1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Alfred Dreyfus
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Known today as the Dreyfus affair, the incident eventually ended with Dreyfus complete exoneration. The museum created a platform in 2006 dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair. Born in Mulhouse, Alsace in 1859, Dreyfus was the youngest of nine born to Raphaël. Raphaël Dreyfus was a prosperous, self-made, Jewish textile manufacturer who had started as a peddler, alfred was 10 years old when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870, and his family moved to Paris following the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany after the war. The childhood experience of seeing his family uprooted by the war with Germany prompted Dreyfus to decide on a career in the military. Following his 18th birthday in October 1877, he enrolled in the elite École Polytechnique military school in Paris, where he received military training, in 1880, he graduated and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the French army. From 1880 to 1882, he attended the school at Fontainebleau to receive more specialized training as an artillery officer. On graduation he was assigned to the Thirty-first Artillery Regiment, which was in garrison at Le Mans, Dreyfus was subsequently transferred to a mounted artillery battery attached to the First Cavalry Division, and promoted to lieutenant in 1885. In 1889, he was adjutant to the director of the Établissement de Bourges, a government arsenal. On 18 April 1891, the 31-year-old Dreyfus married 20-year-old Lucie Eugénie Hadamard and they had two children, Pierre and Jeanne. Three days after the wedding, Dreyfus learned that he had admitted to the École Supérieure de Guerre or War College. His father Raphaël died on 13 December 1893, at the War College examination in 1892, his friends had expected him to do well. However, one of the members of the panel, General Bonnefond, felt that Jews were not desired on the staff, Bonnefonds assessment lowered Dreyfus overall grade, he did the same to another Jewish candidate, Lieutenant Picard. The protest would later count against Dreyfus, the French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals. However within the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff General Bonnefonds prejudices appear to have been shared by some of the new trainees superiors, the personal assessments received by Dreyfus during 1893/94 acknowledged his high intelligence, but were critical of aspects of his personality. Suspicion quickly fell upon Dreyfus who was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894, on 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was summarily convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island in French Guiana. Dreyfus cried out, I swear that I am innocent, I remain worthy of serving in the Army. Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the desert of Tunisia in November 1896
3.
Jean Anouilh
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Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. One of Frances most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilhs work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise, Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship and he often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, in 1918 the family moved to Paris where the young Anouilh received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. He liked the work, and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the virtues of brevity. Anouilhs financial troubles continued after he was called up to service in 1929. Supported by only his meager salary, Anouilh married the actress Monelle Valentin in 1931. Though she would go on to star in many of his plays, Anouilhs daughter Caroline, Anouilhs youngest daughter Colombe even claims that there was never an official marriage between Anouilh and Valentin. She allegedly had multiple affairs, which caused Anouilh much pain. The infidelity weighed heavily on the dramatist as a result of the uncertainty about his own parentage, according to Caroline, Anouilh had learned that his mother had had a lover at the theatre in Arcachon who was actually his biological father. In spite of this, Anouilh and Valentin had a daughter, Catherine, Anouilhs growing family placed further strain on his already limited finances. Determined to break into writing full-time, he began to write scenes for the cinema to supplement their income. At the age of 25, Anouilh found work as a secretary to the French actor and director Louis Jouvet at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Giraudoux was an inspiration to Anouilh and, with the encouragement of the acclaimed playwright, he began writing again in 1929. Before the end of the year he made his debut with Humulus le muet. Ruled by the philosophy, the word creates the decor, Lugné-Poe let Anouilhs lyrical prose shine in front of a backdrop of simple compositions of line and color created a unity of style. The plays were not great successes, closing after 37 and 13 performances respectively, in subsequent years, there was rarely a season in Paris that did not prominently feature a new Anouilh play and many of these were also being exported to England and America. Barsacq was a champion for Anouilh and their affiliation was a factor in the playwrights continued success after the war. In the 1940s, Anouilh turned from contemporary tales to more mythical, classic, pièces noires or Black plays were tragedies or realistic dramas and included Antigone, Jézabel, and La Sauvage
4.
Nicolas Sarkozy
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Nicolas Sarkozy is a French politician who served as the President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012. Before his presidency, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement party, during Jacques Chiracs second presidential term he served as Minister of the Interior except between March 2004 and May 2005 when he was minister of Finances. Sarkozy was also mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France and he was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur during François Mitterrands last term. During his term, he faced the late-2000s financial crisis and the Arab Spring and he married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. In foreign affairs, Sarkozy promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom, in the 2012 election, the Socialist François Hollande defeated Sarkozy by 3. 2%. After leaving the Presidential office, Sarkozy vowed to retire from public life before coming back in September 2014, on 2 July 2014, Sarkozy was charged with corruption by French prosecutors. In 2016, he ran in the Republican presidential primary, and was eliminated in the first round of voting and they were married in the Saint-François-de-Sales church, 17th arrondissement of Paris, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959. During Sarkozys childhood, his father founded his own advertising agency, the family lived in a mansion owned by Sarkozys maternal grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of Paris, according to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today and he also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood, Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a well regarded public middle and high school in Paris 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. Sarkozy enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an M. A. in private law and, later, Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May 68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student organization. He completed his service as a part-time Air Force cleaner. After graduating from university, Sarkozy entered Sciences Po, where he studied between 1979 and 1981, but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language. After passing the bar, Sarkozy became a lawyer specializing in business and they had two sons, Pierre, now a hip-hop producer, and Jean now a local politician in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine where Sarkozy started his own political career. Sarkozys best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent, Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, after they had been separated for several years. As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
5.
