"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Sunday, April 13, 2014

R.E. Slater - Awakening (a poem)




Awakening
by R.E. Slater


Not all at once,
perhaps slowly,
sleepily,
spring awakened
upon an early April's
rhapsodic graces,
heavy with night's
waning fragrances
of cleansing rains,
that wouldst free
bound earth
of dreary winter's
retreating embraces,
and there lie,
quietly alone,
in subduing lights,
remembering
days past bourne
of deeper stirrings,
more ancient callings.

Listening intently,
the haunting verve
of faraway geese
honking in muted,
cacophonous chorus,
its eager flocks
circumscribing
dawn's grey lights
on tireless wing,
carving cold airs
plundering forward
in diminishing echo,
till lost at last,
as quickly as heard,
upon receding memories
of an earlier dawn's
distant birth,
and nevering lands,
beckoning home,
both wont and will.

Remembering
more ancient stirrings,
of youth's lost keeps,
fled on a dawn's
dying echoes sounding
its tympanous chorus
to the burgeoning day,
cleaving its leas,
its forlorn streams,
its desperate byways,
upon a stubborn heart's
resolute dreams
that northward lay
its eternal abodes,
its minstrel lays,
its nethering dawns,
in the early waking lights,
of a new day's arising,
beheld of stout heart,
and faithful Maker.

In whose hands
no charge so deep,
nor call so hard,
is miskept,
nor distant dies,
on a morning's call,
and sounding charge,
affecting wing and heart,
mind and keep,
the eternal flyways
of the beating breast,
pressing wing and voice,
man and beast,
its steady rhythms
of renewing dawns
tissued in membranes
of rebirth, of
time and space,
unto filioqued lands
of more primal decree.


- R.E. Slater
April 12-13, 2014

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved



Thursday, April 3, 2014

Jack London - Novelist, Writer, Sailor, Gold Prospector, Rancher


Novelist Jack London, 1903

Wikipedia Biogarphy

Born
John Griffith Chaney
January 12, 1876
Died
November 22, 1916 (aged 40)
Glen Ellen, California, US
OccupationNovelistjournalistshort story writer and essayist
Literary movementRealism and Naturalism

Signature

John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney,[1] January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)[2][3][4][5] was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.[6] Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.

London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.

Wiki Quotes by Jack London


* * * * * * * * *


Review: ‘Jack London’ biography burnishes
larger-than-life man of letters
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140119/PC12/140119472/1003/-x2018-jack-london-x2019-bio-burnishes-image

by Rosemary Michaud, The Post and Courier 
January 19, 2014

JACK LONDON: An American Life. By Earle Labor. FSG. 384 pages. $30.

Jack London did not make old bones. Indeed, given the fact that at the time of his death in 1916, he suffered from clogged arteries, diseased kidneys, arthritis, rheumatism, chronic nausea, dysentery, edema and insomnia, it is rather amazing that he lasted long enough to see his 40th birthday, which he did, just barely.

It seems clear that London was romantically drawn to the idea of living hard and flaming out early, and he was spectacularly successful in the endeavor.

Reading about Jack London can be both a joyful and wearying experience, one that leads inevitably to the creation of lists. Not only did he write a truly impressive number of novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, plays and poems, he also spent time as a hobo, an oyster pirate, a seal hunter, a gold miner and a war correspondent. He sailed through much of the South Pacific, visited a leper colony and escaped cannibals in the Solomon Islands.

He was an early pursuer of the sport of surfing and helped popularize it in this country. He taught himself how to drive a stagecoach. He boxed. He farmed. He ranched. Twice he ran for mayor of Oakland, Calif., as a socialist. And that is, without exaggeration, only a partial compilation of the many doings of John Griffith London. If he lived in the present day, he would doubtless be offered a prescription for Ritalin.

Born in 1876 to a single mother in straightened circumstances, London was forced to help support his family from the time he was an adolescent and continued to do so for most of his life. He developed a tremendous work ethic that carried over into his writing. Up to the time of his death, sick or well, on land or sea, he tried to produce a thousand words a day without fail.

He mastered a rugged, Kiplingesque style that went over very well in the burgeoning popular magazine market of the time, and though, not surprisingly, a portion of what he wrote was hackwork, he had no choice but to keep churning it out. His ever more complex and expensive way of life demanded it.

