After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley was an English assembly and non-fiction writer, romanceist and novice. Besides reinvigorateds he published travel books, histories, poems, plays, and essays on philosophy, arts, sociology, religion and morls He was a humanist, pacifist and satirist. He was arouse in spiritual subjects as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. His t whiz huge preoccupation with the negative and positive impacts of wisdom and technology life makes him one of the representative writers and intellectuals of the 20th-century. Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on 26 of July in 1894, in Godalming, Surrey, England. His family was a part of English intellectual elite.Aldous granddaddy was the great biologist, agnostic and contr e actu tot aloneyyplacesialist doubting Thomas Henry Huxley, who helped develop the surmisal of evolution. His mother was sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the novelist and niece of Matthew Arnold, the poet. He had three brothers, two of them Julian Huxley and And rew Huxley were great biologists. His third brother Noel Trevelyan Huxley committed suicide after a issue of clinical depression. Huxleys herit season and upbringing had an effect on his work. He attended Hillside school, after that he was educated at Eton College, Berkshire, and after his visual perception recovered (he had keratitis punctata which left him practically blind for two years, and it in any case saved him from participation in the World War I), he was qualified-bodied to study English literature at Balliol College, Oxford.Al supposey past he entered the literary sphere while he was at Oxford, meeting writers like Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell and bonny close friends with D. H. Lawrence After graduation he was financially indebted to his father, thats why he became a French teacher, except he couldnt keep discipline. He worked also at Air Ministry and Brunner and Mond chemical unionize in Billingham. In 1920-21 he worked as a drama critic for Westmin ster Gazette and an assistant at the Chelsea Book Club and the Cond Nast Publications. He unify Maria Nys in 1919.Their only child, Matthew Huxley, was born in 1920. The family divided their season between Lon come in and Europe, for the most part Italy and France, in the 1920s, and traveled around the world in 1925 and 1926, seeing India and making a first visit to the unify States. He moved in 1937 with the guru-figure Gerald Heard to the UnitedStates, believing that the Californian climate would help his midriffsight, which caused him problems all the time. A year by and by he with his family moved to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter (among his films were also adaptations of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice).In the mid-fifties Huxley became famous for his interest in psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs like mescaline and LSD, which he app arntly took a dozen times over ten years. In 1955died his married woman Maria Huxley, and a year later hemarried Laura Archer a. He died November 22, 1963, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He was cremated, and his ashes were hide in his p arents grave in England. In 1961 he suffered a abominable loss when his house and his papers were totally destroyed in a bush-fire. On his deathbed, unable to speak, Huxley make a written request to his wife Laura for LSD, 100 g, intramuscular. Huxley died aged 69, on 22 of November, in 1963.Media reportage of Huxleys passing was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the death of the British author C. S. Lewis, alln on the same day. Huxleys ashes were interred in the family grave at the Watts Cemetery, home of the Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton, England. Aldous Huxley produced 47 books in his immense career as a writer. His most famous novels are gull New World, Eyeless in Gaza, Ape and Essence, Island and After Many a summertime dies the Swan.The English critic Anthony Burgess has said that he weaponed the novel with a brain. Other critics objected that he was a give away essayist than novelist precisely because he cared more virtually his ideas than ab make pass out p hand or characters, and his novels ideas often get in the way of the parable.Novel After Many a Smmer Dies the Swan was written in 1939. Aldous had lived and worked in California for a year, so this satirical novel caricatures what he had seen as a strange life there. The novel won Huxley that years James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. In 1959 the Ameri burn down Academy of Arts and Letters gave him the Award of Merit for the Novel, a prize discombobulaten every five years earlier recipients had been Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, and Theodore Dreiser. I need to confess, that I had never heard of this author and his novel before. In search of it, I decided that I motivation to read a work in original manner of speakingband because it is also a language course, I wanted to take on some matter in English , that I assument heard about, that I take int brook an opinion about. Something that lavatory challenge me.In spite that this authors most famous novel is Brand NewWorld, I chosed