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At the age of 21, Malraux married Clara Gold-

smidt, also a writer, and together they traveled to

Cambodia and spent time in Indochina, attempt-

ing to rediscover the Khmer statuary. He was ar-

rested, however, for taking bas-reliefs from a

temple. His three-year sentence was rescinded, and

he returned briefly to France. It was during this pe-

riod that he became highly critical of French colo-

nial authorities governing Indochina. As a result,

Malraux began the first of many political endeav-

ors that, alongside and often directly linked to his

literary achievements, eventually distinguished his

remarkable life. He helped to first organize the

Young Annam League, an anticolonial organiza-

tion in Saigon in 1925. He also founded and

edited the politically active and outspoken anti-

colonial Saigon newspaper Indochina in Chains.

On returning to France, Malraux published his

first novel, The Temptation of the West (1926). The

work, set in the early stages of the Chinese revolu-

tion and revolving around letters exchanged be-

tween a young European and an Asian intellectual,

focuses on the parallels between Eastern and West-

ern culture. He followed this work with two novels,

The Conquerors (1928), which dealt with a revolu-

tionary strike in Canton, and The Royal Way

(1930), a successful adventure story set in the jun-

gles of Indochina.

Malraux supported himself by working as an

art editor in Paris for Gallimard Publishers. He was

able to take several archaeological expeditions to

Afghanistan and Iran, which led to his discovery of

the lost city that may have been home to the Queen

of Sheba. He continued to write, with death and

revolution two of his major themes. Man’s Fate

(1933), one of his best-known novels, earned for

him the prestigious Goncourt Prize, as well as

much deserved recognition as an author. The novel

depicts a communist uprising in Shanghai and fo-

cuses on the dignity of human solidarity in both

life and death.

In the 1930s, Malraux became known politi-

cally for his support of antifascist and leftist or-

ganizations. He fought for the Republicans during

the Spanish civil war and wrote about these expe-

riences in his novel L’Espoir (Days of Hope, 1937).

The book, published prior to the end of the war,

stops with the March 1937 battle at Guadalajara. In

1938, L’ Es po ir was revised as a screenplay under the

title Sierrade Teruel; however, the film was not re-

leased in France until after the conclusion of World

War II.

The 1940s marked a shift in Malraux’s life. He

divorced his wife and broke away from commu-

nism, as he did not agree with the Nazi–Soviet

pact. He began to concentrate on writing nonfic-

tion and was openly opposed to Stalin’s ideas. He

served with a French tank unit during World War

II and, though twice captured by the Gestapo,

managed to escape both times.

After the war, Malraux became a vocal sup-

porter of Charles de Gaulle. He wrote a number of

books on art and aesthetics and married a concert

pianist. When De Gaulle came into power, Mal-

raux was appointed minister of cultural affairs,

and his first act in office was to order the cleaning

of the Louvre. This act was highly controversial in

that many people saw it not as an improvement

but as an act of vandalism. Malraux eventually re-

tired from the forefront of politics to write his

memoirs, including the autobiographical The

Fallen Oaks (1971). He wrote regularly until his

death on November 23.

Another Work by André Malraux

The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Translated by A. W.

Fielding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992.

A Work about André Malraux

Cate, Curtis. André Malraux: A Biography. New York:

Fromm International, 1998.

Mandelstam, Osip Yemilyevich

(1891–1938) poet

Osip Mandelstam was born in Warsaw, Poland, but

grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a

successful leather merchant, and his mother a

piano teacher. Although the Mandelstams were

278 Mandelstam, Osip Yemilyevich

Jewish, the family was not very religious. Mandel-

stam received an excellent education at home from

various tutors and later from the Tenishev Acad-

emy. He traveled extensively throughout Europe

between 1907 and 1910 and studied French litera-

ture at the University of Heidelberg. Between 1911

and 1917, Mandelstam studied philosophy at the

University of St. Petersburg. He published his first

poem in 1910 in the journal Apollon. With the ad-

vent of revolution, Mandelstam abandoned his

studies to concentrate on poetry.

