Word: balzac
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...breed myths and demonizations. The Rothschilds were called, with admiration and loathing, "the Kings of the Jews and the Jews of the Kings"--sometime pariahs and masters of the universe. The bright version of the Rothschilds--benefactors of progress, multilingual cosmopolitans, patrons of the arts, sponsors of Rossini and Balzac, vintners of Mouton and Lafite--was shadowed by a vicious anti-Semitic twin, the view that culminated in Hitler's speeches about "the rapacity of a Rothschild." The family became an all-purpose and surreal villain. Karl Marx vilified the Rothschilds as a quintessence of capitalist evil. One contemporary conspiracy...
...story, adapted from a short novel by the Honore de Balzac, follows a soldier named Augustin Robert (Ben Daniels) who is sent to Egypt in 1798 as the guide and protector of Jean-Michel (Michel Piccoli) an important artist/historiographer. Jean-Michel is on an official mission to draw, measure and document the cultural landmarks of the Egyptian dunes. Of course, the military party with whom he travels are little concerned with monuments or cave-drawings. They have been yanked from their homes and families to conduct a miserable campaign against the Mameluke Dynasty, marching around the desert with their camels...
...Balzac wrote A Passion in the Desert in an era where Rousseau and other philosophers spent gallons of ink wrestling with the essence of man, the core identity that, depending on one's persuasion, either differentiated him from or linked him ineluctably with the animal kingdom. Augustin, well-played for most of the picture by the leonine Daniels, seems intrigued by these same questions, even overwhelmed by them. Having eventually lost hope of any rediscovery, he gives himself over entirely to the cat's way of life: lapping water, shedding his clothes etc. Dementia and self-abandonment are, however, notorious...
...this marvelously complex, wickedly comic adaptation of Honore de Balzac's schoolroom classic, she has brought them all to ruin--the philandering father (Hugh Laurie), the spoiled daughter (Kelly MacDonald), the clueless son (Toby Stephens) and, for good measure, a self-absorbed young sculptor (Aden Young) who takes her generosity for granted, not realizing that she loves him. She spares only Elisabeth Shue's actress-courtesan, partly because she too is socially unacceptable, partly because she is so useful as the seductress Bette needs to bring off her schemes...
...erroneous. I am the President of the People's Republic of China, but I am also an ordinary citizen, and I have my own interests and hobbies. For instance, I read Tang dynasty poems, Song dynasty lyrics and Yuan dynasty verses, and some of Dante, Shakespeare, Balzac, Tolstoy and Mark Twain. All of these give me great enjoyment. I also like to listen to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, Tchaikovsky. And I listen to some of your famous American pieces. At the beginning of this year I read a book written by a Chinese on Mozart that related his music...