Today in Literary History
December 07, 2024
Born this day in 1873 – Willa Cather, American novelist, short story writer, and poet.
"I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!"
"There's nothing so dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing easier. Most people do that."
"The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness." - From "O Pioneers"
On this day in 43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated in Formia.
"As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars."
"In truth, O judges, while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues."
"History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?"
"There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing to–day and another to–morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author,—its promulgator,—its enforcer. He who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. For his crime he must endure the severest penalties hereafter, even if he avoid the usual misfortunes of the present life."
Born this day in 1888 – Joyce Cary, Irish novelist (d. 1957)
"Others complain that I don’t make the fundamental idea plain enough. This is every writer’s dilemma. Your form is your meaning, and your meaning dictates the form. But what you try to convey is reality—the fact plus the feeling, a total complex experience of a real world. If you make your scheme too explicit, the framework shows and the book dies. If you hide it too thoroughly, the book has no meaning and therefore no form. It is a mess." - The Paris Review Interview: "Joyce Cary, The Art of Fiction," No. 7. Fall-Winter 1954-1955.
Born on December 7
Allan Cunningham (7 December 1784 – 30 October 1842) a Scottish poet and author.
Abraham Jacob van der Aa (7 December 1792 – 21 March 1857) a Dutch writer best known for his dictionaries, one of notable people and the other of notable places in the Netherlands.
Paul Auguste Marie Adam (7 December 1862 – 1 January 1920) a French novelist who became an early proponent of Symbolism in France.
Frederick Thomas (Freddie) Adkins (1894 – 1986) was a British comics artist who worked for the Amalgamated Press from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov - 7 December 1909 – 23 July 1942), a Bulgarian poet, communist and revolutionary.
Kersti Merilaas (7 December 1913 in Narva – 8 March 1986 in Tallinn), an Estonian poet and translator. In addition, she wrote poems and prose for children and plays.
Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 24, 1978), an American author and screenwriter.
Melba Joy Patillo Beals (née Pattillo; born December 7, 1941), an American journalist and educator who was a member of the Little Rock Nine, a group of black students who were the first to racially integrate Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.