Mother's Day Origins and Traditions

The history of Mother's Day is traced from the mother of the Greek Gods, Rhea, to the founder of Modern Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis.

Mother's Day, like Valentine's Day, has often been written off as something invented by business companies to boost their sales in flowers, cards, cakes and other gifts. Despite the commercialism attached to it, following the American tradition, Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May.

Mother's Day in Ancient Greece

The origins of Mother's Day can be traced back to ancient times, the earliest celebration in Ancient Greece with the spring festival dedicated to Rhea, the mother of the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. This was carried through to the Romans who celebrated a similar festival to Cybele, the mother of the Roman gods.

Christians Honor Mothers

The first major group to establish a tribute to honor their mothers were Christians who dedicated the fourth Sunday of the holy period Lent to Mary, the mother of Jesus. This led to the setting up of Mother's Day in the 17th century, retaining the fourth Sunday of Lent, except this time, honoring a spread to celebrate mothers in general and not just figureheads.

Mother's Day Historical Beginnings in the U.S.

• In 1858, Anna Jarvis (Senior), an Appalachian housemother, decided to organize a day "Mother's Work Days" to rally mothers in her town to improve the living conditions for all citizens.

• Some years later, in 1872, a Boston poet and suffragist Julia Ward Howe also established a special day for mothers and for peace.

• When Anna Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna, decided to continue her mother's activism. A year after her mother's death a memorial service was held where Jarvis handed out her late mother's favorite flower, a white carnation.

• Jarvis's campaign and lobbying paid off when five years later the US House of Congress adopted a resolution declaring all government workers should wear a white carnation on Mother's Day. By 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed off on a bill that made Mother's Day a national holiday.

The Irony of Anna Jarvis as Mother's Day Founder

When the greater public adopted the celebration they moved away from Jarvis's idea of going to church. Instead, people started to give gifts and cards, which immensely outraged Jarvis as she believed the sentiment of the day was being spoiled.
In 1923, Jarvis filed a law suit to stop a Mother's Day Festival. She was later arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention while selling carnation for a war mother's group. Despite her efforts, the trend has spread around the world.

As for Anna Jarvis, founder of our modern Mother's Day, she died in 1948, on her deathbed proclaiming that she regretted ever inventing Mother's Day.

Mother's Day Celebrations Worldwide

The British still celebrate this same holiday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, while most countries worldwide take their maternal celebration dated from the modern American version of the event.
In summary, regardless of its dubious history, and no matter how one chooses to celebrate the event, the underlying sentiment of Mother's Day remains as a special holiday to honor all mothers, to show love and appreciation to beloved mothers.

The important thing is to make a mother feel very special by taking delight on Mother's Day to indulge mums/moms an undivided attention and love - something daughters or sons most likely rarely do in their busy life these days.


(This is a shorter version from a piece I originally published for Suite101.com now close. My resources come from personal notes through the years. / Tel)

(c)  Tel Asiado.  Written for InspiredPenWeb.com.  All rights reserved.

William Shakespeare

 Literature / English Writer, Poet & Dramatist 

 

English Writer, Poet, Playwright

A brief biography of William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, considered the greatest writer, dramatist and poet of the English language. 

 

William Shakespeare

 

William Shakespeare (baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23 1616), Born in Stratford-on-Avon, a small England country town, he was the son of a wool dealer who also became a town mayor; his mother was the daughter of a local landowner. Shakespeare was educated at the grammar school, and in 1582 married Anne Hathaway. They had three children, a daughter Susanna and twins. Numerous articles have been written about him, and his works constantly reviewed, studied, criticized and analyzed. Some of his plays such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are among the most famous literary works. He created characters from all walks of life with his gift of insight into human nature. 

 

Early Life

He established himself as an actor and a dramatist in London by 1589. Early plays, written around 1589-93 were the comedies The comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentleman of Verona; the three parts of Henry VI; and Richard III, and the tragedy Titus Andronicus .

As a Writer and Poet

In 1593, he came under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He also wrote for him the comedy Love's Labour 's Lost, and seems also to have dedicated his sonnets written around 1593-96. 

