Your grade for the course is based on the following performances:
Short Essay (20% of grade)
Oral Report, Reading Responses on the Class Blog, and Class Participation (15%)
Long Essay (40%)
Final Exam (25%)
Grades have been delayed, and will be posted by Tuesday, May 25th.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
May 14: Mrs. Dalloway
Garrison Keillor commemorates Mrs Dalloway today (anniversary of publication):
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Final Exam: May 13th--See recent note, added 5/8
Eng. 753
Spring '10
Twentieth-Century Literature Exam: May 13th, 5:00-6:10.
Additional note: Be sure to review the three readings on reading by Proust, Woolf and Bowen.
The Final Exam will consist of short paragraph-long definitions that relate to the terms below and to authors read this semester (Carroll, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Bowen, Schlink).
Terms to consider in relation to works read this semester:
Modernism: what are some of the subjects focused upon and narrative techniques of modernist authors
Modernity (inventions, changes in cultural, everyday life during this period)
Realism
Victorian Period
Postmodernism
Time: memory, the moment (moment of being, epiphany)
Space
Class
Speed (cars, trains, airplanes, telegrams, radio)
Consciousness (mind, memory, dreams, nightmares, hallucinations)
Religion
Sexuality (homosexuality, marriage, gender relations)
War (World War I & II)
Gender (women’s changing roles, the marriage plot, women’s cultural and economic exclusion)
Narrative techniques (interior monologue, quoted monologue, narrated monologue, omniscient narrator, stream of consciousness, parody, quotation, new forms of the novel)
Approximate dates of Victorian, Modernist, Postmodernist periods; authors read this semester (Woolf, Proust, Joyce, Bowen, Carroll); world wars
Spring '10
Twentieth-Century Literature Exam: May 13th, 5:00-6:10.
Additional note: Be sure to review the three readings on reading by Proust, Woolf and Bowen.
The Final Exam will consist of short paragraph-long definitions that relate to the terms below and to authors read this semester (Carroll, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Bowen, Schlink).
Terms to consider in relation to works read this semester:
Modernism: what are some of the subjects focused upon and narrative techniques of modernist authors
Modernity (inventions, changes in cultural, everyday life during this period)
Realism
Victorian Period
Postmodernism
Time: memory, the moment (moment of being, epiphany)
Space
Class
Speed (cars, trains, airplanes, telegrams, radio)
Consciousness (mind, memory, dreams, nightmares, hallucinations)
Religion
Sexuality (homosexuality, marriage, gender relations)
War (World War I & II)
Gender (women’s changing roles, the marriage plot, women’s cultural and economic exclusion)
Narrative techniques (interior monologue, quoted monologue, narrated monologue, omniscient narrator, stream of consciousness, parody, quotation, new forms of the novel)
Approximate dates of Victorian, Modernist, Postmodernist periods; authors read this semester (Woolf, Proust, Joyce, Bowen, Carroll); world wars
Friday, April 30, 2010
May 5th: Brooklyn on My Mind, 5:00, Campus Event
Brooklyn on My Mind, with Colm Toibin, Joseph O'Neill, and Leonard Lopate, talking and
reading about "Émigrés to Brooklyn," will be on May 5th, at 5 p.m., in Woody Tanger
Auditorium.
reading about "Émigrés to Brooklyn," will be on May 5th, at 5 p.m., in Woody Tanger
Auditorium.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Irish Hunger Memorial: The Great Famine (1845-52)
Near Battery Park and Poet's House (see other notice):
Irish Hunger Memorial
290 Vesey Street,
New York, NY 10285
WTC or Chambers St. subway
The Irish Hunger Memorial (or Irish Famine Memorial), the creation of artist Brian Tolle, is devoted to raising public awareness of the events that led to the "Great Irish Famine and Migration" of 1845-1852. It serves as a reminder to millions of New Yorkers and Americans who proudly trace their heritage to Ireland, of those who were forced to emigrate during one of the most heartbreaking tragedies in the history of the world. The Great Hunger" began in 1845 when a blight destroyed the Irish potato crop, depriving Ireland of its staple food. By 1847 millions were starving and dying. Between 1847 and 1852 hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrated to New York where they arrived at South Street Seaport and Castle Clinton. Today, almost 800,000 New York City residents trace their ancestry to Ireland.
The Irish Hunger Memorial (which takes its name from the Irish term for the famine of 1845-52, "An Gorta Mor," The Great Hunger) stands on a half-acre site at the corner of Vesey Street and North End Avenue in Battery Park City, between the Embassy Suites Hotel and the Hudson River. The 96' x 170' Memorial, which contains stones from each of Ireland's 32 counties, is elevated on a limestone plinth. Along the base are bands of texts separated by layers of imported Kilkenny limestone. The limestone is more than 300 million years old and contains fossils from the ancient Irish seabed. The text, which combines the history of the Great Famine with contemporary reports on world hunger, is cast as shadow onto illuminated frosted glass panels. From its eastern approach the Memorial appears as a sloping landscape with a pathway inviting visitors to walk upward past a ruined fieldstone cottage and stone walls toward a pilgrim's standing stone. At the western end of the Memorial, 25 feet above the pavement, a cantilevered overlook offers views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, emblems of America's welcome to the Irish and to all immigrant people.
From the western or river end, the visitor approaches the Memorial through a formal ceremonial entrance that recalls the court cairn or graves of the Irish Neolithic period that are found in the Irish northwest. The ramped passageway ends inside the ruined fieldstone cottage that was brought to New York from the townland of Carradoogan near Attymass, County Mayo.
The size of the cultivated area of the Memorial, one-quarter of an acre, is significant. In 1847, Sir William Gregory proposed an additional clause to the Irish Poor Law stipulating that no person occupying land of more than one-quarter acre was eligible for any relief. This law had a devastating effect and contributed to the suffering. The unroofed abandoned cottage reminds the visitor of the stark choice between survival and holding home and hearth.
Nearly two miles of text have been installed in illuminated bands that wrap around the base of the Memorial. The text includes some 110 quotations, including autobiographies, letters, oral traditions, parliamentary reports, poems, recipes, songs and statistics. Backlit text panels are installed behind frosted glass sections that appear to the visitor as shadows. At night the light will function as a beacon to those on the river. The texts merge past and present accounts of famine and can be updated to respond to new hunger crises.
The audio installation in the passage provides another dimension to the Memorial as living site. The audio will be a medium for contemporary writers and musicians who have responded to the meaning of the Great Irish Famine and the challenge of hunger in the world today. The audio will capture the response of visitors to the Memorial, and will provide updated information about famine sites and conditions worldwide.
Admission And Tickets
Free
Subway:
to World Trade Center
to Chambers St -- 0.4
Irish Hunger Memorial
290 Vesey Street,
New York, NY 10285
WTC or Chambers St. subway
The Irish Hunger Memorial (or Irish Famine Memorial), the creation of artist Brian Tolle, is devoted to raising public awareness of the events that led to the "Great Irish Famine and Migration" of 1845-1852. It serves as a reminder to millions of New Yorkers and Americans who proudly trace their heritage to Ireland, of those who were forced to emigrate during one of the most heartbreaking tragedies in the history of the world. The Great Hunger" began in 1845 when a blight destroyed the Irish potato crop, depriving Ireland of its staple food. By 1847 millions were starving and dying. Between 1847 and 1852 hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrated to New York where they arrived at South Street Seaport and Castle Clinton. Today, almost 800,000 New York City residents trace their ancestry to Ireland.
The Irish Hunger Memorial (which takes its name from the Irish term for the famine of 1845-52, "An Gorta Mor," The Great Hunger) stands on a half-acre site at the corner of Vesey Street and North End Avenue in Battery Park City, between the Embassy Suites Hotel and the Hudson River. The 96' x 170' Memorial, which contains stones from each of Ireland's 32 counties, is elevated on a limestone plinth. Along the base are bands of texts separated by layers of imported Kilkenny limestone. The limestone is more than 300 million years old and contains fossils from the ancient Irish seabed. The text, which combines the history of the Great Famine with contemporary reports on world hunger, is cast as shadow onto illuminated frosted glass panels. From its eastern approach the Memorial appears as a sloping landscape with a pathway inviting visitors to walk upward past a ruined fieldstone cottage and stone walls toward a pilgrim's standing stone. At the western end of the Memorial, 25 feet above the pavement, a cantilevered overlook offers views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, emblems of America's welcome to the Irish and to all immigrant people.
From the western or river end, the visitor approaches the Memorial through a formal ceremonial entrance that recalls the court cairn or graves of the Irish Neolithic period that are found in the Irish northwest. The ramped passageway ends inside the ruined fieldstone cottage that was brought to New York from the townland of Carradoogan near Attymass, County Mayo.
The size of the cultivated area of the Memorial, one-quarter of an acre, is significant. In 1847, Sir William Gregory proposed an additional clause to the Irish Poor Law stipulating that no person occupying land of more than one-quarter acre was eligible for any relief. This law had a devastating effect and contributed to the suffering. The unroofed abandoned cottage reminds the visitor of the stark choice between survival and holding home and hearth.
Nearly two miles of text have been installed in illuminated bands that wrap around the base of the Memorial. The text includes some 110 quotations, including autobiographies, letters, oral traditions, parliamentary reports, poems, recipes, songs and statistics. Backlit text panels are installed behind frosted glass sections that appear to the visitor as shadows. At night the light will function as a beacon to those on the river. The texts merge past and present accounts of famine and can be updated to respond to new hunger crises.
The audio installation in the passage provides another dimension to the Memorial as living site. The audio will be a medium for contemporary writers and musicians who have responded to the meaning of the Great Irish Famine and the challenge of hunger in the world today. The audio will capture the response of visitors to the Memorial, and will provide updated information about famine sites and conditions worldwide.
Admission And Tickets
Free
Subway:
to World Trade Center
to Chambers St -- 0.4
Visit Poet's House, Battery Park: April-June Events
If poetry interests you, visit Poets House, the only poetry library in the U.S.: all the latest journals, chapbooks, audio and 50,000 volumes of poetry (to be read in library only).
10 River Terrace (Chambers St., walk west toward river New York, NY 10282 | (212) 431-7920 | info@poetshouse.org :
The House That Holds a Country
Poets House is a national poetry library and literary center that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry. Our poetry resources and literary events document the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, and stimulate public dialogue on issues of poetry in culture.
Founded in 1985 by poet Stanley Kunitz and arts administrator Elizabeth Kray, Poets House has created a home for all who read and write poetry. From 1990 to 2007 that home was located in an intimate loft at 72 Spring Street in Soho. As rent increases began to make Soho an impractical location, Poets House was fortunate to be designated by the Battery Park City Authority as a rent-free tenant in a new building on the banks of the Hudson River. In the summer of 2009, Poets House moved to its permanent home at 10 River Terrace in Battery Park City and opened to the public on September 25, 2009.
Throughout its transformations, the heart of Poets House has remained its poetry collection. With over 50,000 volumes of poetry—including books, journals, chapbooks, audio and video tapes, and digital media—our collection is among the most comprehensive, open-access collections of poetry in the United States and is the foundation for all our programs and services.
Each year we present over 200 public programs, including panels, lectures, readings, writing workshops and walking tours in New York City and nationwide. Panel discussions and lectures link the voices of poets living today to a vast literary tradition. Poets House readings presented in public parks and libraries cultivate a wider audience for the art. Innovative seminars and workshops taught by emerging and established poets offer aficionados and first-timers an opportunity to explore the writing process in greater depth.
Through the annual Poets House Showcase, we gather and exhibit all of the years' new poetry books. Thousands of books are shown each year from publishers large and small across the country. The Showcase provides readers and writers an opportunity to view the whole range of the art. All of the books are documented in the Directory of American Poetry Books, the most comprehensive bibliographic resource available for poetry published since the 1990's.
Poetry in The Branches is a model for developing poetry audiences in local communities by providing multi-layered poetry services in public libraries. Poetry in The Branches makes this model available nationwide through our Poetry in The Branches National Institute, on-site trainings and consulting to diverse library systems, and full-service programs in local branches. Branching Out: Poetry for the 21st Century, a joint project with the Poetry Society of America, brought PSA's Poetry In Motion™ program and Poets House's Poetry in The Branches model to 7 cities nationwide.
At the turn of a new century, Poets House is working to create a future where everyone has entree into the ageless, borderless conversation that is poetry. We invite you to join us.
Readings and Workshops
Anne Carson
Thursday, April 29, 7:00pm
Nox: From Box to Book with Anne Carson & Currie
With artistic collaborator Currie, poet Anne Carson discusses and reads from Nox, her illustrated "book in a box" that elegizes the loss of her brother with photos, collages, sketches and poetry written through the lens of her translation of Catullus.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
| return to top |
may
Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 1, 11:00am
"How Does a Bird Imagine? What Does a Tree Know?" with Richard Lewis
This performance, art and writing workshop led by children's poet extraordinaire Richard Lewis features a parade in spring-time imagining hats.
Admission free
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Saturday, May 1, 2:00pm
It's About Nature: Children's Learning & the Poetic Experience
with Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis converses with artists, teachers and parents about creating poetic spaces as a means of inspiring community and creative responsiveness to the environment.
Admission free
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Monday, May 3 & Tuesday, May 4, 10:00am–8:00pm
Annual Chapbook Festival
Now in its second year, this two-day national festival of workshops and readings celebrates the microbook. Cosponsored by the MFA Programs in Creative Writing of the City University of New York; the Office of Academic Affairs and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY; the Center for Book Arts; the Poetry Society of America; and Poets & Writers.
@ The CUNY Graduate Center
For more information, please visit www.centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/festival
Admission free
Diane Ackerman
kimiko hahn
Wednesday, May 5, 7:00pm
Close Observation: The Poetics of Flora & Fauna
A Reading & Conversation with Diane Ackerman & Kimiko Hahn
Diane Ackerman, acclaimed essayist and author of Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, talks with Kimiko Hahn, author of Toxic Flora and other poetry collections, about the role of environmental issues and science in their writing.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Diane Ackerman & Kimiko Hahn
Raúl Zurita
Raúl Zurita
Thursday, May 6, 7:00pm
Chile’s Dante:
An Evening with Raúl Zurita & Anna Deeny
The uncompromising Chilean poet Raúl Zuritareads from his work and talks with Anna Deeny, the English-language translator of his volume Purgatory.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo
Angela Hernández Núñez
Tuesday, May 11, 7:00pm
Praises & Offenses: Women Poets from the Dominican Republic with Linda M. Rodriguez Guglielmoni, Judith Kerman, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo & Angela Hernández Núñez
Dominican poets Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo and Angela Hernández Núñez are joined by their english-language translator, Judith Kerman, and scholar Linda M. Rodriguez Guglielmoni for a reading and conversation.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo & Angela Hernández Núñez
jonathan skinner
Jonathan Skinner
Ecopoetics After Copenhagen with Jonathan Skinner
Poetry & Biodiversity: A Public Seminar with Jonathan Skinner
Wednesday, May 12, 7:00–9:00pm
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members; pre-registration is not required
In recognition of the International Year of Biodiversity, this seminar with poet and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner looks at current poetics and cultures of biodiversity, including forest languages and invasive activity in disturbed ecosystems.
Poetry & Watersheds: A Public Seminar with Jonathan Skinner
Friday, May 14, 7:00–9:00pm
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members; pre-registration is not required
Poet and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner examines how poets are responding to our relationship to water, taking into account emerging science, politics, and social and ecological inequities.
Urban Field Poetics: A Writing Workshop with Jonathan Skinner
Saturday, May 15, 1:00–5:00pm
$140, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org
Building on the concerns uncovered in Skinner's two previous seminars, this workshop is an ecopoetics field audit that focuses on Poets House's location along the Hudson River and introduces site-based writing.
Jonathan Skinner's poetry collections include With Naked Foot and Political Cactus Poems. He edits the journal ecopoetics and writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry and poetics. He also teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Maurice Manning
Norman Minnick
Thursday, May 13, 7:00pm
Back Home: A Conversation & Reading
with Maurice Manning & Norman Minnick
Poets Maurice Manning and Norman Minnick share poems, tall tales and conversation about the nature of Kentucky poetry, from the lyric to the comic.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Maurice Manning & Norman Minnick
calef brown
Calef Brown
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 15, 11:00am
My Life as a Blue Elephant with Calef Brown
Author and illustrator of prize-winning children's books, Calef Brown reads from his most popular works and reveals how he creates his illustrations and madcap poems.
Admission Free
Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze
Tuesday, May 18, 7:00pm
Language of the Neighborhood: Chinese Poetry Today
with Arthur Sze & Lucas Klein
Poet, translator and editor of the new volume Chinese Writers on Writing, Arthur Sze reads and discusses modern and contemporary Chinese poetry with scholar and translator Lucas Klein.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson
Thursday, May 20, 7:00pm
Sweethearts of Rhythm:
An Evening with Marilyn Nelson & Jerry Pinkney
Acclaimed poet Marilyn Nelson and artist Jerry Pinkney, winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal, discuss their collaborative book, Sweethearts of Rhythm, which profiles the all-female, interracial band of the 1940s.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Marcella Durand
Brenda Iijima
Ted Mathys
Tyrone Williams
Tuesday, May 25, 7:00pm
Ecopoetical Futures: A Panel with Marcella Durand, Brenda Iijima, Ted Mathys & Tyrone Williams
Four emerging poets investigate how poetry might marshal diverse languages, ethnicities and identities to engage with a global ecosystem under duress.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Marcella Durand, Brenda Iijima, Ted Mathys & Tyrone Williams
Robert Hass
Brenda Hillman
Thursday, May 27, 7:00pm
Elements & Energies:
Robert Hass & Brenda Hillman on Poetry, Ecology & Environmental Action
Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and Brenda Hillman, author of eight lauded collections, share their experiences of activism and writing in response to the natural world.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 29, 11:00am
River of Words with Robert Hass
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Robert Hass shares his own poems of the natural world as well as those by children across the country. A discussion about connecting watersheds and imaginations through poetry and art will follow.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Admission Free
Saturday, May 29, 1:00-3:00pm
An Ethics Occurs at the Edge of What We Know: A Seminar with Brenda Hillman
Author of Practical Water, among other poetry books, Brenda Hillman discusses poetry and activism, writing about the elements and ecopoetics, and the writing process in relation to political commitment and spiritual ideas.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$25, $20 for students and seniors, $15 for Poets House Members
Saturday, May 29, 4:00pm
Robert Hass & Brenda Hillman in the Great Outdoors: A Reading
This reading inaugurates Poets House's outdoor courtyard in the new South Teardrop Park.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
| return to top |
june
Ruth Stone
Ruth Stone
Tuesday, June 8, 7:00pm
What Love Comes To: A Celebration of Ruth Stone
with Chard deNiord, Toi Derricotte, Marie Howe, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Dorianne Laux, Sharon Olds, Gerald Stern, Bianca Stone, & Hillery Stone
In honor of Ruth Stone's 95th birthday, friends and fellow poets read from the acclaimed poet's volume What Loves Comes To: New and Selected Poems.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Monday, June 14, 6:30pm
The 15th Annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge: A Benefit for Poets House
Join performance artist Laurie Anderson, Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang, and award-winning poets Galway Kinnell and Thomas Lux for this annual pilgrimage across one of New York City's great architectural gems. This beloved Poets House event features readings of the poetry of Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes and other greats beneath Roebling's famous arches. The journey from Manhattan to Brooklyn closes with a celebratory dinner and the presentation of the Elizabeth Kray Award, or "The Betty" for service to the field of poetry.
This year, The Betty will be awarded to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "one of our ageless radicals and true bards" (Booklist) who has authored such ground-breathing works as A Coney Island of the Mind, Americus, and Poetry As Insurgent Art; founded the legendary City Lights Bookstore; and launched the City Lights publishing house, which first published Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems, among other seminal works.
Tickets begin at $250 ($225 for Poets House Members). Reservations are required. For details or to make reservations, contact Krista Manrique at (212) 431-7920, ext. 2830 or krista@poetshouse.org.
10 River Terrace (Chambers St., walk west toward river New York, NY 10282 | (212) 431-7920 | info@poetshouse.org :
The House That Holds a Country
Poets House is a national poetry library and literary center that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry. Our poetry resources and literary events document the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, and stimulate public dialogue on issues of poetry in culture.
