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Book Treasure of the World

Download or read book Treasure of the World written by Tara Sullivan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young girl must find a way to help her family survive in a desolate and impoverished Bolivian silver mining community in this eye-opening tale of resilience. Twelve-year-old Ana wants nothing more than to escape the future set for her and her classmates in her small mining village. Boys her age are beginning to leave school to become silver miners and girls her age are destined to one day be the wives of miners. But when her often ill eleven-year-old brother is forced by their demanding father to start work in the mines, Ana gives up her dreams of school to volunteer in his place. The world of silver mining though is dark and dangerous and the men who work there don't want a girl in their way. Ana must find the courage to not only survive but save her family after the worst happens and a mining accident kills her father and leaves her brother missing.

Book Tara s World

    Book Details:
  • Author : Leanne Van Vossen
  • Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
  • Release : 2011-01-13
  • ISBN : 1456845934
  • Pages : 339 pages

Download or read book Tara s World written by Leanne Van Vossen and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After losing her memory in a violent mugging 5 years ago, Tara has been unsure of her place in the world. When her stepdaughter is involved in a car crash, her past comes back to show her where she really belongs.

Book Playing Big

    Book Details:
  • Author : Tara Mohr
  • Publisher : Random House
  • Release : 2014-10-16
  • ISBN : 0091958784
  • Pages : 306 pages

Download or read book Playing Big written by Tara Mohr and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-10-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At last. At last this very important book has been written... It will empower legions of women to step into their greatness.' ELIZABETH GILBERT, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE 'One of the most important books in my life. If you want to achieve anything, or simply be less stressed, this book will help you do it. In it you will find your voice, your ability, your self-confidence and perhaps even your mission in life. Buy it. Pass it on.' SHIRLEY CONRAN The groundbreaking book that gives every woman the practical skills they need to begin PLAYING BIG. Five years ago, Tara Mohr began to see a pattern in her work as an expert in leadership: women with tremendous talent, ideas and aspiration were not recognising their own brilliance. They felt that they were playing small' in their lives and careers and wanted to play bigger', but didn't know how. And so Tara devised a step-by-step programme for playing big from the inside out: this book is the result. Many women are aware of the changes they need to make to be more successful, but they don't know how to become that more confident woman they'd like to be. Playing Big provides real, practical to

Book Educated

Download or read book Educated written by Tara Westover and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library

Book The Upper Case  Trouble in Capital City

Download or read book The Upper Case Trouble in Capital City written by Tara Lazar and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just when Private I thinks all is calm-now that he's cracked the case of 7 Ate 9-Question Mark storms into the office. Mark is worried. All the uppercase letters are M-I-S-S-I-N-G! But that's absurd. This is CAPITAL City! Private I is the last letter standing. Will he solve his BIGGEST mystery yet, the UPPER CASE, before it's too late?! Filled with the same humor, wit, and quirkiness of the hit 7 Ate 9: The Untold Story, comes another laugh-out-loud whodunit.

Book The World s Progress

Download or read book The World s Progress written by Delphian Society and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Tara

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rachael Wooten, Ph.D.
  • Publisher : Sounds True
  • Release : 2020-04-28
  • ISBN : 1683643895
  • Pages : 281 pages

Download or read book Tara written by Rachael Wooten, Ph.D. and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide for invoking the power and blessings of Tara, the beloved female buddha of Tibet Known as "the female Buddha" in Tibet and India, Tara connects us to the archetypal Divine Feminine—an energetic force that exists within us and all around us, and has been available to all humans since our earliest origin. While there are many books on Tara, this practical guide shows us how those of any tradition can directly access her, through clear instruction and authentic Tibetan Buddhist teachings. Jungian analyst, scholar, and spiritual practitioner Dr. Rachael Wooten combines the ancient Tara tradition with depth psychology to help us connect with each of Tara's manifestations and access her blessings within ourselves and in the external world. In her myriad forms, Tara has the power to protect us from inner and outer negativity, illuminate our self-sabotaging habits, cleanse mental and physical poisons, address emotional trauma, open us to abundance, give us strength and peace, help us fulfill our life purposes, and more. Here, you will explore all 22 manifestations of Tara. Each chapter begins with an epigraph that captures the spiritual and psychological essence of the emanation, explains her purpose, and teaches you specific visualizations, praises, mantra chants, and other ways of invoking her presence in yourself and the world. "If ever the voice of wisdom and compassion was needed in the form of an awakened female figure such as Tara," writes Dr. Wooten, "that time is now." This book illuminates the way to her healing, blessings, and aid.

