Description
Шарл Бодлер (1821 – 1867)
Charles Baudelaire (Paris, April 9, 1821 – Paris, August 31, 1867) was the founder of modernism and one of the greatest poets in the world. He wrote extensively on current topics in French culture, and published critiques and essays. Direct and honest with friends as well as enemies, known as a dandy and a spendthrift, he spent practically his entire life fighting against financial scarcity. Although his family planned a career in law or diplomacy for him, Baudelaire decided to dedicate himself exclusively to literature.
The first work of art he published was a review – a critique, “The Salon of 1845”, and the passion with which he wrote about art attracted the attention of the art community in France. He published his most famous work, a collection of poems “Flowers of Evil”, in 1857. The poems from this collection gained a small audience at that time, but the subject of the poems attracted a lot of attention. Some of the main themes of this collection, sex and death, lesbian love, sorrow, corruption, lost innocence, the difficulty of living, were scandalous at the time. A masterpiece of passion, art and poetry, the collection “Flowers of Evil”, as well as other Baudelaire’s artistic opus, still has an exceptional influence on generations of artists, primarily in France and Great Britain, but also around the world. Millions of readers perceive his poetry as one of the peaks of human creativity. Charles Baudelaire’s literary heritage is part of the cultural treasury of humanity, hence we celebrate 200 years since his birth with a commemorative postage stamp.
Artistic realization: MA Boban Savić, academic painter.
Фјодор Достојевски (1821 – 1881)
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky (Moscow, 11 November 1821 – Saint Petersburg, 9 February 1881) is a Russian writer and one of the greatest writers in the world. The influence he achieved with his works can be measured with rare giants of world literature, such as Shakespeare or Cervantes. He is the initiator of a new genre, the psychological novel, and his works have inspired the creation of many new movements and directions in art and literature. Some of the greatest authors of the late nineteenth and twentieth century, in literature, philosophy and psychology, rely on the inspiration derived from his works and contribute to humanity thanks to the works of this exceptional writer, among which the most famous are “Gambler”, “Idiot”, “Crime and Punishment” and “The Karamazov Brothers”. Dostoevsky’s work became synonymous with deep psychological analysis, and many theorists of psychology, even Sigmund Freud himself, considered Dostoevsky the founder of psychological theory and analysis.
Generations of readers around the world have reached life maturity by reading Dostoevsky’s works, so the great jubilee, marking the 200th anniversary of his birth, is an extraordinary opportunity to additionally emphasise the significance and influence of this leading figure of the Russian and world literature and culture in general.
Artistic realization: MA Boban Savić, academic painter.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Rabindranath Tagore (Kolkata, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was an Indian writer, playwright and philosopher. He wrote more than 1,000 poems, 24 plays, eight novels, more than 2,000 songs, a large number of essays and other prose. Tagore’s poetry is characterized by simplicity of emotions, essays by the power of thought, and novels by social consciousness. His main goal was to connect east and west, and he himself translated his lyrical prose into English. He wrote his first poems at the age of eight. During his law studies in London, he published his first two poetry books, “Evening Songs” and “Morning Songs”. He did not finish his studies, but returned to India and devoted himself to literary work. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for his “Gitanjali” book of poems, and in 1915 he was also knighted. He renounced his Knighthood after the Amritsar Massacre in 1919. He was a founder of an experimental school in Santiniketan, which was based on the Upanishadic ideals of education. His most significant works are the poetry books “Gardener” and “Gitanjali”, and the novel “The Wreck”. In addition to writing, Rabindranath Tagore also painted and composed. He is the author of the music and lyrics of the Indian national anthem.
Artistic realization: MA Boban Savić, academic painter.
Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006)
Stanislaw Lem (Lviv, Ukraine, September 12, 1921 - Krakow, Poland, March 27, 2006) was a Polish writer and one of the world’s most famous science fiction writers. He graduated from the grammar school in Lviv in 1939, and in 1941 he began to study medicine, which he had to stop due to the war and continue the studies after the war has been finished, in 1944. Stanislaw Lem’s family moved to Krakow in 1946, where Lem, in the same year, published his first short story “The Man from Mars”, which was later published in the magazine “New Adventure World”.
Stanislaw Lem gained world fame as a science fiction writer with the novel “Solaris”, based on which two films were made, and his other famous works include: “Hospital of Transfiguration”, “The Astronauts”, “Time not Lost”, “The Investigation”, “The Cyberiad”, “Dialogues”, “His Master’s Voice”, “Tales of Pirx the Pilot”, “Imaginary Magnitude”, “The Invincible”, “Peace on Earth” and others.
He received an award from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland in 1970 for the popularization of Polish culture in the world, and two years later he became a member of the committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences “Poland 2000”. He was admitted to the American Science Fiction Writers Association in 1973. In the same year, he received an award from the Ministry of Culture and Arts for literature. He received an honorary doctorate from the Wroclaw Polytechnic in 1981, and in 1991 the Austrian “Franz Kafka” award.
He became a member of the Polish Academy of Arts in 1993, and in 1996 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle and the title of honorary citizen of Krakow. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Opole as well, along with the doctorates from the Lviv State Medical University and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
Artistic realization: MA Boban Savić, academic painter.
