View allAll Photos Tagged affirmation
This turned out to be one of the most joyous, life affirming places that we've visited on our travels. The sparkling, late summer sunshine, the arresting modern architecture set amid so much history, the superb collection of early 20th century paintings on the 5th floor, and the throng of tourists and Parisians enjoying themselves on a Saturday combined to make this a most memorable afternoon.
"Centre Georges Pompidou commonly shortened to Centre Pompidou; also known as the Pompidou Centre in English) is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais. The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers, such as mimes and jugglers. In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature and sketch artists, tables set up for evening dining, and even skateboarding competitions.
The nearby Stravinsky Fountain (also called the Fontaine des automates), on Place Stravinsky, features sixteen whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the colored works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.
It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as Beaubourg. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
The sculpture, Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is twenty-five feet high, was placed in 2012 in front of the Centre Pompidou.
The Centre was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano; British architect Richard Rogers; and Italian architect Gianfranco Franchini, assisted by Ove Arup & Partners.The project was awarded to this team in an architectural design competition, whose results were announced in 1971. It was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate. World-renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Prouvé and Philip Johnson made up the jury which would select one design out of the 681 entries.
National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." An article in Le Figaro declared "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." But two decades later, while reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly coloured tubes for mechanical systems. The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionized museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city.".
Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Georges_Pompidou
...
I savor each moment, because I do not know
exactly when a heavy gust or breeze might blow.
Should it be today, I'll shed my sorrow in a tear
while my courage battles the uncertainty I fear.
Dreadful emotions, for which I can't prepare,
will likely taunt me with sporadic despair,
but I'll be patient amid the highs and lows
for that is the process by which grieving goes.
I will accept my fate in spite of the stress and strain,
ignoring should'ves, could'ves, would'ves to rid my pain;
as will the sun's radiance on my thirsty skin
restore in due time by contented grin.
~ Maria C Dawson
Explore, expand, express your understanding of life and happiness. Share your journey. Heal. Teach. Inspire.
This work "Courage in the Wake of Loss Affirmation" is a derivative of Julie Davis' photo "Goodbyes" / CC BY-NC
It does my heart good to see a rusty crusty sculpture such as this on display in the Seattle Art Museum! :D
for the beautiful Complete Herbal group
The efficacy of the isolated compound—called “callicarpenal”—was affirmed through tests simulating human skin. But these results may not have been a surprise in northeastern Mississippi as long as a century ago, once the source of the callicarpenal was revealed. Seems that it was known there that fresh, crushed leaves of American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, in the family Verbenaceae, helped keep biting insects away from animals such as horses and mules. Placing crushed beautyberry leaves under the animals’ harnesses, residents knew, would mash out a repellent oil. Eventually, some folks there took to mashing the leaves and rubbing the residue on their own skins.
===
The temperate species are deciduous, the tropical species evergreen. The leaves are simple, opposite, and 5-25 cm long. The flowers are in clusters, white to pinkish. The fruit is a berry, 2-5 mm diameter and pink to red-purple with a highly distinctive metallic lustre, are very conspicuous in clusters on the bare branches after the leaves fall. The berries last well into the winter or dry season and are an important survival food for birds and other animals, though they will not eat them until other sources are depleted. The berries are highly astringent, and considered unfit for human use. Callicarpa species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Endoclita malabaricus and Endoclita undulifer.
==
Reject victim blaming, affirm the right to enjoy sexuality! Yes means YES and No means NO however we dress wherever we go
The U.S. Military Academy hosted an Affirmation Ceremony for the Class of 2024, on Aug. 14, 2022, at Eisenhower Hall on West Point, N.Y. The Sunday evening before the first day of class, the Cow Class (Juniors) recite the Cadet oath and affirm their commitment to complete the next two years of study and serve their five-year active duty service obligation, followed by three years of Reserve duty. (U.S. Army by Sgt. 1st Class Luisito Brooks)
This turned out to be one of the most joyous, life affirming places that we've visited on our travels. The sparkling, late summer sunshine, the arresting modern architecture set amid so much history, the superb collection of early 20th century paintings on the 5th floor, and the throng of tourists and Parisians enjoying themselves on a Saturday combined to make this a most memorable afternoon.
