Sonnet 109: O! never say that I was false of heart
by William Shakespeare

O never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart,
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.
That is my home of love; if I have ranged
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reigned
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good—
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
 

"Sonnet 109" by William Shakespeare. Public domain. (buy now)

It's the birthday of documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895. She contracted polio when she was seven, and developed a permanent limp as a result. When she was 12, her father abandoned the family, so she dropped her middle name and adopted her mother's maiden name. She studied photography at Columbia University, and then in 1918 she began to travel, selling her photographs as she went. She ran out of money by the time she got to San Francisco, so she settled there, opened a photography studio, and made a good living shooting portraits of the Bay Area's upper class.

She began taking photographs of men on breadlines, striking workers, and the homeless during the Great Depression, to call attention to their plight, and she did indeed attract the attention of other local photographers. She was hired by the Resettlement Administration, which would later become the Farm Security Administration, to document the displacement of American farmers during the Dust Bowl years, and it's her photo, "Migrant Mother, Nipoma, California, 1936" that is her most famous. Her camera gave us a vivid visual memory of the Great Depression even if we weren't around to experience it.

Today is the birthday of the father of modern Russian literature: Aleksandr Pushkin (books by this author), born in Moscow in 1799. He published his first poem at 15, and in his brief life he worked in nearly every literary form: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, and the critical essay. He tended to run afoul of the authorities by writing revolutionary and political poems, and he was often questioned or sent to remote outposts under the guise of an "administrative transfer." In 1824, he was plucked from his cosmopolitan life in Odessa and exiled to his mother's estate in northern Russia, where he was closely watched. Denied the high-society life to which he was accustomed, he wrote, producing his most famous play, Boris Godunov (1830), and working on his verse novel Eugene Onegin (published serially from 1825 to 1832). After two years, he petitioned Czar Nicholas I to be released from exile. His request was granted, provided that he allow Nicholas to serve as his personal censor.

Unfortunately, freedom was not what he had hoped. He was implicated in the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 because some of the insurgents had carried copies of his poems, and so he was kept on a very short leash, forbidden to travel, or to publish anything, for several years. He was taken to task for reading portions of Boris Godunovaloud to friends, without permission. He spent some time looking for a bride and found one in the lovely Natalya Goncharova. He proposed, and she agreed, on the condition that he resolve his conflicts with the government. Boris Godunov was finally allowed to be published in 1830, five years after it was written. The uncensored version wasn't performed until 2007.

The czar was a great admirer of the lovely Madame Pushkina, and he promoted her husband to the lowest possible court rank, so that Natalya could be invited to court balls. It was a slap in the face to Pushkin, and he resented the insult along with the costly gowns he now had to purchase, although his wife enjoyed the attention. One of her suitors, Georges d'Anthés, was so persistent and brazen that Pushkin finally challenged him to a pistol duel in 1837, after receiving an anonymous letter welcoming him to "The Most Serene Order of Cuckolds." They were both wounded, but Pushkin's wound was mortal, and he died two days later.

It's the birthday of John Wayne, born Marion Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, in 1907.

He broke into the film business via the prop department, as a scenery mover, and befriended director John Ford, who started giving him bit parts in his movies. It was in Ford's Stagecoach (1939) that he became a star. His 50-year relationship with Ford produced some of his best work: including the "cavalry series" of Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), and Ford's post-war — and more disillusioned — films The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Their personal views on politics grew further and further apart, especially during the McCarthy era — Wayne supported the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Ford spoke out against it — and the friends had to agree to disagree and leave it out of their conversations.

It's widely reported that the Republican Party approached Wayne in 1968 to try to convince him to run for president. He declined, scoffing that voters would never put an actor in the White House.

It's the birthday of jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis (1926). He was born in Alton, Illinois, and grew up in East Saint Louis. His family was fairly well off, a fact he liked to remind people of, since they tended to assume he came from poverty. His dad was a dental surgeon, and they also had a ranch in Arkansas, where young Miles learned to ride horses. He moved to New York in 1944 to study at the Institute of Musical Art, which is now Juilliard. His true schooling, though, came by way of jam sessions with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and when Gillespie and Parker parted ways, Davis filled Gillespie's vacancy in Parker's band.

Always an innovator, Davis formed a nine-piece ensemble in the late 1940s that included a tuba and a French horn; their aim was to recreate the smooth sound of the human voice, and their album Birth of the Cool (1956) heralded the beginning of the "cool jazz" movement. Though it was historically important, it was a commercial failure, and Davis resented the success of later musicians — mostly white — who enjoyed success under the cool jazz banner.

He developed a heroin habit in the early '50s, due partly to the company he kept and partly to depression over romantic troubles and his lack of critical acclaim. He finally beat the habit in 1954, after locking himself in his room at his father's house until he had come through the difficult withdrawal symptoms.

In the late 1960s, Davis began introducing some electric guitar and piano into his records, inspired in part by Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. He cut what some consider his last pure jazz album, In a Silent Way, in 1969, and then moved increasingly toward funk and rock 'n' roll; his jazz-rock fusion double album Bitches Brew (1970) was hugely successful — his first gold record — and won him a lot of new fans even as it alienated his old ones. He was the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, and he began opening for rock acts like the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Neil Young.

It's the birthday of novelist Alan Hollinghurst (books by this author), born in Stroud, England (1954). He was an only child, and Stroud was a very small, rural town. His father was a farming bank manager, and Alan accompanied him from farm to farm. When he was seven, his parents decided to send him off to boarding school.

Hollinghurst loved school. He read a lot of poetry, but wasn't very interested in novels other than those of J.R.R Tolkien. He went to Oxford, and there he decided to try writing. His first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), was the story of a gay man who saves the life of an aristocrat, an older gay man. The novel is full of explicit descriptions of sex. He said: "For a shy person, it strikes me now that my first book was rather bold. But I think shy people often have a strange, compensatory impulse. When they do something, it's ridiculously outspoken." Hollinghurst had a tough time selling the paperback rights for the book. It scared off all the publishers. But then the hardcover version of The Swimming-Pool Library was extremely popular and spent months on the best-seller list, and publishers ended up in a bidding war for the paperback rights.

Hollinghurst is a meticulous writer, spending years on each novel.

He said: "I'm not at all easy to live with. I wish I could integrate writing into ordinary social life, but I don't seem to be able to. I could when I started. I suppose I had more energy then. Now I have to isolate myself for long periods. It's all become more of a challenge. I find writing novels gets harder and harder, which is not what I thought would happen. I thought you'd learn how to do it."