swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Sept 27, 2022 1:23:23 GMT
I am always looking for interesting and unusual covers using Scott U554, the embossed Moby Dick envelope from 1970, one of my all-time favorites. I was very happy to find this one recently. It's cacheted with an image of Arrowhead, the house in western Massachusetts where Melville was living when he wrote his masterpiece (as noted in the cachet). Even better is the postmark: This cover was canceled in Pittsfield, a few months after the first-day ceremony in New Bedford, MA, and it got a slogan cancel boasting the town's status as "HOME PORT OF MOBY DICK CELEBRATION 1970." I haven't been able to find out much more about what that celebration entailed, but I like the sound of it!
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swvl
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Posts: 527
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Oct 17, 2022 13:18:02 GMT
Here's another nice U554 FDC I picked up recently, with a cachet by artist Richard Ellis aka Animated Covers. Some cachets for this issue emphasize the history of the whaling industry or the fearsome nature of Melville's great white whale; this one makes him look like a friendly cartoon character out of Hanna-Barbera. I like it.
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swvl
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Posts: 527
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Oct 18, 2022 13:36:22 GMT
Here's a fun literary cover made by Hideaki Nakano, a brilliant and eccentric cachetmaker who made lots of covers during the 1980s and 90s. He loved combo covers and jokes, some in better taste than others. For this one, he started with a slightly beat-up ArtCraft FDC for the set of four Early American Streetcars stamps issued in 1983 (Scott 2059-62). Then, 12 years later, in 1995, he added Tennessee Williams' Literary Arts stamp (Scott 3002) and got a first-day cancel for that one, too, as well as a perfin with his initials. It adds up to a very clever tribute to the author of A Streetcar Named Desire.
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Oct 25, 2022 0:33:30 GMT
One author who has not yet received a USPS stamp is Toni Morrison, the Nobel-winning genius who died in 2019. She’s eligible for USPS consideration as of this year, and I would be very surprised if she does not get a stamp in her honor at some point in the near future. She certainly deserves one! Really happy to see a stamp honoring Toni Morrison among the 2023 issues announced by USPS today! It's a great stamp, and I'm already thinking about cachet designs for FDCs when the stamp's issue date is revealed.
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eggdog
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Post by eggdog on Oct 25, 2022 1:03:13 GMT
Really happy to see a stamp honoring Toni Morrison among the 2023 issues announced by USPS today! It's a great stamp, and I'm already thinking about cachet designs for FDCs when the stamp's issue date is revealed. I was surprised - in a good way! - to see Ernest J. Gaines there, too. I tore through most of his books in the 1980s. A Gathering of Old Men, in which several old men confess to killing a guy they hated - even though only one of them could possibly have done it - was especially memorable. There are a few more on there that I look forward to seeing, but many of the entries look pretty anodyne. Snow globes and school buses in the same year?
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Oct 25, 2022 1:22:32 GMT
I can’t say I know Gaines’ work, though I’ve heard of some of his novels. A Gathering of Old Men sounds great - thanks eggdog for the recommendation!
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Nov 7, 2022 23:56:38 GMT
Returning to this thread just to say that I tracked down a copy of Ernest J. Gaines’ A Gathering of Old Men and read it this past weekend. Wow - incredible writing that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I can’t believe I never encountered Gaines’ work before, and I’m looking forward to making a FDC for him in the new year. Gotta love the way a stamp can provide just the nudge we need to learn about a new subject!
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Jan 17, 2023 3:36:37 GMT
Here’s another interesting FDC I picked up recently for Scott U554. This one doesn’t have a cachet, just a corner card identifying the cover as the work of the Office of the Mayor of New Bedford, Mass., where the envelope was issued. Even more interesting is the insert: A card with the seal of the city, plus a paragraph from Moby Dick. I’m sure it was chosen for its evocative description of nineteenth-century New Bedford, but I enjoyed the way this excerpt winds up with a classic bit of Melvillean proto-existentialism about “the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.”
