Italo Calvino was an Italian writer and journalist. His best-known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Girolamo Savonarola, OP, also referred to as Jerome Savonarola, was an ascetic Dominican friar from Ferrara and a preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He became known for his prophecies of civic glory, his advocacy of the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.
Erich Maria Remarque was a German-born novelist. His landmark novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, was an international bestseller which created a new literary genre of veterans writing about conflict. The book was adapted to film several times. Remarque's anti-war themes led to his condemnation by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as "unpatriotic". He was able to use his literary success and fame to relocate to Switzerland as a refugee, and to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.
Ferdinand I was King of the Two Sicilies from 1816 until his death. Before that he had been, since 1759, King of Naples as Ferdinand IV and King of Sicily as Ferdinand III. He was deposed twice from the throne of Naples: once by the revolutionary Parthenopean Republic for six months in 1799, and again by a French invasion in 1806, before being restored in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Jules Mazarin, from 1641 known as Cardinal Mazarin, was a Roman Catholic Italian prelate, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Louis XIII and Louis XIV from 1642 to his death.
Understatement is an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected. It is the opposite of embellishment or exaggeration, and is used for emphasis, irony, hedging, or humor. A particular form of understatement using negative syntax is called litotes. This is not to be confused with euphemism, where a polite phrase is used in place of a harsher or more offensive expression.
Massimo Taparelli, Marquess of Azeglio, commonly called Massimo d'Azeglio, was a Piedmontese-Italian statesman, novelist, and painter. He was Prime Minister of Sardinia for almost three years until succeeded by his rival Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. A moderate liberal and member of the Moderate Party associated with the Historical Right, d'Azeglio hoped for a federal union between Italian states.
Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright, poet and polemicist who is considered one of the most important German-language authors of the postwar era. He explored themes of death, isolation, obsession and illness in controversial literature that was pessimistic about the human condition and highly critical of post-war Austrian and European culture. He developed a distinctive prose style often featuring multiple perspectives on characters and events, idiosyncratic vocabulary and punctuation, and long monologues by protagonists on the verge of insanity.
Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde.
Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt was an Austrian baroque architect and military engineer who designed stately buildings and churches and whose work had a profound influence on the architecture of the Habsburg Empire in the eighteenth century. After studying in Rome under Carlo Fontana, he constructed fortresses for Prince Eugene of Savoy during his Italian campaigns, becoming his favorite architect. In 1700 he became court engineer in Vienna, and in 1711 was named head of the court department of building. He became court architect in 1723. His designs for palaces, estates, gardens, churches, chapels, and villas were widely imitated, and his architectural principles spread throughout central and southeast Europe. Among his more important works are Palais Schwarzenberg, St. Peter's Church, and Belvedere in Vienna, Savoy Castle in Ráckeve, Schönborn Palace in Göllersdorf, and Schloss Hof.
Margaret Theresa of Spain was, by marriage to Leopold I, Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. She was the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and the elder full-sister of Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs. She is the central figure in the famous Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, and the subject of many of his later paintings.
Milt Gross was an American cartoonist and animator. His work is noted for its exaggerated cartoon style and Yiddish-inflected English dialogue. He originated the non-sequitur "Banana Oil!" as a phrase deflating pomposity and posing. His character Count Screwloose's admonition, "Iggy, keep an eye on me!", became a national catchphrase. The National Cartoonists Society fund to aid indigent cartoonists and their families, for many years was known as the Milt Gross Fund. In 2005, it was absorbed by the Society's Foundation, which continues the charitable work of the Fund.
Bernhard von Spanheim, a member of the noble House of Sponheim, was Duke of Carinthia for 54 years from 1202 until his death. A patron of chivalry and minnesang, Bernhard's reign marked the emergence of the Carinthian duchy as an effective territorial principality.
The Vittoriale degli italiani is a hillside estate in the town of Gardone Riviera overlooking Lake Garda in province of Brescia, in Lombardy. It is where the Italian poet and novelist Gabriele D'Annunzio lived from 1922 until his death in 1938. The estate consists of the residence of D'Annunzio called the Prioria (priory), an amphitheatre, the protected cruiser Puglia set into a hillside, a boathouse containing the MAS vessel used by D'Annunzio in 1918 and a circular mausoleum. Its grounds are now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.
Old Masters: A Comedy is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, first published in 1985. It tells of the life and opinions of Reger, a 'musical philosopher', through the voice of his acquaintance Atzbacher, a 'private academic'.
Wittgenstein’s Nephew is an autobiographical work by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in 1982. It is a recollection of the author's friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, the nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a member of the wealthy Viennese Wittgenstein family. Paul suffers from an unnamed mental illness for which he is repeatedly hospitalized, paralleling Bernhard's own struggle with a chronic lung disease.
Gargoyles is one of Thomas Bernhard’s earliest novels, which made the author known both nationally and internationally. Originally published in German in 1967, it’s a kaleidoscopic work, considered by critics his most disquieting and nihilistic. The German title, Verstörung, translates as something like Confusion or Derangement, but the American publisher chose Gargoyles, perhaps in order to render the array of human freaks the novel depicts to its very end. In fact, this is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity.
Yes is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1978 and translated into English by Ewald Osers in 1992.
Bernhard Rode was a Prussian artist and engraver well known for portraying historical scenes and allegorical works. He knew most of the central figures in the Berlin Enlightenment as Friedrich Nicolai and Gotthold Lessing, and the philosophical and political discussions of the Berlin Philosophs informed much of the subject matter of his artistic work. His paintings include several works depicting, in various guises, the King of Prussia Frederick the Great, who ruled the Prussia during much of Rode's lifetime. Rode was director of the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 1783 until his death in 1797.
Ferry Radax was an Austrian film maker born in Vienna, Austria.
