ÉMILE ZOLA IS IMPRISONED AFTER WRITING "J'ACCUSE...!"

J'accuse...!

George Orwell said that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world and lies will pass into history. Truth is the most valuable thing in a democracy. If you cannot trust on your government, you cannot believe you are living under a democratic system.

On a day like today in 1898 Émile Zola, the French writer, was prosecuted for libel and found guilty after writing an open letter titled J'accuse...!  where he accused the French government of anti-Semitism and claims about the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage.

Nowadays, totalitarianism is rising up in some European countries and the ghost of antisemitism is returning again. Dictatorships put laws over democracy, send police to beat the citizens, forbid free elections, hate the difference and prosecute the dissidence.

The Grandma is worried about the future of the old continent and about the present of her country which is suffering the anger and fury of those powers which must protect their population and not fighting it and repressing it.

Today, one hundred and twenty-one years later, The Grandma also claims J'accuse...! against corruption, repression, totalitarianism, absolutisme, despotisme, tyranny and non-democratic ways to manage a country.

Before talking about Émile Zolà, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 12).

More information: Reported Speech 2

J'Accuse...! was an open letter published on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore by the influential writer Émile Zola.

In the letter, Zola addressed President of France Félix Faure and accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage.

Émile Zola

Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted for libel and found guilty on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.

Other pamphlets proclaiming Dreyfus's innocence include Bernard Lazare's A Miscarriage of Justice: The Truth about the Dreyfus Affair (November 1896). As a result of the popularity of the letter, even in the English-speaking world, J'accuse...! has become a common generic expression of outrage and accusation against someone powerful.

Alfred Dreyfus was born in 1859 in the city of Mulhouse, which was then located in the province of Alsace in northeast France. Born into a prosperous Jewish family, he left his native town for Paris in 1871 in response to the annexation of the province by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War. In 1894, while an artillery captain for the General Staff of France, Dreyfus was suspected of providing secret military information to the German government.

More information: Books Tell You Why

A cleaning woman and French spy by the name of Madame Bastian working at the German Embassy was at the source of the investigation. She routinely searched wastebaskets and mailboxes at the German Embassy for suspicious documents. She found a suspicious bordereau, detailed listing of documents, at the German Embassy in 1894, and delivered it to Commandant Hubert-Joseph Henry, who worked for French military counterintelligence in the General Staff.

The bordereau had been torn into six pieces, and had been found by Madame Bastian in the wastepaper basket of Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, the German military attaché.  When the document was investigated, Dreyfus was convicted largely on the basis of testimony by professional handwriting experts: the graphologists' assertion was that the lack of resemblance between Dreyfus' writing and that of the bordereau was proof of a 'self-forgery,' and prepared a fantastically detailed diagram to demonstrate that this was so. There were also assertions from military officers who provided confidential evidence.

J'accuse...! by Émile Zola

Dreyfus was found guilty of treason in a secret military court-martial, during which he was denied the right to examine the evidence against him. The Army stripped him of his rank in a humiliating ceremony and shipped him off to Devil's Island, a penal colony located off the coast of French Guiana in South America.

At this time, France was experiencing a period of anti-Semitism, and there were very few outside his family who defended Dreyfus. In 1899, Dreyfus returned to France for a retrial, but although found guilty again, he was pardoned. In 1906, Dreyfus appealed his case again, to obtain the annulment of his guilty verdict. In 1906, he was also awarded the Cross of the Légion d'honneur, which stated, a soldier who has endured an unparallelled martyrdom.

More information: The Guardian

Émile Zola was born on 2 April 1840 in Paris. Zola's main literary work was Les Rougon-Macquart, a monumental cycle of twenty novels about Parisian society during the French Second Empire under Napoleon III and after the Franco-Prussian War. He was also the founder of the Naturalist movement in 19th-century literature.

