Art for heart’s sake

By R. Goldberg

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an American sculptor, cartoonist and writer was born in San Francisco. After graduating from the University of California in 1904 he worked as a cartoonist for a number of newspapers and magazines. He produced several series of cartoons all of which were highly popular.

Among his best works are Is there a Doctor in the House?(1929), Rube Goldberg’s Guide to Europe (1954) and I Made my Bed. (1960).

“Here, take your pineapple juice”, gently persuaded Koppel, the male nurse.

“Nope!” grunted Collis P. Ellsworth.

“But it’s good for you, sir”.

“Nope!”

“It’s doctor’s orders”

“Nope!”

Koppel heard the front door bell and was glad to leave the room. He found Doctor Caswell in the hall downstairs. “I can’t do a thing with him”, he told the doctor. “He won’t take his pineapple juice. He doesn’t want me to read to him. He hates the radio. He doesn’t like anything!”

Doctor Caswell received the information with his usual professional calm. He had done some constructive thinking since his last visit. This was no ordinary case. The old gentleman was in pretty good shape for a man of seventy-six. But he had to be kept from buying things. He had suffered his last heart attack after his disastrous purchase of that jerkwater(1) railroad(2) out in Iowa(3). All his purchases of recent years had to be liquidated at a great sacrifice both to his health and his pocketbook.

The doctor drew up a chair and sat down close to the old man.

“I’ve got a proposition for you”, he said quietly.

Old Ellsworth looked suspiciously over his spectacles.

“How’d you like to take up art?” The doctor had his stethoscope ready in case the abruptness of the suggestion proved too much for the patient’s heart.

But the old gentleman’s answer was a vigorous “Rot”! (4)

“I don’t mean seriously”. Said the doctor, relieved that disaster had been averted. “Just fool around with chalk and crayons. It’ll be fun”.

“Bosh!”(5)

“All right.” The doctor stood up. “I just suggested it, that’s all”.

“But, Caswell, how do I start playing with the chalk – that is, if I am foolish enough to start?”

“I’ve thought of that too. I can get a student from one of the art schools to come here once a week and show you”.

Doctor Caswell went to his friend, Judson Livingston, head of the Atlantic Art Institute, and explained the situation. Livingstone had just the young man – Frank Swain, eighteen years old and a promising student. He needed the money. Ran an elevator at night to pay tuition. How much would he get? Five dollars a visit. Fine.

Next afternoon young Swain was shown into the big living. Collis P.Ellsworth looked at him appraisingly.

“Sir, I’m not an artist yet”, answered the young man.

“Umph?”

Swain arranged some paper and crayons on the table. “Let’s try and draw that vase over there on the mantelpiece”, he suggested. “Try it Mister Ellsworth, please.”

“Umph!” The old man took a piece of crayon in a shaky hand and made a scrawl. He made another scrawl and connected the two with a couple of crude lines. “There it is, young man,” he snapped with a grunt of satisfaction. “Such foolishness. Poppy-cock!”(7)

Frank Swain was patient. He needed the five dollars. “If you want to draw you will have to look at what you drawing, sir.”

Old Ellsworth squinted and looked. By gum(8), it’s kinda(9) pretty, I never noticed it before.”

When the art student came the following week there was a drawing on the table that had a slight resemblance to the vase.

The wrinkles deepened at the corners of the old gentleman’s eyes as he asked elfishly, (10) “Well, what do you think of it?”

“Not bad, sir,” answered Swain, ”But it’s a bit lopsided.”

By gum, “ Old Ellsworth chuckled. I see. The halves don’t match.” He added a few lines with a palsied hand and colored(11) the open spaces blue like a child playing with a picture book. Then he looked towards the door. “Listen, young man,” he whispered, “I want to ask you something before old pineapple juice comes back.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Swain respectively.

“ I was thinking could you spare the time to come twice a week or perhaps three times?”

“Sure, Mister Ellsworth.”

“Good. Let’s make it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Four o’clock.”

As the weeks went by Swain’s visits grew more frequent. He brought the old man a box of water-colors and some tubes of oils.

When Doctor Caswell called Ellsworth would talk about the graceful lines of the andirons. He would dwell on the rich variety of color in a bowl of fruit. He proudly displayed the variegated smears of paint on his heavy silk dressing gown. He would not allow his valet to send it to the cleaner’s. He wanted to show the doctor hoe hard he’d been working.

The treatment was working perfectly. No more trips downtown to become involved in purchases of enterprises of doubtful solvency.

The doctor thought it safe to allow Ellsworth to visit the Metropolitan (12), the Museum of Modern Art(13) and other exhibitions with Swain. An entirely new world opened up it’s charming mysteries. The old man displayed an insatiable curiosity about the galleries and the painters who exhibited in them. How were the galleries run? Who selected the canvases for the exhibitions? An idea was forming in his brain.

