1.
Alexander Blok
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Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet. Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family, some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg State University. These influences would affect his early publications, later collected in the book Ante Lucem, in 1903 he married the actress Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. Later, she would involve him in a complicated relationship with his fellow Symbolist Andrei Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry made him famous. During the last period of his life, Blok emphasised political themes, influenced by Solovyovs doctrines, he had vague apocalyptic apprehensions and often vacillated between hope and despair. I feel that an event was coming, but what it was exactly was not revealed to me. Quite unexpectedly for most of his admirers, he accepted the October Revolution as the resolution of these apocalyptic yearnings. According to Orlando Figes he was present at the interrogation. By 1921 Blok had become disillusioned with the Russian Revolution and he did not write any poetry for three years. He complained to Maksim Gorky that his faith in the wisdom of humanity had ended, cant you hear that there are no longer any sounds. Within a few days Blok became sick and his doctors requested that he be sent abroad for medical treatment, but he was not allowed to leave the country. On 29 May 1921, he wrote to Anatoly Lunacharsky, Blok is Russias finest poet, if you forbid him to go abroad, and he dies, you and your comrades will be guilty of his death. A resolution on departure for Block was signed by members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on 23 July 1921, but on 29 July Gorky asked permission for Bloks wife to accompany him, since Bloks health status had deteriorated sharply. Blok to leave Russia was signed by Molotov on 1 August 1921, the permission was delivered on 10 August, after Blok had already died. Several months earlier, Blok had delivered a lecture on Alexander Pushkin. The idealized mystical images presented in his first book helped establish Blok as a poet of the Russian Symbolism style. Bloks early verse is musical, but he sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns
2.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
3.
Leiden
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Leiden is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland. Leiden is located on the Oude Rijn, at a distance of some 20 kilometres from The Hague to its south, the recreational area of the Kaag Lakes lies just to the northeast of Leiden. A university city since 1575, Leiden houses Leiden University, the oldest university of the Netherlands, Leiden is a city with a rich cultural heritage, not only in science, but also in the arts. One of the worlds most famous painters, Rembrandt, was born, other famous Leiden painters include Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Goyen and Jan van Steen. The city has one of Europes most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries. Modern scientific medical research and teaching started in the early 18th century in Leiden with Boerhaave, many important scientific discoveries have been made here, giving rise to Leiden’s motto, ‘City of Discoveries’. It is twinned with Oxford, the location of the United Kingdoms oldest university, Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences together have around 35,000 students. Leiden is a university city, university buildings are scattered throughout the city. Leiden was formed on a hill at the confluence of the rivers Oude. In the oldest reference to this, from circa 860, the settlement was called Leithon, the name is said to be from Germanic *leitha- canal. Leiden has in the past erroneously been associated with the Roman outpost Lugdunum Batavorum and this particular castellum was thought to be located at the Burcht of Leiden, and the citys name was thought to be derived of the Latin name Lugdunum. However the castellum was in closer to the town of Katwijk. The landlord of Leiden, situated in a stronghold on the hill, was subject to the Bishop of Utrecht. This county got its name in 1101 from a domain near the stronghold, Leiden was sacked in 1047 by Emperor Henry III. Early 13th century, Ada, Countess of Holland took refuge here when she was fighting in a war against her uncle, William I. He besieged the stronghold and captured Ada, Leiden received city rights in 1266. In 1389, its population had grown to about 4,000 persons, burgrave Filips of Wassenaar and the other local noblemen of the Hook faction assumed that the duke would besiege Leiden first and send small units out to conquer the surrounding citadels. But John of Bavaria chose to attack the citadels first and he rolled the cannons with his army but one which was too heavy went by ship
4.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
5.
