1923. Literature (2)

Literature

"Le Monocle de Mon Oncle." Wallace Stevens. American. 1923. Poetry. Affirmation of the imagination of middle age vs. the invalid fancy of youth.

"Peter Quince at the Clavier." Wallace Stevens. American. 1923. Poetry. Retells part of the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders; "beauty is momentary in the mind, but in the flesh it is immortal."

The Prophet. Kahlil Gibran. Syrian. 1923. Prose and Poetry. Presents the elements of Gibran's mystical faith.

Saint Joan. George Bernard Shaw. British. 1923. Play. Presents Joan as an early nationalist; prototype of the Protestant thinker who puts conscience before the judgment of the Church.

The Sonnets to Orpheus. Rainer Maria Rilke. German. 1923. Poetry. Sonnets center around the myth of Orpheus: man must be fluid to exist in a changing world. Death is one metamorphosis among many.

"Sunday Morning." Wallace Stevens. American. 1923. Poetry. Narrator debates with woman who feels the need for some imperishable bliss. Death is the mother of beauty; earth is all the paradise we will know.

1923. Literature (1)

Literature

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Robert Frost. American. 1923. Poetry. Stops horse to contemplate beauty of the scene, but then must move on. Frost has said he could have added forty pages of footnotes.

Antic Hay. Aldous Huxley. British. 1923. Novel. Long, futile conversations of London intellectuals; everything seems valueless. Despair.

Dueno Elegies. Rainer Maria Rilke. German. 1923. Poetry. Personal solutions to existential problems and to those posed by the industrial age.

The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. Edna St. Vincent Millay. American. 1923. Poetry. 39 sonnets. "Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."

Kangaroo. DH Lawrence. British. 1923. Novel. Vivid account of Australia. Husband keeps trying to assert his will over his wife, unsuccessfully.

A Lost Lady. Willa Cather. American. 1923. Novel. Frontier woman moves from her husband to a lover, then disappears; rumored to be the wife of a wealthy Englishman in South America. She is seen through the eyes of an adoring young boy.

1923. Society (2)

Society

1923. Bethume-Cookman College is founded at Daytona, Fla. Its slogan is "Enter to Learn. Depart to Serve."

1923. Published March 3 at New York is Volume 1, No. 1 of newsweekly Time, a venture that will mushroom into a vast publishing empire. Put out by Henry Robinson Luce and his Yale classmate Briton Hadden who will die in 1929 after having established a distinctive "Timestyle" by inverting sentences and inventing such words as "socialite," "GOPolitician," "cinemaddict," and "tycoon."

1923. Popular songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas"; "Nobody's Sweetheart"; "Who's Sorry Now?" "I Cried for You"; "Barney Google"; "Mexicali Rise."

1923. New York's Yankee Stadium opens April 19, draws a sell-out crowd of more than 60,000 and turns away thousands for lack of seats.

1923. President Coolidge lights the first White House Christmas tree to begin a lasting tradition.

1923. Japan's Great Kanto earthquake and fire, September 1, destroy Tokyo and Yokohama. 100,000 are killed, 752,000 injured; 83,000 houses are completely destroyed, 380,000 damaged.

1923. U.S. wheat farmers try to persuade each other to plant less, but overproduction continues in the absence of any effective farm organization.

1923. Grasshoppers plague Montana. Forming a cloud 300 miles long, 100 miles wide, and half a mile high, the locusts devour every green blade, leaf, and stalk, leaving holes i the ground where green plants grew.

1923. National Dairy Corp. is organized at New York by Thomas McInnerny who says the dairy industry needs some organization to control the quality and service of its many small, local companies.

1923. Society (1)

Society

1923. Adolf Hitler, 34, stages a "Beer Hall Putsch" at Munich, November 8.

1923. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russia, the Ukraine, White Russia and Transcaucasia), established on paper December 30, 1922, becomes a reality July 6.

1923. V.I. Lenin establishes the first Soviet forced labor camp in the Solovetsky Islands, northwest of Archangel. Slave labor in the next 30 years will build nine new Russian cities, 12 railway lines, six heavy industry centers, three large hydroelectric stations, two highways and three ship canals.

1923. United States Steel reduces its 12-hour day to 8 hours August 2. Big steel will hire an additional 17,000 workers in the next year, raise wages, and still increase its profits.

