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Pornografia
''Pornografia'' is a 1960 novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. The narrative revolves around two middle-aged Warsawian intellectuals, who during a trip to the countryside during World War II construct a scheme to entice two teenagers in a scheme to disturb the young girl's fiancé and, later, to have the youngsters enact the murder of a leader in the Polish resistance. Publication The book was originally published in 1960. In 1966, an English translation from French was published in the United Kingdom through Calder and Boyars, and the United States through Grove Press. In 2009 Grove Press published an English translation by Danuta Borchardt, from the original Polish. Critical response Upon the 2009 American release, Michael Dirda wrote in ''The Washington Post'' that ''Pornografia'' "seems as sick, as pathologically creepy a novel as one is ever likely to read. In some ways, it resembles a rather more polymorphously perverse version of ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' or one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witold Gombrowicz
Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, '' Ferdydurke'', which presented many of his usual themes: problems of immaturity and youth, creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the ''Paris Review'', "widely considered his masterpiece", while ''Cosmos'' is considered, according to ''The New Yorker'', "his most accomplished novel". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, from 1966 to 1969. Biography Polish years Gombrowicz was born in Małoszyce near Opatów, then in Radom Gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Jakub Kolski
Jan Jakub Kolski (born 29 January 1956) is a Polish film director, cinematographer, and writer. Early life and career Kolski was born in Wrocław, and comes from a family closely connected to cinema. His father, Roman Kolski, and his sister, Ewa Pakulska were film editors. His brother, Włodzimierz Kolski, is a production manager. His paternal grandfather was a film producer. Kolski's wife, Grażyna Błęcka-Kolska is an actress. From age eleven until age fourteen, Kolski lived in a small village, Popielawy, near Tomaszów Mazowiecki and Łódź. Those years became the inspiration for his later films. During the late 1970s, he worked his way through the ranks at a TV station in his home town, ending up as chief director of photography. He then studied cinematography at the famous Film School in Łódź, where he now runs a screenplay workshop. In 2007 he gained his doctoral degree in film art. He's also a lecturer at Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Works During th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pornografia (film)
''Pornografia'' is a 2003 Polish–French film directed by Jan Jakub Kolski. It is based on the 1960 Pornografia, novel of the same name by Witold Gombrowicz, set in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. The film touches on themes such as European society of the 1940s as a whole, Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories, guerrilla warfare, the Nazi invasion of Poland, Nazi invasion, murder, suicide, as well as eroticism, guilt, and manipulation of youth by adults. The score, composed by Zygmunt Konieczny, won the Georges Delerue Award at the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent, Flanders International Film Festival in 2003. Cast and characters * Krzysztof Majchrzak as Fryderyk * Adam Ferency as Witold * Krzysztof Globisz as Hipolit * Grażyna Błęcka-Kolska as Maria * Grzegorz Damiecki as Waclaw Paszkowski * Jan Frycz as Siemian * Irena Laskowska as Amelia * Sandra Samos as Henia * Anna Baniowska as Weronika * Kazimierz Mazur as Karol * Jan Urbanski as Skuziak * Magdal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grove Press
Grove Press is an United States of America, American Imprint (trade name), publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an Alternative media, alternative book press in the United States. He partnered with Richard Seaver to bring French literature to the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove later became an imprint of the publisher Grove Atlantic, Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Early years Grove Press was founded in 1947 in Greenwich Village on Grove Street. The original owners only published three books in three years and so sold it to Barney Rosset in 1951 for three thousand dollars. Literary avant-garde Under Rosset's leadership, Grove introduced American readers to European avant-garde literature and theatre, including French authors Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Genet, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Dirda
Michael Dirda (born 1948) is a book critic for the ''Washington Post''. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Career Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree in 1970, Dirda took an M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977 from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the ''Washington Post''; in 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his criticism. Currently, he is a book columnist for the ''Post''. In 2002, Dirda was invested as a member of The Baker Street Irregulars. Works Two collections of Dirda's literary journalism have been published: * ''Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) * ''Bound to Please'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005) He has also written: * ''An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003) (autobiography) * ''Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life'' (New York: Henry Holt, 2005) * ''Classics for Ple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large national audience. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. Financier Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy in 1933 and revived its health and reputation, work continued by his successors Katharine and Phil Graham (Meyer's daughter and son-in-law), who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post'' 1971 printing of the Pentagon Papers helped spur opposition to the Vietnam War. Subsequently, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
''Les Liaisons dangereuses'' (; English: ''Dangerous Liaisons'') is a French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes by Durand Neveu from March 23, 1782. It is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two amoral lovers-turned-rivals who amuse themselves by ruining others and who ultimately destroy each other. It has been seen as depicting the corruption and depravity of the French nobility shortly before the French Revolution, and thereby attacking the Ancien Régime despite having been written nearly a decade prior to those events. The author aspired to "write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death". As an epistolary novel, the book is composed of letters written by the various characters to each other. In particular, the letters between Valmont and the Marquise mark up the majority of the plot, along with those of Cécile de Volanges and Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. Early life Georges Bataille was the son of Joseph-Aristide Bataille (b. 1851), a tax collector (later to go blind and be paralysed by neurosyphilis), and Antoinette-Aglaë Tournarde (b. 1865). Born on 10 September 1897 in Billom in the region of Auvergne, his family moved to Reims in 1898, where he was baptized. He went to school in Reims and then Épernay. Although brought up without religious observance, he converted to Catholicism in 1914, and became a devout Catholic for about nine years. He considered entering the priesthood and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Story Of The Eye
''Story of the Eye'' (french: L'histoire de l'œil) is a 1928 novella written by Georges Bataille that details the increasingly bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenage lovers, including an early depiction of omorashi fetishism in Western literature. It is narrated by the young man looking back on his exploits. Plot summary ''Story of the Eye'' consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this episodic narrative two secondary figures emerge: Marcelle, a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl who comes to a sad end, and Sir Edmund, a voyeuristic English émigré aristocrat. The story starts with our narrator and Simone meeting at her villa three days after first being introduced through their families being distantly related. Shortly after, Simone instigates a dare from the narrator to sit in a saucer intended for the cat's milk, which she wins by si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Klossowski
Pierre Klossowski (; ; 9 August 1905 – 12 August 2001) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus. Life Born in Paris, Pierre Klossowski was the older brother of the artist Balthazar Klossowski, better known as Balthus. Their parents were the art historian Erich Klossowski and the painter Baladine Klossowska. His German-educated father came from a family supposedly belonging to the former Polish petty nobility (drobna szlachta) and bearing the Rola coat of arms. His mother, Baladine Klossowska, was born as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland). When he was 18, Pierre was André Gide's secretary and worked on the drafts of ''The Counterfeiters (novel), Les faux-monnayeurs'' for him. Klossowski was responsible for a new publication of ''The 120 Days of Sodom & Other Writings'' by the Marquis de Sade in 1964. Writing Klossows ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', ''The Ambassadors'', and ''The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts". Miłosz survived the German occupation of Warsaw during World War II and became a cultural attaché for the Polish government during the postwar period. When communist authorities threatened his safety, he defected to France and ultimately chose exile in the United States, where he became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of Stalinism in a prose book, ''The Captive Mind'', brought him renown as a leading ''émigré'' artist and intellectual. Throughout his life and work, Miłosz tackled questions of morality, politics, history, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