Founded in 1985 by poet Stanley Kunitz and arts administrator Elizabeth Kray, Poets House has created a home for all who read and write poetry. From 1990 to 2007 that home was located in an intimate loft at 72 Spring Street in Soho. As rent increases began to make Soho an impractical location, Poets House was fortunate to be designated by the Battery Park City Authority as a rent-free tenant in a new building on the banks of the Hudson River. In the summer of 2009, Poets House moved to its permanent home at 10 River Terrace in Battery Park City and opened to the public on September 25, 2009.
Throughout its transformations, the heart of Poets House has remained its poetry collection. With over 50,000 volumes of poetry—including books, journals, chapbooks, audio and video tapes, and digital media—our collection is among the most comprehensive, open-access collections of poetry in the United States and is the foundation for all our programs and services.
Each year we present over 200 public programs, including panels, lectures, readings, writing workshops and walking tours in New York City and nationwide. Panel discussions and lectures link the voices of poets living today to a vast literary tradition. Poets House readings presented in public parks and libraries cultivate a wider audience for the art. Innovative seminars and workshops taught by emerging and established poets offer aficionados and first-timers an opportunity to explore the writing process in greater depth.
Through the annual Poets House Showcase, we gather and exhibit all of the years' new poetry books. Thousands of books are shown each year from publishers large and small across the country. The Showcase provides readers and writers an opportunity to view the whole range of the art. All of the books are documented in the Directory of American Poetry Books, the most comprehensive bibliographic resource available for poetry published since the 1990's.
Poetry in The Branches is a model for developing poetry audiences in local communities by providing multi-layered poetry services in public libraries. Poetry in The Branches makes this model available nationwide through our Poetry in The Branches National Institute, on-site trainings and consulting to diverse library systems, and full-service programs in local branches. Branching Out: Poetry for the 21st Century, a joint project with the Poetry Society of America, brought PSA's Poetry In Motion™ program and Poets House's Poetry in The Branches model to 7 cities nationwide.
At the turn of a new century, Poets House is working to create a future where everyone has entree into the ageless, borderless conversation that is poetry. We invite you to join us.
Readings and Workshops
Anne Carson
Thursday, April 29, 7:00pm
Nox: From Box to Book with Anne Carson & Currie
With artistic collaborator Currie, poet Anne Carson discusses and reads from Nox, her illustrated "book in a box" that elegizes the loss of her brother with photos, collages, sketches and poetry written through the lens of her translation of Catullus.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
| return to top |
may
Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 1, 11:00am
"How Does a Bird Imagine? What Does a Tree Know?" with Richard Lewis
This performance, art and writing workshop led by children's poet extraordinaire Richard Lewis features a parade in spring-time imagining hats.
Admission free
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Saturday, May 1, 2:00pm
It's About Nature: Children's Learning & the Poetic Experience
with Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis converses with artists, teachers and parents about creating poetic spaces as a means of inspiring community and creative responsiveness to the environment.
Admission free
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Monday, May 3 & Tuesday, May 4, 10:00am–8:00pm
Annual Chapbook Festival
Now in its second year, this two-day national festival of workshops and readings celebrates the microbook. Cosponsored by the MFA Programs in Creative Writing of the City University of New York; the Office of Academic Affairs and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY; the Center for Book Arts; the Poetry Society of America; and Poets & Writers.
@ The CUNY Graduate Center
For more information, please visit www.centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/festival
Admission free
Diane Ackerman
kimiko hahn
Wednesday, May 5, 7:00pm
Close Observation: The Poetics of Flora & Fauna
A Reading & Conversation with Diane Ackerman & Kimiko Hahn
Diane Ackerman, acclaimed essayist and author of Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, talks with Kimiko Hahn, author of Toxic Flora and other poetry collections, about the role of environmental issues and science in their writing.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Diane Ackerman & Kimiko Hahn
Raúl Zurita
Raúl Zurita
Thursday, May 6, 7:00pm
Chile’s Dante:
An Evening with Raúl Zurita & Anna Deeny
The uncompromising Chilean poet Raúl Zuritareads from his work and talks with Anna Deeny, the English-language translator of his volume Purgatory.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo
Angela Hernández Núñez
Tuesday, May 11, 7:00pm
Praises & Offenses: Women Poets from the Dominican Republic with Linda M. Rodriguez Guglielmoni, Judith Kerman, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo & Angela Hernández Núñez
Dominican poets Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo and Angela Hernández Núñez are joined by their english-language translator, Judith Kerman, and scholar Linda M. Rodriguez Guglielmoni for a reading and conversation.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo & Angela Hernández Núñez
jonathan skinner
Jonathan Skinner
Ecopoetics After Copenhagen with Jonathan Skinner
Poetry & Biodiversity: A Public Seminar with Jonathan Skinner
Wednesday, May 12, 7:00–9:00pm
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members; pre-registration is not required
In recognition of the International Year of Biodiversity, this seminar with poet and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner looks at current poetics and cultures of biodiversity, including forest languages and invasive activity in disturbed ecosystems.
Poetry & Watersheds: A Public Seminar with Jonathan Skinner
Friday, May 14, 7:00–9:00pm
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members; pre-registration is not required
Poet and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner examines how poets are responding to our relationship to water, taking into account emerging science, politics, and social and ecological inequities.
Urban Field Poetics: A Writing Workshop with Jonathan Skinner
Saturday, May 15, 1:00–5:00pm
$140, pre-registration required; call (212) 431-7920 or email classes@poetshouse.org
Building on the concerns uncovered in Skinner's two previous seminars, this workshop is an ecopoetics field audit that focuses on Poets House's location along the Hudson River and introduces site-based writing.
Jonathan Skinner's poetry collections include With Naked Foot and Political Cactus Poems. He edits the journal ecopoetics and writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry and poetics. He also teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Maurice Manning
Norman Minnick
Thursday, May 13, 7:00pm
Back Home: A Conversation & Reading
with Maurice Manning & Norman Minnick
Poets Maurice Manning and Norman Minnick share poems, tall tales and conversation about the nature of Kentucky poetry, from the lyric to the comic.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Maurice Manning & Norman Minnick
calef brown
Calef Brown
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 15, 11:00am
My Life as a Blue Elephant with Calef Brown
Author and illustrator of prize-winning children's books, Calef Brown reads from his most popular works and reveals how he creates his illustrations and madcap poems.
Admission Free
Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze
Tuesday, May 18, 7:00pm
Language of the Neighborhood: Chinese Poetry Today
with Arthur Sze & Lucas Klein
Poet, translator and editor of the new volume Chinese Writers on Writing, Arthur Sze reads and discusses modern and contemporary Chinese poetry with scholar and translator Lucas Klein.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson
Thursday, May 20, 7:00pm
Sweethearts of Rhythm:
An Evening with Marilyn Nelson & Jerry Pinkney
Acclaimed poet Marilyn Nelson and artist Jerry Pinkney, winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal, discuss their collaborative book, Sweethearts of Rhythm, which profiles the all-female, interracial band of the 1940s.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Marcella Durand
Brenda Iijima
Ted Mathys
Tyrone Williams
Tuesday, May 25, 7:00pm
Ecopoetical Futures: A Panel with Marcella Durand, Brenda Iijima, Ted Mathys & Tyrone Williams
Four emerging poets investigate how poetry might marshal diverse languages, ethnicities and identities to engage with a global ecosystem under duress.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
From top: Marcella Durand, Brenda Iijima, Ted Mathys & Tyrone Williams
Robert Hass
Brenda Hillman
Thursday, May 27, 7:00pm
Elements & Energies:
Robert Hass & Brenda Hillman on Poetry, Ecology & Environmental Action
Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and Brenda Hillman, author of eight lauded collections, share their experiences of activism and writing in response to the natural world.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Poetry for Children
Saturday, May 29, 11:00am
River of Words with Robert Hass
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Robert Hass shares his own poems of the natural world as well as those by children across the country. A discussion about connecting watersheds and imaginations through poetry and art will follow.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
Admission Free
Saturday, May 29, 1:00-3:00pm
An Ethics Occurs at the Edge of What We Know: A Seminar with Brenda Hillman
Author of Practical Water, among other poetry books, Brenda Hillman discusses poetry and activism, writing about the elements and ecopoetics, and the writing process in relation to political commitment and spiritual ideas.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$25, $20 for students and seniors, $15 for Poets House Members
Saturday, May 29, 4:00pm
Robert Hass & Brenda Hillman in the Great Outdoors: A Reading
This reading inaugurates Poets House's outdoor courtyard in the new South Teardrop Park.
Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment. Programs in this series are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
| return to top |
june
Ruth Stone
Ruth Stone
Tuesday, June 8, 7:00pm
What Love Comes To: A Celebration of Ruth Stone
with Chard deNiord, Toi Derricotte, Marie Howe, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Dorianne Laux, Sharon Olds, Gerald Stern, Bianca Stone, & Hillery Stone
In honor of Ruth Stone's 95th birthday, friends and fellow poets read from the acclaimed poet's volume What Loves Comes To: New and Selected Poems.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Monday, June 14, 6:30pm
The 15th Annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge: A Benefit for Poets House
Join performance artist Laurie Anderson, Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang, and award-winning poets Galway Kinnell and Thomas Lux for this annual pilgrimage across one of New York City's great architectural gems. This beloved Poets House event features readings of the poetry of Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes and other greats beneath Roebling's famous arches. The journey from Manhattan to Brooklyn closes with a celebratory dinner and the presentation of the Elizabeth Kray Award, or "The Betty" for service to the field of poetry.
This year, The Betty will be awarded to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "one of our ageless radicals and true bards" (Booklist) who has authored such ground-breathing works as A Coney Island of the Mind, Americus, and Poetry As Insurgent Art; founded the legendary City Lights Bookstore; and launched the City Lights publishing house, which first published Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems, among other seminal works.
Tickets begin at $250 ($225 for Poets House Members). Reservations are required. For details or to make reservations, contact Krista Manrique at (212) 431-7920, ext. 2830 or krista@poetshouse.org.
April is Poetry Month: T.S. Eliot's Wasteland (Part I)
Listen to The Wasteland, one of the most important poems of the century, on-line
And sign up for a poem a day, Academy of American Poets:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21375?utm_source=poemaday_042810&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_term=24hour_audio
Also, if you're interested in poetry, visit the new site of Poet's House, 10 River Terrace (take subway to Chambers St. and walk west toward the river),
Part I
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar kine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
–Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère!"
And sign up for a poem a day, Academy of American Poets:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21375?utm_source=poemaday_042810&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_term=24hour_audio
Also, if you're interested in poetry, visit the new site of Poet's House, 10 River Terrace (take subway to Chambers St. and walk west toward the river),
Part I
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar kine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
–Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère!"
Monday, April 26, 2010
Surrealism Exhibit: Intl Center for Photography
These Surrealist artists and photographers and their experiments juxtaposing dream and actual worlds connect with our Modernist discussions. Until May 9th: International Center for Photography,
43rd St. & Ave of the Americas.
January 29–May 9, 2010
Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris
Paris was a city of fantasy and chance encounters for Surrealist artists of the 1920s and '30s. During this period of unprecedented social and cultural transformation, photography played a dramatic new role in both avant-garde practice and mass culture. In their works, photographers such as Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Ilse Bing, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, Dora Maar, and Man Ray used fragmentation, montage, unusual viewpoints, and various technical manipulations to expose the disjunctive and uncanny aspects of modern urban life. In Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris, guest curator Terry Lichtenstein has assembled over 150 photographs, films, books, periodicals, and Surrealist ephemera to show how real and imaginary versions of Paris were constructed through photographic images.
43rd St. & Ave of the Americas.
January 29–May 9, 2010
Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris
Paris was a city of fantasy and chance encounters for Surrealist artists of the 1920s and '30s. During this period of unprecedented social and cultural transformation, photography played a dramatic new role in both avant-garde practice and mass culture. In their works, photographers such as Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Ilse Bing, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, Dora Maar, and Man Ray used fragmentation, montage, unusual viewpoints, and various technical manipulations to expose the disjunctive and uncanny aspects of modern urban life. In Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris, guest curator Terry Lichtenstein has assembled over 150 photographs, films, books, periodicals, and Surrealist ephemera to show how real and imaginary versions of Paris were constructed through photographic images.
My 6th, Long Papers Due
May 6th Final Papers are due.
Please follow the new MLA guidelines (form--titles, spacing, page numbers etc., parenthetical references within the text, bibliography_. Also, copyedit and proofread your final paper: writing is a craft.
Don't forget to title your paper: it gives the reader an immediate sense of your focus, and an original title creates interest. Interest is a neglected quality in writing. Avoid cliches and strive for originality. You can incorporate the shorter paper into the longer (10-12pp.).
Please follow the new MLA guidelines (form--titles, spacing, page numbers etc., parenthetical references within the text, bibliography_. Also, copyedit and proofread your final paper: writing is a craft.
Don't forget to title your paper: it gives the reader an immediate sense of your focus, and an original title creates interest. Interest is a neglected quality in writing. Avoid cliches and strive for originality. You can incorporate the shorter paper into the longer (10-12pp.).
Reading Question: Elizabeth Bowen
Consider any aspect of the questions below, and respond:
1. May Sarton, a friend of Bowen's, said of Death of
the Heart that "It left me with a feeling of distilled horror, like the ash
from a fire, a taste I can't get out of my mouth." What is the "horror" in the novel?
2. Matchett, the observing servant in the novel, is described by the narrator as "the
person who really sees what happens." What does she see?
And yet to Thomas and Anna, she is the person who came "with the furniture" of
the house. Why?
What is the meaning of her "phosphorescent apron" (95)? Discuss any aspect of her
character and role in the house and Portia's life.
1. May Sarton, a friend of Bowen's, said of Death of
the Heart that "It left me with a feeling of distilled horror, like the ash
from a fire, a taste I can't get out of my mouth." What is the "horror" in the novel?
2. Matchett, the observing servant in the novel, is described by the narrator as "the
person who really sees what happens." What does she see?
And yet to Thomas and Anna, she is the person who came "with the furniture" of
the house. Why?
What is the meaning of her "phosphorescent apron" (95)? Discuss any aspect of her
character and role in the house and Portia's life.
Monday, April 12, 2010
April 22 Class
Before we begin our discussion of Death of the Heart, we will have a brief discussion comparing Burton's film,
We will also hear a recording of Virginia Woolf, and discuss your response to Joyce's voice last week.
Alice in Wonderlandto our reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice.
We will also hear a recording of Virginia Woolf, and discuss your response to Joyce's voice last week.
Neuroscience, Cognitive Studies and Lit: Listen to Jonathan Lehrer on Virginia Woolf on YouTube
Proust, Woolf, Joyce: good for your mind, they say....
Listen to Jonathan Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, talk about To the Lighthouse (3 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lJ4_9sRNg
This connection between cognitive studies and literature is a good area to explore in your paper this semester or in the future.
Listen to Jonathan Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, talk about To the Lighthouse (3 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lJ4_9sRNg
This connection between cognitive studies and literature is a good area to explore in your paper this semester or in the future.
The Moment: Museum of Modern Art: Photo Exhibit, Henri Cartier Bresson
Compare Bresson's interest in capturing "the decisive moment" with Woolf's "moments of being" and Joyce's "epiphanies." Time--the importance of the moment--modernist interest.
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century: MOMA
April 11–June 28, 2010
MEMBER PREVIEWS ON NOW
The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
View Exhibition Site »
View related events
View related film screenings
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original, accomplished, influential, and beloved figures in the history of photography. His inventive work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography, and his uncanny ability to capture life on the run made his work synonymous with “the decisive moment”—the title of his first major book. After World War II (most of which he spent as a prisoner of war) and his first museum show (at MoMA in 1947), he joined Robert Capa and others in founding the Magnum photo agency, which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through magazines such as Life while retaining control over their work. In the decade following the war, Cartier-Bresson produced major bodies of photographic reportage on India and Indonesia at the time of independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, the United States during the postwar boom, and Europe as its old cultures confronted modern realities. For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. MoMA’s retrospective, the first in the United States in three decades, surveys Cartier-Bresson’s entire career, with a presentation of about three hundred photographs, mostly arranged thematically and supplemented with periodicals and books. The exhibition travels to The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
The exhibition is organized by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography.
The exhibition is supported by The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund.
Additional funding is provided by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Robert B. Menschel, and Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis.
Related Events
Upcoming
Special Exhibition Programs | Adult Programs
The Legacy of Henri Cartier-Bresson
Magnum photographer Gilles Peress and art historian Jean-Francois Chevrier discuss the work and legacy of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The program is moderated by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography.
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
Sold Out
Family Programs | Tours for Tweens
In Focus: The Photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson
Sunday, April 18, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Saturday, April 24, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Sunday, April 25, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Brown Bag Lunch Lectures
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original, accomplished, influential, and beloved figures in the history of photography. For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. This lecture provides an overview of MoMA’s exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, the first retrospective of Cartier-Bresson in the United States in three decades.
Dan Leers (MA, Columbia University) is the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography at MoMA.
Monday, April 19, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
Buy TicketsBuy Tickets
Thursday, April 22, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
Buy TicketsBuy Tickets
Access Programs | Art inSight
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 2:00 p.m.
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Gallery Talks
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Thursday, April 22, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 24, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Gallery Talks
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Saturday, May 1, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 6, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
Friday, May 7, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Past
Member Events | Member Previews
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Friday, April 9, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Related Film Screenings
Upcoming
There are no upcoming film screenings currently scheduled.
Past
Film Screenings & Events
Victoire de la vie (Return to Life)
1937. France. “Henri Cartier” with Herbert Kline. 49 min.
California Impressions
1969–70. USA. Henri Cartier-Bresson. 23 min.
Southern Exposures
1969–70. USA. Henri Cartier-Bresson. 22 min.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 4:00 p.m. , Theater 2, T2
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Juvisy, France. 1938. Gelatin silver print, printed 1947, 9 1/8 x 13 11/16" (23.3 x 34.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Juvisy, France. 1938. Gelatin silver print, printed 1947, 9 1/8 x 13 11/16" (23.3 x 34.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century: MOMA
April 11–June 28, 2010
MEMBER PREVIEWS ON NOW
The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
View Exhibition Site »
View related events
View related film screenings
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original, accomplished, influential, and beloved figures in the history of photography. His inventive work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography, and his uncanny ability to capture life on the run made his work synonymous with “the decisive moment”—the title of his first major book. After World War II (most of which he spent as a prisoner of war) and his first museum show (at MoMA in 1947), he joined Robert Capa and others in founding the Magnum photo agency, which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through magazines such as Life while retaining control over their work. In the decade following the war, Cartier-Bresson produced major bodies of photographic reportage on India and Indonesia at the time of independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, the United States during the postwar boom, and Europe as its old cultures confronted modern realities. For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. MoMA’s retrospective, the first in the United States in three decades, surveys Cartier-Bresson’s entire career, with a presentation of about three hundred photographs, mostly arranged thematically and supplemented with periodicals and books. The exhibition travels to The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
The exhibition is organized by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography.
The exhibition is supported by The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund.
Additional funding is provided by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Robert B. Menschel, and Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis.
Related Events
Upcoming
Special Exhibition Programs | Adult Programs
The Legacy of Henri Cartier-Bresson
Magnum photographer Gilles Peress and art historian Jean-Francois Chevrier discuss the work and legacy of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The program is moderated by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography.
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
Sold Out
Family Programs | Tours for Tweens
In Focus: The Photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson
Sunday, April 18, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Saturday, April 24, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Sunday, April 25, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Sold Out
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Brown Bag Lunch Lectures
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original, accomplished, influential, and beloved figures in the history of photography. For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. This lecture provides an overview of MoMA’s exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, the first retrospective of Cartier-Bresson in the United States in three decades.
Dan Leers (MA, Columbia University) is the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography at MoMA.
Monday, April 19, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
Buy TicketsBuy Tickets
Thursday, April 22, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
Buy TicketsBuy Tickets
Access Programs | Art inSight
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 2:00 p.m.
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Gallery Talks
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Thursday, April 22, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 24, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
Lectures & Gallery Talks | Gallery Talks
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Saturday, May 1, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 6, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
Friday, May 7, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Past
Member Events | Member Previews
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Friday, April 9, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 10:30 a.m.
