Chopin, Kate 1851 1904 en 1 17484 Kate Chopin (born Katherine O'Flaherty on February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904), was an American author of short stories and novels, mostly of a Louisiana Creole background. She is now considered to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century. From 1889 to 1902, she wrote short stories for both children and adults which were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, the Century, and Harper's Youth's Companion. Her major works were two short story collections, Bayou Folk (1884) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Desiree's Baby", a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana; "The Story of an Hour" and "The Storm." Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which is set in New Orleans and Grand Isle. The people in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. Many of her works are set about Natchitoches in north central Louisiana. In time, literary critics determined that Chopin addressed the concerns of women in all places and for all times in her literature. Source: Wikipedia Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 1860 1904 ru 4 8242 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short story writer and playwright. He was born in Taganrog, southern Russia, on 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1860, and died of tuberculosis at the health spa of Badenweiler, Germany, on 15 July [O.S. 2 July] 1904. His brief playwriting career produced four classics, while his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress". Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a special challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text". Not everyone appreciated that challenge: Leo Tolstoy reportedly told Chekhov, "You know, I cannot abide Shakespeare, but your plays are even worse". Tolstoy did, however, admire Chekhov's short stories. Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later exploited by Virginia Woolf and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Source: Wikipedia Hearn, Lafcadio 1850 1904 en 2 5451 Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (June 27, 1850 - September 26, 1904), also known as Koizumi Yakumo (小泉八雲) after gaining Japanese citizenship, was an author, best known for his books about Japan. He is especially well-known for his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Early life Hearn was born in Lefkada (the origin of his middle name), one of the Greek Ionian Islands. He was the son of Surgeon-major Charles Hearn (of King's County, Ireland) and Rosa Antonia Kassimati, who had been born on Kythera, another of the Ionian Islands. His father was stationed in Lefkada during the British occupation of the islands. Lafcadio was initially baptized Patricio Lefcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn in the Greek Orthodox Church. Hearn moved to Dublin, Ireland, at the age of two. Artistic and rather bohemian tastes were in his blood. His father's brother Richard was at one time a well-known member of the Barbizon set of artists, though he made no mark as a painter due to his lack of energy. Young Hearn had a rather casual education, but in 1865 was at Ushaw Roman Catholic College, Durham. He was injured in a playground accident in his teens, causing loss of vision in his left eye. Emigration The religious faith in which he was brought up was, however, soon lost, and at 19 he was sent to live in the United States of America, where he settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. For a time, he lived in utter poverty, which may have contributed to his later paranoia and distrust of those around him. He eventually found a friend in the English printer and communalist Henry Watkin. With Watkin's help, Hearn picked up a living in the lower grades of newspaper work. Through the strength of his talent as a writer, Hearn quickly advanced through the newspaper ranks and became a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, working for the paper from 1872 to 1875. With creative freedom in one of Cincinnati's largest circulating newspapers, he developed a reputation as the paper's premier sensational journalist, as well as the author of sensitive, dark, and fascinating accounts of Cincinnati's disadvantaged. He continued to occupy himself with journalism and with out-of-the-way observation and reading, and meanwhile his erratic, romantic, and rather morbid idiosyncrasies developed. While in Cincinnati, he married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a black woman, an illegal act at the time. When the scandal was discovered and publicized, he was fired from the Enquirer and went to work for the rival Cincinnati Commercial. In 1874 Hearn and the young Henry Farny, later a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated, and published a weekly journal of art, literature, and satire they titled Ye Giglampz that ran for nine issues. The Cincinnati Public Library reprinted a facsimile of all nine issues in 1983. New Orleans In the autumn of 1877, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, Louisiana, where he initially wrote dispatches on his discoveries in the "Gateway to the Tropics" for the Cincinnati Commercial. He lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing first for the Daily City Item and later for the Times Democrat. The vast number of his writings about New Orleans and its environs, many of which have not been collected, include the city's Creole population and distinctive cuisine, the French Opera, and Vodou. His writings for national publications, such as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, helped mold the popular image of New Orleans as a colorful place with a distinct culture more akin to Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. His best-known Louisiana works are Gombo Zhèbes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885); La Cuisine Créole (1885), a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives who helped make New Orleans famous for its cuisine; and Chita: A Memory of Last Island, a novella based on the hurricane of 1856 first published in Harper's Monthly in 1888. Little known then, even today he is relatively unknown in New Orleans culture. However, more books have been written about him than any other former resident of New Orleans other than Louis