Influenced by his close relationship with Anna

AKHMATOVA and Nikolay GUMILEV, Mandelstam

readily joined the Acmeists (see ACHEMISM) and es-

tablished his reputation as a poet with his collec-

tion Kamen (Stone, 1913). Like Akhmatova,

Mandelstam often mixed classical images with

those of contemporary Russian culture. Mandel-

stam’s poetry also exalted the architectural and lit-

erary achievements of classical Greece and Rome.

In his next two collections, Tristiya (1922) and

Poems 1921–25 (1928), he reaffirmed his position

as one of the best poets in Russia. Although both

collections contained images and themes previ-

ously found in Stones, Mandelstam, influenced by

political upheaval in Russia, expanded his poetic

perspective to more universal themes of life, death,

and exile.

In 1918, Mandelstam began to work for the ed-

ucation ministry of the new communist regime,

but his support for the regime soured and stopped

completely after the 1921 execution of his friend

Gumilev. In the 1920s, he supported himself by

writing children’s books and translating works by

English and French writers. He married Nadezhda

Kazin in 1922 and in 1928 published three books:

a poetry collection, entitled simply Poems, and two

collections of critical essays. After a trip to Arme-

nia in 1930, Mandelstam published his last major

collection of poetry, Journey to Armenia, in 1933.

An epigram about Stalin he wrote in 1934—“And

every killing is a treat / For the broad-chested Os-

sete”—resulted in Mandelstam’s being arrested

and exiled to Voronezh. Nadezhda accompanied

him and helped transcribe the agonized poems he

composed there. In 1938, he was arrested again for

“counterrevolutionary” activities. This time he was

sentenced to five years of hard labor. Mandelstam

died that year in the Gulag Archipelago and was

buried in a common grave.

International acclaim for Mandelstam’s work

did not come until the 1970s, when his works were

published in Russia and the West. Mandelstam’s

poems of exile were not published until 1990 in

The Voronezh Notebooks. Their lyrical approach to

almost unimaginable pain is astonishing, as in the

poem “Black Candle” (1934):

It is your fate, for your narrow shoulders to

turn red

under the lashes,

red under the lashes, to burn in the frost . . .

And as for me, I burn after you like a black

candle,

burn like a black candle and dare not pray.

The magnificence of Mandelstam’s verse is still

being rediscovered today. He is now considered to

be one of the best Russian poets of the 20th cen-

tury. The critic Simon Karlinsky, for example, re-

marked in a review of Bruce McClelland’s

translation of Tristiya in the New York Times Book

Review: “In Mandelstam, Russian poetry at last has

a poet of stature comparable to Pushkin’s—a claim

that even the most fanatical admirers of Blok,

Mayakovsky or Pasternak would not dream of mak-

ing.”

Other Works by Osip Mandelstam

50 Poems/Osip Mandelstam. Translated by Bernard

Meares, with an introduction by Joseph Brodsky.

New York: Persea Books, 2000.

The Noise of Time: The Prose of Osip Mandelstam.

Translated by Clarence Brown. San Francisco:

North Point Press, 1986.

Osip Mandelstam’s Stone. Translated and introduced

by Robert Tracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1981.

Tristia. Translated by Bruce McClelland. Barrytown,

N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1987.

Mandelstam, Osip Yemilyevich 279

The Voronezh Notebooks: Poems 1935–1937. Trans-

lated by Richard McKane and Elizabeth Mc-Kane.

Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1998.

Works about Osip Mandelstam

Cavanagh, Clare. Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist

Creation of Tradition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1995.

Harris, Jane Garry. Osip Mandelstam. Boston:

Twayne, 1988.

Mandelstam, Nadezhda. Hope Against Hope. Trans-

lated by Max Hayward. New York: Modern Li-

brary, 1999.