When London was good, however, he was very good. While prospecting in the Klondike, he became moved by the plight of the “trail-hardened” huskies and inspired to write his great classic, “Call of the Wild,” its antithesis “White Fang,” and what some consider his finest short story, “To Build a Fire.” All are still read today.

Earle Labor, professor emeritus of American literature at Centenary College of Louisiana, has spent much of his professional life studying and writing about Jack London. He is also the curator of the Jack London Museum in Shreveport and, perhaps more significantly, states that he heard the “call” of Jack London “more than 70 years ago as a boy in a one-story brick schoolhouse.” It is difficult not to suspect that this has somewhat colored his view of London.

While he possesses full academic bona fides and has written a highly readable (his prose, in places, faintly echoes that of his subject), deeply researched account, one gets the impression that London’s darker side may have been soft pedaled.

Labor dutifully reports on the author’s carousing, alcoholism, infidelity to both his wives, occasionally troubled relationship with his daughters and fatally careless attitude towards his own health, but he sometimes seems to be describing the peccadilloes of a charming, basically innocent child.

In reality, for all his genuine charisma, generosity and joie de vivre, London couldn’t have been easy to live with. His second wife, Charmian Kittredge, who adored her husband and whose diaries Labor draws on extensively, often recounted the pain London caused her with his drinking and frequent bouts of illness. The fact is, London, as dedicated as he was to his craft, would probably have struggled more with his writing, especially in later years, had Charmian not faithfully toiled over reading, editing and typing his manuscripts. The selflessness of the “woman behind the great man,” probably quite rare today, allowed Jack to be Jack.

Despite his foibles, London remains one of the most unique and captivating members of the American literary canon. With this book, Labor has lovingly burnished what was already a larger-than-life reputation.

Reviewer Rosemary Michaud is a writer in Charleston.


* * * * * * * * *


Novelist Jack London

Who was . . .

Overview

Considered by many to be America’s finest author, Jack London, whose name at birth was John Griffith Chaney, was born “south of the slot”—an area south of Market Street and its cable lines in San Francisco, California, on January 12, 1876. The California Historical Society has placed a plaque, attached to a former Wells Fargo Building at Third and Brannan Streets, at what was formerly 615 Third Street, a home destroyed by the famous April 18, 1906 fire that accompanied the great quake. This plaque states that it “marks the birthplace of the noted author Jack London . . .” The plaque marks the location of the home of the Slocums, friends of Flora, Jack’s mother, where it has been said she was living after her reported suicide attempt and release from Dr. Ruttley’s (which was on Mission Street). Jack’s birth certificate does not indicate where he was born, so although we cannot verify this as the actual birthplace of Jack London, at the time, most children were born at home, so this is feasible.

It is believed that he is the biological son of William Chaney, an itinerant astrologer and journalist, who “married” then deserted Jack’s mother, Flora, a spiritualist, before he was born. Flora married John London, a Civil War veteran who had recently moved to San Francisco, eight months after Jack was born. Jack did not learn the true circumstances of his birth until he was in his early twenties. Much of his youth was spent in Oakland, California, on the waterfront.

Jack had little formal schooling. Initially, he attended school only through the 8th grade, although he was an avid reader, educating himself at public libraries, especially the Oakland Public Library under the tutelage of Ina Coolbrith, who later became the first poet laureate of California. In later years (mid-1890s), Jack returned to high school in Oakland and graduated. He eventually gained admittance to U.C. Berkeley, but stayed only for six months, finding it to be “not alive enough” and a “passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence”.

Jack’s extensive life experiences included: being a laborer, factory worker, oyster pirate on the San Francisco Bay, member of the California Fish Patrol, sailor, able-bodied seaman, railroad hobo, and gold prospector (in the Klondike from 1897-1898). In his teens, he joined Coxey’s Army in its famous march on Washington, D.C., and was later arrested for vagrancy in Erie County, New York. As a journalist, Jack covered the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers in 1904, and in 1914, he covered the Mexican Revolution for Collier’s.

It was during his cross-country travels that he became acquainted with socialism, which for many years, became his “holy grail”. He became known as the “Boy Socialist of Oakland” because of his passionate street corner oratory. In fact, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Oakland several times as the socialist party candidate.

