1.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
2.
James Joyce
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential, other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners, and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake. His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism and his published letters, Joyce was born in 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin—about half a mile from his mothers birthplace in Terenure—into a middle-class family on the way down. He went on to attend University College Dublin, in 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated permanently to continental Europe with his partner Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. In the particular is contained the universal, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane May Murray, in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Josephs Church in Terenure on 5 February by Rev. John OMulloy and his godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. He was the eldest of ten surviving children, two of his siblings died of typhoid and his fathers family, originally from Fermoy in County Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyces father and paternal grandfather both married into families, though the familys purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe was a stonemason from Connemara. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation, around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from astraphobia, as an aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of Gods wrath. In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vaticans role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left an impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the familys slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and general financial mismanagement. Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare and this came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life
3.
Dada
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Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centers in Zürich, Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire, in New York, and after 1920, in Paris. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness, still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning in any language, reflecting the movements internationalism. The roots of Dada lay in pre-war avant-garde, the term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works which challenge accepted definitions of art. Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movements detachment from the constraints of reality, the work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dadas rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning. Works such as Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, and the ballet Parade by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works, the Dada movements principles were first collected in Hugo Balls Dada Manifesto in 1916. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I, avant-garde circles outside France knew of pre-war Parisian developments. Futurism developed in response to the work of various artists, many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos, for example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction. According to Hans Richter Dada was not art, it was anti-art, Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend, as Hugo Ball expressed it, For us, art is not an end in itself. But it is an opportunity for the perception and criticism of the times we live in. A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man. Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a systematic work of destruction and demoralization. In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege, to quote Dona Budds The Language of Art Knowledge, Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the First World War. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition
4.
Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
5.
Ulysses (novel)
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Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature, according to Declan Kiberd, Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking. Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of a day,16 June 1904. The novel imitates registers of centuries of English literature and is highly allusive, Ulysses is approximately 265,000 words in length and is divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual Joyce Wars, Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday. Joyce first encountered the figure of Odysseus/Ulysses in Charles Lambs Adventures of Ulysses—an adaptation of the Odyssey for children, at school he wrote an essay on the character, entitled My Favourite Hero. Joyce told Frank Budgen that he considered Ulysses the only character in literature. Leopold Blooms home at 7 Eccles Street - Episode 4, Calypso, Episode 17, Ithaca, sweny’s pharmacy, Lombard Street, Lincoln Place. Episode 15, Circe Cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge, - Episode 16, Eumaeus The action of the novel takes place from one side of Dublin Bay to the other, opening in Sandycove to the South of the city and closing on Howth Head to the North. Joyce divided Ulysses into 18 episodes, every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique and correspondence between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The original text did not include these episode titles and the correspondences, instead, they originate from the Linati, Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. It is 8 a. m. Buck Mulligan, a medical student. The three men eat breakfast and walk to the shore, where Mulligan demands from Stephen the key to the tower, departing, Stephen declares that he will not return to the tower tonight, as Mulligan, the usurper, has taken it over. Stephen is teaching a class on the victories of Pyrrhus of Epirus. After class, one student, Cyril Sargent, stays behind so that Stephen can show him how to do a set of arithmetic exercises, Stephen looks at the ugly face of Sargent and tries to imagine Sargents mothers love for him. Stephen then visits school headmaster Garrett Deasy, from whom he collects his pay, the two discuss Irish history and the role of Jews in the economy. As Stephen leaves, Deasy said that Ireland has never persecuted the Jews because the country never let them in. This episode is the source of some of the novels most famous lines, such as Dedaluss claim that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake and that God is a shout in the street
6.
