 1992
Antoni Zygmund,
91, in Chicago ^top^
Mathematician Zygmund
worked in analysis, in particular in harmonic analysis. He created
one of the strongest analysis schools of the 20th Century.
Born 19001225 in Warsaw (then in the
Russian Empire), Zygmund obtained his Ph.D. from the University of
Warsaw in 1923 for a dissertation written under Aleksander Rajchman's
supervision. From 1922 to 1929 he taught at the Polytechnic School
of Warsaw. After a year in England he took up a post at the university
of Vilnius, Lithuania. He held this post until he was drafted into
the Polish army at the start of the Second World War.
In 1940 Zygmund escaped with his wife
and son from German controlled Poland to the USA. After a number of
posts he was appointed to the University of Chicago in 1947 and remained
there until he retired in 1980. John Canu took one or more of his
courses in 1948-1950.
Zygmund was to create at Chicago a
major analysis research centre. In 1986 he received the National Medal
for Science for his building this research school. He supervised over
80 research students in his years at Chicago.
Zygmund's book Trigonometric Series
(1935) is a classic that, together with later editions, is still the
definitive work on the subject. Other major works include Analytic
functions in 1938 and Measure and integral in 1977.
His work in harmonic analysis has application
in the theory of waves and vibrations. He also did major work in Fourier
analysis and its application to partial differential equations.
|
1990 José Solís Ruiz, político español.
1989
Claude
Pepper, of stomach cancer. He was born on 08 September 1900.
From Florida. Democrat US Senator (1936-1950), US Representative (1963-1989),
advocate for the elderly. Autobiography Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century
(1987)
1981 Ziaur Rahmen presidente of Bangladesh,
assassinated in a failed secessionist military coup led by general Manzur.
1961 Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, dictador dominicano.
1960 Boris
Leonidovich Pasternak, born on 10 February 1890. Russian poet
and novelist, he was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature for Doctor
Zhivago. In the novel, Yuri Zhivago is the son of a rich pre-Revolutionary
Russian Industrialist. An excellent physician, he studies philosophy and
literature, and develops ideas of his own — his main aim being to
preserve his own spiritual independence. He welcomes the Russian Revolution,
enjoying its dream of universal justice. But when the Communists start telling
him how to live and how to think, he rebels. He leaves Moscow for a tiny
village beyond the Urals, where the main romantic theme of the novel develops.
His loved one is exiled to Manchuria by the Soviet Government, and he returns
to Moscow, a broken man, to die in the street of a heart attack. [Pasternak
obituary in the NY Times]
1937 Ten strikers killed by
police near the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago.
1935
Some 50'000 persons by earthquake of magnitude 7.5 which almost
completely destroys Quetta, in what is now Pakistan.
 ^
1934 Koshaku
Heihachiro Togo  ,
Japanese admiral born on 27 January 1848. [08 Nov 1926 Time
cover photo >]
Togo studied naval science in England from 1871 to 1878. Upon his
returnto Japan he was appointed a lieutenant first class. After serving
in a number of naval posts, he was appointed commander in chief of
the combined fleet (December 1903) and was made an admiral in 1904.
As commander in chief of the Japanese navy at the outbreak of the
war, he directed the 10-month naval blockade of the great Russian
military base at Port Arthur (now Lü-shun, on the Yellow Sea), helping
to bring about its surrender on 02 January 1905.
In desperation the Russians dispatched their Baltic fleet to Japan,
confronting Admiral Togo's forces on 27
May in the Tsushima Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan (East
Sea) with the East China Sea. Togo “crossed the enemy's T”, i.e.,
he turned his column across the Russian line of advance, and destroyed
33 out of the 35 Russian ships, ending the war. This spectacular maneuver
was later used by the British and French navies. The victory, the
first occasion in the modern era in which an Asian power defeated
a European nation, forced the Western countries to begin to look upon
Japan as an equal.
Togo became
chief of the Naval General Staff and war councillor to the emperor
after the war. In1913 he was promoted to fleet admiral. From 1914
to 1924 he was in charge of the education of crown prince Hirohito
[29 Apr 1901 – 07 Jan 1989] who became prince regent in 1921
when his father, the emperor Taisho [31 Aug 1879 – 25 Dec 1926],
retired because of mental illness, and emperor when Taisho died. |
1926
Vladimir Andreevich Steklov, Russian mathematician born on
09 Jan 1864.
1911 Arturo Faldi, Italian artist born
on 27 July 1856.