In 1900, Jack married his math tutor and friend, Bess Maddern. It was a Victorian marriage typical of the time, based on “good breeding”, not love. With Bess, he had two daughters — Joan and Bess (“Becky”). Following his separation from Bess in 1903, he married his secretary, Charmian Kittredge, whom he considered his “Mate Woman” and with whom he found true love. Together, they played, traveled, wrote and enjoyed life. Their one child, Joy, only lived for thirty-eight hours.

In 1907, with his second wife, Charmian, Jack sailed the Pacific to the South Seas in the Snark, which became the basis for his book, The Cruise of the Snark. With Charmian at his side, he also developed his “Beauty Ranch” on 1,400 acres of land in Glen Ellen, California.

By his death at age forty on November 22, 1916, Jack had been plagued for years by a vast number of health problems, including stomach disturbances, ravaging uremia, and failing kidneys. His death certificate states that he died of uremic poisoning.

Jack was among the most publicized figures of his day. In his lectures, he endorsed socialism and women’s suffrage. He was also one of the first celebrities used to endorse commercial products, such as grape juice and men’s suits.

Young Jack London’s exceptional brightness and his optimistic, buoyant personality eventually combined to transform his many experiences into a working philosophy of service and survival. He became the personification for his readers of many of the virtues and ideals of a turn-of-the-century Western American man and was the country’s first successful working class writer.

Jack London, Writer

Jack London, Writer

Jack London . . . The Writer

Once Jack had resolved himself to succeed as an author, his diligent habits and innate skills catapulted him far beyond most of his literary peers in both perspective and content. By following a strict writing regimen of 1,000 words a day, he was able to produce a huge quantity of high quality work over a period of eighteen years.

Jack had become the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time. He was prolific: fifty-one of his books and hundreds of his articles had been published. He had written thousands of letters. Many additional works have been published posthumously. His most notable books include The Call of the Wild (originally entitled “The Sleeping Wolf”) which was published in 1903, The Iron Heel, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf (originally entitled “Mercy of the Sea”), The People of the Abyss (a sociological treatise about the slums of London, England), John Barleycorn, Martin Eden, and The Star Rover. His short story, “To Build A Fire”, is considered to be an all-time classic. His writings have been translated in several dozen languages and to this day continue to be widely read throughout the world.

This American literary genius brilliantly and compassionately portrayed his life and times, as well as the neverending struggles of man and nature. Millions of avid readers have been thrilled by his stories of adventure. Authors and social advocates have been inspired by his heartfelt prose. Nevertheless, many of his life experiences were more exciting than his fiction.

Jack London, Sailor

Jack London . . . The Sailor

No man has ever loved to sail more than Jack London. Even as a very young boy, fishing with his stepfather in small boats, his head would fill with visions of tropical islands and faraway places. As he grew up, he occasionally rented boats with money earned from his many part-time jobs. At fifteen, with the financial assistance of “Aunt Jenny” Prentiss, Jack bought a sloop, the Razzle Dazzle, in order to escape the life of the “work beast”. He became an illegal oyster pirate, and before long, had earned the title of “Prince of the Oyster Pirates”; he made more money in one week than he was able to earn in his first full year as a professional writer. Realizing that the life of an oyster pirate frequently ended in prison or death, he reformed and became a California Fish Patrol deputy.

During his lifetime, Jack sailed on a variety of ships including: the sealing schooner Sophia Sutherland to Japan (on which he served as an able-bodied seaman); on the steamship SS Umatilla and the City of Topeka (to Alaska); the RMS Majestic (to England); the SS Siberia (as correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War); took a sampan to Korea; bought and sailed the Spray; designed, built, and sailed the Snark [named after the humoresque Lewis Carroll story] to Hawaii and the South Seas; returned from Tahiti to San Francisco on the SS Mariposa; sailed on the ketch Minota near Tahiti; sailed from Australia to Ecuador on the Tymeric; cruised on the San Francisco Bay and environs in the Roamer; sailed from Seattle to California on the City of Pueblo; sailed on the Dirigo from New York to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn; took the US Army transport Kilpatrick to Mexico (to write about the Mexican Revolution); sailed on fishing boats; stayed on a houseboat; visited the hospital ship USS Solace, the repair ship USS Vestal, and the battleships New York, Arkansas, and Mississippi; returned to Galveston on the transport Ossabow; sailed to Hawaii on the Matsonia; and returned to California on the SS Sonoma.