"Centre Georges Pompidou commonly shortened to Centre Pompidou; also known as the Pompidou Centre in English) is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais. The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers, such as mimes and jugglers. In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature and sketch artists, tables set up for evening dining, and even skateboarding competitions.
The nearby Stravinsky Fountain (also called the Fontaine des automates), on Place Stravinsky, features sixteen whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the colored works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.
It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as Beaubourg. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
The sculpture, Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is twenty-five feet high, was placed in 2012 in front of the Centre Pompidou.
The Centre was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano; British architect Richard Rogers; and Italian architect Gianfranco Franchini, assisted by Ove Arup & Partners.The project was awarded to this team in an architectural design competition, whose results were announced in 1971. It was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate. World-renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Prouvé and Philip Johnson made up the jury which would select one design out of the 681 entries.
National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." An article in Le Figaro declared "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." But two decades later, while reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly coloured tubes for mechanical systems. The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionized museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city.".
Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Georges_Pompidou
...
June 25, 2023 - New York, NY - Governor Hochul signed nation-leading legislation to protect and affirm the LGBTQ+ community ahead of her participation in New York City's annual Pride March. (Don Pollard/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
Affirming God's Sovereignty
Our God remains incomprehensible and retains His simplicity. He tells us in His Word that He is not a God of confusion but of order. He is not at war with Himself. He is altogether good, altogether holy, and altogether sovereign. This we must affirm to maintain a biblical concept of divine sovereignty. Yet we must always balance this understanding with a clear understanding that God always exercises His power and authority according to His holy character. He chooses what He chooses according to His own good pleasure. It is His pleasure that He does. He chooses what is pleasing to Himself. But that pleasure is always His good pleasure, for God is never pleased to will or to do anything that is evil or contrary to His own goodness. In this we can rest, knowing that He wishes for, and has the power to bring about, all good things for us His children.
_____
Renewing your mind - R.C. Sproul
PLEASE NOTE BEFORE USING THIS PHOTO: Your license to use it is restricted to purposes that are affirming of equal access to facilities for all LGBTQ humans. Any use of this photo surrounded by homophobic, transphobic, or discriminatory language is not permitted and license to use is invalid per the respect of moral rights in the Creative Commons license. Any uses of this photo discovered to violate these terms will have license immediately revoked as well. Thank you! :)
This photo replaces a previous photo that I did not take. I took this one. See the rest of the photos in Gender Neutral Restrooms group for more inspiration.
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Published in New West Holllywood law requires gender-neutral public restrooms | Take Two | 89.3 KPCC
Published in Transgender Hopkins County High School Student Working on Petition to Use Bathroon of Choice | WKU Public Radio
Published in Vlaanderen krijgt genderneutrale toiletten - Buitenland - TROUW
Published in SF School Adds Gender-Neutral Kindergarten Bathrooms - Breitbart
Published in Jacksonville City Council scuttles bill that would let transgender men [ sic ] into women’s bathrooms - Liberty Unyielding - Note: comment placed on article about the inaccuracy of the headline.
Published in Out & About - Amerikanske teenagere har mangfoldig kønsforståelse
Published in Single-sex schools 'not equipped to deal with transgender issues' | Education News | News | The Independent
Published in HB 2: Louie Gohmert’s Lie, and What It Reveals.
Published in New Jersey School Board Allows T----s to Use Bathroom According to Their Gender Identity : Nation : Christianity Daily (Comment left ordering change of terminology or takedown, per violation of policy above)
Published in www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2016/10/brian-ro...
