Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American Poet. At the time of his death Longfellow was regarded both at home and abroad as the greatest American poet. His reputation in England rivaled that of Tennyson. His translations from German, Italian and Scandinavian had much the directness and sincerity of his own verse, and attracted many American readers.

When critical taste turned toward a sterner brand of realism, Longfellow’s faults were noticed more than his very solid virtues. He has been called “The poet of the Commonplace,” but he had the gift of illuminating the ordinary and surrounding it with music. The simplicity that endears him to children and many adults often is interpreted as triteness or mediocrity. Nevertheless, Longfellow has earned a permanent place as a skilled lyricist of pure, sweet and gentle tone. Longfellow’s mastery of the ballad form and his proficiency with the sonnet are generally acknowledged.

A tragedy occurred in 1861 that shadowed the remaining years of his life. While his wife was melting sealing wax, a match set fire to her dress and she was burned to death in spite of Longfellow’s efforts to save her. He was seriously burned. Though the poet’s fame continued to grow, the peak of Longfellow’s creative life had passed. His translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1867), to which he turned for solace after his wife’s death, was competent but too literal to possess the musical quality Longfellow ordinarily summoned.

At the 50th anniversary of the graduation of his class at Bowdoin, Longfellow read a poem “Morituri Salutamus” (“We Who Are About to Die Salute Thee). After being stricken with dizziness in 1881, he died from an attack of peritonitis on March 24 of the following year. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

A poem he wrote was The Secret of the Sea and in it the following verses appear.

Ah! What pleasant visions haunt me

As I gaze upon the sea

All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams come back to me

Till my soul is full of longing

For the secret of the sea

And the heart of the great ocean

Sends a thrilling pulse through me

Oil Pastel

 

Why I Draw

Many years ago when I was a kid I had a great fascination with the sea. As I grew up it didn't leave me, the sea seemed to be the fun place it had always been. But one day I went to the beach and found it all very dull. The sea seemed mysterious and menacing rather than the magical place where all my dreams were formed. As I was returning home by train after the disappointing trip, I was shocked to find out that I had lost the thrill of travelling by train. One by one as the years went by I found that I had lost interest in most things. It was then that I discovered art. Though my drawings and paintings were not very good it gave me a great thrill to draw something new every day. Later on I got interested in writing short stories, few people comment on what I write and those that do so out of sympathy, but still I enjoy writing. I think having an idea either in art, music, carpentry or any other thing and then implementing it is one of the greatest thrills life has to give. So one day I decided to revisit the sea. It was one of the best things I had ever done. It seemed through art I had found an old friend again.

Trinco

 

……Many years ago, I was walking on a village road in Trinco with a Doctor who seemed to be more interested in trees and plants than on patients. He seemed to know everything there was to know about plants and was lecturing me about each plant and tree, the structure of the flowers, the kind of leaf, the root system, we came across as we walked. It seemed he had an endless knowledge about everything that the botanical world could throw at him and was fascinated by his own knowledge. I was astonished. But isn’t this useless knowledge, that was irrelevant to me as well as him. How could it benefit anyone other than someone directly involved in it to earn more money. Didn’t a famous ancient poet (whose name I couldn’t recall), once say that education is like an endless ocean, but to be successful one had to be like the mythical swan, who when given milk mixed with a lot of water would only drink the milk but put away the water. Time being finite shouldn’t we only filter out knowledge that is useful to us. However I never asked him this question, because it seemed an unkind thing to say. But as I was listening to his endless lecture on plants I realized the true value of such knowledge. To pass an exam or maybe even to be successful we should follow the mythical swan. But to be happy we must take a wider interest in things around us, the trees, the stars and a million other things around us…..

Composition

 

Many years ago I tried my hand at painting. I wasn’t a natural draughtsman, and colour was a total mystery to me, but what worried me most was the flat look that all my paintings had. The reason this happened was wrong composition.

Composition is the way different elements are arranged in a picture. Many artists place composition above both drawing and colour, because even if the drawing is impeccable and the colour of the highest quality, if the composition is at fault it will fail to satisfy the eye. But many impulsive beginners are so anxious to get on with the painting that they ignore composition.

There are some rules in composition that should not be forgotten. The painter must lead the eye of the beholder into the picture and not across it. Into the picture does not mean the center of the picture, but towards the center, to some focal point where the eye can rest and be content to remain. Also the painting should be balanced, a dark cloud at the top of the picture must be balanced by some other object in a different part of the picture. However it must not be completely balanced, this creates a kind of "tension" that makes the picture more interesting. In the picture I drew given below these principles are followed. The smoke stacks in particular are not balanced and create a tension. However, the most prominent feature of this drawing is a careless even crude use of line and colour that energizes the drawing I hope.

Book cover designed by me

 

The pen drawing after oil pastel

 

Pen Drawing

 

When doing line drawings (pen and ink drawings), cross hatching must be used. Cross hatching is a widely-used artistic technique used to add shadow and dimension to drawn objects. It involves filling a space with at least two sets of lines, with the second set crossing over the first to create a darker effect. Its a bit complicating and time consuming (and therefore boring to do), so I used a kind of crude technique for the following line drawing.

Joseph Conrad

 

A few years ago I read “Heart of Darkness” (1899), by Joseph Conrad. It is about Charles Marlow’s journey down the Congo River in Central Africa as an Ivory transporter. Overall I really liked this story, although like most stories of its time, it sometimes, suffered from xenophobia. So I wanted to find out who wrote this story and this is what I found out.

Joseph Conrad was a British Novelist of Polish Birth. His experiences as a sailor enabled him to picture the beauty and mystery of the sea and also write convincingly of romantic adventures in strange lands. Man’s struggle against nature was one of Conrad’s favorite themes. “Typhoon” is a short story giving an unforgettable description of a storm at sea. “The Heart of Darkness” is a longer story set in the steamy jungles of the Congo, while “The Secret Sharer” is a short tale of shipboard life in the Far East. “Lord Jim” (1900) which deals with a young Englishman’s years of atonement for one moment of cowardice, proves Conrad’s ability as a psychological novelist.

Conrad used English only after he was 20, and did no literary work in it until he was nearly 40. He was an accomplished stylist, but his work often has a flavor suggesting that he continued to think in polish. His real name was Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski. He was born in the Polish Ukraine. His father was exiled for several years after joining in an unsuccessful revolution. Later the family settled in Cracow. The elder Korzeniowski was a cultured man and gave his son the essentials of a sound education. Joseph was a restless boy, and at the age of 17 enrolled in the French merchant marine.

His first sea voyages were to the West Indies. He later sailed on British ships to most of the Mediterranean and pacific ports and to Africa and South America. He was given a master mariner’s certificate in the British merchant marine in 1886, and in the same year became a British Subject. While recovering from an attack of jungle fever in 1889, Conrad began to write a novel published as “Almayer’s Folly “ (1895). He left the sea in 1894, was married, and settled down in rural Kent, England. Conrad’s first books were praised by critics but did not sell well. In his discouragement, he had just decided to go to sea when he was granted a small government pension. Success came with ”Chance” (1913). Like “Victory” (1915), this is a novel about a man’s struggle against a tragic flaw of character. A Personal Record (1912) is Conrad’s autobiography.

Expressionism - Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person. The artist accomplishes this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements. The following are two Expressionist oil pastel drawings by me:

 

Oil Pastel Still Life by me (A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes etc). Still life occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy of genres, but has been extremely popular with buyers. This painting is a still life I did using oil pastel).