University of Paris
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The University of Paris, metonymically known as the Sorbonne, was a university in Paris, France. Emerging around 1150 as an associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris. Vast numbers of popes, royalties, scientists and intellectuals were educated at the University of Paris, following the turbulence of the French Revolution, education was suspended in 1793 whereafter its faculties were partly reorganised by Napoleon as the University of France. In 1896, it was renamed again to the University of Paris, in 1970, following the May 1968 events, the university was divided into 13 autonomous universities. Others, like Panthéon-Sorbonne University, chose to be multidisciplinary, in 1150, the future University of Paris was a student-teacher corporation operating as an annex of the Notre-Dame cathedral school. The university had four faculties, Arts, Medicine, Law, the Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin, France, Normandy, Picardy, the last came to be known as the Alemannian nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply, the faculty and nation system of the University of Paris became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, students followed the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the kings laws or courts. This presented problems for the city of Paris, as students ran wild, students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years. Three schools were especially famous in Paris, the palatine or palace school, the school of Notre-Dame, the decline of royalty brought about the decline of the first. The other two were ancient but did not have much visibility in the early centuries, the glory of the palatine school doubtless eclipsed theirs, until it completely gave way to them. These two centres were much frequented and many of their masters were esteemed for their learning, the first renowned professor at the school of Ste-Geneviève was Hubold, who lived in the tenth century. Not content with the courses at Liège, he continued his studies at Paris, entered or allied himself with the chapter of Ste-Geneviève, and attracted many pupils via his teaching. Distinguished professors from the school of Notre-Dame in the century include Lambert, disciple of Fulbert of Chartres, Drogo of Paris, Manegold of Germany. Three other men who added prestige to the schools of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève were William of Champeaux, Abélard, humanistic instruction comprised grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. To the higher instruction belonged dogmatic and moral theology, whose source was the Scriptures and it was completed by the study of Canon law. The School of Saint-Victor arose to rival those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève and it was founded by William of Champeaux when he withdrew to the Abbey of Saint-Victor
6.
Mines ParisTech
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MINES ParisTech, created in 1783 by King Louis XVI, is a most prominent and prestigious French engineering schools in France and a member of ParisTech and PSL*. Created by decree of the French Kings Counsel on March 19,1783, the school disappeared at the beginning of the French Revolution but was re-established by decree of the Committee of Public Safety in 1794, the 13th Messidor Year II. It moved to Savoie, after a decree of the consuls the 23rd Pluviôse Year X, after the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, the school moved to the Hôtel de Vendôme. From the 1960s onwards, it created research laboratories in Fontainebleau, Évry, the initial aim of the Ecole des mines de Paris, namely to train high-level mining engineers, evolved with time to adapt to the technological and structural transformations undergone by society. Mines ParisTech has now become one of the most prestigious French engineering schools with a variety of subjects. Its students are trained to have management positions, work in research and development departments, or as operations officers, the Corps of Mines, one of the greatest technical corps of the French state. It is a third degree, lasting for three years, consisting in two long-term internships both in public and private economical institutions and courses in economics and public institutions. Every year, ten applications are accepted from students around the world according to their academic achievements. Admission in third year is open to one Ph. D graduate. mines-paristech. ensmp. fr ISIGE-MINES ParisTech
7.
Matthew Arnold
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Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a writer, a type of writer who chastises. The Reverend John Keble, who would one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Thomas Arnold admired Kebles hymns in The Christian Year, only reversing himself with exasperation when this old friend became a Romeward-tending High Church reactionary in the 1830s. In 1828, Arnolds father was appointed Headmaster of Rugby School and his family took up residence. In 1831, Arnold was tutored by his uncle, Rev. John Buckland in the village of Laleham. In 1834, the Arnolds occupied a home, Fox How. William Wordsworth was a neighbour and close friend, in 1836, Arnold was sent to Winchester College, but in 1837 he returned to Rugby School where he was enrolled in the fifth form. He moved to the form in 1838 and thus came under the direct tutelage of his father. He wrote verse for the manuscript Fox How Magazine co-produced with his brother Tom for the enjoyment from 1838 to 1843. During his years there, he won prizes for English essay writing. His prize poem, Alaric at Rome, was printed at Rugby, in 1841, he won an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. During his residence at Oxford, his friendship ripened with Arthur Hugh Clough, Arnold attended John Henry Newmans sermons at St. Marys but did not join the Oxford Movement. His father died suddenly of disease in 1842, and Fox How became his familys permanent residence. Arnolds poem Cromwell won the 1843 Newdigate prize and he graduated in the following year with a 2nd class honours degree in Literae Humaniores. In 1845, after an interlude of teaching at Rugby, he was elected Fellow of Oriel College. In 1847, he became Private Secretary to Lord Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, in 1849, he published his first book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller
8.
