 |
News On This Day |
| Wednesday, July 25, 2001 | Happy Birthday to John Freccero | Edited by Peter Y. Chou |
|
Dover, England Sunday, 5:49 a.m., July 25, 1909— French aviator, Louis Blériot, is first to fly monoplane across the English Channel 
Louis Blériot achieved world acclaim by being the first to fly an aircraft across the English Channel,
a feat of great daring for those times. On July 25, 1909, in his Model XI, 25 horsepower monoplane, he braved
adverse weather and 24 miles of forbidding sea and flew his machine from Les Barraques, France to Dover,
England. This 37-minute flight won for him the much sought after London Daily Mail price of £1000 sterling.
Blériot took off from Les Baraques, near Calais, at 4:41 am on July 25 and landed at
5:17 am in Northfall Meadow, near Dover. He had flown 24 miles (38 km) almost entirely over water
in his fragile plane. On Saturday, July 24, the Channel weather was still foul. Wind swept the Calais headlands
and roiled the waters offshore. When the wind slackened around 3 am, Sunday, July 25, Blériot's friends
woke him up at a Calais hotel. Blériot arose grumpily. “I swear I wasn't in any mood to fly,”
he admitted later. “I would have been happy if they'd told me the wind was blowing so hard there was no
point in even trying.” However once he climbed into the plane, Blériot recalled “I was gripped
by an uneasy feeling: What was going to happen? Would I make it to Dover? Now I thought only of my machine,
the engine, the propeller. Everything was going now, everything vibrating. At the signal, the crew let go.
I was up.” By mid-Channel, Blériot grew almost euphoric: “For 10 minutes I kept on, alone,
isolated, lost in the middle of that vast sea, seeing nothing on the horizon, unable to make out a ship.
This calm, broken only by the roar of the engine, cast a dangerous spell.” Blériot flew southward
along the forbidding cliff. “The wind I was fighting now caught me worse than ever,” he recalled.
“Suddenly, at the edge of an opening that appeared in the cliff, I saw a man desperately waving a tricolor
flag, out alone in the middle of a field, bawling 'Bravo! Bravo!' I didn't point myself, rather I flung myself
toward the ground.” Blériot said: “At the risk of smashing everything, I cut the ignition at
20 metres. Now it was up to chance. The landing gear took it rather badly, the propeller was damaged,
but my word, so what? I had crossed the Channel!”
July 25, 1834— Samuel Taylor Coleridge Dies at Age 61
“And be thou sure in whatever may be published of my posthumous works to remember that, first of all is
the Absolute Good whose self-affirmation is the "I am," as the eternal reality in itself, and the ground
and source of all other reality”
When Wordsworth heard of Coleridge's death, the thought of their disagreements 25 years before,
in the darkes period of Coleridge's life, seemed absurdly unimportant. His voice broke as he told the news
to a friend: this was “the most wonderful man he had ever known.” Charles Lamb, who had seen
every side of Coleridge since they were boys at Christ's Hospital, tried to tell himself that there was no
cause of grief. “It seemed to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,— that
he had a hunger for eternity.” But Lamb, who was himself to die before the end of the year,
could not bring himself to go to the funeral. “His great and dear spirit haunts me... Never saw I
his likeness, nor probably the world can see again.” [Source: Walter Jackson Bate, Coleridge (1968)]
July 25, 1866— Ulysses S. Grant Named 1st General of the Army
July 25, 1941— Lefty Grove Wins 300th Game
July 25, 1964— Beatles' A Hard Day's Night Album Tops Music Chart
It's been a hard day's night,
Lyrics: A Hard Day's Night;
A Hard Day's Night Album Cover;
Fire Island, July 25, 1966— Poet Frank O'Hara Dies at 40
Frank O'Hara, poet and art critic died after being hit by a dune buggy.
He was buried at Springs Cemetery, East Hampton, NY. O'Hara was born in Baltimore on June 27, 1926
and raised in Grafton, Massachusetts. After serving in the navy, he received a B.A. from Harvard,
majoring in music & English (1950) and a M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Michigan (1951).
O'Hara moved to New York City, and worked at the Museum of Modern Art's information desk.
From 1953-55, he was Editorial associate of Art News, writing reviews and articles. O'Hara
continued as a poet and critic, and was the epicenter of a circle of poets that came to be called
the New York School. These poets included John Ashbury, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, who derived
inspiration from paintings by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning. O'Hara collaborated
with the painter Larry Rivers (1957-60) and published a eries of lithographs Stones.