Related Film Screenings
Upcoming
There are no upcoming film screenings currently scheduled.
Past
Film Screenings & Events
Victoire de la vie (Return to Life)
1937. France. “Henri Cartier” with Herbert Kline. 49 min.
California Impressions
1969–70. USA. Henri Cartier-Bresson. 23 min.
Southern Exposures
1969–70. USA. Henri Cartier-Bresson. 22 min.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 4:00 p.m. , Theater 2, T2
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Juvisy, France. 1938. Gelatin silver print, printed 1947, 9 1/8 x 13 11/16" (23.3 x 34.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Juvisy, France. 1938. Gelatin silver print, printed 1947, 9 1/8 x 13 11/16" (23.3 x 34.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer. © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation
Joyce and Woolf Reading Questions: week of April 8-15
Virginia Woolf's Diary entry on James Joyce: August 16, 1922.
amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters-to the
end of the Cemetery scene;& then puzzled, bored, irritated,& disillusioned
as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples...I may revise this
later...I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.For my own part, I
am laboriously dredging my mind for Mrs. Dalloway.
She does revise her views later, and in her notebook on Modern Novels, says that she appreciates Joyce's attempt "to get thinking into literature," the "undoubted occasional beauty of his phrases" as well as his "desire to be more psychological" and "get more things into fiction." She also wonders what is the connection between Bloom and Stephen.
So, take heart. Like other authors and readers, Woolf is sometimes confused when reading and notes the "indecency" (that led to its being censored in America until the Wolsey case in 1933). But in another place, she praises his openness, frankness and method.
Pick up on anything Woolf said, and write....
amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters-to the
end of the Cemetery scene;& then puzzled, bored, irritated,& disillusioned
as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples...I may revise this
later...I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.For my own part, I
am laboriously dredging my mind for Mrs. Dalloway.
She does revise her views later, and in her notebook on Modern Novels, says that she appreciates Joyce's attempt "to get thinking into literature," the "undoubted occasional beauty of his phrases" as well as his "desire to be more psychological" and "get more things into fiction." She also wonders what is the connection between Bloom and Stephen.
So, take heart. Like other authors and readers, Woolf is sometimes confused when reading and notes the "indecency" (that led to its being censored in America until the Wolsey case in 1933). But in another place, she praises his openness, frankness and method.
Pick up on anything Woolf said, and write....
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Counter-Said argument: Literary Theory
Fiction Across Borders
Imagining the Lives of Others in Late-Twentieth-Century Novels
Shameem Black
"This fine book makes an extremely important and timely argument: that it is possible to enter sympathetically and constructively into the life of another, thus avoiding the failure, projection, and disguised domination that much contemporary criticism assumes to be the inevitable result of this enterprise." - Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
Imagining the Lives of Others in Late-Twentieth-Century Novels
Shameem Black
"This fine book makes an extremely important and timely argument: that it is possible to enter sympathetically and constructively into the life of another, thus avoiding the failure, projection, and disguised domination that much contemporary criticism assumes to be the inevitable result of this enterprise." - Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Join the James Joyce Society in NYC
If Joyce interests you, join the JJ Society here in NYC.
http://www.joycesociety.org/
The James Joyce Society
Current programs
History
Membership
Book Mart
Joyce links
So what does the world
really think of Joyce
-- (according to Googlism,
an independent source that
uses the Google engine)???
The James Joyce Society
Home Programs History Gotham Membership Gallery Archive Links Events Help April 1, 2010
Professor Strother Purdy of Marquette University (retired) on "The Measureless Time of Finnegans Wake - A Borgian Analysis" at The Roger Smith Hotel 501 Lexington Ave. at 47th Street New York City on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 6:00 PM
Joyce Events Calendar for 2010
(Trieste, Bloomsday, Prague, Dublin) W h a t ' s n e w ?
Strother Purdy on a Borgian Finnegans Wage 6 pm, Wed. March 24, Roger Smith Hotel, Lex & 47th
New JJS Meeting Venues The Gotham is closed
Early days of the Joyce Society Zack Bowen's memoir
Table of Contents
The James Joyce Society, founded in 1947, is devoted to the appreciation of the life, works, and significance of the Irish author (1882-1941). Meetings take place several times a year in New York City as announced. (Formerly, meetings took place at the Gotham Book Mart, a landmark bookstore and writers' center, which unfortunately is now closed.) [more]
Programs: The 2010 program schedule [more] Membership: Print out the application form to join or renew The James Joyce Society for 2010 ....[more]
Gallery: View original art, illustrations, and photography from The James Joyce Society collection ©....[more] Gotham Book Mart: Now closed, this world-renowned haven for New York writers, founded in 1920, is remembered in this 1948 photograph...[more]
Archive: Past events included Bloomsday celebrations and Fall and Spring programs...[more] Links: Follow links to the Finnegans Wake Society of New York and selected Joyce web pages for text, criticism, media, and discussion....[more]
Browsers: The joycesociety.org pages are formatted for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Opera and similar Windows and Macintosh browsers. For wireless/handheld/accessibility devices and printing, use plain text. For hints on optimizing viewing and printing, see Help.
Email: Send email info@joycesociety.org
President: A. Nicholas Fargnoli, afargnoli@molloy.edu
Webmaster: Heyward Ehrlich, info@heywardehrlich.com.
Site created 02/02/02. © 2002-2010 The James Joyce Society.
Home Programs History Gotham Book Mart Membership Gallery Archive Links Events Help
http://www.joycesociety.org/
The James Joyce Society
Current programs
History
Membership
Book Mart
Joyce links
So what does the world
really think of Joyce
-- (according to Googlism,
an independent source that
uses the Google engine)???
The James Joyce Society
Home Programs History Gotham Membership Gallery Archive Links Events Help April 1, 2010
Professor Strother Purdy of Marquette University (retired) on "The Measureless Time of Finnegans Wake - A Borgian Analysis" at The Roger Smith Hotel 501 Lexington Ave. at 47th Street New York City on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 6:00 PM
Joyce Events Calendar for 2010
(Trieste, Bloomsday, Prague, Dublin) W h a t ' s n e w ?
Strother Purdy on a Borgian Finnegans Wage 6 pm, Wed. March 24, Roger Smith Hotel, Lex & 47th
New JJS Meeting Venues The Gotham is closed
Early days of the Joyce Society Zack Bowen's memoir
Table of Contents
The James Joyce Society, founded in 1947, is devoted to the appreciation of the life, works, and significance of the Irish author (1882-1941). Meetings take place several times a year in New York City as announced. (Formerly, meetings took place at the Gotham Book Mart, a landmark bookstore and writers' center, which unfortunately is now closed.) [more]
Programs: The 2010 program schedule [more] Membership: Print out the application form to join or renew The James Joyce Society for 2010 ....[more]
Gallery: View original art, illustrations, and photography from The James Joyce Society collection ©....[more] Gotham Book Mart: Now closed, this world-renowned haven for New York writers, founded in 1920, is remembered in this 1948 photograph...[more]
Archive: Past events included Bloomsday celebrations and Fall and Spring programs...[more] Links: Follow links to the Finnegans Wake Society of New York and selected Joyce web pages for text, criticism, media, and discussion....[more]
Browsers: The joycesociety.org pages are formatted for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Opera and similar Windows and Macintosh browsers. For wireless/handheld/accessibility devices and printing, use plain text. For hints on optimizing viewing and printing, see Help.
Email: Send email info@joycesociety.org
President: A. Nicholas Fargnoli, afargnoli@molloy.edu
Webmaster: Heyward Ehrlich, info@heywardehrlich.com.
Site created 02/02/02. © 2002-2010 The James Joyce Society.
Home Programs History Gotham Book Mart Membership Gallery Archive Links Events Help
April: Poetry Month
Join a poem a day: poetnews@poets.org
April 1, 2010
Today's poem is from News of the World, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Read more about this book.
A New Day
by Philip Levine
Recorded February, 23 1978
Other Levine Poems
• On 52nd Street
• Gospel
• Coming Close
You can unsubscribe from our Poem-A-Day emails at at anytime—either completely, or until next April.
Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway
Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
212-274-0343
academy@poets.org
A Story
by Philip Levine
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
April 1, 2010
Today's poem is from News of the World, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Read more about this book.
A New Day
by Philip Levine
Recorded February, 23 1978
Other Levine Poems
• On 52nd Street
• Gospel
• Coming Close
You can unsubscribe from our Poem-A-Day emails at at anytime—either completely, or until next April.
Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway
Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
212-274-0343
academy@poets.org
A Story
by Philip Levine
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
April 1 NYT article: Reading and Mental Processes
Read about new directions in literature: literary scholars and cognitive scientists are using "snapshots of the brain" to explore the mechanics of reading. See the link below to read about what we've been exploring in the course: mental states, levels of reading in complex literary texts, free indirect style-merging character's and narrator's thoughts (as in Woolf and Joyce). They say the research is like "mapping wonderland."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?hpw
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?hpw
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Teaching at Brooklyn College: April 21st meeting
Attention English Graduate Students
Teaching at Brooklyn College
Information Session
Wednesday, April 21st (CORRECTED DATE)
Boylan 3407
6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Facilitators
Martha Nadell, Deputy Chair for Summer Sessions
James Davis, Deputy Chair for Graduate Studies
Elaine Brooks, Administrative Deputy Chair
This is an information session for any interested English graduate students in the MA and MFA programs. The goal is to clarify the department’s procedures. The presentation by the faculty members will be followed by Q & A.
Topics of discussion will include
What should graduate students do if they wish to teach at BC?
What factors determine the number and kind of courses that are available for graduate students to teach?
What factors determine who is selected to teach?
What other options are available for students who do not receive courses to teach?
Teaching at Brooklyn College
Information Session
Wednesday, April 21st (CORRECTED DATE)
Boylan 3407
6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Facilitators
Martha Nadell, Deputy Chair for Summer Sessions
James Davis, Deputy Chair for Graduate Studies
Elaine Brooks, Administrative Deputy Chair
This is an information session for any interested English graduate students in the MA and MFA programs. The goal is to clarify the department’s procedures. The presentation by the faculty members will be followed by Q & A.
Topics of discussion will include
What should graduate students do if they wish to teach at BC?
What factors determine the number and kind of courses that are available for graduate students to teach?
What factors determine who is selected to teach?
What other options are available for students who do not receive courses to teach?
Friday, March 19, 2010
New Bloomsbury Archive: King's College, Cambridge
In The Guardian, 19 March 2010
At the bottom of the page, you can access 5
photos from Frances Partridge collection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/19/bloomsbury-archive-virginia-wool
f-death
New Bloomsbury archive casts revealing light on Virginia Woolf's death
A revealing letter about the disappearance and
suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941 is part of a
new archive of letters by the Bloomsbury group
that is being opened to public viewing for the
first time.
The two collections belonged to the novelist
Rosamond Lehmann and the diarist and writer
Frances Partridge, once described by fellow group
member Clive Bell as having "the best legs in
Bloomsbury". Lehmann and Partridge became friends
at Cambridge University, later getting to know
the group of intellectuals that also included
Woolf, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and JM Keynes.
One of the documents in the archive, which has
been acquired by King's College Cambridge, sees
Clive Bell writing to Partridge on 3 April 1941,
shortly after Woolf's final disappearance. "I'm
not sure whether the Times will by now have
announced that Virginia is missing. I'm afraid
there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned
herself about noon last Friday," writes Bell.
"She had left letters for Leonard and Vanessa
[Woolf and Bell]. Her stick and footprints were
found by the edge of the river. For some days, of
course, we hoped against hope that she had
wandered crazily away and might be discovered in
a barn or a village shop. But by now all hope is
abandoned; only, as the body has not been found,
she cannot be considered dead legally."
Bell wrote that it had become evident some weeks
earlier that Woolf "was in for another of those
long and agonising breakdowns of which she had
had several already". "The prospect of two years'
insanity, then to wake up to the sort of world
which another two years of war will have made,
was such that I can't feel sure that she was
unwise," he added.
The archive's thousands of pages of letters,
including some from Woolf herself, and 30 albums
of photographs featuring key members of the group
such as Forster and Strachey, are being opened to
the public by King's. The collection also details
the Bloomsbury group's reaction to the suicide of
the artist Dora Carrington, the first wife of
Frances Partridge's husband Ralph Partridge. She
shot herself two months after Strachey - with
whom she was besotted - died of stomach cancer.
She was still alive when Ralph and Frances
arrived at the Wiltshire house, hours later.
"For me the final touch of horror seems to be
given by the fact that she was still alive and
conscious when you arrived," wrote Clive Bell to
Frances Partridge in 1932. "What can it have been
like - I'm glad I can't clearly imagine it. This
world of tragedy in which all my dearest friends
are engulfed is only half-real to me because I
left England a day or two after Lytton died.
Hadn't you and Ralph better get out of it for a
bit?"
Lehmann - whose controversial first novel Dusty
Answer, partly about her time as a student in
Cambridge, catapulted her to fame - provides a
lighter note in an August 1932 letter to
Partridge about an argument between her husband
Wogan Philipps and his father. "It started with
an argument about capital punishment (W against,
Papa for, of course) and developed at lightning
speed into communism, filthy painting, being in a
filthy set, rotten intellectuals, intention of
making Wogan squirm and beg for every penny, etc
etc," she wrote. "Before we knew where we were,
Wogan was presented with a document to sign,
agreeing to go into Morris's motorworks as an
ordinary mechanic and then go to Russia for six
months and find any work he could. Meanwhile
another letter was composed to Morris asking him
if he would take in Wogan and cure him of
communist nonsense."
She also gives an insight into her lifestyle,
writing about how she had been looking after her
son Hugo while his nurse had a holiday. "I've
really enjoyed it, tho' it makes one feel rather
blank in the head. He really is rather an amusing
child," she wrote.
King's archivist Patricia McGuire said the two
collections also provide glimpses into what
Partridge and Lehmann "were reading or listening
to, into what art galleries and exhibitions they
were attending and into how they responded to
major political events of the day, such as the
Spanish civil war".
"In a way, these two women belonged to a
generation that could only have existed between
the wars," she said. "They had education,
training and rights but they also had lots of
free time and didn't necessarily have to keep a
house. They had well-developed points of view,
were articulate about their emotions and at the
same time struggled with their bohemian
lifestyles and the more conservative, older
generation."
--
At the bottom of the page, you can access 5
photos from Frances Partridge collection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/19/bloomsbury-archive-virginia-wool
f-death
New Bloomsbury archive casts revealing light on Virginia Woolf's death
A revealing letter about the disappearance and
suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941 is part of a
new archive of letters by the Bloomsbury group
that is being opened to public viewing for the
first time.
The two collections belonged to the novelist
Rosamond Lehmann and the diarist and writer
Frances Partridge, once described by fellow group
member Clive Bell as having "the best legs in
Bloomsbury". Lehmann and Partridge became friends
at Cambridge University, later getting to know
the group of intellectuals that also included
Woolf, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and JM Keynes.
One of the documents in the archive, which has
been acquired by King's College Cambridge, sees
Clive Bell writing to Partridge on 3 April 1941,
shortly after Woolf's final disappearance. "I'm
not sure whether the Times will by now have
announced that Virginia is missing. I'm afraid
there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned
herself about noon last Friday," writes Bell.
"She had left letters for Leonard and Vanessa
[Woolf and Bell]. Her stick and footprints were
found by the edge of the river. For some days, of
course, we hoped against hope that she had
wandered crazily away and might be discovered in
a barn or a village shop. But by now all hope is
abandoned; only, as the body has not been found,
she cannot be considered dead legally."
Bell wrote that it had become evident some weeks
earlier that Woolf "was in for another of those
long and agonising breakdowns of which she had
had several already". "The prospect of two years'
insanity, then to wake up to the sort of world
which another two years of war will have made,
was such that I can't feel sure that she was
unwise," he added.
The archive's thousands of pages of letters,
including some from Woolf herself, and 30 albums
of photographs featuring key members of the group
such as Forster and Strachey, are being opened to
the public by King's. The collection also details
the Bloomsbury group's reaction to the suicide of
the artist Dora Carrington, the first wife of
Frances Partridge's husband Ralph Partridge. She
shot herself two months after Strachey - with
whom she was besotted - died of stomach cancer.
She was still alive when Ralph and Frances
arrived at the Wiltshire house, hours later.
"For me the final touch of horror seems to be
given by the fact that she was still alive and
conscious when you arrived," wrote Clive Bell to
Frances Partridge in 1932. "What can it have been
like - I'm glad I can't clearly imagine it. This
world of tragedy in which all my dearest friends
are engulfed is only half-real to me because I
left England a day or two after Lytton died.
Hadn't you and Ralph better get out of it for a
bit?"
Lehmann - whose controversial first novel Dusty
Answer, partly about her time as a student in
Cambridge, catapulted her to fame - provides a
lighter note in an August 1932 letter to
Partridge about an argument between her husband
Wogan Philipps and his father. "It started with
an argument about capital punishment (W against,
Papa for, of course) and developed at lightning
speed into communism, filthy painting, being in a
filthy set, rotten intellectuals, intention of
making Wogan squirm and beg for every penny, etc
etc," she wrote. "Before we knew where we were,
Wogan was presented with a document to sign,
agreeing to go into Morris's motorworks as an
ordinary mechanic and then go to Russia for six
months and find any work he could. Meanwhile
another letter was composed to Morris asking him
if he would take in Wogan and cure him of
communist nonsense."
She also gives an insight into her lifestyle,
writing about how she had been looking after her
son Hugo while his nurse had a holiday. "I've
really enjoyed it, tho' it makes one feel rather
blank in the head. He really is rather an amusing
child," she wrote.
King's archivist Patricia McGuire said the two
collections also provide glimpses into what
Partridge and Lehmann "were reading or listening
to, into what art galleries and exhibitions they
were attending and into how they responded to
major political events of the day, such as the
Spanish civil war".
"In a way, these two women belonged to a
generation that could only have existed between
the wars," she said. "They had education,
training and rights but they also had lots of
free time and didn't necessarily have to keep a
house. They had well-developed points of view,
were articulate about their emotions and at the
same time struggled with their bohemian
lifestyles and the more conservative, older
generation."
--
BC Library Reserve List
WOMAN READER
ON DECONSTRUCTION
ALLEGORIES OF READING
PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
FAHRENHEIT 451
THEORIES OF READING
ULYSSES AND US THE ART OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN JOYCES' MASTERPIECE
ULYSSES-EN-GENDERED PERSPECTIVES
VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE IMPACT OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE ON HER LIFE AND
WORK
VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE LANGUAGES OF PATRIARCHY
VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE BLOOMSBURY AVANT-GARDE
ULYSSES
PAPERSPACE
ON DECONSTRUCTION
ALLEGORIES OF READING
PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
FAHRENHEIT 451
THEORIES OF READING
ULYSSES AND US THE ART OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN JOYCES' MASTERPIECE
ULYSSES-EN-GENDERED PERSPECTIVES
VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE IMPACT OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE ON HER LIFE AND
WORK
VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE LANGUAGES OF PATRIARCHY
VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE BLOOMSBURY AVANT-GARDE
ULYSSES
PAPERSPACE
Bibliography: Modernism
Selected Texts:
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space (1964).
Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination (1981).
Barthes, Roland. S/Z
Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (1968).
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1941. (1986)
Broe, ed. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes (1991).
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990).
Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity (1987).
Carey, John. The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary
Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (1992).
Dettmar, Kevin & Stephen Watt (eds.) Marketing Modernism: Self-Promotion, Canonization and Reading (1996).
Eagleton, Terry. After Theory (2003).
Hamner, Robert. Epic of the Dispossessed: Derek Walcott.
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism (1986).
Kenner, Hugh. Joyce’s Voices (1978).
King, Bruce Alvin. Derek Walcott: A Carribean Life (biography) (2001).
Lawrence, Karen. The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (1981) and De-Colonizing Tradition.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf (biography) (1996).
Levenson, Michael. A Geneology of Modernism (1984).
Lukacs, Geog. Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle (chapter on “The
Ideology of Modernism”) (1971).
Marek, Jane E. Women Editing Modernism: Literary Magazines and Literary History
(1995).
Mao, Douglas & Rebecca Walkowitz. Bad Modernisms (2006).