———. Mozart and Salieri: An Essay on Osip Man-

delstam and the Poetic Process. New York: Vintage,

1994.

Manhae

See HAN YONGUN.

Mann, Heinrich (1871–1950) novelist,

playwright, essayist

Luiz Heinrich Mann was born in Lübeck, Ger-

many. His father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann,

was a successful grain merchant. His mother, Julia

da Silva-Bruhns Mann, was of Brazilian descent. As

a teenager, Mann became an apprentice to a book-

seller and worked for a publishing house. After an

inheritance made him financially independent, he

started his literary career in 1891. He lived in Italy,

Munich, Berlin, and France before moving to the

United States in 1940 to escape the Nazis. He mar-

ried the actress Maria Kanová in 1914 and, after

their divorce, married Nelly Kroeger in 1939.

Mann, a prolific essayist, was one of the few

German writers to oppose his country’s partici-

pation in World War I. He attained literary fame

with his novel Der Untertan (The Patrioteer,

1918), a satirical critique of Germany under

Kaiser Wilhelm. His novel Professor Unrat (1905)

was translated as The Blue Angel and made into a

popular movie in 1928. In the 1930s, Mann wrote

two successful historical novels on King Henry of

Navarre. In 1949, he won the National Prize of

East Germany and died a year later after accepting

the presidency of that country’s Academy of Arts.

Mann’s influences included Friedrich

NIET-

ZSCHE and 19th-century French writers such as

Gustave FLAUBERT. He and his brother Thomas

MANN criticized, supported, and influenced each

other’s writing careers. Mann employed caricature

and sarcasm in his works to convey his social and

political criticisms. A socialist, he used his novels

and plays to oppose authoritarianism, militarism,

and fascism. Less successful than his brother,

Mann was sometimes an uneven and impatient

writer who lacked precision and polish. Nonethe-

less, as the scholar Rolf Linn points out, Mann’s

work represents “an almost complete intellectual

and political history of Germany in the first half of

the twentieth century” and “through it the best

thought of nineteenth century France entered

German thinking.”

Another Work by Heinrich Mann

Henry, King of France. Translated by Eric Sutton. New

York: Knopf, 1939.

A Work about Heinrich Mann

Linn, Rolf N. Heinrich Mann. Boston: Twayne, 1967.

Mann, Thomas (1875–1955) novelist, critic,

essayist

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany. His

father was a wealthy, prominent citizen who was

twice elected as mayor of Lübeck. His mother, Julia

da Silva-Bruhns, was born in Brazil of mixed Ger-

man and Portuguese ancestry. After the death of

Mann’s father in 1891, his family relocated to Mu-

nich. Mann was an avid reader during childhood

and particularly admired realistic literature.

Mann attended the University of Munich; on grad-

uation, he worked for the German Fire Insurance

Company.

While at university, Mann immersed himself in

the writings of Arthur SCHOPENHAUER and

Friedrich NIETZSCHE, two very influential German

280 Manhae

philosophers and cultural critics. Mann also be-

came obsessed with the musical works of Richard

Wagner, a composer whose operas and orchestral

works were inspired by German myth and legend.

Mann’s early literary influences, were Leo TOLSTOY

and Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, whose psychological re-

alism Mann particularly admired.

In 1929, Mann won the Nobel Prize in literature.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany,

Mann, along with his family, moved to Switzerland,

where Mann worked as an editor for various liter-

ary journals. In 1938, Mann moved to the United

States, working as a visiting professor at Princeton

University. While at Princeton, Mann completed

several critical works, including a study of Dosto-

evsky. Mann eventually moved to California but left

the United States in 1952, bitterly disappointed by

the persecution of communists and communist

sympathizers by the U.S. government.

