Carefree Life Research Articles

厚齋 金榦의 생애와 漢詩에 대한 일고찰

This study divided the life of Hujae Kim Gan into early age, middle age, and old age, and examined his poems under different themes, including “pursuit of Neo-Confucianism and introspection,” “trace of secluded life and joy of carefree life,” and “seclusion in forest and everyday feelings.” This study also explored how his inner consciousness is expressed in his poems in different periods. First, the poems under the theme of “pursuit of Neo-Confucianism and introspection” reflect his earnest feelings of fostering temper and pursuing Neo-Confucianism instead of external beauty of formality. The poetic expressions and their sources are mostly based on the scriptures. This shares the same context with the traditional poetic idea of Mencius and Xunzi, which seeks edification of custom, as well as preservation of conscience rather than finding the value and utility of pure literature in poems. Secondly, the poems under the theme of “trace of secluded life and joy of carefree life” are mainly about his craving for completely secluded life and unworldly point of view compared to his previous works that feel somehow heavier with Neo-Confucian ideas. Lastly, the poems under the theme of “seclusion in forest and everyday feelings” mainly cover the secluded and simple vibes he felt throughout his secluded life in forest. These poems show the feelings and daily life of complete seclusion in forest, which he desperately longed for since his youth years. To the scholars of the times and coming scholars, Kim Gan(金榦) is regarded as a scholar who deeply immersed into the Neo-Confucianism. In fact, he lived a secluded life from his early age to devote his whole life to the Neo-Confucianism. He also deemed the continuance of studies and training of upcoming generation as his lifetime task, and a lot of his poems include Neo-Confucian ideas and Neo-Confucian thoughts. However, his poetic world was not completed covered with Neo-Confucian ideas. Instead, there are poems about his pursuit of secluded life and his actual unworldly secluded life. These poems show his aspects as a poet Kim Gan(金榦) who escaped from the Neo-Confucian ideas as a scholar.

A Stylistic Review of Maulana Muhammad Hussain Azad's Essay "Sair-e-Zindagi"

Maulana Muhammad Hussain Azad’s essay "Sair-e-Zindagi" describes life and its different stages. The essay starts with the words of a sage that when a person comes into the world, he is completely ignorant and innocent. Then there is childhood, which he finds in the form of a beautiful and carefree life, and then there is youth, which is a beautiful, exciting and colorful period of life, and it is full of emotions and desires. After that, gradually the organs of a person start to decay and he moves from youth to old age. By going to old age, he becomes greedier about life. A critical review of the said essay is presented in this article highlighting the characteristics pertaining to style and diction of the writer.

Mistreatments Of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The Editor, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an umbrella, constructed to describe difficulties in social communication, with a very confined range of interests and fixed patterns along with atypical sensory-motor behaviors beginning in early childhood. It is estimated that over 350,000 children are on the spectrum in Pakistan, and the prevalence continues to rise(1). Research and studies have shown that early intervention has a positive effect on the later development of children on the spectrum (2). In a child’s life, a sensitive stage of development called the critical period is the time when new connections (synapses) are made that are influenced by environmental stimuli and personal experiences of the child (3). Established diagnosis and intervention in this period influences the brain’s neural plasticity. Hence filling the gap between the child’s growth margin and typically developing peers and supporting their way into adulthood with the competencies necessary to live an independent and carefree life. In underdeveloped nations like Pakistan, there is inadequate knowledge and awareness of ASD. Children are misdiagnosed and caregivers are deluded into the thought of a cure of autism due to the existence of various superstitions and necromantic beliefs(4). Different oil mixtures, herbal medicines, and several other home remedies are practiced: some to elude over-sensitivity or under-sensitivity, some to magically make the child speak etc. However, these practices have no effect, other than losing precious years of the child’s life (5). Parents and caregivers of autistic children should be counseled that ASD is not a disease to cure but a way to adapt. They should be convinced that being autistic is not because some pathogen invaded the brain; rather it is because the brain is wired differently and functions at its own pace. Seminars and webinars should be held for caregivers to help them deal with the psychosocial issues and the social stigma surrounding ASD. There is also a need to create awareness at the government level to better equip people, professionals, and healthcare systems to better cater for the needs of children with ASD. Moreover, efforts should be made to make ASD screening a part of universal pediatric screening so that intervention is provided as early as possible. There is a growing need to understand that ASD is not a curse manifested but an individuality to celebrate.