Book All Four Stars

Download or read book All Four Stars written by Tara Dairman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A scrumptious gem of a story!”—Jennifer A. Nielsen, New York Times bestselling author of The False Prince Meet Gladys Gatsby: New York’s toughest restaurant critic. (Just don’t tell anyone that she’s in sixth grade.) Gladys Gatsby has been cooking gourmet dishes since the age of seven, only her fast-food-loving parents have no idea! Now she’s eleven, and after a crème brûlée accident (just a small fire), Gladys is cut off from the kitchen (and her allowance). She’s devastated but soon finds just the right opportunity to pay her parents back when she’s mistakenly contacted to write a restaurant review for one of the largest newspapers in the world. But in order to meet her deadline and keep her dream job, Gladys must cook her way into the heart of her sixth-grade archenemy and sneak into New York City—all while keeping her identity a secret! Easy as pie, right?

Book And They Lived

    Book Details:
  • Author : Steven Salvatore
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • Release : 2022-03-08
  • ISBN : 154760820X
  • Pages : 283 pages

Download or read book And They Lived written by Steven Salvatore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Can't Take That Away comes a sex-positive, fairytale-inspired YA novel that celebrates first love and self-acceptance, perfect for fans of What If It's Us. "My heart didn't stand a chance. I loved it from once upon a time all the way to its joyfully complex ever after." - New York Times bestselling author Becky Albertalli "A jolt of lightning to my soul. The characters are so bright, the emotion is so vibrant, and the love is exquisitely electric." - Jason June, author of Jay's Gay Agenda Chase Arthur is a budding animator and hopeless romantic obsessed with Disney films and finding his true love, but he's plagued with the belief that he's not enough for anyone: he's recovering from an eating disorder and suffers from body dysmorphia fueled by his father, and can't quite figure out his gender identity. When Chase starts his freshman year of college, he has to navigate being away from home and missing his sister, finding his squad, and contending with his ex-best friend Leila who is gunning for the same exclusive mentorship. If only he can pull together a short for the freshman animation showcase at the end of the semester. Then Chase meets Jack Reid, a pragmatic poet who worships words and longs to experience life outside of his sheltered world. But Chase throws everything into question for Jack, who is still discovering his sexual identity, having grown up in close-knit conservative family. Jack internalized a lot of homophobia from his parents and childhood best friend, who unexpectedly visit campus, which threatens to destroy their relationship. Chase will have to learn to love--and be enough for--himself, while discovering what it means to truly live.

Book Eden s Escape

    Book Details:
  • Author : M. Tara Crowl
  • Publisher : Disney Electronic Content
  • Release : 2016-09-06
  • ISBN : 1484776267
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book Eden s Escape written by M. Tara Crowl and published by Disney Electronic Content. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eden's greatest wish has finally come true. No longer confined to her lamp, she begins a spectacular life in Manhattan with her new guardian, Pepper, a bubbly genie alum who's also a Broadway actress. Eden only gets a taste of the city's wonders before she's whisked away for a wish granting--she is still a genie with a job, after all. David Brightly isn't like other wishers Eden has met. The owner of the world's leading tech company seems more interested in tapping into the lamp's power than making his first wish. Trapped in Brightly's laboratory and unable to get to the lamp, Eden has no choice but to escape and go on the run. She finds herself on the streets of Paris, nowhere near out of danger. Brightly has half the city searching for Eden, claiming she is his kidnapped daughter. She manages to don a disguise and get word of her predicament out to the loyal genies on earth. But Paris is also headquarters of Electra, a group of former genies bent on revenge against Eden, and it seems the scheming Sylvana has teamed up with Brightly to seize the lamp's power once and for all. Eden embarks on a dangerous mission to retrieve the lamp and protect the centuries-old genie legacy. But Brightly has more tricks up his sleeve than any mortal Eden has met. Soon, every genie will have to pick a side in an epic showdown against the greatest threat the lamp has ever faced.