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Jan 17, 2023 3:43:20 GMT
And while we’re at it: Here are two versions of the Sc U554 FDC by prolific cachetmaker C. Stephen Anderson, one in blue and another in the less common red. I haven’t seen any other colors for this one yet, though I know that Anderson did print other cachets in black, brown, and green.
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Feb 12, 2023 15:40:02 GMT
Sharing a couple more recent finds for my ever-slowly-growing collection of Melville-related covers! First, a U554 FDC, cachetmaker unknown to me, with a photo of a nineteenth-century chapel in New Bedford and a related excerpt from Moby Dick. I always like covers for this issue where it seems like the cachetmaker really knew the book, and this is a good one. Then, an unofficial FDC for Scott 2094, postmarked in Pittsfield, Mass. (whose significance I mentioned upthread). By the 1980s, Melville's home of Arrowhead had become the headquarters of the Berkshire County Historical Society, which produced this cover and included an informative stuffer with a short biography.
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Feb 25, 2023 21:45:19 GMT
I've posted a couple of times on this thread about the stamps issued by Ireland last year to mark the centennial of James Joyce's Ulysses (and, a few years earlier in 2004, the centennial of the day on which the novel takes place). Here is another stamp I only recently learned about, issued by Brazil last year for the novel's big anniversary, as well as the history of friendly diplomatic relations between their country and Ireland. As far as I know this is the only stamp issued outside of Ireland having to do with Ulysses' centenary. I love the detailed design, with some clever wordplay laid over a map of Dublin. Nice going, Brasil Correios! I was so happy to find out about this one. If anyone comes across other Joyce-related stamps issued in 2022, please do let me know.
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hdm1950
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What I collect: I collect world wide up to 1965 with several specialty albums added due to volume of material I have acquired. At this point I am focused on Canada and British America. I am always on the lookout for stamps and covers with postmarks from communities in Queens County, Nova Scotia. I do list various goods including stamps occasionally on eBay as hdm50
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Post by hdm1950 on Feb 25, 2023 22:59:23 GMT
I've posted a couple of times on this thread about the stamps issued by Ireland last year to mark the centennial of James Joyce's Ulysses (and, a few years earlier in 2004, the centennial of the day on which the novel takes place). Here is another stamp I only recently learned about, issued by Brazil last year for the novel's big anniversary, as well as the history of friendly diplomatic relations between their country and Ireland. As far as I know this is the only stamp issued outside of Ireland having to do with Ulysses' centenary. I love the detailed design, with some clever wordplay laid over a map of Dublin. Nice going, Brasil Correios! I was so happy to find out about this one. If anyone comes across other Joyce-related stamps issued in 2022, please do let me know. I finally tackled Ulysses last year. It was a real challenge for me with many stops and starts. I was almost over it till your post... . Nice stamp though.