Published in Tech CEOs oppose Texas 'bathroom bill' in ongoing support of transgender rights - SiliconANGLE
Meet the newest collection of paper stitching kits from Joone Creative. They are a thoughtful pairing of simple, tactile embroidery and recorded meditations. US + Canada folks, a giveaway is underway through 7/18: www.allthingspaper.net/2020/07/relax-and-recharge-with-jo...
Prisons (suite) tentatives d'autoportraits (2017 / 2018 retouches finales 2020 / 2021)
Présage, ou ce que vous voulez
Bracketing d'exposition fusionné avec Photomatix et re-traité localement avec DXO PhotoLab
le résultat de la superposition de photos -avec le logiciel "Photomatix"- est volontairement sous-exposé pour permettre le travail -dans "DXO PhotoLab"- de (ce que j’assimile à des) glacis, par des "points de contrôle", cercles de masques en dégradés radiaux, dans lesquels peuvent être inclus différents effets, j’utilise principalement les mesures d’exposition, pour remodeler l’image à ma guise -et, surtout : "La figure existe déjà dans le bloc de marbre" affirmait Michel ange , "il suffit de savoir l'en détacher"
Le cadre est le même que celui de la première série (2011/2012), celui d’un mur de mon atelier qui continue à raconter son vécu (clous, vis, fissures et graffitis -qui en deviennent la peau de l'image, ses cicatrices, rides et grains de beauté). Mais là où la première série était cadrée en "portrait" (en pied -l’appareil photo étant à la même distance du mur dans les 2 séries), la 2ème l’est en "paysage" et comprend sur la gauche une porte, et sur la droite, une fenêtre.
Au fil de tirages (sans compression, j’utilise le .tif pour cette série) j’ai éliminé ou réduit la présence de la porte et de la fenêtre, privilégiant le(s) personnage(s) situé(s) plus ou moins au centre gauche du cadre. J’ai beaucoup utilisé la "gomme" de DXO qui permet, selon sa dimension, l’espace couvert et l’endroit du clic de départ, des variations dans la duplication de parties de l’image.
La trame, boyaux, lianes, paysages, sont mes sculptures en papier toilette dont j’ai varié les positions dans le cadre, au fil des photos, et dont la fusion permet ces ouvertures sur d’autres contrées
Mon corps, que mon corps, nu, mais dont les parties qui peuvent être censurées sont enlevées (castrées) -ce ne sont pas les seuls sévices que (dans la seule représentation de l’aléatoire des fusions d’images et du travail de dévoilement que j’y fais) je me fais subir.
Une amie -que l’on retrouve dans certaines photos- a bien voulue me servir de "modèle" pour illustrer cette autre geôle qu’est la projection dans "l’autre" et les systèmes qui s’installent pour perpétuer des prédéterminismes.
Pour la 1ère série, j’avais écrit : "Ma prison c'est aussi mon corps, ma maison, ma vision du monde et l'espace entre la naissance et la mort
Jeux de bracket avec Nikon D300S, Photomatix et CaptureNX2
Cadre serré, enfermé de ma condition, comment contredire le destin ?
Un coin d’appart, un drap sur le sol, un rideau à la fenêtre, parfois d’anciens modelages en pq, et le corps.
Demain cinquante ans.
Raws de sous-exposés à surexposés, fusionnés pour une image ouverte à la transformation de ses lumières, de ses couleurs et de ses contrastes, jusque dans les traitements locaux les plus fins.
Je presse le sujet pour en sortir les jus les plus profonds, et pourtant, il parvient toujours à m’échapper…
Parti de Muybridge et Marey j’ai rencontré toute l’histoire de l’image, du taureau de Lascaux au boeuf écorché, crucifié ou autre compotier, de l’odalisque à la Vénus en fleur offerte, à toute l’histoire de la vanité…
Aujourd’hui cinquante ans."
herve-germain-prisons.blogspot.fr/
Aujourd’hui, sur les photos de la nouvelle série, j’ai 56 ans, mais je suis en route, après des centaines de possibilités d’images, après des milliers d’heures de travail, vers les 60 ans.
