General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso OMS CMG MVM (12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), sometimes spelled d'Annunzio, was an Italian poet, playwright, and journalist and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet") or Il Profeta ("the Prophet"). D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and was both sensuous and mystical. He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions. His affairs with several women, including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati, received public attention. During the First World War, perception of D'Annunzio in Italy transformed from literary figure into a national war hero. He was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna. As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference, he set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as Duce. The constitution made "music" the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature. Though D'Annunzio never declared himself a fascist, he has been described as the forerunner of Italian fascism as his ideas and aesthetics influenced it and the style of Benito Mussolini. BiographyGabriele D'Annunzio was born in the township of Pescara, in the region of Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town, Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta D'Annunzio (1831–1893). His father had been adopted at age 13 by a childless rich uncle, Antonio D'Annunzio.Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood, because of his angelic looks, a story that has largely been disproven. His precocious talent was recognised early in life, and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany. He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen — a small volume of verses called Primo Vere (1879). His verse was distinguished by such agile grace that literary critic Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article. In 1881 D'Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina, and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers. In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism. He published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L'intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886). Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life. Gabriele D'Annunzio joined the staff of the Tribuna, under the pseudonym of "Duca Minimo". Here he wrote Il libro d'Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance. Il libro d'Isotta is interesting also, because in it one can find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets one can find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892). D'Annunzio's first novel Il Piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L'innocente (The Intruder). These three novels made a profound impression. L'innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics. His next work, Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks) (1896) and Il fuoco (The Flame of Life) (1900); the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language. D'Annunzio's poetic work of this period, in most respects his finest, is represented by Il Poema Paradisiaco (1893), the Odi navali (1893), a superb attempt at civic poetry, and Laudi (1900). A later phase of D'Annunzio's work is his dramatic production, represented by Il sogno di un mattino di primavera (1897), a lyrical fantasia in one act, and his Città Morta (The Dead City) (1898), written for Sarah Bernhardt. In 1883, Gabriele D'Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, but the marriage ended in 1891. In 1894, he began a love affair with the actress Eleonora Duse(1858-1924) which became a cause célèbre. He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as La città morta (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910. After meeting the Marchesa Luisa Casati in 1903, he began a lifelong turbulent on again-off again affair with Luisa, that lasted until a few years before his death. By 1910, his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt, and he fled to France to escape his creditors. There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St Sebastian), 1911, written for Ida Rubinstein. The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books. The work was not successful as a play, but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times, notably by Pierre Monteux (in French), Leonard Bernstein (sung in French, acted in English), and Michael Tilson Thomas (in French). In 1912 and 1913, D'Annunzio worked with opera composer Pietro Mascagni on his opera Parisina, staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue, near Paris. In 1901, D'Annunzio and Ettore Ferrari, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, founded the Università Popolare di Milano (Popular University of Milan), located in via Ugo Foscolo. D'Annunzio held the inaugural speech and subsequently became an associated professor and a lecturer in the same institution. After the start of World War I, D'Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy's entry on the side of the Triple Entente. With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot, losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident. In February 1918, he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, lit. the Bakar Mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster. On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading nine planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna. This is called in Italian "il Volo su Vienna", "the Flight over Vienna". On 12 September 1919, he led the seizure by 2,000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city, forcing the withdrawal of the inter-Allied (American, British and French) occupying forces. The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume, but were denied. D'Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro with himself as "Duce" (leader), but finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy. After the Fiume episode, D'Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning. Although D'Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy. In 1924 he was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Prince of Montenevoso (Italian: Principe di Montenevoso). In 1937 he was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy. D'Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke, at his home in Gardone Riviera. He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani. At the height of his success, D'Annunzio was celebrated for the originality, power and decadence of his writing. Although his work had immense impact across Europe, and influenced generations of Italian writers, his fin de siècle works are now little known, and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations. A prolific writer, his novels in Italian include Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1889), Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894), and Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks, 1896). D'Annunzio's literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school, and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes. One of D'Annunzio's most significant novels, scandalous in its day, is Il fuoco (The Flame of Life) of 1900, in which he portrays himself as the Nietzschean Superman Stelio Effrena, in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse. His short stories showed the influence of Guy de Maupassant. He was also associated with the Italian noblewoman Luisa Casati, an influence on his novels and one of his mistresses. In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular, most notably his poem "La pioggia nel pineto" (The Rain in the Pinewood), which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuousness of his poetry. His work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1912 Summer Olympics. Gabriele D'Annunzio's life and work are commemorated in a museum, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani (The Shrine of Italian Victories). He planned and developed it himself, adjacent to his villa at Gardone Riviera on the southwest bank of Lake Garda, between 1923 and his death. Now a national monument, it is a complex of military museum, library, literary and historical archive, theatre, war memorial and mausoleum. His birthplace is also open to the public as a museum, Birthplace of Gabriele D'Annunzio Museum in Pescara. Further interestArticles Books
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Pamela Beryl Harriman (20 March 1920 – 5 February 1997), also known as Pamela Churchill Harriman, was an English-born American political activist for the Democratic Party, diplomat, and socialite.