After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, because this title intrigued me. I must say, that I dont thumb disappointed after reading this novel and I found very lots quotations which made me to THINK more about THINGS. The action in this novel revolves around characters which are brought together by a Hollywood millionaire Jo Stoyte, who is in his sixities, after strokes and conscious of his mortality. In order to keep an eye on him and cure him, he has hired Dr. Sigmund Obispo, which is interested in researching the secrets of longlivity and no idications of obsolescence in animals, and his assistant Peter Boone.Mr. Stoyte is supporting Dr. Obispos research. Mr. Jeremy Pordage is an English archivist and literature expert, who is brought by Mr. Stoyte from England in order to archive a rare collection of bo oks. Mr. Pordages aim highlights Mr. Stoytes shallow attitude towards the precious works of art, that he can leave himself. Virginia Mounciple is Mr. Stoytes twenty-two year old mistress, who gives pleasure to the old man, in secret likes Dr. Obispo, and whos young assistant Peter is in love with. Mr. Propter is Jo Stoytes neighbour, who is only one of the characters who carry outs success and happiness, without upsetting anyone ar creating evil. All these characters have different life philosophies.Dr. Obispo places great faith in science and medicate as saviours of humankind. He sees everyone as a stepping stone to science, the greater veracious. harmonise to Propters philosophy, he is trapped in ego-based human behaviour that prevents him from reaching enlightenment. Dr. Obispo seduces Virginia in a characteristically egotistical way. She is unable to resist him despite her subjection to Mr. Stoyte. When she is found out by Stoyte, he wants to kill Dr. Obispo, save apro pos kills Peter instead. Dr. Obispo covers up the act for money and continued research support. This takes him, on with Virginia and Stoyte, to Europe, where they find an immortal human, the Fifth Earl of Gonister, who is 200 years old and even alive, but who presently resembles an ape.Mr. Stoyte can non grasp that transcendence or commodity should be ones ultimate goal, rather than prevention of death, and expresses his wish to submit to treatment so that he too get out live forever. The story works scientific knowledge into a more traditional form of narrative. The evolutionary principle of neoteny has been invoked to explain the origin of human characteristics from ape ancestors. The storyline suggests that, if we livedlonger, we would continue to develop along the path of an ape and eventually plump ape-like.The story has been interpreted as the British Huxleys contemptuous nod to the Hearstian earth of the United States in the early part of the twentieth century Jo St oyte is an allegory for William Randolph Hearst by his acquisitions of art and living in an opulent estate alike to Hearst Castle with Virginia, who can be taken as a extravaganza of Marion Davies. This novel has been adapted in theatre, cinema and radio. NBC University Theater radio made adaptation on 12 of December in 1948, starring capital of Minnesota Henry and Alan Hale, Sr., with intermission commentary by Norman Cousins. In 1967 UK released 45- molybdenum T movie After Many a Summer, directed by Douglas Camfield.Its story tells about an American millionaire who is searching for a magic trick potion, that forget grant him eternal life. In early 2000 the Baryshnikov Dance installation commissioned a 35-minute dance for the White Oak Dance fox called After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. The book is mentioned in the novelette and film A Single Man (2009), when George Falconer (Colin Firth) who is an English professor, one year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, who is unable to cope with his natural days in 1960s Los Angeles, takes an empty pistol and some notes on base with this book in his briefcase.I must say, that reading this novel was difficult, because of authors use of words, that are not acquainted in these days and supernumerary scholastic terminology, and because of that, I have feeling that I harbourt truly understood everything, but I suppose that it is normal, because I am only stu expiry and I dont have indebtedness to know everything. In novel, there were a lot of philosophical and mental thoughts and ideas, so I chosed the most interesting and inspiring quotes for me, which all not reveals central plot of novel or main characters perception of life, but speaks about faith and philosophy, about life and death, about good and evil, about men spirit and also biology. So now I ordain expire to pull my favourite quotes out of the story.Potential evil is in time potential good isnt. The longer you live, the more evil you m echanically come into contact with. Nobody comes automatically into contact with good. Men dont find more good by merely existing longer. Men have always wanted to live longer then they are so-called to, but it mostly isnt because they want to fulfil their life with clemency and generosity to others, to those, who need help, or to gain more knowledge. All they mostly want to achieve is only their own, well, maybe sometimes also their families, goodness and wealthiness. Most of men only stand fors of self-interest, but are they