As a Dramatist

From 1594 to about 1612, Shakespeare was a member of a theatre group called The Chamberlain's Men (later The King's Men). He wrote many plays for the group and had no rival writing as a dramatist, for example, the lyric plays Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard II 1594-97, and The Merchant of Venice 1596-97.  By 1599 their group became so successful that they were able to build a new theatre called The Globe. 

 William Shakespeare - The Time & Life of the World's Greatest Writer | Free Documentary History.

 

Anthony Trollope

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 24

 

Brief biography of Anthony Trollope, English novelist, a popular 19th century English novelist, best known as creator of stories set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire and the aristocratic and political Palliser family. He delineated provincial English middle-class society in a series of novels set in fictitious cathedral city of Barchester. 

 

 

Early Life

Trollope was born in London on April 24, 1815,  and educated at Harrow and Winchester, two famous public schools. His mother, Frances Trollope, a prolific writer, earned money by writing novels and travel books. His father was an unsuccessful lawyer and Fellow of New College, Oxford.   

Early Career

At 19 Trollope became a post office clerk in London's General Post Office, and at 26 he was transferred in Ireland and made a deputy postal surveyor. He worked for the post office for 33 years. Notably, he first introduced the red British mail boxes known as pillar boxes. He left the civil service in 1867. He lived mainly in England and Ireland, but his work also took him to Africa and America.

Soon after marrying in 1844, Trollope began writing in his spare time to earn extra money. He regularly produced 1000 words an hour before breakfast. He was 32 when the Macdermots of Ballycloran, his first book, was published. His The Kellys and the O'Kellys were unsuccessful.

Later years as novelist

He was 40 when his first successful story The Warden, his first series of Barchester novels appeared. It is about a clergyman accused of misusing money meant for the old people's home he looks after. This series is about about people living in the imaginary cathedral city of Barchester. It includes the novels Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867).

The format of the Barchester series appealed to his readers and Trollope embarked on a more ambitious sequence, known as the Palliser novels.  Many of these later works are about power and politics involving his invented family of wealthy aristocrats and politicians called the Pallisers, with Plantagenet Palliser, as one of his lead characters. Among the novels in this second series are Can You Forgive Her? (1864) followed by Phineas Finn (1869); others in the sequence are The Eustace Diamonds (1873) and The Prime Minister (1876).

He wrote nearly 50 novels altogether. Trollope introduced into English fiction some of the most memorable characters like Mr. Harding, Archdeacon Grantly and Bishop Proudie. With humour and gentle satire, Trollope told stories of ordinary men and women with human weaknesses.

Trollope also wrote travel books, biographies of Thackeray and Cicero, among others; plays, short stories and literary sketches.  

Anthony Trollope died on December 6, 1882, in Marylebone, London. 

 

Photo Credit:

Anthony Trollope. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

 

Resources: 

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby (1993)

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)

The A-Z of Writers by Tom Payne. Carlton Books Ltd. (1997)

 

(c) April 2008. Updated April 24, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.  

Karen Blixen

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 17

Brief biography of Karen Blixen (alias Isak Dinesen), considered the greatest Danish writer of the 20th century. She is famous for her accounts of experiences in Kenya and her short stories. 

 

Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962) was a Danish author who wrote under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen.  She was born in Rungsted, Denmark.  Her parents were Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen and Wilhelm Dinesen, a writer and an army officer.  She started her education in Copenhagen's Royal Academy of Arts, and later educated in Italy, France, Switzerland and England.  At 22, she started writing short stories.  Seven years later (1914), she married her Danish cousin Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, also a writer and a big game African hunter.  

Life in Kenya, East Africa

The couple went to live on a coffee plantation in Kenya. Her life there is recounted in her autobiographical work Out of Africa, which was published when she was 52.  It tells about her experiences as a coffee farmer in Kenya, revealing the sensitivity and depth of her love for the place. This highly successful book was the basis of a 1985 Hollywood Oscar-Award winning film of the same title starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, directed by Sydney Pollack. 