Nelson, Cary & Laurence Grossberg. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (see
Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”) ( 1988).
Nicholls, Peter. Modernisms: A Literary Guide (1995).
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture (1998).
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative (Essay on Mrs. Dalloway, vol. II) (1984.
Riquelme, J.P. Gothic Modernisms: Essaying Dark Literary Modernity (2008).
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism (1993).
Saussy, Haun. Comp Lit in an Age of Globalization (Yale 2008)
Scott, Bonnie Kime. The Gender of Modernism (1990) and Refiguring Modernism:
Postmodern Feminst Readings of Woolf, West and Barnes (1995).
Walkowitz, Rebecca.Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (2007).
Williams, Patrick, ed. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (1994).
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space (1964).
Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination (1981).
Barthes, Roland. S/Z
Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (1968).
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1941. (1986)
Broe, ed. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes (1991).
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990).
Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity (1987).
Carey, John. The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary
Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (1992).
Dettmar, Kevin & Stephen Watt (eds.) Marketing Modernism: Self-Promotion, Canonization and Reading (1996).
Eagleton, Terry. After Theory (2003).
Hamner, Robert. Epic of the Dispossessed: Derek Walcott.
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism (1986).
Kenner, Hugh. Joyce’s Voices (1978).
King, Bruce Alvin. Derek Walcott: A Carribean Life (biography) (2001).
Lawrence, Karen. The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (1981) and De-Colonizing Tradition.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf (biography) (1996).
Levenson, Michael. A Geneology of Modernism (1984).
Lukacs, Geog. Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle (chapter on “The
Ideology of Modernism”) (1971).
Marek, Jane E. Women Editing Modernism: Literary Magazines and Literary History
(1995).
Mao, Douglas & Rebecca Walkowitz. Bad Modernisms (2006).
Nelson, Cary & Laurence Grossberg. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (see
Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”) ( 1988).
Nicholls, Peter. Modernisms: A Literary Guide (1995).
Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture (1998).
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative (Essay on Mrs. Dalloway, vol. II) (1984.
Riquelme, J.P. Gothic Modernisms: Essaying Dark Literary Modernity (2008).
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism (1993).
Saussy, Haun. Comp Lit in an Age of Globalization (Yale 2008)
Scott, Bonnie Kime. The Gender of Modernism (1990) and Refiguring Modernism:
Postmodern Feminst Readings of Woolf, West and Barnes (1995).
Walkowitz, Rebecca.Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (2007).
Williams, Patrick, ed. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (1994).
Bibliography: Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf: Selected Bibliography
Works:
Woolf, Virginia.The Complete Shorter Fiction, Susan Dick.
---. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell, 5 v.
---. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Nigel Nicholson & Joanne Trautmann. 5 v.
---. The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. 4v.
Biography:
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (2005)
Caws, Mary Ann. Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington (1990, Routledge).
Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life (1984, Norton)
Leaska, Mitchell. Granite & Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (1998, Farrar).
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf (1997).
Reid, Panthea. Art & Affection: The Life of Virginia Woolf (1996).
Rose, Phyllis. Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (1978, Oxford)
Reference:
Kirkpatrick, B.J.& Stuart Clarke. A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th ed. (1997)
Haule, Jame & Philip Smith. A Concordance (Oxford Microforms, 1981-84).
Hussey, Mark. Ed. Virginia Woolf A-Z (1995, Facts on File).
Silver, Brenda. Virginia Woolf Reading Notebooks (1983, Princeton).
Criticism:
Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis. (1989, U of Chicago Pr).
Caramagno,Thomas. Flight of the Mind:Virginia Woolf and Manic-Depressive Illness (1992,U
Ca Pr).
Caughie, Pamela L. Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism (1991, U of Illinois Pr).
Cuddy-Keane, Melba. Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere (2007)
DeSalvo, Louise. Virginia Woolf: the Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse (1989, Beacon).
Fernald, Ann. Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (Palgrave 2006
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde: War, Civilization,
Modernity (Gender and Culture Series (2007).
Gillespie, Diane. The Multiple Muses of Virginia Woolf (1993, U of Missouri Pr).
Hussey, Mark. Ed. Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth (1992).
Laurence, Patricia.The Reading of Silence: Virginia Woolf in the English Tradition (91
Stanford); Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury Modernism and China (2003).
Levenback, Karen. Virginia Woolf and the Great War (1999).
Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. Virginia Woolf & the Problem of the Subject (1987, Rutgers).
Marcus, Jane. Virginia Woolf & the Languages of Patriarchy (1987, Indiana UP).
Naremore, James. The World Without a Self (1972, Yale UP).
Phillips, Kathy J. Virginia Woolf Against Empire (1994, U of Tennessee Pr).
Richter, Harvena. Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage (1970, Princeton).
Rosenbaum S.P. The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary.
Rosenberg, Beth & Jeanne Dubino. Eds.Virginia Woolf and the Essay (1997, St. Martin’s).
Ruototolo, Lucio. The Interrupted Moment (1986, Stanford).
Tremper, Ellen. Who Lived at Alfoxden? Virginia Woolf & English Romanticism (1998).
Willis, J.H.Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers:The Hogarth Press,1917-41(1992,U P Va).
Wilson, Jean Moorcroft. Virginia Woolf: Life and London, A Biography of Place(1987, Norton).
Zwerdling, Alex. Virginia Woolf & the Real World (1986, U of Ca Press).
Works:
Woolf, Virginia.The Complete Shorter Fiction, Susan Dick.
---. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell, 5 v.
---. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Nigel Nicholson & Joanne Trautmann. 5 v.
---. The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. 4v.
Biography:
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (2005)
Caws, Mary Ann. Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington (1990, Routledge).
Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life (1984, Norton)
Leaska, Mitchell. Granite & Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (1998, Farrar).
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf (1997).
Reid, Panthea. Art & Affection: The Life of Virginia Woolf (1996).
Rose, Phyllis. Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (1978, Oxford)
Reference:
Kirkpatrick, B.J.& Stuart Clarke. A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th ed. (1997)
Haule, Jame & Philip Smith. A Concordance (Oxford Microforms, 1981-84).
Hussey, Mark. Ed. Virginia Woolf A-Z (1995, Facts on File).
Silver, Brenda. Virginia Woolf Reading Notebooks (1983, Princeton).
Criticism:
Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis. (1989, U of Chicago Pr).
Caramagno,Thomas. Flight of the Mind:Virginia Woolf and Manic-Depressive Illness (1992,U
Ca Pr).
Caughie, Pamela L. Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism (1991, U of Illinois Pr).
Cuddy-Keane, Melba. Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere (2007)
DeSalvo, Louise. Virginia Woolf: the Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse (1989, Beacon).
Fernald, Ann. Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (Palgrave 2006
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde: War, Civilization,
Modernity (Gender and Culture Series (2007).
Gillespie, Diane. The Multiple Muses of Virginia Woolf (1993, U of Missouri Pr).
Hussey, Mark. Ed. Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth (1992).
Laurence, Patricia.The Reading of Silence: Virginia Woolf in the English Tradition (91
Stanford); Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury Modernism and China (2003).
Levenback, Karen. Virginia Woolf and the Great War (1999).
Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. Virginia Woolf & the Problem of the Subject (1987, Rutgers).
Marcus, Jane. Virginia Woolf & the Languages of Patriarchy (1987, Indiana UP).
Naremore, James. The World Without a Self (1972, Yale UP).
Phillips, Kathy J. Virginia Woolf Against Empire (1994, U of Tennessee Pr).
Richter, Harvena. Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage (1970, Princeton).
Rosenbaum S.P. The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary.
Rosenberg, Beth & Jeanne Dubino. Eds.Virginia Woolf and the Essay (1997, St. Martin’s).
Ruototolo, Lucio. The Interrupted Moment (1986, Stanford).
Tremper, Ellen. Who Lived at Alfoxden? Virginia Woolf & English Romanticism (1998).
Willis, J.H.Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers:The Hogarth Press,1917-41(1992,U P Va).
Wilson, Jean Moorcroft. Virginia Woolf: Life and London, A Biography of Place(1987, Norton).
Zwerdling, Alex. Virginia Woolf & the Real World (1986, U of Ca Press).
A Trip to the Lighthouse: Daphne Merkin
By DAPHNE MERKIN: Woolf’s Lighthouse
[In the novel, the lighthouse is set in the Hebrides, but inspired by Godrevy Lighthouse, Cornwall (SW England), where the Stephens spent their summers)
Published: September 12, 2004
I went to Cornwall to see the lighthouse -- Virginia Woolf's, that is, the one that stands tantalizingly out of reach until the very end of what is arguably her best novel, ''To the Lighthouse.'' The novel is Woolf's most autobiographical. (Transfixed by the portrait of their mother, her sister Vanessa wrote, ''It is almost painful to have her so raised from the dead.'') Set in the Hebrides, it is based on Woolf's recollections of idyllic childhood summers spent at St. Ives on the Cornish coast.
Unlike the green light that winks at the end of the dock in F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''Great Gatsby,'' the lighthouse that lends itself to the title of Woolf's novel is not merely a writerly conceit. It actually exists in the form of the Godrevy lighthouse, which you can see off in the distance from the end of the quay that runs along the pier at St. Ives. It was in search of a glimpse of this literary landmark that my 14-year-old daughter, Zoe, and I traveled early in July to the southwestern tip of England, where the country narrows down into a shape approximating a human foot.
The stark white Godrevy stands on an island of its own at the head of St. Ives Bay, looking oddly less substantial in real life than as a symbol on the page -- a delicate spire rather than an imposing tower. I had impressed upon my daughter the great significance of this occasion, explaining that it would create a link between me and the writer I most admired, but she looked decidedly underwhelmed. You could hardly see the lighthouse, she pointed out, and wasn't I sick of Virginia Woolf already?
The sun flashed off the water, which glimmered a deep blue green more reminiscent of the Mediterranean than foggy, rainy England, as the bobbing sailboats clinked gently in the harbor. A narrow stretch of brownish sand in front of the quay was scattered with sunbathers, some of them sitting inside old-fashioned striped tents of the kind you can see in photos taken decades ago. All around us the sea gulls flapped, making their strange cawing sound -- half-angry, half-nostalgic, as if something has been taken away from them. (And, indeed, they have a reputation as scavengers; signs abound warning the unwary not to feed them.)
St. Ives was the center of the fishing industry throughout the 19th century until its pilchard stocks began to dry up. (Pilchards, which taste like muted sardines, are sold in tins that are decorated with evocative fishing scenes by the painter Walter Langley, who lived in Newlyn, a fishing village across the peninsula from St. Ives.) Since the 1880's, however, when the painter Walter Sickert sought out the area for the vaunted quality of its light -- both limpid and crystalline -- St. Ives has been best known as a mecca for artists and imbibers of artistic atmosphere. Its status as such was confirmed in 1993, when a small, gemlike branch of the Tate Gallery in London opened here.
The sparkling view of porthmeor Beach from the museum's top floor vies for visitors' attention with the exhibits. These include work by contemporary artists and a sampling of the artists who followed in Sickert's footsteps and came to be known as the St. Ives School. This group included painters like Ben Nicholson, Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham and Terry Frost, and the sculptors Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth. (One of them, the painter Patrick Heron, designed the stained-glass window that greets you on arrival.) Inspired by the ancient landscape of rocks, cliffs and Celtic standing stones -- being in touch with primeval life forces created by the promixity of sun, sky and water -- they tended toward an abstract and formalist aesthetic. Other members of the community were the self-taught naive artist Alfred Wallis, a retired Cornish fisherman; Bernard Leach, the pioneering British potter; and painters like Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton, who eventually veered away from strict abstraction. All of them were struck by the same lilting energy -- the ''general sense of the poetry of existence'' as Virginia Woolf once described it -- that continued to haunt the author of ''To the Lighthouse'' many years after her family stopped going to St. Ives.
Within five minutes' walking distance from the Tate, along St. Ives's higgledy-piggledy cobblestone streets, is the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. The gifted and fiercely independent-minded sculptor moved here from London together with her husband, Ben Nicholson, in 1939. Hepworth, who had four young children on her hands, observed that she felt immediately ''nourished'' by the beauty and sense of camaraderie that the village offered. She lived and worked in St. Ives until 1975, when she died in a fire in her studio. The museum displays work from different periods of Hepworth's prolific and celebrated career, including her last major piece, a poignant multipart sculpture in white marble called ''Fallen Images.'' Zoe and I walked through her sparsely furnished house in hushed contemplation, then into the carefully designed yet informal garden, where every few steps we came upon another of Hepworth's organic, elemental forms, carved variously out of wood or stone. Here you can almost feel the artist's consuming dedication as a kind of silent, hovering presence; this impression is heightened when we turn a corner and come upon her workshops, which remain as they were at the time of her death, with unfinished sculptures resting on stands, as if Hepworth herself will shortly return.
It is impossible for any visitor to Cornwall not to be captivated by its richly atmospheric aspects: the miles of untouched green countryside, dotted with cows and lambs, looking as if at any moment Tess of the D'Urbervilles might come running out in an apron and bonnet; the cliff walks straight out of ''The French Lieutenant's Woman,'' with their suggestion of romantic doom; the little grocery stores and intimate pubs; the winding roads bracketed on either side by hedgerows and wildflowers; the fishing trawlers with their array of weather-beaten ropes; the quiet churches with their impeccably maintained cemeteries, like the one in St. Just, where you can still make out the inscription on a gravestone from 1750; and the cluster of 19th-century thatched ''round houses'' in the tiny gleaming village of Veryan -- built without corners, as local lore has it, so there would be no place for the devil to hide. Even the photo-ready, cheerfully self-marketing spirit that informs the tiny town of Mevagissey, near St. Ives -- a fishing village that is also a destination for day-trippers, chockablock with stands selling cotton candy and ''real'' Cornish ice cream and shops carrying plastic pails and shovels and disposable fishing rods -- has its tinselly charm.
And yet it is also impossible for anyone who stays for any time in Cornwall not to realize fairly quickly that it is a region at odds with itself, torn between the temptations of progress and the grip of an idealized past. Everywhere you go you can sense the clash between the thrifty, cautious habits of a rural indigenous population -- a spirit characterized by the plain-spoken fishermen, matey pubs and a dismissive attitude toward all that is showy or too openly aspiring -- and the rapacious consumerism of the Londoners (the ''I want people,'' as they are called) with their buy-'em-and-gut-'em mind-set. Locals or transplanted residents who consider themselves locals -- it doesn't seem to matter how briefly one has actually lived here before claiming this part of the world as one's own -- are in the habit of referring mistily to the ''old'' Cornwall as opposed to the ''new'' Cornwall. The past stands for an irreverent and stubbornly isolationist spirit, the sense the Cornish have of being a people unto themselves ever since the days when Cornwall still went by its Cornish name of Kernow.
The past also stands, although this goes mostly unremarked, for the specter of poverty that marks grim, depleted towns like Camborne and Redruth. Once the center of the defunct tin- and copper-mining industries that were the backbone of Cornwall's economy from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, they now can lay claim to one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the country. Like St. Austell, the bleak town in mid-Cornwall where our five-hour train ride from London deposited us, these are not places in which one would care to linger. Yet in the last few years, St. Austell, on the verge of dereliction since the decline of its once-flourishing china-clay industry, has begun to rebound, with the beginning of the astonishingly successful Eden Project. This environmental development, built on the site of an abandoned clay pit on the outskirts of town, consists of two enormous biospheres that recreate two of the earth's climates, replete with jungle, waterfalls, whimsical sculptures and all manner of plants.
The ''new'' Cornwall -- its present and future -- is embodied by the tourists the locals refer to (even as they assure me that no one uses the derogatory term) as ''emmets'' -- the local word for ''ants.'' Starting with the arrival of Easter and continuing though November, throngs of visitors pour in from other parts of England, bringing with them a much-needed infusion of income to a part of the country that remains, in spite of its breathtaking landscape and inarguable seductions, one of the most economically depressed. They come, like the two jolly retirees from Kent my daughter and I meet down on the dock in Megavissey, to breathe in the fresh sea air, reel in a fish or two and get their fill of ''cream teas'' (showcasing the artery-clogging clotted cream the region prides itself on). The doughy specialty with crimped edges known as as the Cornish pasty is also to be had here; originally devised as a one-stop meal for the men working down in the mines, with a bit of sweet and savory nestled together under the same crust, pasties put me in mind of overgrown apple turnovers.
And now, I suppose, is as good a moment as any to admit the truth: I came to Cornwall to see Virginia Woolf's lighthouse -- which belongs to the old Cornwall, when lightkeepers still roamed the earth (these days the lights go on automatically) -- but I succumbed to the enchantment of two tiny villages, whose pristine, ungussied-up essence is largely underwritten by emmets, I mean tourists, like me. Both of these villages are within an hour or so from St. Ives and have first-class hotels that helped put them on the map.
The allure of St. Mawes, where we stayed at the Tresanton, and Portloe, where we put in at the Lugger, is precisely the time-true quality that, like all authentic experiences of place, requires an element of affluent elitism to preserve that very picturesqueness. Both towns are set in the lush section of Cornwall known as the Roseland Peninsula, much of which is under the domain of the National Trust.
St. Mawes is a singularly captivating mix of the pastoral and coastal. It has drawn wealthy summer visitors and holiday vacationers since Edwardian times hawking nothing other than its own natural assets, which include the climate (reputedly the warmest in England), a glorious setting on Falmouth Bay, with palm trees no less, and a sense of easeful respite. The Tresanton, originally created in the 1940's as a yachtsmen's club, is made up of a cluster of whitewashed old houses on different levels that give little clue from the outside to the casual elegance within. The hotel was bought in 1997 by Olga Polizzi, who first came to St. Mawes at the urging of her husband, the writer William Shawcross, who summered here as a child. The 29 rooms, most with views of the sea, are invitingly done up in tawny colors, Frette sheets and eclectic pieces. The hotel has brought a not entirely unappreciated glamour to quiet St. Mawes (Prince Charles was a guest here just a few weeks before my visit) that is not matched by the more basic accommodations that line Lower Castle Road alongside attached seafront houses.
The remarkable part of St. Mawes is that it manages to have the best of all worlds: think a bit of Capri tossed together with a scattering of Maine and a dollop of East Hampton, and then deduct the crowds. Within a few doors of one another there are a sophisticated gallery, a sleekly designed food emporium, Chalmers & Short, and the dusty, serenely outdated-looking Fashion Center, which seems straight out of a William Trevor story. James Wood, whose family runs the Waterside Gallery, which carries woodcarvings, ceramics and jewelry by Cornwall residents, undertakes to explain the town's magic to me. ''In nice weather,'' he says, ''I've never known a nicer place. I think people who come here find what they're looking for. They don't get homesick.''
Finally, there is dreamy, reclusive Portloe, which is a mere 20 minutes away from St. Mawes if you know your way around the hairpin roads. A slip of a fishing village with nothing in it but a post office, a pub and the Lugger, it makes St. Mawes look positively bustling by contrast. There is nothing to do in Portloe but take walks along the cliff, hole up in your pricey but infinitely chic room in the Lugger or hang out in the Ship Inn, which has been described to me as the best pub in Cornwall. The owner and barkeeper is Andrew Tregunna, much the friendliest person I met in the area. Andrew, who has a wife and two young children, recently renovated two upstairs rooms, which he showed me with shy pride. He plans to charge a fraction of the price of the Lugger and the Tresanton, which would make his rooms the only bargain left on Roseland.
As I watched him greet a regular who seated himself at the bar with a hearty ''How the devil are you, sir,'' I could understand why his cozy place does such a brisk business. My last night in Cornwall, I decided to forego the Lugger's tony cuisine for an excellent piece of sole cooked with capers and butter sauce at the Ship Inn.
Zoe and I sat at our table, and, while we waited for dinner, I finished off a pint of west country scrumpy (cider). The waitresses and 16-year-old pastry chef from the Lugger dropped in for drinks and a chat with friends. They hand-packed the tobacco in the cigarettes they deftly rolled; no worry about secondhand smoke in these parts.
It was nearly midnight by the time we reluctantly bade Andrew good night and made our way down the road in pitch-blackness. It occurred to me belatedly that I should have thought to take a flashlight; there were no streetlights and the only illumination was provided by the stars blinking up in the night sky. The next morning, we were booked to take the train to London, and after that we returned home.