Gare Saint-Lazare
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Paris Saint-Lazare is one of the six large terminus railway stations of Paris. It is the second busiest station in Paris, after the Gare du Nord and it handles 275,000 passengers each day. The station was designed by architect Juste Lisch, and the maître de loeuvre was Eugene Flachat, the first station at St Lazare was 200 m north-west of its current position, called Embarcadère des Batignolles. The station was opened by Marie-Amélie on 24 August 1837, the first line served was the single track line to Le Pecq. In 1843 St-Lazare was the terminus for three lines, by 1900 this number had tripled, the station had 14 platforms in 1854 after several enlargements, and now has 27 platforms sorted in six destination groups. On 27 April 1924 the inner suburban lines were electrified with 750 V third rail, the same lines were re-electrified at 25 kV overhead wires in the 1960s. On 21 March 2012, a new three levels shopping mall with 80 shops opened inside the passenger hall, the Gare Saint-Lazare is situated in the 8th arrondissement, in a very dense business and shopping area of Paris. The Gare Saint-Lazare has been represented in a number of artworks and it attracted artists during the Impressionist period and many of them lived very close to the Gare St-Lazare during the 1870s and 1880s. Édouard Manet lived close by, at 4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, two years after moving to the area he showed his painting The Railway, at the Paris Salon in 1874. At the time of its first exhibition it was caricatured and the subject of ridicule, gustave Caillebotte also lived just a short walk away from the station. He painted Le Pont de l’Europe in 1876 and On the Pont de lEurope in 1876-80, in 1877, painter Claude Monet rented a studio near the Gare Saint Lazare. That same year he exhibited seven paintings of the station in an impressionist painting exhibition. He completed 11 paintings of this subject, oscar-Claude Monets series of the Gare Saint-Lazare train station was one of his most famous series in his lifetime. Monet was one of the most important and influential painters in the Impressionist movement in the 19th century and he was a strong proponent of plein-air landscape painting. Artists such as Caillebotte, Degas and Morisot, do this in order to portray the scene in the moment instead of creating the painting from what they could remember. The flat, opaque circle of the largest signal, placed dead center, the Gare Saint-Lazare piece was shown at the Third Impressionist Exhibition. The Gare Saint-Lazare is far different than Monet’s previous paintings of harbors, boats, the Gare Saint-Lazare series of paintings lead the viewers through a tour of the train station in different points of the day. Everything dissipates with the steam of the train and turns into a flurry of blended colors. ”“Monet’s work on the Gare Saint-Lazare is unparalleled in its evocation of steam and the smoke-filled station
9.
Franco-Prussian War
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The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war on the German Kingdom of Prussia, the German coalition mobilised its troops much more quickly than the French and rapidly invaded northeastern France. The German forces were superior in numbers, had training and leadership and made more effective use of modern technology, particularly railroads. The German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I, the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, the causes of the Franco-Prussian War are deeply rooted in the events surrounding the unification of Germany. In the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia had annexed numerous territories and this new power destabilized the European balance of power established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. France was strongly opposed to any further alliance of German states, in Prussia, some officials considered a war against France both inevitable and necessary to arouse German nationalism in those states that would allow the unification of a great German empire. Bismarck also knew that France should be the aggressor in the conflict to bring the southern German states to side with Prussia, many Germans also viewed the French as the traditional destabilizer of Europe, and sought to weaken France to prevent further breaches of the peace. The immediate cause of the war resided in the candidacy of Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, France feared encirclement by an alliance between Prussia and Spain. The Hohenzollern princes candidacy was withdrawn under French diplomatic pressure, releasing the Ems Dispatch to the public, Bismarck made it sound as if the king had treated the French envoy in a demeaning fashion, which inflamed public opinion in France. They also argue that he wanted a war to resolve growing domestic political problems, other historians, notably French historian Pierre Milza, dispute this. According to Milza, the Emperor had no need for a war to increase his popularity, the Ems telegram had exactly the effect on French public opinion that Bismarck had intended. This text produced the effect of a red flag on the Gallic bull, gramont, the French foreign minister, declared that he felt he had just received a slap. Napoleons new prime minister, Emile Ollivier, declared that France had done all that it could humanly and honorably do to prevent the war, a crowd of 15–20,000 people, carrying flags and patriotic banners, marched through the streets of Paris, demanding war. On 19 July 1870 a declaration of war was sent to the Prussian government, the southern German states immediately sided with Prussia. The French Army consisted in peacetime of approximately 400,000 soldiers, some of them were veterans of previous French campaigns in the Crimean War, Algeria, the Franco-Austrian War in Italy, and in the Mexican campaign. Under Marshal Adolphe Niel, urgent reforms were made, universal conscription and a shorter period of service gave increased numbers of reservists, who would swell the army to a planned strength of 800,000 on mobilisation. Those who for any reason were not conscripted were to be enrolled in the Garde Mobile, however, the Franco-Prussian War broke out before these reforms could be completely implemented
10.
Realschule
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Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Estonia. It has also existed in Croatia, Austria, Denmark and Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Slovenia, for Johann Joachim Becher, education also had a mandate to support the replacement of the Holy Roman Empire with a more republican commonwealth. His school would have had the task of creating education and teaching an organized state structure and his ideal was the artisan, the educated scholar, the universal scientist. In the German secondary school system, Realschule is ranked between Hauptschule and Gymnasium, after completing the Realschule, good students are allowed to attend a professional Gymnasium or a general-education Gymnasium. They can also attend a Berufschule or do an apprenticeship, in most states of Germany, students start the Realschule at the age of ten or eleven and typically finish school at the age of 16–17. In some states, Realschulen have recently replaced by Oberschulen or Sekundarschulen. In 20061.32 million German students attended a Realschule, at Realschule, a student gets an extended education and learns at least one foreign language, usually English. In the state of Baden-Württemberg, after the grade, the student has to choose among technology, home economics. The new subject becomes the fifth main subject, after German, maths, science and English. Other subjects are geography, social sciences, economics, history, religious education, after the 8th grade a student has to choose between arts and music. High school diplomas obtained in Canada or the United States are usually acknowledged as a Mittlere Reife, in some cases however students may apply for certain subjects at a university. All students holding an American high school diploma may apply for the Studienkolleg and those holding a high school diploma can choose from a wider range of possible major subjects at a German university if they did well on the SAT or ACT. Those who scored higher than 1300 on the SAT or higher than 28 on the ACT may apply for any subject at a German university, Gymnasia and Realgymnasia are the classical higher or secondary schools of Germany. According to the PISA examination the students attending a Realschule were outperformed by those attending a Gymnasium, however, they did better than those attending a Hauptschule or a Gesamtschule school. The German tripartite system of education has been criticized for separating children along class lines at a very early age. For instance, in some German states, a decision is made in the sixth or even the fourth grade about whether a child is to continue in the Gymnasium, the Realschule, or the Hauptschule. Only the Gymnasium is a school, so critics argue essentially a decision is made as early as the fourth grade about whether a child will be allowed to attend college. The system is considered so onerous outside Germany that the OECD even sent an envoy to Germany to condemn current German practice
11.