Marina Tsvetaeva
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Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917, in an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Ariadna Efron were arrested on espionage charges in 1941, and her husband was executed. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a chronicler of her times. Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow, the daughter of Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, a professor of Fine Art at the University of Moscow, Tsvetaevas mother, Maria Alexandrovna Meyn, Ivans second wife, was a concert pianist, highly literate, with German and Polish ancestry. Growing up in considerable comfort, Tsvetaeva would later come to identify herself with the Polish aristocracy. Tsvetaevas two half-siblings, Valeria and Andrei, were the children of Ivans deceased first wife, Varvara Dmitrievna Ilovaiskaya, Tsvetaevas only full sister, Anastasia, was born in 1894. The children quarrelled frequently and occasionally violently, there was considerable tension between Tsvetaevas mother and Varvaras children, and Tsvetaevas father maintained close contact with Varvaras family. Tsvetaevas father was kind, but deeply wrapped up in his studies and he was also still deeply in love with his first wife, he would never get over her. Maria Tsvetaeva had had an affair before her marriage, from which she never recovered. Maria Tsvetaeva disapproved of Marinas poetic inclination, she wanted her daughter to become a pianist, in 1902 Tsvetaevas mother contracted tuberculosis. There, away from the constraints of a bourgeois Muscovite life, Tsvetaeva was able for the first time to run free, climb cliffs. There were many Russian émigré revolutionaries residing at that time in Nervi, in June 1904 Tsvetaeva was sent to school in Lausanne. Changes in the Tsvetaev residence led to changes in school, and during the course of her travels she acquired the Italian, French. She gave up the strict musical studies that her mother had imposed and turned to poetry and she wrote With a mother like her, I had only one choice, to become a poet. In 1908, aged 16, Tsvetaeva studied literary history at the Sorbonne, during this time, a major revolutionary change was occurring within Russian poetry, the flowering of the Russian Symbolist movement, and this movement was to colour most of her later work. It was not the theory which was to attract her, but the poetry and her own first collection of poems, Vecherny Albom, self-published in 1910, promoted her considerable reputation as a poet
6.
E. E. Cummings
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Edward Estlin E. E. Cummings, often styled as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two novels, four plays and several essays. He is remembered as an eminent voice of 20th-Century English literature, Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14,1894, to Edward Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke who were Unitarian. They were a family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a professor at Harvard University and later the nationally known minister of Old South Church in Boston and his mother, who loved to spend time with her children, played games with Cummings and his sister, Elizabeth. From an early age, Cummingss parents supported his creative gifts, Cummings wrote poems and also drew as a child, and he often played outdoors with the many other children who lived in his neighborhood. He also grew up in the company of family friends as the philosophers William James. He graduated from Harvard University in 1915 and then received a degree from Harvard in 1916. Many of Cummings summers were spent on Silver Lake in Madison, the family ultimately purchased the nearby Joy Farm where Cummings had his primary summer residence. He exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life, as he matured, Cummings moved to an I, Thou relationship with God. His journals are replete with references to le bon Dieu, as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry, Cummings also prayed for strength to be his essential self, and for relief of spirit in times of depression. Cummings wanted to be a poet from childhood and wrote poetry daily aged 8 to 22 and he went to Harvard and developed an interest in modern poetry which ignored conventional grammar and syntax, aiming for a dynamic use of language. Upon graduating, he worked for a book dealer, in 1917, with the First World War ongoing in Europe, Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend John Dos Passos. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to a unit for five weeks. He fell in love with the city, to which he would throughout his life. The two openly expressed anti-war views, Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans. On September 21,1917, just five months after his assignment, he. They were held for 3½ months in a detention camp at the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne
7.
Langston Hughes
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James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that the negro was in vogue, like many African Americans, Hughes has complex ancestry. Both of Hughes paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky, according to Hughes, one of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County and supposedly a relative of the statesman Henry Clay. The other was Silas Cushenberry, a Jewish-American slave trader of Clark County, Hughess maternal grandmother Mary Patterson was of African-American, French, English and Native American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College, she married Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed race, Leary subsequently joined John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and died from his wounds. In 1869 the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite and her second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry. He and his younger brother John Mercer Langston worked for the abolitionist cause, Charles Langston later moved to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights for African Americans. Charles and Marys daughter Caroline was the mother of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, the second child of school teacher Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns, Hughes father left his family and later divorced Carrie. He traveled to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the racism in the United States. After his parents separated, his mother traveled seeking employment, and young Langston Hughes was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation and he spent most of his childhood in Lawrence. In his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea he wrote, I was unhappy for a long time, after the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln and she had remarried when he was still an adolescent, and eventually they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school. His writing experiments began when he was young, while in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm, I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry
8.