Book Tara s World  A Land of Beauty  Danger  and Love

Download or read book Tara s World A Land of Beauty Danger and Love written by Tom Molnar and published by Apple Valley Press. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A girl appeared at the edge of the secluded pond. She stepped into the water, wading to the deep. Beautiful, she turned toward him. . . Tara has never met a man like Nick. She is drawn to him, yet there is something about him she does not understand. Is it a trait of all humans? Nick and Tara have much to learn about each other as they fight to remain in this beautiful new world filled with danger.

Book No Beauties or Monsters

Download or read book No Beauties or Monsters written by Tara Goedjen and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A desert full of mystery. A girl who sees things she shouldn’t. Desperate to unlock the secrets of Twentynine Palms, I raced through this book!” —Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows For fans of Stranger Things and Veronica Mars comes a new YA mystery about a girl whose desperate search for her missing friend unearths dark secrets, preternatural threats, and a truth that could ultimately tear her family, friends, and town apart. Welcome to Twentynine Palms, where nothing is what it seems. Rylie hasn't been back to the military base in Twentynine Palms since her father died. She left a lot of memories out there, buried in the sand of the Mojave Desert. Memories about her dad, her old friends Nathan and Lily, and most of all, her enigmatic grandfather, a man who cut ties with Rylie’s family before he passed away. But her mom’s new work assignment has sent their family to Twentynine Palms again, and now, Rylie’s in the one place she never wanted to return to. At least her old friends are happy to welcome her home. Well, some of them, anyway. It turns out Lily is gone, vanished into the desert. To make matters worse, there are whispers around town of a mysterious killer on the loose. But it isn’t just Twentynine Palms that feels frightening—there’s something wrong with Rylie, too. She’s seeing things she can’t explain. Visions of monstrous creatures that stalk the night. Somehow, it all seems to be tied to her grandfather and the family cabin he left behind. Rylie wants the truth, but she doesn’t know if she can trust herself. Are the monsters in her head really out there? Or could it be that the deadliest thing in the desert . . . is Rylie herself?

