An Owen Barfield Timeline:
Retirement/Lecturing in America (1959-1985)
Youth Oxford
Years
London
Years
At the
Walhatch
Year Barfield's Life World/Cultural Events
1959

[61]
—Review of The British, Their Psychology and Destiny, The Fall in Man and Nature
Rudolf Steiner. Genesis: Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation. (trans.).

Ethel Barrymore, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georges Grosz, George C. Marshall die, Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King published, Salvadore Quasimodo wins Nobel Prize for Literature, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita released; Snow's Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Brown's Life Against Death published.

DeMille
Villa-Lobos
Villa-Lobos

Wright
1960

[62]
—Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy: An Introduction (trans.)
—Centennial—Rudolf Steiner, Davy on Snow, Mr. Koestler and the Astronomers, The Rediscovery of Meaning, Rudolf Steiner's Concept of Mind (essays)

Gadamer's Truth and Method and Quine's Word and Object published. John F. Kennedy elected President of the United States. Clark Gable dies. Ben Hur wins 10 Oscars. U-2 spy plane shot down. Birth control pill approved. Albert Camus dies. The Twist becomes popular. Psycho released.


Kennedy


Gable

1961

[63]
—Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy: An Introduction (trans.)
—Centennial—Rudolf Steiner, Davy on Snow, Mr. Koestler and the Astronomers, The Rediscovery of Meaning, Rudolf Steiner's Concept of Mind (essays)

First space flights; Foucault's Madness and Civilization and Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth published. Bay of Pigs invasion fails. Hemingway commits suicide. Adolph Eichmann sentenced to death. Rudolf Nureyev defects. Gary Cooper dies. James Thruber dies. Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space. Heller's Catch-22 published. 


Hemingway

1962

[64]
—Man, Thought and Nature (essay)

Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carson's Silent Spring, McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy published; Second Vatican Council begins; Beatles begin their rise to stardom. Marilyn Monroe found dead. War averted in Cuban Missile Crisis. John Glenn orbits the Earth. Telstar communication satellite launched. e. e. cummings dies. Niels Bohr dies. Eleanor Roosevelt dies. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? premieres.


Kuhn


The Beatles
 
1963

[65]
—Visiting Professor at Drew University
—Rudolf Steiner. Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit (trans.)
—Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960's (book)

Civil rights march on Washington; King's "I have a dream" speech; Friedan's Feminine Mystique published. Chaos theory born. President Kennedy assassinated. Sex scandal rocks British government. Edith Piaf dies. Aldous Huxley dies. Tito becomes President-for-Life in Yugoslavia. Pope John XXIII dies. Sylvia Plath commits suicide. William Carlos Williams dies. Michael Jordan born. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold published.

King

Friedan

1964

[66]
—Rudolf Steiner. The Gospel of St. Luke (trans.)
—Preface, The Mystery of Physical Life, The Riddle of the Sphinx (essays).

Quarks proposed; Autobiography of Malcolm X published. Clay beats Liston for  heavyweight title. Beatles cause frenzy in U.S. Lenny Bruce tried for obscenity. King wins Nobel Peace Prize. Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of England. Lyndon Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater for President of the United States.  The Warren Commision rejects conspiracy theory in Kennedy assassination.  Flannery O'Connor dies. Bellow's Herzog published.

Johnson
1965

[67]
Final retirement from legal— practice
—Visiting Professor at Brandeis University; delivers lectures later published as Speaker's Meaning
—Introduction Light on C. S. Lewis, Literature and Faith, Philology and the Incarnation (essays)
—Night and Morning (poetry)
—Unancestral Voice (book)

Viet Nam War escalates. Cox's The Secular City published. Watts torn by race riots. First space walk performed. Le Corbusier dies. Malcolm X murdered. Winston Churchill dies. Cesar Chavez organizes American farm workers. T. S. Eliot dies. Martin Buber dies. Rolling Stones release "[I Can't Get No]  Satisfaction." The Sound of Music released.


Le Corbusier


Churchill

 

1966 Barfield is 68
—Romanticism Comes of Age, new and augmented edition (Steiner Press) 
Lacan's Ecrits published. Cultural Revolution begins in China. Opposition to Vietnam War grows. Ronald Reagan becomes Governor of California. Walt Disney dies. First photographs of Earth from the Moon are taken. Buster Keaton dies. Star Trek premieres on American TV. Cabaret premieres on Broadway. U. S. Supreme Court decides Miranda v. Arizona. In Cold Blood published.