Dinesen was undergoing unhappy times when she met and fell in love with English Denys Finch-Hatton, a game pilot.  She divorced her husband but soon also lost her lover Finch-Hatton who was killed in a plane crash.  Her troubles continued with another devastating loss when her farm failed commercially. Eventually she returned to Denmark to write.

Writing Career

She adopted the name pen name Isak and chose English as her literary language although she also translated some of her works in Danish.  

Her books in English include Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Out of Africa (1938), Winter's Tales (1942) and The Angelic Avengers (1944), which was recognized by the Danish readers as a satire on Nazi-occupied Denmark.  

In her last book, Shadows on the Grass (1961), she returned to Kenya for inspiration.     

From 1950, she then embarked on a series of romantic tales that won her worldwide recognition. Such stories concerned with the problems of personal identity and destiny.  'Babette's Feast,' with lighter and humorous touch also became a successful film.

Rungstedlund Museum

Dinesen lived most of her life at the family estate Rungstedlund located in Rungsted, 13 miles of Copenhagen. The place was acquired by her father in 1879.  Most of her writing took place in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald, 18th-century Danish national playwright and poet. Founded by the Blixen's family, the property is managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation. It was opened to the public as a museum in 1991.   

Legacy

The suburb of Nairobi where Dinesen made her home and her coffee plantation was named after her.  Nearby, is the Karen Blixen Coffee House and Museum.

Karen Blizen died at the age of 77.  

 

Photo credit:

Karen Blixen. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke at Kastrup Airport CPH, Copenhagen 1957-11-02. 

Resources:

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby (1993)

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)

Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. 3^rd Ed, ed. by Jennifer Uglow (1999)

 

(c) April 2009.  Updated April 17, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Henry James

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 15

Brief biography of American writer and critic Henry James. He became a British citizen although he is still considered one of America's greatest writers and literary critics of the 19th and 20 centuries. He is best known  for consciousness and morality themes.    

 

 

Henry James (b. April 15, 1843 – d. February 28, 1916) is considered one of America's greatest writers. He is best known for the way he creates complex and detailed characters in his novels. He was greatly influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, and Ivan Turgenev.

Early life

James was born in New York City into a wealthy and prominent family. His father Henry James Senior was a well-known theological writer and lecturer, his brother William, a pioneer psychologist and philosopher, and her sister Alice, a diarist. The family moved frequently, and he became a roving youth who lived in France, Germany, England, and Switzerland. He also met Turgenev and Flaubert in Europe.

At age 19 he enrolled in the Harvard Law School but preferred reading literature to studying law. Two years later, he published his first story, A Passionate Pilgrim, and became a brilliant reviewer and contributor for literary journals. Only in his 20s, he was considered to be one of the country's finest short-story writers. 

Writing career

James travelled and settled in Europe (1875), the same year he wrote his first book Roderick Hudson. During his first years there he wrote novels that portrayed Americans living abroad in Europe. He was concerned with exploring the relationship between European and American cultures. The Portrait of a Lady (1881), one of his best stories from this period, is about a young American woman who visits England and Italy with her aunt. In the 1880s he began analysing social ills in novels such as The Bostonians and Princess Casamassima (1886), in which he probes the aspects of European political life.  The final stage of James's writing was devoted to combining the previous two themes by analyzing morality questions through the experiences of individuals. It was in this period that James published his greatest novels: The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

As brother of a philosopher William James, who coined the phrase "stream of consciousness",  Henry James could also describe what was "underneath the surface of things" yet remain neutral by not taking sides.  

Later Years

He made England his home primarily in London and Rye, Sussex. In 1915 he became a British citizen. Notably, at Rye, Sussex, James he became friends with HG Wells, the pioneer of science fiction and self-conscious reformer. The friendship turned sour when Wells attacked the Jamesian ethos in the novel Boon (1915).

In 1898, James moved to Rye House, Sussex where he wrote his last three novels.  In 1916, the same year he died, he also received the Order of Merit. He was 72.

His works include novels, stories, plays and thousands of pages of literary criticism.