1923. Major U.S. auto makers inaugurate annual model style changes that make older models stylistically obsolete.

1923. Aimee Semple McPherson uses special effects to produce thunder, lightning and wind that illustrate her "foursquare gospel" and help fill her 5,000-seat temple.

1922. Literature (3)

Literature

Ulysses. James Joyce. Irish. 1922. Novel. Greatest 20th century novel written in English. Obscurity. T.S. Eliot: A landmark because it destroys our civilization. Disillusioned study of estrangement, paralysis and disintegration of society. Records events of one average day, June 16, 1904, in the lives of the three leading characters. Journeys about the city of Dublin, matched by inward journeys into the consciousness. Dispassionate description of details of daily life; details become symbols. Relates time in world of Dublin to timeless myth, history, religion. Plan of book parallels Odyssey; echoes episodes in the Odyssey. Central theme is exile; cannot find key to loneliness and frustration. Molly Bloom: embodiment of feminine regenerative principle of the universe. Her soliloquy in one uninterrupted long sentence ends with "yes." Joyce perfected interior monologue; parodies variety of literary styles.

The Wasteland. TS Eliot. American/British. 1922. Poetry. Breaks from conventional modes of poetic expression in its condensed use of language. Wealth of literary and historical references; lack of narrative sequence. Violent literary controversy on publication. Explores different psychic stages of soul in despair, struggling for redemption. Wasteland - central image of spiritual drought; contrasts with sources of regeneration. Doubt is not resolved; literary, religious fragments offer hope of rebirth, however, in foreign languages, suggesting unassimilated memories. In medieval legend, wasteland ruled by Fisher King, sterile by curse. Cured by purifying ordeals undertaken by a knight. Important event in development of modern English poetry. Like Joyce's Ulysses. Contrast spiritual stagnation with myths from the past. Both use city as major symbol of paralysis. Full of scenes, phrases, references with little meaning in themselves but echo, explain one another. Both depend on reader's knowledge of many works of literature, religion and history.

1922. Literature (2)

Literature

The Hairy Ape. Eugene O'Neill. American. 1922. Play. Crude stoker disillusioned with his life when inspected by a society girl in the depths of the ship.

Jacob's Room. Virginia Woolf. British. 1922. Novel. Life and death of a promising young man from childhood through death in war. Describes his empty room.

Lady into Fox. David Garnett. British. 1922. Novel. Fantasy about man whose wife suddenly turns into a fox.

One of Ours. Willa Cather. American. 1922. Novel. Boy grows up on farm, goes to university, enters army, killed in France in WWI.

Rootabaga Stories. Carl Sandburg. American. 1922. Children's stories. Rich in language and cadences of folk song.

Siddhartha. Hermann Hesse. German. 1922. Novel. Search for ultimate reality through profligacy and asceticism. Wisdom cannot be taught; must come from one's own inner struggle. Parallels to Buddha's life, but not a fictionalized life of Buddha.

"Things." DH Lawrence. British. 1922. Story. Cynical account of two American idealists who devote their lives to art, beauty, Buddhism and European culture. Succeed only in collecting "things."

Les Thibaults. Roger Martin Du Gard. French. 1922/40. Novels. Brothers react as individuals to bourgeois environment. One leads simple, dutiful existence. The other rebels. Both killed in WWI.

1922. Literature (1)

Literature

Abie's Irish Rose. Anne Nichols. American. 1922. Play. Jewish boy marries Irish Catholic girl. Problems with families.

Anna Christie. Eugene O'Neill. American. 1922. Play. Swedish captain loves/hates the sea; in spite of his efforts, daughter falls in love with the sea.

Babbitt. Sinclair Lewis. American. 1922. Novel. Middle class, small-town booster and joiner who is trapped by his middle class values.

The Castle. Franz Kafka. German. 1922. Novel. Man against bureaucracy. Human quest for understanding of the ways of an incomprehensible God?

The Enormous Room. ee cummings. American. 1922. Autobiographical Novel. Imprisonment in a French military concentration camp, incarcerated on a false charge of treason.

Facade. Edith Sitwell. British. 1922. Poetry. Sound and imagery rather than meaning.

"The Garden Party. Katherine Mansfield. New Zealand. 1922. Story. Preparing for a party, wealthy Laura encounters reality in the death of a poor laborer.