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Writters
Great Masters
Anton Chekhov
29'th January, 1860--15 July, 1904
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a short story writer and playwright. He was born in Tagang, southern Russia, on 29 January 1860, and died of tuberculosis at the health spa of Badenweiler, Germany, on 15 July 1904. His brief playwriting career produced four classics and many short stories. His short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress".
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre. Leo Tolstoy reportedly told Chekhov, "You know, I cannot abide Shakespeare, but your plays are even worse". Tolstoy did, however, admire Chekhov's short stories. Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story.His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later exploited by Virginia Woolf and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Story-The Lottery Ticket -Lekhni-June-2007
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Edgar Allen Poe
(19-1-1809-7-10-49)
Born in Boston , Massachusetts U.S. Died in Maryland U.S. Married to Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe ,
Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short-story writer, editor, and literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and invented the detective-fiction genre. He is also credited with contributing to the emerging genre of scienc fiction.
He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Story- The tell tale heart - Lekhni -Feburary -2008
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Guy de Maupassant
(5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893)
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century Frenc writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
story-Two Little Soldiers-(lekhni- August-2007)
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Saki-(Hector Hugh Munro)
1870-1916
Hector Hugo Munro (Saki) was born in Burma, where his father was a senior official in the Burma police. The cruelity of some of his stories has beenn attributed to his strict upbringing from the age of two by maiden aunts in Devonshire. He was educated in Exmouth and at Bedford Grammer School. Later he travelled widely in Europe with his father. He joined in Buma police , but resigned because of ill health, and became a journalist and then a short story writter. He published several collection of short stories, including The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) and Beasts and Super-Beasts(1914) He also wrote two novels, The Unbearable Bessington(1912) and When William Came(1913). He enlisted as a private in 1914, refused a commission, went to France and was killed as a sergeant, in 1916. His last words, heard by a fellow soldier in the trenches, were 'Put that bloody cigarette out'-followed by the sound of a rifle shot. His brilliant short stories are marked by their economy and the blackness of their comedy.His witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture.
Saki is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon.
In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote several plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; and two novella-length satires, the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollern.
The name Saki is often thought to be a reference to the cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, a poem mentioned disparagingly by the eponymous character in "Reginald on Christmas Presents" and alluded to in a few other stories. It may, however, be a reference to the South American primate of the same name, "a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" and that, like Munro himself, hid a vicious streak beneath a gentle exterior.
Story-The Bull--Lekhni-April-2007
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James Joyce
(2-2-1882 to13-1-1941)
Born in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. Died Jurich, Switzerland.
Occupation: Novelist and poet.
Literary Movement : Modernism, Imagism
Influences: Homer, Aristotle, Dante, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Dujardin, Ibsen, Bruno, Vico,
Influenced: Backett, Borges, O'Brien, Rushdie, Eco, Woolf, DeLlillo,Burgess, Campbell, Faukner, Edna O'Brien, Bret Easton Eliss, Martin Amis.
James Joyes a well respected and liked name in 20'th century literature.
Story-Clay (Lekhni-October-2007)
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Kahill Gibran
One of the most like and respected thinker, philosopher, poet and painter from the East.
Gibran on love-An extract from his book ' The Prophet'- Lekhni-12-Feburary-2008
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Mohan Das, Karam Chand Gandhi.
(2-10-1969-30-1-1948.)
Known by millions of Indians as ' Bapu ' (Father), Mahatma should be called the strength of India. Strong believer in Truth and non-violence; his auto-biography is a torch-bearer to many.
Gandhi on Geeta (Lekhni-October-2007)
Introduction to Geeta
Gandhi on Geeta( Lekhni-October-2007)
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O' Henry
(11-9-1862 to 5-6-1910)
O. Henry is the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter . Porter's 400 short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, characterization and the clever use of twist endings.
He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful and optimistic.
Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early years of the 20th century. Many take place in New York City, and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses. His stories are also well known for witty narration.
Fundamentally a product of his time, O. Henry's work provides one of the best English examples of catching the entire flavor of an age. Whether roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the "gentle grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work resides in the collection Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories which each explore some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town while each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex structure which slowly explicates its own background even as it painstakingly erects a town which is one of the most detailed literary creations of the period
Story- Last Leaf-(Lekhni-issue-10, December-2007)
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Swami Vivekananda
(12-1-1863 to 4-7-1902)
Born as Narendra Nath Dutta in Kalcutta, India, Vivekananda is known as the spiritual leader of modern India's reform. He achieved a lot in his short life. Died aged 39, at Belur Math near Kalcutta.
He was the first Indian to go to the west and talk about Hinduism and its key beliefs.
Hinduism -Four Yogas (Lekhni-November-2007)
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