Parabola Calendar
Saturday, October 30
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an American expatriate poet and critic, and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry. He became known for his role in developing Imagism, which in reaction to the Victorian and Georgian poets favored tight language, unadorned imagery, and a strong correspondence between the verbal and musical qualities of the verse and the mood it expressed. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos, which consumed his middle and late career, and was published between 1917 and 1969.
Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway. It was Pound who was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and for the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses.
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Sunday, October 31
Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)."
The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end". A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced Kálan Gái av).
The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year."
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family's ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces. Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.[6] Sometimes two bonfires would be built side-by-side, and people and their livestock would walk between them as a cleansing ritual.
Another common practice was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink.
The name 'Halloween' and many of its present-day traditions derive from the Old English era
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Monday, November 1
Khedrup Gyatso (November 1, 1838 – January 31, 1856) was the 11th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
He was recognised as the Eleventh Dalai Lama in 1840, having come from the same village as Kelzang Gyatso, the seventh Dalai Lama, had in 1708. In 1841 the seventh Panchen Lama, Palden Tenpai Nyima, gave him the pre-novice ordination, cut his hair and gave him the name Khedrup Gyatso.
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Wednesday, November 3
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (November 3, 39 AD – April 30, 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.
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