O.Wilde, Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. (...)
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. (...)

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. (...)
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself...


O. Wilde (1854-1900),
Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'


Saturday, January 22, 2011

C.M.Skinner, life


Charles Montgomery Skinner

1852 – 1907

American writer

Charles Montgomery Skinner, journalist and writer, was born in New York in 1852.  
During his lifetime, C.M. Skinner published some collections of myths, legends and folklore found inside the United States and across the world. Then, in 1896 he authored the complete nine volume set of Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Skinner hoped that America’s progress would transform the nation’s few legends into great ones. He hoped to combine folklore conventions with New England transcendentalism to keep alive traditions endangered by the industrial age.
Skinner’s writings were wide ranging. He was a playwright, too, authoring the play Villon, the Vagabond.
C. M. Skinner’s other interests included the seasons, especially as they changed inside of industrializing cities. In order to improve the urban environment, he authored a guide to gardening and urban beautification.
He also commented on turn-of-the-century America’s turbulent economy in Workers and the Trusts and American Communes.
His other contributions to American literature included works of natural history such as With Feet to the Earth and Do-Nothing Days.
His career in journalism included editorship of the paper Brooklyn Eagle’.
The Brooklyn Eagle, also called The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, was a daily newspaper  published in Brooklyn, New York, New York for 114 years, from 1841 to 1955. Walt Whitman was its editor for two years (from 1846 to 1848). The original paper ceased publication in 1955 due to a prolonged strike, before being briefly revived between 1960 and 1963.
Nowadays there is also a successor daily newspaper by the same name. As a matter of fact, in 1996 the name was revived once again for a new daily newspaper, which as of 2010 was still in operation.

3 comments:

  1. Please, feel free to add information concerning C. M. Skinner, almost unknown in my Country. Thanks, anna

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  2. Please, feel free to add information concerning C.M. Skinner, almost unknown in my Country. Thanks, anna

    ReplyDelete