Le Havre
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Le Havre is an urban French commune and city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northwestern France. It is situated on the bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux. Modern Le Havre remains deeply influenced by its employment and maritime traditions and its port is the second largest in France, after that of Marseille, for total traffic, and the largest French container port. The name Le Havre means the harbour or the port and its inhabitants are known as Havrais or Havraises. Administratively the commune is located in the Normandy region and, with Dieppe, is one of the two sub-prefectures of the Seine-Maritime department, Le Havre is the capital of the canton and since 1974 has been the see of the diocese of Le Havre. Le Havre is the most populous commune of Upper Normandy, although the population of the greater Le Havre conurbation is smaller than that of Rouen. It is also the second largest subprefecture in France, the city and port were founded by the King Francis I of France in 1517. Economic development in the Early modern period was hampered by wars, conflicts with the English, epidemics. It was from the end of the 18th century that Le Havre started growing, after the 1944 bombings the firm of Auguste Perret began to rebuild the city in concrete. Changes in years 1990–2000 were numerous, the right won the municipal elections and committed the city to the path of reconversion, seeking to develop the service sector and new industries. The Port 2000 project increased the capacity to compete with ports of northern Europe, transformed the southern districts of the city. In 2005 UNESCO inscribed the city of Le Havre as a World Heritage Site. The André Malraux Modern Art Museum is the second of France for the number of impressionist paintings, the city has been awarded two flowers by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom. Le Havre is a major French city located some 50 kilometres west of Rouen on the shore of the English Channel, numerous roads link to Le Havre with the main access roads being the A29 autoroute from Amiens and the A13 autoroute from Paris linking to the A131 autoroute. Administratively, Le Havre is a commune in the Haute-Normandie region in the west of the department of Seine-Maritime, the urban area of Le Havre corresponds roughly to the territory of the Agglomeration community of Le Havre which includes 17 communes and 250,000 people. It occupies the tip of the natural region of Pays de Caux where it is the largest city. Le Havre is sandwiched between the coast of the Channel from south-west to north-west and the estuary of the Seine to the south, Le Havre belongs to the MLG community Paris Basin which was formed in the Mesozoic period. The Paris Basin consists of sedimentary rocks, the commune of Le Havre consists of two areas separated by a natural cliff edge, one part in the lower part of the town to the south including the harbour, the city centre and the suburbs
12.
Giandomenico Facchina
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Giandomenico Facchina was an Italian mosaic artist of the 19th century who did much of his work in France. Giandomenico Facchina was born in 1826 in Sequals, today in the province of Pordenone in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and he was trained in Trieste and Venice. He first worked on the restoration of ancient mosaics, including the St Marks Basilica in Venice, in the 1850s he traveled to France, first to Montpellier, where he was called to work on the restoration of old floors. He filed a patent for a method of extracting ancient mosaic pavements at the National Institute of Industrial Property in 1858 and he also used a derivative of this technique, which allows a prefabricated mosaic to be made in the workshop, facilitating production of the mosaic. This technique was used very successful at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and it allowed Facchina get many orders. At Paris, he decorated, among others, the new house built by Charles Garnier. Until his death in 1903 Giandomenico Facchina divided his time between his studios in Venice and Paris, giandomenica Facchina founded in Sequals the first mosaic school, now the town hall. In 1922 the school was moved to Spilimbergo
13.
Athena
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Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena, Athena is known for her calm temperament, as she moves slowly to anger. She is noted to have fought for just reasons. Athena is portrayed as a companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the patroness of Athens. The Athenians founded the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her city, Athens. Veneration of Athena was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes, in her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshipped Athena as Athena Polias. While the city of Athens and the goddess Athena essentially bear the same name, Athena is associated with Athens, a plural name, because it was the place where she presided over her sisterhood, the Athenai, in earliest times. Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene, at Thebes she was called Thebe, and the city again a plural, Thebae. Similarly, at Athens she was called Athena, and the city Athenae, Athena had a special relationship with Athens, as is shown by the etymological connection of the names of the goddess and the city. According to mythical lore, she competed with Poseidon and she won by creating the olive tree, the Athenians would accept her gift and name the city after her. In history, the citizens of Athens built a statue of Athena as a temple to the goddess, which had piercing eyes, a helmet on her head, attired with an aegis or cuirass, and an extremely long spear. It also had a shield with the head of the Gorgon on it. A large snake accompanied her and she held Nike, the goddess of victory, therefore, Mylonas believes that Athena was a Mycenaean creation. On the other hand, Nilsson claims that she was the goddess of the palace who protected the king, a-ta-no-dju-wa-ja is also found in Linear A Minoan, the final part being regarded as the Linear A Minoan equivalent of the Linear B Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja. Divine Athena also was a weaver and the deity of crafts, whether her name is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean she who knows divine things better than others. Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek Ἀθεονόα, Plato also noted that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess whose Egyptian name was Neith, and which was identified with Athena. Neith was the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, in addition, ancient Greek myths reported that Athena had visited many mythological places such as Libyas Triton River in North Africa and the Phlegraean plain
14.