Meanwhile, back in New York, I found myself daydreaming about waking up to the briny smell of the sea and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. Cornwall had cast its spell on me, as James Wood had predicted. There's something about the place -- maybe it comes back to the light, which really does have a sheen to it, almost like a curtain of glass beads -- that works its way into your bones.
Daphne Merkin, a novelist and critic, is working on a memoir of depression, ''Melancholy Baby.''
[In the novel, the lighthouse is set in the Hebrides, but inspired by Godrevy Lighthouse, Cornwall (SW England), where the Stephens spent their summers)
Published: September 12, 2004
I went to Cornwall to see the lighthouse -- Virginia Woolf's, that is, the one that stands tantalizingly out of reach until the very end of what is arguably her best novel, ''To the Lighthouse.'' The novel is Woolf's most autobiographical. (Transfixed by the portrait of their mother, her sister Vanessa wrote, ''It is almost painful to have her so raised from the dead.'') Set in the Hebrides, it is based on Woolf's recollections of idyllic childhood summers spent at St. Ives on the Cornish coast.
Unlike the green light that winks at the end of the dock in F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''Great Gatsby,'' the lighthouse that lends itself to the title of Woolf's novel is not merely a writerly conceit. It actually exists in the form of the Godrevy lighthouse, which you can see off in the distance from the end of the quay that runs along the pier at St. Ives. It was in search of a glimpse of this literary landmark that my 14-year-old daughter, Zoe, and I traveled early in July to the southwestern tip of England, where the country narrows down into a shape approximating a human foot.
The stark white Godrevy stands on an island of its own at the head of St. Ives Bay, looking oddly less substantial in real life than as a symbol on the page -- a delicate spire rather than an imposing tower. I had impressed upon my daughter the great significance of this occasion, explaining that it would create a link between me and the writer I most admired, but she looked decidedly underwhelmed. You could hardly see the lighthouse, she pointed out, and wasn't I sick of Virginia Woolf already?
The sun flashed off the water, which glimmered a deep blue green more reminiscent of the Mediterranean than foggy, rainy England, as the bobbing sailboats clinked gently in the harbor. A narrow stretch of brownish sand in front of the quay was scattered with sunbathers, some of them sitting inside old-fashioned striped tents of the kind you can see in photos taken decades ago. All around us the sea gulls flapped, making their strange cawing sound -- half-angry, half-nostalgic, as if something has been taken away from them. (And, indeed, they have a reputation as scavengers; signs abound warning the unwary not to feed them.)
St. Ives was the center of the fishing industry throughout the 19th century until its pilchard stocks began to dry up. (Pilchards, which taste like muted sardines, are sold in tins that are decorated with evocative fishing scenes by the painter Walter Langley, who lived in Newlyn, a fishing village across the peninsula from St. Ives.) Since the 1880's, however, when the painter Walter Sickert sought out the area for the vaunted quality of its light -- both limpid and crystalline -- St. Ives has been best known as a mecca for artists and imbibers of artistic atmosphere. Its status as such was confirmed in 1993, when a small, gemlike branch of the Tate Gallery in London opened here.
The sparkling view of porthmeor Beach from the museum's top floor vies for visitors' attention with the exhibits. These include work by contemporary artists and a sampling of the artists who followed in Sickert's footsteps and came to be known as the St. Ives School. This group included painters like Ben Nicholson, Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham and Terry Frost, and the sculptors Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth. (One of them, the painter Patrick Heron, designed the stained-glass window that greets you on arrival.) Inspired by the ancient landscape of rocks, cliffs and Celtic standing stones -- being in touch with primeval life forces created by the promixity of sun, sky and water -- they tended toward an abstract and formalist aesthetic. Other members of the community were the self-taught naive artist Alfred Wallis, a retired Cornish fisherman; Bernard Leach, the pioneering British potter; and painters like Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton, who eventually veered away from strict abstraction. All of them were struck by the same lilting energy -- the ''general sense of the poetry of existence'' as Virginia Woolf once described it -- that continued to haunt the author of ''To the Lighthouse'' many years after her family stopped going to St. Ives.
Within five minutes' walking distance from the Tate, along St. Ives's higgledy-piggledy cobblestone streets, is the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. The gifted and fiercely independent-minded sculptor moved here from London together with her husband, Ben Nicholson, in 1939. Hepworth, who had four young children on her hands, observed that she felt immediately ''nourished'' by the beauty and sense of camaraderie that the village offered. She lived and worked in St. Ives until 1975, when she died in a fire in her studio. The museum displays work from different periods of Hepworth's prolific and celebrated career, including her last major piece, a poignant multipart sculpture in white marble called ''Fallen Images.'' Zoe and I walked through her sparsely furnished house in hushed contemplation, then into the carefully designed yet informal garden, where every few steps we came upon another of Hepworth's organic, elemental forms, carved variously out of wood or stone. Here you can almost feel the artist's consuming dedication as a kind of silent, hovering presence; this impression is heightened when we turn a corner and come upon her workshops, which remain as they were at the time of her death, with unfinished sculptures resting on stands, as if Hepworth herself will shortly return.
It is impossible for any visitor to Cornwall not to be captivated by its richly atmospheric aspects: the miles of untouched green countryside, dotted with cows and lambs, looking as if at any moment Tess of the D'Urbervilles might come running out in an apron and bonnet; the cliff walks straight out of ''The French Lieutenant's Woman,'' with their suggestion of romantic doom; the little grocery stores and intimate pubs; the winding roads bracketed on either side by hedgerows and wildflowers; the fishing trawlers with their array of weather-beaten ropes; the quiet churches with their impeccably maintained cemeteries, like the one in St. Just, where you can still make out the inscription on a gravestone from 1750; and the cluster of 19th-century thatched ''round houses'' in the tiny gleaming village of Veryan -- built without corners, as local lore has it, so there would be no place for the devil to hide. Even the photo-ready, cheerfully self-marketing spirit that informs the tiny town of Mevagissey, near St. Ives -- a fishing village that is also a destination for day-trippers, chockablock with stands selling cotton candy and ''real'' Cornish ice cream and shops carrying plastic pails and shovels and disposable fishing rods -- has its tinselly charm.
And yet it is also impossible for anyone who stays for any time in Cornwall not to realize fairly quickly that it is a region at odds with itself, torn between the temptations of progress and the grip of an idealized past. Everywhere you go you can sense the clash between the thrifty, cautious habits of a rural indigenous population -- a spirit characterized by the plain-spoken fishermen, matey pubs and a dismissive attitude toward all that is showy or too openly aspiring -- and the rapacious consumerism of the Londoners (the ''I want people,'' as they are called) with their buy-'em-and-gut-'em mind-set. Locals or transplanted residents who consider themselves locals -- it doesn't seem to matter how briefly one has actually lived here before claiming this part of the world as one's own -- are in the habit of referring mistily to the ''old'' Cornwall as opposed to the ''new'' Cornwall. The past stands for an irreverent and stubbornly isolationist spirit, the sense the Cornish have of being a people unto themselves ever since the days when Cornwall still went by its Cornish name of Kernow.
The past also stands, although this goes mostly unremarked, for the specter of poverty that marks grim, depleted towns like Camborne and Redruth. Once the center of the defunct tin- and copper-mining industries that were the backbone of Cornwall's economy from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, they now can lay claim to one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the country. Like St. Austell, the bleak town in mid-Cornwall where our five-hour train ride from London deposited us, these are not places in which one would care to linger. Yet in the last few years, St. Austell, on the verge of dereliction since the decline of its once-flourishing china-clay industry, has begun to rebound, with the beginning of the astonishingly successful Eden Project. This environmental development, built on the site of an abandoned clay pit on the outskirts of town, consists of two enormous biospheres that recreate two of the earth's climates, replete with jungle, waterfalls, whimsical sculptures and all manner of plants.
The ''new'' Cornwall -- its present and future -- is embodied by the tourists the locals refer to (even as they assure me that no one uses the derogatory term) as ''emmets'' -- the local word for ''ants.'' Starting with the arrival of Easter and continuing though November, throngs of visitors pour in from other parts of England, bringing with them a much-needed infusion of income to a part of the country that remains, in spite of its breathtaking landscape and inarguable seductions, one of the most economically depressed. They come, like the two jolly retirees from Kent my daughter and I meet down on the dock in Megavissey, to breathe in the fresh sea air, reel in a fish or two and get their fill of ''cream teas'' (showcasing the artery-clogging clotted cream the region prides itself on). The doughy specialty with crimped edges known as as the Cornish pasty is also to be had here; originally devised as a one-stop meal for the men working down in the mines, with a bit of sweet and savory nestled together under the same crust, pasties put me in mind of overgrown apple turnovers.
And now, I suppose, is as good a moment as any to admit the truth: I came to Cornwall to see Virginia Woolf's lighthouse -- which belongs to the old Cornwall, when lightkeepers still roamed the earth (these days the lights go on automatically) -- but I succumbed to the enchantment of two tiny villages, whose pristine, ungussied-up essence is largely underwritten by emmets, I mean tourists, like me. Both of these villages are within an hour or so from St. Ives and have first-class hotels that helped put them on the map.
The allure of St. Mawes, where we stayed at the Tresanton, and Portloe, where we put in at the Lugger, is precisely the time-true quality that, like all authentic experiences of place, requires an element of affluent elitism to preserve that very picturesqueness. Both towns are set in the lush section of Cornwall known as the Roseland Peninsula, much of which is under the domain of the National Trust.
St. Mawes is a singularly captivating mix of the pastoral and coastal. It has drawn wealthy summer visitors and holiday vacationers since Edwardian times hawking nothing other than its own natural assets, which include the climate (reputedly the warmest in England), a glorious setting on Falmouth Bay, with palm trees no less, and a sense of easeful respite. The Tresanton, originally created in the 1940's as a yachtsmen's club, is made up of a cluster of whitewashed old houses on different levels that give little clue from the outside to the casual elegance within. The hotel was bought in 1997 by Olga Polizzi, who first came to St. Mawes at the urging of her husband, the writer William Shawcross, who summered here as a child. The 29 rooms, most with views of the sea, are invitingly done up in tawny colors, Frette sheets and eclectic pieces. The hotel has brought a not entirely unappreciated glamour to quiet St. Mawes (Prince Charles was a guest here just a few weeks before my visit) that is not matched by the more basic accommodations that line Lower Castle Road alongside attached seafront houses.
The remarkable part of St. Mawes is that it manages to have the best of all worlds: think a bit of Capri tossed together with a scattering of Maine and a dollop of East Hampton, and then deduct the crowds. Within a few doors of one another there are a sophisticated gallery, a sleekly designed food emporium, Chalmers & Short, and the dusty, serenely outdated-looking Fashion Center, which seems straight out of a William Trevor story. James Wood, whose family runs the Waterside Gallery, which carries woodcarvings, ceramics and jewelry by Cornwall residents, undertakes to explain the town's magic to me. ''In nice weather,'' he says, ''I've never known a nicer place. I think people who come here find what they're looking for. They don't get homesick.''
Finally, there is dreamy, reclusive Portloe, which is a mere 20 minutes away from St. Mawes if you know your way around the hairpin roads. A slip of a fishing village with nothing in it but a post office, a pub and the Lugger, it makes St. Mawes look positively bustling by contrast. There is nothing to do in Portloe but take walks along the cliff, hole up in your pricey but infinitely chic room in the Lugger or hang out in the Ship Inn, which has been described to me as the best pub in Cornwall. The owner and barkeeper is Andrew Tregunna, much the friendliest person I met in the area. Andrew, who has a wife and two young children, recently renovated two upstairs rooms, which he showed me with shy pride. He plans to charge a fraction of the price of the Lugger and the Tresanton, which would make his rooms the only bargain left on Roseland.
As I watched him greet a regular who seated himself at the bar with a hearty ''How the devil are you, sir,'' I could understand why his cozy place does such a brisk business. My last night in Cornwall, I decided to forego the Lugger's tony cuisine for an excellent piece of sole cooked with capers and butter sauce at the Ship Inn.
Zoe and I sat at our table, and, while we waited for dinner, I finished off a pint of west country scrumpy (cider). The waitresses and 16-year-old pastry chef from the Lugger dropped in for drinks and a chat with friends. They hand-packed the tobacco in the cigarettes they deftly rolled; no worry about secondhand smoke in these parts.
It was nearly midnight by the time we reluctantly bade Andrew good night and made our way down the road in pitch-blackness. It occurred to me belatedly that I should have thought to take a flashlight; there were no streetlights and the only illumination was provided by the stars blinking up in the night sky. The next morning, we were booked to take the train to London, and after that we returned home.
Meanwhile, back in New York, I found myself daydreaming about waking up to the briny smell of the sea and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. Cornwall had cast its spell on me, as James Wood had predicted. There's something about the place -- maybe it comes back to the light, which really does have a sheen to it, almost like a curtain of glass beads -- that works its way into your bones.
Daphne Merkin, a novelist and critic, is working on a memoir of depression, ''Melancholy Baby.''
Joyce Reading Question: Week of 3/18-25
Briefly describe your adventures in reading the first three chapters of Joyce's
Ulysses. We'll discuss some of these responses
in class next week.
Ulysses. We'll discuss some of these responses
in class next week.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Contemporary Treatments of Reading: potential paper topics
Contemporary Bits on Reading (more suggestions?)
Rachel Jennings sends this link on "The Twilight Zone," an episode in which a man who loves to read cannot find the time until...
http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/video/
Also new books: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, a spoof on the Queen's new engagement with reading.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Shaffer and Borrows, the charming story of a reading society (told in epistolary style) that formed on the island of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between France and England, during German occupation of the island in WWII.
Stevie Smith has a new book of essays, out this month, Changing My Mind. There are a few interesting essays on her reading of Forster, Barthes, Nabokov in a section called "Reading."
Rachel Jennings sends this link on "The Twilight Zone," an episode in which a man who loves to read cannot find the time until...
http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/video/
Also new books: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, a spoof on the Queen's new engagement with reading.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Shaffer and Borrows, the charming story of a reading society (told in epistolary style) that formed on the island of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between France and England, during German occupation of the island in WWII.
Stevie Smith has a new book of essays, out this month, Changing My Mind. There are a few interesting essays on her reading of Forster, Barthes, Nabokov in a section called "Reading."
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Talk on Abolition: March 17th, 3:40-5:00, BC
Book Talk: David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City.
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Library, March 17, 3:40-5:00 p.m.
Noted historian Graham Hodges (Colgate University) will discuss his latest book--the first biography of David Ruggles, a leading African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who led more than 600 bond people to freedom, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. Ruggles mentored leading black abolitionists including Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Book signing to follow talk.
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Library, March 17, 3:40-5:00 p.m.
Noted historian Graham Hodges (Colgate University) will discuss his latest book--the first biography of David Ruggles, a leading African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who led more than 600 bond people to freedom, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. Ruggles mentored leading black abolitionists including Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Book signing to follow talk.
Friday, March 5, 2010
NYT Review of Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"
Movie Review
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010)
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures)
Walt Disney Pictures
Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland.”
March 5, 2010
What’s a Nice Girl Doing in This Hole?
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: March 5, 2010
Into the dark you tumble in “Alice in Wonderland,” Tim Burton’s busy, garish and periodically amusing repo of the Lewis Carroll hallucination “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” It’s a long fall turned long haul, despite the Burtonian flourishes — the pinch of cruelty, the mordant wit — that animate the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the porker that slides under her feet with a squeal. “I love a warm pig belly for my aching feet,” the queen tells Alice. Played by Mia Wasikowska, Alice looks a touch dazed: she seems to have left her pulse above ground when she fell down the rabbit hole of Mr. Burton’s imagination.
-----------------
Multimedia
Faces of WonderlandSlide Show
Faces of Wonderland
Related
Film: Drinking Blood: New Wonders of Alice’s World (February 28, 2010)
DVDs: Another Trippy Rabbit Hole (February 28, 2010)
ArtsBeat: Curiouser and Curiouser Cinema Adventures in 'Wonderland'
Blogs
The Carpetbagger
The
Carpetbagger
Your guide to the news and the nonsense of awards season. Join the discussion.
Go to Awards Season
------------------
Mr. Burton has done his best work with contemporary stories, so it’s curious if not curiouser that he’s turned his sights on another 19th-century tale. Perhaps after slitting all those throats in his adaptation of “Sweeney Todd,” he thought he would chop off a few heads. Whatever his inspiration, he has tackled this new story with his customary mix of torpor and frenzy. After a short glance back at Alice’s childhood and an equally brief look at her present, he sends the 19-year-old on her way, first down the hole and then into a dreamscape — unfortunately tricked out with 3-D that distracts more than it delights — where she meets a grinning cat and a lugubrious caterpillar, among other fantastical creatures.
Dark and sometimes grim, this isn’t your great-grandmother’s Alice or that of Uncle Walt, who was disappointed with the 1951 Disney version of “Alice in Wonderland.” “Alice has no character,” said a writer who worked on that project. “She merely plays straight man to a cast of screwball comics.” Of course the character of Carroll’s original Alice is evident in each outrageous creation she dreams up in “Wonderland” and in the sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass,” which means that she’s a straight man to her own imagination. (She is Wonderland.) Here she mostly serves as a foil for the top biller Johnny Depp, who (yes, yes) plays the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Burton’s bright and leaden whimsies.
First thought up by Carroll in a rowboat in which one of the passengers was the 10-year-old Alice Liddell, the object of his much-debated love, “Wonderland” (1865) is, among many other things, a testament to glorious nonsense as well as an inspiration for dark thoughts (about Carroll’s feelings for Liddell) and for lysergic works from the likes of David Lynch. It’s a total (head) trip, one that starts and stops and doesn’t fit easily into the mainstream narrative mold, which could explain why the screenwriter Linda Woolverton, borrowing both from “Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” has given Alice a back story, a dash of psychology and a battle royal if, alas, not a pool of her own tears in which to swim.
Since narrative momentum isn’t Mr. Burton’s strength, “Alice in Wonderland” probably seemed a good fit for him, and there are moments when his transparent delight in the material lifts the movie and even carries it forward. His Wonderland (here, Underland) isn’t inviting or attractive. The colors are often bilious, though the palette also turns gunmetal gray, bringing to mind “Sweeney Todd.” There’s a suggestively nightmarish aspect to Alice’s journey, as when she steps on some severed heads in the Red Queen’s moat as if they were stones. The queen herself is a horror: Bette Davis as Elizabeth I and reconfigured as a bobble-head doll. Ms. Bonham Carter makes you hear the petulant child in her barbarism and the wounded woman too. She rocks the house and the movie.
And she does, even though the character is a harridan cliché who, smitten with her knave (Crispin Glover) and clutching her power, rules with a boom. (“Off with his head!”) She eventually dukes it out with her rival and sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, gliding like an ice dancer), who enlists Alice’s help. There’s more, including computer-generated flowers, assorted 3-D projectiles and the usual British actors earning their pay, like the “Harry Potter” alumni Timothy Spall, Alan Rickman and Imelda Staunton. Mr. Burton lavishes his attention on the little things in “Wonderland” — the perfectly drawn red heart painted on the center of the Red Queen’s mouth, for instance — perhaps because nothing else claims his attention. He’s very bad with the awkward action scenes, maybe because he’s embarrassed that they even exist.
Mr. Depp’s strenuously flamboyant turn embodies the best and worst of Mr. Burton’s filmmaking tendencies even as the actor brings his own brand of cinematic crazy to the tea party. With his Kabuki-white face, the character seems to have been calculated to invoke Heath Ledger’s Joker, though at his amusing best the Hatter brings to mind a strung-out Carrot Top. But Mr. Depp doesn’t have much to do, which he proves as he wildly flirts with the camera. The only time the character hooks you is in the shivery moment when his gaze turns predatory as he looks at Alice, who, every inch a Tim Burton Goth Girl, from her corpselike pallor to her enervated presence, presents a more convincing vision of death than of sex.
That queasy, potentially rich and frightening moment expectedly fades as fast as the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), which doesn’t leave you with much else to hold onto, Alice included. Mr. Burton’s heroine is a wan figure to hang an entire world on, and Ms. Wasikowska, who’s a livelier, truer presence in the forthcoming “The Kids Are All Right,” barely registers among Mr. Burton’s clanging and the computer-generated galumphing. This isn’t an impossible story to translate to the screen, as the Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer showed with “Alice” (1988), where the divide between reality and fantasy blurs as it does in dreams. It’s just hard to know why Mr. Burton, who doesn’t seem much interested in Alice, bothered.
