VirtueAligned

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (born November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia—died February 9 [January 28, Old Style], 1881, St. Petersburg) was a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoyevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived. Literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism have been profoundly shaped by his ideas. His works are often called prophetic because he so accurately predicted how Russia’s revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. In his time he was also renowned for his activity as a journalist. #fyodor #dostoevsky #history

Albert Camus (born November 7, 1913, Mondovi, Algeria—died January 4, 1960, near Sens, France) was a French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker, was killed in World War I during the First Battle of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, did housework to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle, in a two-room apartment. Camus’s first published collection of essays, L’Envers et l’endroit (1937; “The Wrong Side and the Right Side”), describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. #albertcamus #camus #history

Aldous Huxley (born July 26, 1894, Godalming, Surrey, England—died November 22, 1963, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was an English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for one novel, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that followed. Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley; his brothers included physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley and biologist Julian Huxley. #aldoushuxley #huxley #history

Albert Camus (born November 7, 1913, Mondovi, Algeria—died January 4, 1960, near Sens, France) was a French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker, was killed in World War I during the First Battle of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, did housework to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle, in a two-room apartment. Camus’s first published collection of essays, L’Envers et l’endroit (1937; “The Wrong Side and the Right Side”), describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. A second collection of essays, Noces (1938; “Nuptials”), contains intensely lyrical meditations on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. #albertcamus #camus #history

Alexander the Great (born 356 bce, Pella, Macedonia [northwest of Thessaloníki, Greece]—died June 13, 323 bce, Babylon [near Al-Ḥillah, Iraq]) was the king of Macedonia (336–323 bce), who overthrew the Persian empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. Already in his lifetime the subject of fabulous stories, he later became the hero of a full-scale legend bearing only the sketchiest resemblance to his historical career. He was born in 356 bce at Pella in Macedonia, the son of Philip II and Olympias (daughter of King Neoptolemus of Epirus). From age 13 to 16 he was taught by Aristotle, who inspired him with an interest in philosophy, medicine, and scientific investigation, but he was later to advance beyond his teacher’s narrow precept that non-Greeks should be treated as slaves. Left in charge of Macedonia in 340 during Philip’s attack on Byzantium, Alexander defeated the Maedi, a Thracian people. #alexanderthegreat #macedonia #history

Heraclitus (born c. 540 bce, Ephesus, Anatolia [now Selçuk, Turkey]—died c. 480) was a Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book he apparently wrote is lost. His views survive in the short fragments quoted and attributed to him by later authors. Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world around him, Heraclitus also stressed the need for people to live together in social harmony. He complained that most people failed to comprehend the logos (Greek: “reason”), the universal principle through which all things are interrelated and all natural events occur, and thus lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. #heraclitus #greek #history

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (born November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia—died February 9 [January 28, Old Style], 1881, St. Petersburg) was a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoyevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived. Literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism have been profoundly shaped by his ideas. His works are often called prophetic because he so accurately predicted how Russia’s revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. In his time he was also renowned for his activity as a journalist. #fyodor #dostoevsky #history

Julius Caesar (born July 12/13, 100? bce, Rome [Italy]—died March 15, 44 bce, Rome) was a celebrated Roman general and statesman, the conqueror of Gaul (58–50 bce), victor in the civil war of 49–45 bce, and dictator (46–44 bce), who was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate House on the Ides of March. He is one of the major figures of Classical antiquity. Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society has been extinct for so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the average, educated modern person. But Caesar’s name, like Alexander’s, is still on people’s lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. #juliuscaesar #caesar #history

Carl Jung (born July 26, 1875, Kesswil, Switzerland—died June 6, 1961, Küsnacht) was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology, in some aspects a response to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of the extraverted and the introverted personality, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, literature, and related fields. Jung was the son of a philologist and pastor. His childhood was lonely, although enriched by a vivid imagination, and from an early age he observed the behaviour of his parents and teachers, which he tried to resolve. Especially concerned with his father’s failing belief in religion, he tried to communicate to him his own experience of God. In many ways, the elder Jung was a kind and tolerant man, but neither he nor his son succeeded in understanding each other. #carljung #jung #history

Albert Camus (born November 7, 1913, Mondovi, Algeria—died January 4, 1960, near Sens, France) was a French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker, was killed in World War I during the First Battle of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, did housework to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle, in a two-room apartment. Camus’s first published collection of essays, L’Envers et l’endroit (1937; “The Wrong Side and the Right Side”), describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. A second collection of essays, Noces (1938; “Nuptials”), contains intensely lyrical meditations on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. #albertcamus #camus #history

Sylvia Plath American Sylvia Plath (born October 27, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died February 11, 1963, London, England) was an American poet and novelist whose best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of women in mid-20th-century America. The searing use of language and shocking honesty in her works helped make her a major figure in both the confessional poetry movement and the literature of the women’s movement beginning in the 1960s. Plath continues to be an influence on many 21st-century writers. #sylviaplath #plath #history

Oscar Wilde (born October 16, 1854, Dublin, Ireland—died November 30, 1900, Paris, France) was an Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose enduring fame rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In his comedies he proved himself to be a master of the epigram. He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake, and he was the object of notorious civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895–97). Despite his fall from society’s grace at the end of his life, Wilde came to be regarded as the personification of wit and sophistication. #oscar #oscarwilde #history