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Linda
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Post by Linda on Mar 18, 2023 17:55:40 GMT
I have written about the Japanese poet and novelist Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢賢治, 1896 - 1933) elsewhere (please see this and this in the maxicard thread), but have never specifically talked about the stamp that was issued by Japan Post in 1996, on the occasion of the writer's birth centenary. It's part of the multi-year series '第2次文化人' (literarally, 'the second cultural figures series') that resulted in 31 stamps being released in the course of 13 years, from 1992 to 2004. This stamp features a portrait of Miyazawa and his handwriting of the poem「雨ニモマズ」that was published posthumously. Kenji Miyazawa was born in the centre of today’s Hanamaki (花巻), Iwate prefecture, and spent many years studying and teaching in Morioka (盛岡, 40 km north of Hanamaki), hence traces of him are omnipresent in both cities. In a Moriaka museum, Miyazawa is jointed commemorated with another literary figure, Takuboku Ishikawa (石川啄木), a native of Morioka. I don’t pretend to know why a museum should commemorate both of them; my guess is that they are of roughly the same period, and that Ishikawa, who is 10 years older than Miyazawa, has great influence on the latter. This museum, Takuboku Ishikawa and Kenji Miyazawa are subjects of depiction in the pictorial cancel shown with my stamp. Miyazawa once held an academic position in agricultural science when he was teaching in Morioka. At one point due to illness and hoping to develop a closer connexion to the life of peasants, he retired to an impoverished region of Hanamaki to work on a farm. There, he established a private school (私塾) called「羅須地人協会」to teach the locals about modern cultivation techniques improved by scientific methods. Besides poetry, he is also author of numerous novels that had been widely adapted, including Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜). There is in Hanamaki a gigantic mural depicting a scene in this novel, which uses pigments that absorbes ultra-violet light to shine at night. It's really stunning if you have the chance to see it in real life. In Hanamaki, a museum and the fairy tale village built in honour of him were both located 5 km away on a steep hill for reasons unknown. Kenji Miyazawa’s birth house has been destroyed long ago. The residence that was subsequently built on the same site is now occupied by his relatives. Outside of it a commemorative plaque stands, next to which a bench was decorated with characters from Miyazawa’s novels. To get to the museum, we needed to climb exactly 366 stairs which were numbered and decorated with Japanese characters that together made up Miyazawa’s poem and other phrases. The main exhibition space inside the museum is neatly designed. At the centre of the hall is a number of screens projecting videos and images related to the 4 main themes of the exhibition. 3 rows of panels displaying reproductions of items related to Miyazawa are placed on the four walls. A small quantity of originals placed behind glass window fill up the space between the centre and the walls. At the first sight the space looks packed with too many items, yet it’s actually easy to navigate between sections and it didn’t feel crowded at all. There I learned a few facts that I didn’t know about Miyazawa, such as that he was a devout Buddhist who was keen to learn about Christianity. His short life is the exact embodiment of the spiritual ideal he portrayed in his best known poem「雨ニモマズ」. I came to Hanamaki a bit too late in the season, the light show at the Fairy Tale Village inspired by Miyazawa’s works was over. However, permanent installation still remained in place, I was able to see some of the finest crafts I have ever seen in my life. At the entrance stood a wall of panels signed by famous people in the animation industry who have come to this village over the years. The list includes Ghibli’s director Isao Takahata, producer Toshio Suzuki, the composer Joe Hisaishi and many others. Before leaving Hanamaki, I also went to see the gigantic poetry tablet dedicated to Miyazawa’s 「雨ニモマズ」. It’s well hidden behind the trees at the end of a walking trail leading to where the poet took farming retreat. The surrounding landscape must have changed tremendously over the years, yet the piece of land that was once cultivated by the poet seemed to have stand still against the erosion of time. Japan Post provides many pictorial cancels related to Miyazawa. I think I will talk about some of those I have obtained in the pictorial cancels thread.
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REL1948
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Post by REL1948 on Mar 18, 2023 18:21:44 GMT
Thank you Linda for your exceptional post on Japan. I learn so much from your travel posts and appreciate seeing your art and photography. I've had Hokusai prints on my wall since I was a teenager, I love the Edo period. Rob
One of my favorite paintings by Hokusai that I have hanging in my woodshop: Sawyers Cutting a Log, 1839 (One year before the world's First Stamp)
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Mar 22, 2023 1:06:50 GMT
Here are a couple of stamps I recently added to my collection celebrating Herman Melville (one of my favorite authors, as readers of this thread already know). One was issued by French Polynesia in 1992 to mark the 150th anniversary of Melville's visit to that region. His time in what is now French Polynesia inspired his bestselling first novel, Typee, and its sequel, Omoo, which were much better-known in his lifetime than Moby Dick, which came out a few years later and wasn't widely recognized as a masterpiece until long after his death. I haven't read those first two, though I've read and loved much of the rest of Melville. The second stamp was issued by Uruguay in 2001 to mark the 150th anniversary of Moby Dick. I am unaware of any direct connection between Melville and Uruguay, but there's no excuse needed in my opinion to celebrate a great work of fiction! I'll be on the lookout for any other stamps about Melville.