Zola was among the strongest proponents of the Third Republic and was elected to the Légion d'honneur. He risked his career in January 1898 when he decided to stand up for Alfred Dreyfus. He was sentenced to jail and was removed from the Légion d'honneur. To avoid jail time, Zola fled to England, and stayed there until the French Government collapsed; he continued to defend Dreyfus. Four years after this famous letter to the president, Zola died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney. On 4 June 1908, Zola's remains were laid to rest in the Panthéon in Paris.

Émile Zola argued that the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was based on false accusations of espionage and was a misrepresentation of justice. He first points out that the real man behind all of this is Major du Paty de Clam. Zola states: He was the one who came up with the scheme of dictating the text of the bordereau to Dreyfus; he was the one who had the idea of observing him in a mirror-lined room. And he was the one whom Major Forzinetti caught carrying a shuttered lantern that he planned to throw open on the accused man while he slept, hoping that, jolted awake by the sudden flash of light, Dreyfus would blurt out his guilt.

J'accuse...! by Émile Zola

Next, Zola points out that if the investigation of the traitor was to be done properly, the evidence would clearly show that the bordereau came from an infantry officer, not an artillery officer such as Dreyfus.

Zola argues Dreyfus's innocence can be readily inferred from the circumstances when he states: These, Sir, are the facts that explain how this miscarriage of justice came about; The evidence of Dreyfus's character, his affluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of innocence combine to show that he is the victim of the lurid imagination of Major du Paty de Clam, the religious circles surrounding him, and the 'dirty Jew' obsession that is the scourge of our time.

After more investigation, Zola points out that a man by the name of Major Esterhazy was the man who should have been convicted of this crime, and there was proof provided, but he could not be known as guilty unless the entire General Staff was guilty, so the War Office covered up for Esterhazy.

At the end of his letter, Zola accuses General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus's innocence and covering it up. He accuses both General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of religious prejudice against Alfred Dreyfus. He accuses the three handwriting experts, Messrs. Belhomme, Varinard and Couard, of submitting false reports that were deceitful, unless a medical examination finds them to be suffering from a condition that impairs their eyesight and judgment.

Zola's final accusations were to the first court martial for violating the law by convicting Alfred Dreyfus on the basis of a document that was kept secret, and to the second court martial for committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting Major Esterhazy.

More information: I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground,

it will but grow.

Émile Zola

ANDY WARHOL, VISUAL ART MOVEMENT A.K.A. POP ART

The Grandma & Claire arriving to the MACBA

After following the strike convened in a favour of civil and labour rights, The Grandma has returned to her activity. Today, she has gone to visit the MACBA, the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona accompanied by Claire Fontaine.

Claire and The Grandma have wanted to homage Andy Warhol, who died on a day like today in 1987, and they have enjoyed the last trends in contemporary art.

Before visiting the museum, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 11).

More information: Reported Speech 1

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928-February 22, 1987) was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture.

Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

More information: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in several galleries in the late 1950s, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons.

Andy Warhol

He promoted a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with coining the widely used expression 15 minutes of fame.

In the late 1960s, he managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine.

He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster); his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. 

More information: The Andy Warhol Museum

Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola and Julia, whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S.

His parents were working-class Lemko emigrants from Mikó, Austria-Hungary, now called Miková, located in today's northeastern Slovakia. Warhol's father emigrated to the United States in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Ruthenian Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers—Pavol, the oldest, was born before the family emigrated; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.

Warhol's early career was dedicated to commercial and advertising art, where his first commission had been to draw shoes for Glamour magazine in the late 1940s.

The Grandma Warhol

He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions at the Hugo Gallery and the Bodley Gallery in New York City; in California, his first West Coast gallery exhibition was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles with Campbell's Soup Cans. The exhibition marked his West Coast debut of pop art.

Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop art exhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles, and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time poet John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.

It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, mushroom clouds, electric chairs, Campbell's Soup Cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali, and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines or photographs of police dogs attacking African-American protesters during the Birmingham campaign in the civil rights movement. During these years, he founded his studio, The Factory and gathered about him a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. His work became popular and controversial.

