Little What's-His-Name (Le Petit Chose. French Classics)

Little What's-His-Name (Le Petit Chose. French Classics)
Author: Alphonse Daudet
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691057

Little What's-His-Name (Le Petit Chose) - Alphonse Daudet's (1840-1897) first published, though not his first written, novel - appeared in 1868. The first part was composed in that Southern France it describes so charmingly; its first chapters form one of the most touching of autobiographies. In the second part Daudet has to tell of the struggles of an idealistic young poet in the selfish, devouring whirlpool of Paris. The whole book seems to bear the impress of the circumstances under which it was written. It is full of the milk of human kindness. --- When Daudet wrote Le Petit Chose in his early manhood, he succeeded in producing one of the most delightfully idyllic of his works, one that will probably continue to be read as long as any of the more powerful novels of his prime. It is one of the most perfect representations in literature of childhood's hopes and fears and of youth's aspirations and defeats. It is perfect because it is real. --- Enjoy to the full one of the purest and most exquisite stories of youthful experience to be found in French or in any other literature. (W. P. Trent)

Colas Breugnon (A Burgundian Story; French Classics)

Colas Breugnon (A Burgundian Story; French Classics)
Author: Romain Rolland
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691332

"Colas Breugnon" is a charming romance of life in Burgundy three hundred years ago. It is an "autobiographical" novel, the story being told in the first person by Colas, who reviews his fifty years of life, and describes all its joys and sorrows. The story is gay and humorous, and full of wise observations about life. --- "Colas Breugnon is the jovial Burgundian, the lusty wood-carver, the practical joker always fond of his glass, the droll fellow. Before everything, Colas Breugnon is a free man. He loves his king, but only so long as the king leaves him his liberty; he loves his wife, but follows his own bent; he is on excellent terms with the priest of a neighboring parish, but never goes to church; he idolizes his children, but his vigorous individuality makes him unwilling to live with them. He is friendly with all, but subject to none; he is freer than the king; he has that sense of humor characteristic of the free spirit to whom the whole world belongs. From the artistic point of view, 'Colas Breugnon' may perhaps be regarded as Rolland's most successful work. This is because it is woven in one piece, because it flows with a continuous rhythm, because its progress is never arrested by the discussion of thorny problems. It is written throughout in the same key. The first sentence gives the note like a tuning fork, and thence the entire book takes its pitch. Throughout, the same lively melody is sustained. The writer employs a peculiarly happy form. His style is poetic without being actually versified; it has a melodious measure without being strictly metrical. This work is unlike any of Rolland's other writings. It is not an historic study, a critical appreciation, a philosophic essay, nor yet even, in the strictest sense of the word, a novel. It is rather a volume of reminiscences as told by a man of fifty; and the very aimlessness with which this man talks is in itself a pleasure; for Breugnon is himself the one subject of the book, holding our attention by the display of a wayward, sympathetic, and aggressive personality." (Stefan Zweig)

The Sandman. The Elementary Spirit (Two Mysterious Tales. German Classics)

The Sandman. The Elementary Spirit (Two Mysterious Tales. German Classics)
Author: E. T. A. Hoffmann
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691170

No literature can produce a more original writer than Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776 1822), a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann). His works are very numerous and were published at Berlin in fifteen volumes. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann.---Of the two tales in this book, "The Sandman" is from the collection "Night Pieces," and The Elementary Spirit is from his "Later Works." In these stories, Hoffmann's purpose is to point out the ill-effect of a morbid desire after an imaginary world, and a distaste for realities. Different as their adventures are, there is a striking similarity in the characters of Nathaniel (in "The Sandman") and Victor (in "The Elementary Spirit"). However wild may be the subjects of Hoffmann, and however rambling his method of treating them, his style is remarkably lucid.---The story of the Sandman had its origin in a discussion which actually took place between La Motte Fouque (a German writer of the romantic movement, 1777 1843) and some friends, at which Hoffmann was present. Some of the party found fault with the cold, mechanical deportment of a young lady of their acquaintance, while La Motte Fouque zealously defended her. Here Hoffmann caught the notion of the automaton Olympia, and the arguments used by Nathaniel are those that were employed by La Motte Fouque."

