Talk:John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

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Contents

[edit] Dates

"Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Junior (June 9, 1922 – December 11, 1941) [...] Magee's posthumous fame rests mainly on High Flight, a sonnet he wrote on 3 September 1940, just two weeks before his death." ?

[edit] Fix?

Apparently he wrote the sonnet in August or September of 1941 - the date IMHO cannot be more accurately determined. Madman 16:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The exact date that Magee wrote High Flight is uncertain, but what IS known is that he included it in a letter to his parents, and dated it September 3rd, 1941. Magee's first flight in a Spitfire was August 7th. Thus, High Flight was written sometime between August 7th and September 3rd, 1941. RJHaas 21:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE 22 January 2008: I have obtained a copy of Magee's logbook. It shows a flight to 33,000 feet on 18 August 1941 in a Spitfire MKI. The letter to his parents which contains High Flight was written on 3 September 1941 - Magee writes that he started it after a flight to 30,000 feet. So, High Flight was written between those two dates.

I have also researched the aircraft that Magee flew on his inspirational flight. It was not, as has been stated, a new model of the Spitfire MKV, but a Spitfire MKI that served with 610 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.

[edit] Link

Removed the following dead link. Did not find an appropriate replacement, but then didn't spend more than five or ten minutes on it either. Jim 03:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can somebody link to the poem?

It's in Wikipedia, here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/High_Flight

But the "High Flight" page redirects to this article! The content about Gillespie's poem needs to be put on a page about the poem, I think -- and certainly this article should link to the poem. ChristinaDunigan 15:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is a link to a copy of the actual manuscript: http://www.highflightproductions.com/ThePoem.html As part of my research into Magee and High Flight, I requested a copy of the original letter from the Library of Congress where it is kept. They wouldn't give me a new copy, but instead gave me what appears to be a copy of a copy of a copy. I "cleaned" it up using Photoshop... you can see both versions at the link above and see what Magee actually wrote. RJHaas 21:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nationality

I'm not sure what nationality Magee would have used to describe himself, but as he had an Amercian father and a British mother, I think it is fair enough to describe him as American-British. He spent only 1+ year living in the US as opposed to 8+ in the UK. 86.136.195.43 12:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this but at best he should be called British-American since he lived many more years of his live in Britan than America.

[edit] Possible plagiarism

I have made a separate section of this portion of the High Flight section as it is important. Far too many articles I have read on Magee verge on near-hagiography: the evidence is quite damning that he was heavily influenced by others and 'borrowed' (to give it a charitable name) an awful lot from other poets' work. Their work should be credited or at least acknowledged too, especially when Magee's work is so widely quoted and it is clearly 'not all his own work'. 86.136.195.43 13:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More on possible plagiarism

This section title was removed but I have reinstated it: the evidence is compelling that Magee (a juvenile poet and therefore more likely to be influenced by the work of others) plagiarised phrases taken from other poems in High Flight. Their work should not go unrecognised as part of the foramtion process for this iconic poem 86.138.104.71 13:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

This editor has again reverted the change without explanation. I have left a message on his or her talk page asking for the reasons for the chnage. 86.133.211.174 05:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

As original contributor of this section, I agree it's worth a separate section, but a different heading might be kinder. "Probable" is really too weak (coincidence doesn't stretch that far) but "plagiarism" has too harsh a tone. I'd go with something like: Sources of phrases in High Flight. Tony in Devon 15:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Further thought on my own note above: 'Unconscious plagiarism' is a shorter, very fair description that's just come to mind. And it would be nice to know where Magee read (as he must have) Icarus - probably in his Welsh(?) training base.Tony in Devon 19:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't disagree more. We don't know if it was unconscious or not. For all we know, he wrote High Flight with Icarus open on the desk next to him. It's plagiarism, for sure: we just don't know the degree of deliberation to it, and we shouldn't guess, which is what the phrase 'unconscious' is (and I'd disagree with 'very fair' too). That number of borrowed phrases, all from the same source, goes well beyond coincidence, as you say. 86.138.105.97 09:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Also - 'probable' is a stronger term that 'possible': I had thought of calling the section 'probable plagiarism' but decided against as it suggested we have knowledge about his thought processes and working methods that we don't. 'Possible' allows ambiguity to remain. 86.138.105.97 09:54, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

OK - I'm happy to leave it. A colleague writing about same facts was generous in allowing for pressure the young man must have been under, and the fact that the poem was despatched privately and not necessarily for publication... and I know I've found myself (in quieter times) writing phrases that I realise come unconsciously from other sources. Moving on, I'd love to trace the original writer of the final lines - and have made some "possible" progress - a long way from 'verifiable'! I'll add a link to Toronto Univ page; they have illustrated the sourced phrases more clearly than my own narrative. - Tony in Devon 11:30, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I have thought about this quite a bit during my research in Magee and "High Flight." I do have a copy of "Icarus - An Anthology of the Poetry of Flight" and have identified the relevant lines. My own conclusion is that the book "Icarus..." did serve as "source material" for High Flight. I personally do not think that it qualifies as plagiarism, as there is enough of Magee's original contribution to "High Flight" that makes it quite distinguishable from the other poems. In other words, other than a couple of lines, you would never mistake one poem for the other. This is just my humble opinion, arrived at after 18 years worth of continual research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RJHaas (talk • contribs) 02:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Even versus ever (eagle flew)

A number of other websites, including one listed in this article's References, say that "or ever eagle flew" is the correct wording.

Some of them even explicitly cite "or even eagle flew" as a common error compared to the handwritten manuscript. Here are three sites that use "ever":

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2736.html

https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/highflight.htm

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=564253

I haven't found a view of the manuscript, but it seems more likely that "ever" is correct, both because of the careful explanation given at the airforcehistory site, whose author claims to have seen the ms, and because that word harmonizes with the overall sonority, mood, and vocabulary of the poem as well as being locally echoed by "never".

So I would propose changing the word in the complete poem to "ever" and adding a note about the "even" variant.

Or failing that, to at least add a note about the issue.

Salliesatt (talk) 02:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the desire to be accurate in quoting Magee's poem. In my 18 years worth of research into Magee and his most famous poem, I have been asked many times about the "even" vs "ever" situation. I have concluded that what Magee intended on writing was "even," not "ever." The other citations notwithstanding, I submit my own evidence:

- In "Sunward I've Climbed," the biography on Magee written by Hermann Hagedorn in 1942, the poem quotes "even." Hagedorn, without a doubt, had a close look at the original letter containing High Flight that was sent to Magee's parents. - Faith Magee, John Magee's mother, recited her son's poem for the United States Air Force - the recording is available from the USAF Museum. You can listen to the recording on my website (www.highflightproductions.com). Mrs. Magee quite clearly says "even eagle flew." I think that of all the people who have read Magee's letters, she would be the most familiar with his handwriting. - The letter itself. I have a high-resolution scan from the Library of Congress of Magee's letter containing High Flight. Indeed, Magee's "n" appears nearly identical to his "r". In the word "never" ("never lark, or even eagle"), both letters are used - and they are very simliar. On the flip side of the page containing High Flight is an entire page of Magee's handwriting, with plenty of enns and arrs. I'm not a handwriting expert, but I could see where one could easily confuse one for the other.

In conclusion, I bow to Mr. Hagedorn and Mrs. Magee in their interpretations, and will fight any change from "even eagle flew" to "ever eagle flew."

Regards, Ray Haas —Preceding unsigned comment added by RJHaas (talk • contribs) 23:46, 12 February 2008 (UTC)