1888 Abraham Louis Buvelot, Swiss
Australian painter, lithographer, and photographer, active in Brazil and
Australia, born on 03 March 1814. — MORE
ON BUVELOT AT ART “4” MAY
with links to images.
1883 12 persons trampled when
a rumor that the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge is in imminent danger of
collapsing causes a stampede.
1855 Johann Baptist Pflug von
Biberach, German artist born on 13 February 1785.
1835
Adrian Meulemans, Dutch artist born on 24 August 1766.
^
1806 Charles Dickinson,
shot in duel by Andrew Jackson.
In Logan County, Kentucky, future president Andrew Jackson participates
in his first recorded duel, killing Charles Dickinson, a lawyer who
was known as one of the best pistol shots in the area. The proud and
volatile Jackson, a former senator and representative of Tennessee,
called for the duel after his wife Rachel was slandered as a bigamist
by Dickinson, who was referring to a legal error in the divorce from
her first husband in 1791.
Jackson
met his foe at Harrison’s Mills on Red River in Logan, Kentucky on
May 30, 1806. In accordance with dueling custom, the two stood twenty-four
feet apart with pistols pointed downwards. After the signal, Dickinson
fired first, grazing Jackson’s breastbone and breaking some of his
ribs. However, Jackson, a former Tennessee militia leader, maintained
his stance and fired back, fatally wounding his opponent. It was the
first of several recorded duels Jackson was said to have participated
in during his lifetime, the majority of which were called in defense
of his wife's honor. In 1829, Rachel died, and Jackson was elected
the seventh president of the United States. |
^
Condamnés
à mort par la Révolution:
1795 (11 prairial an III):
Domiciliés à Paris, par
la conseil militaire séant à Paris:
CHAUVEL Jean Louis, serrurier, convaincu d'avoir
porté au bout de sa bayonnette la tête du représentant Ferraud le
3 prairial an 3.
CHEBRIER Nicolas Etienne, membre du comité révolutionnaire
de la section de l'Arsenal, comme convaincu d'avoir harangué dans
la tribune de la Convention pendant la révolte des 3 et 4 prairial.
DUVAL Pierre François, cordonnier, comme convaincu
d'avoir lu une pétition liberticide dan la convention, et pris part
à la révolte des 3 et 4 prairial.
1794 (11 prairial an II):
ANDROUET Servais, prêtre réfractaire, domicilié à
la Nouée, canton de Josselin (Morbihan), comme réfractaire à la loi,
par le tribunal criminel du département des Côtes du Nord..
PALANGIÉ François, prêtre, domicilié à St Geniès
(Aveyron), comme contre-révolutionnaire, par le tribunal criminel
dudit département.
VASSEUR François Alexis, graveur, domicilié à Colmar
(Haut-Rhin), par le tribunal criminel dudit département comme espion,
et distributeur de faux assignats.
DELESTRE Charles Philippe, 52 ans, né à Bucquoy,
arpenteur, veuf de Couppe Marie Anne Joseph, à Arras
DRAPIER Philippe Joseph, 51 ans, marchand de bois,
né et domeurant à Havrincourt, époux de Dobigny Agnès, guillotiné
à Arras
Par le tribunal révolutionnaire
de Paris:
FERUYANT Louis Jacques, ex trésorier de France, 37
ans, né et domicilié à la Motte-Teney (Deux-Sèvres), comme convaincu
d’avoir abusé de son autorité de président du comité révolutionnaire
de la Mothe-sur-Seine, ayant fait faire des dénonciations vagues et
calomnieuses dont il a été le rédacteur, contre un citoyen de l’avoir
fait incarcérer, en l’arrachant à sa famille et à ses fonctions.
MORET Louis Julien, ex curé, 46 ans, né à Arcy-sur-Aube,
domicilié à Premier-Fait, même département, comme complice de manœuvres
pratiquées dans la commune de Premier-Fait, tendantes à armer les
citoyens les uns contre les autres, et à rétablir la royauté.
PUT Jean, marchand forain, 24 ans, né et domicilié
à Aurillac (Cantal), comme s’étant soustrait à l’exécution de la loi
de la réquisition, ayant été trouvé muni d’une cocarde blanche, et
comme espion des despotes coalisés contre la France.