Je rencontre Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, le Caravage, Georges de la Tour, beaucoup Turner, je rencontre Van Gogh, Pissaro, Monet et Renoir mais aussi des fresques antiques, des visages de Francis Bacon, des textures de jeux vidéos ou encore des affiches de films d’horreur
Et ce n'est pas fini, je continue à rencontrer les Alpes de Courbet, le romantisme de Caspar David Friedrich, de Camille Corot, de Jean-Baptiste Millet, les courbes de François Boucher et les envolées de Fragonard, la théâtralité d’Antoine Watteau...
Je rencontre la jungle, la forêt en feu, la tempête, les fonds sous-marin, les montagnes sous les nuages, les égouts, des monstres, des êtres originels, etc.
Les gilets jaunes m’ont permis (et continuent !) une fenêtre thérapeutique par rapport à ce travail qui devenait, fin 2018, très dépressif, et finalement laissé en suspend. Alors j’ai pu revenir à la vie dans la lutte collective pour le bien commun, sans cesser d’expérimenter -bien sûr- les formes d’expression utilisées pour transmettre l’expérience : vidéo / montage.
Je reviens, depuis plus d'un an, à ce travail d'autoportrait avec plus de recul, même s'il reste désespéré
The Class of 2023 affirmed their commitment to service on August 15, 2021, and took the Oath of Affirmation, binding them to complete their next two years of study and a minimum of five years of active-duty military service thereafter. Astronaut William S. McArthur Jr. ‘73 was the guest speaker for the evening.
Members of the Class of 1973, the 50-year affiliates of the Class of 2023, presented the cadets with commemorative coins to mark the occasion of their affirmed commitment.
"Regardless of your academic focus, you will graduate having majored in leadership. The good news is that you will leave this hallowed institution well-prepared to meet the challenges your careers will place before you. When you graduate, look at your diploma. Understand what it represents. It doesn’t mean that you are ready to conquer the world any more than one from an Ivy League school, an MIT or Ga Tech, a Notre Dame, Michigan, Texas, or Stanford. It means you are ready to learn your profession through hands-on experience. It means you are ready to make your own luck.
- Astronaut William S. McArthur Jr. ‘73
The Class of 2021 affirms their commitment to service in the US Army in a ceremony at West Point, NY. 18 August, 2019. (US Army Photo by Cadet Amanda Lin)
A fun way to affirm strength for women and girls. More significantly for my family, an affirmation for folks with special needs. My wife has multiple sclerosis; I also have two siblings with cerebral palsy. The zoo where this display is located is a certified destination for people living with autism.
Beery christmas - Divers 2021
Yeastie Boys x Loch Lomond - Pretty Green
Yeastie Boys
On espere que vous avez pense a renouveler votre passeport car on va voyager ce vendredi. Direction la Nouvelle-Zelande en passant par l'Ecosse ! La brasserie Yeastie Boys s'est rapprochee des Ecossais de Loch Lomond pour creer une New-Zeland Pilsner de qualite. Peut-etre que cette destination oceanique va vous surprendre mais il faut savoir que de nombreux houblons tres aromatiques y poussent dont le Nelson Sauvin. Ca tombe bien puisque ce houblon est bien present dans cette Pretty Green et va nous permettre de continuer l'exploration de notre aventure houblonnee ! Dans votre verre, l'identite de la Pilsner va s'affirmer avec sa robe doree mais avec un aspect legerement trouble. Le nez va tout de suite vous mettre dans le bain du houblon neo-zelandais. La Pilsner tcheque s'exprime sur des notes herbacees et discretes mais sa cousine neo-zelandaise va etre beaucoup plus expressive sur le fruit tropical ! On peut donc retrouver de la goyave ainsi que des notes plus affirmees de zeste de pamplemousse et de citron. Le Nelson Sauvin va apporter egalement ses notes de sauvignon blanc et de groseille. En bouche, on retrouve la croustillance et la legerete que l'on apprecie dans la Pilsner. Cependant, l'attaque est bien plus vivace avec une grosse vague de fraicheur. C'est le moment de sortir les planches de surfs ! On retrouve le cote zeste d'agrume qui va assecher la bouche avec son amertume longue et presente pour nous donner une envie de ' reviens-y ' durant la degustation. Vous avez entre vos mains toute l'identite de la biere neo-zelandaise ! Les deux brasseries nous ont fait une belle collaboration et nous permettent de nous rendre compte du pouvoir du houblon au niveau de son amertume et de son aromatique. Et rien que sur cette thematique, il y a encore beaucoup de choses a decouvrir entre les houblons allemands, tcheques, anglais, francais, americains etc... a chaque pays son caractere !