His Jackson Pollack was published by Braziller (1959), and Lunch Poems was published
by City Lights Books. O'Hara's work comprised the second largest selection in Donald Allen's
The New American Poetry, 1945-60. Donald Allen's edition of The Collected Poems
of Frank O'Hara won the National Book Award in 1971.
Here's a Frank O'Hara poem:
Light
— Frank O'Hara, "Poem"
Los Angeles, July 25, 1986— Film Director Vincente Minnelli Dies at 83
Vincente Minnelli died in Los Angeles at the age of 83 and was buried at
Forest Lawn in Glendale,
California. Minnelli won the Academy Award for Best Director for
An American In Paris with Gene Kelly
(1951), and again for Gigi
with Leslie Caron (1958). Minnelli was born in Chicago on February 28, 1903,
and was a costume designer in Chicago and New York theaters. By 1933 he was made art director at
Radio City Music Hall. After directing several Broadway musicals, he came to Hollywood and MGM in 1940,
where he handled some of Judy Garland's numbers in Busby Berkeley's musicals Strike Up The Band
and Babes on Broadway. In 1943, he directed the classic musical
Meet Me in St. Louis starring Judy Garland. They married in 1945, after
making The Clock, a stylish romantic drama with Robert Walker. Their daughter Liza Minnelli
was born in 1946. He directed
Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy (1950),
The Bad and the Beautiful
with Kirk Douglas & Lana Turner (1952), The Band Wagon with Fred Astaire (1953),
Brigadoon with Gene Kelly (1953), Kismet with Ann Blyth (1955), Lust for Life
with Kirk Douglas & Anthony Quinn (1956), and Bells Are Ringing with Judy Holliday & Dean Martin (1960).
His last films were the Barbra Streisand musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
and the studio-mangled A Matter of Time (1976) with his daughter, Liza Minnelli.
Minnelli said: “I work to please myself. I'm still not sure if movies are an art form.
And if they're not, then let them inscribe on my tombstone what they could about any craftsman
who loves his job: 'Here lies Vincente Minnelli. He died of hard work.'” And his work was beautiful!
My dear Davy: Work hard, and if Success do not dance up like the bubbles in the Salt
(with the Spirit Lamp under it) may the Devil and his Dame take success!... from the Window before me
there is a great Camp of Mountains— Giants seem to have pitch'd their tents there—
Each mountain is a Giant's tent— and how the light streams from them— and the shadows that
travel upon them! Davy! I ake for you to be with us.
W. Wordsworth is such a lazy fellow that I bemire myself by making promises for him— the moment,
I received your letter, I wrote to him... I trust howeer that I have invoked the sleeping Bard with
a spell so potent, that he will awake and deliver up that Sword of Argantyr, which is to rive the
Enchanter Gaudy-verse from his Crown to his Fork...
We drank tea the night before I left Grasmere, on the Island in that lovely lake, our kettle swung
over the fire hanging from the branch of a Fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods and mountains, and
lake all trembling, and as it were idealized thro' the subtle smoke which rose up from the
clear red embers of the fir-apples, which we had collected; afterwards, we made a glorious Bonfire
on the margin, by some elder bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke—
and the Image of the Bonfire, and of us that danced round it— ruddy laughing faces in the twilight—
the Image of this in a Lake smooth as that sea, to whose waves the Son of God had said, Peace!
May God and all his Sons, love you as I do— S. T. Coleridge
My Dear Madam: The weather here is hot, that it has induced us to engage our house for another month,
as we suppose that Florence will be intolerable in August. We live here seeing no one, reading for ever
almost... Our only amusement is a ride, which Shelley and I often take, in the cool of the evening...
We have finished Ariosto, and are now reading the Aminta of Tasso— a correct pastoral! I think
I shall like Tasso better than Ariosto, for although I bestow little value on correctness by itself,
I like it united to the genius and spirit of poetry— and how Ariosto runs on sometimes for stanzas
with— nothing!... My Dear Mrs. Gisborne, Your's obliged most truly, M. W S.
My Sweet Girl,— You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour—
for what is in the world? I say you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with such eyes upon me
as I have upon you: it cannot be. Forgive me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day employed
in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with you... If you should ever feel for Man at the first sight what
I did for you, I am lost... You absorb me in spite of myself— you alone: for I look not forward with any pleasure
to what is called being settled in the world; I tremble at domestic cares— yet for you I would meet them, though
if it would leave you the happier I would rather die than do so. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks,
your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your
lips to send me out of it. From no others would I take it. I am
indeed astonished to find myself so careless of all charms but yours— remembering as I do the time when even
a bit of ribband was a matter of interest with me. What softer words can I find for you after this— what it is
I will not read. Nor will I say more here, but in a postscript answer anything else you may have mentioned in your
letter in so many words— for I am distracted with a thousand thoughts. I will imagine you Venus tonight and
pray, pray, pray to your star like a heathen. Yours ever, fair Star, John Keats
Goethe has lately received a letter from Walter Scott, which has given him great pleasure.