When the late spring sun began to cloak the fields and gardens with color, Ellsworth executed a god-awful smudge which he called “Trees dressed in white”. Then he made a startling announcement. He was going to exhibit it in the Summer show at the Lathrop Gallery!

For the summer show at the Lathrop gallery was the biggest art exhibit of the year in quality, if not in size. The lifetime dream of every mature artist in the United States was a Lathrop prize. Upon this distinguished group Ellsworth was going to foist his “Trees dressed in white”, which resembled a gob(14) of salad dressing thrown violently up against the side of a house!.

“If the papers het hold of this, Mister Ellsworth will become a laughing-stock. We’ve got to stop him”, groaned Koppel.

“No”, admonished(15) the doctor. “We can’t interfere with him now and take a chance of spoiling all the good work that we’ve accomplished.”

To the utter astonishment of all three – and especially Swain – “Trees dressed in white” was accepted for the Lathrop show.

Fortunately, the painting was hung in an inconspicuous place where it could not excite any noticeable comment. Young Swain sneaked into the Gallery one afternoon and blushed to the tops of his ears when he saw “Trees dressed in white”, a loud, raucous splash on the wall. As two giggling students stopped before the strange anomaly Swain fled in terror. He could not bear to hear what they had to say.

During the course of the exhibition the old man kept on taking his lessons, seldom mentioning his entry in the exhibition. He was unusually cheerful.

Two days before the close of the exhibition a special messenger brought a long official-looking envelope to Mister Ellsworth while Swain, Koppel and the doctor were in the room. “Read it to me, requested the old man.” “My eyes are tired from painting.”

“It gives the Lathrop Gallery pleasure to announce that the First Lathrop Prize of $1,000 has been awarded to Collis P. Ellsworth for his painting, “Trees dressed in white.”

Swain and Koppel uttered a series of inarticulate gurgles. Doctor Caswell, exercising his professional self-control with a supreme effort, said: “Congratulations, Mister Ellsworth. Fine, fine … See, see … Of course, I didn’t expect such great news. But, but – well, how, you’ll have to admit that art is much more satisfying than business.”

“Art’s nothing,” snapped the old man. “I bought the Lathrop Gallery last month.”

EXPLENATORY NOTES

1. jerkwater (Am. colloq.): small, unimportant.
2. railroad (Am.): railway. The lexical differences between the British and American English are not great in number but they are considerable enough to make the mixture of the two variants sound strange and unnatural. A student of English should bear in mind that different words are used for the same objects, such as can, candy, truck, mailbox, subway, instead of tin, sweets, lorry,, pillar-box, underground.
3. Iowa: a north central state of the USA. The noun is derived from the name of an Indian tribe. Quite a number of states, towns, rivers and the lake in America are named by Indian words, e.g. Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, Kansa, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan.
4. rot (sl.): foolish remarks or ideas.
5. bosh (sl.): empty talk, nonsense.
6. umph: an interjection expressing uncertainty or suspicion.
7. poppycock: foolish nonsense.
8. by gum (dial.): by God.
9. kinda: the spelling fixes contraction of the preposition “of” and its assimilation with the preceding noun which is a characteristic train of American pronunciation.
10. elfish: (becoming rate) (of people or behaviour) having the quality or habit of playing tricks on people like an elf; mischievous.
11. colored: the American spelling is somewhat simpler than its British counterpart. The suffix – our is spelled – or.
12. the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the leading museum in America, was founded in 1870. Its collections cover a period 5,000 years, representing the cultures of the Ancient world and Near and Far East as well as the arts of Europe and America. Among the collections are the paintings, which include oils, pastels, water-colors, miniatures and drawings. There are over 5,000 exhibits, among which are the works of Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, English and American artists.
13. the Museum of Modern Art: a repository of art peculiar to the twentieth century, was opened in 1929. It has several departments among which are the department of architecture and design, the department of painting and sculpture, the department of photography.
14. gob (sl.): a mass of something sticky.
15. admonish: to scold or warn gently.

The analysis of the text “Art for heart’s sake”

by Reuben Goldberg

Drawer (n)- a part of a piece of furniture, such as a desk that you pull out and push in and use to keep things in it: “She took a file from her desk drawer”

Drawing(n)- a picture that you draw: “…a drawing of Canterbury Cathedral”

Form the point of view of stylistic, there are many stylistic devices in the text. Here are some of them:

Zeugma: “All his purchases of recent years had to be liquidated at a greatsacrifice both to his health and his pocketbook ”

Simile: “… the open spaces blue like a child playing with a picture book ”

Personification: “When the late spring sun began to cloak the fields and gardens with colour…”, “An entirely new world opened up it’s charming mysteries”

Metonymy: “I want to ask you something before old pine apple juice comes back”

In general, I suppose that the tone of the piece of literature is informal, conversational, casual and ironical.

