Fun_People Archive
20 Dec
LIT BITS V3 #355

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 100 20:19:31 -0800
To: Fun_People
Precedence: bulk
Subject: LIT BITS V3 #355

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649  -=[ Fun_People ]=-
X-http://www.langston.com/psl-bin/Fun_People.cgi
Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #355
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Thursday, 21 December 2000; on this day,

625 years ago (1375),

     Giovanni Boccaccio dies at 62 in Certaldo, Italy, the town of his
     birth.

201 years ago (1799),

     William Wordsworth and his devoted sister, Dorothy, take possession
     of Dove Cottage at Grasmere, Westmorland.

196 years ago (1804),

     British statesman and novelist, Benjamin Disraeli is born in London.
     His novels are closely related to his political career which includes
     two stints as prime minister (1868 and 1874-80).

141 years ago (1859),

     Gustave Kahn, French poet and literary theorist who claimed to be the
     inventor of vers libre, is born in Metz.

128 years ago (1872),

     American novelist and short-story writer known mainly for his stories
     about dogs, Payson Terhune is born in Newark, New Jersey.

108 years ago (1892),

     Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Fairfield) is born in London.

95 years ago (1905),

     British novelist best known for the autobiographical and satiric
     12-volume series of novels, _A Dance to the Music of Time_, Anthony
     Powell is born in London.

83 years ago (1917),

     Heinrich Boll is born in Cologne. The West German novelist and
     playwright will win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

60 years ago (1940),

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, 44, dies of a heart attack in Los Angeles, leaving
     _The Last Tycoon_ unfinished.

Today's poem:

     The World Is Too Much with Us; Late and Soon

     The world is too much with us; late and soon
     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
     Little we see in Nature that is ours;
     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
     The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
     It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

                                          William Wordsworth

© 2000 Peter Langston