... comme
conspirateurs:
BEGU Louis César, 44 ans, né à Tours, ci-devant huissier,
chef du premier battaillon du département d'Indre et Loire, domicilié
à Toursp
COMPIN Nicolas Marie, 64 ans, cultivateur, agent
national, né et domicilié à Maltate (Saône et Loire).
GUIBORA Jean Antoine, journalier vigneron, 24 ans,
soldat du 11ème régiment d'hussards, né et domicilié à St Gemme (Marne).
JOUSSINEAU
Jean, (dit Delatour-donnois), ex noble, colonel à la
suite de la cavalerie, ci-devant capitaine des carabiniers, 64 ans,
né à St Wist (Corrèze), domicilié à Rodde (Puy-de-Dôme).
LACORDRE Nicolas (dit Montpausin), ex subdélégué
et juge, 65 ans, né à Mont-sur-Siom, à St Pourçain (Allier).
LACROIX Claude, cultivateur, domicilié à Chaourse
(Aube).
LEVAL Auguste François César, ex noble, capitaine
en second des grenadiers des gardes françaises, 29 ans, né et domicilié
à Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme).
MORILLON Pierre (dit Dubellai), marchand de draps
en soie, 78 ans, né et domicilié à Poitiers (Vienne).
1793:
BOURASSEAU René, officier municipal, domicilié à
Girouard, canton des Sables (Vendée), comme chef des brigand de la
Vendée, par la commission militaire séante aux Sables. |
^
1778 François-Marie
Arouet “Voltaire”, French
philosopher, historian, poet, dramatist, and novelist.
Voltaire was born on 21 November 1694,
in Paris to a treasury officer and his wife. Voltaire studied law
but abandoned it to become a writer. He won success with his plays
— mostly classical tragedies at first. He also wrote histories
and epic poetry. His writing brought him some measure of success,
and his wise investments made him wealthy in his mid-30s. However,
his epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on politics
and religion, infuriated the government and landed Voltaire in the
Bastille for nearly a year in 1717. Voltaire's time in prison failed
to quench his satire. In 1726, he again displeased authorities and
fled to England. He returned several years later and continued to
write plays. In 1734, his Lettres
philosophiques criticized established religions and political
institutions, and he was forced to flee once more. He retreated to
the region of Champagne, where he lived with his mistress and patroness,
Madame du Châtelet. In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation
of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland, where
he wrote his best-known work, Candide.
He died in Paris, having returned to supervise the production of one
of his plays.
VOLTAIRE ONLINE: |
| Candide
L'homme
aux quarante écus
Lettres
philosophiques
Micromégas
Le
monde comme il va
La
Pucelle d'Orléans (1762) |
In English translations:
Candide
Candide
(in English and French)
Letters
on England
Philosophical
Dictionary (selected entries) |
1770 François Boucher, French Rococo
painter, engraver, and designer, born on 29 September 1703. —
MORE
ON BOUCHER AT ART “4” MAY
with links to images.
^
1744 Alexander
Pope.
Born on
21 May 1688, he was a poet and satirist of the English Augustan period,
best known for his poems An
Essay on Criticism (1711), The The
Rape of the Lock (1712–1714), The Dunciad (1728),
and An
Essay on Man (1733–1734). He is one of the most quotable
of all English authors.
Pope's father,
a wholesale linen merchant, retired from business in the year of his
son's birth and in 1700 went to live at Binfield in Windsor Forest.
The Popes were Roman Catholics, and at Binfield they came to know
several neighboring Catholic families who were to play an important
part in the poet's life. Pope's religion procured him some lifelong
friends, notably the wealthy squire John Caryll (who persuaded him
to write The Rape of the Lock, on an incident involving Caryll's
relatives) and Martha Blount, to whom Pope addressed some of the most
memorable of his poems and to whom he bequeathed most of his property.
But his religion also precluded him from a formal course of education,
since Catholics were not admitted to the universities. He was trained
at home by Catholic priests for a short time and attended Catholic
schools at Twyford, near Winchester, and at Hyde Park Corner, London,
but he was mainly self-educated. He was a precocious boy, eagerly
reading Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, which he managed to teach
himself, and an incessant scribbler, turning out verse upon verse
in imitation of the poets he read. The best of these early writings
are the “Ode on Solitude” and a paraphrase of St. Thomas à Kempis
[1380 – 08 Aug 1471], both of which he claimed to have written
at the age of 12.