 

Photo credit:

Henry James. NNDB / Public Domain 

Resources: 

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby. CUP, Cambridge, 1993
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una Mcgovern, Chambers Harrap, Edinburgh,  2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994

 

 

(c) April 2009. Tel. Inspire Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

JS BACH St. Matthew Passion

Classical Music / Sacred Music


The St Matthew Passion (German: Matthäus-Passion), BWV 244, is a Passion, an oratorio written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727 for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici). The setting is based on the Holy Bible's Gospel of St. Matthew chapters 26 and 27 (in the German translation of Martin Luther) to music, with interspersed chorales and arias. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of classical sacred music and pinnacle of JS Bach's musical artistic achievement.

Below is a video performed by the King's College Chapel in Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury. Rogers Covey-Crump - tenor (Evangelist), Michael George - bass (Jesus),  Emma Kirkby - soprano,  Michael Chance - alto,  Martyn Hill - tenor,  David Thomas - bass,  The Choir of King's College, Cambridge; The Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge (Soprano in ripieno); The Brandenburg Consort (Roy Goodman - leader). 

Bach - St. Matthew Passion (Cambridge, 1994). Apology. Embedding is no longer available for this video. Here's the link: Bach's St Matthew Passion. Uploaded by EuroArtsChannel. Accessed November 11, 2017.

Another video, for more listening ...  Here's the link: Bach St. Matthew Passion (Complete). Youtube, uploaded by ClassicalMusicTVHD. Accessed Nov 11, 2014  (more listening)

The St Matthew Passion is the second of two Passion settings by JS Bach that have survived, the first being the St. John Passion, first performed in 1724. Very little is about the creation process of the St Matthew Passion. The available information derives from extant early manuscripts, contemporary publications of the libretto, and circumstantial data, for instance in documents archived by the Town Council of Leipzig.  It was  probably first performed on 11 April 1727 in the St. Thomas Church and again on 15 April 1729, 30 March 1736, and 23 March 1742. Bach then revised it again between 1743 and 1746.

Trivia:  Our Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (Symphony Chorus, Chamber Singers and VOX) performed Bach's St Matthew Passion, with Brett Weymark conducting. Soloists: Robert Macfarlane (Evangelist), Christopher Richardson (Christus), Celeste Lazarenko (Soprano), Sally-Anne Russell (Mezzo Soprano), Jonathan Abernethy (Tenor) and David Greco (Baritone). An amazing statement of faith! Saturday, 15 April 2017, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. The last time Sydney Philharmonia Choirs performed this was 10 years ago (2007).  Here's a review from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Bach's St Matthew Passion an epic undertaking of power and energy."


Video Credit:

Bach St. Matthew Passion (King's College, Cambridge, 1994). Youtube, uploaded by EuroArtsChannel. Accessed Nov. 11, 2017. 

Bach St. Matthew Passion (Complete). Youtube, uploaded by ClassicalMusicTVHD. Accessed Nov 11, 2014  (more listening)

Resource:

St. Matthew Passion (Bach).  en.wikipedia.org.



(c) April 11, 2009. Updated September 5, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

Emile Zola: Social Reformer

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 2

Major 19^th-century novelist known for novels that deal with harsh realities in working-class life but reflective of his humane values and the need to defend them.  (170)

Emile Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902), French novelist, journalist and critic, was born in Paris, the son of an Italian engineer.  He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, southeast of France, educated at the College Bourbon (now College Mignet).  When he was seven his father died leaving the family with financial problems having been debt-ridden. He moved back with his mother to Paris when he was 18.  He studied in Lycee Saint-Louis.

After failing his final school exam, he went to work for a publisher as a clerk,  but soon became an active journalist. He began writing novels and gained his first  success with Therese Raquin, a story with a very powerful picture of remorse, which was published when he was 27 years old. Emile Zola was also a political journalist, critical of the French Emperor Napoleon III and his Second Empire. 

The people he subsequently met, and his experiences as he struggled for success as a writer, became provocative subject matter in the short stories and novels that earned him  place in literature. 

