Happy holidays, happy 2015

Happy Christmas holidays and happy 2015.

This year you're not going to listen to a Christmas carol, but watch a Big Bang Theory Christmas episode :) :

Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne, 1956

Highlights from Look Back in Anger.

A film version of the play.

Human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech: John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

John Milton (1608-1674) was born into a Puritan family, he supported Cromwell’s government and in 1649 he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Languages (he had studied Latin, Greek, and Italian).

After the fall of Charles I, censorship had been abolished, but it had been soon reintroduced after a number of libels and pamphlets were published, whose content was disturbing also for the Puritans. The Licensing Act, 1643, restored preventive censorship (that is, before) the book was published.

Milton’s argumentations were not accepted at that time, but they would become part of the reflection on the human rights later.

                

Note on the title – "… Areopagitikos [was] a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore)". From: http://tinyurl.com/b4cajc

Reading from: Areopagitica, 1644

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men [1]. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. […]

As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. […]

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

[1] Reference to a Greek myth in which the teeth of a dead dragon, planted in the ground, give birth to great warriors.

A Valentine's Day love song

It's ok for everyone, the English- speaking ones and the French :)

Gallant

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gallant

Gallant: "a young man of fashion", a ladies' man, "a man who enjoys being with and giving attention to women", "a man who shows a marked fondness for the company of women or is especially attentive to women".

Epiphany

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epiphany

epiph·a·ny

 noun \i-ˈpi-fə-nē\

Epiphany : a Christian festival held on January 6 in honor of the coming of the three kings to the infant Jesus Christ

: a moment in which you suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way

plural epiph·a·nies

Full Definition of EPIPHANY

1

capitalized :  January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ

2

:  an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being

3

a (1) :  a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) :  an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) :  an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure

b :  a revealing scene or moment

What's in a poem/ 2

The Solitary Reaper, William Wordsworth, 1807.

Henry Bacon, The Peasant Girl, 1883

"Behold her single in the field... Reaping and singing by herself..."

 

"Among the farthest Hebrides"

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton

"Will no one tell me what she sings? - 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago: 

Or is it some humble lay, 

Familiar matter of to-day? 

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 

That has been, and may be again?" 

What's in a poem

Daffodils, by William Wordsworth, 1804.
Senses, emotions, poetic inspiration: "poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity" (Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1798, 1800).
The poet lived most of his life in the Lake District.

        Below, Wordsworth's house in Grasmere, Dove Cottage.

Daffodils bloom in early spring. 

Listen to the poem read by a famous English actor, Jeremy Irons.

"A host of golden daffodils"