She was a descendant of the Earls of Leicester and Ilchester and the Dukes of Atholl. She was a first cousin of Lavinia Fitzalan-Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. She was also a third cousin, once removed, of Angus Ogilvy, husband of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Alexandra of Kent. She was also a fourth cousin, once removed, of Sarah, Duchess of York. She married three important and powerful men, her first husband being Randolph Churchill, the son of prime minister Winston Churchill. Her only child, Winston Churchill, was named after his famous grandfather. Biography
Pamela Digby was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, England, the daughter of Edward Digby, 11th Baron Digby, and his wife, Constance Pamela Alice, the daughter of Henry Campbell Bruce, 2nd Baron Aberdare. She was educated by governesses in the ancestral home at Minterne Magna in Dorset, along with her three younger siblings. Her great-great aunt was the nineteenth-century adventurer and courtesan Jane Digby (1807–1881), notorious for her exotic travels and scandalous personal life. Pamela was to follow in her ancestor's footsteps, and has been called "the 20th-century's most influential courtesan".
Raised amid acres of Dorset farmland and woods, from an early age Pamela was a very good horsewoman. She competed at shows at the International Olympia, Royal Bath and West Show, and local shows at Dorchester and Melplash. She show-jumped a tiny pony called Stardust that did a clear round at Olympia when every fence was above the animal's withers.
At the age of seventeen, she was sent to a Munich boarding school for six months. While there she was introduced to Adolf Hitler by her friend Unity Mitford, one of the six Mitford sister.. She subsequently went to Paris, taking some classes at the Sorbonne. By 1937, she had returned to Britain.
In 1939, while working at the Foreign Office in London doing French-to-English translations, Pamela met Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill, and a womaniser and alcoholic, desperate for a wife, having already proposed to eight women in the space of two weeks. Randolph proposed to her on the very evening they met, and they were married on 4 October 1939.
Two days after Randolph Churchill took his seat in the House of Commons, their son Winston was born. Shortly after giving birth, Pamela and the newborn were photographed by Cecil Beaton for Life magazine, its first cover of a mother with baby.
In February 1941, Randolph was sent to Cairo for military service, where he accrued large gambling debts.
During her marriage to Randolph Churchill, she had romantic involvements with several men of prominence and wealth such as: W. Averell Harriman, who much later became her third husband; Edward R. Murrow; and John Hay "Jock" Whitney. Eventually, Pamela filed for divorce in December 1945 on the grounds that he had deserted her for three years.
After her divorce from Randolph Churchill, Pamela moved to Paris and in 1948 began her five-year-long affair with Gianni Agnelli. She described this as the happiest period of her life. She converted to Catholicism, and obtained an annulment of her marriage with Randolph Churchill from the Catholic Church, in the hope to marry Gianni Agnelli.
Agnelli, however, did not have the same intention. In 1952, Pamela found him with a young woman, Anne-Marie d'Estainville. And one year later, in November of 1953, Gianni Agnelli married Italian Prrincess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto. Pamela Churchill ended the affair.
Her next significant relationship was with Baron Ellie de Rothschild, who was married. He supported her financially, and she was schooled in art history and wine-making during this clandestine and short relationship. During this time she also entertained an affair with the writer Maurice Druon and with the shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.
Other notable men Pamela Churchill was involved with after her divorce from Churchill included Prince Aly Khan, William S. Paley, Alfonso de Portago,etc.
In 1959, Pamela Churchill met Broadway producer Leland Hayward, who was still married to Slim Hawks. She moved to New York City.
The day Hayward's divorce was final, she became the fifth Mrs. Hayward with the ceremony taking place in Carson City, Nevada, on 4 May 1960. Hayward was rich with income from his productions, notably the very successful The Sound of Music, allowing for a lavish and luxurious lifestyle mostly between their residence in New York City and the Westchester County estate "Haywire." Pamela Hayward stayed with her husband until his death on 18 March 1971.
The day after Hayward's funeral, Pamela arranged to resume her acquaintance with her former lover, Harriman, then 79 years old and recently widowed.
