Jorge Luis Borges facts

Borges' full name was Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges.

The Argentine writer was born on August 24, 1899.

Borges already knew how to read and write at the age of 4.

Jorge Luis Borges was raised in a bilingual family in Buenos Aires. It was so natural for him to speak two languages that it was not until he was a grown child that he realized that Spanish and English were two different languages.

Borges' only childhood friendship was his own sister Norah.

In 1938, Borges was hit in the head. While he was recovering, he almost died of blood poisoning. After this experience Borges changed his way of thinking, and began to write in a new style, one that he would not abandon for the rest of his life.

Borges was blind for the last 30 years of his life. Something that didn't stop him from publishing.

Although Jorge Luis Borges was a world-renowned writer, he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Bioy Casares and Borges wrote works together under the pseudonym 'H. Bustos Domecq'.

For literary critics The Aleph is their best collection of short stories.

Borges never sympathized with the government of Juan Domingo Perón, whom he accused of being a dictator.

The Peronist government, which also did not sympathize with Borges, appointed him 'Inspector of Poultry Markets'.

Jorge Luis Borges was shy and stuttered when speaking, problems he had to overcome with medical help.

After the overthrow of the Peronist government, Borges was elected director of the National Library in 1955.

Borges' idea of paradise was that of a huge library.

In 1962 the film version of his tale Man in the Pink Corner was made.

Weeks before he died, Borges married his secretary, Maria Kodama.

In 1999 the government of Argentina issued a series of coins commemorating the centennial of Jorge Luis Borges' birth.

.

Facts about Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta, India on 7 May 1961.

Rabindranath Tagore was the first writer from Asia to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

The national anthems of both Bangladesh and India originate in two songs by Rabindranath Tagore: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana.

Rabindranath's parents were Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi.

In 1883 Rabindranath Tagore married Mrinalini Devi with whom he would have 5 children.

In 1915 Tagore was knighted by the British Crown, but he got rid of such recognition in 1919, after the massacre committed against the independence movement of India.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote more than 3,000 songs throughout his life. He also wrote novels, short stories, theatre and poems.

Facts about Dante Alighieri

The word 'divine' was first added to the 1555 edition of The Divine Comedy; the original title was simply The Comedy.

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in the city of Florence.

In 1274, at the age of nine, Dante meets for the first time Beatriz Portinari, who would provide the inspiration for his major works.

The Divine Comedy has been illustrated by Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, John Flaxman, William Blake, Gustave Doré, and Salvador Dalí, and has inspired the music of Tchaikovsky, Giovanni Pacini, and Franz Liszt.

Dante Alighieri considered the Latin poet Virgil one of his most important influences, so much so that in the Divine Comedy he was the character who guided the poet on his journey through Hell and Purgatory. While Beatriz, muse and beloved poet of Dante, was his guide in Heaven.

In 1292 Dante wrote Vita Nuova.

In 1277 Dante Alighieri marries Gemma Donati, with whom he has 4 children: Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni and Antonia.

Dante Alighieri died in September 1321.

In 2007, Italian scientists from the University of Bologna recreated Dante's royal face. The model is believed to be the closest to its true appearance. A portrait made by Botticelli was used as a base next to the skull.

The sculpture known as Rodin's Thinker was originally baptized by Rodin as Dante thinking of the gates of hell. Although it is popularly known as The Thinker.

The iconography of Auguste Rodin's The Gates of Hell is based on Dante's The Divine Comedy and Baudelaire's poems from his The Flowers of Evil, trying to make a great allegory of love and condemnation.

The Heavy Metal band, Iced Earth has as one of its top works the song Dante`s Inferno that lasts 16 minutes and is based on the Divine Comedy.

.

Facts about Cervantes

It was in Alcalá de Henares where Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, known as the prince of ingenuity, was born.

The ingenious nobleman Don Quixote de la Mancha is considered the first modern novel, and the greatest work of Spanish literature and one of the best in world history.

Cervantes, though eager to write poetry, never considered himself a good poet, and even lamented it. Here are some of his own verses on the subject:

I always work and wake up

for seeming to be a poet.

the grace that heaven didn't want to give me

Cervantes lost the mobility of his left hand in the battle of Lepanto, when a piece of lead severed a nerve. Hence the nickname of the Lepanto´s one-armed.

Both the wound on his hand and his participation in the battle of Lepanto was a source of great pride for Cervantes. In the prologue of the second part of Don Quixote he wrote: the highest occasion that the past centuries saw, the present ones, nor do they expect to see the future ones.

