Word: napoleons
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HISTORIANS DELUDE THEMSELVES. Chroniclers of crowded battlefields claim to be citing causes, all the while knowing that they can be certain only of enumerating events. In War and Peace, Napoleon claims that what happens is "destiny when I can guide it, chance when it slips through my fingers," and the historian believes him. But, Tolstoy implies in his epic novel, chance--and the random effect it has on the lives of millions of people--is history's major determining factor. The victory at Borodino towards the end of the novel belongs to the aging Russian general Kutuzov not because...
...like working for Napoleon. She's a great general," says Actress Candice Bergen of her latest director, Lino Wertmuller. Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini are in Rome filming A Night Full of Rain, Wertmuller's first movie in English. To make it, Wertmuller says, is like "flying blind." Giannini spent six months studying the language for his part as an English-speaking Italian journalist. As for Bergen, cast as a former American college radical who falls in love with Giancarlo, she has different language problems. "At this point, my English is beginning to break up," she says. "I find...
...Russians have a symbiotic relationship with cold. For them, snow is a matter of both pride and necessity. It was, after all, General Winter as much as any Russian field marshal who saved the capital from Napoleon and Hitler. Without a heavy covering of snow, the winter wheat crop suffers. The "worst" winter in recent years was that of 1975, when almost no snow fell and the Soviets had to spend scarce hard currency for foreign grain to feed their populace and livestock...
...Napoleon's orders, the Transfiguration was taken off to the Louvre, and in 1802 it was heavily varnished for protection. The varnish gradually darkened to an ocher soup, contributing to the traditional idea that Raphael, a draftsman without peer, was a mediocre colorist. The change also raised the suspicion in some specialists' minds that the lower and darker half of the painting, depicting the cure of a boy's madness by divine grace, had actually been done by Raphael's pupil Giulio Romano...
...glow doesn't fade because the moralizing comes first. In the stage version the voice of Tolstoy has been fleshed out as a narrator who in the opening minutes of the play, introduces the characters and soliloquizes on the main themes. And don't worry that the vision of Napoleon's troops setting fire to St. Petersburg as the Russian troops fight and die in the snow will break the back of even the Loeb's large space and advanced technical equipment. Ayrton has been conducting a production seminar for the entire cast in order to prevent any catastrophes. With...