Grook
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Grook
A grook ( da, gruk) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aphorism, created by the Danish poet, designer, inventor and scientist Piet Hein, who wrote over 10,000 of them, mostly in Danish. They have been published in Danish in 20 volumes. Each grook has a unique line drawing accompanying the words of the poem and providing additional meaning. Some say that the name "''gruk''" is short for "''grin & suk''" (), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin air. The contemporary "''Hunden Grog''" ("Grog the Dog") stories by fellow cartoonist Storm P. has, in public opinion, been regarded as an inspiration. Piet Hein's ''gruks'' first started to appear in the daily newspaper "''Politiken''" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance. The grooks are multi-faceted and characterized by irony, paradox, brevity, precise use of languag ...
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Piet Hein (scientist)
Piet Hein (16 December 1905 – 17 April 1996) was a Danish polymath (mathematician, inventor, designer, writer and poet), often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym Kumbel, meaning " tombstone". His short poems, known as '' gruks'' or grooks ( da, gruk), first started to appear in the daily newspaper ''Politiken'' shortly after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell". He also invented the Soma cube and the board game Hex. Biography Hein, a direct descendant of Piet Pieterszoon Hein, the 17th century Dutch naval hero, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (later to become the Niels Bohr Institute) of the University of Copenhagen, and Technical University of Denmark. Yale awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1972. He died in his home on Funen, Denmark in 1996. Resistance Piet Hein, who, in his own words, "played mental ping-pong" with Niels Bohr in the inter-War period, found himself con ...
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Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the S ...
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Aphorism
An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tradition from generation to generation. The concept is generally distinct from those of an adage, brocard, chiasmus, epigram, maxim (legal or philosophical), principle, proverb, and saying; although some of these concepts may be construed as types of aphorism. Often, aphorisms are distinguished from other short sayings by the need for interpretation to make sense of them. In ''A Theory of the Aphorism'', Andrew Hui defined an aphorism as "a short saying that requires interpretation." History The word was first used in the '' Aphorisms'' of Hippocrates, a long series of propositions concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing and medicine. The often cited first sentence of this work is: "" - "life is shor ...
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Storm P
Robert Storm Petersen (19 September 1882 – 6 March 1949) was a Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist. He is known almost exclusively by his pen name Storm P. Biography He was the son of a butcher and grew up in Copenhagen in a lower middle class environment. After interrupted studies at the Academy of Art, he worked as a free-lance painter, illustrator and cabaret entertainer. Already during World War I he was a well-known artist, and from about 1920 onward he was almost a national "institution" as a humorist, partly because of his versatile interests. His first comic strip was printed in 1906, in the Danish tabloid ''Ekstra Bladet''. He was for many years connected to the Copenhagen newspaper ''Berlingske Tidende'' as a comic writer and cartoonist. As a humorist, Storm P. is related to British and American humor, with a strong touch of craziness and absurdity. Often his starting point is a plain Copenhagen jargon, combined with a ...
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Politiken
''Politiken'' is a leading Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, published by JP/Politikens Hus in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in 1884 and played a role in the formation of the Danish Social Liberal Party. Since 1970 it has been independent of the party but maintains a liberal stance. It now runs an online newspaper, ''politiken.dk''. The paper's design has won several international awards, and a number of its journalists have won the Cavling Prize. History and profile ''Dagbladet Politiken'' was founded on 1 October 1884 in Copenhagen by Viggo Hørup, Edvard Brandes and Hermann Bing. Hørup and Brandes formed the newspaper after being fired as editors from the ''Morgenbladet'' over political differences. Hørup led the paper as editor-in-chief for fifteen years from its start in 1884. In 1904, the tabloid ''Ekstra Bladet'' was founded as a supplement to ''Politiken ''and was later spun off as an independent newspaper on 1 January 1905. The paper established its present ...
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Occupation Of Denmark
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral. For most of the war, the country was a protectorate and then an occupied territory of Germany. The decision to occupy Denmark was taken in Berlin on 17 December 1939. On 9 April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark in Operation Weserübung. The Danish government and king functioned as relatively normal in a ''de facto'' protectorate over the country until 29 August 1943, when Germany placed Denmark under direct military occupation, which lasted until the Allied victory on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1945. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until the Danish government stepped down in a protest against German demands to institute the death penalty for sabotage. Just over 3,000 Danes ...
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Irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into different types, including ''verbal irony'', ''dramatic irony'', and ''situational irony''. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection. Definitions Henry Watson Fowler, in ''The King's English'', says, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." Also, Eric Partrid ...
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Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself, and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification ...
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Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word ''rhyme'' has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme. Etymology The word derives from Old French ''rime'' or ''ryme'', which might be derived from Old Frankish ''rīm'', a Germanic term meaning "series, sequence" attested in Old English (Old English ''rīm'' meaning "enumeration, series, numeral") and Old High German ''rīm'', ultimately cognate to Old Irish ''rím'', Greek ' ''arithmos'' "number". Alternatively, the Old French words may derive from Latin ''rhythmus'', from ...
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Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to question. Satire is found in many a ...
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Genres Of Poetry
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, a ...
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