Anecdotes About European Authors Quiz

Answer: Emile Zola

"J'accuse", had been the title of the public letter which Zola had had published in a French paper.
Emile Zola (1840-1902) was born in Paris as the son of an Italian engineer. He spent his childhood in Aix-en-Provence. At the death of his father in 1858, he moved back to Paris. Worked for some time for the publishing-house Hachette. Personal friend of Paul Cézanne.
His cycle "The Rougon Macquart" was an almost scientific study of a family under the Second Empire. Zola was already an opponent of Napoleon III, when, through his involvement in the Dreyfus affair, he further angered the French establishment. It was only by escaping to England, that he could avoid being imprisoned. It took until Dreyfus
had been cleared before Zola was able to return.
Anatole France (1844-1924)is the pseudonym of Jacques Anatole François Thibault.
Proust was born at Auteuil in 1871 and died in Paris, of pneumonia, in 1922. First part of " A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" was published in 1903.

Answer: André Malraux

An even "stronger case" is Vaclav Havel who became Prime-Minister and President of his homeland Czechia.
André Malraux (1901-1976) was a French novelist, adventurer and art historian who became Minister of Cultural Affairs and was a member of de Gaulle's Government from 1958 till 1969.
He fought in the Spanish Civil War and and was an active member of the Resistance in World War II. For some time he was an art editor for Gallimard.
André Maurois (1885-1967) was the penname of Emile Herzog, novelist,historian and essayist. Published a "History" of France, of Great-Britain and of the U.S.A. Wrote a "Life of Disraeli", and also of P.B. Shelley, Victor Hugo, M.Proust and H. de Balzac.
François Mauriac (1885 at Bordeux- d. 1970, in Paris) is the author of various novels with Roman-Catholic background. He became a Member of the French Academy in 1933, won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952 and became a supporter of de Gaulle when the latter started his anti-colonial policies in Morocco and Algeria.
J.P. Sartre (1905-1980) philosopher, essayist, novelist and playwright.
Declined the Nobel Prize in 1964.

Answer: absinth

Absinth was called the "cocaine of the nineteenth century"; also Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, van Gogh and Gauguin partook of it. And it was not unknown to Oscar Wilde either.
The drink is still legal in Spain.

Answer: Guy de Maupassant

None of these were models of virtue. Villon was known as a thief and narrowly escaped being put to death for murdering a priest. He had been condemned already, but was reprieved when it was revealed that the priest had actually himself started the brawl. From that time on Villon disappeared from the public scene in Paris.
The Marquis de Sade died in an asylum, but not in Paris. He ended his infamous life at Charenton-Saint-Maurice, Val de Marne. Charenton is also the native town of the painter Eugène Delacroix. It is near Paris, not in Paris.
After his riotous years with Verlaine, Rimbaud left Europe, gave up all literary activity and started a new, though not necessarily more virtuous life in Africa. Illness obliged him to return to France where he died in 1891.
Guy de Maupassant was born at the Castle of Miromesnil near Tourville-sur-Arques (Seine Maritime)on 5th of August 1850. He died in Paris on 6th of July 1893. During the last years of his life, he suffered from mental madness, caused by syphilis, which he contracted in his early 20s. Considered to be France's greatest short-story writer.
Though he has been accused of misogynism, his portrayal of prostitutes was sympathetic.

Answer: Victor Hugo

Georges Feydeau (1862-1921) was the author of such successful comedies as :"A Flea in her Ear" and "The Lady from Maxim's". There are rumours he was the illegitimate son of Napoleon III.
Alexandre Dumas Jr.(1824-1895), illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas, Sr.
His "Dame aux Camélias" was made into an opera by Verdi: "La Traviata".
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), is the author of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Les Misérables". He was born in Besançon as the son of one of Napoleon's high-ranking officers.
The coup d'état of Louis Napoléon ( later Napoléon III) made Hugo flee to, first Brussels, then Luxembourg, and the Channel Islands. He remained for some 20 years on Guernsey as a voluntary exile.

Answer: Arthur Rimbaud

Alexandre Dumas Sr.(1802-1870) is the author of "The Three Musketeers" and " The Count of Monte Christo".
Paul Verlaine was born at Metz in 1844. After his marriage in 1870, he started an affair with the younger poet Arthur Rimbaud. Led a Bohemian life with him in London and Brussels. He was jailed for 18 months after shooting Rimbaud on the wrist on July 12, 1873. In this period Verlaine converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1879 Verlaine found a new friend Lucien Liétinois, but soon he also relapsed into alcoholism. Verlaine died in Paris at the age of 52.
Arthur Rimbaud (° Oct.20, 1854, at Charleville near the Belgian frontier) was the son of an army captain who deserted his family when his son was six years old. He became the precocious boy-poet of French symbolism. After the end of the affair with Verlaine, Rimbaud abandoned writing. He now became a trader and a gun-runner in Africa. On November 10, 1891, he died in Marseille after the amputation of his cancerous right leg.