God's Beloved (German Classics)

God's Beloved (German Classics)
Author: Bernhard Kellermann
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 159569126X

"What we find in the insane asylum of 'God's Beloved' are strange human communities, presented in the characteristic atmosphere of their milieu. Kellermann was a seeker after new forms of expression for psychical reaction; but he presented himself as a pure nature of great delicacy and lucidity." (Kuno Francke)

The Poor Musician (German Classics. The Life of Grillparzer)

The Poor Musician (German Classics. The Life of Grillparzer)
Author: Franz Grillparzer
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 159569109X

"The Poor Musician" is an autobiographical novella by Austria's famous dramatist and poet Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872): Rounded and compacted, and yet saturated with the sad tragedy of his own isolation -- it is the most artistic work we have from his pen. For the student of Grillparzer-psychology it is a veritable treasure trove. "The Poor Musician" was the one piece of his creative genius that unflinchingly grappled with the great problem of resignation; the one piece that pictured resignation; but also the one piece that made resignation itself tragic. --- The poor, half-witted fiddler, shipwrecked in life, coddling his woe as the last sweet treasure it has left him, pouring it forth in the midnight solitude of his chamber in music that is music to none but the illusioned player -- such is resignation.

The Jewess of Toledo (German Classics)

The Jewess of Toledo (German Classics)
Author: Franz Grillparzer
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1595691391

Franz Grillparzer (1791 - 1872) was an Austrian dramatic poet. "The Jewess of Toledo" may perhaps be said to mark the climax of his productive activity. Written in 1851, it was first performed in Prague in 1872, after Grillparzer's death. It is an eminently modern drama of passion in classical dignity of form. The play is properly called "The Jewess of Toledo"; for Rachel, the Jewess, is at the centre of the action, and is a marvelous creation – "a mere woman, nothing but her sex". The King of Castile, however, though relatively passive, is the most important character. He is attracted to Rachel by a charm that he has never known in his coldly virtuous English consort, and, after an error forgivable because made comprehensible, is taught the duty of personal sacrifice to morality and to the state.

The Monk's Marriage (Swiss-German Classics)

The Monk's Marriage (Swiss-German Classics)
Author: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691383

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898) was a poet and novelist, born in Zürich, Switzerland. Meyer was preeminently the artist among German novelists; his style is polished and finely balanced; his scenes are delineated with infinite care, and his subjects always have a certain inner harmony with the spirit of the author's own time. In "The Monk's Marriage" Meyer reached the highest development of the "frame-story." It has been universally admired for the genius and audacity of its invention, for its artistic elaboration, and for the wonderful pen-portrait of Dante, "the wanderer through Hell," whose personality dominates the whole story as he narrates it. This introduction of Dante was a bold stroke, justified only by success. The plot of the tale itself is based upon an account (in Machiavelli's "History of Florence") of a family feud which began the bitter factional strife of the Guelfs and Ghibellines in Florence. The frame is a masterpiece, generally more admired than the story. The tale is characteristically Italian, with its sudden changes of fortune, the breathless development of the plot, the volcanic outburst of passion. The plot, one of the few in Meyer's works in which love is the dominant note, is well developed and told with consummate art. The language is noticeable for its stately dignity, such as befits the character of the narrator, the great Dante. The story has one of "those murderous finales which are Meyer's delight," as Gottfried Keller once wrote to Theodor Storm. And yet, The "Monk's Marriage" ranks as one of the best, if not the best, of Meyer's Novellen.

Krambambuli. The District Doctor (Two Novellas. German Classics)

Krambambuli. The District Doctor (Two Novellas. German Classics)
Author: Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691049

Austrian writer Baroness (Freifrau) Marie von Ebner Eschenbach (1830-1916) was one of the foremost novelists in the German tongue, and one of the best short-story writers in the world. The Austrian aristocracy with their Slavo-German dependents in the Moravian villages constitute the world of her fiction. Country and city are her theatres, noble and peasant keep the balance. All forms of the short-story are at her command: letters, diaries, dialogues, and that most difficult of all forms, the story within a story. --- Where can be found a more concrete and genial characterization of the leading political lords and ladies, more lifelike portraits of officialdom and of the much abused peasantry than in her historic tale "The District Doctor" (1883), which has as its background the bloody peasant uprisings in Galicia in 1846? Where do we find human sympathy ethically and artistically more refined than in her little masterpiece "Krambambuli" (1883), the story of a dog with spotless pedigree who, like Rudiger in the Nibelungen, perishes in the vain attempt to serve two masters? --- Of the qualities that make up a great writer she has the deep and high truth of substance. She does not view the world in the rosy light of the idyll. She never seeks to avoid the ugly. But more, she puts a high moral interpretation on human life. Her ethics is proof against all egotism and will bear comparison with that of the great moralists, ancient and modern."

The Trembling of a Leaf

The Trembling of a Leaf
Author: William Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Mondial
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1595691197

In 1916, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) travelled to the Pacific to research his novel "The Moon and Sixpence," based on the life of Paul Gauguin. This was the first of those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output.---Maugham reused elements of his Pacific diaries in "The Trembling of a Leaf" (1921), which contains one of his most recognized stories, "Rain," adapted to the stage by John Colton and Clemence Randolph in 1922.