Book TARAS BULBA AND OTHER TALES

Download or read book TARAS BULBA AND OTHER TALES written by NIKOLAI VASILEVICH GOGOL and published by BEYOND BOOKS HUB. This book was released on 2023-06-03 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian literature, so full of enigmas, contains no greater creative mystery than Nikolai Vasil’evich Gogol (1809-1852), who has done for the Russian novel and Russian prose what Pushkin has done for Russian poetry. Before these two men came Russian literature can hardly have been said to exist. It was pompous and effete with pseudo-classicism; foreign influences were strong; in the speech of the upper circles there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words. Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a new structure out of living Russian words. The spoken word, born of the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth, the native earth, was it enabled to soar. Coming up from Little Russia, the Ukraine, with Cossack blood in his veins, Gogol injected his own healthy virus into an effete body, blew his own virile spirit, the spirit of his race, into its nostrils, and gave the Russian novel its direction to this very day. More than that. The nomad and romantic in him, troubled and restless with Ukrainian myth, legend, and song, impressed upon Russian literature, faced with the realities of modern life, a spirit titanic and in clash with its material, and produced in the mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic’s observation about Gogol: “Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.” But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol’s work his “free Cossack soul” trying to break through the shell of sordid to-day like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that his works, true though they are to our life, are at once a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us. And they have all the joy and sadness of the Ukrainian songs he loved so much. Ukrainian was to Gogol “the language of the soul,” and it was in Ukrainian songs rather than in old chronicles, of which he was not a little contemptuous, that he read the history of his people. Time and again, in his essays and in his letters to friends, he expresses his boundless joy in these songs: “O songs, you are my joy and my life! How I love you. What are the bloodless chronicles I pore over beside those clear, live chronicles! I cannot live without songs; they... reveal everything more and more clearly, oh, how clearly, gone-by life and gone-by men.... The songs of Little Russia are her everything, her poetry, her history, and her ancestral grave. He who has not penetrated them deeply knows nothing of the past of this blooming region of Russia.” Indeed, so great was his enthusiasm for his own land that after collecting material for many years, the year 1833 finds him at work on a history of “poor Ukraine,” a work planned to take up six volumes; and writing to a friend at this time he promises to say much in it that has not been said before him. Furthermore, he intended to follow this work with a universal history in eight volumes with a view to establishing, as far as may be gathered, Little Russia and the world in proper relation, connecting the two; a quixotic task, surely. A poet, passionate, religious, loving the heroic, we find him constantly impatient and fuming at the lifeless chronicles, which leave him cold as he seeks in vain for what he cannot find. “Nowhere,” he writes in 1834, “can I find anything of the time which ought to be richer than any other in events. Here was a people whose whole existence was passed in activity, and which, even if nature had made it inactive, was compelled to go forward to great affairs and deeds because of its neighbours, its geographic situation, the constant danger to its existence.... If the Crimeans and the Turks had had a literature I am convinced that no history of an independent nation in Europe would prove so interesting as that of the Cossacks.” Again he complains of the “withered chronicles”; it is only the wealth of his country’s song that encourages him to go on with its history. Too much a visionary and a poet to be an impartial historian, it is hardly astonishing to note the judgment he passes on his own work, during that same year, 1834: “My history of Little Russia’s past is an extraordinarily made thing, and it could not be otherwise.” The deeper he goes into Little Russia’s past the more fanatically he dreams of Little Russia’s future. St. Petersburg wearies him, Moscow awakens no emotion in him, he yearns for Kieff, the mother of Russian cities, which in his vision he sees becoming “the Russian Athens.” Russian history gives him no pleasure, and he separates it definitely from Ukrainian history. He is “ready to cast everything aside rather than read Russian history,” he writes to Pushkin. During his seven-year stay in St. Petersburg (1829-36) Gogol zealously gathered historical material and, in the words of Professor Kotlyarevsky, “lived in the dream of becoming the Thucydides of Little Russia.” How completely he disassociated Ukrainia from Northern Russia may be judged by the conspectus of his lectures written in 1832. He says in it, speaking of the conquest of Southern Russia in the fourteenth century by Prince Guedimin at the head of his Lithuanian host, still dressed in the skins of wild beasts, still worshipping the ancient fire and practising pagan rites: “Then Southern Russia, under the mighty protection of Lithuanian princes, completely separated itself from the North. Every bond between them was broken; two kingdoms were established under a single name — Russia — one under the Tatar yoke, the other under the same rule with Lithuanians. But actually they had no relation with one another; different laws, different customs, different aims, different bonds, and different activities gave them wholly different characters.” This same Prince Guedimin freed Kieff from the Tatar yoke. This city had been laid waste by the golden hordes of Ghengis Khan and hidden for a very long time from the Slavonic chronicler as behind an impenetrable curtain. A shrewd man, Guedimin appointed a Slavonic prince to rule over the city and permitted the inhabitants to practise their own faith, Greek Christianity. Prior to the Mongol invasion, which brought conflagration and ruin, and subjected Russia to a two-century bondage, cutting her off from Europe, a state of chaos existed and the separate tribes fought with