| | 121 | Author: | Boethius | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Consolation of Philosophy (Trans. W.V. Cooper, 1902)  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | 'To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile
given, and bright were all my labours then;
but now in tears to sad refrains am I
compelled to turn. Thus my maimed Muses guide
my pen, and gloomy songs make no feigned tears
bedew my face. Then could no fear so
overcome to leave me companionless upon my way.
They were the pride of my earlier bright-lived
days: in my later gloomy days they are the
comfort of my fate; for hastened by
unhappiness has age come upon me without warning,
and grief hath set within me the old age of her
gloom. White hairs are scattered untimely on
my head, and the skin hangs loosely from my
worn-out limbs. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 122 | Author: | Brawley, Benjamin | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Negro in American Fiction | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Ever since Sydney Smith sneered at American books a hundred years ago, honest critics
have asked themselves if the literature of the United States was not really open to the charge of
provincialism. Within the last year or two the argument has been very much revived; and an
English critic, Mr. Edward Garnett, writing in "The Atlantic Monthly," has pointed out that with
our predigested ideas and made-to-order fiction we not only discourage individual genius but
make it possible for the multitude to think only such thoughts as have passed through a sieve.
Our most popular novelists, and sometimes our most respectable writers, see only the sensation
that is uppermost for the moment in the mind of the crowd, — divorce, graft, tainted meat or
money, — and they proceed to cut the cloth of their fiction accordingly. Mr. Owen Wister, a
"regular practitioner" of the novelist's art, in substance admitting the weight of these charges,
lays the blame on our crass democracy which utterly refuses to do its own thinking and which is
satisfied only with the tinsel and gewgaws and hobbyhorses of literature. And no theme has
suffered so much from the coarseness of the mob-spirit in literature as that of the Negro. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 129 | Author: | Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Chessmen of Mars | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | SHEA had just beaten me at chess, as usual, and, also as
usual, I had gleaned what questionable satisfaction I might
by twitting him with this indication of failing mentality by
calling his attention to the nth time to that theory,
propounded by certain scientists, which is based upon the
assertion that phenomenal chess players are always found to
be from the ranks of children under twelve, adults over
seventy-two or the mentally defective — a theory that is lightly
ignored upon those rare occasions that I win. Shea had gone
to bed and I should have followed suit, for we are always
in the saddle here before sunrise; but instead I sat there
before the chess table in the library, idly blowing smoke at
the dishonored head of my defeated king. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 131 | Author: | Cahan, Abraham | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Younger Russian Writers | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | RUSSIAN critics never cease lamenting the dearth of good
literature. Turgeneff, Dostoyevsky, Pisemsky, Goncharoff, and
Pomialovsky are dead; Tolstoy, the only survivor of the great
constellation of the sixties and seventies, is a very old man and has
"sworn off;" while the younger generation of novelists has so far failed to
produce a single work of lasting value. The productions of the masters
were inspired by the noble enthusiasms of their time: they were the
æsthetic offspring of the abolitionist movement and of the
renaissance which followed the emancipation of the serfs. "Does the
poverty of our literature of to-day denote a lack of ideals?" ask the critics. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 133 | Author: | Chesnutt, Charles Waddell, 1858-1932 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Free Colored People of North Carolina | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN our generalizations upon American history — and the American
people are prone to loose generalization, especially where the
Negro is concerned — it is ordinarily assumed that the entire colored
race was set free as the result of the Civil War. While this is true in
a broad, moral sense, there was, nevertheless, a very considerable technical exception in the case of several hundred thousand free people of
color, a great many of whom were residents of the Southern States.
Although the emancipation of their race brought to these a larger
measure of liberty than they had previously enjoyed, it did not confer
upon them personal freedom, which they possessed already. These
free colored people were variously distributed, being most numerous,
perhaps, in Maryland, where, in the year 1850, for example, in a state
with 87,189 slaves, there were 83,942 free colored people, the white population of the State being 515,918; and perhaps least numerous in
Georgia, of all the slave states, where, to a slave population of 462,198,
there were only 351 free people of color, or less than three-fourths of
one per cent., as against the about fifty per cent. in Maryland. Next
to Maryland came Virginia, with 58,042 free colored people, North
Carolina with 30,463, Louisiana with 18,647, (of whom 10,939 were in
the parish of New Orleans alone), and South Carolina with 9,914.
For these statistics, I have of course referred to the census reports
for the years mentioned. In the year 1850, according to the same
authority, there were in the state of North Carolina 553,028 white people, 288,548 slaves, and 27,463 free colored people. In 1860, the white
population of the state was 631,100, slaves 331,059, free colored people, 30,463. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 136 | Author: | Dargan, E. Preston | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Voyages of Conrad | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN 1873, A POLISH LAD of fifteen, walking in the Alps with his tutor, dismayed that gentleman
by a declaration of independence. He proposed to give up his country and career, in order to take
his chances on the sea. A few years later he was sailing on the Mediterranean, that "nursery of
the craft." Then he realized his dream by becoming associated with the English flag —
incidentally learning the English language. He went on far voyages, seeing little of Europe for a
quarter of a century. Finally, he accomplished his second transformation: the Polish lad became
a great writer of English. The boy was named Jozef Korzeniowski the writer is known to fame
as Joseph Conrad. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 139 | Author: | Friedland, Louis S. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Anton Chekhov | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | We are about to come into possession of Chekhov. It will be a
priceless possession, for Chekhov is indispensable to our understanding
of the psychology of the great people that has introduced into the present
world situation an element so complex, so disturbing, so tragic and
beautiful. Chekhov is the faithful reporter, unerring, intuitive, direct. He
never bears false witness. The essence of his art lies in a fine restraint,
an avoidance of the sensational and the spectacular. His reticence reveals
the elusive and lights up the enigmatic. And what a keen, voracious
observer he was! Endless is the procession of types that passes through
his pages — the whole world of Russians of his day: country gentlemen,
chinovniks, waitresses, ladies of fashion, shopgirls, town physicians,
Zemstvo doctors, innkeepers, peasants, herdsmen, soldiers, tradesmen,
every type of the intelligentsia, children, men and women of every class
and occupation. Chekhov describes them all with a pen that knows no
bias. He eschews specialization in types. In a letter written to his friend
Plescheyev, Chekhov draws in one stroke a swift, subtle parallel between
the two authors, Shcheglov and Korolenko, and then he goes on to say,
"But, Allah, Kerim! Why do they both specialize? One refuses to part
with his prisoners, the other feeds his readers on staff officers. I
recognize specialization in art, such as genres, landscape, history; I
understand the 'emploi' of the actor, the school of the musician, but I
cannot accept such specialization as prisoners, officers, priests. This is
no longer specialization; it is bias." Chekhov ignores no phase of the life
of his day. This inclusiveness, this large and noble avidity that refuses to
be circumscribed by class or kind or importance, makes the sum of his
stories both ample and satisfying. His work illuminates the whole of
Russian life, the main thoroughfares, the bypaths, the unfrequented
recesses. Without Chekhov, how are we to embark on the discovery of
Russia? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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