Zo d'Axa
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A descendant of the famous French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, he was one of the most prominent French individualist anarchists at the turn of the 20th century. He was a sort of Socialist condottieri, a dandy, a rake, ernest La Jeunesse nicknamed him the Restaurant Recruit. DAxa was a cavalryman but deserted to Belgium and was exiled to Italy in 1889, there he ran an ultra-Catholic newspaper and seduced the native womenfolk. He spent the few years being pursued from one country to the next by the police, before taking advantage of the general amnesty. At this point, having led a most disreputable life, and being an agitator by temperament, dAxa and LEnDehors rapidly became the target of the authorities after attacks by Ravachol and dAxa was kept in jail in Mazas Prison. After his release, he wrote pamphlets and met Camille Pissarro. He was again arrested in Italy, and transferred at Sainte Pelagie, an individualist and aesthete, dAxa justified the use of violence as an anarchist, seeing propaganda of the deed as akin to works of art. Anarchists, he wrote, had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately, dAxa was a bohemian who exulted in his outsider status, and praised the anti-capitalist lifestyle of itinerant anarchist bandit precursors of the French illegalists. He expressed contempt for the masses and hatred for their rulers and he was an important anarchist interpreter of the philosophy of individualist anarchist Max Stirner, defender of Alfred Dreyfus and opponent of prisons and penitentiaries. DAxa remains an influential anarchist theorist for anti-work sentiment, illustrations by Lucien Pissarro, Steinlen and Félix Vallotton
15.
Jean-Louis Barrault
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Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted from 1933 to 1935. At 25 years of age, he met and studied with the mime Étienne Decroux, from 1940 to 1946 Barrault was a member of the Comédie-Française, where he directed productions of Paul Claudels Le Soulier de satin and Jean Racines Phèdre, two plays that made his reputation. Over his career, he acted in nearly 50 movies including Les beaux jours, Jenny, LOr dans la Montagne, in 1940, he married the actress Madeleine Renaud. They founded a number of theatres together and toured extensively, including in South America and he was the uncle of actress Marie-Christine Barrault and sometime sponsor of Peter Brook. He died from an attack in Paris at the age of 83. Jean-Louis Barrault is buried with his wife Madeleine Renaud in the Passy Cemetery in Paris, Jean-Louis Barrault, Reflections on the Theatre, In fact it is the simplest things that are the most tricky to do well. To be able to exactly what is written without omitting anything that is written. To be able to capture the exact context of the one is reading. Barrault from Melinda Camber Porters Through Parisian Eyes, Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture, when I go to sleep, I feel I have experienced a small death, so that I can wake up in the morning renewed and reborn. Jean-Louis Barrault at the Internet Movie Database Jean-Louis Barrault at Find a Grave
16.
Patrick Baudry
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Patrick Pierre Roger Baudry, is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the French Air Force and a former CNES astronaut. In 1985, he became the second French citizen in space, after Jean-Loup Chrétien, Baudry was born in Douala and is married with two children from another union. His hobbies include sports, such as motorcycling and car racing. He also enjoys running marathons, playing squash, skiing, shooting, windsurfing, Baudry is also a wine connaisseur. Prytanée National Militaire,1965 French Airforce Academy École de lAir,1967 Baudry completed flight training at Salon-de-Provence and Tours, France, served as a fighter pilot in Fighter Squadron 1/11 Roussillon on F100 and Jaguar, and completed numerous operational missions in several countries of Africa. He entered the Empire Test Pilots School at Boscombe Down, England, in 1978, Baudry holds an airline transport pilot license. He worked for some time after his flight for Airbus as a test pilot. Baudry became a CNES astronaut candidate in June 1980, for two years, he trained at CNES and at Star City near Moscow. Baudry is a CNES expert for manned space activities and participates in the analysis of decisions. Baudry flew as a payload specialist on STS-51-G Discovery, STS-51-G was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The international crew aboard Discovery deployed communications satellites for Mexico, the Arab League, and they deployed and later retrieved the SPARTAN satellite, which performed 17 hours of x-ray astronomy experiments while separated from the Space Shuttle. In completing this flight, Baudry traveled 2.5 million miles in 112 Earth orbits, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, Chevalier of the National Merit Order, French Astronautics Medal, the Soviet Order of Amitié des Peuples and the Soviet Order of Gagarine. NASA Biography for Patrick Baudry Spacefacts biography of Patrick Baudry UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
17.
Henri Cordier
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Henri Cordier was a French linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, editor and Orientalist. He was President of the Société de Géographie in Paris, Cordier was a prominent figure in the development of East Asian and Central Asian scholarship in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Cordier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States and he arrived in France in 1852, and his family moved to Paris in 1855. He was educated at the Collège Chaptal and in England, in 1869 at age 20, he sailed for Shanghai, where he worked at an English bank. During the next two years, he published articles in local newspapers. In 1872, he was librarian of the North China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In this period, about twenty articles were published in Shanghai Evening Courier, North China Daily News, in 1876, he was named secretary of a Chinese government program for Chinese students studying in Europe. In Paris, Cordier was a professor at lÉcole spéciale des Langues orientales and he joined the faculty in 1881, and he was a professor from 1881-1925. Cordier was also a professeur at lÉcole Libre des Sciences Politiques, which is known as the National Foundation of Political Studies. Although he had only a knowledge of the language, Cordier made major contributions to Sinology. Cordier, as the Bibliotheca Sinica is sometimes referred to, is the standard enumerative bibliography of 70,000 works on China up to 1921. Even though the author did not know Chinese, he was thorough, endymion Wilkinson also praises Cordier for including the full titles, often the tables of contents, and reviews of most books. Cordier was an editor of Toung Pao, which was the first international journal of Chinese Studies. Along with Gustaaf Schlegel, he helped to establish the prominent sinological journal Toung Pao in 1890, Royal Asiatic Society, honorary member,1893. Royal Geographic Society, corresponding member,1908, académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, member,1908. Cordiers published writings encompass 1,033 works in 1,810 publications in 13 languages and 7,984 library holdings, dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à lEmpire chinois, Vol.1, Vol.2. 1, Vol.2, by F. Renouard de Ste-Croix, lImprimerie sino-européenne en Chine, bibliographie des ouvrages publiés en Chine par les Européens au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle. Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à lEmpire chinois, bibliotheca sinica, Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3, dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à la péninsule indochinoise Bibliotheca Japonica
18.
