Portal:Literature
Introduction
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
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The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. The poems, 859 lines long in total, were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severe depression—some of which was caused by the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed inspiration—writing in a frantic pace he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, in Switzerland's Rhone Valley. After their publication in 1923 and Rilke's death in 1926, the Duino Elegies were quickly recognized by critics and scholars as his most important work.
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“ | A lion was awakened from sleep by a Mouse running over his face. Rising up angrily, he caught him and was about to kill him, when the Mouse piteously entreated, saying: 'If you would only spare my life, I would be sure to repay your kindness.' The Lion laughed and let him go. It happened shortly after this that the Lion was caught by some hunters, who bound him by strong ropes to the ground. The Mouse, recognizing his roar, came, gnawed the rope with his teeth, and set him free, exclaiming 'You ridiculed the idea of my ever being able to help you, expecting to receive from me any repayment of your favor; but now you know that it is possible for even a Mouse to confer benefits on a Lion.' | ” |
— Aesop, "The Lion and the Mouse" |
More Did you know
- ... that Danilo Kiš's 1965 novel Garden, Ashes mixes fact and fiction, with both the narrator and the author having lost their fathers in the Holocaust?
- ... that in Lady of Sherwood, Jennifer Roberson chose to write about the demise of Richard I because the "death of a popular monarch always provide fodder for novelists"?
- ... that blind poet María Josefa Mujía was Bolivia's first woman writer after its independence?
- ... that De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, the 1924 Dutch children's book based on a real-life shipwreck in 1618, has sold more than 250,000 copies?
- ... that Iosif Vulcan changed the name of a young literary debutant to Mihai Eminescu, later Romania's national poet?
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![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... that The Inland Whale, by Theodora Kroeber, sought to demonstrate the literary merit of Indigenous American oral traditions?
- ... that the Three Bards are the most celebrated poets in the history of Polish literature?
- ... that despite specializing in literature and serving as a senior editor of the Zhonghua Book Company, historian Zhang Zhenglang never published a single book of his own?
- ... that Sheila Egoff, Canada's first professor of children's literature, returned to her library work immediately after retirement?
- ... that Peter Demetz, who taught German literature at Yale University from 1956 to 1991, was born in Prague where he was persecuted under the Nazis and escaped the Communist regime in 1949?
- ... that Soviet German literary critic Richard Knorre was injured in an explosion during the siege of Leningrad?
Today in literature
- 1758 - Hannah Webster Foster, American author born
- 1797 - Mary Wollstonecraft, English author died
- 1866 - Jeppe Aakjær, Danish writer born
- 1886 - Hilda Doolittle, American poet and novelist born
- 1937 - Sergei Tretyakov, Russian writer died
- 1941 - Stephen Jay Gould, American author born
- 1976 - Dalton Trumbo, American writer died
- 2000 - Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah, Pakistani journalist and writer died
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