Carlo Levi Biography

Carlo Levi

(Turin, 1902-Rome, 1975) Italian writer and painter.With a degree in Medicine, he soon devoted himself to cultivating broader cultural interests.As a painter, he stood out for the first time in 1923, and six years later he joined the "Gruppo dei Sei" in Turin.He was one of the young people gathered around Pietro Gobetti, and later joined "Giustizia e Libertà".

He was confined to politics in 1935-1936, and later moved to Paris.From 1943 on he participated in the Resistance movement, and was director of newspapers in Florence and Rome.Later, he combined his work as a journalist and painting (in 1945 he exhibited in his own room at the Venice Biennale).In 1963 and in 1968 he was elected senator of the Republic, as an independent, on the list of communists.

His first literary work, Christ stopped at Eboli ( Cristo si è fermato a Eboli , 1945), evokes his experiences during confinement, when discover, in a passionate and lacerating way, the peasant world of southern Italy.The narrative (which served to reconsider the view of the southern world from the north) illustrates a solidly structured mythical story.Levi's realistic and neo-baroque prose confronts two contradictory ways of approaching peasant civilization: the fascination for the primitive and the false and manipulative mythologization of that scenario.The work contributed to the dissemination of the "southern question", which would be the fundamental theme of almost all his later works.

He raised in a very personal way the problem of the human presence in the world and its permanent risk of crisis, taking into account the profound reality of symbols and archetypes, which E.de Martino studied during the same years.After Paura della libertà (1946), written before the war, came L'orlogio (1950). Le parole sono pietre (1955) is also set in the South, specifically in Sicily, and the climax of the play is the unforgettable episode of Carlo Levi's visit to the mother of a murdered trade unionist, Salvatore Carnevale.

Il future à un cuore antico (1956) and La doppia notte dei tigli (1959) are dedicated to the Soviet Union and Germany, respectively.In Tutto il miele è finito (1965) he takes up the theme of the South, the island of Sardinia.The figures of the peasants and the shepherds come to the fore and become the true characters of a myth, which the author always tries to transform into rational, systematic, scientific and socialist achievements, with a prose in which, however , there are elements of great emotional intensity that reflect his fascination for primal presences.

Comments

Phoenician numbers

In History Today Online we explained in a previous post which were the Arabic numerals, but the truth is that they are not the only ones, and although somewhat complicated to understand, the truth is that the Phoenician numbers are perhaps much more difficult.In History Today Online we talk to you now of which are the Phoenician numbers. The Phoenicians also known as Canaanites, although they were a civilization that occupied a region called Canaan and was a territory that currently encompasses Israel, Syria and Lebanon.They always stood out for their art, closely linked to the different Mediterranean influences and as not for an alphabet that they created and that is in fact the origin of the alphabet that we know today, they also had a numerical system and that we tried to decipher below. The Phoenician Numbers: The main basis of the Phoenician numbers, are the angles and the stripes since these are the base they used to create the different numbers.Depending on how e...

Humberto Fernández Morán Biography

Humberto Fernández Morán (Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1924-Stockholm, Sweden, 1999) Venezuelan scientist.Inventor of the diamond blade, he was a pioneer in electron microscopy techniques and decisive in the process of scientific modernization of his country, in which he founded the Venezuelan Institute of Neurology and Brain Research (IVNIC). Humberto Fernández carried out his first studies between the capital of Zulia, Curaçao and New York.In 1936 he entered the German School of Maracaibo and the following year he left for Germany, where he finished high school at the Schulgemeinde Wichersdorf high school in Sallfeld.At the age of fifteen, he began his medical studies at the University of Munich.During the Second World War, six days before the Normandy landing (1944), in a basement and under low aerial bombardment, he graduated in medicine with Summa cum laude . Humberto Fernández Morán The following year he revalidated his degree at the Central University of Venezuela and worked ...

Camilo Torres Restrepo Biography

Camilo Torres Restrepo (Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo; Bogotá, 1929-San Vicente de Chucurí, Santander, 1966) Priest and Colombian guerrilla.After being ordained a priest in 1954 and completing his training with sociology studies in Belgium (1954-1959), he participated in the founding of the Faculty of Sociology of the National University of Colombia, where he taught between 1959 and 1962. Camilo Torres Restrepo Worried since his youth about deep social inequalities, the charismatic personality of Camilo Torres Restrepo, the coherence of his progressive message and his initiatives in favor of the classes most disadvantaged had made him, since his return to the country, a figure of great relevance.The expulsion from the university (1962) increased its public projection and marked the beginning of an approach to revolutionary positions, which culminated in the abandonment of the priesthood and the incorporation of the National Liberation Army into the guerrilla (1965).Since then cal...