Critical Analysis

Mann’s first major work, Buddenbrooks (1900),

shows the influence of Richard Wagner in its use of

leitmotif, using a word or an image over and over

again in the work as a thematically unifying ele-

ment. The novel follows several generations of the

Buddenbrook family, a wealthy and powerful Ger-

man family that disintegrates and degenerates with

each successive generation. The novel especially fo-

cuses on the last Buddenbrook, the decadent artist

Hanno. The work demonstrates Mann’s affinity for

the epic quality of the novel, which he inherited

from early Tolstoy works. Buddenbrooks was well

received throughout Germany and established

Mann as a prominent writer.

In 1912, Mann completed a much shorter but

also less conventional work, Death in Venice. The

story recounts a strange relationship between

Tadzio, a 14-year-old boy, and Gustav von Aschen-

bach, a mature German writer. Aschenbach be-

comes obsessed with the boy, who falls ill during

an epidemic. Aschenbach decides to brave the epi-

demic and nurse the boy but contracts the disease

himself and dies. Throughout the story the narra-

tor asks this question:

[D]o you believe, my dear boy, that the man

whose pass to the spiritual passes through the

senses can ever achieve wisdom and true manly

dignity?

Aschenbach, who has never before allowed himself

to experience passion, literally dies for it and of it.

The ambiguities in the relationship between As-

chenbach and the boy, as well as the story’s multi-

layered symbolism, have made Death in Venice a

frequent subject of debate among scholars and

critics.

During World War I, Mann adamantly sup-

ported the policies of the kaiser, the leader of Ger-

many, and vehemently attacked liberalism. After

the end of World War I, however, Mann’s political

opinions changed, and he vocally supported par-

liamentary democracy and the newly formed

Weimar Republic.

The Magic Mountain (1924), Mann’s second

great work, reflects the political conflict found in

the writer’s contemporary world. In the novel,

Hans Castorp visits his cousin at a fashionable tu-

berculosis sanatorium and decides to stay there

even though he is not ill. The stay spans more than

seven years, during which time Castorp talks with

the other patients in the sanatorium and learns

valuable lessons about the meaning of life and

death. Castorp is caught in a conflict between two

opposing political forces represented by two char-

acters: a young Italian liberal humanist, Settem-

brini, and Naptha, a radical reactionary figure who

supports faith beyond reason. The differences be-

tween the two men culminate in a duel: Settem-

brini fires into the air, and Naptha, overwhelmed

by rage, kills himself. The duel between the two op-

posing forces symbolically reflects the conflict in

Mann’s own society. The work also reflects Mann’s

concern about fascism and the growing popular-

ity of the Nazis in his native Germany. The novel

received tremendous critical acclaim and became a

best-seller in Germany.

Joseph and His Brothers appeared as a trilogy

written between 1933 and 1943. Set in the biblical

world, the story emerges as a religious and political

Mann, Thomas 281

allegory of conflict between individual liberty and

political oppression. The story describes the

progress of Joseph who matures into a wise politi-

cal leader ready to lead his people to freedom. The

novel was written during the height of the Nazi

regime and reflects Mann’s personal hatred for fas-

cism and oppression.

Mann’s last great novel, Doctor Faustus (1947),

delineates the life of a famous composer, Adrian

Lewerkuhn. The work is set against the grim back-

ground of crumbling German culture and society

between the First and the Second World Wars.

Mann’s exploration of the roots of fascism in Ger-

many was well received around the world but was

resented by some in Germany itself.

When Thomas Mann returned to Europe in

1953, he refused to live in Germany—the govern-

ment of which had deprived him of his citizenship

in 1936—and settled in Switzerland. In 1949,

Mann was awarded the Goethe Prize, the highest

literary honor in Germany. Mann’s exploration of

the relationship of the extraordinary person to the

society has never been surpassed.

Other Works by Thomas Mann

Confessions of Felix Krull: The Confidence Man. New

York: Vintage Press, 1992.

Death in Venice and Other Stories. Translated by

David Luke. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

Works about Thomas Mann

Heilbut,Anthony. Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature.

Riverside: University of California Press, 1997.