When he was 31, Zola began writing the great novels called Les Rougon-Macquart series of 20 novels about 'the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire,' which he didn't complete until 22 year later. This series comprises a score of books, all linked to each other by the appearance of one or more members of the family, describing their lives and adventures. In order to apply his theory to the study of le document humain, Zola mastered the technical details of most professions, occupations and crafts, as well as the history of recent events in France at that time. Zola wrote about all levels of French society, from prostitutes (Nana), poor farm laborers (The Soil) to coal miners (Germinal).  His writings portrayed the harsh realities of life, nevertheless reflecting his attachment to humane values and the need to defend them.   
 

In the later years of the Empire he had formed with Flaubert, Daudet, the Goncourts, and Turgenev a sort of informal society, out of which grew the 'Naturalist school'.

Zola espoused the cause of Jewish soldier Alfred Dreyfus who was accused of treason, in his famous letter I Accuse! to the president of France in 1898. He was brought to trial for libel, convicted and sentenced, and removed from the Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, he escaped for a year to England, but welcomed back as a hero.

He wrote two more series of novels, The Three Cities (3 Volumes, 1894-98) and The four Gospels (4 volumes, 1899-1902).     

At 62, he died in Paris, suffocated by carbon monoxide poisoning, from charcoal fumes coming in the chimney of his home. 

Photo Credit:


Emile Zola. Public Domain.

Resources:  Emile Zola. en.wikipedia.org.  Accessed April 19, 2009

Emile Zola. Encyclopaedia Britanica. Accessed April 2009

The Life of Emile Zola.  A biographical film about his involvement with the Dreyfus affair and his friendship with painter Cezanne.  It won the Academy Award for best picture in 1937. 



(c) April 2, 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Washington Irving

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 3

 

American Short-Story Writer famous for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle

 

 

 

Brief biography of writer Washington Irving, one of the first American authors to achieve international reputation with the success of  The Sketch Book. Washington Irving became a famous author for his humorous and satirical stories. He pioneered the establishment of short story writing in American literature, and wrote literary history and biography in later years.

 

Early Life 

Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, in New York City, son of a wealthy merchant. He studied law privately but he did not pursue it as a career although he practised it briefly. He began his career writing satirical essays for newspapers, in particular in the Salmagundi Papers in 1807. 

 

Writing Career

Irving's print debut was in 1802 when he published a collection of nine observational letters, The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. He used the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. The letters first appeared in the November 15 edition of the New York Morning Chronicle, a political-leaning newspaper that time. The letters contained lampoon of the early 19th century New York society and culture. 

When he was 26, he published A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. He used the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar. The book was a social satire, a comic account of the early years of Dutch settlement in Manhattan, and it became part of New York folklore. It gained him wide acclaim.   

Eventually the word Knickerbocker was used to describe any New Yorker who could trace his/her family to the original Dutch settlers. In 1815, at the age of 32, he went to England where he lived for many years.  

 

The Sketch Book

When he was 37, he published his most successful book, The Sketch Book. It is a collection of essays and sketches on English folk customs, Native Americans, and legends from his childhood in New York State.

The book contains two of his most famous stories: "Rip Van Winkle", about a man who falls asleep for 20 years, and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", in which the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane meets with a headless horseman.

With the success of The Sketch Book, Irving became a professional writer; he returned to New York in 1832 a literary hero. He died at the age of 76, November 28, 1859. Throughout the United States, there are many schools, hotels, and places taken in his fictional books.

 

Books by Washington Irving

A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, 1809

The Sketch Book, 1819-1820

Bracebridge Hall, 1822

Tales of a Traveller, 1824

History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1828

Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus, 1831

The Crayon Miscellany, 1835

The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 1837

Biography and Poetical Remains of the Late Margaret Miller Davidson, 1841

George Washington (5 volumes), 1855-1859

 

Photo credit:

Irving Washington. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Daguerreotype of Washington Irving (modern copy by Mathew Brady, original by John Plumbe).

 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994

McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002

Ousby, Ian. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. Carlton, 1997.

 

(c) April 2009. Updated April 3, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.