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Post by Woland on May 7, 2020 15:06:05 GMT -5
Boris Chicherin was a 19th century political philosopher and jurist in the Russian Empire. Of a liberal bent, he praised Alexander II's reforms (notably emancipation of the serfs), later advocating for a constitutional monarchy. In 1868 he resigned his University position, protesting against government repressions by Alexander II, however he felt assassinating the Tsar was a step too far. As City Mayor of Moscow he was forced to resign over a speech labelled "too liberal". He wrote out the rest of his years at his estate, writing scientific and law books. He died in 1904, one year short of the revolution; his nephew Georgy would serve as Soviet Foreign Minister from 1918-1930.
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Post by Woland on May 8, 2020 13:07:33 GMT -5
Francis II was the final Holy Roman Emperor from 1792-1806, he was also crowned Francis I of Austria in 1804 giving him the nickname of "Double Emperor". His daughter Marie Louise married Napoleon
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Post by Woland on May 9, 2020 13:11:19 GMT -5
Francois-Marie Arouet better known as Voltaire (1694-1778), the famous French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist and advocate of civil liberties. His troublemaking youthfulness earned him 11 months in the Bastille and temporary exile to England. Later travels in the Netherlands and a second exile to England opened his mind to freedom of speech along with Britain's constitutional monarchy compared to France's absolutist. He became more adept at circumventing the authorities, continuing to write essays, plays and short stories throughout his life, his arguably most famous being "Candide".
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Post by Windischer on May 10, 2020 14:29:10 GMT -5
Today, May 10, is the birthday of the most famous Slovene mustache. Ivan Cankar, who is considered the greatest Slovene author, was born today in 1876 in Vrhnika near Ljubljana. He was the key figure of Slovene Modernity and is sometimes compared to Franz Kafka or James Joyce.  |
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Post by Woland on May 10, 2020 15:14:36 GMT -5
Anna Akhmatova, female Russian poet of the "Silver Age". Born in Odessa in 1889, she moved with her family to St. Petersburg a year later. During the early 20th century her early poems drew much praise, only for the 1st World War to crop up. Almost all of her friends fled abroad to escape the Revolutio, Anna decided to stay; witnessing the horrendous events of that tumultuous period while losing her loved ones and friends would become a recurring motif throughout her lifetime. In 1921 her ex-husband was arrested and shot by the Cheka, her poems were suppressed by the Bolsheviks, her son would be sent to the Gulag during Stalin's Great Purge. Out of her fellow poets who didn't flee during the 30s, some were either exiled or committed suicide. The period of 1935-1940 inspired her greatest poems "Requiem", in honour of all the victims of Stalin's Purges.
During the 2nd World War and the horrific 900 day siege of Leningrad (modern day St. Petersburg), Akhmatova was evacuated to Uzbekistan for safety along with other prominent artists such as Shostakovich. She overcame a bout of typhus and returned to Leningrad once the siege was lifted. After the war her work was suppressed once again, her son was exiled to the Gulag again (after fighting in the 2nd World War). After Stalin's death her work slowly began to circulate once again, in the last 10 years of her life she was an inspiration to a new generation of poets until she died of heart failure at the age of 76.
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Post by Woland on May 12, 2020 12:55:55 GMT -5
Luis Bunuel was a Spanish surrealist film director. In the 20s and 30s he made short films in Spain and France (usually banned for blasphemy), the scandal earned him a lonely stay in Hollywood. Back in Spain he sided with the Republicans during the Civil War, he went to America shortly before the war ended and stayed; he wasn't welcome under Franco. During the Civil War his close friend Federico Garcia Lorca was executed by the Nationalists.
His time in America was fruitless, he restarted his directing career in Mexico by winning best director at Cannes for "Los Olvidados". During the 50s he continued to make Mexican movies, a couple with French producers and even churned out a couple english-language movies (including an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe). In 1960 his old friend General Franco invited him back to Spain to make a movie called "Viridiana", it was banned immediately. During the 60s and 70s Bunuel worked almost exclusively in France, churning out a new series of surrealist films often attacking the middle class and the Church. He retired from filmmaking in 1977, ironically Franco had died and "Viridiana" was finally released in Spain. He died in 1983 from cirrhosis.
This portrait was made in 1924 by his lifelong friend and fellow surrealist Salvador Dali.
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Post by Woland on May 13, 2020 8:19:04 GMT -5
Elizabeth Martinova (1869-1904) was a Russian artist in the late 19th century. She became more famous as a model for portrait painters, the most famous being Konstantin Somov's "lady in blue" painted between 1897-1900, Elizabeth was suffering from Tuberculosis at the time while Konstantin had to visit Paris during the same period. Elizabeth insisted he never sell the painting of it, when she discovered it was sold to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow she wrote a strongly worded letter to him admonishing him for it. She passed away from Tuberculosis at 35 years of age.
