On this day in 1819, the great writer Mary Ann Evans was born. You probably known her better as George Eliot. It is often hard to fully appreciate older authors. For example, people often miss much of the social commentary in Jane Austen, who is read as little more than a particularly witty Harlequin romance. And don’t even get me started on Shakespeare, who almost no one gets much out of. But Eliot doesn’t so much have this problem because of her deep characterizations.

Another aspect of this is how she approaches people on the margins of society. That’s especially true in her first three books. The crux of Adam Bede is Hetty’s desperate and foolish behavior leading to the death of her baby and the ramifications of that. The Mill on the Floss if mostly about Maggie’s isolation and the results of it. I’ve never understood why Tom and Maggie have to die at the end of the book. I guess it was the style of the time, but the book is hardly a tragedy. And Maggie’s sins are minor — even by the standards of time.

Both of these books seem to me just a lead up to Eliot’s masterpiece, Silas Marner. Okay, I admit it: I’m just a soft touch who is easily charmed by an infant melting the heart of a miser. But there is so much more in that little book. Above all, it is highly positive but still realistic rendering of community. People can be very messed up, but in a situation like this, I think this is how people behave. Of course, it is still 19th century literature, so we have to have villains like Dunstan Cass and low-born opium addicts like Molly Farren.

I guess I have to stop there because I haven’t read anything else by Eliot. She is also known for her German translations and for her work as a left wing journalist. She also led quite a scandalous life. She rejected Christianity. And she lived in sin with philosopher George Henry Lewes for twenty odd years. And then, at the age of 60, she married John Cross who was twenty years younger than she was. On their honeymoon, he apparently tried to kill himself. And then when they returned, she caught some kind of infection and died a couple of months later. But hell, she lived a hell of a lot longer than the much better behaved Jane Austen and all the Brontë sisters.

Happy birthday George Eliot!

On this day in 1821, the great writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born. As always, it is hard to know exactly how to judge a writer in translation. But I think that Dosteyevsky’s voice comes across as well in translation as does Cervantes. While Cervantes was clearly a sly and funny man, Dosteyevsky was, well, not. He was more idealistic and thoughtful. He is also profound in a way that I have never found Tolstoy. But that is probably because Dostoyevsky is more of a spiritual writer.

Crime and Punishment is the only novel of his that I know really well. What’s interesting is the process of development of Raskolnikov. He starts off as a kind of Ayn Rand character: rational and evil. It is only as he becomes less rational that he’s able to glimpse the broader truth of life. But that doesn’t make him irrational. It is just, as I see every day, that the fanatical pursuit of ideological truths lead to the most vile of behavior.

If you find someone who is obsessed with Rand or Nietzsche, the logical antidote is Dostoyevsky. Rand especially shows the propagandistic power of a simple idea. But its effectiveness and simplicity does not make it correct. And what Dostoyevsky understands, in Crime and Punishment and elsewhere is that certainty is generally not a good thing. And he didn’t have the Nazis as an example. (Not that it is necessary; in the long history of humanity, the Nazis really aren’t that unusual.)

Happy birthday Fyodor Dostoyevsky!

Before getting to the birthday, on this day in 1947, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Disney ratted on Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance. But maybe “ratted” is the wrong word, because he didn’t actually disclose any information. He just figured they were commies. And how did he know? They were part of the 1941 animators’ strike. Like most conservatives then and now, any liberal cause from workers’ rights to civil rights to environmental regulation must be a communist plot. There are many reasons why people generally have a bad opinion of Walt Disney today. This is one of them. But I mostly only care that his cartoon shorts sucked. Thank God for Warner Bros!

On this day in 1788, a truly remarkable woman was born: Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a prominent writer and editor, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s start with the fact that she was born just after the US Constitution was ratified, and she lived until well after the Civil War and shortly before the Progressive Era. As Mr Rochester would have said, she was tenacious of life.

Her parents were very liberal and so they educated her the way that they would have educated a boy. Of course, she could not go off to college, so she was largely self-taught. She became a school teacher in her early twenties but married two years later. Over the next nine year, she had five children. And then her husband died. According to Wikipedia, she worn black the rest of her long life “as a sign of perpetual mourning.” I mention it only because I love stuff like that.

A year after her husband’s death, she published her first book of poetry, The Genius of Oblivion. And then, four years later she published her first novel, Northwood: Life North and South. Her politics were fairly conservative by modern standards, but for their time, she probably was as liberal as most Democrats — maybe even me. She was against slavery, but for sending the slaves to Liberia. That was in 1827, which probably made her more liberal than Lincoln some years later. But even though she lived to 1879, she never believed in women’s suffrage.

She is considered the most important person for making Thanksgiving a holiday. I’m not at all interested in that. But I am interested in a book she wrote in 1830, Poems for Our Children. It contained perhaps the most famous poem in America:

Perhaps Hale’s greatest legacy is that she pushed early American publishing away from English writers. At the time, most American magazines contained mostly reprinted work from our recent captors. And you can easily see why. American artists of all kinds were generally of an inferior quality. We just hadn’t set up the kind of institutions that are necessary to help young artists to maximize their potential. But obviously, the only way to do that was to encourage the publication of American writers as Hale did.

In addition to her work with magazines, she managed to publish almost fifty books in her lifetime. She lived a remarkable life.

Happy birthday Sarah Josepha Hale!

On this day in 1921, the Scottish writer George Mackay Brown was born. He is known mostly for his poetry and since that is all that I’ve ever read, I will stick to that.

He was actually from the Orkney Islands — an archipelago just north of Scotland. And he spent pretty much his entire life there. He was born into a very poor family and was himself greatly limited because he suffered from tuberculosis from a young age. But at least he could write. In fact, in his early 20s, he began to do some writing for the local paper.

His hometown was Stromness, which even today has only a population of about two thousand people. Since before Brown was born, it had be “dry” — not allowing any alcohol. But in 1947, the town lifted the ban. So at the age of 25, Brown had his first taste of alcohol. He liked it. He later wrote, “[T]hey flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself ‘If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness.'” Apparently, many people thought he drank too much for the rest of his life, but I don’t especially see evidence of that.

His first book of poetry, The Storm, was published in 1954. It sold quite well. But it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that he was able to support himself. Until then, his mother had supported him. I find his work charming and direct. But not easy. Here is “Taxman” from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown. I don’t fully understand it. But I like the slice-of-life quality to it: the harvest done, the celebration starts, the taxman comes?

And here is a wonderful spiritual poem, “Beachcomber.” I won’t try to interpret it even though it begs for a thorough discussion. Just enjoy:

Happy birthday George Mackay Brown!