one another constantly and for the most petty reasons. Mutual depredations were possible owing to the absence of mountain ranges; there were no natural barriers against sudden attack. The openness of the steppe made the people war-like. But this very openness made it possible later for Guedimin’s pagan hosts, fresh from the fir forests of what is now White Russia, to make a clean sweep of the whole country between Lithuania and Poland, and thus give the scattered princedoms a much-needed cohesion. In this way Ukrainia was formed. Except for some forests, infested with bears, the country was one vast plain, marked by an occasional hillock. Whole herds of wild horses and deer stampeded the country, overgrown with tall grass, while flocks of wild goats wandered among the rocks of the Dnieper. Apart from the Dnieper, and in some measure the Desna, emptying into it, there were no navigable rivers and so there was little opportunity for a commercial people. Several tributaries cut across, but made no real boundary line. Whether you looked to the north towards Russia, to the east towards the Tatars, to the south towards the Crimean Tatars, to the west towards Poland, everywhere the country bordered on a field, everywhere on a plain, which left it open to the invader from every side. Had there been here, suggests Gogol in his introduction to his never-written history of Little Russia, if upon one side only, a real frontier of mountain or sea, the people who settled here might have formed a definite political body. Without this natural protection it became a land subject to constant attack and despoliation. “There where three hostile nations came in contact it was manured with bones, wetted with blood. A single Tatar invasion destroyed the whole labour of the soil-tiller; the meadows and the cornfields were trodden down by horses or destroyed by flame, the lightly-built habitations reduced to the ground, the inhabitants scattered or driven off into captivity together with cattle. It was a land of terror, and for this reason there could develop in it only a warlike people, strong in its unity and desperate, a people whose whole existence was bound to be trained and confined to war.” This constant menace, this perpetual pressure of foes on all sides, acted at last like a fierce hammer shaping and hardening resistance against itself. The fugitive from Poland, the fugitive from the Tatar and the Turk, homeless, with nothing to lose, their lives ever exposed to danger, forsook their peaceful occupations and became transformed into a warlike people, known as the Cossacks, whose appearance towards the end of the thirteenth century or at the beginning of the fourteenth was a remarkable event which possibly alone (suggests Gogol) prevented any further inroads by the two Mohammedan nations into Europe. The appearance of the Cossacks was coincident with the appearance in Europe of brotherhoods and knighthood-orders, and this new race, in spite of its living the life of marauders, in spite of turnings its foes’ tactics upon its foes, was not free of the religious spirit of its time; if it warred for its existence it warred not less for its faith, which was Greek. Indeed, as the nation grew stronger and became conscious of its strength, the struggle began to partake something of the nature of a religious war, not alone defensive but aggressive also, against the unbeliever. While any man was free to join the brotherhood it was obligatory to believe in the Greek faith. It was this religious unity, blazed into activity by the presence across the borders of unbelieving nations, that alone indicated the germ of a political body in this gathering of men, who otherwise lived the audacious lives of a band of highway robbers. “There was, however,” says Gogol, “none of the austerity of the Catholic knight in them; they bound themselves to no vows or fasts; they put no self-restraint upon themselves or mortified their flesh, but were indomitable like the rocks of the Dnieper among which they lived, and in their furious feasts and revels they forgot the whole world. That same intimate brotherhood, maintained in robber communities, bound them together. They had everything in common — wine, food, dwelling. A perpetual fear, a perpetual danger, inspired them with a contempt towards life. The Cossack worried more about a good measure of wine than about his fate. One has to see this denizen of the frontier in his half-Tatar, half-Polish costume — which so sharply outlined the spirit of the borderland — galloping in Asiatic fashion on his horse, now lost in thick grass, now leaping with the speed of a tiger from ambush, or emerging suddenly from the river or swamp, all clinging with mud, and appearing an image of terror to the Tatar....” Little by little the community grew and with its growing it began to assume a general character. The beginning of the sixteenth century found whole villages settled with families, enjoying the protection of the Cossacks, who exacted certain obligations, chiefly military, so that these settlements bore a military character. The sword and the plough were friends which fraternised at every settler’s. On the other hand, Gogol tells us, the gay bachelors began to make depredations across the border to sweep down on Tatars’ wives and their daughters and to marry them. “Owing to this co-mingling, their facial features, so different from one another’s, received a common impress, tending towards the Asiatic. And so there came into being a nation in faith and place belonging to Europe; on the other hand, in ways of life, customs, and dress quite Asiatic. It was a nation in which the world’s two extremes came in contact; European caution and Asiatic indifference, niavete and cunning, an intense activity and the greatest laziness and indulgence, an aspiration to development and perfection, and again a desire to appear indifferent to perfection.” All of Ukraine took on its colour from the Cossack, and if I have drawn largely on Gogol’s own account of the origins of this race, it was because it seemed to me that Gogol’s emphasis on the heroic rather than on the historical — Gogol is generally discounted as an historian — would give the reader a proper approach to the mood in which he created “Taras Bulba,” the finest epic in Russian literature. Gogol never wrote either his history of Little Russia or his universal history. Apart from several brief studies, not always reliable, the net result of his many years’ application to his scholarly