Answer: Fyodor Dostoyevski

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist, journalist and short story writer. In 1846 he joined a group of utopian socialists. Was arrested on April 23, 1849 and - after a mock execution- sent to Siberia.
After 4 years of hard labour in a stockade, wearing fetters, he was released. Became a soldier for some time. Returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 as a monarchist and a devout follower of the Russian Orthodox Church. Travelled in Europe in the early 1860s. Having become a gambler, he ran into debts. An epileptic all his life, he died in St. Petersburg on February 9,1881.
Aleksandr Solzhenytsin(° 1918) author of a number of novels based on his own experiences of Soviet prisons and hospitals. Was exiled from Soviet Union in 1974. Moved to U.S. in 1976. Returned to Russia after end of Soviet system.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960).Born into a prominent Jewish family in Moscow. Nobel Prize in 1958. Though not accepted by Soviet authorities, his work seems to have somehow been respected by Stalin himself.
"Doctor Zhivago" was first published in Milan by Feltrinelli in 1957.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (°1899-1977) is the author of "Lolita" (1955); "Pnin" (1957) and "Pale Fire" (1962). For his first works he used the pen-name Vladimir Sirin.

Answer: Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy (1828-1910) is famous as the author of "War and Peace" and " Anna Karenina". Born at Yasnaya Polyana in Tula Province. Took part in the Crimean War. In his view the secret of change in the world lay in education. In 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian-Orthodox church. Died of pneumonia in 1910.
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) was born in Moscow into a cultured, but poor aristocratic family.
On his mother's side he was a greatgreatgrandson of a black Abyssinian who served under Peter the Great. Was banished from St. Petersburg because of his sympathies for some of the political radicals of his time. Got killed in a duel in which he intended to defend the honour of his wife.
Maksim Gorki(°1868 - d.1936). Penname of Aleksei Peshkov. BTW Gorki means: bitter.
His birthplace was Nizhnii Novgorod. He lived for some time in Capri, where he was visited by Lenin (1906). In the 1920s he chose voluntary exile from Soviet Union because of the way in which the intellectuals were treated.
Stalin coaxed him back in 1931.

Answer: Miguel de Cervantes

Tirso de Molina was the pseudonym of Fray Gabriel Tellez (1584-1648). Author of "El Burlador de Sevilla" (1630), the story about "Don Juan".
Lope de Vega (1562-1635). Playwright. Soldier in the Spanish Armada. Ran into trouble after lampooning the father of the married woman he was having an affair with. Then he became a priest, but kept going on with his love-affairs. Died shortly after losing his son at sea.

Pedro de Calderon de la Barca (°1600- d. in 1681). Educated by Jesuits. Most famous play:" Life is a Dream". Became a priest in 1651, which may account for the many "autos sacramentales" he wrote. Died in 1681.

Cervantes was born in Alcala de Henares in 1547. Possibly the descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity.In 1571 he fought valiantly at Lepanto. Later he fell into the hands of Algerian corsairs. Was later ransomed by Trinitarians. Thrown into jail in Sevilla in 1597 because of money-problems with the government. The publication of his "Don Quixote" in 1605 proved an immediate success. "Novelas Ejemplares" followed in 1613, "Don Quixote, Part Two", in 1615. Died on April 22, 1616.

Answer: Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca was born at °Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, 1898 and died near Granada, 1936. Murdered by the Nationalists at the beginning of the Civil War.
Gabriele d' Annunzio, penname of Gaetano Rapagnetta, born in 1864 on a boat in the Adriatic. Served with distinction as an aviator in World War One. Involved in the Fiume dispute in 1919. Later he sympathized with Mussolini who took over the black shirts of the Fiume volunteers for his own Fascist Movement."Il Fuoco" describes his love-affair with Eleonora Duse.
Georges Bernanos(°Paris 1888 - died of cancer in Paris 1948).
Novelist and essayist, whose masterpiece was the "Diary of a Country Priest" (1936). First he was an active supporter of the rightist Action Française movement and an ardent supporter of the French monarchy. Later he changed his views and became a resolute opponent of Franco's rebellion against the Spanish Republic in 1938.