João Guimarães Rosa

(27 June 1908 – 19 November 1967) was a Braziliannovelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses.[1][2][3]

Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed "seu Fulô") and Francisca Guimarães Rosa ("Chiquitinha").
He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life:
I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.
Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio School in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University.
On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. Vilma had a son, João Emílio, who had a daughter, Alice (the only granddaughter of the author). In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works.
Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Infantry Battalion (Oficial Médico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. In 1938 he served as assistant-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, the Righteous Among the NationsAracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa.
In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack. His masterpiece is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. In this novel, Riobaldo, a jagunço is torn between two loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands. Following his own existential quest, he contemplates making a deal with Lucifer in order to eliminate Hermógenes, his nemesis. One could say that Sertão (the backlands) represents the whole Universe and the mission of Riobaldo is to pursue its travessia, or crossing, seeking answers for the metaphysical questions faced by mankind. In this sense he is an incarnation of the classical hero in the Brazilian backlands.
Guimarães Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career. He was 59.

by Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936)

A Madman's Diary" (simplified Chinese: 狂人日记; traditional Chinese: 狂人日記; pinyin: Kuángrén Rìjì; Wade–Giles: K'uang-jen Jih-chi) was written in 1918 by Lu Xun, commonly considered one of the greatest writers in 20th-century Chinese literature. This short story is considered to be one of the first and most influential modern works written in vernacular Chinese. "A Madman's Diary" is an attempt by Lu Xun to describe the effects of feudal values upon the Chinese people. He uses an analogy of cannibalism to describe the way such outdated values eat away at the individual. The story would become a cornerstone of the New Culture Movement.
It is the first story in the book Call to Arms, a collection of short stories by Lu Xun. Its title is influenced by Nikolai Gogol's short story "Diary of a Madman".[citation needed]
Yi-tsi Mei Fuerwerker, author of "Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, and Wang Meng," said that the story was often referred to as "China's first modern short story".[1]

The story is allegedly a copy of the diary entries (in vernacular Chinese) of a madman who, according to the foreword written in classical Chinese, has now been cured of his delusiveparanoia. After extensively studying Chinese history as outlined in the Four books and five classics of his culture, the diary writer, the supposed "madman", began to see the words "Eat People!" written between the lines of the texts (Lu Xun implies this figuratively, although in the story's context, this could be read literally). Seeing the people in his village as potential man-eaters, he is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his venerable doctor and his neighbors, who are crowding about to watch him, are harboring cannibalistic thoughts on him.
It is anti-traditional in the sense that the other characters are portrayed as heartless, bound to tradition, and cannibalistic, yet the madman's fears are depicted as genuine. Despite the brother's apparent genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as big a threat as any stranger. The insanity of the narrator is never proven, however. Towards the end the narrator turns his concern to the younger generation, especially his late sister (who died when she was five) as he is afraid they will be cannibalized. By then he is convinced that his late sister had been eaten up by his brother, and that the narrator might have unwittingly tasted her flesh.
The story ends with a famous line: "Save the children..."

Lu Xun
simplified Chinese: 鲁迅; traditional Chinese: 魯迅; pinyin: Lǔ Xùn) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (simplified Chinese: 周树人; traditional Chinese: 周樹人; pinyin: Zhōu Shùrén; Wade–Giles: Chou Shu-jen) (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua (白話) (the vernacular) as well as classical Chinese. Lu Xun was a fiction writer, editor, translator, critic, essayist and poet. In the 1930s he became the titular head of the Chinese League of the Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.
Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was highly acclaimed by the Communist regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though sympathetic to the ideals of the Left, Lu Xun never actually joined the Chinese Communist Party. Like many leaders of the May Fourth Movement, he was primarily a liberal.
Lu Xun's works became known to English readers through numerous translations, beginning in 1960 with Selected Stories of Lu Hsun translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. More recently, in 2009, Penguin Classics published a complete anthology of his fiction titled The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun which the scholar Jeffrey Wasserstrom[1] said "could be considered the most significant Penguin Classic ever published."[2]

Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun was named Zhou Zhangshou (周樟壽, P: Zhōu Zhāngshòu, W: Chou Chang-shou) with his style name Yushan (豫山, P: Yùshān, W: Yü-shan). The style name was later changed to Yucai (豫才, P: Yùcái, W: Yü-ts'ai). In 1898, before he went to Jiangnan Naval Academy, he took the given name of "Shuren" (樹人, P: Shùrén, W: Shu-jen), figuratively, "to be an educated man".[3]
The Shaoxing Zhou family was very well-educated, and his paternal grandfather Zhou Fuqing (周福清, P: Zhōu Fúqīng, W: Chou Fu-ch'ing) held posts in the Hanlin Academy; Zhou's mother, née Lu, taught herself to read. However, after a case of bribery was exposed – in which Zhou Fuqing tried to procure an office for his son, Lu Xun's father, Zhou Boyi – the family fortunes declined.
Zhou Fuqing was arrested and almost beheaded. Meanwhile, a young Zhou Shuren was brought up by an elderly servant Ah Chang, whom he called Chang Ma; one of Lu Xun's favorite childhood books was the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
His father's chronic illness and eventual death during Lu Xun's adolescence, apparently from tuberculosis, persuaded Zhou to study medicine. Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine, he went abroad to pursue a Westernmedical degree at Sendai Medical Academy (now medical school of Tohoku University) in Sendai, Japan, in 1904.[citation needed]

Education

Lu Xun was educated at Jiangnan Naval Academy (T: 江南水師學堂, S: 江南水师学堂, P: Jiāngnán Shuǐshī Xuétáng, W: Chiang-nan Shui-shih Hsüeh-t'ang) (1898–99), and later transferred to the School of Mines and Railways (T: 礦路學堂, S: 矿路学堂, P: Kuànglù Xuétáng, W: K'uang-lu Hsüeh-t'ang) at Jiangnan Military Academy (T: 江南陸師學堂, S: 江南陆师学堂, P: Jiāngnán Lùshī Xuétáng, W: Chiang-nan Lu-shih Hsüeh-t'ang). It was there Lu Xun had his first contacts with Western learning, especially the sciences; he studied some German and English, reading, amongst some translated books, Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, J. S. Mill's On Liberty, as well as novels like Ivanhoe and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
On a Qing government scholarship, Lu Xun left for Japan in 1902. He first attended the Kobun Gakuin (Kobun Institute ZH, JA, Hongwen xueyuan, 弘文學院), a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. His earliest essays, written in Classical Chinese, date from here. Lu also practised some jujutsu.
Lu Xun returned home briefly in 1903. At age 22, he complied to an arranged marriage with a local gentry girl, Zhu An (朱安, P: Zhū Ān, W: Chu An). Zhu, illiterate and with bound feet, was handpicked by Lu Xun's mother. Lu Xun possibly never consummated this marriage, although he took care of her material needs all his life.

Lu Xun
(or Lu Hsun, pronounced "Lu Shun"; 1881-1936) has been considered China's greatest modern writer for most of the 20th century. Many of the other authors of fictional works of social criticism popular during the 1920s and 1930s have been at least partially discredited or criticized during the various political movements in China since 1949, but Lu Xun's reputation has remained consistently distinguished. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) called him "commander of China's cultural revolution."
Perhaps it was because Lu Xun died relatively early in the Communist movement that he has not been criticized for making the kinds of political "errors" for which his colleagues have suffered. But the sophisticated complexity of his writing style, which lends itself to various interpretations, is also an important factor in his achievement of a position of preeminence. Though he was an influential essayist, Lu Xun is best known for his short stories. Chinese writers of the 1920s and 1930s were deeply distressed by the social and political disasters they saw all around them. Some put all their faith in an ideological movement and wrote propaganda pieces advocating revolution. The most doctrinaire of these works of "revolutionary literature" are hardly literary: They are more concerned with presenting political solutions than with lifelike characters, realistic situations, or deeper insight into human nature. Other writers felt less certain of what solution to propose and used their fiction instead to vividly and sensitively describe the current plight of the Chinese, with the implied intention of stimulating readers to realize the necessity of acting to eliminate such human degradation and corruption.
But Lu Xun chose neither of these options. In the early 1920s, he did not feel absolute optimism that radical social change would occur in China, and he did not project idealized revolutionary heroes or situations in his fiction. Yet on the other hand, he also did not simply offer sensitive descriptions of the sufferings of the Chinese people. Instead, through vivid analogies and exaggerated characters, Lu Xun presented his personal vision of Chinese society. The intensity and darkness of this vision makes reading a Lu Xun story a moving and disturbing experience.
About the Author
Lu Xun is the pen name of the writer born as Zhou Shuren (Chou Shu-jen) in 1881 to a family with a strong Confucian background. His grandfather served as a high official in Peking (Beijing), and his father was also a scholar.
- But Lu Xun's childhood was filled with hardship.
- Not only did he endure the Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion [1],
- but his father suffered from chronic illness,
- and the family was so poor they had to pawn their belongings to buy his medicine.
- Moreover, when Lu Xun was thirteen, his grandfather in Peking was accused of complicity in a bribery case and was detained in custody for seven years; every fall during this period the family had to send money to the Ministry of Punishment to insure that the grandfather would not be sentenced to death.
This overt corruption certainly influenced Lu Xun's contempt for the traditional system of government.
In 1904, he went to Sendai, in Japan, to study medicine, but he soon realized that China needed "spiritual medicine" even more than treatment for physical ills. Lu Xun returned to Tokyo in 1906, and decided to devote himself to education and literature rather than medicine, thus expressing his lifelong dedication to teaching and encouraging young people as the major hope for China's future.
Lu Xun's last story, "Divorce," was published in 1925. The following year Lu Xun protested the killing of students in a demonstration, and he had to flee. He went to Amoy (Xiamen), then Canton (Guangzhou), then Shanghai, and continued to aid leftist students [2]. From this time until his death in 1936, Lu Xun supported political change through overt action and "pen warfare": He was a prolific writer of short, biting essays attacking social injustice and political corruption. He avidly encouraged young writers, translators, and artists, and was a particularly enthusiastic supporter of woodblock prints which depicted the intense sufferings of the Chinese people to show the desperate need for a revolution.
[1] The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising of Chinese people against the existence of foreigners in China. They wanted to make all foreigners leave China
[leftist students were those who rebelled against the political system and sought social and political change.