projects was this brief epic in prose, Homeric in mood. The sense of intense living, “living dangerously” — to use a phrase of Nietzsche’s, the recognition of courage as the greatest of all virtues — the God in man, inspired Gogol, living in an age which tended toward grey tedium, with admiration for his more fortunate forefathers, who lived in “a poetic time, when everything was won with the sword, when every one in his turn strove to be an active being and not a spectator.” Into this short work he poured all his love of the heroic, all his romanticism, all his poetry, all his joy. Its abundance of life bears one along like a fast-flowing river. And it is not without humour, a calm, detached humour, which, as the critic Bolinsky puts it, is not there merely “because Gogol has a tendency to see the comic in everything, but because it is true to life.” Yet “Taras Bulba” was in a sense an accident, just as many other works of great men are accidents. It often requires a happy combination of circumstances to produce a masterpiece. I have already told in my introduction to “Dead Souls” how Gogol created his great realistic masterpiece, which was to influence Russian literature for generations to come, under the influence of models so remote in time or place as “Don Quixote” or “Pickwick Papers”; and how this combination of influences joined to his own genius produced a work quite new and original in effect and only remotely reminiscent of the models which have inspired it. And just as “Dead Souls” might never have been written if “Don Quixote” had not existed, so there is every reason to believe that “Taras Bulba” could not have been written without the “Odyssey.” Once more ancient fire gave life to new beauty. And yet at the time Gogol could not have had more than a smattering of the “Odyssey.” The magnificent translation made by his friend Zhukovsky had not yet appeared and Gogol, in spite of his ambition to become a historian, was not equipped as a scholar. But it is evident from his dithyrambic letter on the appearance of Zhukovsky’s version, forming one of the famous series of letters known as “Correspondence with Friends,” that he was better acquainted with the spirit of Homer than any mere scholar could be. That letter, unfortunately unknown to the English reader, would make every lover of the classics in this day of their disparagement dance with joy. He describes the “Odyssey” as the forgotten source of all that is beautiful and harmonious in life, and he greets its appearance in Russian dress at a time when life is sordid and discordant as a thing inevitable, “cooling” in effect upon a too hectic world. He sees in its perfect grace, its calm and almost childlike simplicity, a power for individual and general good. “It combines all the fascination of a fairy tale and all the simple truth of human adventure, holding out the same allurement to every being, whether he is a noble, a commoner, a merchant, a literate or illiterate person, a private soldier, a lackey, children of both sexes, beginning at an age when a child begins to love a fairy tale — all might read it or listen to it, without tedium.” Every one will draw from it what he most needs. Not less than upon these he sees its wholesome effect on the creative writer, its refreshing influence on the critic. But most of all he dwells on its heroic qualities, inseparable to him from what is religious in the “Odyssey”; and, says Gogol, this book contains the idea that a human being, “wherever he might be, whatever pursuit he might follow, is threatened by many woes, that he must need wrestle with them — for that very purpose was life given to him — that never for a single instant must he despair, just as Odysseus did not despair, who in every hard and oppressive moment turned to his own heart, unaware that with this inner scrutiny of himself he had already said that hidden prayer uttered in a moment of distress by every man having no understanding whatever of God.” Then he goes on to compare the ancient harmony, perfect down to every detail of dress, to the slightest action, with our slovenliness and confusion and pettiness, a sad result — considering our knowledge of past experience, our possession of superior weapons, our religion given to make us holy and superior beings. And in conclusion he asks: Is not the “Odyssey” in every sense a deep reproach to our nineteenth century? An understanding of Gogol’s point of view gives the key to “Taras Bulba.” For in this panoramic canvas of the Setch, the military brotherhood of the Cossacks, living under open skies, picturesquely and heroically, he has drawn a picture of his romantic ideal, which if far from perfect at any rate seemed to him preferable to the grey tedium of a city peopled with government officials. Gogol has written in “Taras Bulba” his own reproach to the nineteenth century. It is sad and joyous like one of those Ukrainian songs which have helped to inspire him to write it. And then, as he cut himself off more and more from the world of the past, life became a sadder and still sadder thing to him; modern life, with all its gigantic pettiness, closed in around him, he began to write of petty officials and of petty scoundrels, “commonplace heroes” he called them. But nothing is ever lost in this world. Gogol’s romanticism, shut in within himself, finding no outlet, became a flame. It was a flame of pity. He was like a man walking in hell, pitying. And that was the miracle, the transfiguration. Out of that flame of pity the Russian novel was born. — JOHN COURNOS Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman’s Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General), 1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847; Letters, 1847, 1895, 4 vols. 1902. ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: Also St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba, trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes, London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia (adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff’s Journey’s; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London, Maxwell 1887; Dead Souls, London, Fisher Unwin, 1915; Dead Souls, London, Everyman’s Library (Intro. by John Cournos), 1915; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff, London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913. LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.), Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol, 1914...FROM THE BOOK.

