The Saunterer

Edgar Allen Poe on the greatest thing poetry can do

    Poems do many things. To Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Tennyson achieved the greatest of these:

    In perfect sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived . . . I call him, and think him the noblest of poets—not because the impressions he produces are, at all times, the most profound, not because the poetical excitement which he induces is, at all times, the most intense—but because it is, at all times, the most ethereal—in other words, the most elevating and the most pure.

    (Quoted from page 48 of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, edited by Harold Bloom. Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010.)

    For a poem of Tennyson’s in a past post on the Saunterer that illustrates what poetry can do that science cannot, click HERE.
    For a brief biography of Edgar Allen Poe, click here. For images of or relating to him, click here.
    For a brief biography of Harold Bloom, click here. For images of or relating to him, click here.

Frank Sinatra on learning songs to sing

    First and above all, he studied the lyrics for their emotion:

    I take a sheet with just the lyrics. No music. At that point, I’m looking at a poem. I’m trying to understand the point of view of the person behind the words. I want to understand his emotions. Then I start speaking, not singing, the words so I can experiment and get the right inflections. When I get with the orchestra, I sing the words without a microphone first, so I can adjust the way I’ve been practicing to the arrangement. I’m looking to fit the emotion behind the song that I’ve come up with to the music. Then it all comes together.

    (Quoted from “Still Attuned to Sinatra at 100,” by James Kaplan. Page A17, The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2015.)
    For a brief biography of Frank Sinatra, click here. For images of or relating to Frank Sinatra, click here.
    For a brief biography of James Kaplan, click here. For images of or relating to James Kaplan, click here.

Margaret Fuller on how climbing sharpens the senses

    Want to be more alive? Go hiking, go climbing. Margaret Fuller:

    When I can exhaust myself in climbing, I feel delightfully; the eye is so sharpened, and the mind so full of thought. The outlines of all objects, the rocks, the distant sails, even the rippling of the ocean were so sharp that they seemed to press themselves into the brain. When I see a natural scene by such a light, it stays in my memory always, as a picture; on milder days it influences me more in the way of reverie.

    (Quoted from page 255 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Margaret Fuller, click here. For images of or relating Margaret Fuller, click here.

The Architectural Record on diversity of architecture

    Within any location it’s good to have similar architecture (think of Ivy League campuses) but bad to have diverse architecture (think of the Las Vegas Strip). Why do we not mind diversity of people in a place but mind diversity of architecture? It’s an interesting question, and the answer perhaps applies to how paintings are best grouped in art museums.

    Consider from page 220 of Volume VII of the Architectural Record, July-September, 1897, this passage:

    Broadway, on the other hand, is an architectural Babel, a confusion of tongues. The present development of it corresponds to the latest phase of immigration, as attested by the names of the signs, which still further variegate and vulgarize its architecture, and bespeak not only an Angle-Saxon and a Celtic and a Teutonic but a Semitic and a Slavonic population. Indeed, it is the heterogeneousness of the part of Broadway of which we are speaking that makes this mile from Canal Street to 10th Street perhaps the most horrible stretch of architecture on the face of the earth.

Kenyon Cox on striving

    Although Kenyon Cox is addressing serious young artists, his advice is good for serious young anyones:

    To the serious young artist I would say: Fix your eye on the highest, gird yourself for the journey, and Godspeed! If you fall by the way you may at least fall face forward. And it may be that even you may reach the goal. It may be that you, too, may find yourself, in the end, among the small but glorious company whose work the world will cherish and whose memory the world will not let die.

    (Quoted from page 231 of The Classic Point of View, by Kenyon Cox. Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1911.)
    For a brief biography of Kenyon Cox, click here. For images of or relating to Kenyon Cox click here.

W. H. Auden on being true to oneself

    W. H. Auden:

    Every poet knows that, when he looks back over what he has written, the poems it is a torment and a shame to recall are not those which, for one reason or another, were failures—no poet who writes much can hope to escape writing some poems which are bad or, at least, boring — but those which he knows to be clever forgeries, expressing feelings or attitudes which were not really his, but which vanity, a wish to please an audience, or the wrong kind of conscience deluded him into fancying were genuine. Of these, he is very rightly ashamed, because he cannot say, “I should have written it differently” or “It was the best I could do at the time”: he can only say “I ought never to have written it, and I needn’t have.”

    (Quoted from page 47 of the October 22, 2015, The New York Review of Books.)
    For a brief biography of W. H. Auden, click here. For images of or relating to W. H. Auden, click here.

Eleanor Roosevelt on the value of the past, the present, and the future

    Yesterday, today, or tomorrow—which is best? Here, we differ from Eleanor Roosevelt. We spend, with the help of art, much of our days mining our past for feelings. As for her,

    Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.

    (Quoted from page 76 of Guilty Till Proven Innocent Because They Can, by Salvatore J. Manfredonia. Authorhouse, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, click here. For images of or relating to Eleanor Roosevelt, click here.

Bertrand Russell’s credo

    Bertrand Russell’s credo is exactly how he lived his life:

    Let us keep before our minds constantly the thought of serving the world, not some derivative principle, nor pride, nor desire to confute our opponents, but the positive desire to nourish life in the world rather than to minister to death.

    (Quoted from page 287 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Bertrand Russell, click here. For images of or relating to Bertrand Russell, click here.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on what white Americans neglected to do in helping the Negro

    White Americans did a necessary thing but failed with the sufficient things. Hear Martin Luther King, Jr.:

    For the vast majority of White Americans, the past decade—the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation, or all forms of discrimination. The outraged White citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs and forbade them more cruelties. But when this was to a degree accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily inflamed him melted away. White Americans left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the aggressor. It appeared that the White segregationist and the ordinary White citizen had more in common with one another than either had with the Negro.

    (Quoted from page 141 of I Mix What I Like, by Jared A. Ball. AK Press, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., click here. For images of or relating to Martin Luther King, Jr., click here.
    For a brief biography of Jared A. Ball, click here. For images of or relating to Jared A. Ball, click here.

Friedrich Nietzsche on the way to live.

    Ever wonder why the song Frank Sinatra sang is called My Way, not The Way? Friedrich Nietzsche knew:

    This is my way. What is yours? As for the way, it does not exist.

    (Quoted from page 84 of A God Within, by René Dubos. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.)
    For a brief biography of Friedrich Nietzsche, click here. For images of or relating to Friedrich Nietzsche, click here.
    For a brief biography of René Dubos, click here. For images of or relating to René Dubos, click here.