Bernard Cottret
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Bernard Cottret, born in 1951 at Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, is a French Historian and literary scholar. Stemming from a family of artists and musicians, Bernard Cottret is the son of Bernard Cottret and Geneviève Aurel, classical singers and his only son Yann is also a musician. He is now retired and lives in the country, he is also a lay preacher in the United Protestant Church of France. He founded and chaired the department of humanities of his university, and established links with the College of Charleston, SC. Cottret is also a fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France, Cottret is the author and editor of more than forty volumes, which address the history of the British Isles, colonial America, France and Europe in a comparative perspective. He also authored fifty chapters in books and forty articles in academic journals, not to mention numerous radio or television interviews. Some of these contributions have been translated into English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, several essays deal with the Protestant Reformation and religious issues, in relation with politics. He has given over 250 lectures in France, Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Canada and he has organized annual summer seminars in partnership with Potsdam and some Polish associates. It is primarily as a historian that he approached the Protestant Reformation, reading Lucien Febvre and benefiting from the teachings of Robert Mandrou. The Huguenots in England, published in 1991, uses the French Protestant diaspora to understand English society in the modern period. In 1993, Christopher Hill welcomed in Renaissance Quarterly a very interesting book, professor Cottret begins with some useful remarks, of contemporary relevance, on immigration, past and present, and problems of adaptation, both for the immigrants and for the host country. He went on “for English-speaking readers the main interest of the lies in the new angle of vision which it offers on English social development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The American edition of Calvin, A Biography was well received and described by the publication of The Institute on Religion, from 1988 to 2002, Bernard Cottret was a member of the steering committee of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It led, at the request of Jonathan Clark, to a book in English devoted to the work of Bolingbroke. The Académie française awarded several of his books, in July 2011 The Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques awarded him the Charles-Aubert-Histoire prize for the whole of his historical productions. That same year, he was appointed a member of the André Kaspi Committee on public commemorations and he later participated in the 2012 Jean-Jacques Rousseau committee for national celebrations at the Ministry of Culture. His notice is published in Contemporary Authors and Whos Who in France Terre d’exil, l’Angleterre et ses réfugiés, Aubier, Paris,1985. La Glorieuse Révolution d’Angleterre,1688, Gallimard, Paris,1988, jésus, de Newton à Voltaire, Le Cerf, Paris,1990, réédition CNRS,2011
19.
Dreyfus affair
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The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice, the major role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the lasting social conflict. The scandal began in December 1894, with the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterházy after a trial lasting two days. The Army then accused Dreyfus with additional charges based on falsified documents, activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial, the new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all the accusations against Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless, in 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, the affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps, the pro-Army, mostly Catholic anti-Dreyfusards and the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalization, the museum created an online platform in 2006 dedicated to the Dreyfus Affair, giving the public access to these documents. After a closed trial, he was guilty of treason. He was deported to Devils Island, at that time, the opinion of the French political class was unanimously unfavourable towards Dreyfus. Certain of the injustice of the sentence, the family of the Captain, through his brother Mathieu, meanwhile Colonel Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage, found evidence in March 1896 indicating that the real traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterházy. The General Staff, however, refused to reconsider its judgment, in July 1897 his family contacted the President of the Senate Auguste Scheurer-Kestner to draw attention to the tenuousness of the evidence against Dreyfus. Scheurer-Kestner reported three months later that he was convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus and also persuaded Georges Clemenceau, in the same month, Mathieu Dreyfus complained to the Ministry of War against Walsin-Esterházy. A Dreyfusard declaration that rallied many intellectuals to Dreyfus cause, France became increasingly divided over the case, and the issue continued to be hotly debated until the end of the century. Antisemitic riots erupted in more than twenty French cities, There were several deaths in Algiers. The Republic was shaken, which prompted a sense that the Dreyfus Affair had to be resolved to restore calm, despite increasingly robust evidence to the contrary, Dreyfus was convicted again and sentenced to ten years of hard labour, though the sentence was commuted due to extenuating circumstances. Exhausted by his deportation for four years, Dreyfus accepted the presidential pardon granted by President Émile Loubet
20.