The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Allen Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.

This Everyman’s edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations
==

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is the title usually employed to designate an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321; the author's own title for the work was simply "Comedìa". The epithet Divina was later applied to it by Giovanni Boccaccio, and the first printed edition to add the word divine to the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce,[1] published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature,[2] and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.[3] The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.[4] It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven;[5] but at a deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God.[6] At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.[7] Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse"

Structure and story
The poem is written in the first person, and tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman whom he had met in childhood and admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova.
The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1 for a total of 10: 9 circles of the Inferno, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God. Within the 9, 7 correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdividing itself into three subcategories, while two others of more particularity are added on for a completion of nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the Late repentant and the excommunicated by the church. The core seven sins within purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).
In central Italy's political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300, the White Guelphs, and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.[citation needed]
In Hell and Purgatory, Dante shares in the sin and the penitence respectively. The last word in each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy is stelle, "stars

Durante degli Alighieri,

mononymously referred to as Dante (UK pron.: /ˈdænti/, US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c. 1265–1321), was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Commedia and later called Divina by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.[1]
In Italy he is known as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") or just il Poeta. He, Petrarch and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".[2]

Dante was born in Florence, Italy. The exact date of birth is unknown, although it is generally believed to be around 1265.
This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in La Divina Commedia. Its first section, the Inferno, begins "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" ("Halfway through the journey of our life"), implying that Dante was around 35 years old, since the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and since his imaginary travel to the nether world took place in 1300, he must have been born around 1265. Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed, from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII 151-154). In 1265, the sun was in Gemini between approximately May 11 and June 11.[
Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), born no earlier than about 1100.
Dante's father, Alaghiero or Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century. This suggests that Alighiero or his family enjoyed some protective prestige and status, although some suggest that the politically inactive Alighiero was of such low standing that he was not considered worth exiling.[
Dante's family had loyalties to the Guelphs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy and which was involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor.
- The poet's mother was Bella, likely a member of the Abati family. She died when Dante was not yet ten years old,
- and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi.
It is uncertain whether he really married her, since widowers were socially limited in such matters, but this woman definitely bore him two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana (Gaetana). When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family.[4] Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. But Dante by this time had fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari (known also as Bice), whom he first met when he was only nine. Years after his marriage to Gemma he claims to have met Beatrice again; he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known: the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, he had three children (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).[4]
Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289). This victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in public life one had to enroll in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the physicians' and apothecaries' guild. In the following years, his name is occasionally recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from such meetings from 1298-1300 was lost during World War II, however, so the true extent of Dante's participation in the city's councils is uncertain.
Gemma bore Dante several children. Although several others subsequently claimed to be his offspring; it is likely that only Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni and Antonia were his actual children. Antonia later became a nun, taking the name Sister Beatrice.

Don Quixote


by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616)



Cervantes' tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant, tilts at windmills and battles with sheep in the service of the lady of his dreams, Dulcinea del Toboso, has fascinated generations of readers, and inspired other creative artists such as Flaubert, Picasso and Richard Strauss. The tall, thin knight and his short, fat squire, Sancho Panza, have found their way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Supposedly intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction of the day, the 'books of chivalry', this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature. Cervantes' greatest work can be enjoyed on many levels, all suffused with a subtle irony that reaches out to encompass the reader.