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Human Wishes
''Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment'' is a collection of previously uncollected writings by Samuel Beckett, spanning his entire career. The title is derived from the Latin phrase " disjecta membra", meaning scattered remains or fragments, usually applied to written work. The essays appear in their original language of composition (English, French, or German), as stipulated by Beckett, since the volume is intended for scholars who should be able to read several languages. Beckett himself did not value these pieces much, seeing them as "mere products of friendly obligation or economic need". The collection includes Beckett's famous essay on an early version of James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'' which originally appeared in ''Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress''. Contents * Foreword by Ruby Cohn Part I: Essays at Esthetics * Dante...Bruno. Vico.. Joyce – ''essay on Finnegans Wake'' * Le Concentrisme – ''an account ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. It became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH (Réseau Gloria). Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey ( ga, Seán Ó Cathasaigh ; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. Early life O'Casey was born at 85 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin, as John Casey, the son of Michael Casey, a mercantile clerk (who worked for the Irish Church Missions), and Susan Archer. His parents were Protestants and he was a member of the Church of Ireland, baptised on 28 July 1880 in St. Mary's parish, confirmed at St John the Baptist Church in Clontarf, and an active member of St. Barnabas' Church on Sheriff Street until his mid-20s, when he drifted away from the church. There is a church called 'Saint Burnupus' in his play '' Red Roses For Me''. O'Casey's father died when Seán was just six years of age, leaving a family of thirteen. The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. Early works include ''Life of Mr Richard Savage'', the poems ''London'' and ''The Vanity of Human Wishes'' and the play ''Irene''. After nine years' effort, Johnson's '' A Dictionary of the English Language'' appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated ''The Plays of William Shakespeare'', and the apologue ''The History of R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hodge (cat)
Hodge (fl. c.1769) was one of Samuel Johnson's cats, immortalised in a characteristically whimsical passage in James Boswell's 1791 book ''Life of Johnson''. Although there is little known about Hodge, such as his life, his death, or any other information, what is known is Johnson's fondness for his cat, which separated Johnson from the views held by others of the eighteenth century. Life Most of the information on Hodge comes from Boswell's account. It is in this passage that Johnson is claimed to have an affection for animals in general, or at least the ones that he kept: The latter anecdote is used as the epigraph to Vladimir Nabokov's acclaimed poem/novel ''Pale Fire''. Johnson bought oysters for his cat. In modern England, oysters are an expensive food for the well-to-do, but in the 18th century oysters were plentiful around the coasts of England and so cheap that they were a staple food of the poor. Johnson refused to send Francis Barber to buy Hodge's food, fearing t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Williams (poet)
Anna Williams by Frances Reynolds Anna Williams (1706 – 6 September 1783) was a Welsh poet. She was a close companion of the writer Samuel Johnson, who said he was "very desolate" when she died. Cataracts left Williams blind or visually impaired in the 1740s, when Johnson took her under his wing and helped to support her. She joined his household until her death, apart from an interval of six years. In return, Williams supervised Johnson's household management and expenses. Besides poetry, she wrote an unfinished dictionary of philosophical terms and translated and published a French biography of the emperor Julian. Life Early life She was born at Rosemarket, Pembrokeshire to Zachariah Williams (1668/73–1755), a scientist and physician, and his wife, Martha. Her father provided her with a wide artistic and scientific education, Italian and French. In 1726–27, the family moved to London, staying at the Charterhouse, where Anna helped her father while he experimented ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avigdor Arikha
Avigdor Arikha ( he, אביגדור אריכא; April 28, 1929 – April 29, 2010) was a Romanian-born French–Israeli artist, printmaker and art historian. Biography Victor Długacz (later Avigdor Arikha) was born to German-speaking Jewish parents in Rădăuţi, but grew up in Czernowitz in Bukovina, Romania (now in Ukraine). His father was an accountant. In 1941, the family was forcibly deported to the Romanian-run concentration camps of Transnistria, where his father was beaten to death. Arikha survived thanks to the drawings he made of deportation scenes, which were shown to delegates of the International Red Cross. Arikha immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1944, together with his sister. Until 1948, he lived in Kibbutz Ma'ale HaHamisha. In 1948 he was severely wounded in 1948 Arab–Israeli War. From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he learned the fresco t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bram Van Velde
Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde (19 October 1895 – 28 December 1981) was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction. He is often seen as member of the School of Paris but his work resides somewhere between expressionism and surrealism, and evolved in the 1960s into an expressive abstract art. His paintings from the 1950s are similar to the contemporary work of Matisse, Picasso and the abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb. He was championed by a number of French-speaking writers, including Samuel Beckett and the poet André du Bouchet. Early life Bram van Velde was born in Zoeterwoude, near Leiden, into an intensely poor family, and this would mark him profoundly for life. His mother, Catharina von der Voorst (1867–1949) was the illegitimate daughter of a Count. His father, Willem van Velde (1868–1914) owned a small company engaged in water transportation on the Rhin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Hayden
Henri Hayden, born Henryk Hayden (December 24, 1883 – May 12, 1970), was a Polish painter. Born in Warsaw, Hayden lived and worked in Paris. Hayden studied engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnic from 1902 to 1905, while simultaneously pursuing studies at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and eventually moved to France in 1907. In Paris, he became acquainted with the artists associated with the Ecole de Paris and later raised to prominence as a Cubist painter. Hayden said that "I only absorbed Cubism in 1915, after having swallowed and digested all of French painting in a few years. This rapid absorption led me, in a spirit of creative synthesis, without even realising, to Picasso and Braque's experimentation at the time." His first exhibition took place at the Galerie Druet in 1911. One of Hayden's first dealers was Leonce Rosenberg, who organised an exhibition of his works in 1919. Collections Hayden's works are held in several major museum collections worldwide, including the Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Dialogues
Originally published in ''transition'' 49 in 1949, ''Three Dialogues'' represents a small part (fewer than 3000 words) of a correspondence between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit about the nature of contemporary art, with particular reference to the work of Pierre Tal-Coat, André Masson and Bram van Velde. It might more accurately be said that beneath these surface references may be found an invaluable commentary on Beckett's own struggle with expression at a particularly creative and pivotal period of his life. A frequently quoted example is the following recommendation, ostensibly for what Tal Coat's work should strive towards: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express." A great strength of these dialogues is the wit of both participants, combined with Duthuit's persistent and intelligent challenges to Beckett's pessimism, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geer Van Velde
Gerardus "Geer" van Velde (5 April 1898, Lisse – 5 March 1977, Cachan, Paris) was a Dutch painter. Biography Early life Van Velde was the second son of Willem Adriaan van Velde, then owner of a small case of inland waterway transport fuelwood and charcoal on the Rhine and Hendrika Catharina von der Voorst, illegitimate daughter of an earl. Catharina and her four children (Neeltje, Bram, Geer, and Jacoba) were abandoned by Willem Adriaan after the bankruptcy of his business, leaving them in misery. Moving a lot, they eventually moved to The Hague in 1903. In 1910, at the age of twelve, Geer became an apprentice designer in the firm with Schaijk & Eduard H. Kramers. Kramers encouraged Geer to develop his interest in painting, as he did with his brother Bram van Velde Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde (19 October 1895 – 28 December 1981) was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Play (play)
''Play'' is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as ''Spiel'' on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. It was not well-received upon its British premiere. Synopsis The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral "urns",Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 443 about three feet tall by preference,Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 159 arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three stock characters. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress (W2). Their " ces reso lost to age and aspect as to seem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endgame (play)
''Endgame'', by Samuel Beckett, is an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play about a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents and his doddering, dithering, harried, servile companion in an abandoned shack in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who mention their awaiting some unspecified “end” which seems to be the end of their relationship, death, and the end of the actual play itself. Much of the play’s content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions; the plot is held together by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story the character Hamm is writing. An aesthetically profound part of the play is the way the story-within-story and the actual play come to an end at roughly the same time. The play’s title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate. It was originally written in French (entitled ''Fin de partie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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