Diary Of A Foreigner In Paris

Experience postwar Europe through the diary of a fascinating and witty twentieth-century writer and artist. Recording his travels in France and Switzerland, Curzio Malaparte encounters famous figures such as Cocteau and Camus and captures the fraught, restless spirit of Paris after the trauma of war. In 1947 Curzio Malaparte returned to Paris for the first time in fourteen years. In between, he had been condemned by Mussolini to five years in exile and, on release, repeatedly imprisoned. In his intervals of freedom, he had been dispatched as a journalist to the Eastern Front, and though many of his reports from the bloodlands of Poland and Ukraine were censored, his experiences there became the basis for his unclassifiable postwar masterpiece and international bestseller, Kaputt. Now, returning to the one country that had always treated him well, the one country he had always loved, he was something of a star, albeit one that shines with a dusky and disturbing light. The journal he kept while in Paris records a range of meetings with remarkable people—Jean Cocteau and a dourly unwelcoming Albert Camus among them—and is full of Malaparte’s characteristically barbed reflections on the temper of the time. It is a perfect model of ambiguous reserve as well as humorous self-exposure. There is, for example, Malaparte’s curious custom of sitting out at night and barking along with the neighborhood dogs—dogs, after all, were his only friends when in exile. The French find it puzzling, to say the least; when it comes to Switzerland, it is grounds for prosecution!

Experience postwar Europe through the diary of a fascinating and witty twentieth-century writer and artist. Recording his travels in France and Switzerland, Curzio Malaparte encounters famous figures such as Cocteau and Camus and captures the fraught, restless spirit of Paris after the trauma of war. In 1947 Curzio Malaparte returned to Paris for the first time in fourteen years. In between, he had been condemned by Mussolini to five years in exile and, on release, repeatedly imprisoned. In his intervals of freedom, he had been dispatched as a journalist to the Eastern Front, and though many of his reports from the bloodlands of Poland and Ukraine were censored, his experiences there became the basis for his unclassifiable postwar masterpiece and international bestseller, Kaputt. Now, returning to the one country that had always treated him well, the one country he had always loved, he was something of a star, albeit one that shines with a dusky and disturbing light. The journal he kept while in Paris records a range of meetings with remarkable people—Jean Cocteau and a dourly unwelcoming Albert Camus among them—and is full of Malaparte’s characteristically barbed reflections on the temper of the time. It is a perfect model of ambiguous reserve as well as humorous self-exposure. There is, for example, Malaparte’s curious custom of sitting out at night and barking along with the neighborhood dogs—dogs, after all, were his only friends when in exile. The French find it puzzling, to say the least; when it comes to Switzerland, it is grounds for prosecution!

"Every "diary" is a portrait, chronicle, tale, record, history. Notes taken day by day are not a diary but merely moments selected at random in the current of time, in the river of the passing day. A "diary" is a tale: the tale of a tranche de vie (the very definition of the novel, according to one celebrated school), of a period, a year, many years of our life. And as life follows the logic of a tale, it has a beginning, middle, and end (a life is a series of beginnings, middles, and ends, within the closed circle of the beginning, middle, and end of life, in the circle of life). It's not true that a "diary" begins by chance, progresses by chance, has no conclusion but the end of life. A diary, like every tale, calls for a beginning, a plot, and a denouement. The subject of Diary of a Foreigner in Paris is my return to Paris after a fourteen-year absence. It's my discovery of a new France, of a new French people. It's the portrait of a moment in the history of the French nation, of French civilization, that coincides with a particular moment in my life, in the story of my life. I don't claim to be breaking new ground in the "diary" genre. I'm simply suggesting that a diary is a tale, as a play is a tale. And now I arrive at my point: a "diary" is a theatrical work brought to the boards of the page. It's the point at which a tale comes closest to the theater. Everything there tends toward an ending, a conclusion, following the classical rules of unity, but centered on the character called "I." It's the Das Da, Kafka's "present moment," brought to the stage-page. My "diary," at least, is this."--

A poetic portrait of Paris that combines prose poetry, diary, and memoir by award-winning writer and poet Henri Cole. Henri Cole’s Orphic Paris combines autobiography, diary, essay, and poetry with photographs to create a new form of elegiac memoir. With Paris as a backdrop, Cole, an award-winning American poet, explores with fresh and penetrating insight the nature of friendship and family, poetry and solitude, the self and freedom. Cole writes of Paris, “For a time, I lived here, where the call of life is so strong. My soul was colored by it. Instead of worshiping a creator or man, I cared fully for myself, and felt no guilt and confessed nothing, and in this place I wrote, I was nourished, and I grew.” Written under the tutelary spirit of Orpheus—mystic, oracular, entrancing—Orphic Paris is an intimate Paris journal and a literary commonplace book that is a touching, original, brilliant account of the city and of the artists, writers, and luminaries, including Cole himself, who have been moved by it to create.

The first volume of David Plante's extraordinary diaries of a life lived among the artistic elite, both a deeply personal memoir and a hugely significant document of cultural history

"A truly moving book." —John Ashbery Jana Prikryl’s The After Party journeys across borders and eras, from cold war Central Europe to present-day New York City, from ancient Rome to New World suburbs, constantly testing the lingua francas we negotiate to know ourselves. These poems disclose the tensions in our inherited identities and showcase Prikryl’s ambitious experimentation with style. “Thirty Thousand Islands,” the second half of the collection, presents some forty linked poems that incorporate numerous voices. Rooted in one place that fragments into many places—the remote shores of Lake Huron in Canada, a region with no natural resources aside from its beauty—these poems are an elegy that speaks beyond grief. Penetrating, vital, and visionary, The After Party marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Diary Without Dates" by Enid Bagnold. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The diaries reveal details of a remarkable life of a woman born in Imperial Russia who refused to complain about the luxurious life she left behind. CTV National News Its a miraculous tale that takes the readers through revolutions and world wars and chronicles Hendrikoffs transformation from a wealthy privileged lady in-waiting for the Russian empresses to desperate survivor scavenging for coal in a Nazi-occupied France. Calgary Herald Countess Olga Lala Hendrikoff was born into the Russian aristocracy, serving as lady-in-waiting to the empresses and enjoying a life of great privilege. But on the eve of her wedding in 1914 came the first rumors of an impending wara war that would change her life forever and force her to flee her country as a stateless person with no country to call home. In A Countess in Limbo, Countess Hendrikoff tells her remarkable true story that includes the loss of her brother in the Russian gulag, her sister-in-law murdered with the Russian Imperial family, and herself being robbed at gunpoint and accused of being a spy by the Nazis. She also speaks of the daily life that continues during wartime: ration cards and food restrictions, the black market, and the struggle just to get by another day. Her gripping story and thoughtful analysis provide a valuable look at life and humanity in the face of war. Spanning two of the most turbulent times in modern historyWorld War I in Russia and World War II in ParisCountess Hendrikoffs journals demonstrate the uncertainty, horror, and hope of daily life in the midst of turmoil. Her razor-sharp insight, wit, and sense of humor create a fascinating eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution and the occupation and liberation of Paris.