Mathieu Dreyfus
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Mathieu Dreyfus was an Alsatian Jewish industrialist and the older brother of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer falsely convicted of treason in what became known as the Dreyfus Affair. Mathieu was one of his brothers most loyal supporters throughout the affair, Mathieu was born two years before Alfred, in Mulhouse, in Alsace, then controlled by France. His schooling was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, a French defeat which led to the loss of Alsace to Germany. His father, the director of a factory, chose to retain French nationality for himself and his young children. Mathieu continued his studies in Paris, at 18, he joined the 9th regiment of Hussars at Belfort but, unlike Alfred, he did not pursue a military career. With his other brothers, Jacques and Léon, Mathieu followed the family tradition, in 1885, he became its director. In May 1889, he married Suzanne Marguerite Schwob, the daughter of a manufacturer from Héricourt. Their daughter, Magui, married Adolphe, the son of Joseph Reinach and their son Émile, served in the French artillery in World War I and was killed on October 22,1915. In October 1894, while he was in Mulhouse, Mathieu received a telegram from Lucie, Alfreds wife, arriving on November 1, Mathieu learned that his brother had been arrested for treason. Mathieu had no doubt that the arrest had been a mistake that would quickly be cleared up, Mathieu arranged a meeting with the commandant Armand du Paty de Clam, who had carried out his brothers arrest. Paty de Clam indicated that the charges against Alfred were overwhelming, convinced of his brothers innocence, Mathieu proposed a deal to Paty de Clam, “Let me get close to my brother You will listen to our conversation from behind a curtain. If, impossible as it may be, he has done something wrong, he tell me all and I myself will put the pistol in his hands. ”Mathieu then found a lawyer to represent his brother. Mathieu then contacted the journalist and member of parliament Joseph Reinach, Reinach requested of President Casimir-Perier that the trial not take place in camera, a lost cause. Mathieu followed all leads to get help, in desperation, he sought out a clairvoyant, who “assured” him of the existence of a secret dossier used illegally against Dreyfus. He became restless, asking all his contacts for their support, Paty de Clam briefly suspected him of having written the bordereau, the main piece of evidence used to convict Alfred. For his part, Alphonse Bertillon, called to verify the incriminating evidence, by this point, Mathieu understood that he had to lead a real campaign and take daily action to establish the truth of the case. For his efforts, Joseph Reinach described Mathieu as the brother, ” Émile Zola as the “heroic brother, ” and George Clemenceau as the “noble Mathieu. ”In February 1895, just after his brothers deportation, Mathieu met the Jewish anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare. During the summer of 1895, Mathieu gave him all the necessary to compose the first expose dedicated to the affair
21.
Alexandre Dumas, fils
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Dumas, fils was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a well-known playwright and author of classics such as The Three Musketeers. Dumas, fils was admitted to the Académie française in 1874, Dumas was born in Paris, France, the illegitimate child of Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay, a dressmaker, and novelist Alexandre Dumas. In 1831 his father recognized him and ensured that the young Dumas received the best education possible at the Institution Goubaux. At that time, the law allowed the elder Dumas to take the child away from his mother and her agony inspired the younger Dumas to write about tragic female characters. At boarding schools, he was taunted by his classmates because of his family situation. These issues profoundly influenced his thoughts, behaviour, and writing, in 1844, Dumas moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye to live with his father. There he met Marie Duplessis, a courtesan who would be the inspiration for the character Marguerite Gauthier in his romantic novel La Dame aux camélias. Adapted into a play, it was titled Camille in English and became the basis for Verdis 1853 opera, La Traviata, Duplessis undergoing yet another name change, this time to Violetta Valéry. Although he admitted that he had done the adaptation because he needed the money, he had success with the play. He was not only more renowned than his father during his lifetime, after this, he virtually abandoned writing novels. On 31 December 1864, in Moscow, Dumas married Nadezhda von Knorring, daughter of Johan Reinhold von Knorring, after Nadezhdas death, Dumas married Henriette Régnier de La Brière in June 1895, without issue. In 1874, he was admitted to the Académie française and in 1894 he was awarded the Légion dhonneur, Dumas died at Marly-le-Roi, Yvelines, on 27 November 1895, and was interred in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. His grave is, perhaps coincidentally, only some 100 metres away from that of Marie Duplessis, aventures de quatre femmes et d’un perroquet Césarine La Dame aux camélias. Texte online ), with an illustrated by Albert Besnard English titled as Camellias Le Docteur Servan Antonine Le Roman d’une femme Les Quatre Restaurations. Vivier LAmi des femmes Le Supplice dune femme coll, emile de Girardin Héloïse Paranquet coll. Durentin Les Idées de Madame Aubray Le Filleul de Pompignac coll, francois Une Visite de noces La Princesse Georges La Femme de Claude Monsieur Alphonse LÉtrangère Les Danicheff coll. de Corvin La Comtesse Romani coll. Gustave Fould La Princesse de Bagdad Denise Francillon La Route de Thèbes Illegitimacy in fiction Legitimacy Maurois, the Titans, a three-generation biography of the Dumas. New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, a Critical Edition of the Manuscripts of La Route de Thebes by Alexandre Dumas fils
22.
Abel Gance
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Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films, Jaccuse, La Roue, and the monumental Napoléon. Born in Paris in 1889, Abel Gance was the son of a prosperous doctor, Abel Flamant. Initially taking his mothers name, he was brought up until the age of eight by his grandparents in the coal mining town of Commentry in central France. He then returned to Paris to rejoin his mother who had by then married Adolphe Gance and he started working as a clerk in a solicitors office, but after a couple of years he turned to acting in the theatre. When he was 18, he was given a contract at the Théâtre Royal du Parc in Brussels, where he developed friendships with the actor Victor Francen. While in Brussels, Gance wrote his first film scenarios, which he sold to Léonce Perret, back in Paris in 1909, he acted in his first film, Perrets Molière. At that stage he regarded the cinema as infantile and stupid and was drawn into film jobs by his poverty, but he nevertheless continued to write scenarios. During this period he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, often fatal at that time, Gance tried to maintain a connection with the theatre and he finished writing a monumental tragedy entitled Victoire de Samothrace, in which he hoped that Sarah Bernhardt would star. Its five-hour length, and Gances refusal to cut it, proved to be a stumbling block, with the outbreak of World War I, Gance was rejected by the army on medical grounds and in 1915 he started writing and directing for a new film company, Film dArt. He soon caused controversy with La Folie du docteur Tube, a fantasy in which he. The producers were outraged and refused to show the film, Gance nevertheless continued working for Film dArt until 1918, making over a dozen commercially successful films. His experiments included tracking shots, extreme close-ups, low-angle shots and his subjects moved steadily away from simple action films towards psychological melodramas, such as Mater dolorosa starring Emmy Lynn as a neglected wife who has an affair with her husbands brother. The film was a commercial success, and it was followed by La Dixième Symphonie. Here Gances mastery of lighting, composition and editing was accompanied by a range of literary and artistic references which some critics found pretentious and he re-enlisted in the Service Cinématographique in order to be able to film some scenes on a real battlefield at the front. The film made an impact and went on to have international distribution. He employed elaborate editing techniques and innovative use of cutting which made the film highly influential among other contemporary directors. The finished film was originally in 32 reels and ran for nine hours
23.
