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Alexis Saint-Legér Léger
Alexis Leger (; 31 May 1887 – 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (; also Saint-Leger Leger), was a French poet, writer and diplomat, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time" Early life Alexis Leger was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. His great-grandfather, Prosper Louis Léger, a solicitor, had settled in Guadeloupe in 1815. His grandfather and father were also solicitors; his father was also a member of the city council. The Leger family owned two plantations, one of coffee (La Joséphine) and the other of sugar (Bois-Debout). St. Léger described his childhood on Guadeloupe as "the son of a family French as only the colonials are French". Later on, Léger greatly embellished his family origins by changing his surname to the more aristocratic sounding St Léger-Léger and by claiming that his ancestors were a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to Anti-imperialism, criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, he was described in his obituary in ''The New York Times'' as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti." Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide expressed the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively). Gide engaged in child rape; having sex with young boys who were not of the age of consent. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, libretto, librettist, Poetry, poet, Playwdramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, the son of an upper-class Christian Austrian mother, Anna Maria Josefa Fohleutner (1852–1904), and a Christian Austrian–Italian bank manager, Hugo August Peter Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal (1841–1915).Carl Emil Schorske, Schorske, Carl E. ''Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture'', 1980. His grandfather was Augustin Emil Hofmann von Hofmannsthal and his great-grandfather was Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal, from whom his family inherited the noble title "Edler von Hofmannsthal", was a Jewish tobacco farmer ennobled by the Austrian emperor.J. D. McClatchy, McClatchy, J. D. (editor). ''The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal'', Princeton University Press, 2008, . Chapter 1 contains a brief biog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti (; 8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as ("Hermeticism"), he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th-century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned with futurism. Like many futurists, he took an irredentist position during World War I. Ungaretti debuted as a poet while fighting in the trenches, publishing one of his best-known pieces, ("The Joy"). During the interwar period, Ungaretti worked as a journalist with Benito Mussolini (whom he met during his socialist accession), as well as a foreign-based correspondent for and . While briefly associated with the Dadaists, he developed Hermeticism as a personal take on poetry. After spending several years in Brazil, he returned home during World War II, and was assigne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Six
"Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name has its origins in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' Comœdia'' (see Bibliography). Their music is often seen as a neoclassic reaction against both the musical style of Richard Wagner and the Impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The members were Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983). ' In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of World War I, Blaise Cendrars and the painter Moïse Kisling decided to put on concerts at 6 , the studio of the painter Émile Lejeune (1885–1964). For the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Modigliani, and others. Music by Erik Sati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nadia Boulanger
Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher, conductor and composer. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were many important composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Grażyna Bacewicz, Daniel Barenboim, Lennox Berkeley, İdil Biret, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, David Diamond (composer), David Diamond, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Gilbert Levine, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Julia Perry, Astor Piazzolla,. Laurence Rosenthal, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century classical music, composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernism (music), modernist music. Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the Saint Petersburg State University, University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913), the last of which caused a List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience respons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristide Briand
Aristide Pierre Henri Briand (; 28 March 18627 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (19181939). In 1926, he received the Nobel Peace Prize along with German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann for the realization of the Locarno Treaties, which aimed at reconciliation between France and Germany after the First World War. To avoid another worldwide conflict, he was instrumental in the agreement known as the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, as well to establish a "History of the European Union, European Union" in 1929. However, all his efforts were compromised by the rise of nationalistic and revanchist ideas like Nazism and fascism following the Great Depression. Early life He was born in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique) of a ''petite bourgeoisie, pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington Naval Conference
The Washington Naval Conference (or the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament) was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations (the United States, Japan, China, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal) regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Germany was not invited to the conference, as restrictions on its navy had already been set in the Versailles Treaty. Soviet Russia was also not invited to the conference. It was the first arms control conference in history, and is still studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement. Held at Memorial Continental Hall, in Downtown Washington, it resulted in three major treaties: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty (more commonly known as the Washington Naval Tre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine '' Fortune'' from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work. Early years MacLeish was born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois. His father, Scottish-born Andrew MacLeish, worked as a dry-goods merchant and was a founder of the Chicago department store Carson Pirie Scott. His mother, Martha (née Hillard), was a college professor and had served as president of Rockford C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nellie Yu Roung Ling
Nellie Yu Roung Ling ( zh, t=裕容齡, w=Yü Jung-ling, p=Yù Rónglíng; 188216 January 1973), also spelt Nelly, was a Han Chinese Eight Banners, Hanjun Plain White Banner, Plain White bannerwoman and dancer, who is considered "the first modern dancer of China". She was the younger daughter of and Louisa Pierson, the other one being Princess Der Ling, Lizzie Yu Der Ling. Although not a member of the House of Aisin-Gioro, Qing imperial family, Roung Ling was given the title of "" while serving as a lady-in-waiting for Empress Dowager Cixi. She was also known as Yu Roon(g) Ling, especially in the works of her sister Der Ling. She was referred to as Madame Dan Pao Tchao after her marriage to the General Dan Pao Tchao (; 1887–1958), and Princess Shou Shan, a title appeared on the cover of her 1934 historical novella about the Fragrant Concubine (''Hsiang Fei''), a name Reginald Johnston, Sir Reginald Johnston claimed she never used. Early life Born in an upper-class family, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
