Sonines' Books: Merry Christmas!!!

jueves, 27 de diciembre de 2007

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas arrived! You have to forgive me because between lunch and lunch I haven't had time to write something on my blog. Well, if I had to suggested books, undoubtedly I'll speak of the last that they have given me this Christmas (which I have demanded): "Vida y destino" de Vasili Grossman and "Un día de cólera" de Reverte. Both seemingly bellicose but with a large philosophical base in the case of Vasili.

But I would like to quote from books that I personally have marked my childhood, and these nostalgic dates because I've passed a lot of evenings to read these books. One is "Leyendas" of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. In particular "Ojos verdes" . Also I read the famous book by Neruda, "Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor". Also I think I have read a lot of times "La isla del tesoro" by Stevenson. Those who have read Becquer you would love to read "Relatos" by Henry James. They are not fantasy or legends, but they are very entertaining. I remember to have read "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" in 5 times ... Not that I weren't bored so much, but it's better than to stay with the family! Merry Christmas to everybody!

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Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England. Her father, Patrick Brontë, had moved from Ireland to Weatherfield, in Essex, where he taught in Sunday school. Eventually he settled in Yorkshire, the centre of his life's work. In 1812 he married Maria Branwell of Penzance. Patrick Brontë loved poetry, he published several books of prose and verse and wrote to local newspapers. In 1820 he moved to Hawort, a poverty-stricken little town at the edge of a large tract of moorland, where he served as a rector and chairman of the parish committee.
The lonely purple moors became one of the most important shaping forces in the life of the Brontë sisters. Their parsonage home, a small house, was of grey stone, two stories high. The front door opened almost directly on to the churchyard. In the upstairs was two bedrooms and a third room, scarcely bigger than a closet, in which the sisters played their games. After their mother died in 1821, the children spent most of their time in reading and composition. To escape their unhappy childhood, Anne, Emily, Charlotte, and their brother Branwell (1817-1848) created imaginary worlds - perhaps inspired by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Between the years 1824 and 1825 Emily attended the school at Cowan Bridge with Charlotte, and then was largely educated at home. Her father's bookshelf offered a variety of reading: the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. In 1835 Emily Brontë was at Roe Head. There she suffered from homesickness and returned after a few months to home. To facilitate their plan to keep school for girls, Emily and Charlotte Brontë went in 1842 to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management. Emily returned on the same year to Haworth. In 1842 Aunt Branwell died. When she was no longer taking care of the house and her brother-in-law, Emily agreed to stay with her father.

Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters and was interested in mysticism. Her first novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a story-within-a-story, did not gain immediate success as Charlotte's Jane Eyre, but it has acclaimed later fame as one of the most intense novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood. He constantly misinterprets the reactions and interactions of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis in the late 1848. She had caught cold at her brother Branwell's funeral in September. After the appearance of Wuthering Heighs, some skeptics maintained that the book was written by Branwell, on the grounds that no woman from such circumscribed life, could have written such passionate story. In 1848 Charlotte and Anne visited George Smith to reveal their identity and to help quell rumors that a single author lay behind the pseudonyms. After her sisters' deaths, Charlotte edited a second edition of their novels, with prefatory commentary aimed at correcting what she saw as the reviewers' misunderstanding of Wuthering Heights. The complex time scheme of the novel had been taken as evidence by the critics, that Emily had not achieved full formal control over her narrative materials.

Biography

Born in Neva York in 1819. In his youth he enlisted as grumete in a sailboat and later toured the South Seas aboard a whaler. All these experiences served for the creation of a large part of his work, in which the action and adventure contrasting with a deep study on the feelings and limitations of human beings. Melville's works went unnoticed during his time, but today is regarded as one of the best writers of the nineteenth century. He died in New York in 1891.

Moby Dick (1851)

The masterpiece belatedly recognized Herman Melville. A young man embarks aboard a whaler and participates in the fight against seamen monster oceans. The great symbolic story of the confrontation between man and nature, and between good and evil.

The book deals with the obsessive and self-destructive pursuit of a great white whale conducted by Captain Acab. Moby Dick contains a of profound symbolism. It is generally recognized that shares characteristics of the allegory and the epic. Includes references to subjects as diverse as biology, religion, idealism, obsession, pragmatism, racism, and political hierarchy. The crew of the Pequod come from backgrounds as varied as France, Iceland, Holland, Italy, Malta, China, Denmark, Portugal, India, England, Spain and Ireland, suggesting that the vessel is a representation of humanity. The biblical allusions to the names of the characters or the significance of the white whale have intrigued readers and critics for more than a century.

