BY
MAYOR MARTIN O'MALLEY
DESIGNATING AUGUST 16, 2002
AS
"ELI SIEGEL DAY" IN BALTIMORE
| WHEREAS, | the people of Baltimore are proud to join
with the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland
Historical Society, Coppin State College, Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute,
Morgan State University, former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, and others in honoring
the centenary of the great Baltimorean poet, philosopher, and educator
Eli Siegel (1902-1978), who in 1941 founded the philosophy Aesthetic Realism;
and
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| WHEREAS, | Eli Siegel grew up in Baltimore, and his
contributions to world thought began with writings completed in this city,
some appearing in such Baltimore publications as Horizons of Johns
Hopkins University, the Modern Quarterly, his columns in the Baltimore
American; and
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| WHEREAS, | he won the esteemed Nation Poetry
Prize in 1925 for his "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana," which he said
was affected by thoughts of Druid Hill Park, and about which William Carlos
Williams wrote, "I say definitely that that single poem, out of a thousand
others written in the past quarter century, secures our place in the cultural
world"; and
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| WHEREAS, | the honesty, kindness, and greatness of
mind Eli Siegel possessed were described in the Baltimore Sun by
Donald Kirkley: "Baltimore friends close to him at the time [that he won
the Nation prize] will testify to a certain integrity and steadfastness
of purpose which distinguished Mr. Siegel .... He refused to exploit a
flood of publicity .... He wanted to investigate the whole reach of human
knowledge ... to discover in its labyrinth some order or system"; and
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| WHEREAS, | Eli Siegel showed that 1) the deepest
desire of every person is to like the world honestly, 2) humanity’s largest
danger is contempt, "the addition to self through the lessening of something
else," 3) "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is
the aesthetic oneness of opposites"; and his scholarship and historic
comprehension are in his books, beginning with Self and World, the
classes he taught which changed people’s lives magnificently, his thousands
of lectures on the arts, sciences, and history; and
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| WHEREAS, |
this education he founded, enabling people
to see the world and others with the respect and kindness they deserve,
including people of different races and nationalities, is continued by
Class Chairman Ellen Reiss and the faculty of the not-for-profit Aesthetic
Realism Foundation, and is used as a Teaching Method with unprecedented
success by educators in public schools — we salute Eli Siegel for his great
contributions to knowledge and humanity beginning in the City of Baltimore.
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NOW, THEREFORE,
I, MARTIN O’MALLEY, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF BALTIMORE, do hereby
proclaim August 16, 2002 as "ELI SIEGEL DAY" in BALTIMORE,
and do urge all citizens to join in this celebration.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set the Great Seal of the City of Baltimore to be affixed this twenty-eighth day of April, two thousand two.  |
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