“Alice in Wonderland” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It is a surprise (or not) that this movie, with its severed heads and Jabberwocky battle, is not rated PG-13, which serves as a warning for parents.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Tim Burton; written by Linda Woolverton, based on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll; director of photography, Dariusz Wolski; edited by Chris Lebenzon; music by Danny Elfman; costumes by Colleen Atwood; senior visual effects supervisor, Ken Ralston; makeup design by Valli O’Reilly; produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Joe Roth, Suzanne Todd and Jennifer Todd; released by Walt Disney Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.
WITH: Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter), Mia Wasikowska (Alice Kingsleigh), Anne Hathaway (White Queen), Helena Bonham Carter (Red Queen), Crispin Glover (Stayne-Knave of Hearts), Matt Lucas (Tweedledee and Tweedledum), Alan Rickman (Absolem the Caterpillar), Timothy Spall (Bayard the Bloodhound) and Imelda Staunton (Tall Flower Faces).
WITH THE VOICES OF: Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat), Barbara Windsor (Dormouse), Christopher Lee (Jabberwocky), Michael Gough (Dodo) and Paul Whitehouse (March Hare).
Average Reader Rating
2.5 rating, 31 votes
Rate It
Log In to Rate This
5 Readers' Reviews
* All Comments
* Highlights
* Readers' Recommendations
* Oldest
* Newest
March 4th, 2010
10:03 pm
Rating:
5.
Lighten Up
Stop dissecting; just sit back and enjoy the fun. It's just entertainment, why so serious?
– Byron Furseth, Chicago
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers
March 4th, 2010
9:23 pm
Rating:
4.
Wonderful Movie
The critic disqualifies herself when she says that Alice is a foil for Mr. Depp. There can be no doubt that Ms. Wasowski is the heroine of this film, whether you like her or not. Mr. Depp is good as usual, but as expected he does not have the major part the trailers would have us believe.
It is a wonderful and magic movie for anyone who has kept their imagination and a love for fairy tales. The visuals are absolutely stunning and artful, the aesthetically loveliest movie I have seen. The 3D beautifully adds to the immersion.
– MadHatter, Berlin, Germany
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers
March 4th, 2010
8:40 pm
Rating:
3.
Waste of rabbit time. 1 star.
1 star
Once again, Tim Burton demonstrates a complete lack of imagination. Instead of telling a wonderful story of how a young girl descends into a wonderland of the mind, we get the usual cliched Burton handbag of gothic grunts, overtoothed animals, and lispy lead character in Depp who seem not to have even a passing acquaintance with one of childhoods fabled imaginative fables. Where oh where is the spine of the story, the characters, the conflict, the story and the story?
Tony Gillotte
Vacaville, CA
– Tony Gillotte, Vacaville, CA
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
March 4th, 2010
8:35 pm
Rating:
2.
misuse of talent
I admit that I always cringe when I see Dargis' byline, but if I read her right, as I muddle my way again through her signature convoluted 'review,' I am in agreement that this is not much of a movie, and that Burton's and Depp's talents were not put to good use.
– davidkirby008z, perth
Recommend Recommended by 9 Readers
March 3rd, 2010
8:39 pm
Rating:
1.
Alice in a by-the-numbers Wonderland
When it was announced that goth-pop filmmaker Tim Burton was going to remake Alice in Wonderland, on paper it appeared a match made in cinematic heaven.
With a back-catalogue featuring some of cinema's most unique treats (Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Beetlejuice to name just a handful), Burton seemed the ideal candidate to give Lewis Carroll's Alice a 21st century makeover.
Burton gathered a stellar cast of his favourites (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter), bona fide stars (Anne Hathaway) and fresh talent (Australia's Mia Wasikowska), recruited high-profile scriptwriter Linda Woolverton and told the world he was going to make his Wonderland a 3D visual spectacular.
It appeared he was going to try to make his 3D Wonderland the 2010 equivalent of Dorothy walking into a Technicolor Oz back in 1939.
However, what sounds good on paper doesn't always translate into reality, and sadly that is what has happened here.
The story itself could have saved this film, however, it seems the scriptwriter herself was relying on the amazing visuals to give the story more impact and pacing than what this paper-thin narrative could offer.
It opens with a 19-year-old Alice (Wasikowska) at a crossroads in her life.
While she has grown up and blossomed into a beautiful young woman, she is still haunted by the same dream, her journey to Wonderland as a wide-eyed youngster.
When she is proposed to by a man she has no romantic interest in, she escapes back to Wonderland, where she finds the huge-headed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter playing, well, herself) is destroying everything.
A group of familiar characters - including the mad hatter (a ludicrously miscast Depp), the Cheshire Cat and Tweedledee and - dum (Little Britain's Matt Lucas) - are not convinced this is the same Alice that has been prophesised as the one to come and save them from the evil queen's rule.
After the visual phenomenon that is Avatar, global audiences are eagerly awaiting the next movie to submerse them into a 3D cinematic experience and alas, Alice isn't going to be the movie to do that.
Whereas Cameron filmed his visual opus in 3D, Burton opted against this, deciding to convert it after filming, because it is easier and cheaper.
As such, the 3D and overall visuals of Wonderland are as good as your basic by-the-numbers CG blockbuster, not the groundbreaking visual experience we were being told to expect.
– Ross, Perth, Australia
Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers
Average Reader Rating
2.5 rating, 31 votes
Rate It
Log In to Rate This
Read All Readers' Reviews »
Related Articles
* SPECIAL REPORT; Designing for 'Alice in the Real World' (March 4, 2010)
* FILM; Drinking Blood: New Wonders of Alice’s World (February 28, 2010)
* 'Avatar' Faces Traffic Jam At 3-D Screens (January 30, 2010)
* ARTS, BRIEFLY; Brains Behind 'Beetlejuice' To Head Cannes Jury (January 26, 2010)
* FILM; Unleashing Life's Wild Things (November 8, 2009)
Ads by Google what's this?
Alice in Wonderland Bucks
Give Alice in Wonderland Fandango Bucks. Good Towards Any Movie/Time!
Fandango.com/AliceInWonderland
Alice in Wonderland
Download Alice in Wonderland digital book now
www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php
Alice Wonderland Jewelry
Chesire Cat, Mad Hatter, Red Queen, White Rabbit, Alice and More
www.KirksFollyStore.com
Tickets & Showtimes
Enter your ZIP code or city to view tickets and showtimes in your area.
Odd Facebook ads
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010)
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures)
Walt Disney Pictures
Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland.”
March 5, 2010
What’s a Nice Girl Doing in This Hole?
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: March 5, 2010
Into the dark you tumble in “Alice in Wonderland,” Tim Burton’s busy, garish and periodically amusing repo of the Lewis Carroll hallucination “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” It’s a long fall turned long haul, despite the Burtonian flourishes — the pinch of cruelty, the mordant wit — that animate the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the porker that slides under her feet with a squeal. “I love a warm pig belly for my aching feet,” the queen tells Alice. Played by Mia Wasikowska, Alice looks a touch dazed: she seems to have left her pulse above ground when she fell down the rabbit hole of Mr. Burton’s imagination.
-----------------
Multimedia
Faces of WonderlandSlide Show
Faces of Wonderland
Related
Film: Drinking Blood: New Wonders of Alice’s World (February 28, 2010)
DVDs: Another Trippy Rabbit Hole (February 28, 2010)
ArtsBeat: Curiouser and Curiouser Cinema Adventures in 'Wonderland'
Blogs
The Carpetbagger
The
Carpetbagger
Your guide to the news and the nonsense of awards season. Join the discussion.
Go to Awards Season
------------------
Mr. Burton has done his best work with contemporary stories, so it’s curious if not curiouser that he’s turned his sights on another 19th-century tale. Perhaps after slitting all those throats in his adaptation of “Sweeney Todd,” he thought he would chop off a few heads. Whatever his inspiration, he has tackled this new story with his customary mix of torpor and frenzy. After a short glance back at Alice’s childhood and an equally brief look at her present, he sends the 19-year-old on her way, first down the hole and then into a dreamscape — unfortunately tricked out with 3-D that distracts more than it delights — where she meets a grinning cat and a lugubrious caterpillar, among other fantastical creatures.
Dark and sometimes grim, this isn’t your great-grandmother’s Alice or that of Uncle Walt, who was disappointed with the 1951 Disney version of “Alice in Wonderland.” “Alice has no character,” said a writer who worked on that project. “She merely plays straight man to a cast of screwball comics.” Of course the character of Carroll’s original Alice is evident in each outrageous creation she dreams up in “Wonderland” and in the sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass,” which means that she’s a straight man to her own imagination. (She is Wonderland.) Here she mostly serves as a foil for the top biller Johnny Depp, who (yes, yes) plays the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Burton’s bright and leaden whimsies.
First thought up by Carroll in a rowboat in which one of the passengers was the 10-year-old Alice Liddell, the object of his much-debated love, “Wonderland” (1865) is, among many other things, a testament to glorious nonsense as well as an inspiration for dark thoughts (about Carroll’s feelings for Liddell) and for lysergic works from the likes of David Lynch. It’s a total (head) trip, one that starts and stops and doesn’t fit easily into the mainstream narrative mold, which could explain why the screenwriter Linda Woolverton, borrowing both from “Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” has given Alice a back story, a dash of psychology and a battle royal if, alas, not a pool of her own tears in which to swim.
Since narrative momentum isn’t Mr. Burton’s strength, “Alice in Wonderland” probably seemed a good fit for him, and there are moments when his transparent delight in the material lifts the movie and even carries it forward. His Wonderland (here, Underland) isn’t inviting or attractive. The colors are often bilious, though the palette also turns gunmetal gray, bringing to mind “Sweeney Todd.” There’s a suggestively nightmarish aspect to Alice’s journey, as when she steps on some severed heads in the Red Queen’s moat as if they were stones. The queen herself is a horror: Bette Davis as Elizabeth I and reconfigured as a bobble-head doll. Ms. Bonham Carter makes you hear the petulant child in her barbarism and the wounded woman too. She rocks the house and the movie.
And she does, even though the character is a harridan cliché who, smitten with her knave (Crispin Glover) and clutching her power, rules with a boom. (“Off with his head!”) She eventually dukes it out with her rival and sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, gliding like an ice dancer), who enlists Alice’s help. There’s more, including computer-generated flowers, assorted 3-D projectiles and the usual British actors earning their pay, like the “Harry Potter” alumni Timothy Spall, Alan Rickman and Imelda Staunton. Mr. Burton lavishes his attention on the little things in “Wonderland” — the perfectly drawn red heart painted on the center of the Red Queen’s mouth, for instance — perhaps because nothing else claims his attention. He’s very bad with the awkward action scenes, maybe because he’s embarrassed that they even exist.
Mr. Depp’s strenuously flamboyant turn embodies the best and worst of Mr. Burton’s filmmaking tendencies even as the actor brings his own brand of cinematic crazy to the tea party. With his Kabuki-white face, the character seems to have been calculated to invoke Heath Ledger’s Joker, though at his amusing best the Hatter brings to mind a strung-out Carrot Top. But Mr. Depp doesn’t have much to do, which he proves as he wildly flirts with the camera. The only time the character hooks you is in the shivery moment when his gaze turns predatory as he looks at Alice, who, every inch a Tim Burton Goth Girl, from her corpselike pallor to her enervated presence, presents a more convincing vision of death than of sex.
That queasy, potentially rich and frightening moment expectedly fades as fast as the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), which doesn’t leave you with much else to hold onto, Alice included. Mr. Burton’s heroine is a wan figure to hang an entire world on, and Ms. Wasikowska, who’s a livelier, truer presence in the forthcoming “The Kids Are All Right,” barely registers among Mr. Burton’s clanging and the computer-generated galumphing. This isn’t an impossible story to translate to the screen, as the Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer showed with “Alice” (1988), where the divide between reality and fantasy blurs as it does in dreams. It’s just hard to know why Mr. Burton, who doesn’t seem much interested in Alice, bothered.
“Alice in Wonderland” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It is a surprise (or not) that this movie, with its severed heads and Jabberwocky battle, is not rated PG-13, which serves as a warning for parents.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Tim Burton; written by Linda Woolverton, based on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll; director of photography, Dariusz Wolski; edited by Chris Lebenzon; music by Danny Elfman; costumes by Colleen Atwood; senior visual effects supervisor, Ken Ralston; makeup design by Valli O’Reilly; produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Joe Roth, Suzanne Todd and Jennifer Todd; released by Walt Disney Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.
WITH: Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter), Mia Wasikowska (Alice Kingsleigh), Anne Hathaway (White Queen), Helena Bonham Carter (Red Queen), Crispin Glover (Stayne-Knave of Hearts), Matt Lucas (Tweedledee and Tweedledum), Alan Rickman (Absolem the Caterpillar), Timothy Spall (Bayard the Bloodhound) and Imelda Staunton (Tall Flower Faces).
WITH THE VOICES OF: Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat), Barbara Windsor (Dormouse), Christopher Lee (Jabberwocky), Michael Gough (Dodo) and Paul Whitehouse (March Hare).
Average Reader Rating
2.5 rating, 31 votes
Rate It
Log In to Rate This
5 Readers' Reviews
* All Comments
* Highlights
* Readers' Recommendations
* Oldest
* Newest
March 4th, 2010
10:03 pm
Rating:
5.
Lighten Up
Stop dissecting; just sit back and enjoy the fun. It's just entertainment, why so serious?
– Byron Furseth, Chicago
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers
March 4th, 2010
9:23 pm
Rating:
4.
Wonderful Movie
The critic disqualifies herself when she says that Alice is a foil for Mr. Depp. There can be no doubt that Ms. Wasowski is the heroine of this film, whether you like her or not. Mr. Depp is good as usual, but as expected he does not have the major part the trailers would have us believe.
It is a wonderful and magic movie for anyone who has kept their imagination and a love for fairy tales. The visuals are absolutely stunning and artful, the aesthetically loveliest movie I have seen. The 3D beautifully adds to the immersion.
– MadHatter, Berlin, Germany
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers
March 4th, 2010
8:40 pm
Rating:
3.
Waste of rabbit time. 1 star.
1 star
Once again, Tim Burton demonstrates a complete lack of imagination. Instead of telling a wonderful story of how a young girl descends into a wonderland of the mind, we get the usual cliched Burton handbag of gothic grunts, overtoothed animals, and lispy lead character in Depp who seem not to have even a passing acquaintance with one of childhoods fabled imaginative fables. Where oh where is the spine of the story, the characters, the conflict, the story and the story?
Tony Gillotte
Vacaville, CA
– Tony Gillotte, Vacaville, CA
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers
March 4th, 2010
8:35 pm
Rating:
2.
misuse of talent
I admit that I always cringe when I see Dargis' byline, but if I read her right, as I muddle my way again through her signature convoluted 'review,' I am in agreement that this is not much of a movie, and that Burton's and Depp's talents were not put to good use.
– davidkirby008z, perth
Recommend Recommended by 9 Readers
March 3rd, 2010
8:39 pm
Rating:
1.
Alice in a by-the-numbers Wonderland
When it was announced that goth-pop filmmaker Tim Burton was going to remake Alice in Wonderland, on paper it appeared a match made in cinematic heaven.
With a back-catalogue featuring some of cinema's most unique treats (Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Beetlejuice to name just a handful), Burton seemed the ideal candidate to give Lewis Carroll's Alice a 21st century makeover.
Burton gathered a stellar cast of his favourites (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter), bona fide stars (Anne Hathaway) and fresh talent (Australia's Mia Wasikowska), recruited high-profile scriptwriter Linda Woolverton and told the world he was going to make his Wonderland a 3D visual spectacular.
It appeared he was going to try to make his 3D Wonderland the 2010 equivalent of Dorothy walking into a Technicolor Oz back in 1939.
However, what sounds good on paper doesn't always translate into reality, and sadly that is what has happened here.
The story itself could have saved this film, however, it seems the scriptwriter herself was relying on the amazing visuals to give the story more impact and pacing than what this paper-thin narrative could offer.
It opens with a 19-year-old Alice (Wasikowska) at a crossroads in her life.
While she has grown up and blossomed into a beautiful young woman, she is still haunted by the same dream, her journey to Wonderland as a wide-eyed youngster.
When she is proposed to by a man she has no romantic interest in, she escapes back to Wonderland, where she finds the huge-headed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter playing, well, herself) is destroying everything.
A group of familiar characters - including the mad hatter (a ludicrously miscast Depp), the Cheshire Cat and Tweedledee and - dum (Little Britain's Matt Lucas) - are not convinced this is the same Alice that has been prophesised as the one to come and save them from the evil queen's rule.
After the visual phenomenon that is Avatar, global audiences are eagerly awaiting the next movie to submerse them into a 3D cinematic experience and alas, Alice isn't going to be the movie to do that.
Whereas Cameron filmed his visual opus in 3D, Burton opted against this, deciding to convert it after filming, because it is easier and cheaper.
As such, the 3D and overall visuals of Wonderland are as good as your basic by-the-numbers CG blockbuster, not the groundbreaking visual experience we were being told to expect.
– Ross, Perth, Australia
Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers
Average Reader Rating
2.5 rating, 31 votes
Rate It
Log In to Rate This
Read All Readers' Reviews »
Related Articles
* SPECIAL REPORT; Designing for 'Alice in the Real World' (March 4, 2010)
* FILM; Drinking Blood: New Wonders of Alice’s World (February 28, 2010)
* 'Avatar' Faces Traffic Jam At 3-D Screens (January 30, 2010)
* ARTS, BRIEFLY; Brains Behind 'Beetlejuice' To Head Cannes Jury (January 26, 2010)
* FILM; Unleashing Life's Wild Things (November 8, 2009)
Ads by Google what's this?
Alice in Wonderland Bucks
Give Alice in Wonderland Fandango Bucks. Good Towards Any Movie/Time!
Fandango.com/AliceInWonderland
Alice in Wonderland
Download Alice in Wonderland digital book now
www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php
Alice Wonderland Jewelry
Chesire Cat, Mad Hatter, Red Queen, White Rabbit, Alice and More
www.KirksFollyStore.com
Tickets & Showtimes
Enter your ZIP code or city to view tickets and showtimes in your area.
Odd Facebook ads
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Virginia Woolf: Diary Excerpts & "Time Passes" from TL
Virginia Woolf's Diary written during the period she was writing "Time Passes" in To the Lighthouse
Sources for Genetic Criticism (a criticism that explores the early drafts, versions and sources of a text.
Woolf On-Line
Question: What kinds of literary questions might you generate after reading some of the diary entries and the historical information below as well as the text of To the Lighthouse? What are the connections between the private life and public historical events in the life and writings of an author?
Ways of developing a paper from the sources below will be discussed in class and in
Individual conferences
Julia Briggs, an eminent critic and biographer of Virginia Woolf, who died last year, created a wonderful Virginia Woolf resource on-line for the underlying aspects of To the Lighthouse (diaries, drafts of the “Time Passes” section, historical information on The General Strike of miners in 1926 during which time Woolf was writing “Time Passes,” images of St. Ives, the seaside village that entered into Woolf’s images in the book; and the Stephen family history.
Additional information and other sources besides those listed below:
www.woolfonline.com/?q=image/tid
Images of the General Stike, St. Ives, the Stephen Family.
Below you will find Virginia Woolf’s Diary entries during the writing of the “Time Passes” (middle section) of To the Lighthouse. To appreciate the context of the times—the public and historical context of this private diary about her writing and life, it is important to know that The General Strike of Miners was going on May 3-12, 1926. It is also important to know—given popular conceptions of Woolf—that she was involved in the cause of the coal miners, listening to daily reports on the strike, speaking with her husband, Leonard Woolf (who was a radical socialist) and friends about the events.
What was this strike about?
The British General Strike began on 3rd May 1926, and ended on 12th May 1926. Ten days of strike action that were to change the very nature of work relations in the country for years to come.
