Memoirs Of A Breton Peasant

Author : Jean-Marie Deguignet
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
ISBN 13 : 1609802594
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Memoirs of a Breton Peasant written by Jean-Marie Deguignet and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Déguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen—often caustic—observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Déguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III’s coronation ceremonies, supports Italy’s liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet’s freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Déguignet’s voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998.

Author : Jean-Marie Deguignet
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
ISBN 13 : 1609803469
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Memoirs of a Breton Peasant written by Jean-Marie Deguignet and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Déguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen—often caustic—observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Déguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III’s coronation ceremonies, supports Italy’s liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet’s freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Déguignet’s voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998.

Author : Annette Bourrut Lacouture
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300095759
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jules Breton, Painter of Peasant Life written by Annette Bourrut Lacouture and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jules Breton (1827-1906), known as one of the first 'peasant painters', created beautiful scenes of rural French life and was a highly popular figure among the Salon artists of his era. Taking his inspiration from his native Artois and from the landscapes of Brittany, where he stayed for long periods, he painted peasant women and men performing their daily activities, meticulously observing their world and making it a place of peace and harmony. During the second half of the nineteenth century, rewards and official decorations were heaped upon him, and his paintings were purchased not only by the emperor but also by collectors in America, Britain and Ireland. However, Breton's work became eclipsed by the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, and he was eventually forgotten. This book now pays Breton the tribute that he deserves. It traces the development of his career and the forces that influenced him from his childhood through his early training in Belgium and Paris to his years in Brittany. The book presents and discusses a number of important paintings by Breton, some of which have been almost unknown until now, and it shows how they reflect the artist's social and humanitarian concerns as well as his painterly abilities.

Author : Pierre Jakez Hélias
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300025996
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Horse of Pride written by Pierre Jakez Hélias and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1978-01-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of a Breton village during the author's childhood reveals a timeless world, isolated by a unique culture and language, where life is a continuous struggle and tradition is paramount

Author : Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1429932406
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Story of French written by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does everything sound better if it's said in French? That fascination is at the heart of The Story of French, the first history of one of the most beautiful languages in the world that was, at one time, the pre-eminent language of literature, science and diplomacy. In a captivating narrative that spans the ages, from Charlemagne to Cirque du Soleil, Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow unravel the mysteries of a language that has maintained its global influence despite the rise of English. As in any good story, The Story of French has spectacular failures, unexpected successes and bears traces of some of history's greatest figures: the tenacity of William the Conqueror, the staunchness of Cardinal Richelieu, and the endurance of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Through this colorful history, Nadeau and Barlow illustrate how French acquired its own peculiar culture, revealing how the culture of the language spread among francophones the world over and yet remains curiously centered in Paris. In fact, French is not only thriving—it still has a surprisingly strong influence on other languages. As lively as it is fascinating, The Story of French challenges long held assumptions about French and shows why it is still the world's other global language.

Author : Marjorie Price
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101217049
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Gift from Brittany written by Marjorie Price and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enchanting memoir of an artist?s liberating sojourn in France during the sixties?and the friendship that transformed her life While in her late twenties, Marjorie Price leaves the comfort of her Chicago suburb to strike out on her own in Paris and hone her artistic talents. Dazzled by everything French, she falls in love with a volatile French painter and they purchase an old farmhouse in the Breton countryside. When Marjorie?s seemingly idyllic marriage begins to unravel, she forms a friendship with an elderly peasant woman, Jeanne, who is illiterate, has three cows to her name, and has never left the village. Their differences are staggering yet they forge a friendship that transforms one another?s life.

