Pero
The painter Claude Lantier: Nowadays we want something different
With the end of his brush he pointed to a study of the nude, suspended from the wall near the door. It was really magnificent, full of masterly breadth of colouring. By its side were some other admirable bits, a girl’s feet exquisite in their delicate truthfulness, and a woman’s trunk with quivering satin-like skin. In his rare moments of content he felt proud of those few studies, the only ones which satisfied him, which, as it were, foretold a great painter, admirably gifted, but hampered by sudden and inexplicable fits of impotency.
The Ugly Duckling is a reflection of Hans Christian Andersen's life
One of his best fairy tales The Ugly Duckling Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen first conceived in 1842 while enjoying the beauty of nature in the country estate of Bregentved and lavished a year's worth of attention upon it. The first tale's title was The Young Swans but he didn't want to spoil the element of surprise in the protagonist's transformation and discarded it for The Ugly Duckling. The fairy tale was first published in 1843 in Copenhagen and quickly experienced great success with audiences and critics, and Andersen enjoyed literary fame from the mid-1830s. It is considered to be his autobiographical work because he was also an ugly and poor child. Andersen told critic Georg Brandes in an interview that his autobiography had already been written in the fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, which is also a "reflection of his life". In the end, the fairy tale The Ugly Duckling and its author Andersen experienced a happy ending.
The Tale of Tsar Saltan is one of Alexander Pushkin's first fairy tales
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan is one of the most famous fairy tales from Russian folklore which was inspired many artists. In general, there are two versions. The first was written in the 19th century when dozens of scholars in Europe began to collect old stories, fables, fairy tales, legends, and everything that might help to preserve cultural heritage in the rapidly developing society where new norms replaced traditions without much thought if everything old is so bad to deserve to be forgotten. The most famous collection of that time is known as Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm. The second, and even better-known version today is the poem The Tale of Tsar Saltan which was written by Alexander Pushkin in 1831, and published a year later in the collection of "poem A. Pushkin".
The Swan by Stéphane Mallarmé
The virginal, enduring, beautiful today
will a drunken beat of its wing break us
this hard, forgotten lake haunted under frost
by the transparent glacier of unfled flights!
Stéphane Mallarmé's The Swan symbolically depicts the tragic rift between poetry and life
French poet and one of the foremost contributors to French symbolism in poetry, Stéphane Mallarmé spread his new poetics based on the introduction of free verse and the construction of the poem around a central symbol using the image to symbolize an abstract aspect of the human mind. His poetry is dominated by the pursuit of pure language, and the reader only senses the meaning of the poem. One of his most famous poems is the Sonnet about the Swan or The Swan as it is often called, published in 1876. It evokes Mallarmé's sense of exile in which the poet is found among men, like a bird that is prevented from flying.
The Gods in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
In Homer's epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey are personalities, both gods and men. The gods, as well as the people, are very clearly depicted and fully reflect the consciousness, morals, and social relations of the Greeks in Homer's time. Homer portrays the gods as both human-like and god-like. Individuals did not control their destinies. Instead, the gods were responsible for the fate of human affairs.
The Return of Persephone by Alec Derwent Hope
Gliding through the still air, he made no sound;
Wing-shod and deft, dropped almost at her feet,
And searched the ghostly regiments and found
The living eyes, the tremor of breath, the beat
Of blood in all that bodiless underground.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
The French humanist, narrator, physician, and monk François Rabelais wrote five comic novels Gargantua and Pantagruel from 1532, when he was about 37, until the end of his life. The first book, Pantagruel, was published in 1532, and the second, Gargantua, in 1534. The third book was published in 1545, the fourth in 1552, and the last, after Rabelais' death, in 1564. The censors of the Collège de la Sorbonne stigmatized it as obscene, and in a social climate of increasing religious oppression in a lead up to the French Wars of Religion, it was treated with suspicion, and contemporaries avoided mentioning it.
François Rabelais: How Pantagruel, being at Paris, received letters from his father Gargantua, and the copy of them
Pantagruel studied very hard, as you may well conceive, and profited accordingly; for he had an excellent understanding and notable wit, together with a capacity in memory equal to the measure of twelve oil budgets or butts of olives. And, as he was there abiding one day, he received a letter from his father in manner as followeth.
Inspiration for The Man with a Hoe by Edwin Markham
American poet Edwin Markham wrote the poem The Man with the Hoe after he saw a painting called L'homme a la houe by the French artist Jean-François Millet. This poem was first presented publicly at a New Year's party in 1898. It was first published in the San Fransisco Examiner in January 1899 and also reprinted in many other newspapers across the United States because it dealt with the working class. It was used as the opening poem in Markham's 1902 collection The Man with a Hoe and Other Poems.
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