Small Consolation

Re: By The Time They Were Thirty : Counterpoint

>> Shakespeare was still a playwright in the making, languishing with the difficulties of writing blood-and-guts plays like the Henry VI plays and Richard III, and the slight comedies, The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew. That said, Shakespeare is writing like a madman-- and with King John, Richard II and the Sonnets in the offing, he'll soon surpass his rival Christopher Marlowe.

>> Wallace Stevens was only starting to publish in magazines, and was still trying to find stable work.

>> Alec Guinness had some small stage work (including a scene-stealing Osric in Gielguds's Hamlet), but aside from a bit part in Evensong, he had yet to make an impression on film; his performance as Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations is two years away. Like many English actors, however, Guinness found his acting career delayed by service in WWII; in a strange irony, due to an error, Guinness and another actor wound up being the first Brits to land on the shore of Italy before the invasion begun. Check out Guinness' brilliant autobiography Blessings In Disguise for more information.

>> James Joyce is in his own private hell after the destroyed publication of Dubliners and as Portait of the Artist as a Young Man lingers. Only Chamber Music, Joyce's very small book of verse, is in print.

>> Henry James had only one novel publish, in serial form in the Atlantic Monthly, the generally-forgotten Watch and Ward. Roderick Hudson doesn't appear for another two years.

>> Northrop Frye is still three years away from publishing his breakthrough study of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry.

>> John Dryden is still two years away from writing his first play, The Wild Gallant, now largely ignored, and All For Love remains six years away.

>> Virginia Woolf has yet to publish a novel. The Voyage Out remains three years away.

>> Emily Dickinson may be writing, but no one knows a damned thing of her, mostly by her own will.

>> Dante Alighieri is only on the cusp of finishing the Vita Nuova after the death of his beloved Beatrice; the Commedia remains at least five years away, with its beginning (the Inferno) not coming to development until 1290, when Dante was 35.

>> Walt Whitman remains six years away from publishing the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the volume (comprising just twelve poems) published at Whitman's own expense.

So, there's some consolation, I suppose.... So, to be Eliot, the young poet who rises to prominence in his youth, or to be Stevens, the poet (more than any other) associated with middle-age, that is the question.... Not that I'm near middle-age yet, but.... Oh, hell, one never knows, does one?