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hrdoktorx
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What I collect: France (and French territories), Africa, Canada, USA, Germany, Guatemala, stamps about science, flags, maps, stamps on stamps...
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Post by hrdoktorx on Mar 25, 2023 17:53:47 GMT
Recent souvenir sheet and accompanying set of six stamps issued by Alderney on the theme of "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne:
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Apr 13, 2023 0:56:41 GMT
I made a few FDCs, as promised, for the Toni Morrison stamp issued last month. One that I am especially proud of is this combo cover, which I made using a FDC that Sweden issued in 1993 for its own stamp celebrating Morrison's Nobel Prize win that year. 30 years later, this US stamp is a richly deserved honor in the country whose literature she contributed so much to.
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swvl
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Posts: 527
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Apr 27, 2023 0:14:20 GMT
Here's another new find in my ongoing quest for interesting FDCs of Scott U554. This one was sponsored by the Moby Dick Stamp Club — I love that detail — in the issuing city of New Bedford, Mass. It features the famous rallying cry from the novel, "A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat"; to avoid 172-year-old spoilers, I won't mention which of those two fates awaits the crew of the Pequod. There's also a nicely engraved illustration, the city seal, and a list of local dignitaries. A nice one!
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eggdog
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Post by eggdog on May 2, 2023 3:43:08 GMT
Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Nobel laureate (1905) from Poland. His most famous novel was Quo Vadis, a melodrama about the early days of Christianity in Rome, when Nero was the emperor. It was very popular at the time, and had a sort of revival in the 1950s because of a Hollywood film that became a hit. (I've never seen it.) But his most influential writing by far was a series of three books simply called the Trilogy, about Polish history in the 1600s: a revolt by Ukrainian Cossacks against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (With Fire and Sword); the Swedish invasion of Poland (The Deluge); and Poland's brush with the Ottoman attempts to conquer parts of Eastern and Central Europe (Fire in the Steppe). I've never finished it, mainly because it comes to about 3,000 pages, but I haven't given up. He was a terrific writer; many of the characters (including the good guys) are more or less lowlifes, but they are believable lowlifes. Sienkiewicz did his homework writing these books; they're historically well-informed, but they were also more subtly meant to encourage Polish nationalism, and he was somewhat choosy about which historical incidents he highlighted and which he left understated. (He lived in the Russian-occupied part of Poland and had enough trouble with the censors as it was.) But for all that, they are intensely believable; it has been said that generations of Poles learned more history from the Trilogy than they did from anywhere else. If your curiosity is piqued, go for the translations by W. S. Kuniczak. A notable author himself and a skilled historian, he gracefully renovated the prose; Sienkiewicz sometimes wrote in a style that was slightly archaic even in the 1880s, and translators into English had a tendency to turn other-language literature into English that was even more archaic. And with Sienkiewicz becoming unexpectedly popular throughout much of Europe, hasty and awful translations were churned out all over the place. I don't know how people in the 1900s and 1910s read that alphabet soup. Kuniczak restores the life to the Trilogy; you can almost taste the rotgut these guys were drinking in the taverns after a hard day of defending the borderlands, and, depending on what kind of attitudes you have, you may sneak a little dream of pouring a few down with them. Sienkiewicz traveled widely, as many Poles did during the partition. He even worked as a reporter in the United States for a while, writing for the audience back in Poland. These were translated a few years ago, but I haven't seen a copy of that book. If you look at the names of the recipients of the first twenty or so Nobel Literature Prizes, you may scratch your nose in befuddlement. Probably a lot of you never heard of Henryk Sienkiewicz. But, while Tolstoy has often been called the greatest historical novelist of all time and deserves it more than anybody, Sienkiewicz was, in his own way, a great one too.
