“In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror, I spend seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody ‘identified’ me…and whispered in my ear…’Can you describe this?’ And I said: ‘Yes, I can.’”
Requiem Preface (written 1957)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged poetry, readings/research, women's history
“U.S. gospel singer. As a child, Jackson sang in the choir of the New Orleans church where her father preached. She learned sacred songs but was also exposed to blues recordings by Bessie Smith and Ida Cox. In Chicago she worked at odd jobs while singing with a gospel touring quintet, and opened several small businesses. Her warm, powerful voice first came to wide public attention in the 1930s, when she participated in a cross-county tour singing such songs as “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Closely associated with Thomas A. Dorsey, she sang many of his songs. “Move on up a Little Higher” (1948) sold over a million copies, and she became one of the best-selling singers of the 1950s and ‘60s. She first appeared at Carnegie Hall in 1950. Active in the civil-rights movement from 1955, she sang at the epochal 1963 civil-rights march in Washington.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, music, readings/research, women's history
[In book review] “This is not a book that should be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Quoted in The Algonquin Wits, ed. Robert E. Drennan (1968)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, women's history
“Pen name of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, Russian poet. In her youth Akhmatova was strongly influenced by both the French and Russian symbolists. In 1903, she met the poet Gumilev, who included one of her poems in the journal Sirius, which he published in Paris. Akhmatova and Gumilev were married in 1910, and were divorced in 1913. In 1911, Akhmatova became secretary of the Guild of Poets, organized by Gumilev and Gorodetsky.
Akhmatova’s first book, Vecher (Evening, 1912), is notable for its detail and clarity; her unmistakable feminine voice and her beautiful love lyrics won her attention from Russian readers. Also in 1912, the Acmeist literary group formed, and Akhmatova became one of its most prominent members. Her second book of poem, Chetki (Rosary, 1914), made her one of the most popular poetesses of her time. Beginning with her third book of verse, Belaya staya (The White Flock, 1917), Akhmatova’s poetic image changed from that of a contemporary poet who tells of an unhappy love to that of a poet who issues from the tradition of Russian classical verse. In the early 1920s, two more collections of Akhmatova’s poetry appeared—Porodozhnik (Plantain, 1921) and Anno Domini (1922). After that, it became difficult for Akhmatova to publish her poetry. The Soviet government disapproved of her apolitical themes, highly personal love lyrics, and religious motifs, consider her a poet alien to the new order. During this period, she wrote a number of scholarly articles and pieces about Pushkin. In connection with the mass repressions and those of her son and second husband, Akhmatova wrote the long poem ‘Requiem,‘ which was never published in full in Soviet Russia. From 1940 to 1965, Akhmatova worked on her long poem ‘Poema bez geroya’ (translated Poem Without a Hero, 1973), which is dedicated to the second decade of 20th-century Russian culture, the Petersburg Silver Age. In 1946, there began a new round of round of repressions and Akhmatova, along with [Mikhail] Zoshchenko, was the subject of harsh attacks by the Soviet cultural authorities.
With the onset of the thaw under Khrushchev, Akhmatova was again able to publish. During this period she was at the center of a group of young poets, including [Joseph] Brodsky, and was recognized for her contributions to Russian literary culture. Of particular interest are [Lidia] Chukovskaya’s multivolume reminiscences about Akhmatova, Zapiski ob Anna Akhmatova (1967; translated The Akhmatova Journals, 1994). Many translations of Akhmatova’s poetry exist, including The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1992), translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward.”
Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“There are many valid reasons why most women who have been sexually mistreated, especially early in their careers, haven’t reported it. It many fields and communities, it’s been too hazardous to do so. Male-dominant institutions have been far too lax in adopting, or enforcing, penalties for unambiguous sexual misconduct…. Men who misuse wealth or station to sexually impose themselves on others must be held accountable in a way they traditionally have not.”
Seltzer, Leon, Phd. “Uncharted Territory.” Psychology Today, March/April 2018
“If education is always to be conceived along some antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?”
The Absorbent Mind, ch. 1 (1949)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“German political philosopher naturalized U.S. citizen 1950. Arendt received her doctorate at the age of twenty-two from the University of Heidelberg, where she studied with Karl Jaspers. She fled Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and eventually settled in the U.S. (1941), where she held numerous teaching posts and became the first woman to be appointed full professor at Princeton University. She ended her career at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her reputation as a profound and independent philosophical analyst was launched with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), in which she documented the belief that Nazism and Communism had their roots in the anti-Semitism and imperialism of the 15th century. She continued to offer challenging and unconventional theories about the decline in values in modern society, in such books as The Human Condition (1961), and Crises of the Republic (1972). A storm of controversy surrounded the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), in which she suggested that even the Jews could be held partly responsible for Germany’s barbarisms in World War II. Her other works include On Revolution (1963) and On Violence (1970), in which she suggested that violence is a response to powerlessness. Her philosophically most ambitious work, The Life of the Mind (1978), a three-volume study of the fundamental mental activities thinking, willing, and judging, though unfinished (only the volumes Thinking and Willing were completed), it is a penetrating analysis of the processes of the mind and of their corresponding effects on action.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“American poet, novelist, critic, and dramatist. Cullen was one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Following the traditional verse forms based in part on the works of John Keats, Cullen is best remembered for his poems treating contemporary racial issues. His first volume of seventy-three poems, Color (1925), won the Harmon Award for high achievement in literature. Among his most notable poems in the volume are ‘The Shroud of Color,’ ‘Heritage,’ ‘Yet Do I Marvel,’ and ‘Incident.’ His other published collections include The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), Copper Sun (1927), The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) and The Medea and Some Poems (1935). He also edited Carolina Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (1929). His only novel, One Way to Heaven (1932), was praised for its accurate portrayal of Harlem life. The Lost Zoo (1940) and My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942) are children’s books. Two important works published after his death were On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (1947), and My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance (1991).
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“American astronomer, compiler of almanacs, and inventor. He was born a free black in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland, and owned a farm near Baltimore. He taught himself astronomy and mathematics and began astronomical calculations in 1773. He accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 1789. In 1790 he was appointed to the commission that surveyed the site for Washington, D.C. From 1791 to 1802 he published annual almanacs; he sent an early copy to Thomas Jefferson to counter a contention that blacks were intellectually inferior. He also wrote essays denouncing slavery and war.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?”
The Fire Next Time (1963)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
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