Degre d'alcool
5.5%
Temperature de degustation ideale
6° - 8°
Le style
New Zealand Pilsner
Depuis le debut du Beery Christmas, vous avez rencontre differents types de houblons notamment des varietes americaines. Il existe aussi des varietes neo-zelandaises tres prisees des brasseurs ! Le houblon en Nouvelle-Zelande se developpe en meme temps que l'installation des colons britanniques dans le pays. Ces derniers apportent dans leurs bagages des plants de houblons et les introduisent dans la region de Nelson. La meteo y est propice pour la culture du houblon qui devient rapidement un juteux commerce ! Dans les annees 60, les cultivateurs decident de developper leurs propres varietes. En decoulent des houblons au profil aromatique riche et aux notes singulieres. On peut parler des notes de melon du Motueka ou des notes de sauvignon blanc et de groseille du Nelson Sauvin. Au total, une quinzaine de varietes de houblons neo-zelandais se developpent et s'exportent desormais dans le monde. A partir des annees 80, des brasseurs locaux decident de brasser de la biere pour sortir du carcan des lagers avec peu de saveurs. Les Neo-Zelandais, peu rancuniers, se reconcilient avec elles grace a leur houblon. Ils decident d'associer les deux pour brasser des bieres legeres avec un caractere delicatement tropical pour donner vie a la New Zeland Pilsner !
Le calendrier de l'Avent de bieres pas comme les autres
Partez a l'aventure dans l'univers incroyable de ceux qui font le Beery Christmas ! Nos brasseurs et brasseuses vous reveleront tout sur notre passion commune : la biere.
Chaque soir du mois de decembre, nous serons des milliers a travers l'Europe a decouvrir ensemble une nouvelle biere et surtout de nouvelles saveurs.
Brassees exclusivement pour vous, decouvrez des styles et des procedes de brassage inedits pour une experience gustative unique et depaysante !
( Divers albums de photos prisent en 2021 sans sujet reel.
Various albums of pictures taken in 2021 without real subject. )
#art #artistsoninstagram #penart #illustration #wesleybowersart #wesleybowerscreative #affirmations #complete #playful #spiritual #magical #genuine #gorgeous #affirmationart #sedonaartist #sedonaart #arizonaartist #forest #trees #hills #mountains #sky #sun
my design for the spoonflower "Affirmations" challenge.
The inspiration for this design is a graffiti and grunge style of scribbles of positive affirmation- A pick me up when I am low. I envisaged a duvet cover in this design, The idea being, every night before i went to bed, I can read the scribbles and affirm a positive day.....and over time, i can add to the affirmations to create an ever growing entry of positiveness, in the scribbly, scrawly, fun carefree style.
This design would also make a great wallpapered panel above my desk in the art studio.
www.spoonflower.com/designs/8581980-graffiti-grunge-style...
Fitch Ratings recently affirmed its "A" rating on JAXPORT’s $129.8 million in outstanding revenue bonds, issuing the port a “Stable” rating outlook.
Fitch says the rating reflects the port’s “versatile financial and operating position” despite global marketplace volatility created by the coronavirus pandemic. The rating is also supported by JAXPORT’s growing automobile and container activity, increasingly diverse revenue base, and desirable location in the Southeast U.S, according to Fitch.