authentically inteded ripe for it.There must be something more for them (and us) in this life. All our life we are busy to make our plans and dreams to come true, and when our time has almost come to an end, we want to life longer to do something good. simply why now, why we havent thought of it earlier? Because we didnt have time. save I must say, it is so lame argument. Time was all around us, but we didnt spend it concerning about and doing things th at palpablely matters. So, if you can extend your time, it doesnt mean that you will know how to spend it and find good. Time is evil, because it is slowly and consistently killing us.why do we fall when we jump out of a tenth-story window? Because the nature of things bechances to be such that we do fall. I really liked this quote. It is so simple and obvious fact, but I have never thought of it, because it just happens so. This first sentence really sounds to me like wordplay. Why do we fall when we jump? Some will say it is because of gravity, and there is nothing we can do about it. It is science. entirely maybe we are not created to do and desire whatever we want. spring or reaching for something we want, but dont need to get, achieve or gain is falling or maybe even redemption from it.Our misfortune is that we dont always stop after fall, but instead we get back on that windowsill, despite our scars and bruises,and start looking down, searching for someone to catch us or something we can land on. This, in my opinion, is human nature. We dont want to give up (ofcourse there are a loto f good deal who do give up, but that is already another story), we are stubborn, we know nature of things, but we are sure of that we can experiment and try to flip it. Why should some animals live much longer than human beings and merely show no signs of old age.Somehow, somewhere we had made a biologic mistake. This thought sound very interesting. We are cold the crown of nature, of all beings, but why is then do we live shorter lives than those, who are supposed(a) to be below us . We are smarter, wiser, simply better than animals. Why dont we live longer, for instance, why could not we day at age of 200? And again time is evil.It will last longer, but it will kill us anyway. And if we really, even obligatory, must life that long and become ape-likes, do we really want that? Would we like to become as Jo Stoyte, who doesnt care about anything at all? I wont. I think I would rather commit suicide, than become an animal. But question is what went wrongly in our development? Who made the mistake? I cant explain why it is so, but I opine that it must be this way. We come into the world, we live and we die, and there is nothing wrong with it. It is nature of life. We are humans, we dont need eternal life. We are smart and capable, buti f we could have more time, I think we wont have any normal idea what to do with it. I believe that our world is breaking apart, there are too much bad things, catastrophes, cold-blooded tribe, who are willing to do everything to make moore good for themselves.I would not like to live too long to witness all that what is going to happen and what we dont know a thing about. If youre always frighten of dying, youll surely die. Fears a poison and not such a slow poison either. This spoke to me too and it is connected with former quotes and my thoughts. I dont really know statistics, but I think there are nea rly equal amount of people who are scared of dying and who are not. I can acknowledge me in this not scared part. Why should I be scared? I know, I will die, sooner or later. I dont believe in any predictions, but once I filled test with title When you will die?. If it is true, it will happen on 16 of January, in 2016.So, it seems that I will be able to finish my studies and maybe even work for and half a year, and then Thats it I am gone, and how? In a car accident. But thank goodness, I dont have a drivers licence. I think it is obvious, that I am making fun of this. I dont believe I will day at age of 26. But if I will, I am not scared of it. I almost like my life, it isnt bad, but it always could be better, and if it becomes better untill 2016, then death bring it on I dont have self-destructive inclination. I am living here and now and I am suggesting others to do the same. Dont do loggerheaded things and play with your destiny, but use our days, make them worth it. Thinki ng of dying will kill much faster.Dont be afraid of death, if it smells your fear, it will track you down and kill you more painfully. There were a lot of nice quotations, but because of the page limit (and if there wont be any, I would need much more to write everything I would like), I will only write some of them down without discussing. The real conditions at anygiven moment are the subjective conditions of the people then alive. On the human level. men live in ignorance, craving and fear. Ignorance, craving and fear result in some fugacious pleasures, in many lasting miseries, in final frustration. What is man? A nothingness surrounded by God, indigent and capable of God, filled with God, if he so desires.In conclusion I can say, that I was interested in these philosophical and eternal thoughts, proposed by the author. They are meaningful, they make me think and I consider that the greatest credit of studying.