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The Death Of A Soldier
"The Death of a Soldier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, '' Harmonium.'' The poem uses free verse to describe the death of a soldier. Interpretation The poem's longevity reinforces the naturalistic austerity of its depiction of death. One interpretive viewpoint asks whether Stevens is writing about any death, or rather, as Longenbach asserts, the death of the soldier—"and not an ambiguously 'fictive' soldier but Eugène Lemercier he young French painter killed in 1915 whose letters were collected as ''Lettres d'un soldat'' and read by Stevens in the summer of 1917" Lemercier was the grandson of Irish artist Harriet Osborne O'Hagan. Longenbach claims that the poem's "utter bareness derives from the fact that Stevens was writing not about natural death ... but about a new kind of unnatural death, the daily death of thousands of soldiers on French battlefields." One response to Longenbach's interpretation is to invoke Stevens's distinction between the tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his ''Collected Poems'' in 1955. Stevens's first period of writing begins with the 1923 publication of ''Harmonium'', followed by a slightly revised and amended second edition in 1930. His second period occurred in the 11 years immediately preceding the publication of his ''Transport to Summer'', when Stevens had written three volumes of poems including ''Ideas of Order'', '' The Man with the Blue Guitar'', ''Parts of a World'', along with ''Transport to Summer''. His third and final period began with the publication of '' The Auroras of Autumn'' in the early 1950s, followed by the release of his ''Collected Poems'' in 1954, a year before his death. Stevens's best-known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonium (poetry Collection)
''Harmonium'' is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines (" Life Is Motion") to several hundred ("The Comedian as the Letter C") (see the footnotesFrom the table of contents for ''Harmonium'' in Frank Kermode and Joan Richards, editors, ix–xi: * Earthy Anecdote * Invective Against Swans * In the Carolinas * The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage * The Plot Against the Giant * Infanta Marina * Domination of Black * The Snow Man * The Ordinary Women * The Load of Sugar-Cane * Le Monocle de Mon Oncle * Nuances of a Theme by Williams * Metaphors of a Magnifico * Ploughing on Sunday * Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges * Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores * Fabliau of Florida * The Doctor of Geneva * Another Weeping Woman * Homunculus et La Belle Etoile * The Comed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Verse
Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Definition Free verse does not "proceed by a strict set of rules … is not a literary type, and does not conform to a formal structure." It is not considered to be completely free. In 1948, Charles Allen wrote, "The only freedom cadenced verse obtains is a limited freedom from the tight demands of the metered line." Free verse contains some elements of form, including the poetic line, which may vary freely; rhythm; strophes or strophic rhythms; stanzaic patterns and rhythmic units or cadences. It is said that verse is free "when it is not primarily obtained by the metered line." Donald Hall goes as far as to say that "the ''form'' of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the ''form'' of a rondeau," and T. S. Eliot wrote, "No verse is fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Lemercier
Eugène Lemercier (7 November 1886 – 6 April 1915) was a French artist and soldier in World War I. His letters to his mother are a first-hand account of the war, and are preserved in the National Library of Ireland. He is believed to be the subject of Wallace Stevens' poem " The Death of a Soldier." Early life and artistic career Eugène Emmanuel Lemercier was born in Paris on 7 November 1886. He was the son of Marguerite O’Hagan and Eugène-Augustin Lemercier. His grandmother was the Irish portrait artist Harriet Osborne O'Hagan, and his mother was also an artist. His father died before Lemercier was born. Lemercier entered the École des Beaux-Arts at age fifteen. He left the École in 1906 to join the army to complete his military service. Lemercier won a number of government prizes for his paintings between 1906 and 1914, for pieces such as ''La Contemplation'' (Study for 'Contemplation'), which is held by the National Gallery of Ireland. He began a new work, when he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harriet Osborne O'Hagan
Harriet Osborne O'Hagan (1830–1921) was an Irish portrait artist. Life Harriet Osborne was born in Dublin in 1830. She initially studied with George Sharp RHA. At least one Dublin address can be discerned from her exhibited works, 195 Great Brunswick Street. Having moved to London, she appears under the name O'Hagan in 1854 living at 193 Stanhope Street, though it is unknown when or where she married. Around 1866, O'Hagan moved to Paris. She was in Paris at the same time as Sarah Purser, and was a member of her social circle, however little is known about her personal life or career. Purser produced portrait entitled Mademoiselle Lemercier in 1887, which is likely to be O'Hagan's daughter, Marguerite Lemercier O'Hagan (1859 – c.1930). It has been suggested that this portrait was created during a visit to Ireland. O'Hagan lived out her life in France, and it is known that she lamented being unable to return to Ireland. She died in 1921, in Paris. Her grandson was Eugène Lemer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Snow Man
"The Snow Man" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, ''Harmonium'', first published in the October 1921 issue of the journal ''Poetry''. Overview Sometimes classified as one of Stevens' "poems of epistemology", it can be read as an expression of the naturalistic skepticism that he absorbed from his friend and mentor George Santayana. It is doubtful that anything can be known about a substantial self (Santayana was an epiphenomenalist) or indeed about substances in the world apart from the perspectives that human imagination brings to "the nothing that is" when it perceives "junipers shagged with ice", etc. There is something wintry about this insight, which Stevens captures in ''The Necessary Angel'' by writing, "The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us." The poem is an expression of Stevens' perspectivism, leading from a relatively objective description of a winter scene to a relatively subjective emotional response (thinking of miser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British Empiricism, empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Internationally, Locke’s political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tabula Rasa
''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctrine of innatism, which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge. Proponents of the ''tabula rasa'' theory also favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate when it comes to aspects of one's personality, social and emotional behaviour, knowledge, and sapience. Etymology ''Tabula rasa'' is a Latin phrase often translated as ''clean slate'' in English and originates from the Roman ''tabula'', a wax-covered tablet used for notes, which was blanked ('' rasa'') by heating the wax and then smoothing it. This roughly equates to the English term "blank slate" (or, more literally, "erased slate") which refers to the emptiness of a slate prior to it being written on with chalk. Both may be renewed repe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1918 Poems
This year is noted for the end of the World War I, First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide. Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January – 1918 flu pandemic: The "Spanish flu" (influenza) is first observed in Haskell County, Kansas. * January 4 – The Finnish Declaration of Independence is recognized by Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia, Sweden, German Empire, Germany and France. * January 9 – Battle of Bear Valley: U.S. troops engage Yaqui people, Yaqui Native American warriors in a minor skirmish in Arizona, and one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars between the United States and Native Americans. * January 15 ** The keel of is laid in Britain, the first purpose-designed aircraft carrier to be laid down. ** The Red Army (The Workers and Peasants Red Army) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Poems
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
