseph Auslander to be named to the position. MacLeish found little value in Auslander’s writing. However, MacLeish was happy that having Auslander in the post attracted many other poets, such as Robinson Jeffers and Robert Frost, to hold readings at the library. He set about establishing the consultantship as a revolving post rather than a lifetime position. In 1943, MacLeish displayed his love of poetry and the Library of Congress by naming Louise Bogan to the position. Bogan, who had long been a hostile critic of MacLeish’s own writing, asked MacLeish why he appointed her to the position; MacLeish replied that she was the best person for the job. For MacLeish promoting the Library of Congress and the arts was vitally more important than petty personal conflicts.

In the June 5, 1972 issue of The American Scholar, MacLeish laid out in an essay his philosophy on libraries and librarianship, further shaping modern thought on the subject. MacLeish remarked in the essay that libraries are more than a mere collection of books. "If books are reports on the mysteries of the world and our existence in it, libraries remain reporting on the human mind, that particular mystery, still remains as countries lose their grandeur and universities are not certain what they are." For MacLeish, libraries are a massive report on the mysteries of human kind.

Two collections of MacLeish's papers are held at the Yale Library Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. These are the Archibald MacLeish Collection and Archibald MacLeish Collection Addition.

MacLeish had three children: Kenneth, Mary Hillard, and Peter. He is also a great-uncle of film actress Laura Dern.

Awards

1933: Pulitzer Prize for poetry (Conquistador)

1953: Pulitzer Prize for poetry (Collected Poems 1917–1952)

1953: National Book Award (Collected Poems, 1917–1952)

1953: Bollingen Prize in Poetry

1959: Pulitzer Prize for Drama (J.B.)

1959: Tony Award for Best Play (J.B.)

1965: Academy Award for Documentary Feature (The Eleanor Roosevelt Story)

1977: Presidential Medal of Freedom

Archibald MacLeish's Published Books:

Poetry

"The Wild Old Wicked Man" and Other Poems (1968)

Actfive (1948)

Actfive and Other Poems (1948)

Class Poem (1915)

Collected Poems (1952)

Conquistador (1932)

Einstein (1929)

Elpenor (1933)

Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City (1933)

Later Poems, 1951-1962

New Found Land New Found Land (1930)

New and Collected Poems, 1917-1976 (1976)

Nobodaddy (1926)

Poems, 1924-1933 (1935)

Songs for Eve (1954)

Songs for a Summer's Day (1915)

Streets in the Moon (1928)

The Collected Poems of Archibald MacLeish (1962)

The Hamlet of A. Macleish (1928)

The Happy Marriage (1924)

The Human Season, Selected Poems 1926-1972 (1972)

The Pot of Earth (1925)

Tower of Ivory (1917)

Prose

A Continuing Journey (1968)

A Time to Act: Selected Addresses (1943)

A Time to Speak (1941)

America Was Promises (1939)

American Opinion and the War: the Rede Lecture (1942)

Art Education and the Creative Process (1954)

Champion of a Cause: Essays and Addresses on Librarianship (1971)

Freedom Is the Right to Choose (1951)

Jews in America (1936)

Letters of Archibald MacLeish, 1907-1982 (1983)

Poetry and Experience (1961)

Poetry and Opinion: the Pisan Cantos of Ezra Pound (1974)

Public Speech (1936)

Riders on the Earth: Essays & Recollections (1978)

The American Cause The American Cause (1941)

The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren (1964)

The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (1965)

The Irresponsibles: A Declaration (1940)

Drama

Air Raid (1938)

An Evening's Journey to Conway (1967)

Colloquy for the States (1943)

Herakles (1967)

J.B. (1958)

Panic (1935)

Scratch (1971)

Six Plays (1980)

The American Story: Ten Broadcasts (1944)

The Fall of the City (1937)

The Great American Fourth of July Parade (1975)

The Land of the Free (1938)

The Trojan Horse (1952)

The Wild Old Wicked Man (1968)

This Music Crept By Me on the Waters (1953)

Three Short Plays (1961)

Union Pacific (ballet) (1934)

R.E. Slater - Star Light, Star Bright (a poem)

Galaxy Rising

Star Light, Star Bright

by R.E. Slater

We are light!

Did you know that?
Formed from starlight's ancient cosmic debris
Mashed together across the wastelands of space -
Empty space, but not nearly empty, just emptied for creation,
As cosmic dust fallen to Earth
Fallen from the dazzling skies above
Ordained by creation's hands by the Almighty God of Love.

Bourne by Light, birthed of Light, formed from Light -
Ye Stars of heaven fallen to Earth
Mingling with earth
Mingling Love
Mangled by sin's dark emptiness.

To shine on a new day as the stars above -
Lighting dark places holding earth's sin
Lighting eternity's days with starlight above
Swept from the heaven's
Fallen as Love.


- R.E. Slater
June 15, 2012

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

“The cosmos is within us.

We are made of star-stuff.

We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

―Carl Sagan

Drops of Jupiter - Train

Related -

Stardust - Willie Nelson

Discover Science - A Cosmic Recipe for Earthlings