“Ya he dicho lo que la ballena significaba para Acab pero, ¿y para mí? Aparte de las características peligrosas del animal estaba su blancura, que era lo que más me aterraba, ya que si bien en muchos objetos la banclura contribuye a aumentar su belleza, como en los mármoles y en otros objetos, lo cierto es que a mí me producía una extraña sensación de desasosiego”.

Biography

“And where there is no love, the reason, too, is absent”.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoïevski was born in Moscow in 11 November of 1821. His father, authoritarian, was assassinated by the peasants who worked for him. His mother died when he was young. Initially intended to pursue a career as an engineer in the engineering of the army, Dostoïevski to 23 years old decided to leave to devote himself to literature, and he writed a first novel: Poor Folk (1846). At 26 years old, he made a first hearts attacks. In 1849, two years later he was arrested for revolutionary activity against the Czar Nicolas I and sentenced to exile in a labor camp in Siberia. Six years later, he was assigned as an officer in a regiment of Siberia. Later he obtained the permission to live in St. Petersburg, under the supervision of the secret police. He change radically his design of the world and became religious and conservative. At age of 40, he met Maria Dmitrineva Isaeva who become his wife - she died in 1864. A year later, his brother Mikhail died, leaving behind a wife and a child. Dostoïevski be directed to their needs but continues to travel, to play roulette and covers debts, and then sliding into a terrible depression. Later, he hired as secretary to Anna Griogorievna Snitkine who became his wife in 1867. The writer became famous as the last year of his life, following the publication of Brothers Karamazov. He died of a hemorrhage in 1881, and his motorcade in St. Petersburg is followed by 30000 people. He had 60 years and leaved behind a great masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866), around the character Raskolnikov, The Player (1866) and The Idiot (1868). In 1971 wrote The Possessed, an exploration of philosopical nihilism. By the time of The Brothers Karamakov, which appered in 1979-1980, Dostovievski was recognized in his own country like as one of its greats writers.

His work tormented, haunted by the search for the truth, is both a realistic picture of the world and prophetic picture of the human soul. Both in his life and in his writing, Dostoïevski was inhabited by an ardent faith in Christ and in Russian people. His career has continued between elation and disillusionment.

These two exemples of novels of Dostovievski may seem very contradictory, but realy they are not. Only show the need for survival of human, beings face the others and himself in any situation:

Notes for the underground (1863)(Memorias del subsuelo)

Refugees in the basement, the character features is continually shouted down the human condition to advocate their right to freedom. A ferocious monologue, a man with no specific identity, except to be an official, he was represented himself like that from the front pages, he will narrate the memories of his personal tragedy. Dostovïesvki succeeds in creating a new antihero as are Raskólnikov or Ivan Karamákov against any imposition bureaucratic.

(Habla el protagonista sobre el personaje secundario de Apollón:)

“Llevábamos así ya varios años; le odiaba. ¡Dios cuanto le odiaba! Creo que en la vida había odiado tanto a nadie como a él; sobretodo en algunos momentos concretos.(...)Era un pedante elevado a grado sumo y el ser más vanidoso de cuantos hay sobre la faz de la tierra; y por añadidura, con un amor propio equiparable al de Alejandro Magno. Estaba enamorado de cada uno de sus botones, de cada uña suya; sí enamorado, irremisiblemente enamorado, y ¡enorgullecía de ello!(...) Le gustaba leer por las tardes, en voz baja pausada, como cuando se les canta a los cadáveres. Lo curioso es que acabó dedicándose a eso: ahora se ofrece para leer Salmos a los fallecidos, y a parte de eso, también fumiga ratas y hace betún.”

The Gambler (1866)(El jugador)

The fate of Alexis Ivanovich, consumed by two passions, the game and love of a woman, reveals the image of a humanity wishful crazy and aspirations uncontrolled, condemned to eternal nostalgia or the hope of salvation. Published in 1866, the same year as Crime and punishment, this novel tormented, which is the legacy of Russian romanticism and opens the access to the universe of the great writer.
Alexei is a prototypical gambler who rationalizes and defends his growing obsession with roulette. For Alexei, a big win at roulette would earn him entrance into the aristocracy and transforms him from outsider to insider. In The Gambler, Dostoievski introduces a scheming cast of characters gathered in Roulettenberg, a fictitious German spa town with a casino and international clientele. Dostoievski employs the literary device of a diary to reveal the tumultuous inner life of Alexei Ivanovitch, a poor but educated young man who works as a tutor for the General. As a servant and outsider, Alexei both observes and participates in the tempest that surrounds the General and his entourage of blue bloods and social climbers.