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on May 14, 2023 21:03:33 GMT
Here's a beautifully engraved stamp issued by Monaco in 1982 to mark the 2000th anniversary of the death of the great classical poet P. Vergilius Maro. The Latin quotation comes from a part of the Aeneid's sixth book in which our hero Aeneas gets a supernatural vision of future Roman glory that includes the triumphant march of Julius Caesar (pictured here) "down from the ramparts of the Alps and Monoecus' cliff" — that last part being an ancient name for Monaco, which is why it's quoted here. Aeneid Book VI is one of my favorite works of literature, and I highly recommend Seamus Heaney's standalone translation to anyone who's interested in reading an English version. Anyway, back to the stamp: If my calculations are right, they got the year slightly off — Virgil died in 19 BC, and 2000 years after that was 1981, no? But hey, who's counting!
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Post by paul1 on May 14, 2023 21:28:11 GMT
agree, great looking stamp, and you can see the similarity with many of the beautifully engraved French stamps of the second half of the C20. Eugene Lacaque did a lot of stamp engraving work - mostly for the French postal authorities - but other countries too - he died it seems in 2005.
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Ryan
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Post by Ryan on May 15, 2023 1:43:19 GMT
If my calculations are right, they got the year slightly off — Virgil died in 19 BC, and 2000 years after that was 1981, no? 2000 years after 19 BC was in fact 1982, because there is no year zero in our calendar. The 18th anniversary of death would have been in 1 BC, the 19th anniversary would have been in 1 AD (or BCE / CE for all the modern kids out there). Ryan
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swvl
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What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on May 15, 2023 1:59:50 GMT
Good point, Ryan, I should have realized it was my math that was off!
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eggdog
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Post by eggdog on May 15, 2023 3:08:08 GMT
Here is Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz (1798-1855, pronounced Mick-KAY-vitch) was a poet who led a hard, active, and crowded life. Creative people and intellectuals in early 19th-century Poland had it rough, and he was one of many who ended up leaving the country and never going back. Although he identified as Polish, he grew up in Nowogródek, Lithuania, and considered that region his homeland. (Just to add to the confusion, Nowogródek is now in Belarus.) He moved to Russia for a few years and joined in the intellectual ferment of St. Petersburg - this was the time when Russia's sleepy cultural life was starting to erupt into a ferment that ended up giving the world Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and so many others. When he left Russia, he: - visited the Pope in Rome to raise the Catholic Church's support for freedom in the Eastern European countries;
- published a newspaper/magazine, The Polish Pilgrim, on behalf of the large emigré Polish community in Paris;
- dropped out of that because he couldn't take the emigré infighting;
- got a job as a university professor in Slavic studies;
- got suspended from the university job for becoming involved in a messianic religious movement, Towianism, and for being too vocal about his other political and social opinions;
- wrote a series of epic poems;
- started at least one, and I think two, volunteer freedom-fighter brigades called the Polish Legion;
- got a job with the French government as an ambassador to Constantinople during the Crimean War (whose idea was that?), where he created as much anti-Russian havoc as he possibly could - and then died, probably from a cholera outbreak.