Dear Scottie – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Letters to his Daughter

       Our article aims at a brief literary analysis of the letters written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, the famous American writer to his only child, Scottie. Despite his short life (1896-1940), Fitzgerald left an indelible mark not only on English-language literature, but also on world literature. His novels and short stories have been translated into many languages ​​of the world. And the new screen adaptation of his masterpiece "The Great Gatsby" once again opened the door for the writer in the hearts of millions of modern youth. The writer's biography is no less impressive than the lives of his most reckless characters. Fitzgerald's life was full of adventures and extremes. He had periods of carefree life and days when he had to constantly ask his literary agent for an advance. Scottie, his only daughter, was the brightest point of his life, born to him by his wife, the beautiful and talented Zelda Sayre. Dozens of letters written to Scott reveal the truest and most intimate side of the writer - the father figure and that of the role of the father - for which he never betrayed.

The educational opportunities of Ukrainian children at the time of the Russian invasion: perspectives from teachers

ABSTRACT The global Covid-19 pandemic has passed. This process required greater attention and care to the specifics of the organization of distance learning and the resolution of problems that arose for participants in the educational process. By late 2021 face-to-face teaching was returning but Russian aggression against Ukraine interrupted the comparatively carefree life of children and hindered access to kindergartens and schools which required a further focus on remote education. The paper outlines the peculiarities of the organization of distance learning under martial law in Ukraine and presents the problems of the organization of training during a time of conflict as well as the challenges presented by Internet platforms for the organization of the distance learning approaches recommended by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine. The aim of the research was theoretical analysis and generalization of literature on research problems, pedagogical observations, surveys, methods of mathematical statistics. The article provides one of the first analyses of the difficulties faced during this period of immense disruption based on empirical data and explains to what extent Ukrainian teachers under martial law have the possibility to organize distance teaching, what problems they face, what is the psychological state of children.

Образ автора в повести С. Довлатова «Заповедник»

The article is devoted to the description of the image of the author / the main subject of speech of the story “Reserve” as the central figure of the autobiographical narrative. The main direction of the research is the subjective organization of the story, which is closely connected with the chronotopic structure in the autobiographical narrative. The chronotope of the “Reserve”, according to the typology of M.M. Bakhtin, is the chronotope of the threshold, the autobiographical hero is faced with the need to make a fateful step, decide whether to stay in the country or emigrate. In the article, the subject of research is one of the aspect of the existence of the author-narrator is the spiritual sphere. It is noted that, trying to understand his problems (“money, wife, creativity and the state”), the hero never argues with himself (his opponents are always outside), although he can condemn himself for actions in the past. The semantic multiplicity of the “I” (the hero in the past / in the present), characteristic of the autobiographical narrative, increases due to the different attitude to the “threshold” (declared by the author or revealed by the interpreter): “I”, exposing itself, its “lazy, carefree life”; “I” is active, changing, capable of a decisive step — overcoming the threshold; “I” is a person who has not changed, whom, however, the next wave of life has carried over the “threshold”.

Comparing and Contrasting the Samurai Gintoki and Hijikata Personalities from Gintama

The mask or persona will be discussed in the first subchapter. Gintoki and Hijikata both have a mask that they wear to show to other people or society. Gintoki's persona is lazy, childish, and cowardly since his motivation is to live a carefree life, free of obligations, and to project an image that others will not hold high expectations of him. Behind every façade is their genuine personality, which they prefer not to project. The shadow will be discussed in the second subchapter. Their repressed feelings and flaws are contained in the shadow. I will also go through how each character's shadow works. Gintoki's shadow is his guilt about killing his own teacher as a result of being forced to make some difficult decisions. Whereas Hijikata’s shadow is regret of being unable to save his brother. The findings are that a human psyche is complex, and each has his different causes and outcomes.Keywords: samurai, persona, shadow, anima, animus, personality

Adélaïde et moi: La Nouvelle-Orléans 1850–2011, une fresque romancée par Daniel Dujardin-Sadowy

