April 24, 2010
Uprisings and Downfalls: Troy, Sherlock Holmes, the Irish Rebellion and Brendan Behan
Turning to the calendar, we find a number of historic literary events that happened today:
The end of Troy (1184 BCE)
Today is the traditional day that Greek soldiers led by Menelaus infiltrated Troy inside a giant wooden horse. Next day’s bulldog edition of the Troy Herald-Tribune leads with GREEKS IN FUTURE METAPHOR SACK CITY.
The end of Sherlock Holmes, temporarily (1891)
On this day, Sherlock Holmes walks into the consulting room of a surprised Dr. Watson to open “The Final Problem,” the controversial story which ends with the great detective going over the falls in the arms of the villainous Dr. James Moriarty. Despite the looming presence of “the Napoleon of Crime,” Moriarty appears only in this story and in “The Valley of Fear,” and is mentioned in five other stories. It was up to later writers to take the character and give him the stories sufficient to his reputation.
Irish poets fight for independence (1916)
The Irish Republican Brother, led by literary men Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett and four others, lead a revolt against British rule by seizing several public buildings in Dublin and declaring the founding of the Irish Republic. It took a week of gun battles and 20,000 troops (facing only 1,600 rebels) to put down the rebellion.
The initial reviews of the rebellion were poor, castigating the leaders as men with no influence nor reputation. But Britain turned victory into defeat by arresting several thousand Irish men and women and executing 15, including the leaders who signed the proclamation, even those who had played no role in the uprising. "It is absolutely impossible,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero, even though the day before he may have been only a minor poet." The backlash inspired sympathy and the “Poet’s Rebellion” would become a founding story in Irish history when the nation achieved independence in 1921.
More about the rebellion can be found at Wikipedia.
Brendan Behan hits a dead end (1942)
The 19-year-old future playwright and Irish Republican Army member, was sentenced to 14 years for the attempted murder of two detectives during an IRA parade. Behan served four years before being released in a general amnesty. He spent his time in prison writing, and eventually used his experiences for his novel “Borstal Boy” (1958) and plays such as “The Quare Fellow” (1954).
Born: Robert Bailey Thomas, Farmer’s Almanac founder, Grafton, Mass., 1766; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1800; Anthony Trollope, novelist, London, 1815; Elizabeth Goude, novelist, Wells, Somersetshire, 1900; Robert Penn Warren, poet, novelist, critic, Guthrie, Ky., 1905; Stanley J. Kauffmann, critic, editor, New York City, 1916; Sue Grafton, mystery novelist, Louisville, Ky., 1940; Eric Bogosian, performance artist, playwright, Boston, Mass., 1953.
Died: James T. Fields, publisher, editor, Boston, 1881; Lucy Maud Montgomery, novelist, Toronto, Ontario, 1942; Willa Cather, novelist, New York City, 1947.
Quote for the Day: “Of the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.” — Anthony Trollope, novelist, who was born today in 1815
Also from “Writers 365”:
- When the Shift Hits the Fan in Dublin (1907)
- Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein Meet Cute (1907)
- Virginia Woolf at the door (1913)
- Sailing along the Spoon River (1915)
- Great Moments in Literary Sex (Part I)
- Great Moments in Literary Sex (Part II)
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