More information: The Art Story

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the bull market of 1980s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.

Before the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, he teamed with 15 other artists, including David Hockney and Cy Twombly, and contributed a Speed Skater print to the Art and Sport collection. The Speed Skater was used for the official Sarajevo Winter Olympics poster.

Warhol died in Manhattan at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987 at age 58. According to news reports, he had been making a good recovery from gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative irregular heartbeat. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication. The malpractice case was quickly settled out of court; Warhol's family received an undisclosed sum of money.

More information: Tate

If you're not trying to be real, 

you don't have to get it right. That's art.

Andy Warhol

'SWAN LAKE' AT THE BOLSHOI THEATRE IN MOSCOW

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Today, The Grandma is spending her last day at home. She is totally recovered of her flu and tomorrow she will start her activity again.

She has been relaxed at home studying a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 9 & 10).

After doing her homework, The Grandma has watched one of her favourite ballets, Swan Lake, which was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the 19th century and received its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on a day like today in 1877.

More information: Future 2

Swan Lake is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets.

The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger.

Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo.

There is no evidence to prove who wrote the original libretto, or where the idea for the plot came from. Russian and German folk tales have been proposed as possible sources, including The White Duck and The Stolen Veil by Johann Karl August Musäus, but both those tales differ significantly from the ballet.

Olga Spessiva in Swan Lake costume

One theory is that the original choreographer, Julius Reisinger, who was a Bohemian and therefore likely to be familiar with The Stolen Veil, created the story.

Another theory is that it was written by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres at the time, possibly with Vasily Geltser, Danseur of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre, a surviving copy of the libretto bears his name.

Since the first published libretto does not correspond with Tchaikovsky's music in many places, one theory is that the first published version was written by a journalist after viewing initial rehearsals, new opera and ballet productions were always reported in the newspapers, along with their respective scenarios.

Some contemporaries of Tchaikovsky recalled the composer taking great interest in the life story of Bavarian King Ludwig II, whose life had supposedly been marked by the sign of Swan and could have been the prototype of the dreamer Prince Siegfried. However, Ludwig's death happened 10 years after the first performance of the ballet.

Begichev commissioned the score of Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky in May 1875 for 800 rubles. Tchaikovsky worked with only a basic outline from Julius Reisinger of the requirements for each dance. However, unlike the instructions for the scores of The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, no written instruction is known to have survived.

More information: ThoughtCo

From around the time of the turn of the 19th century until the beginning of the 1890s, scores for ballets were almost always written by composers known as specialists, who were highly skilled at scoring the light, decorative, melodious, and rhythmically clear music that was at that time in vogue for ballet. Tchaikovsky studied the music of specialists such as the Italian Cesare Pugni and the Austrian Ludwig Minkus, before setting to work on Swan Lake.

Tchaikovsky had a rather negative opinion of the specialist ballet music until he studied it in detail, being impressed by the nearly limitless variety of infectious melodies their scores contained. Tchaikovsky most admired the ballet music of such composers as Léo Delibes, Adolphe Adam, and later, Riccardo Drigo.

He would later write to his protégé, the composer Sergei Taneyev, I listened to the Delibes ballet Sylvia... what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony. I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written Swan Lake. 

Tchaikovsky most admired Adam's 1844 score for Giselle, which used the Leitmotif technique: associating certain themes with certain characters or moods, a technique he would use in Swan Lake, and later, The Sleeping Beauty.

Tchaikovsky drew on previous compositions for his Swan Lake score. According to two of Tchaikovsky's relatives –his nephew Yuri Lvovich Davydov and his niece Anna Meck-Davydova– the composer had earlier created a little ballet called The Lake of the Swans at their home in 1871.

This ballet included the famous Leitmotif, the Swan's Theme or Song of the Swans. He also made use of material from The Voyevoda, an opera he had abandoned in 1868. The Grand adage from the second scene of Swan Lake was fashioned from an aria from that opera, as was the Valse des fiancées from the third scene. Another number which included a theme from The Voyevoda was the Entr'acte of the fourth scene.