Michel Houellebecq
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Michel Houellebecq is a French author, filmmaker, and poet. Having written poetry and an essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he published his first novel, Whatever. Atomised followed in 1998, and Platform in 2001 and he published a book of poems, The Art of Struggle, in 1996. After a publicity tour for Platform led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, in 2010 he published the Prix Goncourt-winning La Carte et le Territoire, and in 2015, Submission. Houellebecq was born in 1956 on the French island of Réunion, the son of Lucie Ceccaldi, a French doctor born in Algeria of Corsican descent, and René Thomas and he lived in Algeria from the age of five months until 1961, with his maternal grandmother. His grandmothers maiden name was Houellebecq, which he took as his pen name, later, he went to Lycée Henri Moissan, a high school at Meaux in the north-east of Paris, as a boarder. He then went to Lycée Chaptal in Paris to follow courses in order to qualify for Grandes écoles. He began attending the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1975 and he started a literary review called Karamazov and wrote poetry. Houellebecq graduated as an agronomist in 1980, married and had a son, then he divorced, became depressed and his first poems appeared in 1985 in the magazine La Nouvelle Revue. Six years later, in 1991, he published an essay of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Rester vivant, méthode appeared the year, and was followed by his first collection of poetry. He won the 1998 Prix Novembre for his second novel Les Particules Élémentaires and published as Atomised or, the novel became an instant nihilistic classic. Michiko Kakutani, however, described it in The New York Times as a deeply repugnant read, the novel won Houellebecq the International Dublin Literary Award in 2002. In 2000, Houellebecq published the short fiction Lanzarote, in which he develops a number of the themes he would explore in later novels, including fringe religions and his subsequent novel, Platform, earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance told mostly in the first-person by a 40-year-old male arts administrator, with sex scenes. The Possibility of an Island is a novel that cycles between three characters narratives, Daniel 1 and Daniels 24 and 25, neo-human clones of Daniel 1 and he later adapted and directed the film based on his novel. In 2008, Flammarion published Ennemis publics a conversation via e-mail between Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy, Houellebecq has also released three music CDs on which he recites a selection of his poetry. Two of them, Présence de la mort and Établissement dun ciel dalternance were recorded with composer Jean-Jacques Birgé in 1996 for Radio France, Présence humaine, on Bertrand Burgalats Tricatel label, has a rock band backing him
24.
Charles Koechlin
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Charles Louis Eugène Koechlin was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He once said, The artist needs an ivory tower, not as an escape from the world and this tower is for the artist like a lighthouse shining out across the world. Koechlin was born in Paris, and was the youngest child of a large family and his father died when he was 14. Though he was interested in music his family wanted him to become an engineer. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1887 but the year was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to spend six months recuperating in Algeria. He had to repeat his first year at the École and graduated with only mediocre grades, after a struggle with his family and private lessons with Charles Lefebvre he entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1890 studying first with Antoine Taudou for harmony. In 1892 he started studying with Massenet for composition, André Gedalge for fugue and counterpoint and his fellow-pupils included George Enescu, Ernest Le Grand, Reynaldo Hahn, Max dOllone, Henri Rabaud, and Florent Schmitt. From 1896 he was a pupil of Gabriel Fauré, where his fellow-pupils now included Ravel, Fauré had a major influence on Koechlin, in fact Koechlin wrote the first Fauré biography, a work which is still of value. In 1898 a grateful Koechlin orchestrated the suite from Faurés Pelléas et Mélisande. After his graduation Koechlin became a composer and teacher. He married Suzanne Pierrard in 1903, but after 1921 regularly corresponded with his former student, from its inception in the early 1930s to his death he was a passionate supporter of the International Society for Contemporary Music, eventually becoming President of its French section. From 1937 he was elected President of the Fédération Musicale Populaire and he visited the USA four times to lecture and teach in 1918-19,1928,1929 and 1937. On the second and third visits he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, through arrangements made by Catherine Murphy Urner, on the 1929 visit his symphonic poem La Joie païenne won the Hollywood Bowl Prize for Composition and was performed there under the baton of Eugene Goossens. Even so, Koechlin had to pay for the preparation of orchestral parts, in the 1940s, however, the music department of Belgian Radio took up his cause and broadcast several premieres of important scores including the first complete performance of the Jungle Book cycle. He died, and his body is buried, at his home at Le Canadel, Var. Some of his papers are housed at the University of California at Berkeley Library, in 1940, the French government offered him the award of Chevalier de la Légion dhonneur, but he refused it. Koechlin was enormously prolific, as the worklist below suggests and he was highly eclectic in inspiration and musical technique, but the expressive core of his language remained distinct from his contemporaries. At the start of his career he concentrated on songs with orchestral accompaniment, a recent recording of a selection shows he was already master of an individual impressionism deriving less from Debussy than from Berlioz and Fauré
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