Author : Jackie Wullschlager
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0307270580
Total Pages : 641 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chagall written by Jackie Wullschlager and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2008-10-21 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.” As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known and most-loved paintings of our time. Yet behind this triumph lay struggle, heartbreak, bitterness, frustration, lost love, exile—and above all the miracle of survival. Born into near poverty in Russia in 1887, the son of a Jewish herring merchant, Chagall fled the repressive “potato-colored” tsarist empire in 1911 for Paris. There he worked alongside Modigliani and Léger in the tumbledown tenement called La Ruche, where “one either died or came out famous.” But turmoil lay ahead—war and revolution; a period as an improbable artistic commissar in the young Soviet Union; a difficult existence in Weimar Germany, occupied France, and eventually the United States. Throughout, as Jackie Wullschlager makes plain in this groundbreaking biography, he never ceased giving form on canvas to his dreams, longings, and memories. His subject, more often than not, was the shtetl life of his childhood, the wooden huts and synagogues, the goatherds, rabbis, and violinists—the whole lost world of Eastern European Jewry. Wullschlager brilliantly describes this world and evokes the characters who peopled it: Chagall’s passionate, energetic mother, Feiga-Ita; his eccentric fellow painter and teacher Bakst; his clever, intense first wife, Bella; their glamorous daughter, Ida; his tough-minded final companion and wife, Vava; and the colorful, tragic array of artist, actor, and writer friends who perished under the Stalinist regime. Wullschlager explores in detail Chagall’s complex relationship with Russia and makes clear the Russian dimension he brought to Western modernism. She shows how, as André Breton put it, “under his sole impulse, metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting,” and helped shape the new surrealist movement. As art critic of the Financial Times, she provides a breadth of knowledge on Chagall’s work, and at the same time as an experienced biographer she brings Chagall the man fully to life—ambitious, charming, suspicious, funny, contradictory, dependent, but above all obsessively determined to produce art of singular beauty and emotional depth. Drawing upon hitherto unseen archival material, including numerous letters from the family collection in Paris, and illustrated with nearly two hundred paintings, drawings, and photographs, Chagall is a landmark biography to rank with Hilary Spurling’s Matisse and John Richardson’s Picasso.

Author : Lady Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Autobiography written by Lady Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Nigel Pennick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1644115859
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Creating Places of Power written by Nigel Pennick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the traditional rites of auspicious building and crafting • Explains the ceremonial beginnings and Hermetic principles in the laying out of foundations not only for sacred buildings like temples but also for homes and barns • Examines the principles and ceremonies of electional astrology and details how to compute natural time, as opposed to clock time • Shares examples from ancient Egypt, Iran, India, and Europe that range from the Stone Age to the Renaissance and include secret societies When we make things--whether a building, a sacred space, or a magical object--there is a precise moment when the artifact comes into being as a separate entity. That moment in time possesses its own unique quality, and because of this, there is a right time to do something and a wrong time. And, as Nigel Pennick reveals, we have the power to select favorable moments for our creations, just as our ancestors did. Illustrating ancient principles of divination, chronomancy, and electional astrology, Pennick examines all the factors behind the ancestral art of geomancy: the auspicious creation and alignment of sacred buildings as places of power. Sharing examples from ancient Egypt, Iran, India, and Europe that range from the Stone Age to the modern day, including secret societies like the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, he explains how many cities were constructed on specially selected sites and founded ritually at precise, predetermined moments. Looking at the traditional rites of creating places of power, Pennick explains the ceremonial beginnings and Hermetic principles in the laying out of foundations as well as the use of sacrifice in the building of many notable structures. Examining the role of sacred geometry in geomancy, Pennick explains the Hermetic meaning assigned to each direction in traditional European cultures as well as the principles of natural measures and the science of understanding lucky and unlucky days. Revealing how geomantic principles are rooted in the structure of the world and the cosmic patterns of space and time, the author shows how they transcend the ages and are just as meaningful today as they were to our ancestors.

Author : Ai Weiwei
Publisher : Bond Street Books
ISBN 13 : 0385683200
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows written by Ai Weiwei and published by Bond Street Books. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei--one of the world's most famous artists and activists--tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as "the most important artist working today" by the Financial Times and as "an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom" by The New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. Once an intimate of Mao Zedong, Ai Weiwei's father was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist--and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his own life story and that of his father, whose own creativity was stifled. At once ambitious and intimate, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.