A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation':   “I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.”  – Marguerit...

'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

 

“I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.” – Marguerite Duras

 

Duras, a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker, was born in French Indochina (Vietnam) on April 4, 1914 and grew up there in poverty before running away from home as a teenager to live and write in France. 

 

While she was, indeed, a "passionate" journalist, she also was the author of many novels, plays, films and works of short fiction.  Her best-known tales recalled her affair with a rich landowner’s son while still living in Vietnam, led by the best-selling, fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant, translated into English as The Lover.  That book won her the prestigious Goncourt Prize.   Variations on her teenage affair also appear in The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover.

 

Awarded France's national theater prize, “The Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie Française,” in recognition of her lifetime body of work, she also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her film Hiroshima mon amour.

 

Duras's many essays often spoke to human rights and issues of social justice.  “Journalism without a moral position is impossible,” she said.  “I believe every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.”

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life'

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life':   “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney   Born in Ireland in April o...

How to 'fortify your inner life'

 

“If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney

 

Born in Ireland in April of 1939, Heaney is widely recognized as one the 20th century’s major poets. Author of more than 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Heaney’s,

 

                                                                        Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

 

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Our most precious gifts'

A Writer's Moment: 'Our most precious gifts':   “A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.”  –  Washington Irving    Born in New York...

'Our most precious gifts'

 “A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.” –  Washington Irving

 

 Born in New York City on this date in 1783, Irving wrote from 1820 up until just before his death in 1859.   In fact, just eight months before his death (at age 76, in Tarrytown, NY), he completed a definitive five-volume biography The Life of George Washington.

 

Along with James Fenimore Cooper, Irving was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe.  And, he offered encouragement and support to upcoming American authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe, leading to the development of a true “American” literary style.  His writings, like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, have stood the test of time, read, referenced and studied by generations of students.

 

Irving also was one of America’s leading diplomats and his thoughtful attention to other cultures and religions helped establish our young nation on the world stage.  In his later years, he offered this sage advice to fellow diplomats and writers alike:

 

“Remember, an inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in even the roughest weather.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Maddening, and yet so fascinating'

A Writer's Moment: 'Maddening, and yet so fascinating':   “For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.” – Joan D. Vinge   Born in Baltimore on this date in ...