Disney

1967

[69]
—Abortion Bill, Imagination and Inspiration, (with C. S. Lewis. Mark vs. Tristram: Correspondence between C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield) (essays)
—Speaker's Meaning (book)

Laing's Politics of Experience, Derrida's Writing and Difference, White's Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis published. Che Guevara killed. Three astronauts killed in fire. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band released. Thurgood Marshall becomes first black Supreme Court Justice. Langston Hughes dies. Robert Oppenheimer dies. Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude published.

Laing

Derrida


Marshall

1968

[70]
—Visiting professor at Hamilton College
—Where is Fancy Bred? (essay)

Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy assassinated. Nixon elected President. Sovets invade Poland. Shirley Chisholm becomes first black woman elected to the House of Representatives. Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interest, Castaneda's The Teaching of Don Juan, Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog published. France paralyzed by protests. 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres. 


Kennedy

1969

[71]
—Visiting professor, University of Missouri, Columbia
—Opium and Infinity (essay)

US Apollo astronauts land on the Moon; Lovelock proposes Gaia hypothesis; Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture, Millett's Sexual Politics published. Sharon Tate and four others killed by Manson family. 567 murdered at Mylai Massacre. Woodstock festival held. Golda Meir becomes Israeli Premier. Concorde flies for the first time. Ho Chi Minh dies. Eisenhower dies.


Manson

1970

[72]
—Coleridge Collected, The Disappearing Trick, C. S. Lewis, Dream, Myth, and Philosophical Double Vision (essays)
—The Case for Anthroposophy (translated and ed.)

First Earth Day. Jimi Hendrix dies. Sadat becomes President of Egypt. Students slain at Kent State. De Gaulle dies. US troops enter Cambodia. Yukio Mishima commits suicide. Bertrand Russell dies. E. M. Forster dies. Greer's The Female Eunuch published. 


Hendrix


Sadat


Greer

1971

[73]
—Either: Or, In Conversation [i.e., C. S. Lewis in Conversation], Nature and Philosophy, Self and Reality (essays)
—The Year Makes Answer, Meditation (poetry)
—What Coleridge Thought (book)

Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda. China joins the United States. Krusgchev dies. Waldheim becomes United Nations Secretary-General. Stravinsky dies. Thompson's At the Edge of History, Pribram's Languages of the Brain published. Jim Morrison dies. Diane Arbus commits suicide. Louis Armstrong dies. Dirty Harry released


Stravinsky

1972

[74]
—Visiting Professor, Drew University
—Barfield on Coleridge: An Exchange, Review of Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel, Comment; The Politics of Abortion, Giordano Bruno and the Survival of Learning, Participation and Isolation: A Fresh Light on Present Discontents (essays and reviews)

US President Nixon visits China. Watergate scandal. The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (SALT I). Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind published. J. Edgar Hoover dies. Marianne Moore dies. John Berryman commits suicide. 


Berryman

1973

[75]
—Comment: Poetry in Walter de la Mare, Comment: Some Reflections on Iconology, Language and Discovery, Afterword to the Third Edition of Poetic Diction (essays and reviews)
—G. W. F. Hegel. Eleusis [poem to Holderlin] (trans.)

Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, Geertz's Interpretations of Cultures published. The Who's Tommy premieres in London. Vietnam War cease-fire signed. Anwar Sadat fights October war with Israel; Arabs cut oil supplies to supporters of Israel. Allende, the President of Chile is killed in a coup d'état aided by the American government, and his Marxist government is replaced by a military junta. W. H. Auden dies. Pablo Neruda dies. J. R. R. Tolkien dies.


Neruda

1974

[76]
—Visiting professor, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook
—The Coming Trauma of Materialism, Matter, Imagination, and Spirit (essays and reviews)

Crack cocaine makes its first documented appearance in California. US President Richard Nixon resigns. On November 12, South Africa is expelled from the United Nations. Charles Lindbergh dies. Duke Ellington dies. Anne Sexton dies. John Crowe Ransom dies.


Sexton

1975

[77]
C. S. Lewis and Historicism (essay).

Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Fighting breaks out in Lebanon between Lebanese Muslims and the Maronite-dominated Phalange faction. Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology, Capra's Tao of Physics, Wilson's Sociobiology, Feyerabend's Against Method published. Arnold Toynbee dies. P. G. Wodehouse dies. Hannah Arendt dies. Sociobiology born.


Feyerabend

 
1976

[78]
—Youth, A Giant in Those Days, Some Reflections on The Great Divorce of C. S. Lewis (essays)
—Owen Barfield and the Origin of Language (pamphlet)

Nadia Comaneci receives perfect score at Olympics. Glass' Einstein on the Beach premieres. Agatha Christie dies. Rocky premieres. Carol Reed dies. Man Ray dies. Martin Heidegger dies. Mao Zedong dies. 