He showed it to me today, and as the English handwriting was very illegible to him, he asked me
to translate the contents to him. It appears that Goethe had first written to the renowned English
poet, and this letter was in reply. "I feel myself highly honored," writes Walter Scott, "that any
of my productions should have been so fortunate as to attract the attention of Goethe, to the number
of whose admirers I have belonged since the year 1798, when, notwithstanding my slight knowledge of
the German language, I was bold enough to translate into English the Götz von Berlichingen.
In this youthful undertaking, I had quite forgotten that it is not enough to feel the beauty of a
work of genius, but that one must also thoroughly understand the language in which it is written
before one can succeed in making such beauty apparent to others. Nevertheless, I still set some
value on that youthful effort, because it at least shows that I knew how to choose a subject
which was worthy of admiration... Poor Lord Byron's destiny did not grant him so fortunate a lot,
since it carried him off in the prime of life, and cut short all that had been hoped and expected
from him. He esteemed himself fortunate in the honor which you paid him, and felt how much he was
indebted to a poet to whom all the writers of the present generation owe so much, that they feel
themselves bound to look up to him with childlike veneration... I wish you a continuance of good
health and repose, and subscribe myself, with the most sincere and deepest esteem, Walter Scott,
Edinburgh, July 9, 1827" Goethe was, as I said, delighted with this letter. He was, however,
of opinion that it paid him so much respect that he must put a great deal to the accunt of the
courtesy of a man of rank and refined cultivation. He then mentioned the good and affectionate
manner in which Walter Scott spoke of his family connections, which pleased him highly, as a sign
of brotherly confidence.
Yesterday I went to the Atheneum, & looked thro' Journals & books— for wit,
for excitement,— to awake in me the muse. In vain and in vain. And am I yet to learn
that the God dwells within? that books are but crutches, the resorts of the feeble & lame,
which if used by the strong, weaken the muscular power, & become necessary aids? I return home.
Nature still solicits me. Overhead the sanctities of the stars shine forevermore & to me also,
pouring satire on the pompous (bustle) business of the day which they close & making the
generations of men show slight & evanescent. A man is but a bug, the earth but a boat a cockle
drifting under their old (lamps) light.
Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.
I think if I were professor of Rhetoric, teacher of the art of writing well, to young men,
I should use Dante for my text-book. Come hither, youth, & learn how the brook that flows
at the bottom of your garden, or the farmer who ploughs the adjacent field—
your father & mother, your debts & credits, & your web of habits are the very best basis
of poetry, & the material which you must work up. Dante knew how to throw the weight of his body
into each act, and is, like Byron, Burke, & Carlyle, the Rhetorician. I find him full of the
nobil volgare eloquenza; that he knows "God damn," & can be rowdy if he please, & he does please.
Yet is not Dante reason or illumination & that essence we were looking for, but only a new exhibition
of the possibilities of genius. Here is an imagination that rivals in closeness & precision the senses.
But we must prize him as we do a rainbow, we can appropriate nothing of him. Could we some day admit
into our oyster heads the immense figure which these flagrant points compose when united, the hands
of Phidias, the conclusion of Newton, the pantheism of Goethe, the all wise music of Shakspeare, the
robust eyes of Swedenborg!
I am my own man more than most men, yet the loss of a few persons would be most impoverishing;
a few persons who give flesh to what were, else, mre thoughts, and which now I am not at liberty
to slight, or in any manner treat as fictions. It were too much to say that the Platonic world
I might have learned to treat as cloud-land, had I not known Alcott, who is a native of that country,
yet I will say that he makes it as solid as Massachusetts to me; and Thoreau gives me, in flesh and
blood and pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics. He is far more real, and daily practically obeying
them, than I.
Read Parson's Dante. The translation appears excellent, most faithful, yet flowing & elegant,
with remarkable felicities, as when Per tutti i cerchi dello inferno scuri is rendered
"Through all the dingy circles down in hell." But Dante still appears to me, as ever, an exceptional
mind, a prodigy of imaginative function, executive rather than contemplative or wise... not like
Shakespeare, or Socrates, or Goethe, a beneficent humanity.