Windsor Forest
was near enough to London to permit Pope's frequent visits there.
He early grew acquainted with former members of the circle of John
Dryden [19 Aug 1631 – 12 May 1700],
notably William Wycherley, William Walsh, and Henry Cromwell. By 1705
his “Pastorals” were in draft and were circulating among the best
literary judges of the day. In 1706 Jacob Tonson, the leading publisher
of poetry, had solicited their publication, and they took the place
of honor in his Poetical Miscellanies in 1709.
This early emergence of a man of letters may have been assisted by
Pope's poor physique. As a result of too much study, so he thought,
he acquired a curvature of the spine and some tubercular infection,
probably Pott's disease, that limited his growth and seriously impaired
his health. His full-grown height was four feet six inches; but the
grace of his profile and fullness of his eye gave him an attractive
appearance. He was a lifelong sufferer from headaches, and his deformity
made him abnormally sensitive to physical and mental pain. Though
he was able to ride a horse and delighted in travel, he was inevitably
precluded from much normal physical activity, and his energetic, fastidious
mind was largely directed to reading and writing.
When the “Pastorals” were published, Pope was already at work on a
poem on the art of writing. This was An Essay on Criticism,
published in 1711. Its brilliantly polished epigrams (e.g., “A little
learning is a dangerous thing,” “To err is human, to forgive, divine,”
and “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread”), which have become
part of the proverbial heritage of the language, are readily traced
to their sources in Horace, Quintilian, Boileau, and other critics,
ancient and modern, in verse and prose; but the charge that the poem
is derivative, so often made in the past, takes insufficient account
of Pope's success in harmonizing a century of conflict in critical
thinking and in showing how nature may best be mirrored in art.
The well-deserved success of the Essay
on Criticism brought Pope a wider circle of friends, notably
Richard Steele [1672 – 01 Sep 1729] and Joseph Addison [01
May 1672 – 17 Jun 1719], who were then collaborating on
The Spectator. To this journal Pope contributed the most
original of his pastorals, “The Messiah” (1712), and perhaps other
papers in prose. He was clearly influenced by The Spectator's
policy of correcting public morals by witty admonishment, and in this
vein he wrote the first version of his mock-epic, The Rape of
the Lock (two cantos, 1712; five cantos, 1714), to reconcile
two Catholic families. A young man in one family had stolen a lock
of hair from a young lady in the other. Pope treated the dispute that
followed as though it were comparable to the mighty quarrel between
Greeks and Trojans, which had been Homer's theme. Telling the story
with all the pomp and circumstance of epic made not only the participants
in the quarrel but also the society in which they lived seem ridiculous.
Though it was a society where Britain's statesmen oft the fall
foredoom Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home; as if one
occupation concerned them as much as the other; and though in such
a society a young lady might do equally ill to Stain her honour,
or her new brocade; Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade;
Pope managed also to suggest what
genuine attractions existed amid the foppery and glitter. He acknowledged
how false the sense of values was that paid so much attention to external
appearance, but ridicule and rebuke slide imperceptibly into admiration
and tender affection as the heroine, Belinda, is conveyed along the
Thames to Hampton Court, the scene of the “rape”:
But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides:
While melting music steals upon the sky,
And soften'd sounds along the waters die;
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay.
A
comparable blend of seemingly incompatible responses, love and hate,
bawdiness and decorum, admiration and ridicule, is to be found in
all Pope's later satires.
Pope
had also been at work for several years on “Windsor-Forest.” In this
poem, completed and published in 1713, he proceeded, as Virgil had
done, from the pastoral vein to the georgic and celebrated the rule
of Queen Anne as the Latin poet had celebrated the rule of Augustus.
In another early poem, “Eloisa to Abelard,” Pope borrowed the form
of Ovid's “heroic epistle” (in which an abandoned lady addresses her
lover) and showed imaginative skill in conveying the struggle between
sexual passion and dedication to a life of celibacy.