More information: Classic FM

By April 1876 the score was complete, and rehearsals began. Soon Reisinger began setting certain numbers aside that he dubbed undanceable. Reisinger even began choreographing dances to other composers' music, but Tchaikovsky protested and his pieces were reinstated. Although the two artists were required to collaborate, each seemed to prefer working as independently of the other as possible.

Tchaikovsky's excitement with Swan Lake is evident from the speed with which he composed: commissioned in the spring of 1875, the piece was created within one full year. His letters to Sergei Taneyev from August 1875 indicate, however, that it was not only his excitement that compelled him to create it so quickly but his wish to finish it as soon as possible, so as to allow him to start on an opera. Respectively, he created scores of the first three numbers of the ballet, then the orchestration in the fall and winter, and was still struggling with the instrumentation in the spring.

By April 1876, the work was complete. Tchaikovsky's mention of a draft suggests the presence of some sort of abstract but no such draft has ever been seen. Tchaikovsky wrote various letters to friends expressing his longstanding desire to work with this type of music, and his excitement concerning his current stimulating, albeit laborious task.

More information: The Guardian

I love anything by Tchaikovsky.

He was the real pop star of his day.

Sufjan Stevens

KARL LAGERFELD, GOODBYE TO THE KAISER OF FASHION

Karl Otto Lagerfeld

Today, The Grandma has received bad news. Karl Otto Lagerfeld, one of the best fashion designer and caricaturist has died in Paris. Lagerfeld is one of the last examples of the 20th century, an age that has offerred other names in fashion like Coco Channel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Iris Apfel, Giorgio Armani or Gianni Versace. The Grandma wants to talk about Karl Lagerfeld as a last  homage.

Before talking about Karl, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 8).

More information: Future II

Karl Otto Lagerfeld (10 September 1933-19 February 2019) was a German creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer and caricaturist who lived in Paris.

He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, from 1983 until his death, as well as creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi and his own eponymous fashion label. Over the decades, he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects. He was recognized for his white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high starched collars.

Karl Lagerfeld

Lagerfeld was born on 10 September 1933 in Hamburg, Germany, and was the son of businessman Otto Lagerfeld (1881–1967) and his wife Elizabeth. 

His father owned a company that produced and imported evaporated milk, while his maternal grandfather Karl Bahlmann was a local politician for the Catholic Centre Party. His family belonged to the Old Catholic Church. When she met his father, Lagerfeld's mother was a lingerie saleswoman from Berlin. His parents were married in 1930.

Lagerfeld was known to misrepresent his birth year, claiming to be younger than his actual age, and to misrepresent his parents' background. For example, he claimed that he was born in 1938 to Elisabeth of Germany and Otto Ludwig Lagerfeldt from Sweden, although these claims have been conclusively proven to be entirely wrong, as his father was from Hamburg and spent his entire life in Germany, with no Swedish connection whatsoever. There is also no evidence that his mother Elisabeth Bahlmann, the daughter of a middle-class local politician, called herself Elisabeth of Germany. He was known to insist that no one knows his real birth date. In an interview on French television in February 2009, Lagerfeld said that he was born neither in 1933 nor 1938.

More information: Karl

In April 2013, he finally declared that he was born in 1935. A birth announcement was, however, published by his parents in 1933, and the baptismal register in Hamburg also lists him as born in that year, conclusively proving that he was born on 10 September 1933. Bild am Sonntag published his baptismal records in 2008 and interviewed his teacher and a classmate, who both confirmed that he was born in 1933. Despite that, Karl Lagerfeld announced publicly that he was celebrating his 70th birthday on 10 September 2008, despite actually turning 75.