Book Europe s Freedom Fighter  Taras Shevchenko  1814 1861

Download or read book Europe s Freedom Fighter Taras Shevchenko 1814 1861 written by United States. Congress House and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Taras Bulba And Other Tales

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
  • Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
  • Release : 2023-07-01
  • ISBN : 9358591919
  • Pages : 249 pages

Download or read book Taras Bulba And Other Tales written by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-07-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Taras Bulba and Other Tales" is a collection of stories written by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, one of the most renowned Russian authors of the 19th century. The collection contains several distinct tales that showcase Gogol's unique blend of satire, dark humor, and vivid storytelling. The centerpiece of the collection is the titular story, "Taras Bulba," which follows the life of a Cossack warrior and his two sons during the tumultuous times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Gogol's depiction of the fierce and proud Cossack culture, along with the intense conflicts and vivid battle scenes, brings to life the spirit of the era and the struggles of the characters. In addition to "Taras Bulba," the collection includes other notable tales such as "St. John's Eve," a mysterious and atmospheric story set during a pagan festival, and "The Portrait," a haunting tale of a painter's obsession with his subject. These stories exhibit Gogol's ability to delve into the depths of human nature, exploring themes of identity, passion, and the supernatural. "Taras Bulba and Other Tales" is a captivating collection that showcases Gogol's mastery of storytelling and his exploration of themes that remain relevant today.

Book Taras Bulba  A Tale of the Cossacks

Download or read book Taras Bulba A Tale of the Cossacks written by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Taras Bulba" is a historical romance that depicts the life of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap, who study at the Kiev Academy. After the sons return home, the three men travel to the Zaporizhian Sich, where they join other Cossacks and go to war against Poland.

Book Wouldn t Miss It for the World

Download or read book Wouldn t Miss It for the World written by Tara McCarthy and published by Gallery Books. This book was released on 2007-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking exploration of dubious pursuits like destination weddings, book clubs, and rock 'n' roll, Wouldn't Miss It for the World is a spirited and surprising new novel from Tara McCarthy, the author of Love Will Tear Us Apart. The cast of characters that Tara McCarthy sends down to the tiny Central American country of Belize for a destination wedding are in for a few surprises. There's mother-of-the-bride Alice, a widow, who is about to come face-to-face with an impressive array of Belizean creatures from toucans to intriguing ex-pats. There's Abby, who would rather be back home at Chelsea Lambert's Sweet Sixteen but isn't entirely displeased with the effect her new black bikini has o n some of the wedding guests. And there's Dan, an old friend of the groom, who has decided it's time to declare his love for the bride -- until complications with his girlfriend arise. As their story unfolds against a backdrop of Mayan temples, butterfly farms, and coral reefs, we learn, too, about the bride and the groom. June and Cash are members of the Starter House, an up-and-coming rock band that is certain to either break through or break up -- and this will be the week that decides it.