Reviewed by: Adélaïde et moi: La Nouvelle-Orléans 1850–2011, une fresque romancée par Daniel Dujardin-Sadowy Sharon L. Fairchild Dujardin-Sadowy, Daniel. Adélaïde et moi: La Nouvelle-Orléans 1850–2011, une fresque romancée. L’Harmattan, 2021 ISBN 978-2-343-14495-5. Pp. 286. Recounting the life experience of a young French woman, Adélaïde Mallard, who emigrated to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century at the age of twenty-two, this work is the result of research done by her great great-granddaughter, Françoise D. The text is presented in the first-person voices of the two women in alternating chapters, with the larger part of the narrative expressing Adélaïde’s point of view. Based entirely on factual events and real individuals, the story is nevertheless fictionalized in its representation of certain activities as well as in the thoughts, opinions, and emotions of these individuals. This presents some confusion in categorizing and understanding the work. For example, some events that are presumed to have taken place are entirely invented, while others are confirmed to have occurred through journal entries, newspaper clippings, etc. Consequently, the reader cannot distinguish which aspects come from concrete sources and which are purely fictitious. The author acknowledges that the work is a “fresque romancée,” indicating his intentions. Despite these caveats, the text surges with life and drama revealing the realities of this tumultuous period in the history of the United States and New Orleans. As a major port and center of the cotton and sugar industries, New Orleans’s complex society consisted of wealthy plantation and slave owners, agents who imported and exported goods, and a mix of American and European settlers trying to improve their lives in the bustling city. Adélaïde was taken in by her uncle, Prudent Mallard, a prosperous furniture importer and cabinetmaker, whose elegant products furnished the most famous plantation mansions. During the first three years of her life there, Adélaïde enjoyed a whirlwind, carefree life, during which time she met her husband, Eugène Delaroche. Also a French immigrant, he had traveled to the United States to join the new settlement of Castroville, west of San Antonio, Texas. Adélaïde’s romantic dreams of living in the United States gradually disappeared as she suffered the harsh circumstances of life in New Orleans. The years following her marriage were marked by upheaval and tragedy as rampant yellow fever epidemics, fires, political turmoil, and the Civil War impacted her family. Since France had abolished slavery in 1848, French citizens were forbidden from participating in its trade and in the Civil War. French immigrants such as Adélaïde’s husband, who joined the Louisiana Militia and fought with the Confederate army, were forced to make difficult choices. The aftermath of the war led to a deteriorating situation that ultimately forced Adélaïde’s family to return to France in 1869. Representing the quest of Françoise D. to understand the lives and choices made by her ancestors, this book is of interest to others because of the intimate view it provides not only of this family but also of thousands of immigrants who settled in the United States during challenging times. [End Page 229] Sharon L. Fairchild Texas Christian University, emerita Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Memory, innocence and nostalgia: other versions of African childhood in two African texts

There are a number of memoirs/autobiographies and biographies by African writers on their childhoods in Africa. However, many of these texts tend to focus mostly on the child protagonist�s experiences of colonialism, slavery, war, death and deprivation. This article moves away from these narratives of deprivation and trauma, focusing on other versions of African childhoods where the child lives a carefree life devoid of danger and scarcity of resources. Using Camara Laye�s The Dark Child and Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: The Years of Childhood and doing a textual analysis of the content, themes and characters, this article argues that these texts can be read as recollections of nostalgia and memories of a carefree time in the life of two African children, a time that the narrators reminisce upon through the act of retelling in order to revisit the joys and innocence of those days.

Tourists and meteorologists in the Italian Riviera: The Journal de Bordighera (1883–1935) as a source for the study of the local climate

The Italian Riviera was, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the Second World War, one of the most famous, elitist, climatic, winter, international tourist destinations. In Bordighera, in particular, the British community was so important that a typical English ‘environmental bubble’ was created, and still today there is not only physical, but also cultural evidence of it. Among the latter, the polyglot Journal de Bordighera (1883–1935), a large number of issues of which are still held at the local Museum Bicknell, is the privileged witness of the carefree life of the tourists spending their winter on the Riviera in that period. One of its weekly columns, the ‘Bulletin Météorologique’, contains precise data, collected by the tourists themselves, about the temperatures of the resort, while comments on the special climate of the region are scattered across different issues. That information is unique for Bordighera because, even if the location has always been appreciated for its mild climate, surprisingly no other meteorological data have ever been recorded for such a long period. The aim of this paper is twofold: to reconstruct this historical climatological series, which appears to have reasonable historical reliability, if verified with the series of other weather stations of the Riviera, and to consider the observations about the climate published by the tourist meteorologists on the Journal de Bordighera as a positioned way to observe and to narrate the climate of the Riviera.