Du Fu
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Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Along with Li Bai, he is called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a civil servant. His life, like the country, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755. Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages, since many of Du Fus poems feature morality and history, this practice is particularly important. Most of what is known of Du Fus life comes from his poems and his paternal grandfather was Du Shenyan, a noted politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu. Du Fu was born in 712, the birthplace is unknown, except that it was near Luoyang. In later life, he considered himself to belong to the city of Changan. Du Fus mother died shortly after he was born, and he was raised by his aunt. He had a brother, who died young. He also had three brothers and one half sister, to whom he frequently refers in his poems. The son of a minor scholar-official, his youth was spent on the education of a future civil servant, study and memorisation of the Confucian classics of philosophy. He later claimed to have produced creditable poems by his early teens, in the early 730s, he travelled in the Jiangsu/Zhejiang area, his earliest surviving poem, describing a poetry contest, is thought to date from the end of this period, around 735. In that year, he took the civil service exam, likely in Changan and he failed, to his surprise and that of centuries of later critics. Hung concludes that he failed because his prose style at the time was too dense and obscure. After this failure, he went back to traveling, this time around Shandong, Du Fu would have been allowed to enter the civil service because of his fathers rank, but he is thought to have given up the privilege in favour of one of his half brothers. He spent the four years living in the Luoyang area
9.
Pablo Neruda
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Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. He derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda, Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 10 years old and he often wrote in green ink, which was his personal symbol for desire and hope. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called Neruda the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language, harold Bloom included Neruda as one of the 26 writers central to the Western Tradition in his book The Western Canon. On July 15,1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, during his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Nerudas arrest, friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped through a pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was an advisor to Chiles socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973 six and a half hours after that injection. Pinochet, backed by elements of the forces, denied permission for Nerudas funeral to be made a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets, soon after her death, Reyes moved to Temuco, where he married Trinidad Candia Marverde, a woman with whom he had had another child nine years earlier, a boy named Rodolfo. Neruda grew up in Temuco with Rodolfo and a half-sister, Laura and he composed his first poems in the winter of 1914. During this winter, he wrote often about dinosaurs, on July 18,1917, at the age of thirteen, he published his first work, an essay entitled Entusiasmo y perseverancia in the local daily newspaper La Mañana, signed Neftalí Reyes. From 1918 to mid-1920 he published poems, such as Mis ojos. In 1919, he participated in the literary contest Juegos Florales del Maule, by mid-1920, when he adopted the pseudonym Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poems, prose, and journalism. He is thought to have named himself Neruda after the Czech poet Jan Neruda, the young poets intention in publishing under a pseudonym was to avoid his fathers disapproval of his poems. In 1921, at the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile, both works were critically acclaimed and have been translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas sold millions of copies and became Nerudas best-known work, almost one hundred years later, Veinte Poemas still retains its place as the best selling poetry book in the Spanish language
10.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Several critics have described Rilkes work as inherently mystical. These deeply existential themes tend to him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were written in French. In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors, in the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets. He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague and his childhood and youth in Prague were not especially happy. His father, Josef Rilke, became an official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie Entz, came from a well-to-do Prague family, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a house on the Herrengasse 8, where René also spent many of his early years. The relationship between Phia and her son was colored by her mourning for an earlier child, a daughter who had died only one week old. During Rilkes early years Phia acted as if she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy by dressing him in girls clothing and his parents marriage failed in 1884. His parents pressured the poetically and artistically talented youth into entering a military academy, which he attended from 1886 until 1891, from 1892 to 1895 he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. Until 1896 he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague, in 1897 in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke met and fell in love with the widely travelled, intellectual woman of letters Lou Andreas-Salomé. Rilke changed his first name from René to Rainer at Lous urging because she thought that name to be masculine, forceful. His relationship with married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilkes most important confidante until the end of his life, having trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke. In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy, in 1899, he travelled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Author Anna A. Tavis cites the cultures of Bohemia and Russia as the key influences on Rilkes poetry, in 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists colony at Worpswede. It was here that he got to know the sculptor Clara Westhoff and their daughter Ruth was born in December 1901. In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there
11.
William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
