Re: [Marxism] A progress report on "Utopia in the Catskills"
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * More on William Cullen Bryant from Wikipedia: His first employment, in 1825, was as editor of the New-York Review, which within the next year merged with the United States Review and Literary Gazette. But in the throes of the failing struggle to raise subscriptions, he accepted part-time duties with the New-York Evening Post under William Coleman; then, partly because of Coleman's ill health, traceable to the consequences of a duel and then a stroke, Bryant's responsibilities expanded rapidly. From assistant editor he rose to editor-in-chief and co-owner of the newspaper that had been founded by Alexander Hamilton. Over the next half century, the Post would become the most respected paper in the city and, from the election of Andrew Jackson, the major platform in the Northeast for the Democratic Party and subsequently of the Free Soil and Republican Parties. In the process, the Evening-Post also became the pillar of a substantial fortune. From his Federalist beginnings, Bryant had shifted to being one of the most liberal voices of the century. An early supporter of organized labor, with his 1836 editorials asserting the right of workmen to strike, Bryant also defended of religious minorities and immigrants, and promoted the abolition of slavery.[8] He "threw himself into the foreground of the battle for human rights"[9] and did not cease speaking out against the corrupting influence of certain bankers in spite of their efforts to break down the paper.[10] According to newspaper historian Frank Luther Mott, Bryant was "a great liberal seldom done justice by modern writers".[11] _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A progress report on "Utopia in the Catskills"
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 4/30/19 10:17 PM, Mark Lause wrote: For those unfamiliar with Cole's "Course of Empire," see his series at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire_(paintings) I'm getting deeper now into Cole's story. Early in his career, he made a sketch titled "The Fountain, No. 1: The Wounded Indian Slaking His Death Thirst" that was based on a poem titled "The Fountain" by William Cullen Bryant, a once-famous poet now mostly ignored. You can see the image of the sketch on the Metropolitan Museum website: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10494 The Met states: Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting, drew this study for a series (never realized) of paintings based on William Cullen Bryant’s poem “The Fountain” (1839). The poem evokes several eras of American civilization through incidents that occur at a forest stream. In this scene, a wounded brave (modeled after the Hellenistic sculpture known as the "Dying Gaul," which Cole had seen in Rome) symbolizes the plight of many American Indians in an era of forced relocation. Bryant’s poem can be read here: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fountain-4/ In 2003, Ingrid Satelmajer wrote an article about the poem for American Periodicals that puts Bryant's politics into context. He was a prominent figure in the Democratic Party and supported Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act only because he thought it was the only way they could be saved from total annihilation. Satelmajer views the poem's message as one that has a great degree of ambivalence. Although the Indians were depicted as cruel and white civilization as a form of progress, the final outcome would exceed any cruelty that preceded it: While a cyclical view of cultures might be used to justify the passing of the Indians, the possible outcomes the poem's close offers are for a tale that could be linear for humans as a whole. Indeed, the nation's continuance of its past course, the poem ultimately argues, not only is uncertain; that course in fact contains the potential seeds of its own destruction. Although natural and uncontrollable forces stand responsible for three of the projected changes, the first listed is "man" and his "strange arts." The consequent landscape arising from human meddling--"wither[ed] and deform[ed]"--places the "strange arts" of humans on pair with "chok[ing]" and cataclysmic natural forces. Bryant also began to break with the Democratic Party on slavery and empire. Satelmajer quoting Bryant in the party journal "Democratic Review": The question how long an empire so widely extended as ours can be kept together by means of our form of government is yet to be decided. That this form of government is admirably calculated for a large territory and a numerous population we have no doubt, but there is a probable limit to this advantage. Extended beyond a certain distance, and a certain number of states it would become inconvenient and undesirable, and a tendency would be felt to break up into smaller nations. If the Union of these states is destined to be broken by such a cause, the annexation of Texas to the Union would precipitate the event, perhaps, by a whole century. It is better to carry out the experiment with the territory we now possess. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A progress report on "Utopia in the Catskills"
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * For those unfamiliar with Cole's "Course of Empire," see his series at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire_(paintings) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] A progress report on "Utopia in the Catskills"
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I am immersed in NY State history as part of the film I am working on that includes segments dealing with: 1. The extinction of the mountain lions that gave the Catskills their name (Kaaters + Kill = Catskill; Dutch words for cats and river). When Henry Hudson's crew walked around in the mountains near Bard College, they saw cougars everywhere. Hence the name of the mountains. By 1900, they were extinct. 2. The Munsees and the Mohawks, indigenous people driven from their land first by the Dutch and then by the American colonists. After the Munsees "sold" Manhattan to the Dutch, the Dutch systematically drove them off their land and out of NY State entirely. Because the Mohawks fought alongside the British, George Washington ordered General John Sullivan to burn their villages and kill men, women and children. My village was in Woodridge, NY on land that likely was the site of a Munsee settlement. Woodridge was in Sullivan County, named after this murdering colonist General. 3. Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. He was a British artist who came to America because he hated what the industrial revolution was doing to his country. One of his most famous paintings was the typical landscape with a railroad train toward the margins. It was a symbol of the "civilization" that had already exterminated the mountain lion and drove the Mohawk into Canada. The work is titled "River in the Catskills". The train is directly above the man in the red coat. You can see the smoke coming from the locomotive. https://mfas3.s3.amazonaws.com/objects/SC94180.jpg One of his other paintings was "Last of the Mohicans" that was inspired by James Fenimore Cooper's novel--the one that ends: In the midst of the awful stillness with which such a burst of feeling, coming as it did, from the two most renowned warriors of that region, was received, Tamenund lifted his voice to disperse the multitude. “It is enough,” he said. “Go, children of the Lenape [the Munsees and the Mohicans were part of Lenape society], the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans.” _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