“Our diversity of business and strong relationships with our customers, along with the investments that have been made in our port by our federal, state, local, and private partners, have helped ensure that we can continue to grow and thrive in today’s industry,” said JAXPORT CEO Eric Green. “A number of major projects, anchored by harbor deepening, will be coming online in about the next 18 months, allowing us to build on the success we’re experiencing and accommodate continued growth for the benefit of our customers and community.”
The Class of 2023 completes their Affirmation Ceremony and commits to their Active Duty requirement in the Army. (U.S. Army Photo by CDT Alexa Zammit)
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в or Пе́шков;[1] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist.[2] He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[3] Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), My Childhood (1913–1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun (1905). He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.
Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936.
Contents
1 Life
1.1 Early years
1.2 Political and literary development
1.3 Capri years
1.4 Return from exile
1.5 Povolzhye famine
1.6 Second exile
1.7 Death of Lenin
1.8 Return to Russia: last years
1.9 Apologist for the gulag
1.10 Hostility to gays
1.11 Conflicts[citation needed] with Stalinists
1.12 Death
2 Depictions and adaptations
3 Selected works
3.1 Novels
3.2 Novellas
3.3 Short stories
3.4 Drama
3.5 Non-fiction
3.6 Collections
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Sources
7 Further reading
8 External links
Life
Early years
Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother[2] and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.[2]
As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).[4] He started using the pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, "Makar Chudra", was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis, where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops.[5][6][7] The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity.[2]
Political and literary development
Anton Chekhov and Gorky. 1900, Yalta
Gorky's reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.[citation needed]
In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."[8]
He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy.[9]
Leo Tolstoy with Gorky in Yasnaya Polyana, 1900
From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own.[10] Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture.[11] Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s.[11] He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov, who ran the school—to work there.[11] By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project.[11]
As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday"), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered.[12] It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of political plays, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie, Auguste Rodin and Anatole France, amongst others.[13]
In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny. When visiting the Adirondack Mountains, Gorky wrote Мать (Mat', Mother), his notable novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul" but also his admiration for the boldness of the American spirit.[citation needed]
Capri years
In 1909–1911 Gorky lived on the island of Capri in the burgundy-coloured "Villa Behring".
From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy, partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia.[2] He continued to support the work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot's Encyclopedia. During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey".[14] Despite his atheism,[15] Gorky was not a materialist.[16] Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called "God-Building" (богостроительство, bogostroitel'stvo),[2] which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create a religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building' was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements.
Return from exile
An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1913, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography.[2] On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture".
After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana (secret police) on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov.[17] Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over the floor.[18] Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicated that revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery".[19] Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair.[20] In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are the incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness".[21] Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable-I had never known people who were really like this".[22] Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them.[22]
During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917. On the day after the Bolshevik coup of 7 November 1917, Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample the grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too".[23] Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution. One contemporary remembered at how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin.[24] Gorky wrote that Lenin together with Trotsky "have become poisoned with the filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams.[24] Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them".[24] Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia".[24] A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, "New Life") fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918. (It would not be re-published in Russia until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.) The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev.[citation needed]
"Lenin and his associates," Gorky wrote, "consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes ... the abolition of free speech and senseless arrests."[25]
In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg, who later became his unofficial wife. In August 1921, the poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam, a close friend of Gumilev's widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had a strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything."[26] In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis.
Povolzhye famine
In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.[27]
Second exile
Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries, which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to the Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder."[28] This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously."[29] He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov, who acted as Gorky's secretary for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters.