Cervantes suffered 5 years of captivity in Algiers; during that time he tried to escape unsuccessfully on 4 occasions from prison. In 1580, Friar Juan Gil, a Trinitarian father, paid the five hundred gold escudos they were asking for the ransom of Cervantes.

In 1597 Cervantes was imprisoned in the Royal Prison of Seville for alleged mishandling as a tax collector. In the solitude of the prison Cervantes conceives his Quixote.

In 1605 Miguel de Cervantes published the first part of the Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, the first edition of which was soon sold out.

Don Quixote was conceived by Cervantes as a parody of the books of chivalry.

The second part of Don Quixote was published in 1615, one year before Cervantes' death.

The great English writer William Shakespeare came to read the first part of Don Quixote de la Mancha.

There is a common place, that both Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same date (April 23, 1616); however Cervantes died on April 22, being buried on April 23, while Shakespeare's England then governed the Julian calendar, so in reality Shakespeare's death occurred on May 3.

.

Frankenstein (novel)

   Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel of terror by the English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, published in 1818. It is the story of a young scientist, Frankenstein, who tries to create a living man from corpses he has stolen from morgues and graveyards. Frankenstein succeeds in creating a manlike monster whose hideous appearance frightens everyone he encounters. Rejected by the world, the monster turns on his creator and causes the death of Frankenstein's family and friends. Frankenstein pursues the monster who flees to the arctic regions. There Frankenstein dies, and the creature disappears.
   This novel, written by the wife of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shaelley, has been made into several motion pictures and remains one of the most popular horror stories in English fiction. Since Mrs. Shelley gave no name to the monster, he has become known by the name of his creator, Frankenstein.

George Gascoigne

   George Gascoigne was an English writer. Born Cardington, England, about 1525. Died Stamford, England, Oct. 7, 1577.
   Gascoigne was a pioneer in English Renaissance literature. A resourceful innovator, he was among the first English writers to use such literary forms as the prose comedy, verse tragedy, verse satire, novel, and critical essay. Gascoigne's The Supposes (1566) is the oldest existing English prose comedy, and his Jocasta (1566) is the second oldest English tragedy in blank verse.
Gascoigne also wrote The Adventures of Master F. J. (1573), which has been called the first English novel. His satiric poem The Steele Glas (1576) was the first original English poem, other than a verse drama, to be written in blank verse. Gascoigne also wrote fine lyric poetry.

Who was Rómulo Gallegos?

   Rómulo Gallegos was a Venezuelan novelist, educator, and statesman. Born Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 2, 1884 - April 7, 1969.
   Gallegos' works include some of the finest novels in modern Spanish-American literature. His novels usually take place in the llanos, the vast tropical plains of Venezuela, and they depict a never-ending battle between civilization and barbarism. The most famous of his books are Doña Bárbara (1929) and Cantaclaro (1934).
   In his early life, Gallegos was a teacher. His first novel was El último Solar (1920), later revised and published as Reinaldo Solar (1930). Because he was opposed to the government of the Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gomez, Gallegos went to Spain in voluntary exile in 1931 and stayed there until Gomez' death in 1935. For a time after his return to Venezuela he was minister of education. In 1947 he was elected president, but a military coup the next year removed him from office. During his years of political activity, Gallegos continued to write novels and to direct adaptations of his works for motion pictures.