These
poems and other works were collected in the first volume of Pope's
Works in 1717. When it was published, he was already far
advanced with the greatest labor of his life, his verse translation
of Homer. He had announced his intentions in October 1713 and had
published the first volume, containing the Iliad, Books I–IV,
in 1715. The
Iliad was completed in six volumes in 1720. The work of translating
The
Odyssey (vol. i–iii, 1725; vol. iv and v, 1726) was shared
with William Broome [03 May 1689
– 16 Nov 1745], who had contributed notes to the Iliad,
and Elijah Fenton [20 May 1683 –
16 Jul 1730]. The labor had been great, but so were the rewards. By
the two translations Pope cleared about £10'000 and was able to claim
that, thanks to Homer, he could “ . . . live and thrive / Indebted
to no Prince or Peer alive.”
The
merits of Pope's Homer lie less in the accuracy of translation and
in correct representation of the spirit of the original than in the
achievement of a heroic poem as his contemporaries understood it:
a poem Virgilian in its dignity, moral purpose, and pictorial splendor,
yet one that consistently kept Homer in view and alluded to him throughout.
Pope offered his readers the Iliad and the Odyssey
as he felt sure Homer would have written them had he lived in early
18th-century England.
Political
considerations had affected the success of the translation. As a Roman
Catholic his affiliations were Tory rather than Whig; and though he
retained the friendship of such Whigs as William Congreve [24 Jan
1670 – 19 Jan 1729], Nicholas Rowe [20 Jun 1674 – 06 Dec
1718], and the painter Charles Jervas [1675 – 02 Nov 1739],
his ties with Steele and Addison grew strained as a result of the
political animosity that occurred at the end of Queen Anne's reign.
He found new and lasting friends in Tory circles, Jonathan Swift,
John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, the Earl of Oxford, and
Viscount Bolingbroke. With the first five he was associated (1713–1714)
in the Scriblerus Club to write joint satires on pedantry, later to
mature as Peri Bathouse, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry
(1728) and the “Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus” (1741); and these
were the men who encouraged his translation of Homer. The Whigs, who
associated with Addison at Button's Coffee-House, put up a rival translator
in Thomas Tickell, who published his version of Iliad, Book
I, two days after Pope's. Addison preferred Tickell's manifestly inferior
version; his praise increased the resentment Pope already felt owing
to a series of slights and misunderstandings; and when Pope heard
gossip of further malice on Addison's part, he sent him a satirical
view of his character, published later as the character of Atticus,
the insincere arbiter of literary taste in “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”
(1735).
Even before the Homer
quarrel, Pope had found that the life of a wit was one of perpetual
warfare. There were few years when either his person or his poems
were not objects of attacks from the critic John Dennis, the bookseller
Edmund Curll, the historian John Oldmixon, and other writers of lesser
fame. The climax was reached over his edition of Shakespeare. He had
emended the plays, in the spirit of a literary editor, to accord with
contemporary taste (1725);but his practice was exposed by the scholar
Lewis Theobald in Shakespeare Restored (1726). Though Pope
had ignored some of these attacks, he had replied to others with squibs
in prose and verse. But he now attempted to make an end of the opposition
and to defend his standards, which he aligned with the standards of
civilized society, in the mock-epic The Dunciad (1728). Theobald
was represented in it as the Goddess of Dullness' favorite son, a
suitable hero for those leaden times; and others who had given offense
were preserved like flies in amber. Pope dispatches his victims with
such sensuousness of verse and imagery that the reader is forced to
admit that if there is petulance here, as has often been claimed,
it is, to parody Wordsworth, petulance recollected in tranquility.
Pope reissued the poem in 1729 with an elaborate mock-commentary of
prefaces, notes, appendixes, indexes, and errata; this burlesque of
pedantry whimsically suggested that The Dunciad had fallen
a victim to the spirit of the times and been edited by a dunce.
Pope and his parents had moved from
Binfield to Chiswick in 1716. There his father died (1717), and two
years later he and his mother rented a villa on the Thames at Twickenham,
then a small country town where several Londoners had retired to live
in rustic seclusion. This was to be Pope's home for the remainder
of his life. There he entertained such friends as Swift, Bolingbroke,
Oxford, and the painter Jonathan Richardson. These friends were all
enthusiastic gardeners, and it was Pope's pleasure to advise and superintend
their landscaping according to the best contemporary principles, formulated
in his “Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington”
(1731). This poem, one of the most characteristic works of his maturity,
is a rambling discussion in the manner of Horace on false taste in
architecture and design, with some suggestions for the worthier employment
of a nobleman's wealth.
