Today In Literature

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1896 Anton Chekhov's The Seagull opened in St. Petersburg. This is the first-written of Chekhov's four masterpieces -- Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard are the others -- and though now regarded as one of the most influential plays in modern drama, its opening night was an infamous flop. During the writing, Chekhov admitted that he was "flagrantly disregarding the basic tenets of the stage," not only for having so much talk and so little action, but for having "started it forte and ended it pianissimo." During rehearsal he had implored the actors and the director to give up the usual bombastic style and give his understatements a chance: "The point is, my friends, there's no use being theatrical. None whatever. The whole thing is very simple. The characters are simple, ordinary people." Convinced of disaster, he nearly withdrew his permission for the production, and then nearly did not attend the opening himself; by Act Two he was hiding backstage from the booing and jeering; at two a.m. he was still walking the streets alone. When he finally returned home, he declared to a friend, "Not if I live to be seven hundred will I write another play."

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[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1833, Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm. Why someone self-described as "a nomadic" excluded from "love, happiness, joy, pulsating life, caring and being cared for, caressing and being caressed," and who regarded friendship as something found "at the cloudy bottom of fleeing illusions or attached to the clattering sound of collected coins" should leave his money to mankind is something of a puzzle.

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[Moehair]

"We are here to help eat other get through this thing, whatever it is."

[Moehair]

oops..that's "each other"...not eat

[Jay]

On this day in 1885 Arthur Rimbaud wrote to his mother that he had decided to give up his more sedate job as a coffee-trader in Ethiopia, so beginning the last phase of his wild, infamous and short life: "... Several thousand rifles are on their way to me from Europe. I am going to set up a caravan, and carry this merchandise to Menelik, the king of Shoa...."
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[Jay]

On this day in 1958 Raymond Chandler began his last novel, the never-completed (by him) Poodle Springs. This was Chandler's name for Palm Springs, where "every third elegant creature you see has at least one poodle," and where Philip Marlowe thought he might settle down with his new wife, the socialite Linda Loring. Chandler lost interest after a few chapters; Marlowe probably would have too.
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[Jay]

October 25
On this day in 1984 Richard Brautigan's body was found in his California home, a suicide some weeks earlier. The literary critics have never been kind to the writing, and the biographers have been unable to penetrate the writer's life, but Brautigan was a counter-culture hero in the late sixties and seventies; by the time of his death, the cult, the counter-culture, and his own mental health were pretty much gone.
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October 26
On this day in 1822, seventeen-year-old Hans Christian Andersen enrolled in school, taking his place in a second form classroom of eleven-year-olds. Andersen's school experiences would lead to a gallery of outcast and misfit heros in his stories, and though his own life would take fairytale shape, he had lifelong nightmares of mocking laughter and of headmaster Meisling, "in front of whom I stood miserable and awkward."
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October 27
On this day in 1922 Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room was published. This was the first full-length book put out by the Woolfs' Hogarth Press, with a Post-Impressionistic cover designed by sister Vanessa. It was "a new form for a new novel," wrote Woolf before starting; afterwards, she felt confident "that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice," and that "Either I am a great writer or a nincompoop."
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[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1895 Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was published. Early critics called it "Jude the Obscene," and dubbed its author "Hardy the Degenerate." Dismayed by such criticism, and mindful of what had been said about his earlier books, Hardy thereafter wrote only poetry: "If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone."

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[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1950 George Bernard Shaw died at the age of ninety-four. Up to his very last months, Shaw was able to maintain his writing and political campaigning; to the very end, he maintained his often irascible, always redoubtable spirit. One young journalist who had interviewed Shaw on his 90th birthday, and had said he hoped to interview him again on his 100th, was told: "I don't see why not; you look healthy enough to me." But the barrage of tribute and wonder that came with each passing birthday found Shaw less receptive and, said his housekeeper, "a prisoner in his own house." By his 94th birthday, and after having read in The Times that he had spent a "restful" day, Shaw was ready to explode:

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[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1918 twenty-five-year-old Wilfred Owen died in France, killed by machine-gun fire while leading his men across a canal by raft. While teaching in France in 1914, Owen began to visit the wounded soldiers in a nearby hospital; moved by their suffering and courage, he returned to England to enlist, and was himself fighting in France by the beginning of 1917.

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[Yulaichen]

Thanks,Guys !!So many messagers about today in history!!

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1894 twenty-year-old Robert Frost departed for the Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border. He was poor, jobless, unpublished, expelled from Dartmouth College and recently spurned by his high school sweetheart. Adding it all up, Frost packed a small bag, took a train to New York, a steamer to Virginia, and began walking into a soggy heart of darkness.

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[grace]

Hello,
I've just joined and am hooked. Will be back soon and often. Thanks for keeping this going, and for so many interesting posts!

[Scheherazade]

Hello Gracie and Yulaichen,

Welcome to the Forum! The posts come from todayinliterature.com.


On this day in 1816 Percy Bysshe Shelley's first wife, Harriet Westbrook, drowned herself. She and Shelley had eloped in 1811 -- he upper-class and nineteen, she the sixteen-year-old daughter of a tavern owner -- but then Shelley eloped with another sixteen-year-old, and Harriet saw few options: "I could never be anything but a source of vexation and misery to you all.... Too wretched to exert myself, lowered in the opinion of everyone, why should I drag on a miserable existence?"

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[Jay]

On this day in 1851 Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was published in the United States. The British edition had been published the previous month, with a botched ending; the American edition corrected this, but even if the American reviewers read to the end they sided with the British: "...so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature." Many see the book's reception as a turning-point in Melville's life.
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