He wrote several successful books while there,[30] but by 1928 he was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in the coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento. In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda, the corrupt and murderous head of the Ogpu and two other Ogpu officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky, who held high office in the Gulag. Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently.[31]
Death of Lenin
After the death of Lenin in 1924, Gorky wrote the following:
Vladimir Lenin, a big, real man of this world, has passed away. His death is a painful blow to all who knew him, a very painful blow! But the black line of death shall only underscore his importance in the eyes of all the world - the importance of the leader of the world’s working people. If the clouds of hatred for him, the clouds of lies and slander woven round him were even denser, it would not matter, for there is no such force as could dim the torch he has raised in the stifling darkness of the world gone mad. Never has there been a man who deserves more to be remembered forever by the whole world. Vladimir Lenin is dead. But those to whom he bequeathed his wisdom and his will are living. They are alive and working more successfully than anyone on Earth has ever worked before.[32]
Return to Russia: last years
Avel Enukidze, Joseph Stalin and Maxim Gorky celebrate 10th anniversary of Sportintern. Red Square, Moscow USSR. Aug 1931
Gorky's return from Fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky, which was for many years the Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhni Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow's main park, and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as was the Moscow Art Theatre. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour.
He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers, founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale "A Girl and Death" to his visitors Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov, an event that was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "Эта штука сильнее чем "Фауст" Гёте (любовь побеждает смерть)"[33] ["This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust (love defeats death)]".
Apologist for the gulag
In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea-Baltic Canal, presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential.[34] For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal were refuted by multiple accounts of thousands of prisoners who froze to death not only in the evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day.[35]
On his definitive return to the Soviet Union in 1932, Maxim Gorky received the Ryabushinsky Mansion, designed in 1900 by Fyodor Schechtel for the Ryabushinsky family. The mansion today houses a museum about Gorky.
Hostility to gays
Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense. His attitude was coloured by the fact that several leading members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung, or Brownshirts, were overtly homosexual. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky claimed "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish."[36]
Conflicts[citation needed] with Stalinists
By the summer of 1934, Gorky was increasingly in conflict with the Soviet authorities. He was angry that Leopold Averbakh, whom he regarded as a protege, was denied a role in the newly created Writers Union, and objected to interference by the Central Committee staff in the affairs of the union. This conflict, which may have been exacerbated by Gorky's despair over the early death of his son, Max, came to a head just before the first Soviet Writers Congress, in August 1934. On 11 August, he submitted an article for publication in Pravda which attacked the deputy head of the press department, Pavel Yudin with such intemperate language that Stalin's deputy, Lazar Kaganovich ordered its suppression, but was forced to relent after hundreds of copies of the article circulated by hand. Gorky's draft of the keynote speech he was due to give at the congress caused such consternation when he submitted it to the Politburo that four of its leading members – Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Andrei Zhdanov – were sent to persuade him to make changes.[37] Even in its toned-down version – very unusually for the Stalin era – he did not praise Stalin, did not mention any of the approved writers turning out 'socialist realist' novels, but singled out Fyodor Dostoevsky for "having painted with the most vivid perfection of word portraiture a type of egocentrist, a type of social degenerate in the person of the hero of his Memoirs from Underground. ... Dostoyevsky in the figure of his hero has shown the depths of whining despair that are reached by the individualist from among the young men of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who are cut off from real life."[38]
Death
With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow. His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as a paid informer.[39] Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg, who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral.
The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded the circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's coffin during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (one of the three Moscow Trials), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda's NKVD agents.[40]
In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical "socialist realism".
Depictions and adaptations
The Gorky Trilogy is a series of three films based on the three autobiographical books: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities, directed by Mark Donskoy, filmed in the Soviet Union, released 1938–1940. The trilogy was adapted from Gorky's autobiography.[41]
The German modernist Bertolt Brecht based his epic play The Mother (1932) on Gorky's novel of the same name.
Gorky's novel was also adapted for an opera by Valery Zhelobinsky in 1938. In 1912, the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice based his opera Radda on the character of Radda from Makar Chudra. Our Father is the title given to Gorky's The Last Ones in its English translation by William Stancil.
The play[clarification needed] made its New York debut in 1975 at the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by Keith Fowler.