BRITISH AND AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS

Students of English Department before rendering the newspaper articles, editorials, brief newspaper items and other newspaper materials informational in character have to translate them. That is why it is absolutely necessary for the learners to be familiar with English newspapers and to understand their language peculiarities.

English newspaper writing dates from the 17^th century. The first of any regular series of English newspapers was the Weekly News which first appeared on May 23, 1662. The 17^th century saw the rise of a number of other news sheets. The first English daily newspaper The Daily Courant was brought out on March 11, 1702. The paper carried news, largely foreign, and no comment, the latter being against the principles of the publisher, as was stated in the first issue of his paper.

Thus the early English newspaper was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary as a regular feature found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18^th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.

The rise of the American newspaper, which was brought onto American soil by British settlers, dates back to the late 17^th, early 18^th centuries.

Modern British and American newspapers can be classified into two main groups: quality and popular newspapers.

Quality newspapers are serious, national, daily newspapers. They concern themselves, as far as possible, with factual reports of major national and international events, with the world of politics and business, they give a comprehensive coverage of industry, technology, commerce, arts, sport and public affairs. In Great Britain these are The Time, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent. The Times is the most famous British quality newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times are the American quality newspapers. The New York Times is ranked as” the world’s top daily”. The Wall Street Journal covers national and international news. It is the business newspaper with the largest circulation in the country. The Washington Post, a serious daily paper, is of national interest, in particular because it contains full coverage of Congress.

Popular (tabloid) newspapers are in size and contain, many photographs. Unlike quality newspapers popular newspapers are not so serious and their stories tend to be sensational. Popular British newspapers are: The Daily Express, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, The Daily Star, The Sun. The tabloids concentrate on more emotive reporting of stories often featuring violence, the Royal family, film and pop stars, and sport. It is often said that the popular press aims to entertain its readers than inform them.

It took the English newspaper more than a century to establish a style and a standard of its own. It is only by the 19^th century that English newspaper may be said to have developed a system of language means which forms separate functional style – English newspaper style often referred to as newspaper English.

Not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under newspaper style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely diverse character. On the pages of newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems, and the like. Since these serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, they cannot be considered examples of newspaper style. Nor can articles in special field, such as science and technology, art, literature, etc. be classed as belonging to newspaper style.

Since the primary function of newspaper style is to impart information, only printed matter serving this purpose comes under newspaper style proper. Such matter can be classed as: brief news items and communiqués; press reports (parliamentary or court proceedings, etc.); editorials and articles purely informational in character; advertisements and announcements.

To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyze the following bask features:

1. Vocabulary parameters of English newspaper style.

It goes without saying that the bulk of the vocabulary used in newspaper writing is neutral common literary. But apart from this, newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by an extensive use of:

a) Special political and economic terms, e.g. constitution, president-elect, by- election, General Assembly, gross output, gross domestic product, per capita production.

b) Non-term political vocabulary, e.g. public, progressive, nation- wide, unity, peace. A characteristic feature of political vocabulary is that the borderline between terms and non-terms is less distinct than in the vocabulary of other special fields. The semantic structure of some words comprises both terms and non-terms, e.g. nation, crisis, agreement, member, representative, leader.

c) Newspaper clichés, stereotyped expressions, common- place phrases familiar to the reader, e.g. vital issue, pressing problem, well- informed sources, danger of war, to escalate a war, overwhelming majority, pillars of society, welfare state.

d) Abbreviations. New items, press reports and headlines abound in abbreviations of various kinds. Among them abbreviated terms – names of organizations, public and state bodies, political associations, industrial and other companies, various offices, known by their initials are very common; e.g. UNO (United Nations Organization), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), EEC (European Economic Community),FO (Foreign Office).

e) Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e.g. a splash- down, a teach- in, stop- go policies, internet bank, e- marketplace.

f) Emotionally coloured words. English newspaper is characterized by an extensive use of emotionally- coloured vocabulary: “ The long- suffering British housewife needs a bottomless purse to cope with this scale of inflation”(Daily Mirror). Reporters tend to introduce emotionally coloured elements into the matter-of-fact, linguistically neutral news stories, e.g. “Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made this shock announcement yesterday in the Commons”.(Daily Mirror).

g) Elements of appraisal. The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary such as allege and claim, casting some doubt on the facts reported.

h) Non- literary(special colloquial) vocabulary. Alongside political words and expressions, terms, cliches and abbreviations one can find colloquial words and expressions, slang, jargonisms and professionalisms, for example: “There is something fishy going on of the B.C. coast. Almost weekly, thousands of farm salmon are breaking stir and swimming into wide – open waters, where, environmentalists fear, they wreak havoc with the wild salmon”(The Globe and Mail).

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