Jack London, Gold Prospector

Jack London . . . The Gold Prospector

Overcome with “Klondike fever,” Jack departed from San Francisco on the SS Umatilla on July 25, 1897, accompanied and bankrolled by his much older brother-in-law, Captain Shepard, who returned home after only two days on the rugged Alaska trails. With nearly 2,000 pounds of required equipment — including warm garments, food, mining implements, tents, blankets, Klondike stoves, and a copy of Miner Bruce’s Alaska, Jack entered the Yukon Territory by way of the Dyea River and the notorious Chilkoot Pass.

Jack moved into a cabin and staked a claim on Henderson Creek in early November of 1897, after a month of prospecting. During the long winter which followed, he became well-known to his fellow prospectors for his storytelling ability.

In May 1898, he developed a severe case of scurvy from lack of fresh fruit and vegetables; he could no longer work his claim. Desperately needing immediate medical attention, he anxiously awaited the melting of the ice blocking the Yukon River. He eventually did receive some medical help but was advised to return home. On June 28, he arrived in St. Michael, after making his way in a small boat down 1,500 miles of the Yukon River. From St. Michael, he sailed home.

Jack London gained a tremendous amount of insight and perspective while in Alaska and the Klondike [in Canada]. Although he had not discovered much gold, he had uncovered a Mother Lode of experience from which he would draw material for his future novels and stories.

Upon his return to Oakland, California, he discovered that his stepfather, John London, had died. At the age of 22, he now shouldered the responsibility of supporting his mother and his stepnephew. Despite tackling every job opening possible, he could not find steady work. In desperation, he sold many of his belongings and dove into writing. He was talented and prolific, yet at first all of his manuscripts were rejected. In early December 1898, he sold his first short story, an Alaskan tale entitled, “To The Man On Trail”. His writing career was launched.

Jack London, Rancher

Jack London . . . the Rancher

“I ride over my beautiful ranch. Betwen my legs is a beautiful horse. 
The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. 
Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing. 
The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. 
I have everything to make me glad I am alive.”

In 1905, while living with Charmian at Wake Robin Lodge in Glen Ellen, California, Jack London decided to settle permanently in the Valley of the Moon. In June, he purchased his first piece of real estate — the Hill Ranch — 130 beautiful acres of trees, fields, springs, streams, canyons, hills, and abundant wildlife. After six additional land purchases, Jack London’s “Beauty Ranch” eventually totaled 1,400 acres and consisted of seven parcels of land bought between 1905 and 1913.

Jack loved ranch life. At Beauty Ranch, he raised many animals such as prize bulls, horses, and pigs. He cultivated a wide variety of crops, including forty acres of wine grapes which were formerly part of the Kohler-Frohling Winery. By damming a stream that crossed the property, Jack built a lake for irrigation and recreation. He introduced terracing and green water mulching. He produced record yields of oat hay on acreage that had been considered overfarmed. He experimented with innovative ideas such as growing spineless cactus, which was developed by his friend, the “Plant Wizard”, Luther Burbank (who lived in nearby Santa Rosa), for use as a cattle feed in arid regions; unfortunately, the cactus was not completely spineless and could not be used for feed. He imported thousands of Australian eucalyptus trees hoping the wood could be used for hardwood lumber and pier pilings, but the wood was found to be too soft. Jack’s “Pig Palace” was the showplace of the county. It allowed one man to feed up to two hundred hogs; Jack normally employed two men to feed and care for his pigs. And, his ranch’s concrete silos were the very first in California.

The ranch was also the building site for the majestic Wolf House. Constructed completely with native redwood trees, locally-quarried boulders, volcanic rock and blue slate, Wolf House took more than two years to build. Only a few days before Jack and Charmian were to move in, the house tragically burned due to spontaneous combustion caused by a careless oversight by a workman; only the walls were left standing.

You can visit and enjoy Jack London’s Beauty Ranch today. It is now a California State Historic Park which includes the House of Happy Walls museum, the Pig Palace, Jack London’s grave, the Lake, the Wolf House ruins, and more.