The strike was called by the Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.) on 1st May 1926, with action to begin on 3rd May 1926. It was precipitated in support of striking coal miners in the North of England, Scotland and Wales. The strike action was perceived as necessary to ensure current and future pay and work conditions would remain acceptable to the industry. In reality, it was the latest in a long series of industrial disputes that had crippled the coal industry since the end of the First World War, creating real hardship for mining families, and continuing political unrest and uncertainty for numerous governments. 'Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay', was the miners' slogan as they marched headlong in to Britain's one and only General Strike.
Despite commencing in the mining towns and Unions of the country, one of the flash points for the strike itself occurred in London, when the Daily Mail's Fleet Street printers refused to print a leading article criticising trade unions. Subsequently, other print workers joined the protest and the General Strike started to gain momentum. The TUC activated its strike plans, calling out all union members in essential industries. The strike had begun.
Woolf’s Diary
April 30, 1926
Yesterday I finished the first part of To the Lighthouse, & today
began the second. I cannot make it out—here is the most difficult abstract
piece of writing—I have to give an empty house, no people's characters,
the passage of time, all eyeless & featureless with nothing to cling to:
well, I rush at it, & at once scatter out two pages. Is it nonsense, is it
brilliance? Why am I so flown with words, & apparently free to do
exactly what I like? When I read a bit it seems spirited too; needs com-
pressing, but not much else. Compare this dashing fluency with the
excruciating hard wrung battles I had with Mrs Dalloway (save the end).
This is not made up: it is the literal fact.
May 5, 1926
An exact diary of the Strike would be interesting. For instance, it is
now a 1/4 to 2: there is a brown fog; nobody is building; it is drizzling.
The first thing in the morning we stand at the window & watch the
traffic in Southampton Row. This is incessant. Everyone is bicycling;
motor cars are huddled up with extra people. There are no buses. No
placards. no newspapers. The men are at work in the road; water, gas &
electricity are allowed; but at 11 the light was turned off. I sat in the
press in the brown fog, while L. wrote an article for the Herald. A very
revolutionary looking young man on a cycle arrived with the British
Gazette. L. is to answer an article in this. All was military stern a little
secret. Then Clive dropped in, the door being left open. He is offering
himself to the Government. Maynard excited, wants the H[ogarth].
P[ress]. to bring out a skeleton number of the Nation. It is all tedious &
depressing, rather like waiting in a train outside a station. Rumours are
passed round—that the gas wd. be cut off at 1—false of course. One
does not know what to do. And nature has laid it on thick today—fog,
rain, cold. A voice, rather commonplace & official, yet the only common
voice left, wishes us good morning at 10. This is the voice of Britain,
to wh. we can make no reply. The voice is very trivial, & only tells us
hat the Prince of Wales is coming back (from Biarritz), that the London
streets present an unprecedented spectacle.
May 6, 1926
(one of the curious effects of the Strike is that it is difficult to remember
the day of the week). Everything is the same, but unreasonably, or
because of the weather, or habit, we are more cheerful, take less notice,
& occasionally think of other things. The taxis are out today. There are
various skeleton papers being sold. One believes nothing. Clive dines in
Mayfair, & everyone is pro-men; I go to Harrison [dentist], & he shouts
me down with "Its red rag versus Union Jack, Mrs Woolf" & how
Thomas has 100,000. Frankie dines out, & finds everyone pro-
Government. Bob [Trevelyan] drops in & says Churchill is for peace,
but Baldwin wont budge. Clive says Churchill is for tear gas bombs,
fight to the death, & is at the bottom of it all. So we go on, turning in
our cage. I notice how frequently we break of[f] with "Well I don't
know." According to L. this open state of mind is due to the lack of
papers. It feels like a deadlock, on both sides; as if we could keep fixed
like this for weeks. What one prays for is God: the King or God; some
impartial person to say kiss & be friends—as apparently we all desire.
Just back from a walk to the Strand. Of course one notices lorries
full of elderly men & girls standing like passengers in the old 3rd class
carriages. Children swarm. They pick up bits of old wood paving.
Everything seems to be going fast, away, in business[?]. The shops are
open but empty. Over it all is some odd pale unnatural atmosphere—
great activity but no normal life. I think we shall become more in-
dependent & stoical as the days go on. And I am involved in dress
buying with Todd [editor of Vogue]; I tremble & shiver all over at the
appalling magnitude of the task have undertaken—to go to a dress-
maker recommended by Todd, even, she suggested, but here my blood
ran cold, with Todd. Perhaps this excites me more feverishly than the
Strike. It is a little like the early hours of the morning (this state of
things) when one has been up all night. Business improved today. We
sold a few books. Bob cycled from Leith Hill, getting up at 5 a.m. to
avoid the crowd. He punctured an hour later, met his tailor who mended
him, set forth again, was almost crushed in the crowd near London, &
has since been tramping London, from Chelsea to Bloomsbury to gather
gossip, & talk, incoherently about Desmond's essays & his own poetry.
He has secreted two more of these works which 'ought to be published'.
He is ravenous greedy, & apelike, but has a kind of russet surly charm;
like a dog one teases. He complained how Logan teased him. Clive calls
in to discuss bulletins—indeed, more than anything it is like a house
where someone is dangerously ill; & friends drop in to enquire, & one
has to wait for doctor's news—Quennel, the poet, came; a lean boy,
nervous, plaintive, rather pretty; on the look out for work, & come to
tap the Wolves—who are said, I suppose to be an authority on that
subject. We suggested Desmond's job. After an hour of this, he left,
— here Clive came in & interrupted. He has been shopping in the
West End with Mary. Nothing to report there. He & L. listened in at
7 & heard nothing. The look of the streets—how people "trek to work"
that is the stock phrase: that it will be cold & windy tomorrow (it is
shivering cold today) that there was a warm debate in the Commons—
Among the crowd of trampers in Kingsway were old Pritchard,
toothless, old wispy, benevolent; who tapped L. on the shoulder & said
he was "training to shoot him"; & old Miss Pritchard, equally frail,
dusty, rosy, shabby. "How long will it last Mrs Woolf?" "Four weeks"
"Ah dear!" Off they tramp, over the bridge to Kennington I think;
next in Kingsway comes the old battered clerk, who has 5 miles to walk.
Miss Talbot has an hours walk; Mrs Brown 2 hours walk. But they all
arrive, & clatter about as usual—Pritchard doing poor peoples work for
nothing, as I imagine his way is, & calling himself a Tory.
Then we are fighting the Square on the question of leading dogs.
Dogs must be led; but tennis can be played they say. L. is advancing to
the fight, & has enlisted the Pekinese in the Square. We get no news from
abroad; neither can send it. No parcels. Pence have been added to milk,
vegetables &c. And Karin has bought 4 joints.
It is now a chilly lightish evening; very quiet; the only sound a distant
barrel organ playing. The bricks stand piled on the building & there
remain. And Viola was about to make our fortune. She dined here,
Monday night, the night of the strike.
May 7, 1926
No change. "London calling the British Isles. Good morning every-
one". That is how it begins at 10. The only news that the archbishops
are conferring, & ask our prayers that they may be guided right. Whether
this means action, we know not. We know nothing. Mrs Cartwright
walked from Hampstead. She & L. got heated arguing, she being anti-
labour; because she does not see why they should be supported, &
observes men in the street loafing instead of working. Very little work
done by either of us today. A cold, wet day, with sunny moments. All
arrangements unchanged. Girl came to make chair covers, having walked
from Shoreditch, but enjoyed it. Times sent for 25 Violas. Question
whether to bring out a skeleton Roneo Nation. Leonard went to the
office, I to the Brit[ish] Mus[eum]; where all was chill serenity, dignity
& severity. Written up are the names of great men; & we all cower like
mice nibbling crumbs in our most official discreet impersonal mood
beneath. I like this dusty bookish atmosphere. Most of the readers
seemed to have rubbed their noses off & written their eyes out. Yet
they have a life they like—believe in the necessity of making books, I
suppose: verify, collate, make up other books, for ever. It must be
15 years since I read here. I came home & found L. & Hubert [Henderson]
arriving from the office—Hubert did what is now called "taking a cup
of tea", which means an hour & a halfs talk about the Strike. Here is his
prediction: if it is not settled, or in process, on Monday, it will last 5 weeks.
Today no wages are paid. Leonard said he minded this more than the war &
Hubert told us how he had travelled in Germany, & what brutes they were
in 1912. He thinks gas & electricity will go next; had been at a journal-
ists meeting where all were against labour (against the general strike that
is) & assumed Government victory. L. says if the state wins & smashes
T[rades]. U[nion]s he will devote his life to labour: if the archbishop
succeeds, he will be baptised. Now to dine at the Commercio to meet Clive.
May 9, 1926
There is no news of the strike. The broadcaster has just said that we
are praying today. And L. & I quarrelled last night. I dislike the tub
thumper in him; he the irrational Xtian in me. I will write it all out later—
my feelings about the Strike; but I am now writing to test my theory that
there is consolation in expression. Unthinkingly, I refused just now to
lunch with the Phil Bakers, who fetched L. in their car. Suddenly,
10 minutes ago, I began to regret this profoundly. How I should love the
talk, & seeing the house, & battling my wits against theirs. Now the
sensible thing to do is to provide some pleasure to balance this, which
I cd. not have had, if I had gone. I can only think of writing this, &
going round the Square. Obscurely, I have my clothes complex to deal
with. When I am asked out my first thought is, but I have no clothes to
go in. Todd has never sent me the address of the shop; & I may have
annoyed her by refusing to lunch with her. But the Virginia who refuses
is a very instinctive & therefore powerful person. The reflective &
sociable only comes to the surface later. Then the conflict.
Baldwin broadcast last night: he rolls his rs; tries to put more than
mortal strength into his words. "Have faith in me. You elected me
18 months ago. What have I done to forfeit your confidence? Can you
not trust me to see justice done between man & man?" Impressive as it
is to hear the very voice of the Prime Minister, descendant of Pitt &
Chatham, still I can't heat up my reverence to the right pitch. I picture
the stalwart oppressed man, bearing the world on his shoulders. And
suddenly his self assertiveness becomes a little ridiculous. He becomes
megalomaniac. No I dont trust him: I don't trust any human being,
however loud they bellow & roll their rs.
May 10, 1926
Quarrel with L. settled in studio. Oh, but how incessant the arguments
& interruptions are! As I write, L. is telephoning to Hubert. We are
getting up a petition. There was a distinct thaw (we thought) last night.
The Arch B. & Grey both conciliatory. So we went to bed happy.
Today ostensibly the same dead lock; beneath the surface all sorts of
currents, of which we get the most contradictory reports. Dear old
Frankie has a story (over the fire in the bookshop) of an interview
between Asquith & Reading which turned Reading hostile to the men.
Later, through Clive, through Desmond, Asquith is proved to be at the
Wharfe, 60 miles from Lord Reading. Lady Wimbore gave a party—
brought Thomas & Baldwin together. Meeting mysteriously called off
today. Otherwise strike wd. have been settled. I to H of Commons this
morning with L.'s article to serve as stuffing for Hugh Dalton in the
Commons this afternoon. All this humbug of police & marble statues
vaguely displeasing. But the Gvt. provided me with buses both ways, &
no stones thrown. Silver & crimson guard at Whitehall; the cenotaph,
& men bare heading themselves. Home to find Tom Marshall caballing
with L.; after lunch to [Birrell & Garnett's] bookshop, where the gossip
(too secret for the telephone) was imparted; to London Library where
Gooch—a tall, pale mule, affable & long winded, was seen, & Molly
dustily diligently reading the Dublin Review for 1840, walk home;
Clive, to refute gossip; James to get St Loe to sign; then Maynard
ringing up to command us to print the Nation as the N. Statesman is
printed; to wh. I agreed, & L. disagreed; then dinner; a motor car
collision—more telephones ringing at the moment 9.5.
May 11 , 1926
I may as well continue to write—this book is used to scandalous
mistreatment—while I wait—here interruptions began
which lasted till the present moment/ when I write from 12.30 to 3
with Gerald Brenan in the study composing with infinite difficulty a letter
to Mr Galsworthy. Arguing about the Ar[chbisho]p of Canterbury
with Jack Squire at 12 seems now normal, but not—how often do I
repeat—nearly as exciting as writing To the Lighthouse or about de
Q[uincey]. I believe it is false psychology to think that in after years
these details will be interesting. The war is now barren sand after all.
But one never knows: & waiting about, writing serves to liberate the
mind from the fret & itch of these innumerable details. Squire doesn't
want to "knuckle under". To kneel is the duty of the Church. The
Church has no connection with the nation. Events are that the Roneo
workers refuse to set up L.'s article in the Nation, in which he says
that the Strike is not illegal or unconstitutional. Presumably this is a
little clutch of the Government throttle. Mr Baldwin has been visiting
the Zoo. In the middle of lunch admirable Miss Bulley arrives, having
visited Conway unsuccessfully. St Loe has joined. So Rose Macaulay
& Lytton. Tonight the names are to be handed in; & then perhaps
silence will descend upon us. Ralph & Gerald are our emissaries. But
then everyone rings up—the most unlikely people—[Donald] Brace for
instance, Kahan; the woman comes with the new sofa cover. Yester-
day Ralph & Frances Marshall were in a railway accident. She had her
teeth jangled. One man was killed; another had his leg broken—the
result of driving a train without signals, by the efforts of ardent optimistic
undergraduates. Billing has been in to say he will print anything, all
his men being back & needing work. So, as poor MacDermott has been
dead since January, perhaps the Nation will be done by them. Come to
think of it, almost all our type is standing, so our printing was in any
case hardly feasible. Must I now ring up James? Day's Library boy was
set upon by roughs, had his cycle overturned, but kept his books & was
unhurt after calling here for 6 Tree. Tree dribbles along. There is an
occasional order. Mrs C[artwright]. arrives on Faith's bicycle which is
red with rust.
May 12, 1926
Strike settled. (ring at bell)
The Strike was settled about 1.15—or it was then broadcast. I was in
Tottenham Court Rd. at 1 & heard Bartholomew & Fletcher's megaphone
declaim that the T.U.C. leaders were at Downing Street; came home to
find that neither L. or Nelly had heard this: 5 minutes later, the wireless.
They told us to stand by & await important news. Then a piano played
a tune. Then the solemn broadcaster assuming incredible pomp & gloom
& speaking one word to the minute read out: Message from 10 Downing
Street. The T.U.C. leaders have agreed that Strike shall be withdrawn.
Instantly L. dashed off to telephone to the office, Nelly to tell Pritchard's
clerk, & I to Mrs C. (But N[elly]. was beforehand) then we finished
lunch; then I rang up Clive—who proposes that we should have a drink
tonight. I saw this morning 5 or 6 armoured cars slowly going along
Oxford Street; on each two soldiers sat in tin helmets, & one stood with
his hand at the gun which was pointed straight ahead ready to fire. But I
also noticed on one a policeman smoking a cigarette. Such sights I dare
say I shall never see again; & dont in the least wish to. Already (it is now
10 past 2) men have appeared at the hotel with drainpipes. Also Grizzle
has won her case against the Square.
May 13, 1926
I suppose all pages devoted to the Strike will be skipped, when I read
over this book. Oh that dull old chapter, I shall say. Excitements about
what are called real things are always unutterably transitory. Yet it is
gloomy—& L. is gloomy, & so am I unintelligibly—today because the
Strike continues—no railwaymen back: vindictiveness has now seized
our masters. Government shillyshallies. Apparently, the T.U.C. agreed
to terms wh. the miners now reject. Anyhow it will take a week to get
the machinery of England to run again. Trains are dotted about all over
England. Labour, it seems clear, will be effectively diddled again, &
perhaps rid of its power to make strikes in future. Printers still out at
the Nation. In short, the strain removed, we all fall out & bicker &
backbite. Such is human nature—& really I dont like human nature
unless all candied over with art. We dined with a strike party last night
& went back to Clive's. A good deal was said about art there. Good dull
Janet Vaughan, reminding me of Emma, joined us. I went to my
dressmaker, Miss Brooke, & found it the most quiet & friendly & even
enjoyable of proceedings. I have a great lust for lovely stuffs, & shapes;
wh. I have not gratified since Sally Young died. A bold move this, but
now I'm free of the fret of clothes, which is worth paying for, & need
not parade Oxford Street.
May 20, 1926
Waiting for L. to come back from chess with Roger: 11.25. I think
nothing need be said of the Strike. As tends to happen, one's mind slips
after the crisis, & what the settlement is, or will be, I know not.
We must now fan the books up again. Viola & Phil Baker were both
struck on the wing. Viola comes, very tactfully, as a friend, she says, to
consult after dinner. She is a flamboyant creature—much of an actress—
much abused by the Waleys & Marjories; but rather taking to me. She
has the great egotism, the magnification of self, which any bodily display,
I think, produces. She values women by their hips & ankles, like horses.
Easily reverts to the topic of her own charms: how she shd. have married
the D. of Rutland. "Lord — (his uncle) told me I was the woman
John really loved. The duchess said to me 'Do make love to John &
get him away from —. At any rate you're tall & beautiful—' And I
sometimes think if I'd married him—but he never asked me—Daddy
wouldn't have died. I'd have prevented that operation: Then how he'd
have loved a duke for a son in law! All his life was dressing up—that
sort of thing you know." So she runs on, in the best of clothes, easy &
familiar, but reserved too; with the wiles & warinesses of a woman of
the world, half sordid half splendid, not quite at her ease with us, yet
glad of a room where she can tell her stories, of listeners to whom she
is new & strange. She will run on by the hour—yet is very watchful not
to bore; a good business woman, & floating over considerable acuteness
on her charm. All this however, is not making her book move, as they say.
Eddy came in to tea. I like him—his flattery? his nobility? I dont
know—I find him easy & eager. And Vita comes to lunch tomorrow
which will be a great amusement & pleasure. I am amused at my relations
with her: left so ardent in January—& now what? Also I like her presence
& her beauty. Am I in love with her? But what is love? Her being 'in
love' (it must be comma'd thus) with me, excites & flatters; & interests.
What is this 'love'? Oh & then she gratifies my eternal curiosity: who's
she seen, whats she done—for I have no enormous opinion of her poetry.
How could I—I who have such delight in mitigating the works even of
my greatest friends. I should have been reading her poem tonight:
instead finished Sharon Turner—a prosy, simple, old man; the very spit
& image of Saxon. a boundless bore, I daresay, with the most intense zeal
for "improving myself", & the holiest affections, & 13 children, & no
character or impetus—a love of long walks, of music; modest, yet
conceited in an ant like way. I mean he has the industry & persistency in
recounting compliments of an ant, but so little character that one hardly
calls him vain!
May 25, 1926
The heat has come, bringing with it the inexplicably disagreeable
memories of parties, & George Duckworth; a fear haunts me even now,
as I drive past Park Lane on top of a bus, & think of Lady Arthur Russell
& so on. I become out of love with everything; but fall into love as the
bus reaches Holborn. A curious transition that, from tyranny to freedom.
Mixed with it is the usual "I thought that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you"—death being hidden among
the leaves: & Nessa's birthday among the little hard pink rosettes of the
may, which we used to stop & smell on the pavement at the top of
Hyde Pk. Gate & I asked why, if it was may, it did not come out on
the 1st; it comes out now, & Nessa's birthday, which must be her 47th,
is in a few days. She is in Italy: Duncan is said to have "committed a
nuisance" for which he has been fined 10 lira.
Diary of Margaret Woods: day to day reactions to the General Strike
http://www.woolfonline.com/?q=diaries/mw/overview
Sources for Genetic Criticism (a criticism that explores the early drafts, versions and sources of a text.
Woolf On-Line
Question: What kinds of literary questions might you generate after reading some of the diary entries and the historical information below as well as the text of To the Lighthouse? What are the connections between the private life and public historical events in the life and writings of an author?
Ways of developing a paper from the sources below will be discussed in class and in
Individual conferences
Julia Briggs, an eminent critic and biographer of Virginia Woolf, who died last year, created a wonderful Virginia Woolf resource on-line for the underlying aspects of To the Lighthouse (diaries, drafts of the “Time Passes” section, historical information on The General Strike of miners in 1926 during which time Woolf was writing “Time Passes,” images of St. Ives, the seaside village that entered into Woolf’s images in the book; and the Stephen family history.