Pope now
began to contemplate a new work on the relations of man, nature, and
society that would be a grand organization of human experience and
intuition, but he was destined never to complete it. An Essay
on Man (1733–1734) was intended as an introductory book discussing
the overall design of this work. The poem has often been charged with
shallowness and philosophical inconsistency, and there is indeed little
that is original in its thought, almost all of which can be traced
in the work of the great thinkers of Western civilization. Subordinate
themes were treated in greater detail in “Of the Use of Riches, An
Epistle to Bathurst” (1732), “An Epistle to Cobham, Of the knowledge
and characters of men” (1733), and “Of The Characters of Women: an
Epistle to a Lady” (1735).
Pope
was deflected from this “system of ethics in the Horatian way” by
the renewed need for self-defense. Critical attacks drove him to consider
his position as satirist. He chose to adapt for his own defense the
first satire of Horace's second book, where the ethics of satire are
propounded, and, after discussing the question in correspondence with
Dr. John Arbuthnot [Apr 1667 – 27 Feb 1735], he addressed to
him an epistle in verse (1735), one of the finest of his later poems,
in which were incorporated fragments written over several years. His
case in “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” was the satirist's traditional
case: that depravity in public morals had roused him to stigmatize
outstanding offenders beyond the reach of the law, concealing the
names of some and representing others as types, and that he was innocent
of personal rancor and habitually forbearing under attack.
The success of his “First Satire Of the Second Book Of Horace, Imitated”
(1733) led to the publication (1734–38) of 10 more of these paraphrases
of Horatian themes adapted to the contemporary social and political
scene. Pope's poems followed Horace's satires and epistles sufficiently
closely for him to print the Latin on facing pages with the English;
but whoever chose to make the comparison would notice a continuous
enrichment of the original by parenthetic thrusts and compliments,
as well as by the freshness of the imagery. The series was concluded
with two dialogues in verse, republished as the “Epilogue to the Satires”
(1738), where, as in “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” Pope ingeniously
combined a defense of his own career and character with a restatement
of the satirist's traditional apology. In these imitations and dialogues
Pope directed his attack upon the materialistic standards of the commercially
minded Whigs in power and upon the corrupting effect of money, while
restating and illustrating the old Horatian standards of serene and
temperate living. His anxiety about prevailing standards was shown
once more in his last completed work, The New Dunciad (1742),
reprinted as the fourth book of a revised Dunciad (1743),
in which Theobald was replaced as hero by Colley Cibber, the poet
laureate and actor-manager, who not only had given more recent cause
of offense but seemed a more appropriate representative of the degenerate
standards of the age. In Dunciad, Book IV, the Philistine
culture of the city of London was seen to overtake the court and seat
of government at Westminster, and the poem ends in a magnificent but
baleful prophecy of anarchy. Pope had begun work on Brutus,
an epic poem in blank verse, and on a revision of his poems for a
new edition, but neither was complete at his death.
Pope's favorite meter was the 10-syllable, iambic pentameter rhyming
(heroic) couplet. He handled it with increasing skill and adapted
it to such varied purposes as the epigrammatic summary of the Essay
on Criticism, the pathos of “Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate
Lady,” the mock-heroic of The Rape of the Lock, the discursive
tones of the Essay on Man, the rapid narrative of the Homer
translation, and the Miltonic sublimity of the conclusion of The
Dunciad. But his greatest triumphs of versification are found
in the “Epilogue to the Satires,” where he moves easily from witty,
spirited dialogue to noble and elevated declamation, and in “An Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot,” which opens with a scene of domestic irritation
suitably conveyed in broken rhythm:
Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said:
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The Dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land;
and closes with a deliberately chosen contrast of domestic calm, which
the poet may be said to have deserved and won during the course of
the poem:
Me, let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
Pope's
command of diction is no less happily adapted to his theme and to
the type of poem, and the range of his imagery is remarkably wide.
He has been thought defective in imaginative power, but this opinion
cannot be sustained in view of the invention and organizing ability
shown notably in The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad.
He was the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame in France
and Italy and throughout the European continent and to see translations
of his poems into modern as well as ancient languages.