To read: A Chronology of Jack London’s Life . . . click here.

It is difficult to include all the events that occurred in Jack London’s life, especially the publication dates of all the books, articles, jokes, essays, and other writings, but we think you’ll find this to be one of the most complete — and accurate — chronologies in existence. It is an excerpt from The Wit and Wisdom of Jack London. Find out more details about this book at our Bookstore.

Text © 1990 and 1999 by WORDSWORTH™. All rights reserved.


Jack London,  Novelist

Monday, March 24, 2014

Ave Maria - The Prayer: Background, Source, Text, and Music


La Purisima Inmaculada Concepcion de Maria con Artista Ribera.
Por la gloria de la Iglesia Santa Romana Catolica. By Lloyd Baltazar.

Ave Maria - The Prayer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_maria

The Hail Mary, also commonly called the Ave Maria (Latin) or Angelic Salutation, is a traditional Christian prayer asking for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Roman Catholicism, the prayer forms the basis of the Rosary and the Angelus prayers. In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, a similar prayer is used in formal liturgies, both in Greek and in translations. It is also used by many other groups within the Catholic tradition of Christianity including Anglicans, Independent Catholics, and Old Catholics. Some Protestant denominations, such as Lutherans, also make use of a form of the prayer.

Based on the greeting of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in the Gospel of Luke, the prayer takes different forms in various traditions. It has often been set to music, although the most famous musical expression of the words Ave Maria by Schubert does not actually contain the Hail Mary prayer.

Biblical source

The prayer incorporates two passages from Saint Luke's Gospel: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,"[1] and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."[2] In mid-13th-century Western Europe the prayer consisted only of these words with the single addition of the name "Mary" after the word "Hail," as is evident from the commentary of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the prayer.[3]

The first of the two passages from Saint Luke's Gospel is the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, originally written in Koine Greek. The opening word of greeting, χαῖρεchaíre, here translated "Hail," literally has the meaning "rejoice" or "be glad." This was the normal greeting in the language in which Saint Luke's Gospel is written and continues to be used in the same sense in Modern Greek. Accordingly, both "Hail" and "Rejoice" are valid English translations of the word ("Hail" reflecting the Latin translation, and "Rejoice" reflecting the original Greek).

The word κεχαριτωμένη, (kecharitōménē), here translated as "full of grace," admits of various translations. Grammatically, the word is the feminine present perfect passive voice participle of the verb χαριτόωcharitóō, which means "to show, or bestow with, grace" and, in the passive voice, "to have grace shown, or bestowed upon, one."[4][5]

The text also appears in the account of the annunciation contained in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 9.


"Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee."

Angelic visitation of Mary


Meaning and Contexts (a large section) -

Musical settings

The Hail Mary, or Ave Maria in Latin, has been set to music numerous times. Among the most famous settings is the version by Charles Gounod (1859), adding melody and words to Johann Sebastian Bach's first prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier; and Franz Schubert's Ave Maria (Ellens Gesang III, D839, Op 52 no 6, 1825), Ellen's third song in English, as part of his Opus 25, a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's popular epic poem "The Lady of the Lake," loosely translated into German. It has become one of Schubert's most popular works under the title of Ave Maria. Antonín Dvořák's version was composed in 1877. Another setting of Ave Maria was written by Giuseppe Verdi for his 1887 opera Otello. Russian composer César Cui, who was raised Roman Catholic, set the text at least three times: as the "Ave Maria," op. 34, for 1 or 2 women's voices with piano or harmonium (1886), and as part of two of his operas: Le Flibustier (premiered 1894) and Mateo Falcone (1907). Settings also exist by MozartLisztByrdElgarSaint-SaënsRossiniBrahmsStravinskyLauridsenFranz BieblDavid Conte and Perosi as well as numerous versions by less well-known composers, such as J. B. TreschAnton Bruckner wrote three different settings.

In Slavonic, the text was also a popular subject for setting to music by Eastern European composers. These include Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Bortniansky, Vavilov (his version often misattributed to Caccini) and several others.