Additional information and other sources besides those listed below:
www.woolfonline.com/?q=image/tid
Images of the General Stike, St. Ives, the Stephen Family.
Below you will find Virginia Woolf’s Diary entries during the writing of the “Time Passes” (middle section) of To the Lighthouse. To appreciate the context of the times—the public and historical context of this private diary about her writing and life, it is important to know that The General Strike of Miners was going on May 3-12, 1926. It is also important to know—given popular conceptions of Woolf—that she was involved in the cause of the coal miners, listening to daily reports on the strike, speaking with her husband, Leonard Woolf (who was a radical socialist) and friends about the events.
What was this strike about?
The British General Strike began on 3rd May 1926, and ended on 12th May 1926. Ten days of strike action that were to change the very nature of work relations in the country for years to come.
The strike was called by the Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.) on 1st May 1926, with action to begin on 3rd May 1926. It was precipitated in support of striking coal miners in the North of England, Scotland and Wales. The strike action was perceived as necessary to ensure current and future pay and work conditions would remain acceptable to the industry. In reality, it was the latest in a long series of industrial disputes that had crippled the coal industry since the end of the First World War, creating real hardship for mining families, and continuing political unrest and uncertainty for numerous governments. 'Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay', was the miners' slogan as they marched headlong in to Britain's one and only General Strike.
Despite commencing in the mining towns and Unions of the country, one of the flash points for the strike itself occurred in London, when the Daily Mail's Fleet Street printers refused to print a leading article criticising trade unions. Subsequently, other print workers joined the protest and the General Strike started to gain momentum. The TUC activated its strike plans, calling out all union members in essential industries. The strike had begun.
Woolf’s Diary
April 30, 1926
Yesterday I finished the first part of To the Lighthouse, & today
began the second. I cannot make it out—here is the most difficult abstract
piece of writing—I have to give an empty house, no people's characters,
the passage of time, all eyeless & featureless with nothing to cling to:
well, I rush at it, & at once scatter out two pages. Is it nonsense, is it
brilliance? Why am I so flown with words, & apparently free to do
exactly what I like? When I read a bit it seems spirited too; needs com-
pressing, but not much else. Compare this dashing fluency with the
excruciating hard wrung battles I had with Mrs Dalloway (save the end).
This is not made up: it is the literal fact.
May 5, 1926
An exact diary of the Strike would be interesting. For instance, it is
now a 1/4 to 2: there is a brown fog; nobody is building; it is drizzling.
The first thing in the morning we stand at the window & watch the
traffic in Southampton Row. This is incessant. Everyone is bicycling;
motor cars are huddled up with extra people. There are no buses. No
placards. no newspapers. The men are at work in the road; water, gas &
electricity are allowed; but at 11 the light was turned off. I sat in the
press in the brown fog, while L. wrote an article for the Herald. A very
revolutionary looking young man on a cycle arrived with the British
Gazette. L. is to answer an article in this. All was military stern a little
secret. Then Clive dropped in, the door being left open. He is offering
himself to the Government. Maynard excited, wants the H[ogarth].
P[ress]. to bring out a skeleton number of the Nation. It is all tedious &
depressing, rather like waiting in a train outside a station. Rumours are
passed round—that the gas wd. be cut off at 1—false of course. One
does not know what to do. And nature has laid it on thick today—fog,
rain, cold. A voice, rather commonplace & official, yet the only common
voice left, wishes us good morning at 10. This is the voice of Britain,
to wh. we can make no reply. The voice is very trivial, & only tells us
hat the Prince of Wales is coming back (from Biarritz), that the London
streets present an unprecedented spectacle.
May 6, 1926
(one of the curious effects of the Strike is that it is difficult to remember
the day of the week). Everything is the same, but unreasonably, or
because of the weather, or habit, we are more cheerful, take less notice,
& occasionally think of other things. The taxis are out today. There are
various skeleton papers being sold. One believes nothing. Clive dines in
Mayfair, & everyone is pro-men; I go to Harrison [dentist], & he shouts
me down with "Its red rag versus Union Jack, Mrs Woolf" & how
Thomas has 100,000. Frankie dines out, & finds everyone pro-
Government. Bob [Trevelyan] drops in & says Churchill is for peace,
but Baldwin wont budge. Clive says Churchill is for tear gas bombs,
fight to the death, & is at the bottom of it all. So we go on, turning in
our cage. I notice how frequently we break of[f] with "Well I don't
know." According to L. this open state of mind is due to the lack of
papers. It feels like a deadlock, on both sides; as if we could keep fixed
like this for weeks. What one prays for is God: the King or God; some
impartial person to say kiss & be friends—as apparently we all desire.
Just back from a walk to the Strand. Of course one notices lorries
full of elderly men & girls standing like passengers in the old 3rd class
carriages. Children swarm. They pick up bits of old wood paving.
Everything seems to be going fast, away, in business[?]. The shops are
open but empty. Over it all is some odd pale unnatural atmosphere—
great activity but no normal life. I think we shall become more in-
dependent & stoical as the days go on. And I am involved in dress
buying with Todd [editor of Vogue]; I tremble & shiver all over at the
appalling magnitude of the task have undertaken—to go to a dress-
maker recommended by Todd, even, she suggested, but here my blood
ran cold, with Todd. Perhaps this excites me more feverishly than the
Strike. It is a little like the early hours of the morning (this state of
things) when one has been up all night. Business improved today. We
sold a few books. Bob cycled from Leith Hill, getting up at 5 a.m. to
avoid the crowd. He punctured an hour later, met his tailor who mended
him, set forth again, was almost crushed in the crowd near London, &
has since been tramping London, from Chelsea to Bloomsbury to gather
gossip, & talk, incoherently about Desmond's essays & his own poetry.
He has secreted two more of these works which 'ought to be published'.
He is ravenous greedy, & apelike, but has a kind of russet surly charm;
like a dog one teases. He complained how Logan teased him. Clive calls
in to discuss bulletins—indeed, more than anything it is like a house
where someone is dangerously ill; & friends drop in to enquire, & one
has to wait for doctor's news—Quennel, the poet, came; a lean boy,
nervous, plaintive, rather pretty; on the look out for work, & come to
tap the Wolves—who are said, I suppose to be an authority on that
subject. We suggested Desmond's job. After an hour of this, he left,
— here Clive came in & interrupted. He has been shopping in the
West End with Mary. Nothing to report there. He & L. listened in at
7 & heard nothing. The look of the streets—how people "trek to work"
that is the stock phrase: that it will be cold & windy tomorrow (it is
shivering cold today) that there was a warm debate in the Commons—
Among the crowd of trampers in Kingsway were old Pritchard,
toothless, old wispy, benevolent; who tapped L. on the shoulder & said
he was "training to shoot him"; & old Miss Pritchard, equally frail,
dusty, rosy, shabby. "How long will it last Mrs Woolf?" "Four weeks"
"Ah dear!" Off they tramp, over the bridge to Kennington I think;
next in Kingsway comes the old battered clerk, who has 5 miles to walk.
Miss Talbot has an hours walk; Mrs Brown 2 hours walk. But they all
arrive, & clatter about as usual—Pritchard doing poor peoples work for
nothing, as I imagine his way is, & calling himself a Tory.
Then we are fighting the Square on the question of leading dogs.
Dogs must be led; but tennis can be played they say. L. is advancing to
the fight, & has enlisted the Pekinese in the Square. We get no news from
abroad; neither can send it. No parcels. Pence have been added to milk,
vegetables &c. And Karin has bought 4 joints.
It is now a chilly lightish evening; very quiet; the only sound a distant
barrel organ playing. The bricks stand piled on the building & there
remain. And Viola was about to make our fortune. She dined here,
Monday night, the night of the strike.
May 7, 1926
No change. "London calling the British Isles. Good morning every-
one". That is how it begins at 10. The only news that the archbishops
are conferring, & ask our prayers that they may be guided right. Whether
this means action, we know not. We know nothing. Mrs Cartwright
walked from Hampstead. She & L. got heated arguing, she being anti-
labour; because she does not see why they should be supported, &
observes men in the street loafing instead of working. Very little work
done by either of us today. A cold, wet day, with sunny moments. All
arrangements unchanged. Girl came to make chair covers, having walked
from Shoreditch, but enjoyed it. Times sent for 25 Violas. Question
whether to bring out a skeleton Roneo Nation. Leonard went to the
office, I to the Brit[ish] Mus[eum]; where all was chill serenity, dignity
& severity. Written up are the names of great men; & we all cower like
mice nibbling crumbs in our most official discreet impersonal mood
beneath. I like this dusty bookish atmosphere. Most of the readers
seemed to have rubbed their noses off & written their eyes out. Yet
they have a life they like—believe in the necessity of making books, I
suppose: verify, collate, make up other books, for ever. It must be
15 years since I read here. I came home & found L. & Hubert [Henderson]
arriving from the office—Hubert did what is now called "taking a cup
of tea", which means an hour & a halfs talk about the Strike. Here is his
prediction: if it is not settled, or in process, on Monday, it will last 5 weeks.
Today no wages are paid. Leonard said he minded this more than the war &
Hubert told us how he had travelled in Germany, & what brutes they were
in 1912. He thinks gas & electricity will go next; had been at a journal-
ists meeting where all were against labour (against the general strike that
is) & assumed Government victory. L. says if the state wins & smashes
T[rades]. U[nion]s he will devote his life to labour: if the archbishop
succeeds, he will be baptised. Now to dine at the Commercio to meet Clive.
May 9, 1926
There is no news of the strike. The broadcaster has just said that we
are praying today. And L. & I quarrelled last night. I dislike the tub
thumper in him; he the irrational Xtian in me. I will write it all out later—
my feelings about the Strike; but I am now writing to test my theory that
there is consolation in expression. Unthinkingly, I refused just now to
lunch with the Phil Bakers, who fetched L. in their car. Suddenly,
10 minutes ago, I began to regret this profoundly. How I should love the
talk, & seeing the house, & battling my wits against theirs. Now the
sensible thing to do is to provide some pleasure to balance this, which
I cd. not have had, if I had gone. I can only think of writing this, &
going round the Square. Obscurely, I have my clothes complex to deal
with. When I am asked out my first thought is, but I have no clothes to
go in. Todd has never sent me the address of the shop; & I may have
annoyed her by refusing to lunch with her. But the Virginia who refuses
is a very instinctive & therefore powerful person. The reflective &
sociable only comes to the surface later. Then the conflict.
Baldwin broadcast last night: he rolls his rs; tries to put more than
mortal strength into his words. "Have faith in me. You elected me
18 months ago. What have I done to forfeit your confidence? Can you
not trust me to see justice done between man & man?" Impressive as it
is to hear the very voice of the Prime Minister, descendant of Pitt &
Chatham, still I can't heat up my reverence to the right pitch. I picture
the stalwart oppressed man, bearing the world on his shoulders. And
suddenly his self assertiveness becomes a little ridiculous. He becomes
megalomaniac. No I dont trust him: I don't trust any human being,
however loud they bellow & roll their rs.
May 10, 1926
Quarrel with L. settled in studio. Oh, but how incessant the arguments
& interruptions are! As I write, L. is telephoning to Hubert. We are
getting up a petition. There was a distinct thaw (we thought) last night.
The Arch B. & Grey both conciliatory. So we went to bed happy.
Today ostensibly the same dead lock; beneath the surface all sorts of
currents, of which we get the most contradictory reports. Dear old
Frankie has a story (over the fire in the bookshop) of an interview
between Asquith & Reading which turned Reading hostile to the men.
Later, through Clive, through Desmond, Asquith is proved to be at the
Wharfe, 60 miles from Lord Reading. Lady Wimbore gave a party—
brought Thomas & Baldwin together. Meeting mysteriously called off
today. Otherwise strike wd. have been settled. I to H of Commons this
morning with L.'s article to serve as stuffing for Hugh Dalton in the
Commons this afternoon. All this humbug of police & marble statues
vaguely displeasing. But the Gvt. provided me with buses both ways, &
no stones thrown. Silver & crimson guard at Whitehall; the cenotaph,
& men bare heading themselves. Home to find Tom Marshall caballing
with L.; after lunch to [Birrell & Garnett's] bookshop, where the gossip
(too secret for the telephone) was imparted; to London Library where
Gooch—a tall, pale mule, affable & long winded, was seen, & Molly
dustily diligently reading the Dublin Review for 1840, walk home;
Clive, to refute gossip; James to get St Loe to sign; then Maynard
ringing up to command us to print the Nation as the N. Statesman is
printed; to wh. I agreed, & L. disagreed; then dinner; a motor car
collision—more telephones ringing at the moment 9.5.
May 11 , 1926
I may as well continue to write—this book is used to scandalous
mistreatment—while I wait—here interruptions began
which lasted till the present moment/ when I write from 12.30 to 3
with Gerald Brenan in the study composing with infinite difficulty a letter
to Mr Galsworthy. Arguing about the Ar[chbisho]p of Canterbury
with Jack Squire at 12 seems now normal, but not—how often do I
repeat—nearly as exciting as writing To the Lighthouse or about de
Q[uincey]. I believe it is false psychology to think that in after years
these details will be interesting. The war is now barren sand after all.
But one never knows: & waiting about, writing serves to liberate the
mind from the fret & itch of these innumerable details. Squire doesn't
want to "knuckle under". To kneel is the duty of the Church. The
Church has no connection with the nation. Events are that the Roneo
workers refuse to set up L.'s article in the Nation, in which he says
that the Strike is not illegal or unconstitutional. Presumably this is a
little clutch of the Government throttle. Mr Baldwin has been visiting
the Zoo. In the middle of lunch admirable Miss Bulley arrives, having
visited Conway unsuccessfully. St Loe has joined. So Rose Macaulay
& Lytton. Tonight the names are to be handed in; & then perhaps
silence will descend upon us. Ralph & Gerald are our emissaries. But
then everyone rings up—the most unlikely people—[Donald] Brace for
instance, Kahan; the woman comes with the new sofa cover. Yester-
day Ralph & Frances Marshall were in a railway accident. She had her
teeth jangled. One man was killed; another had his leg broken—the
result of driving a train without signals, by the efforts of ardent optimistic
undergraduates. Billing has been in to say he will print anything, all
his men being back & needing work. So, as poor MacDermott has been
dead since January, perhaps the Nation will be done by them. Come to
think of it, almost all our type is standing, so our printing was in any
case hardly feasible. Must I now ring up James? Day's Library boy was
set upon by roughs, had his cycle overturned, but kept his books & was
unhurt after calling here for 6 Tree. Tree dribbles along. There is an
occasional order. Mrs C[artwright]. arrives on Faith's bicycle which is
red with rust.
May 12, 1926
Strike settled. (ring at bell)
The Strike was settled about 1.15—or it was then broadcast. I was in
Tottenham Court Rd. at 1 & heard Bartholomew & Fletcher's megaphone
declaim that the T.U.C. leaders were at Downing Street; came home to
find that neither L. or Nelly had heard this: 5 minutes later, the wireless.
They told us to stand by & await important news. Then a piano played
a tune. Then the solemn broadcaster assuming incredible pomp & gloom
& speaking one word to the minute read out: Message from 10 Downing
Street. The T.U.C. leaders have agreed that Strike shall be withdrawn.
Instantly L. dashed off to telephone to the office, Nelly to tell Pritchard's
clerk, & I to Mrs C. (But N[elly]. was beforehand) then we finished
lunch; then I rang up Clive—who proposes that we should have a drink
tonight. I saw this morning 5 or 6 armoured cars slowly going along
Oxford Street; on each two soldiers sat in tin helmets, & one stood with
his hand at the gun which was pointed straight ahead ready to fire. But I
also noticed on one a policeman smoking a cigarette. Such sights I dare
say I shall never see again; & dont in the least wish to. Already (it is now
10 past 2) men have appeared at the hotel with drainpipes. Also Grizzle
has won her case against the Square.
May 13, 1926
I suppose all pages devoted to the Strike will be skipped, when I read
over this book. Oh that dull old chapter, I shall say. Excitements about
what are called real things are always unutterably transitory. Yet it is
gloomy—& L. is gloomy, & so am I unintelligibly—today because the
Strike continues—no railwaymen back: vindictiveness has now seized
our masters. Government shillyshallies. Apparently, the T.U.C. agreed
to terms wh. the miners now reject. Anyhow it will take a week to get
the machinery of England to run again. Trains are dotted about all over
England. Labour, it seems clear, will be effectively diddled again, &
perhaps rid of its power to make strikes in future. Printers still out at
the Nation. In short, the strain removed, we all fall out & bicker &
backbite. Such is human nature—& really I dont like human nature
unless all candied over with art. We dined with a strike party last night
& went back to Clive's. A good deal was said about art there. Good dull
Janet Vaughan, reminding me of Emma, joined us. I went to my
dressmaker, Miss Brooke, & found it the most quiet & friendly & even
enjoyable of proceedings. I have a great lust for lovely stuffs, & shapes;
wh. I have not gratified since Sally Young died. A bold move this, but
now I'm free of the fret of clothes, which is worth paying for, & need
not parade Oxford Street.
May 20, 1926
Waiting for L. to come back from chess with Roger: 11.25. I think
nothing need be said of the Strike. As tends to happen, one's mind slips
after the crisis, & what the settlement is, or will be, I know not.
We must now fan the books up again. Viola & Phil Baker were both
struck on the wing. Viola comes, very tactfully, as a friend, she says, to
consult after dinner. She is a flamboyant creature—much of an actress—
much abused by the Waleys & Marjories; but rather taking to me. She
has the great egotism, the magnification of self, which any bodily display,
I think, produces. She values women by their hips & ankles, like horses.
Easily reverts to the topic of her own charms: how she shd. have married
the D. of Rutland. "Lord — (his uncle) told me I was the woman
John really loved. The duchess said to me 'Do make love to John &
get him away from —. At any rate you're tall & beautiful—' And I
sometimes think if I'd married him—but he never asked me—Daddy
wouldn't have died. I'd have prevented that operation: Then how he'd
have loved a duke for a son in law! All his life was dressing up—that
sort of thing you know." So she runs on, in the best of clothes, easy &
familiar, but reserved too; with the wiles & warinesses of a woman of
the world, half sordid half splendid, not quite at her ease with us, yet
glad of a room where she can tell her stories, of listeners to whom she
is new & strange. She will run on by the hour—yet is very watchful not
to bore; a good business woman, & floating over considerable acuteness
on her charm. All this however, is not making her book move, as they say.
Eddy came in to tea. I like him—his flattery? his nobility? I dont
know—I find him easy & eager. And Vita comes to lunch tomorrow
which will be a great amusement & pleasure. I am amused at my relations
with her: left so ardent in January—& now what? Also I like her presence
& her beauty. Am I in love with her? But what is love? Her being 'in
love' (it must be comma'd thus) with me, excites & flatters; & interests.
What is this 'love'? Oh & then she gratifies my eternal curiosity: who's
she seen, whats she done—for I have no enormous opinion of her poetry.
How could I—I who have such delight in mitigating the works even of
my greatest friends. I should have been reading her poem tonight:
instead finished Sharon Turner—a prosy, simple, old man; the very spit
& image of Saxon. a boundless bore, I daresay, with the most intense zeal
for "improving myself", & the holiest affections, & 13 children, & no
character or impetus—a love of long walks, of music; modest, yet
conceited in an ant like way. I mean he has the industry & persistency in
recounting compliments of an ant, but so little character that one hardly
calls him vain!
May 25, 1926
The heat has come, bringing with it the inexplicably disagreeable
memories of parties, & George Duckworth; a fear haunts me even now,
as I drive past Park Lane on top of a bus, & think of Lady Arthur Russell
& so on. I become out of love with everything; but fall into love as the
bus reaches Holborn. A curious transition that, from tyranny to freedom.
Mixed with it is the usual "I thought that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you"—death being hidden among
the leaves: & Nessa's birthday among the little hard pink rosettes of the
may, which we used to stop & smell on the pavement at the top of
Hyde Pk. Gate & I asked why, if it was may, it did not come out on
the 1st; it comes out now, & Nessa's birthday, which must be her 47th,
is in a few days. She is in Italy: Duncan is said to have "committed a
nuisance" for which he has been fined 10 lira.
Diary of Margaret Woods: day to day reactions to the General Strike
http://www.woolfonline.com/?q=diaries/mw/overview
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)