Schopenhauer in Dante’s Garden of Eden: Melancholy and Rubén Darío’s “Autumnal”

Schopenhauer in Dante’s Garden of Eden: Melancholy and Rubén Darío’s “Autumnal”

Nostalgiczne powroty do przeszłości. O fenomenie wielkich blokowisk oraz retroprzedmiotach w najnowszej prozie realistycznej

This article describes the phenomenon of large blocks of flats in the latest popular prose. It indicates that many writers, such as Cichowski, Chutnik, and Wilk, return to their childhood spent in the period of the late PRL [the Polish People’s Republic]. The leisurely rhythm of the story along with the factual recording of the old world reflect the atmosphere of the lost carefree life. The rich enumeration of retro-objects develops into the glorification of the past. Chutnik, Wilk and Cichowski focus on describing interpersonal relationships based on friendship and solidarity. Their works constitute a valuable bridge between the past and the present.

FOREGROUNDING OF POSTCOLONIAL ELEMENTS IN HANIF KUREISHI’S THE BLACK ALBUM

Purpose of the study: This study aims to examine the postcolonial elements i.e, hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence concerning Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Black Album (1995). The protagonist of the novel faces religious, economic, social, racial, and ethnic identities in a tormenting and perturbing social order of England.
 Methodology: This article is based on inductive reasoning and thus exploratory due to its qualitative nature. A close reading method is applied to the text of this paper. For this purpose, the researcher has read carefully the book Close Reading (The Basics 2018) by David Greenham. The method consists of five stages through which the paper scrutinized.
 Main Findings: The researcher endeavors to find out religious, economic, ethnic, cultural, and social factors behind the identity crisis faced by the protagonist. Hybridity, mimicry, assimilation, and ambivalence play a very vital role in the social life of the protagonist. The researcher found that Shahid Hassan is caught between two identities i.e, Islamic fundamentalism and liberalism. Islamic fundamentalism offered him much peace and satisfaction with the Islamic religion whose leader is Riaz Al Husain but the liberalism attracts his attention with drugs, sex, music, freedom, rock n` rolls, and carefree life in form of Deedee Osgood who is his mentor and is a college lecturer too. He becomes the victim of hybrid identity and remains in an ambivalent state of mind. Being a British immigrant, he always remains in search of his true identity. Being a postcolonial novel, it helps the students, teachers, and literature lovers to know about the biased and rude behaviour of the whites towards non-whites.
 Application of the study: Foregrounding of postcolonial elements is very significant only in the field of postcolonial study because it highlights economic, religious, political, social, cultural, and ethnic factors of identity crisis.
 Novelty/Originality of this study: This study is an original contribution as it examines the economic, political, racial, social, and ethnic issues faced by the protagonist. The researcher employed Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial elements to examine the identity crisis faced by the protagonist. Moreover, the close reading method for data analysis is based on originality as well as novelty.

Tribals education in Bhoksa Tribe of India: Status, challenges and issues

India has been rightly described as a ‘melting pot’ of race & tribes. The aboriginal tribes of India are the oldest inhabitants of the country, for millennia tribal societies have been subjugated by more recently arrived groups, their land was taken away, they were pushed further into the hilly gorges & wilds and also assimilated into the dominant caste & culture of the country. Chronic indebtedness has been, and is still, probably the most difficult problem facing almost the entire tribal population of India. Reliable ethnographic evidence proved that the tribal people were handicapped in their struggle to live carefree life when their place ofhabitation was isolated and divided between middle man and contractors, except that there were many other problems such as the problem of safe drinking water, loss of their rights over land andforests, poor and primitive mode ofagriculture resulting in deficit supply of food grain and no other programmes for their economic development and health facilities. The major problem faced by tribals is the lack of education andfacilities provided by the government. Most tribals are illiterate and have no idea how they can use their fundamental rights provided by India's constitution. In this paper, an attempt has been made on tribal problems in India but the main focus is on the problem of education of tribal people, and the lack of resources & equipment. It also includes the role performed by NGOs and other Programmers recommended by Government.