Virginia Woolf
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Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society, Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59. Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, London and her parents were Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen. Julia Stephen was born in British India to Dr. John and she was the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones, Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household. Her parents had each been married previously and been widowed, and, consequently, Julia had three children by her first husband, Herbert Duckworth, George, Stella, and Gerald Duckworth. Leslie and Julia had four children together, Vanessa Stephen, Thoby Stephen, Virginia, Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and Virginias honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected, supplementing these influences was the immense library at the Stephens house, from which Virginia and Vanessa were taught the classics and English literature. Unlike the girls, their brothers Adrian and Julian were formally educated and sent to Cambridge, the sisters did, however, benefit indirectly from their brothers Cambridge contacts, as the boys brought their new intellectual friends home to the Stephens drawing room. According to Woolfs memoirs, her most vivid memories were not of London but of St Ives, Cornwall. The Stephens summer home, Talland House, looked out over Porthminster Bay, memories of these family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction Woolf wrote in later years, most notably To the Lighthouse. She describes why she felt so connected to Talland House in an entry dated March 22nd,1921. Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall. One’s past, I suppose, I see children running in the garden … The sound of the sea at night … almost forty years of life, all built on that, permeated by that, so much I could never explain. The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was thirteen, after her mother and half-sister, she quickly lost her surrogate mother, Stella Duckworth, as well as her cherished brother Thoby, when he was in his mid-20s. She was, however, able to take courses of study in Ancient Greek, Latin, German and this brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of womens higher education such as the principal of the Ladies Department, Lilian Faithfull, Clara Pater and George Warr. Her sister Vanessa also studied Latin, Italian, art and architecture at Kings Ladies Department, in 2013 Woolf was honoured by her alma mater with the opening of a building named after her on Kingsway. The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she spent time recovering at her friend Violet Dickinsons house, and at her aunt Carolines house in Cambridge
7.
George Grosz
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George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic and he emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his work, he exhibited regularly. In 1956 he returned to Berlin where he died, George Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin, Germany, the son of a pub owner. Grosz grew up in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, where his mother became the keeper of the local Hussars Officers mess after his father died in 1901. At the urging of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a painter named Grot. Grosz developed his skills further by drawing meticulous copies of the scenes of Eduard von Grützner. From 1909 to 1911, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle and he subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik. In November 1914 Grosz volunteered for service, in the hope that by thus preempting conscription he would avoid being sent to the front. He was given a discharge after hospitalization for sinusitis in 1915, in January 1917 he was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit. In the last months of 1918, Grosz joined the Spartacist League and he was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents. In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in a 300 German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection Gott mit uns, by contrast, in 1942 Time magazine identified Grosz as a pacifist. In 1922 Grosz traveled to Russia with the writer Martin Andersen Nexø, upon their arrival in Murmansk they were briefly arrested as spies, after their credentials were approved they were allowed to meet with Grigory Zinoviev, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Vladimir Lenin. Groszs six-month stay in the Soviet Union left him unimpressed by what he had seen and he ended his membership in the KPD in 1923, although his political positions were little changed. Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power, in June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York. In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12,1933 he, Grosz became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. In the 1930s he taught at the Art Students League, where one of his students was Romare Bearden and he taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955. In America, Grosz determined to make a break with his past
8.
Anton Chekhov
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in esteem by writers. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his career, Medicine is my lawful wife, he once said. These four works present a challenge to the ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a theatre of mood. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew and he made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great 29 January 1860, the third of six surviving children, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a serf and his Ukrainian wife, were from the village Vilkhovatka near Kobeliaky. A director of the choir, devout Orthodox Christian, and physically abusive father. Chekhovs mother, Yevgeniya, was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth-merchant father all over Russia and our talents we got from our father, Chekhov remembered, but our soul from our mother. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that its sickening and frightening to think about it, remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool. Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium and he sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his fathers choirs. In 1876, Chekhovs father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, to avoid debtors prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow, Chekhovs mother physically and emotionally broken by the experience, Chekhov was left behind to sell the familys possessions and finish his education. Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three years, boarding with a man called Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches and he sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. Chekhov also enjoyed a series of affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, Chekhov now assumed responsibility for the whole family
9.
Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
10.