Theophile Gautier

   Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), was a French poet, and one of the most influential prose writers of the middle of the 19th century, was born in Tarbes. As a man of letters he had a fine sense of rhythm, together with a fervent and romantic fancy. Gautier threw himself eagerly into the war of the romanticists against the classicists, and was conspicuous on the nights of the celebrated "Battle of Hernani" in 1830. Gautier made his debut with a volume of verse in this same year (1830). Three years later followed another volume, Albertus, which is bolder and more original, although it never rises to the height of fine poetry. His first novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), was an extravagant romance about an adventuress who disguised herself as a man. The book was designed to outrage the public taste but succeeded beyond Gautier's expectations and became the basis of a legend that all his work was lurid and erotic. Balzac admired Mademoiselle de Maupin, and engaged Gautier on Le chronique de Paris, which he was editing. In 1838 Gautier wrote his Comedie de la mart, which marks a break with his first romantic epoch. Soon after this he began his series of travel-pictures, which extend from 1845 to 1866, and describe various parts of France, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Turkey (Constantinople). During the same period Gautier was writing a series of archaeological works, of which Le Roman de la momie is the best known. His Une larme du diable (1839) has a certain resemblance in spirit to Albertus. Le capitaine Fracasse (1863) is a sort of aftermath of the romantic spirit, tending more toward irony and toward the fantastic than the earlier books. Emaux et camees (1852-72), the best of his poetry, anticipates the passivity of the Parnassians and illustrates his "art for art's sake" theories. He died at Neuilly, near Paris. The following is a partial list of his principal productions: Poems—La com'edie de, la mart (1838); Les intirieurs et Us passages (1845); Emaux et Camees (1852). Novels, stories, etc.— Une nuit de Cleopatre (1836); Le roi Candaules (1847); Militona (1848); Les roues innocents (1849); Jean et Jeannette (1850); Partie carree (1851); Arria Marcella (1852); Jettatura (1857); Avatar (1857); La Belle Jenny (1864); La peau de tigre (1852); Spirite (1865); Les jeunes France (1867). To these must be added the half-autobiographical Paradis des chats (embodying Gautier's special affection for cats) and Menagerie intime (1869). Finally, an immense quantity of criticism of literature and art, and of the history of art: L'histoire despeintres, in collab. (1847); L'art moderne (1852); Les beaux-arts en Europe (1852); Les dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture, in collab. (1856); Histoire de I'art dramatique (1860); Histoire du romantisme (1874).

Thomas De Quincey

   Thomas De Quincey was an English essayist and critic. Born Manchester, England, Aug. 15, 1785. Died Edinburgh, Scotland, Dec. 8, 1859.
   De Quincey wrote some of the most powerfully imaginative essays in the English language. In his best work he combined poetic effects of rhythm and imagery with scholarly detail and painstaking logic. His subjects ranged from literary criticism and biography to personal reminiscence and the analysis of dreams. De Quincey's best-known work, the autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822), is one of the classics of English prose. It is a frank and compelling description of his long struggle to break his addiction to drugs. Among De Quincey's important shorter essays are On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth and Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.
   As a boy, De Quincey ran away from school and wandered through Wales and the streets of London. He later studied at Oxford University but left without taking a degree. While at Oxford, he began to take opium to relieve a painful ailment, and he became permanently addicted to the drug. Its influence on his work has been the subject of much critical study.
   De Quincey was a friend of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth and was one of the first literary critics to appreciate his talent. For many years he lived near Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey in the Lake District. Some of his reminiscences about these poets were so startlingly intimate that Southey called him a "cowardly spy" and a "traitor." In 1830, De Quincey settled in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Blackwood's Magazine published many of his essays. During the last years of his life he revised and collected his work into a 14-volume edition. Although many of his essays are no longer widely read, the best of them are considered outstanding contributions to English literature.

Pierre Corneille

   Pierre Corneille was a French dramatist. Born Rouen, France, June 6, 1606. Died Paris, France, Oct. 1, 1684.
   Corneille was the first author of great French tragedies. He and his contemporary Jean Racine are generally considered the foremost playwrights of the Neoclassical period in France. Using Greek tragedy as his model, Corneille wrote dramas of epic grandeur and dignity. His masterpiece is The Cid (1637), a romantic story based on the legends of the Spanish hero El Cid.
   Many of Corneille's plays are based on legend and history. The principal figures are people of noble character and high position who must resolve a conflict between their emotions and their sense of duty. Corneille exalts reason and willpower above sentiment, and at times his heroes seem almost superhuman in their devotion to honor. His plays are especially celebrated for their eloquent poetry and their studies of character.
   Corneille studied law but never practiced it. From 1629 to 1650 he was a magistrate in Rouen. He began his dramatic career with a comedy, Melite, which was successfully produced in Paris in 1629. He wrote several other successful comedies, the best known of which is The Liar (Le Menteur, 1643). His first tragedy was Medea (Médée, 1635).
    For a short time, Corneille was patronized by Cardinal Richelieu, but the two men quarreled. When The Cid was first produced, the French Academy, at Richelieu's request, endorsed a critique of the play that claimed it had faulty construction and forced Corneille to adhere more closely to strict Classical rules. After several years of silence he produced his three famous tragedies, Horace (1640), Cinna (1640), and Polyeucte (about 1643). His later plays were less successful. The four great tragedies, however, remain among the undisputed classics of French literature.