They were married on 27 September 1971. As Pamela Churchill Harriman she became a United States citizen in the same year. With this marriage, her social focus was moved to Washington, D.C., where he owned a townhouse in Georgetown from which they entertained many notable people. Harriman, a railroad heir, was wealthy and also bought an estate in Virginia and a private jet. With Harriman's involvement and links in the Democratic Party, her political career began. In 1980, the National Women's Democratic Club named her "Woman of the Year". In 1986, when W. Averell Harriman died, Pamela stayed at his side, remaining Pamela Harriman and inherited 115 million dollars.
In 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton of United States appointed her as Ambassador to France.
Pamela Churchill Harriman died on 5 February 1997 at the American Hospital, Neuilly-sur-Seine, after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage while swimming at the Paris Ritz one day earlier.
The morning after her death, President Jacques Chirac of France placed the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur on her flag-draped coffin. She was the first female foreign diplomat to receive this honour. President Bill Clinton, in further recognition of her contributions and significance, dispatched Air Force One to return her body to the US and spoke at her funeral at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., mentioning her public service in glowing terms. Pamela Churchill Harriman was buried 14 February 1997 at Arden, the former Harriman estate in New York. Further interest
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Name: Gleb Derujinsky Birth place: New York, U.S. Birth date: 19 March 1925 Nationality: American Death place: Durango, Colorado, U.S. Death Date: 9 June 2011 Languages: Russian, French, English Profile Gleb Derujinsky (19 March 1925 – 9 June 2011) was an American fashion photographer. He worked for Esquire, Look, Life, Glamour, Town and Country and The New York Times Magazine, before shooting extensively for Harper’s Bazaar. Eileen Ford, founder of Ford Models agency, described him as an “early visionary on a path that others were to follow”. Biography Gleb Derujinsky was born in New York City in 1925, and named after his father Gleb W. Derujinsky, an immigrant of Russian nobility who became a successful sculptor. The Derujinsky family served the Russian tsars as far back as Peter the Great, and relatives include the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the painter Mikhail Vrubel. Derujinsky’s mother, the classical pianist Alexandra Micholoff Derujinsky, died in the late 1950s. Derujinsky’s first languages were Russian and French, and he went on to learn English while enrolled at the Trinity School in New York. In 1942, Derujinsky became a corporal in the army and stayed until after the end of World War II. His language abilities and negotiation skills contributed to his being promoted to Staff Sergeant halfway through his tours, and learned Morse Code in just 30 days Upon his return to New York City, he opened his first photography studio with his veteran loan. By February 1948, he landed his first cover with Collier’s magazine. Shortly thereafter, he began working for Harper’s Bazaar Jr., an offshoot of Harper’s Bazaar aimed towards college-age women that became a supplement of Harper’s Bazaar. Derujinsky was retained as a freelance photographer, working alongside Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe for editors Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland and art director Alexey Brodovitch. Citing the great photographer Horst P. Horst as a key influence, Derujinsky photographed the Paris Spring collections from 1953-1963 and was known for his outlandish ideas and travel images taken in remote locations all over the world at time when travel, especially by air, was far from common. “Gleb Derujinsky is an original, the Indiana Jones of the fashion photographers. He flew his own private plane to exotic places—models and edi- tors in tow. Wow, the stories that came back! His Paris collection photos nailed the vibe of people in everyday life, juxtaposed with elegance, a metaphor for his notion of Paris at the time.” Derujinsky also freelanced for Look Magazine, Town and Country, The New York Times Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, Esquire, Glamour, Seventeen, Life, and Good Housekeeping. Working extensively with Carmen Dell’Orefice and his then-wife Ruth Neumann-Derujinsky, his work also featured many of the era’s top models, from Jean Patchett and Jean Shrimpton, to Nena Von Schlebrügge and Iris Bianchi. “It’s a tribute to Gleb Derujinsky that his best photographs for Harper’s Bazaar could be mistaken for Avedons. He spun narratives of Parisian chic and New York joie de vivre that have lost not a bit of their charm.”
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Books Gleb Derujinsky, l'œil de la mode Andrea Derujinsky Glamourissime
Glenda Bailey, rédactrice en chef, Harper’s Bazaar. «Je n’ai jamais confondu ses photos avec celles d’ Avedon ou qui que ce soit d’autre. Le style de Gleb était indubitablement personnel. […] Il n’avait besoin de copier personne. Il avait sa propre vision et connaissait son équipement. Il avait sa manière à lui de voir la lumière et l’environnement. Avec lui, j’avais le sentiment de faire partie d’une vision sortie de son esprit et qu’il réalisait dans une photographie.» Carmen Dell’Orefice, mannequin. |
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