His older sister, Martha Christiane Christel, was born in 1931. Lagerfeld had an older half-sister, Thea, from his father's first marriage. His family name has been spelled both Lagerfeldt, with a t, and Lagerfeld. Like his father, he uses the spelling Lagerfeld, considering it to sound more commercial.

Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, 1982

His family was mainly shielded from the deprivations of World War II due to his father's business interests in Germany through the firm Glücksklee-Milch GmbH His father was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. After attending a private school, Lagerfeld finished his secondary school at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he majored in drawing and history.

Lagerfeld was hired as Pierre Balmain's assistant after winning the coats category in a design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat in 1955. In 1958, after three years at Balmain, he moved to Jean Patou where he designed two haute couture collections per year for five years. His first collection was shown in a two-hour presentation in July 1958, but he used the name Roland Karl, rather than Karl Lagerfeld. Although, in 1962, reporters began referring to him as Karl Lagerfelt or Karl Logerfeld. The first collection was poorly received.

More information: Vogue

Lagerfeld began to freelance for French fashion house Chloé in 1964, at first designing a few pieces each season. As more and more pieces were incorporated, he soon designed the entire collection. In 1970, he also began a brief design collaboration with Roman haute-couture house Curiel; its head was Gigliola Curiel, who died in November 1969.

Lagerfeld's first collection there was described as having a drippy drapey elegance designed for a 1930s cinema queen. The Curiel mannequins all wore identical short-cropped blonde wigs. He also showed black velvet shorts, worn under a black velvet ankle-length cape.

Karl Lagerfeld

His Chloé collection for spring 1973, shown in October 1972, garnered headlines for offering something both high fashion and high camp. He showed loose Spencer jackets and printed silk shirt-jackets.

He designed something he called a surprise skirt, which was in an ankle-length, pleated silk, so loose that it hid the fact it was actually pants. It seems that wearing these skirts is an extraordinary sensation, he told a reporter at the time. He also designed a look inspired by Carmen Miranda, which consisted of mini-bra dresses with very short skirts, and long dresses with bra tops and scarf shawls.

In the 1980s, Lagerfeld integrated the interlocked CC monograph of Coco Chanel into a style pattern for the House of Chanel.

In 1993, US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour walked out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show, when he employed strippers and adult-film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.

In December 2006, Lagerfeld announced the launch of a new collection for men and women dubbed K Karl Lagerfeld, which included fitted T-shirts and a wide range of jeans.

Following health complications in January 2019, Lagerfeld was admitted to the American Hospital of Paris in Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine on 18 February. The next morning, he died at that hospital, aged 85.

More information: Business of Fashion

 Black-and-white always looks modern,

whatever that word means.

Karl Lagerfeld

'ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN' BY MARK TWAIN

Mark Twain

Today, The Grandma has gone out to visit her doctor. She is almost totally recovered of her flu. To celebrate it, The Grandma has decided to go to the library and borrow a wonderful Mark Twain's masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel that was published in the USA on a day like today in 1885.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 7).

More information: Future I

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist, criticism of the book continued due to both its perceived use of racial stereotypes and its frequent use of the racial slur nigger. 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores themes of race and identity. A complexity exists concerning Jim's character. While some scholars point out that Jim is good-hearted, moral, and he is not unintelligent, in contrast to several of the more negatively depicted white characters, others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word nigger and emphasizing the stereotypically comic treatment of Jim's lack of education, superstition and ignorance.

Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and Jim's human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught.

More information: The Official Licensing Website of Mark Twain

Mark Twain, in his lecture notes, proposes that a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience and goes on to describe the novel as ...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.

To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave his son, isolate him, and beat him. When Huck escapes, he then immediately encounters Jim illegally doing the same thing. The treatments both of them receive are radically different, especially with an encounter with Mrs. Judith Loftus who takes pity on who she presumes to be a runaway apprentice, Huck, yet boasts about her husband sending the hounds after a runaway slave, Jim.

Mark Twain

Some scholars discuss Huck's own character, and the novel itself, in the context of its relation to African-American culture as a whole. It is suggested that the character of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the correlation, and even interrelatedness, between white and black culture in the United States.

Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography.

More information: Mental Floss

Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson River, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel's title closely paralleled its predecessor's: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade).

Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883.  The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.

Download The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Words are only painted fire; 

a look is the fire itself.

Mark Twain

GERONIMO, THE ONE WHO YAWNS & THE APACHE TRIBE

Geronimo

Today, The Grandma is still at her home fighting against flu. She feels better and she has wanted to read about Geronimo, the prominent leader of the Apache tribe who died on a day like today in 1909.

The Grandma loves American Native History and she admires their resilience against colonizations and their way of understanding life and respecting nature.

Before reading about Geronimo, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 7).

More information: Present Perfect 2

Geronimo (Mescalero-Chiricahua: Goyaałé the one who yawns; June 1829-February 17, 1909) was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands, the Tchihende, the Tsokanende and the Nednhi, to carry out numerous raids as well as resistance to US and Mexican military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora, and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848.

While well known, Geronimo was not a chief among the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare he frequently led large numbers of men and women beyond his own following. At any one time, about 30 to 50 Apaches would be following him.

Goyaałé aka Geronimo

During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he surrendered three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life. In 1886, after an intense pursuit in Northern Mexico by U.S. forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation breakout, Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood, an Apache-speaking West Point graduate who had earned Geronimo's respect a few years before.

Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, just north of the Mexican/American boundary. Miles treated Geronimo as a prisoner of war and acted promptly to remove Geronimo first to Fort Bowie, then to the railroad at Bowie Station, Arizona where he and 27 other Apaches were sent off to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe which had been previously exiled to Florida.

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In his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where he reportedly rode a ferris wheel and sold souvenirs and photographs of himself. However, he was not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909, still as a prisoner of war. He is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery surrounded by the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.

Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans originally from the Southwest United States. The current division of Apachean groups includes the Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache (formerly Kiowa-Apache).

During the centuries of Apache-Mexican and Apache-United States conflict, raiding had become embedded in the Apache way of life, used not only for strategic purposes but also as an economic enterprise, and often there was overlap between raids for economic need and warfare. Raids ranged from stealing livestock and other plunder, to the capture and/or killing of victims, sometimes by torture.

Geronimo

Mexicans and Americans responded with retaliatory attacks against the Apache which were no less violent and were very seldom limited to identified individual adult enemies. The raiding and retaliation fed the fires of a virulent revenge warfare that reverberated back and forth between Apaches and Mexicans and later, Apaches and Americans.

From 1850 to 1886 Geronimo, as well as other Apache leaders, conducted attacks, but Geronimo was driven by a desire to take revenge for the murder of his family and accumulated a record of brutality during this time that was unmatched by any of his contemporaries. His fighting ability extending over 30 years forms a major characteristic of his persona.

Among Geronimo's own Chiricahua tribe many had mixed feelings about him. While respected as a skilled and effective leader of raids or warfare, he emerges as not very likable, and he was not widely popular among the other Apache. This was primarily because he refused to give in to American government demands leading to some Apaches fearing the American responses to Geronimo's sense of Indian nationalism.

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Nevertheless, Apache people stood in awe of Geronimo's powers which he demonstrated to them on a series of occasions. These powers indicated to other Apaches that Geronimo had super-natural gifts that he could use for good or ill. In eye-witness accounts by other Apaches, Geronimo was able to become aware of distant events as they happened, and he was able to anticipate events that were in the future. He also demonstrated powers to heal other Apaches.

Geronimo was born to the Bedonkohe band of the Apache, in Arizpe, Sonora, near Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Gila River in the modern-day state of New Mexico, then part of Mexico, though the Apache disputed Mexico's claim. His grandfather, Mahko, had been chief of the Bedonkohe Apache. He had three brothers and four sisters.