Prawo małoletnich do wolności od hazardu, uzależnienia od Internetu i gier komputerowych

The Right of Minors to Freedom from Gambling and Internet andGaming Addition The aim of the article is to highlight the dangers of gambling and Internet and gaming addiction of minors and young persons. The author is convinced that in the absence of positive legislative changes and if creators of games engaging young persons in gaming are not punished, children will not be safe in the online environment. There will not have any other lives than those in the games they play. Additionally, the most important thing is the role of the parents, guardians and teachers. They should talk to children about the problem, show them the dangers and organise better their free time – in an educational and carefree way. In accordance with the obligatory rules of custody, they should ensure them suitable development, safety and a sense of belonging. The teachers ought to support these activities. Summarising, if the status quo continues to be tolerated, minors and young person’s will be deprived of carefree life and suffer from harm and even sudden deaths. The author is sure that parents and children do not give enough attention to that and we should not take away from young person’s the joy of simple things letting them play in the Internet instead.

Changing educational gradient in long-term care-free life expectancy among German men, 1997-2012.

BackgroundThe inverse association between mortality and individual socioeconomic status is well-documented. Due to the lack of appropriate data, little is known about the nature of this association among individuals with long-term care (LTC) needs.ObjectivesWe aim to fill in this knowledge gap by estimating life expectancy (LE), life expectancy without (CFLE) and with (CLE) long-term care by education for older German men; and by assessing the trends in the education-LE/CFLE/CLE gradient over time.Data and methodsWe apply survival analysis and Gompertz regression to German Socioeconomic Panel data (1997–2012) to estimate the mortality levels and to construct the life tables for three educational categories. Using the administrative data from the health insurance, we adjust mortality rates upward to account for the institutionalized population. We estimate age-specific LTC prevalence from the German Microcensus data (2004, 2012) and compute life expectancy with and without LTC by employing Sullivan’s method. Slope and Relative Indices of Inequality are computed to evaluate the magnitude of educational inequalities in CFLE.ResultsThere is a clear and growing educational gradient in LE and CFLE among older men in Germany. In 2004, LE at age 65 among men with low education was 14.2 years, or 3.3 years lower than among highly educated individuals. The CFLE of these two educational categories ranged from 13.6 to almost 17 years. The gradient increased over time and in 2012 the difference constituted 4.6 years. The gaps between educational groups were not pronounced for CLE. The declining health ratio of years without LTC to remaining LE suggests the expansion of LTC needs, irrespective of the educational level.ConclusionsGrowing inequalities by educational status among older German men with care needs demand the attention of policy-makers. Prompt actions are needed to increase the survival chances of the most vulnerable groups.

