Talk:Langdon Smith
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[edit] Our official 10,000th article
I'd been meaning to do an article for Langdon Smith (and many others) for some time, but as we approached a myriad articles, I thought it was finally time to get around to doing it, as I thought the theme of Smith's most famous work fit well with the funciton of the Wikimedia wikis. I gradually edited it mostly over the last few days based on work I had begun months ago, and then kept careful track of the main page counter and posted it at the proper time (or kairos) for it to become our official 10,000th article. As I mentioned at the Village Pump, I really had no great wish to be identified as it's author, but I did want something noteworthy for the article and not something extremely trivial or embarrassing, created by mere chance, or even by a vandal. Now that we have reached this point, it is good to reflect that myriads more quote pages are yet to be built, and encourage others to join us in the effort of doing the best we can in making them truly worthy of attention. ~ Kalki 18:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Some info on "Evolution"
I was aware that there were a few notable variants in some early publications of the poem, while Smith was alive, and there may be some corruptions that have occured since. Here is some of the information I have been able to gather.
Early printing history:
- First printing, in The New York Herald in 1895; (did not then include quatrains 15 -19, 25 and 26)
- Second printing in The New York Journal amidst a page of advertisements. No date as yet found, and no copies are known to survive.
- Published in The Scrap Book magazine, edited by Frank A. Munsey, in 1906
- Published in Evolution : A Fantasy (1909) (same version as in The Scrap Book magazine) : Downloadable PDF — though pages are not shown in web browsers, the pdf contains images of all the pages)
Additional lines not found in any previous known publication occurred in the version published in The Book of Poetry (1927) edited by Edwin Markham:
- For we know the clod, by the grace of God
Will quicken with voice and breath;
And we know that Love, with gentle hand
Will beckon from death to death.
It is not known.whether these lines existed in the second newspaper publication, of which there are no known copies, nor whether they had been originally edited out by Smith or by some other editors. ~ Kalki 23:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Why the bold?
Am I missing something or is there no explanation as to why certain lines are in bold? - dcljr 05:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