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Post by The Duchess on May 13, 2020 20:57:58 GMT -5
Katherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester (1657-1717)
Daughter of the infamous poet and rake, Sir Charles Sedley, Katherine Sedley was the mistress of James, Duke of York, and a sparkling wit in her own right. It was through this wit -- and her father -- that she was noticed at court. Willowy and dark-haired, Katherine was considered to be very plain, if not ugly. She herself knew this, and was astonished that the Duke would take her as his mistress, stating that "it cannot be my beauty for he must see I have none, and it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any." The Duke was not stupid, necessarily, but a rather dour and humourless man, one who did not keep up with the parries and ripostes of courtly banter. Insofar as James' behaviour, people noted the incongruities between his near-pathological piety and his irrepressible libido. James himself was, of course, aware of this, telling Bishop Burnet that he could be religious without being a saint. Nevertheless, in the second year of his kingship, 1686, his confessor encouraged James to stop seeing Katherine. He created her Countess of Dorchester at their parting, a title which died with her in 1717. Her amusing, sometimes astonishing, wit shone through quite a bit in her dealings with two subsequent monarchs; Mary II, her former lover's daughter, and George I, the first Hanoverian king. Mary refused to receive Katherine at court in 1689 on account of her violating the seventh commandment: committing adultery. Bemused, Katherine replied that the queen had no regard for the fifth commandment: honour thy father. Her wit shone through once more at George I's coronation in 1715, where she discovered Louise de Kerouaille and Elizabeth Villiers in attendance; who were, respectively, mistresses of Charles II and William III. Upon approaching the two women, Katherine exclaimed, "By God! Who would've thought that us three old whores would be here?" As the coronation wore on, and it was asked if everyone swore allegiance to the new king, Katherine looked around the room, noting all the armed soldiers, and quipped, "What, does this old goat think anyone will say no with all these soldiers around?"
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Post by Woland on May 14, 2020 18:32:05 GMT -5
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a titan of french literature, responsible for "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and his door-stopper "Les Miserables". After Napoleon III came to power in 1851, Hugo went into exile until he returned to France in 1873. He also made sketches, watercolours and poems throughout his 60 year career. Upon his death in 1885 it's estimated over 2 million people came to Paris to pay their respects to the great author (France's population at the time was 40 million). Here he is in 1876.
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Post by Woland on May 15, 2020 12:27:27 GMT -5
Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) was born in Kiev to Polish dancers (Vaslav self-identified as Polish). He joined the Imperial Ballet School in 1900, was caught up in the Bloody Sunday Massacre in 1905 (escaped with a head wound). His early career garnered rapturous acclaim from his audiences but it was only after he teamed up with Sergei Diaghilev where he reached his greatest heights as a dancer, the Ballets Russes Paris tour redefined ballet for a couple decades. Sadly no footage of Nijinsky exists, Diaghilev didn't trust the early jerky camera recordings of the time. After Nijinsky marriage to Romola de Pulszky (daughter of a Hungarian politician) during the South American tour he was ejected from the company by Diaghilev (Nijinsky and Diaghilev had a brief relationship in the past). His attempts to stage ballet without his former collaborators couldn't live up to previous success, it only lasted a couple weeks with audiences noting Nijinsky's performances were lacking, there were also rumours of a nervous breakdown.
In 1914 Diaghilev moved to Hungary with his pregnant wife just before the outbreak of the First World War, he was confined to house arrest in Budapest as an "enemy Russian citizen". It took 2 years of wrangling for Diaghilev to rejoin the Ballets Russes tour in the USA. Despite a twisted ankle and additional stresses of organising the ballet company, the tour was a critical success albeit mismanagement of funds. On a south american tour of 1917 Diaghilev began to worry the members of his company, he was confused on stage, stressed out, his pianist friend Arthur Rubinstein wept at Nijinsky's deterioration. His performance in Montevideo on 30th September 1917 would be his final public performance. He moved with his wife to Zurich to recover from the stresses, Vaslav was nervous and paranoid about his condition, utterly terrified of confinement and hospitalisation. In 1919 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed, his 2nd daughter would be born a year later.
Diaghilev spent almost the rest of his life in asylums and sanatoriums, for long periods he would not utter a word. He spent the 2nd world war in Austria, his wife tried keeping him out of fighting. One anecdote recalls him hearing a group of Russian soldiers playing music inspiring Vaslav to dance for them. In 1947 he moved to England with his wife, he died from kidney failure in London 3 years later. This photo dates from 1912, dancing in "Afternoon of a Faun" based on Debussy's piece.
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