Geronimo

Geronimo's chief, Mangas Coloradas (Spanish for "red sleeves"), sent him to Cochise's band for help in his revenge against the Mexicans. It was during this incident that the name Geronimo came about. This appellation stemmed from a battle in which, ignoring a deadly hail of bullets, he repeatedly attacked Mexican soldiers with a knife.

The origin of the name is a source of controversy with historians, some writing that it was appeals by the soldiers to Saint Jerome Jerónimo! for help. Others source it as the mispronunciation of his name by the Mexican soldiers.

The first Apache raids on Sonora and Chihuahua took place during the late 17th century. To counter the early Apache raids on Spanish settlements, presidios were established at Janos (1685) in Chihuahua and at Fronteras (1690) in northern eastern modern state of Chihuahua, then Opata country.

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In 1835, Mexico had placed a bounty on Apache scalps. Two years later, Mangas Coloradas became principal chief and war leader and began a series of retaliatory raids against the Mexicans. Apache raids on Mexican villages were so numerous and brutal that no area was safe. Between 1820 and 1835 alone, some 5000 Mexicans died in Apache raids, and 100 settlements were destroyed. Later, as a leader, Geronimo was notorious for urging raids and war on Mexican Provinces and American locations in the southwest.

Early in his life, Geronimo became invested in the continuing and relentless cycle of revenge warfare between the Apaches and Mexicans. On March 5, 1851, when Geronimo was in his 20s, a force of Mexican militia from Sonora under Colonel Jose Maria Carrasco attacked and surprised an Apache camp outside of Janos, Chihuahua, slaughtering the inhabitants, including Geronimo's family. Col. Carrasco claimed he had followed the Apaches to Janos, Chihuahua after they had conducted a raid in Sonora, taken livestock and other plunder and badly defeated Mexican militia.

Geronimo and some Apaches

Geronimo was absent at the time of the attack on the Apache camp, but when he returned he found that his mother, wife, and his three children were among the dead. In retaliation, Geronimo joined in an extended series of revenge attacks against the Mexicans.

This event left Geronimo with a bitter and very personal hatred for Mexicans, and he often killed them indiscriminately and with a special vehemence. Throughout Geronimo's adult life his antipathy, suspicion and dislike for Mexicans was demonstrably greater than for Americans.

In 1873 the Mexicans once again attacked the Apache. After months of fighting in the mountains, the Apaches and Mexicans decided on a peace treaty at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico. After terms were agreed, the Mexican troops gave mescal to the Apaches and, while they were intoxicated, they attacked and killed 20 Apaches and captured some. The Apache were forced to retreat into the mountains once again.

The Apache–United States conflict was itself a direct outgrowth of the much older Apache–Mexican conflict which had been ongoing in the same general area since the beginning of Mexican/Spanish settlement in the 1600s.

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On May 17, 1885, a number of Apache including Nana, Mangus (son of Mangas Coloradas), Chihuahua, Naiche, Geronimo, and their followers fled the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona after a show of force against the reservation's commanding officer Britton Davis. The people, who had lived as semi-nomads for generations, disliked the restrictive reservation system.

Department of Arizona General George Crook dispatched two columns of troops into Mexico, the first commanded by Captain Emmet Crawford and the second by Captain Wirt Davis. Each was composed of a troop of cavalry, usually about forty men, and about 100 Apache scouts. They pursued the Apache through the summer and fall through Mexican Chihuahua and back across the border into the United States. The Apache continually raided settlements, killing other Native Americans and civilians and stealing horses.

In February 1909, Geronimo was thrown from his horse while riding home, and had to lie in the cold all night before a friend found him extremely ill. He died of pneumonia on February 17, 1909, as a prisoner of the United States at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. 

On his deathbed, he confessed to his nephew that he regretted his decision to surrender. His last words were reported to be said to his nephew, I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive. He was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the Apache Indian Prisoner of War Cemetery.

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I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds 

and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. 

I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me. 

Now I can eat well, sleep well and be glad. 

I can go everywhere with a good feeling.

Geronimo