The Count of Monte Cristo

   The Count of Monte Cristo, or Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, a romantic novel by the French author Alexandre Dumas père. The hero of the story is a young sailor, Edmond Dantès who is unjustly imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. He is befriended by another prisoner, the abbé Faria, who tells him of a great treasure buried on the island of Monte Cristo. When the abbé dies, Dantès takes the place of the corpse. His body is thrown into the sea, and he swims to safety. He then goes to the island and finds the treasure. Assuming the name of the Count of Monte Cristo, he travels to Paris with his newly acquired wealth. In Paris he avenges himself upon his enemies and richly rewards his friends.
   The novel was published in 12 volumes in 1844 and 1845. It is one of the most popular of all romantic adventure stories.

John Collier (writer)

   John Collier (1901-1980) was an English writer. Collier's novels and short stories are famous for their imaginative and ironic plots. Many are fantasies or horror stories with satirical overtones, such as the title story of the collection Green Thoughts (1932) and the novel His Monkey Wife (1930). Another novel, Full Circle (1933), predicts what life in England might be like in 1995, after war has ruined the country and turned the people into savages. Other works by Collier include Indians of the Americas (1947) and Milton's Paradise Lost (1973), a "screenplay for the cinema of the mind."

Roy Blount, Jr. quotes

Roy Alton Blount, Jr. (born October 4, 1941) is an American writer. Best known as a humorist, Blount is also a reporter, actor, and musician with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band composed entirely of writers.

• Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
• A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.
• A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat’s eyes don’t even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog’s eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, “What do you want me to do for you? I’ll do anything for you.” Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don’t have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing.
• In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is.
• I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies.
• Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.
• Usage ain't always a matter of ought.
• That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.

Tarik Gunersel quotes

Tarık Günersel (27 June 1953 in Istanbul, Turkey) is a Turkish aphorist, poet, playwright, and translator.

• Life is words in action, literature is action in words.
• Enter Love, exit Theory of Love.
• Is sincerity a virtue by itself? A serial killer has also acted sincerely.
• The art of dying is part of the art of living.
• Sociology: A branch of primatology.
• If only procrastination could be postponed!
• One who doesn’t know law thinks one lives in a jungle. One who knows law knows one lives in a jungle.
• Alexandre the Great was unable to untie the Gordion Knot. He simply cut it.
• You summarise your struggle for 20 years in 20 minutes and your child will remember 2 sentences, which is good.
• If life were enough for vitality, there would be no art.
• I am finally ready for the world. I hope it’s ready for me.
• An apprentice is a master in dreams. A master is an apprentice even in dreams.

Gustave Flaubert quotes

• A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
• Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
• Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
• There is no truth. There is only perception.
• A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
• I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
• Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
• The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
• Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
• Madame Bovary is myself.
• Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
• One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
• Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

------------------------------------------------

Gustave Flaubert quotes. Famous quotes by Gustave Flaubert. Gustave Flaubert quotations.

Quotes by Bertrand Russell

• Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
• The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
• Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
• Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
• Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
• War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
• The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
• I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
• The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
• The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
• To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
• There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
• To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

---------------------------------------

Famous quotes by Bertrand Russell. The best Bertrand Russell quotes. Quotations by Bertrand Russell.

Novalis quotes

• Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
• Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.
• We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
• Where children are, there is the golden age.
• Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
• Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.
• Where no gods are, spectres rule.
• Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.
• Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
• We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

----------------------------------------


Novalis quotes. Famous quotes by Novalis. Best quotations by Novalis. Great quotes by Novalis.

Charles Dickens quotes

• I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
• Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
• A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
• A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
• The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
• If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
• Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
• Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
• An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
• I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
• Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
• We forge the chains we wear in life.
• There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

------------------------------------

Great Charles Dickens quotes. Famous quotes by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens quotations.

Paulo Freire quotes

• Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
• If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.
• No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.
• The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves...
• language is never neutral.
• The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.
• The multitude is always in the wrong.
• The educator has the duty of not being neutral.
• The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.

----------------------------------------

Great Paulo Freire quotes. Famous quotes by Paulo Freire. Best quotes from Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire quotations.

Ambrose Bierce quotes

• War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
• Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
• Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
• Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
• Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
• Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
• Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
• An egotist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me.
• Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
• Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
• Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
• Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
• All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
• Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

---------------------------------------------


Great Ambrose Bierce quotes. Famous quotes by Ambrose Bierce. Ambrose Bierce quotations.