Glass


Mao

 
1977

[79]
—Shirley Sugerman, A Conversation with Owen Barfield (interview)

Apple Computer founded. The five rings around Uranus are discovered. Elvis Presley dies. Roberto Rossellini dies. Roots on American TV. Vladimir Nabokov dies. Bing Crosby dies. Charlie Chaplin dies. Star Wars premieres. Annie Hall premieres.


Nabokov


Presley

 
1978

[80]
—Visiting Professor, Univ. of British Columbia
—Owen Barfield and the Origin of Language (essay)

First test-tube baby born in London. Mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.  Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to be chosen as pope since 1522. Isreal invades Lebanon. Saturday Night Fever premieres. Margaret Mead dies. Jomo Kenyetta dies. 


Pope John Paul II

1979

[81]
—Visits California State University, Fullerton
—The Voice of Cecil Harwood: A Miscellany (editor)
—Focus on Language, Review of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Review of Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence (essays and reviews).

In Nicaragua the Sandinista army overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza. Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. John Wayne dies. Herbert Marcuse dies. Elizabeth Bishop dies.


Marcuse


Bishop


Thatcher

1980

[82]
—Wife Maud dies
—The Concept of Revelation (essay)
—Towards Interviews Owen Barfield (interview)

1980 John Lennon is shot and killed in New York City. Ian-Iraq war begins. Voyager I sends back first pictures of Saturn. Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi becomes the prime minister of India again, after having lost her seat in 1977. Saddam Hussein becomes President of Iraq. Sony Walkman born. First holographic film. CNN born.


Sadam Hussein


Reagan

 
1981

[83]
—Assumes editorship of Coleridge's Philosophical Lectures for The Collected Coleridge
—Human Relationships, Language, Evolution of Consciousness, and the Recovery of Human Meaning, The Nature of Meaning, Two Kinds of Forgetting (essays and reviews).

AIDS is first recognized. IBM first introduces the personal computer. First computer "mouse." American president Reagan gives the CIA permission to begin paramilitary operations against the Sandinista government (in Nicaragua). First laptop computer. Samuel Barber dies. Bob Marley dies. Moshe Dayan dies. Albert Speer dies. 


Barber


Marley


Speer

1982

[84]
—The Evolution Complex, Introduction. The English Spirit, Meaning, Revelation and Tradition in Language and Religion, Coleridge in the 21st Century (review of Poetry Realized in Nature) (essays and reviews).

Britain gives Canada the power to ammend its own constitution. The first permanent artificial heart is transplanted. Directed by the CIA the Contras blow up two bridges in Nicaragua and begin the Contra revolution. Ingrid Bergman dies. Ayn Rand dies. Israel invades Lebanon. Britain and Argentina fight Falklands war.. Archibald MacLeish dies. E. T. released. Walker's The Color Purple published.


Bergman

 
1983

[85]
—Orpheus: A Poetic Drama (book
—A Note on the Production, Program Notes for the Original Production of Orpheus, Foreword to Orpheus, East, West and Saul Bellow (review of The Dean's December), Introducing Rudolf Steiner (essays and reviews)
—Night Operation (fiction)

U.S. President Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire". OPEC agrees to cut crude oil prices for the first time in its 23 year history. Start of cellular phone networks in US. Scientists studying the South Pole find a descrease in the ozone layer. Time names computer "man of the year." Ralph Richardson dies. Buckminster Fuller dies. George Cukor dies. U. S. invades Granada. Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space.


Richardson


Fuller


Ride

1984

[86]
—Introduction. Origins of Natural Science, Imagination and Science, The Presence of Subterranean Springs (review of Insight-Imagination) (essays and reviews).

Brian Mulroney is elected Prime Minister of Canada.  Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, is assassinated by her Sikh guards. Her son Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister. The United States signs a free-trade agreement with Isreal that includes, among other things, a requirement that Isreal would have to discuss all its industrial policies with the US before carrying them out; Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition published. Sam Peckinpah dies. Ray Kroc dies. Michel Foucault dies. Richard Burton dies. Gibson's Neuromancer published.


Burton


Gandhi

1985

[87]
—The Year Participated (trans.)
—Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (book)
—Listening to Steiner, Introduction. Hope, Evolution and Change, Introduction. The Karma of Materialism, Solovyev and the Meaning of Love (essays)
—Reflections on C. S. Lewis, S. T. Coleridge, and R. Steiner (interview)

Between 1985 and 1988 the American national deficit tripled. In November Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Geneva. Italo Calvino dies. Rock Hudson dies of AIDS. Hole in the Ozone Layer discovered. Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior sunk by French government. Walker spy ring broken. Titanic found.


Calvino


Hudson

 
Previous| Next