Of Cedars Across the Sea

Of Cedars Across the Sea Krystal Elkhoury (bio) Lighthouse for the Drowning: Poems Jawdat Fakhreddine Huda Fakhreddine & Jayson Iwen, trans. BOA Editions, Ltd. www.boaeditions.org 128 Pages; Print, $16.00 Translation is a daunting task, and translation of poetry is even more difficult due to its inherent precision, and the risk of cultural nuances getting lost in translation. Despite this, Huda Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen were more than ready to undertake the herculean endeavor of translating the poetry of Jawdat Fakhreddine—Huda's father—from Arabic into English. Huda Fakhreddine and Iwen note in the introduction the hardships that they grappled with over the course of the translation process wherein important choices had to be made regarding words with multiple meanings and potential translations. Huda Fakhreddine and Iwen made deliberate decisions to stay as true to the original as possible, ensuring that the meaning and intent of the poems were not lost, while also expertly adding more subtext through wordplay. After reading the poems in both English and Arabic, I found myself stunned at how Huda Fakhreddine and Iwen have managed to accomplish this delicate juggling act. The introduction provides historical context for the reader as to how Lighthouse for the Drowning and its translation came to be: it was written during a time of political upheaval and eventual civil war within Lebanon which forced Jawdat Fakhreddine into a temporary exile to America. Jawdat Fakhreddine's feelings of isolation and banishment to a foreign land are at the forefront of his poems, which are saturated with the strong desire for remembrance and returning, a return to youth and childhood, a return to an energetic and carefree life, a return to something forgotten and the desire to never forget, a return home to one's roots. There is a yearning for something more that is so visceral and captivating it makes the reader feel every melancholic, depressed, and excited emotion that gripped Fakhreddine at the time of writing. The form of the collection stands as metaphor, with English text on the left and Arabic on the right, and can easily be interpreted as representing the West and the Middle East, respectively. The negative space between the text and translation is significant, and reading the book from beginning to end—left to right—has the reader metaphorically journeying from a foreign Western country, travelling over the bodies of water (negative space) that separate them from their destination in the east, guided home by the beacon of a lighthouse of words. Lighthouse for the Drowning encapsulates the feelings of melancholy and isolation that affects any member of a diaspora and evokes a desire to return home even in those who have never set foot ashore the land of their ancestors. Despite the nuances found in the English and Arabic languages, there is an opportunity for a play on words through translation—in one poem, the word "bahr" is translated as "sea," but can also mean a "meter" in Arabic poetry, as the translators note. In the same poem, "waves" stand in for the names of the Arabic poetic meters. Together, this translation creates a beautiful interplay of imagery where the author likens his spirit to the seas before being overtaken by the waves, like words that overwhelm but are the only thing that can convey the poetry of his spirit. In the second stanza, Fakhreddine states outright that "Poetry is the deepest sea, / distant yet more urgent than surf breaking on rocks." The sea, or meter, of poetry is a raucous entity with powerful meanings that rise and fall in waves that ebb and flow on the shores of a reader's mind. Fakhreddine's poems are an intimate offering of the author's deepest fears, desires, and longings, a retrospective reflection to his roots and a yearning to return to the land of his childhood. Water plays a large role in his collection, a renewing and rejuvenating force, showcasing the power of the sea whose waves climb high to batter at the Ancient Phoenician Wall in Batroun, insisting to be seen, to be read, to be heard. Fakhreddine enshrines his words in the dynamic Lebanese landscape: in the...

Portrayals of Caring Masculinities in Fiction Film: The Male Caregiver in Still Mine, Intouchables and Nebraska.

This article analyzes the male caregiving characters Driss in Intouchables (2011), Craig in Still Mine (2012) and David in Nebraska (2013) in terms of hegemonic masculinity and its variations (Connell 1990; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Caregiving is a complex social situation normally assumed within kinship relationships, and traditionally attributed to women. We briefly review feminist analysis of caregiving since the 1970s (Fine and Glendinning 2005), and use critical studies on men and masculinities to show that the uptaking of caring tasks by men would and is contributing to equality between women and men (Elliott 2015). We have looked at the portrayal of the male caregivers in these films, and if and how they challenge hegemonic masculinity in terms of positive experiences. Our findings show that despite the tension men experience between giving in to and challenging patriarchal privilege of a care-free life, strategies such as humour, complicity, outdoor action and a general concern for the dignity of the care-receiver can be identified as some of these features of (imagined) caring masculinities and open new spaces for defining care as a gender neutral activity.

World War I and the Russian Revolution in the Memoirs of German Officer Wilhelm Wölfing

This is the first publication of the memoirs of W. Wölfing, a German reserve officer and participant in World War I. This unique archival document contains information about his time in captivity in Siberia between 1915 and 1917 and his activity as an official representative of the German High Command in Moscow in 1918. The text of the memoirs is kept in the Federal Military Archive of Germany in Freiburg. It has never been published in Germany or translated into Russian previously. The text has a pronounced anti-Bolshevik tone: equally, its author presents the development of events between 1917 and 1918 as being unsupported by the German government, which makes it possible to consider the position of Wölfing as an alternative to the preservation of the German Empire and the destruction of the Bolshevik regime. The author’s biography combines typical and unique features: a certified lawyer; a reservist on the Eastern front during World War I; an uhlan sent on air reconnaissance; and a German officer who led a carefree life in Russian captivity and made an adventurous escape in 1918. After the signing of the Brest Peace Agreement between Germany and Soviet Russia, he headed the Moscow Office of the the German High Command’s Foreign Policy Department; in this capacity, he was engaged in propaganda work, promoted emigration, and was an advocate of a military intervention in Russia to overthrow the Bolsheviks. His status as a diplomat allowed him to establish broad and diverse contacts. He had contacts among representatives of the Bolshevik leadership, including the Chekists (Radek, Peters), “former people” hostile to the new government (Patriarch Tikhon, Prince Lvov), cultural activists, and many foreigners. The memoirs contain many details of Russian everyday life in the wartime conditions before the Revolution and at the beginning of the post-revolutionary period. They also make it possible to clarify prevailing ideas about the nature of the political processes that took place in 1918, primarily in regards to the extent to which the Bolsheviks influenced the events of the November Revolution in Germany and the possible alternatives to Russian history between 1918 and 1919.