Be a little careful about your Library. Do you foresee what you will do with it?
Very little to be sure. But the real quesion is, What it will do with you? You will come here
& get books that will open your eyes, & your ears, & your curiosity, & turn you inside out
or outside in.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and
woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring night.
As I walked on the beach (Nantasket), panting with thirst, a man pointed to a white spot on the side
of a distant hill (Strawberry Hill he called it) which rose from the gravelly beach, and said that
there was a pure and cold and unfailing spring; and I could not help admiring that in this town of Hull,
of which I had heard, but now for the first time saw, a single spring should appear to me and should be
of so much value... Hull, the place of the spring and of the well. This is what the raveler would
remember. All that he remembered of Rome was a spring on the Capitoline Hill! It is the most perfect
seashore I have seen. The rockweed falls over you like the tresses of mermaids, and you see
the propriety of that epithet. You cannot swim among these weeds and pull yourself up by them without
thinking of mermen and mermaids.
This early twitter or breathing of chip-birds in the dawn sounds like something organic in the earth.
This is a morning celebrated by birds. Our bluebird sits on the peak of the house and warbles as in the
spring, but as he does not now by day. This morning is all the more glorious for a white fog, which,
though not universal, is still very extensive over all lowlands, some fifty feet high or more, though
there was none at ten last night. There are white cobwebs on the grass. the battalions of the fog are
continually on the move... In the meanwhile the wood thrush and the jay and the robin sing around me here,
and birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate
and the sun be reflected from farm windows on its green bottom. It is a rare music, the earliest bee's
hum amid the flowers, revisiting the flower-bells just after sunrise.
Very early this morning we heard the note of the wood thrush, on awaking, though this was a poor singer.
I was glad to find that this prince of singers was so common in the wilderness... The shores of this lake
are rocky, rarely sandy, and we saw no good places for moose to come out on, i.e. no meadows... Landing
on the east side, four or five miles north of Kineo, I noticed roses (R. nitida) in bloom, and,
as usual, an abundance of rue (Thalictrum Cornuti) along the shore. The wood there was arbor-vitae,
spruce, fir, white pine... Returning, we found the tree cranberry in one place still in bloom. The stream
here ran very swiftly and was hard to paddle against.
What Raphael and Michelangelo would have been in our period.
Things are not quite so simple with "pure" art as is dogmatically claimed. In the final analysis,
a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a
symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.
In this sense I shall never be a pure artist as the dogma defines him. We higher creatures are also
mechanically produced children of God, and yet intellect and soul operate within us in completely
different dimensions. Oscar Wilde: “All art is at once surface and symbol.”
That everything is transitory is merely a simile. Everything we see is a proposal, a possibility,
an expedient. The real truth, to begin with, remains invisible beneath the surface. the colors that
captivate us are not lighting, but light. The graphic universe consists of light and shadow. The diffused
clarity of slightly overcast weather is richer in phenomena than a sunny day. A thin stratum of cloud
just before the stars break through. It is difficult to catch and represent this, because the moment is
so fleeting. It has to penetrate into our soul. The formal has to fuse with the Weltanschauung.
Simple motion strikes us as banal. The time element must be eliminated. Yesterday and tomorrow as
simultaneous. In music, polyphony helped to some extent to satisfy this need. A quintet as in
Don Giovanni is closer to us than the epic motion in Tristan. Mozart and Bach are more
modern than the nineteenth century. If, in music, the time element could be overcome by a retrograde
motion that would penetrate consciousness, then a renaissance might still be thinkable.
We investigate the formal for the sake of expression and of the insights into our soul which are
thereby provided. Philosophy, so they say, has a taste for art; at the beginning I was amazed at
how much they saw. For I had only been thinking about form, the rest of it had followed by itself.
An awakened awareness of "the rest of it" has helped me greatly since then and provided me with
greater variability in creation... The world was my subject, even though it was not the visible world.
I plan to use my free time to paint. Maybe I'll set up my tent out in the bushes, use it as a fine
outdoor studio, and borrow some spicy saps from 'nature.'
Last look at Barcelona and last thoughts. The mountains rise up in majestic beauty. The setting sun
shows its last pale rays. Here and there, the blue sky holds little white clouds. As I look at this
landscape, my mind is crowded with thoughts. We are going to leave Barcelona, leave this beautiful
country. No more shall we see this blue sky which delights me so. No more shall I be able to touch
my lips to the sweet face of dearest Grandmother. No more shall I be able to surrender to nameless
thoughts that always come to me in the evening when I lean on the railing of our balcony, in the
silence of the night. And last of all, I am sad to think that we are leaving a country that has been
like a mother and a lucky charm for us.