Armstrong. His footprint in the history of Creole cooking is visible even today. Harper's sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1889. He spent two years in the islands and produced Two Years in the French West Indies and Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave (both 1890). Later life in Japan In 1890, Hearn went to Japan with a commission as a newspaper correspondent, which was quickly broken off. It was in Japan, however, that he found his home and his greatest inspiration. Through the goodwill of Basil Hall Chamberlain, Hearn gained a teaching position in the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue, a town in western Japan on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Most Japanese identify Hearn with Matsue, as it was here that his image of Japan was molded. Today, The Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum (小泉八雲記念館) and Lafcadio Hearn's Old Residence (小泉八雲旧居) are still two of Matsue's most popular tourist attractions. During his 15-month stay in Matsue, Hearn married Setsu Koizumi, the daughter of a local samurai family, and became a naturalized Japanese, taking the name Koizumi Yakumo. In late 1891, Hearn took another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyushu, at the Fifth Higher Middle School, where he spent the next three years and completed his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). In October 1894 he secured a journalism position with the English-language Kobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo (Imperial) University, a post he held until 1903. On September 26, 1904, he died of heart failure at the age of 54. In the late 19th century Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to the Western world. With the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, however, particularly at the Paris World's Fair in 1900, the West had an insatiable appetite for exotic Japan, and Hearn became known to the world through the depth, originality, sincerity, and charm of his writings. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but as the man who offered the West some of its first glimpses into pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work still offers valuable insight today. Legacy The Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi adapted four Hearn tales into his 1965 film, Kwaidan. Several Hearn stories have been adapted by Ping Chong into his trademark puppet theatre, including the 1999 Kwaidan and the 2002 OBON: Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Hearn's life and works were celebrated in The Dream of a Summer Day, a play that toured Ireland in April and May 2005, which was staged by the Storytellers Theatre Company and directed by Liam Halligan. It is a detailed dramatization of Hearn's life, with four of his ghost stories woven in. Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North." There is also a cultural center named for Hearn at the University of Durham. Hearn was a major translator of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. In Ian Fleming's You only Live Twice, James Bond retorts to his nemesis Blofeld's comment of "Have you ever heard the Japanese expression kirisute gomen?" with "Spare me the Lafcadio Hearn, Blofeld." [From Wikipedia.] Tchekhov, Anton Pavlovitch 1860 1904 ru 3 3503 Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhov, né le 17/29 janvier 1860 à Taganrog (Russie), mort le 2/15 juillet 1904 à Badenweiler (Allemagne), est un nouvelliste et dramaturge russe, médecin de profession. Ami d’Ivan Bounine, Maxime Gorki, Léon Tolstoï, Fédor Chaliapine, Souvorine, il est l’oncle de Mikhaïl Tchekhov, fils de son frère Alexandre et de Natalia Golden, et disciple de Constantin Stanislavski. Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhov est né le 29 janvier 1860 (calendrier grégorien), à Taganrog, au bord de la mer d'Azov, en Russie. Ses parents sont des petits commerçants. D’une religiosité excessive, son père est un homme violent. Anton Tchekhov étudie la médecine à l'université de Moscou et commence à exercer à partir de 1884. Se sentant responsable de sa famille, venue s’installer à Moscou après la faillite du père, il cherche à augmenter ses revenus en publiant des nouvelles dans divers journaux. Le succès arrive assez vite. Il ressent très tôt les premiers effets de la tuberculose, qui l’obligera à de nombreux déplacements au cours de sa vie pour tenter de trouver un climat qui lui convienne mieux que celui de Moscou. Bien que répugnant à tout engagement politique, il sera toujours extrêmement sensible à la misère d’autrui. En 1890, en dépit de sa maladie, il entreprend un séjour d'un an au bagne de Sakhaline afin de porter témoignage sur les conditions d’existence des bagnards. L'île de Sakhaline paraitra à partir de 1893. Toute sa vie, il multipliera ainsi les actions de bienfaisance (construction d’écoles, exercice gratuit de la médecine, etc.). Ses nouvelles d’abord, son théâtre ensuite, le font reconnaitre de son vivant comme une des gloires nationales russes, à l’égal d’un Dostoievski ou d’un Tolstoï. Après avoir longtemps repoussé toute perspective de mariage, il se décide, en 1901, à épouser Olga Leonardovna Knipper (1870-1959), actrice au Théâtre d’art de Moscou. Lors d’une ultime tentative de cure, Anton Tchekhov meurt le 2 juillet 1904 à Badenweiler en Allemagne. Au médecin qui se précipite à son chevet, il dit poliment en allemand : « Ich sterbe » (je meurs). Ayant refusé de l’oxygène, on lui apporte… du champagne, et ses derniers mots seraient, d’après Virgil Tanase : « Cela fait longtemps que je n’ai plus bu de champagne ». Ayant bu, il se couche sur le côté et meurt. Le 9 juillet, il est enterré à Moscou, au cimetière de Novodevitchi. Stephens, Leslie 1832 1904 en 1 1198 Delmas de Pont-Jest, Louis-René 1830 1904 fr 1 311 Dit René de Pont-Jest ou Léon Delmas. Officier de marine, puis écrivain et journaliste, grand-père maternel de Sacha Guitry qui le décrivait ainsi: «René de Pont-Jest, ancien officier de marine, romancier, chroniqueur, homme très distingué, esprit fin, fine lame, aimant les femmes, aimant le jeu - type disparu du parisien à guêtres blanches sous pantalons à carreaux». On lui doit en particulier la série «Mémoires d'un détective» qui comporte trois romans: * Le N° 13 de la rue Marlot (1877). * La Femme de cire (1883). * Le Cas du docteur Plemen (1887.).