Word: elder
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Thanks for calling attention in your fine article to the "streams of translations" poured out by W.H. Auden [Oct. 8]. In trying to further the one-tongue aspect of world poetry, Poet Auden's translation of the Icelandic Elder Edda has gone a long way. He kept both mode of thought and the long alliterative line and stress count. Translations draw us together...
...information of any recluses who might not have heard or misanthropes who just don't care, is an adventurous seagull who wants to "fly where no seagull has flown before," to "know what there is to know of this life." This angers his flock. An outraged Elder announces, "You are henceforth and forever outcast!", and Jonathan takes it on the wing...
...that he actually talks, of course. Jonathan and the rest of his feathered friends are real birds-not mechanical, not animated-but their voices and interior monologues are rendered by actors. James Franciscus speaks for Jonathan, Juliet Mills for his love interest, Hal Holbrook for the Elder, Richard Crenna and Dorothy McGuire for Jonathan's parents. None of these actors has chosen to be included in the film's credits, a privilege only the least charitable would question...
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the warmest, most goodhearted, most tuneful (score by Neil Diamond) piece of moral uplift since the musical version of Lost Horizon. Years hence, scholars may debate the significance of the fact that the wise elder in Shangri-La and the wise bird here are both called Chiang. Surely it is no mere coincidence. A homage, perhaps. Or maybe a moment of mystic communion, a stroke of magic enlightenment of the sort that Jonathan is always shoving his beak into...
...literature breaks down into categories, usually determined by age, sometimes by common experience. For example, Emerson and Whittier are grouped together as "Elder Statesmen," Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman take "a philosophical view of the whole affair," while James, Twain, Howells, and Adams are the "Malingerers." Within these categories Aaron analyzes particular responses and finds that, in spite of the collective failure to come to grips with the War, the conflict was a disturbing and compelling experience for each. Especially to men like Twain and Howells, the War marked the turning point in their own American experience--each went through...