Listen my children and you will hear: the charge of the light brigade
A couple of weeks ago I had some fun with poetic voices of the past, and in the comments section “Beverly” alerted me to the fact that a recording exists of Alfred Lord Tennyson reading his poem “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Tennyson seems a figure from the long-distant past, born at the beginning of the nineteenth century in 1809. He was Poet Laureate of England from Wordsworth’s death in 1850 until his own demise in 1892, the longest tenure in that post ever, spanning the bulk of Victoria’s reign. He lived long enough to still be around when Edison developed the phonograph and wax cylinders in the 1880’s, in time for Tennyson to record his famous 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which commemorated a doomed, error-laden but valiant battle of the Crimean War.
You can listen to the 1890 recording at this link, and follow along with the words as well. Tennyson sounds like he’s “come ‘thro the Jaws of Death” himself, doesn’t he?
And then there’s the following, another astounding Edison wax recording which is fairly self-explanatory, but is explained further here:
Too bad oral history was not yet a recognized historical method.
here is the tennyson wax redcording..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCnUXm7Iloo
and another interesting version movie buffs will love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXzCOlPHFmc
[the later 1966 version was just as good… see the battle of Balaclava]
and my most personal favorite…
🙁
now that you tube is cutting out things as their new policy (which is not to bright as these exerpts are what causes rediscovery and increased sales on things that only have reproduction cost as the production costs were recouped before most people were born today)
anyway… given buckweat and others, these movies are progressively being erased… OH TAY… (which means the saturday night live skits that made eddie murphy great will not make sense).
there is an our gang, or a little rascals clip where alfalfa decides to read tennysons poem to the class, and spanky decides to light a package of fireworks in his pocket
they were allowed to buy guns in commic books, and bring them to school to use after school too, so dont be so aghast that free people act free while domesticated people are shocked at what theya re allowed to do!
another reason to erase the old movies, ergo lots and lots of remakes supplanting them, as they speak loudly as to the lies we believe about the past!!!!
like women couldnt go to college…
i even heard neo pull this trope up again, in another thread recently. DO THE FREAKING RESEARCH…
if such was so, then was madam curie hatched from an egg?
Elizabeth cady stanton died in 1902 when women were supposed (by her) not to have rights, prooperty, etc..
and where did she go to school while decalring that women couldnt go to school. (which again is a HALF truth… they COULD… but the STATE didnt pay for it!!)
She attended Johnstown Academy, where she studied Latin, Greek and mathematics until the age of 16. At the Academy, she enjoyed being in co-educational classes where she could compete intellectually and academically with boys her age and older. She did this very successfully, winning several academic awards and honors, including the award for Greek language.
wait a second… had to be the mid 1800s… she didnt attend college at 16 when she died of old age, did she?
and as far as a culture that didnt want women to learn and a religion that reinforced it.
Cadys’ neighbor, Rev. Simon Hosack, with strongly encouraging her intellectual development and academic abilities at a time when she felt these were undervalued by her father.
oh, well so much for PROGRESSIVE TRUTH…
Lucretia Mott went to Nine Partners Quaker Boarding School in what is now Millbrook, Dutchess County, New York, which was run by the Society of Friends.
The Religious Society of Friends is a name used by a range of independent religious organizations which all trace their origins to a Christian movement in mid-17th century England and Wales.
anyway… almost anywhere you start… you will bump into different groups of the same single group twiddling through our existence seeking collusive power and lying all the way..
even TENNYSON… or do we forget his
“federation of the world”
league of nations
United nations..
hey…. did you notice the new logos of the UN, muslim brotherhood, the asian organization, etc… they ALL share the same borders…
For I dipped into the future,…
locksley hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VReKpeQb5A
Gather ye rosebuds while thee may, for youth is wasted on the young…
One of the reasons Crimea war was lost by Britain is that generals underestimated how severe winter can be even at Black Sea shores. So the soldiers had to improvise in clothes. This campaign gave us such pieces of costume as cardigan and balaclavas.
According modern British historicans, the only good thing which came from this war was Florence Nightingale and her brigade of nurses. But Russian authorities also extract lessons from poor preparedness of the troops and weak economy. This was the main reason why Alexander II launched at least an ambitious program of liberal reforms, begining from abolishion of serfdom, Army reform, creating municipal institutions of self-government and many else. For my family history, the important thing was creation of medical faculty of Moscow University, where my grand-grandfather got his MD.
When we think our era is one of rapid change, it’s good to remember that a bugler who fought in the Crimea could have lived to see World War I. People who grew up in cottages little different from those of the Middle Ages saw the first skyscrapers.
Since we’re being all literary, and retrospective, the first book of Siegfried Sassoon’s trilogy The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston centers on the genteel simplicity of life before the great war, which hasn’t been seen since.
Another great poem about the Light Brigade is Kiplings “Last of the Light Brigade”.
Sergey: some of my ancestors apparently moved to Russia at the invitation of that same czar. They were brewers in Alsace-Lorraine, and he wanted to develop the beer industry.
They got trapped there after his assassination. Until they finally came here.
When I worked for a union local in St. Louis a long time ago the president would invariably end the Monday staff meetings by telling us to remember, “Yours not to reason why, yours but to do or die.”
I never quite summoned up the courage to ask him if he knew the preceding line: “Someone had blundered.”
Alex Bensky: not only that, but if you look at the poem the line is “do and die.”
The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the events leading up to it, are vividly described in George Macdonald Fraser’s picaresque novel “Flashman at the Charge.”
In an earlier novel of the series, GMF described Lord Cardigan as “the spoiled child of fortune who knows with unshakeable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction and pleasure.”
Remind you of anyone we know?