in the dead of winter
On this day in history - the death of William Butler Yeats. The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted. In 1887, 15-inch snowflakes fell in Montana. The Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, and I was in a hotel room in Lyme Regis watching it. In 1953 Derek Bentley was hanged for a murder he did not commit.
On this day in history Horace Walpole invented the word "serendipity" - what could be better than that? In 1813 Pride and Prejudice was published. Stendhal's first book was published. Galileo may, on this day, have unwittingly been the first person to see the planet Neptune.
The death of Charlemagne. Japan invaded Shanghai. Antarctica was discovered. The first locomotive ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1807, Pall Mall was the first street lit by gaslight. Fifty years ago, Lego was invented.
Colette was born; David Lodge was born. John Tavener and Robert Wyatt were both born (one year apart). Jackson Pollock was born. In 1457 Henry VII was born, and on the same day in 1547 (note the chiasmus) his son, Henry VIII, died.
And, I now find, this very same day in 1996 saw the deaths of both the great Russian poet Joseph Brodsky and my cousin Stephanie's grandfather, Burne Hogarth, whose famous Tarzan revolutionised the art of drawing muscles in comic strips.* Two events I certainly knew about at the time, of course, but never connected.
Wikipedia is strange...
* I have seen cartoonists get tears in their eyes when I mentioned his name.
9 comments:
I have seen cartoonists get tears in their eyes when I mentioned his name...
...doubtless at the injustice of it all.
Didn't the credit go to Edgar Rice Burroughs? - as well as the cash?
Selena, cartoonists are rather dreamy types...
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the original novel, which was followed by a very popular spinoff comic strip. Burne Hogarth drew it - replacing Hal Foster - almost consistently from 1937 to 1950.
There! I had to look half of that up!
And I had to look up chiasmus, and now am parallely confused.
Mopsa - it's always good to learn a new word. In fact, if you google something like "rhetorical terms" you can find these pages that list and define every rhetorical device, and they are endlessly fascinating. If more people writing poetry today had read these pages the whole thing would be much more congenial... Even the names are interesting.
Where, oh where would Conan the Barbarian(or indeed Arnold Schwartzenegger) be without the technological and artistic advances brought about by Burne Hogarth?
Hi Toby...
To answer your question, I'm sure Arnie would have been just fine. I'm also sure the artists who drew Conan would have been at the very least aware of the influence of the Tarzan drawings. The advances brought5 about by Hoag's drawings weren't technical, but were aesthetic and to that extent did inform how future heroes of that kind were visualised. If you Google Conan, there's a quote from one of the artists on Wiki where he explicitly mentions Tarzan as the most similar precedent.
Anyway, not sure how your remark was intended, but let's just remember this is a member of my family we're talking about!
"In 1953 Derek Bentley was hanged for a murder he did not commit"
Er, didn't he? He was found guilty at the time, by a jury of his peers, who had heard all the evidence. In those days jurors had to have qualifications, and their decisions had to be unanimous; neither requirement exists today. Bentley's appeal at the time failed.
Many decades later the Court of Appeal in its wisdom decided that the trial process had been unfair. That is not the same as saying Bentley was innocent at all. Had he still been alive, he would have been retried.
It is also rarely mentioned that he was carrying a knuckle duster with a lethal spike on it.
None of the above is to say that Bentley was guilty, of course (as he should have been retried), only that it can't be said he was innocent either.
I know, I should get out more.
Linda - please - I must not have expressed myself well there -- It really does seem to me that not only the representation of Conan and seemingly every cartoon hero, but also characters on sword and sorcery book covers, action/adventure book covers, movie posters and graphic novels of the past 50 years has been influenced by Burne Hogarth. I'm not sure if those drawings had any influence on body builders or not(in terms of how they wanted their muscles to look -- if you look at photos of people like Jack LaLanne in the 1930s, they don't have nearly the muscle definition that later body builders express). But I certainly meant no offence against Burne Hogarth - his work advanced not only the artistry of comics, but also the anatomical knowledge and expression of comic artists.
Hi Toby, don't fret! I must have misread you. Easily done on a morning when a deranged binman has been clattering weird extra-planetary wheelie bins around the street from 5-6am...
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