This text was also very often set by composers in the Renaissance, including Josquin des PrezOrlando di Lasso, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Before the Council of Trent there were actually different versions of the text, so the earlier composers in the period sometimes set versions of the text different from the ones shown above. Josquin des Prez, for example, himself set more than one version of the Ave Maria. Here is the text of his motet Ave Maria ... Virgo serena, which begins with the first six words above and continues with a poem in rhymed couplets.


Ave Maria, Plena Gratia. "In thanksgiving
for  many petitions granted."


Hail Mary (Annunciation)
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de BerryChantilly Museum

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum, Virgo serena.

Ave cuius conceptio,
solemni plena gaudio,
celestia, terrestria,
nova replet letitia.
Ave cuius nativitas,
nostra fuit solemnitas,
ut lucifer lux oriens
verum solem preveniens.
Ave pia humilitas,
sine viro fecunditas,
cuius annunciatio
nostra fuit salvatio.
Ave vera virginitas,
immaculata castitas,
cuius purificatio
nostra fuit purgatio.
Ave preclara omnibus
angelicis virtutibus,
cuius fuit assumptio
nostra glorificatio.


O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.


The much anthologized Ave Maria 'by' Jacques Arcadelt is actually a 19th-century arrangement by Pierre-Louis Dietsch, loosely based on Arcadelt's three part madrigal Nous voyons que les hommes.

Franz Schubert's Ellens dritter Gesang (D839, Op 52 no 6, 1825) is often performed with the Ave Maria prayer sung in place of the original text; this is misidentified as "Schubert's Ave Maria."[17] [18] The original text of Schubert's song is from Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake and was translated into German by Adam Storck; it opens with the greeting "Ave Maria" ("Hail Mary"), but is not a setting of the traditional Ave Maria prayer. In Walt Disney's Fantasia, the tune is used with yet another text beginning with the phrase.
Even though Protestant Christianity generally avoids any special veneration of Mary, access to the beautiful and culturally significant tradition of Marian music is facilitated by substitution texts. These texts are intended to replace the words of the standard "Ave Maria," preserving word boundaries and syllable stresses, so that music written for the former text can be sung with the latter. An example is the Christ-centric Ave Redemptor:

Even though Protestant Christianity generally avoids any special veneration of Mary, access to the beautiful and culturally significant tradition of Marian music is facilitated by substitution texts. These texts are intended to replace the words of the standard "Ave Maria," preserving word boundaries and syllable stresses, so that music written for the former text can be sung with the latter. An example is the Christ-centric Ave Redemptor:

Latin text                                                 English translation
Ave redemptor, Domine Jesus:                    Hail the Redeemer, Lord Jesus,
Cuius ob opus                                             By whose work
Superatur mors, enim salvatio                      Death is defeated, for salvation
Nunc inundavit super universam terram.       Has now overflowed upon all the world.


Sancte redemptor, reputata                         Holy Redeemer, our faith
Fides est nobis peccatoribus,                       Is reckoned to us sinners,
Nunc et in morte, ad iustitiam.                     Now and in death, as righteousness.



A famous setting for the Orthodox version of the prayer in Church Slavonic (Bogoroditsye Djevo) was composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in his All-Night Vigil.


Ave Maria, sung by Maria Callas




Hymn to the Virgin
by Sir Walter Scott

Ave Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden's prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild;
Thou canst save amid despair.
Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
Though banish'd, outcast and reviled –
Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;
Mother, hear a suppliant child!
Ave Maria

Ave Maria! undefiled!
The flinty couch we now must share
Shall seem this down of eider piled,
If thy protection hover there.
The murky cavern's heavy air
Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled;
Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer,
Mother, list a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!

Ave Maria! stainless styled.
Foul demons of the earth and air,
From this their wonted haunt exiled,
Shall flee before thy presence fair.
We bow us to our lot of care,
Beneath thy guidance reconciled;
Hear for a maid a maiden's prayer,
And for a father hear a child!
Ave Maria.




Singer Maria Callas Wikipedia Bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Callas

Images of Maria Callas - see link here




Ave Maria. An arrangement by composer Franz Schubert.




Wednesday, March 19, 2014

William Ernest Henry - Invictus




Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

c. 1849–1903


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.