Ilya Ehrenburg
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Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure. Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union and he became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist – in particular, as a reporter in three wars. His articles on the Second World War have provoked intense controversies in West Germany, the novel The Thaw gave its name to an entire era of Soviet politics, namely, the liberalization after the death of Joseph Stalin. Ehrenburgs travel writing also had great resonance, as did to a greater extent his memoir People, Years, Life. In addition, Ehrenburg wrote a succession of works of poetry, ilya Ehrenburg was born in Kiev, Russian Empire to a Lithuanian Jewish family, his father was an engineer. Ehrenburgs family was not religiously affiliated, he came into contact with the practices of Judaism only through his maternal grandfather. Ehrenburg never joined any religious denomination and he learned no Yiddish, although he edited the Black Book, which was written in Yiddish. He considered himself Russian and, later, a Soviet citizen and he took strong public positions against antisemitism. He wrote in Russian even during his years abroad. When Ehrenburg was four years old, the moved to Moscow. At school, he met Nikolai Bukharin, who was two grades above him, the two remained friends until Bukharins death in 1938 during the Great Purge. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1905, both Ehrenburg and Bukharin got involved in activities of the Bolshevik organisation. In 1908, when Ehrenburg was seventeen years old, the tsarist secret police arrested him for five months and he was beaten up and lost some teeth. Finally he was allowed to go abroad and chose Paris for his exile, in Paris, he started to work in the Bolshevik organisation, meeting Vladimir Lenin and other prominent exiles. But soon he left these circles and the Communist Party, Ehrenburg became attached to the bohemian life in the Paris quarter of Montparnasse. He began to write poems, regularly visited the cafés of Montparnasse and got acquainted with a lot of artists, especially Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Jules Pascin, Foreign writers whose works Ehrenburg translated included those of Francis Jammes. During World War I, Ehrenburg became a war correspondent for a St. Petersburg newspaper and he wrote a series of articles about the mechanized war that later on were also published as a book. His poetry now also concentrated on subjects of war and destruction, as in On the Eve, Nikolai Gumilev, a famous symbolistic poet, wrote favourably about Ehrenburgs progress in poetry
11.
Curzio Malaparte
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Curzio Malaparte, born Kurt Erich Suckert, was an Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, novelist and diplomat. His chosen surname, which he used from 1925, means evil/wrong side and is a play on Napoleons family name Bonaparte which means, in Italian, good side. Born in Prato, Tuscany, Malaparte was a son of a German father, Erwin Suckert, an executive, and his Lombard wife. He was educated at Collegio Cicognini in Prato and at La Sapienza University of Rome, in 1918 he started his career as a journalist. Malaparte fought in World War I, earning a captaincy in the Fifth Alpine Regiment and several decorations for valor, in 1924, he founded the Roman periodical La Conquista dello Stato. In 1926 he founded with Massimo Bontempelli the literary quarterly 900, later he became a co-editor of Fiera Letteraria, and an editor of La Stampa in Turin. His polemical war novel-essay, Viva Caporetto, criticized corrupt Rome and the Italian upper classes as the real enemy. In Technique du coup detat, Malaparte attacked both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, here he stated that the problem of the conquest and defense of the State is not a political one. It is a problem, a way of knowing when and how to occupy the vital state resources, the telephone exchanges, the water reserves. He taught a lesson that a revolution can wear itself out in strategy. In the same book, first published in French by Grasset, he entitled chapter VIII, A Woman and this led to Malaparte being stripped of his National Fascist Party membership and sent to internal exile from 1933 to 1938 on the island of Lipari. He was freed on the intervention of Mussolinis son-in-law and heir apparent Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolinis regime arrested Malaparte again in 1938,1939,1941, during that time he built a house, known as the Casa Malaparte, on Capo Massullo, on the Isle of Capri. It was later used as a location in Jean-Luc Godards film, shortly after his time in jail he published books of magical realist autobiographical short stories, which culminated in the stylistic prose of Donna come me. His remarkable knowledge of Europe and its leaders is based upon his experience as a correspondent, in 1941 he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera. The articles he sent back from the Ukrainian Fronts, many of which were suppressed, were collected in 1943, the experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, Kaputt and The Skin. Kaputt, his account of the war, surreptitiously written. Their appearance is miserable, their cruelty sad, their courage silent, as the Italian reporter, in his Kaputt World War II testimony, Malaparte described an interview with Pavelic, While he spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on the Poglavniks desk