In 1985 Enemies was performed in London with a multi-national cast directed by Ann Pennington in association with Internationalist Theatre. The cast included South African Greek actress Angelique Rockas and Bulgarian Madlena Nedeva playing the parts of Tatiana, and Kleopatra respectively.[42] Tom Vaughan of The Morning Star affirmed "this is a great revolutionary play, by a great revolutionary writer, performed with elegance and style, great passion and commitment".[43] BBC Russian Service was no less complimentary.[44]
Selected works
Main article: Maxim Gorky bibliography
Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky. New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270.
Novels
Goremyka Pavel, 1894. Published in English as Orphan Paul[45]
Foma Gordeyev (Фома Гордеев), 1899. Also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid
Three of Them (Трое), 1900. Also translated as Three Men
The Mother (Мать), 1907. First published in English, in 1906
The Life of a Useless Man (Жизнь ненужного человека), 1908
A Confession (Исповедь), 1908
Okurov City (Городок Окуров), 1908
The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина), 1910
The Artamonov Business (Дело Артамоновых), 1927
Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина), unfinished:[46]
The Bystander, 1927
The Magnet, 1928
Other Fires, 1930
The Specter, 1936
Novellas
The Orlovs (Супруги Орловы), 1897
Creatures That Once Were Men (Бывшие люди), 1897
Varenka Olesova (Варенька Олесова), 1898
Summer (Лето), 1909
Great Love (Большая любовь), 1911
Short stories
"Makar Chudra" (Макар Чудра), 1892
"Old Izergil" (Старуха Изергиль), 1895
"Chelkash" (Челкаш), 1895
"Konovalov" (Коновалов), 1897
"Malva" (Мальва), 1897
"Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (Двадцать шесть и одна), 1899
"Song of a Falcon" (Песня о Соколе), 1902. Also referred to as a poem in prose
Drama
The Philistines (Мещане), translated also as The Smug Citizens and The Petty Bourgeois (Мещане), 1901
The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902
Summerfolk (Дачники), 1904
Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), 1905
Barbarians (Варвары), 1905
Enemies, 1906.
The Last Ones (Последние), 1908. Translated also as Our Father[47]
Children (Дети), 1910. Translated also as The Reception (and called originally "Встреча")
Queer People (Чудаки), 1910. Translated also as Eccentrics
Vassa Zheleznova (Васса Железнова), 1910, 1935 (revised version)
The Zykovs (Зыковы), 1913
Counterfeit Money (Фальшивая монета), 1913
The Old Man (Старик), 1915, Revised 1922, 1924. Translated also as The Judge
Workaholic Slovotekov (Работяга Словотеков), 1920
Somov and Others (Cомов и другие), 1930
Yegor Bulychov and Others (Егор Булычов и другие), 1932
Dostigayev and Others (Достигаев и другие), 1933
Non-fiction
Chaliapin, articles in Letopis, 1917[48]
Untimely Thoughts, articles, 1918
My Recollections of Tolstoy, 1919
Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev, 1920–1928
V.I. Lenin (В.И. Ленин), reminiscence, 1924–1931
The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)
Literary Portraits [c.1935].[49]
Poems
"The Song of the Stormy Petrel" (Песня о Буревестнике), 1901
Autobiography
My Childhood (Детство), Part I, 1913–1914
In the World (В людях), Part II, 1916
My Universities (Мои университеты), Part III, 1923
Collections
Sketches and Stories, three volumes, 1898–1899
Creatures That Once Were Men, stories in English translation (1905). This contained an introduction by G. K. Chesterton[50] The Russian title, Бывшие люди (literally "Former people") gained popularity as an expression in reference to people who severely dropped in their social status
Tales of Italy (Сказки об Италии), 1911–1913
Through Russia (По Руси), 1923
This image is free to post anywhere as is.
If we examine our lives, are we more positive or negative? Do we tend to affirm and build people up? Or do we tend more to criticize and gossip about people?
I've begun a new group photo album for "free positive images" if anyone would like to upload images there.
If you want to copy and paste this image, you are welcome to. The blog explains a little more about the subject:
templestream.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-your-life-was-word-c...