Analysis of Poem - Cummings Study Guide


Wikipedia Background to Poem

"Invictus" is a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was written in 1875 and published in 1888 in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, where it is the fourth poem in the section Life and Death (Echoes).[1] It originally had no title.[1] Early printings contained only the dedication To R. T. H. B.—a reference to Robert Thomas Hamilton Bruce (1846–1899), a successful Scottish flour merchant and baker who was also a literary patron.[2] The title "Invictus" (Latin for "unconquered"[3]) was added by editor Arthur Quiller-Couch when the poem was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse .[4][5]





Biography of William Ernest Henley

Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” which concludes with the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.” Henley’s poems often engage themes of inner strength and perseverance. His numerous collections of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888), London Voluntaries (1893), and Hawthorn and Lavender (1899).

Henley edited the Scots Observer (which later became the National Observer), through which he befriended writer Rudyard Kipling, and the Magazine of Art, in which he lauded the work of emerging artists James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Henley was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who reportedly based his Long John Silver character in Treasure Island in part on Henley.


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Biography of William Ernest Henley
Source: PoemHunter

William Ernest Henley (August 23, 1849 - July 11, 1903) was a British poet, critic and editor.

Henley was born in Gloucester and educated at the Crypt Grammar School. The school was a poor relation of the Cathedral School, and Henley indicated its shortcomings in his article (Pall Mall Magazine, Nov. 1900) on T. E. Brown the poet, who was headmaster there for a brief period. Brown's appointment was a stroke of luck for Henley, for whom it represented a first acquaintance with a man of genius. "He was singularly kind to me at a moment when I needed kindness even more than I needed encouragement." Brown did him the essential service of lending him books. Henley was no classical scholar, but his knowledge and love of literature were vital.

After suffering tuberculosis as a boy, he found himself, in 1874, aged twenty-five, an inmate of the hospital at Edinburgh. From there he sent to the Cornhill Magazine where he wrote poems in irregular rhythms, describing with poignant force his experiences in hospital. Leslie Stephen, then editor, visited his contributor in hospital and took Robert Louis Stevenson, another recruit of the Cornhill, with him. The meeting between Stevenson and Henley, and the friendship of which it was the beginning, form one of the best-known episodes in English literature (see Stevenson's letter to Mrs Sitwell, Jan. 1875, and Henley's poems "An Apparition" and "Envoy to Charles Baxter").

In 1877 Henley went to London and began his editorial career by editing London, a journal written for the sake of its contributors rather than the public. Among other distinctions it first gave to the world The New Arabian Nights of Stevenson. Henley himself contributed a series of verses chiefly in old French forms. He had been writing poetry since 1872, but (so he told the world in his “ advertisement” to his collected Poems, 1898) he “found himself about 1877 so utterly unmarketable that he had to own himself beaten in art and to addict himself to journalism for the next ten years.” When London folded, he edited the Magazine of Art from 1882 to 1886. At the end of that period he came into the public eye as a poet. In 1887 Gleeson White made for the popular series of Canterbury Poets (edited by William Sharp) a selection of poems in old French forms. In his selection Gleeson White included many pieces from London, and only after completing the selection did he discover that the verses were all by Henley. In the following year, HB Donkin in his volume Voluntaries, written for an East End hospital, included Henley's unrhymed rhythms quintessentializing the poet's memories of the old Edinburgh Infirmary. Alfred Nutt read these, and asked for more; and in 1888 his firm published A Book of Verse.

Henley was by this time well known within a restricted literary circle, and the publication of this volume determined his fame as a poet, which rapidly outgrew these limits, two new editions of the volume being printed within three years. In this same year (1888) Fitzroy Bell started the Scots Observer in Edinburgh, with Henley as literary editor, and early in 1889 Bell left the conduct of the paper to him. It was a weekly review on the lines of the old Saturday Review, but inspired in every paragraph by the vigorous and combative personality of the editor. It was transferred to London as the National Observer, and remained under Henley's editorship until 1893. Though, as Henley confessed, the paper had almost as many writers as readers, and its fame was mainly confined to the literary class, it was a lively and influential feature of the literary life of its time. Henley had the editor's great gift of discerning promise, and the "Men of the Scots Observer," as Henley affectionately and characteristically called his band of contributors, in most instances justified his insight. The paper found utterance for the growing imperialism of its day, and among other services to literature gave to the world Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads.

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