Masques, Mayings and Music-Dramas: Vaughan Williams and the Early Twentieth-Century Stage by Roger Savage

MUSIC FOR THE STAGE Masques, Mayings and Music-Dramas: Vaughan Williams and Early Twentieth-Century Stage. By Roger Savage. Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press, 2014. [ix, 390 p. ISBN 9781843839194. $99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, appendix, index.Ralph Vaughan Williams's reputation rests largely on his large-scale orchestral and choral works, and to a lesser extent on his solo vocal music and songs. His nationalist activities as a polemical essayist and activist on behalf of amateur music making have also attracted notice, focusing a certain amount of attention on church music and folk song arrangements that he composed in fulfilment of this mission. Lost in most discussions, however, has been any real appreciation for his stage music. When it has been noticed at all, it has usually been to dismiss it as dilettantish, work of a man who not a born musician of (as critic Richard Capell famously put it in his Daily Telegraph review of 1936 opera The Poisoned Kiss; quoted in Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams [London: Oxford University Press, 1980], 251). And yet, throughout his long creative life, Vaughan Williams was constantly engaged in theatrical projects. He completed six operas, another six ballets and and was forever contemplating more works in these genres (a number of which were left uncompleted at his death). He wrote well over a dozen scores of incidental music for stage and radio plays, and made major contributions to film music. Admittedly, not all stage music matches quality of orchestral and choral masterpieces, but some of it, notably opera Riders to Sea and score for film Scott of Antarctic, clearly does. And 1930 Job is one outstanding works of interwar period by any composer.Roger Savage's new book is not exactly about Vaughan Williams's stage music. Indeed, in some ways, it is not even-or at least, not always-about Vaughan Williams. Its true subject is turn-of-thetwentieth-century musical stage, aspects of which Savage explores in eight widely-varied essays. Thus, one chapter investigates sudden vogue for Jacobean Masque, both in new and revived forms, and relates it to late-Victorian and Edwardian search for a newly non-naturalistic and ritualistic theater that exercised writers like W. B. Yeats and Arthur Symons. Another explores writings and theories of Reginald Buckley, North Country autodidact and visionary who conceived of an English Bayreuth at Glastonbury and wrote librettos for a massive Arthurian cycle that was partially set to music by Rutland Boughton. A third examines work of avant-garde theater director and polemicist Edward Gordon Craig and his failed collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on an English ballet entitled Cupid and Psyche. Vaughan Williams makes important appearances in these chapters-as arranger of one of masques, as an observer and wry commentator on Buckley, and as projected composer of Craig-Diaghilev ballet, respectively-but is not a leading player in them.His role is significantly larger in other essays in collection, however. A piece on 1911 Pageant of London, a mammoth, multiday, open-air production that was itself centerpiece of Festival of Empire marking coronation of George V, includes detailed discussion of suite of folk tunes he arranged for pageant's Merrie England scene. Another, on Gypsophilia, early twentieth-century literary and artistic enthusiasm for fantasized notions of carefree life of traveling people, places special emphasis on Gypsy elements discernible in various Vaughan Williams operatic projects, notably Hugh Drover. A related essay on turn-of-the-century literary cult of vagabond-the essays, travel books, novels and poems extolling the open road that sprang up everywhere before World War I-focuses on composer's song cycle after Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel, and opera The Pilgrim's Progress that he fashioned from John Bunyan's work of same name. …