His greatest work was a long epic poem called Pan Tadeusz, the story of a group of Lithuanian noblemen who agree to fight against Russia for their independence in the wake of Napoleon's failed attempt to conquer Russia. The poem (and I'll confess I'm going secondhand here because I never got very far into it; I can't read poems of more than 100 pages without going into severe brain melt) concerns the Messianic streak of Polish nationalism (e.g. Poland's freedom is necessary before Europe can progress into a higher state of liberty and peace), the conflict Mickiewicz had within himself between his social ideas - which were themselves pretty radical - his religious beliefs, and the grim reality that social reformers have to cooperate with people they don't agree with and don't like, and even have to do some things that are against all their other principles if they're going to get anywhere. Sound familiar? Adam Mickiewicz wrote the book on it, so to speak. In 1968, the Communist authorities in Poland banned the production of one of Mickiewicz's plays, and rioting in the streets ensued. Yes, riots happen. But how many of them are centered around a 19th-century poet? That's how good Adam Mickiewicz was. Oh, yeah. The stamp was issued in 1947, part of a set of eight honoring Polish 405-412, artists and scientists. Actually, a set of 32; each stamp was issued in a perforate and imperforate version, and then a few months later all 16 versions were reissued in different colors. Scott 386-403, 403A-403H, 412B-412I, a semi-postal that only exists in the second set and only perforated (B57), and even a little souvenir sheet (412a). They were all on paper that is like strong newsprint, and many copies have turned yellowish or brownish and have become brittle. Paper aside, it's an attractive set and was popular with both collectors and everyday people who mailed letters. I highly recommend Seamus Heaney's standalone translation to anyone who's interested in reading an English version. How cool is that!?! The Aeneid was another epic poem I never could get through, which was to my detriment in school because my concentration was on medieval and Renaissance literature (wanna buy some stamps? how about some pencils? wanna buy a pencil?) and references to Virgil were all over the place in so many of those works. Seamus Heaney opened Beowulf for me - in fact, the last term paper I ever ghostwrote for somebody was based on Heaney's translation of Beowulf. So now I'm psyched to see if he brought The Aeneid back to life.
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eggdog
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Post by eggdog on Jul 17, 2023 1:44:15 GMT
Ismail Kadare, a great novelist and the only Albanian writer to have reached an international audience. I know everybody is tired of hearing how "Kafkaesque" such-and-such is, but Kadare earns it. I'd make some Samuel Beckett comparisons, too. (Honk if you've ever seen Beckett's play "What Where". It made me what I am today!) I recently read The File on H, which isn't one of his best-known novels but which captures many of his themes. A couple of college students in New York get the idea that the hinterlands of Albania (and there are a lot of hinterlands in Albania!) hold the last legacies of a form of poetry that has never been written down and whose origins go back to classical Greece. They go to Albania to find someone who knows the old poems, bringing along an enormous "portable" tape recorder that barely works. It goes on from there. The thing is, besides being creepy, The File on H has a strong narrative drive - remarkably for a story in which not much happens - and it's funny without the reader knowing exactly why it's so funny. That story was carefully set in the time of the monarchy. The Hoxha government didn't go out of its way to bring publicity to Kadare, but Kadare was careful to disguise his commentary just enough to deflect the censor's gaze, and somehow he got on Enver Hoxha's good side (if such a side can be said to have existed). His books were available in Albania and were fairly widely read, but many Albanians wondered how far they could trust a guy who was able to get away with writing these things and not go to prison. Oddly, I have only read books of his that were translated into French and then from the French edition into English. If any have been translated directly from Albanian, I haven't seen them. His best-known book is The General of the Dead Army. The title says it all, except that there were two generals. A few of his novels are set centuries ago; I've personally found them harder going because I don't know enough about early and medieval Albanian history to have gotten all the cultural allusions. The majority are set within the last 150 years and, while some sense of Balkan history is helpful, specialized study is not even a little bit necessary.
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Linda
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Ex-mathematician turned visual artist and touring cyclist to bike across Canada, Europe, Japan etc.
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Post by Linda on Jul 17, 2023 13:41:23 GMT
Here is Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz (1798-1855, pronounced Mick-KAY-vitch) was a poet who led a hard, active, and crowded life. Creative people and intellectuals in early 19th-century Poland had it rough, and he was one of many who ended up leaving the country and never going back. Although he identified as Polish, he grew up in Nowogródek, Lithuania, and considered that region his homeland. (Just to add to the confusion, Nowogródek is now in Belarus.) He moved to Russia for a few years and joined in the intellectual ferment of St. Petersburg - this was the time when Russia's sleepy cultural life was starting to erupt into a ferment that ended up giving the world Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and so many others. When he left Russia, he: - visited the Pope in Rome to raise the Catholic Church's support for freedom in the Eastern European countries;
- published a newspaper/magazine, The Polish Pilgrim, on behalf of the large emigré Polish community in Paris;
- dropped out of that because he couldn't take the emigré infighting;
- got a job as a university professor in Slavic studies;
- got suspended from the university job for becoming involved in a messianic religious movement, Towianism, and for being too vocal about his other political and social opinions;
- wrote a series of epic poems;
- started at least one, and I think two, volunteer freedom-fighter brigades called the Polish Legion;
- got a job with the French government as an ambassador to Constantinople during the Crimean War (whose idea was that?), where he created as much anti-Russian havoc as he possibly could - and then died, probably from a cholera outbreak.