Iris Murdoch Biography

Iris Murdoch (Jean O.Bayley, Dublin, 1919-Oxford, 1999) English narrator and essayist.His childhood was spent in London.From 1938 to 1942 he studied philosophy and literature at Somerville College, Oxford where he learned Latin and Greek and modern languages.From 1948 to 1963 he taught philosophy at Oxford and between 1942 and 1944 he worked at the British Treasury and then in Brussels, at the United Nations. During the last part of his life he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.He wrote more than thirty novels, plays, and volumes of poetry.His first published book was Sartre, the romantic rationalist (1953), a study on the French philosopher and his system of ideas. Bajo la red (1954) was his first novel. Some novels of his first period, such as La campana ( The Bell , 1958) or The Red and the Green (1965), which takes place in the framework of the 1916 insurrection in Dublin, follow the historical and psychological tradition of the 19th century novel.Other works, o...

Edward Kennedy Biography

Edward Kennedy (Edward Moore Kennedy, also known as Ted Kennedy; Boston, 1932-Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, 2009) American politician member of the Kennedy clan, one of the most influential families in the history of the Democratic Party.Brother of Robert Francis Kennedy and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he began his political career as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts in 1964, a position to which he would be reelected in 1970, 1982, 1992 and 1996. Edward Kennedy From 1969 to 1971 he was deputy leader of the Senate Democratic majority.His presidential aspirations were frustrated when he was convicted of reckless manslaughter in a 1969 car accident.While he was driving while intoxicated, his vehicle fell into a lake and his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, was killed.Despite this, he would later present his candidacy for the nomination for the presidential elections of 1980 and 1988, but was defeated. Edward Kennedy had married in 1958 with Virginia Joan Bennet, with who...

Elsa triolet Biography

Elsa Triolet (Moscow, 1896-Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, Yvelines, 1970) French writer of Russian origin.Mayakovsky's sister-in-law.He resided in Berlin (1927).His works include Good afternoon Teresa (1938), The first slip costs two hundred francs (1944, Goncourt prize), The sorrel horse (1953 ), The appointment of foreigners (1956) and The nylon age (1959-1963).

Josef Hoffmann Biography

Josef Hoffmann (Pirnitz, 1870-Vienna, 1956) Austrian architect, decorator and urban planner.He was a disciple of O.Wagner and participated, along with J.M.Olbrich and other architects, in the creation of the avant-garde movement of the Secession (1897).His work is characterized by the careful treatment of the surfaces achieved through geometric decorations; The Stoclet Palace in Brussels stands out for its calculated elegance of style (1905-1911).

Elmer Verner Maccollum Biography

Elmer Verner Maccollum (Redfield, 1879-Baltimore, 1967) American biochemist and biologist who made fundamental contributions in the field of dietetics, especially on the types of vitamins.He began studying at the University of Kansas, where he graduated in 1903.Later, he entered Yale University, where he received his doctorate in 1906.Between 1907 and 1927 he was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin (1907-27) and in the period 1917-1944 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an institution that, upon retirement, appointed him Honorary Professor. In his first investigations he tried to find a diet based on the mixture of simple substances, but he was unsuccessful in his experiments with animals despite enriching the flavor of the food in case this was what failed.He continued the work of the Nobel laureates Christiaan Eijkman-discoverer of the first vitamin, thiamine or B1-and Frederick Hopkins, as well as Casimir Funk, on the different types of substances pr...

Alejo de Vahía Biography

Alejo de Vahía (documented between 1490 and 1505) Spanish sculptor of probable Nordic origin.Established in Becerril de Campos, he spread his work from there, during the Spanish-Flemish period, throughout the Palencia and Valladolid area.In addition to its stone carvings (tombs, etc.), its production is basically made up of devotional imagery ( María Magdalena of the main altarpiece of the Cathedral of Palencia).

Dwijendralal Ray Biography

Dwijendralal Ray (Also called Dwijendralal Roy, Dwijendra Lal Roy, D.L.Ray, Rèi Dvi-Endralal or Rai Dvigendralal; Krishnagar, 1863-1913) Indian poet and playwright.Born into a wealthy family (he was a member of the Brahmin caste, the first in the social ladder of India), he received a careful academic training. Dwijendralal Roy In his youth he became known as a writer through some satirical theatrical pieces; But his true recognition as a playwright came with the premiere of his historical dramas that, from a patriotic approach, seek to recover the main customs and customs of India, as well as its popular literary traditions. Part of its plot material comes from the Mahabharata , the huge epic poem that recounts, in Sanskrit, the confrontation between the forces of Good and Evil, embodied in the clans of the Pandavas and the Kauravas.His best-known plays are Mevarpatan , Durqadas and Candragupta . This love for the historical and cultural richness of India is also prese...

History Today Online

Search This Blog