POPE ONLINE: An
Essay on Criticism — An
Essay on Criticism — An
Essay on Man — An
Essay on Man, Moral Essays and Satires — The
Rape of the Lock — The
Rape of the Lock — Windsor-Forest
|
| The
Universal Prayer |
FATHER of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou great First Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind;
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And, binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will:
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,
To enjoy is to obey.
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Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round:
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, 0, teach my heart
To find that hetter way!
Save me alike from foolish pride
And impious discontent
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent
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Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy breath;
0, lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death!
This day he bread and peace my lot:
All else heneath the sun,
Thou know'st if best bestowed or not,
And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,
One chorus let all Being raise,
All Nature's incense rise!
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 1700
Antoine Masson, French engraver, draftsman, and pastellist, born
in 1636. — more with
link to an image.
1640 Pieter Pauwel Rubens, great
Flemish Baroque era painter born on 28 June 1577.
[click
for 1639 self-portrait >]
— MORE
ON RUBENS AT ART “4” MAY with
links to images.
^
1593 Christopher
Marlowe, 29, dramatist, stabbed.
Poet
and playwright Christopher Marlowe, born on 06 February 1564 (two
months before Shakespeare), was baptized in Canterbury on 26 February.
Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, was a bright student.
He won scholarships to prestigious schools and earned his B.A. from
Cambridge in 1584. Historians believe Marlowe served as a spy for
Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge. He was nearly denied his master's
degree in 1587, until the queen's advisers intervened, recommending
he receive the degree and referring obliquely to his services for
the state.
While still in school,
Marlowe wrote his play Tamburlaine
the Great, about a 14th century shepherd who became an emperor.
The blank verse drama caught on with the public, and Marlowe wrote
five more plays before his death in 1593, including The
Jew of Malta and Doctor
Faustus. He also published a translation of Ovid's
Elegies.
On 15 May 1593,
Marlowe's former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and
tortured on suspicion of treason. Told that heretical documents had
been found in his room, Kyd wrote a letter saying the documents belonged
to Christopher Marlowe. An arrest warrant was issued on 18 May, and
Marlowe was arrested on 20 May. He bailed out but became involved
in a fight over a tavern bill and is stabbed to death on 30 May 1593.
Kyd was baptized on 06 November 1568.
He was educated at the Merchant Taylor's School in London and raised
to be a scrivener, a professional trained to draw up contracts and
other business documents. Of his early work, The Spanish Tragedie
(1562, it is sometimes called Hieronimo, after its protagonist))
brought him the most recognition. Some scholars believe it served
as a model for Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Kyd died penniless in December 1594.
MARLOWE ONLINE: |
|
Complete Works
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Tamburlaine
the Great—part I — part II
Tamburlaine
the Great—part 1 — part 2
|
The Jew of Malta
The Jew of Malta
The Jew of Malta
The Jew of Malta
The Massacre at Paris
The Massacre at Paris |
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Edward II
Hero and Leander
Doctor Faustus
translator of:
Ovid's
Elegies |
 1431
Joan of Arc, burned at the stake.
^top^
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy,
Joan of Arc, 19, peasant
girl, Catholic mystic, and French liberation
heroine, is burned at the stake following her convictions for witchcraft
and heresy.
On 24 May 1430, while leading
a military expedition against the foreign occupiers of France, Joan
had been captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne and later
sold to the English.
Early in life, Joan had begun to hear
"voices" of Catholic saints. Shortly after she turned sixteen, these
voices told her to aid Charles in regaining the French throne and
expelling the English from France. A captain in the French army arranged
a meeting with Charles, and the dauphin, convinced of the validity
of Joan's divine mission, furnished her with a small force of troops.
Wearing white armor, Joan led her troops
to Orleans, and on 29 April 1429, as a French sortie distracted the
English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed
by its eastern gate. Bringing needed supplies and troops into the
besieged city, she also inspired the French to a passionate resistance,
and during the next week, she led the charge during a number of skirmishes
and battles. On 07 May, she was even hit by an arrow, but after dressing
her wounds, she returned to the battle. On 08 May, the siege
of Orleans was broken after six months and the English retreated.
Over the next five weeks, Joan led
French forces into a number of stunning victories over the English,
and, in July, Reims, the traditional city of coronation, was captured.
On 16 July 1429, with Joan of Arc kneeling beside him, Charles
VII was crowned king of France.