I wanted to tell you that I found a strange truth in my Heros and Hero Worship. Carlyle speaks
of the "Divine Idea in Man"— that all things which we see or work with on this earth, especially
ourselves and all other persons, are like a kind of vesture or sensuous Appearance, that under all,
there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the "Divine Idea of the World." This is the reality
which lies at the bottom of all Appearance. To the mass of men, no such Divine Idea is recognizable
in the world; they live, says Fichte, merely among the superficialities, practicalities and appearances
of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them.
Does this Divine Idea explain the supreme longings, the things that call to us, the things that stir
in us? Sometimes when I have been stirred too deeply, when my entire being trembles in the agony of
revelations which cannot be spoken, I have exclaimed against the littleness of our bodies in which
souls, like prisoners, suffer and rejoice with an intensity we seem incapable of resisting. Was this
only a spark from the Divine in us?
“The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of Things, in the True, Divine, and Eternal, which
exist always, unseen to most, under the Temporary Trivial!” this appeals to me because of its
loftiness and purity. It seems to explain many things, and above all it makes clear the reason for
peace and contentment entering a human heart when it turns away from the trivial, and the vexations
and anguish attending the trivial. But it takes a hero to accomplish this; it takes a brave, strong
heart to turn away from the trivial. No wonder the great man who succeeds in living in the inward sphere
of things can complete those masterful tasks, write the immortal books, prophesy— kings, men of
letters, prophets, poets, they are all moved by the True, the Divine, the Eternal, and are inspired
by the light within, a light Fichte and Carlyle apparently believe to be possessed by every man,
although seldom recognized.
It reminds me of something Hugo [Guiler] told me; that there is poetry in every human being but
it lies hidden sometimes because the person is ashamed of it and believes it to be a weakness...
“All children are poetical,” Hugo said. “You see this in their love of fairy tales,
of beautiful things, in their love of make-believe. Afterward they lose this, some entirely, some
partly, burying it under a rough exterior. Many never lose it.” And poetry, after all, being
divine, is another name for the Divine Idea.
You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need
to attain or cultivate it... All that you have to do is give up being aware of other things,
that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains,
and that is the Self.
|
 |
Born on July 25:
Paolo Gualdo
(1553-1621)
Christoph Scheiner
(1575-1650)
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
Arthur James Balfour
(1848-1930)
Maxfield Parrish
(1870-1966)
Walter Brennan
(1894-1974)
Eric Hoffer
(1902-1983)
Elias Canetti
(1905-1994)
Barbara Harris
Nate Thurmond
Walter Payton (1954-1999)
Iman Abdulmajid
|
Poet Samuel Coleridge died this morning at 6:30 am from a coma. The previous evening on July 24,
he dictated to Joseph Green for the Opus Maximum and spoke with utmost difficulty:
Congress established a new rank, general of the armies of the United States,
to which Grant was immediately appointed. Grant was born on April 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois.
He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. In February 1862 he took
Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles
in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying,
"I can't spare this man— he fights." Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg,
the key city on the Mississippi, and cut the Confederacy in two.
Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga. Lincoln appointed Grant General-in-Chief in March 1864.
Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he pinned down General Robert E. Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia. Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House,
Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.
Grant became the 18th U.S. President (1869-1877) and brought part of his Army staff to the White House.
However his administration was marked by political scandal with gold speculators wrecking the economy.
Grant died from throat cancer on July 23, 1885 at Mount McGregor, New York, in the Adirondacks.
Boston Red Sox Pitcher Lefty Grove becomes the 12th baseball pitcher to win 300 games.
It was his last victory and he retired at the end of the year with a lifetime record
of 300 wins-141 loses. Considered the greatest left-handed pitcher in American League
history, Grove had eight 20-win seasons, leading the AL in strikeouts 7 consecutive
seasons (1925-1931). He was 31-4 for the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics, compiling a
16-game winning streak in the process. Lefty Grove has led the league with the lowest
ERA more than any other pitcher (9). Once in the 9th inning against the Yankees,
with a runner on first, a one run lead and no outs, Lefty struck out Babe Ruth,
Lou Gehrig, and Bob Meusel on 10 pitches to win the game. Grove was born on March 6, 1900
in Lonaconing, Maryland and died on May 23, 1975 in Norwalk, Ohio. He was inducted into
Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1947.
The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night tops the music chart and stays #1 for 14 weeks.
Here are the lyrics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney:
