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Showing posts with the label Edmund and Jules de Goncourt

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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Paris in July 2018 - The de Goncourt brothers

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I have recently quoted from a book called 365 dagar  (365 days) by Anders Bergman & Emilie Perland. There are extracts from famous and not so famous writers of diaries. You meet a lot of different people that you have never heard of before, and they are sometimes fascinating characters. Two of them are the de Goncourt brothers, Edmond and Jules, both naturalism writers.  " They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870."They are known for their literary work and for their diaries, which offer an intimate view into the French literary society of the later 19th century." (Wikipedia) Edmond (left) with his brother Jules. Photographed by Félix Nadar (Wikipedia) Researching the internet, I found this interesting article by Tara Isabella Burton (from 2015) on th...
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