In 1920, Joan of Arc, already one of
the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a
Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
. Joan was born in 1412, the daughter
of a tenant farmer at Domrémy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar
and Lorraine. In 1415, the Hundred Years War between England and France
entered a crucial phase when the young King Henry V of England invaded
France and won a series of decisive victories against the forces of
King Charles VI. By the time of Henry's death in August 1422, the
English and their French-Burgundian allies controlled Aquitaine and
most of northern France, including Paris. Charles VI, long incapacitated,
died one month later, and his son, Charles, regent from 1418, prepared
to take the throne. However, Reims, the traditional city of French
coronation, was held by the Anglo-Burgundians, and the Dauphin (heir
apparent to the French throne) remained uncrowned. Meanwhile, King
Henry VI of England, the infant son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois,
the daughter of Charles VI, was proclaimed king of France by the English.
Joan's village of Domrémy lay on the frontier between the France of
the Dauphin and that of the Anglo-Burgundians. In the midst of this
unstable environment, Joan began hearing "voices" of three Christian
saints — St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she
was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing
Reims and therefore the French throne.
In May 1428, she traveled to Vaucouleurs,
a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison
of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home.
In January 1429, she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety
and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.
Dressed in men's clothes and accompanied by six soldiers, she reached
the Dauphin's castle at Chinon in February 1429 and was granted an
audience. Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately
picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several
weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who
concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be
well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl. Charles
furnished her with a small army, and on 27 April 1429, she set
out for Orléans, besieged by the English since October 1428.
On 29 April 1429, as a French sortie
distracted the English troops on the west side of Orléans, Joan entered
unopposed by its eastern gate. She brought greatly needed supplies
and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance.
She personally led the charge in several battles and on 07 May was
struck by an arrow. After quickly dressing her wound, she returned
to the fight, and the French won the day. On 08 May the English
retreated from Orléans. During the next five weeks, Joan and the French
commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over
the English. On 16 July, the royal army reached Reims, which
opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII
was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her
standard: an image of Christ in judgment. After the ceremony, she
knelt before Charles, joyously calling him king for the first time.
On 08 September, the king and Joan attacked Paris. During the
battle, Joan carried her standard up to the earthworks and called
on the Parisians to surrender the city to the king of France. She
was wounded but continued to rally the king's troops until Charles
ordered an end to the unsuccessful siege. That year, she led several
more small campaigns, capturing the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
In December, Charles ennobled Joan, her parents, and her brothers.
In May 1430, the Burgundians laid siege
to Compiègne, and Joan stole into the town under the cover of darkness
to aid in its defense. On 23 May, while leading a sortie against
the Burgundians, she was captured. The Burgundians sold her to the
English, and in March 1431 she went on trial before ecclesiastical
authorities in Rouen on charges of heresy. Her most serious crime,
according to the tribunal, was her rejection of church authority in
favor of direct inspiration from God. After refusing to submit to
the church, her sentence was read on 24 May: She was to be turned
over to secular authorities and executed. Reacting with horror to
the pronouncement, Joan agreed to recant and was condemned instead
to perpetual imprisonment. Ordered to put on women's clothes, she
obeyed, but a few days later the judges went to her cell and found
her dressed again in male attire. Questioned, she told them that St.
Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for giving in to the
church against their will. She was found to be a relapsed heretic
and on 29 May ordered handed over to secular officials. On 30 May,
Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marché
in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold
high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough
to be heard above the roar of the flames. As a source of military
inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly
in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France
except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920,
Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized
as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is
30 May.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
by the Sieur Louis de Conté (her page and secretary), freely
translated out of the ancient French into modern English by Mark Twain.
(
Chapter 3-24: Joan the Martyr)
PAINTINGS OF JOAN OF ARC: Jeanne d'Arc Écoute Ses Voix—
Jeanne d'Arc au Sacre de Charles VII Dans
la Cathédrale de Reims— Jeanne d'Arc Brandit Son Épée
— Maud Adams as Joan of Arc—
Joan of Arc Inspired— Jeanne d'Arc en Prison |
1416 Jerome of Prague burned as a heretic by the Church
0339 Eusebius, 74, Father of early church history.
He attended the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, and his "Historia Ecclesiastica"
contains an abundance of detail on the first three centuries of the Early
Church found nowhere else in ancient literature.
|
1847
Alice Sophia Stopford Green Ireland, proponent of Irish independence
site safe for children 