2015/11/18

Week ten

Les Misérables - Les Misérables  is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Les Misérables has been popularized through numerous adaptations for the stage, television, and film, including a musical and a film adaptation of that musical.

Les Misérables

Jean Valjean as Monsieur Madeleine. Illustration by Gustave Brion
Author	Victor Hugo
Illustrator	Emile Bayard
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Epic novel, historical fiction
Publisher	A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie.
Publication date	1862

Genre -  "kind" or "sort", from Latin genus, Greek is any category of literature, music or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

Dithyramb - The dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god: Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also remarks in the Republic that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker.

YOUTH by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924)

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. 

It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. 

It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; 

it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. 

Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, 

of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. 

This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. 

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; 

people grow old by deserting their ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. 

Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—

these are the long, long years that bow the head 

and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder; 

the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts; 

the undaunted challenge of events, 

the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next, 

and the joy in the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt;

as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, 

as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station. 

So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, 

and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite—so long are you young.

When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism,

then are you grown old, indeed!