His greatest work was a long epic poem called Pan Tadeusz, the story of a group of Lithuanian noblemen who agree to fight against Russia for their independence in the wake of Napoleon's failed attempt to conquer Russia. The poem (and I'll confess I'm going secondhand here because I never got very far into it; I can't read poems of more than 100 pages without going into severe brain melt) concerns the Messianic streak of Polish nationalism (e.g. Poland's freedom is necessary before Europe can progress into a higher state of liberty and peace), the conflict Mickiewicz had within himself between his social ideas - which were themselves pretty radical - his religious beliefs, and the grim reality that social reformers have to cooperate with people they don't agree with and don't like, and even have to do some things that are against all their other principles if they're going to get anywhere. Sound familiar? Adam Mickiewicz wrote the book on it, so to speak. In 1968, the Communist authorities in Poland banned the production of one of Mickiewicz's plays, and rioting in the streets ensued. Yes, riots happen. But how many of them are centered around a 19th-century poet? That's how good Adam Mickiewicz was. Oh, yeah. The stamp was issued in 1947, part of a set of eight honoring Polish 405-412, artists and scientists. Actually, a set of 32; each stamp was issued in a perforate and imperforate version, and then a few months later all 16 versions were reissued in different colors. Scott 386-403, 403A-403H, 412B-412I, a semi-postal that only exists in the second set and only perforated (B57), and even a little souvenir sheet (412a). They were all on paper that is like strong newsprint, and many copies have turned yellowish or brownish and have become brittle. Paper aside, it's an attractive set and was popular with both collectors and everyday people who mailed letters. I have another Polish stamp honouring Adam Mickiewicz that was issued in 1962 as part of the Literary People series:
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swvl
Member
Posts: 527
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Sept 11, 2023 22:08:28 GMT
Royal Mail’s run of topics that successfully appeal to my nostalgia continues with these new Paddington stamps. I loved reading Michael Bond’s stories when I was a kid — they're classics of children's literature — and recently my own older son has enjoyed reading them as well. The stamps are very nicely done, too. I like the simple designs based on cartoonist Ivor Wood’s Paddington illustrations.
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swvl
Member
Posts: 527
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Dec 20, 2023 22:54:27 GMT
The latest addition to my small collection of stamps and covers related to James Joyce is this Colorano Silk FDC for the stamp that Ireland issued in 1982 for the centenary of Joyce's birth. It's a really nice cachet, even if I wish they'd put Joyce's name at the top instead of "Literary and Musical" (referencing the set that this stamp was part of, I think).
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hrdoktorx
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Posts: 6,650
What I collect: France (and French territories), Africa, Canada, USA, Germany, Guatemala, stamps about science, flags, maps, stamps on stamps...
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Post by hrdoktorx on Jan 13, 2024 18:24:01 GMT
Strip of five se-tenant stamps from St-Helena, issued for Christmas 2000, and showing scenes from various children's stories:
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Linda
Member
Ex-mathematician turned visual artist and touring cyclist to bike across Canada, Europe, Japan etc.
Posts: 1,271
What I collect: Mostly Canadian and European stamps about art / science / landscape
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Post by Linda on Jan 15, 2024 13:04:02 GMT
This painting by Peter Swan was commissioned by Canada Post to paint Anne of Green Gables 101 years after its creator Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 - 1942) was born (Canada, 1975): Why not on Montgomery's birth centenary in 1974? I have no idea!
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