Fun_People Archive
19 Jul
LIT BITS V3 #201

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 100 18:31:53 -0700
To: Fun_People
Precedence: bulk
Subject: LIT BITS V3 #201

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649  -=[ Fun_People ]=-
X-http://www.langston.com/psl-bin/Fun_People.cgi
Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #201
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Thursday, 20 July 2000; on this day,

146 years ago (1854),

	Poet Caroline Anne Bowles--who sent the manuscript of her narrative
     poem _Ellen Fitzarthur_ to Robert Southey anonymously (and subsequently
     married him)--dies at 69 in Lymington, Hampshire.

131 years ago (1869),

	Mark Twain's _The Innocents Abroad_ is published. In chapter 19 he
     quips: "They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always
     spell better than they pronounce."

66 years ago (1934),

	The writer of the "two Germanies," Uwe Johnson is born in Cammin.
     His first novel will be rejected by East German publishers so he will
     move to West Berlin in 1959. Highly experimental, his narratives
     abruptly shift from one consciousness or place to another, and words
     assume different meanings when used by different characters.

Today's poem:

             Qual Donna Attende A Gloriosa Fama

     Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame
     Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy?
     Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy
     Whom all the world doth as my lady name!
     How honour grows, and pure devotion's flame,
     How truth is joined with graceful dignity,
     There thou may'st learn, and what the path may be
     To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim;
     There learn soft speech, beyond all poet's skill,
     And softer silence, and those holy ways
     Unutterable, untold by human heart.
     But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill,
     This none can copy! since its lovely rays
     Are given by God's pure grace, and not by art.

     (Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson)

                                          Francesco Petrarch
prev [=] prev © 2000 Peter Langston []