Robertson, Ritchie. The Cambridge Companion to

Thomas Mann. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002.

Mansfield, Katherine (Kathleen

Mansfield Beauchamp)

(1888–1923)

short-story writer, poet

Katherine Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield

Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand, to an

affluent, middle-class family, but in 1909 she left

for London to pursue a career as a writer. There,

she met and married George Bowdon, a music

teacher, but left him a few days after the wedding.

Her first complete volume of short stories was

published in 1911, under the title In a German

Pension. These stories were based on Mansfield’s

stay at a Bavarian health resort, where she lived for

a time after she left her husband and where she

suffered a miscarriage.

Shortly after her return to London, she met

John Middleton Murry, a critic, poet, and editor,

whom she married in 1918. In that same year, she

was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In London, she

met a number of artists and writers, including D.

H. Lawrence, who modeled one of his characters

in his novel Women in Love after Mansfield, and

Virginia Woolf. The painter Dorothy Brett de-

scribed Mansfield as having “a sort of ironic ruth-

lessness toward the small minds and less agile

brains....Katherine had a tongue like a knife, she

could cut the very heart of one with it.” (She was

much more subtle and ambiguous in her writing.)

In fiction writing, Virginia Woolf treated Mans-

field as such a serious rival that, after her death,

Woolf said there was “no point in writing. Kather-

ine won’t read it.”

When her brother Leslie was killed during

World War I, Mansfield began to write stories

about her family and growing up. Some of her best

stories, such as “The Garden Party,” are set in New

Zealand at the turn of the century.

“The Garden Party,” published in 1922, deals

with social class, death, and the artist’s sensibility.

The Sheridan family is hosting an elaborate garden

party when a delivery man brings the news that a

worker who lived in one of the little cottages near

the Sheridan house has been killed in an accident.

Mrs. Sheridan, once assured that the man did not

actually die in her garden, insists that the party go

on, telling her daughter, Laura, “People like that

don’t expect sacrifices from us.” Later, Mrs. Sheri-

dan sends Laura to the Scott house with the left-

overs from the party, and at the “pokey little

hole . . .” she accidentally enters the room where

the body is laid out. Gazing at the dead man, she

thinks, “He was given up to his dream. What did

282 Mansfield, Katherine

garden parties . . . matter to him?” The story ex-

emplifies Mansfield’s delicate, poetic style, her ten-

dency to focus on a life-changing moment, and her

habit of ending on a note of ambiguity.

In “The Fly” (1923), a businessman is re-

minded by a visitor of the death of his son six

years earlier in World War I. Unable to summon

up the grief he wants to feel, he picks up a photo-

graph of his son. At this moment, he notices a fly

that has fallen into the inkpot. He rescues the fly

and watches as it begins the tedious process of

cleaning itself off. Just as it is “ready for life again,”

the man drops more ink on it. He repeats the

process, amazed at the fly’s courage and resilience,

until the final blot of ink kills the fly, at which

point the man is seized by “a grinding feeling of

wretchedness.” He calls for fresh blotting paper

but cannot remember what he had been thinking

about before he began to torment the fly. Al-

though the man cannot remember, the reader

knows that the fly stands for all those who are

helpless victims of a cruel fate.

Although Poems (1923) and The Letters of

Katherine Mansfield (1928) were published

posthumously, Mansfield is primarily remem-

bered for her seven books of short stories, and she

has exerted a lasting influence on modern short-

story writers. She crafted her stories very carefully,

writing and rewriting. Her writing is always subtle

and often ironic and witty. As she defied conven-

tions in her life, so her stories question conven-

tional ideas about social class, family life, and

marriage.

Katherine Mansfield died of tuberculosis in

1923 near Fontainebleau, France. The first signifi-

cant writer to emerge from New Zealand, she is

claimed by nationalist critics in both New Zealand

and Britain but is best thought of as a product of

colonialism. Her biographer Antony Alpers says of

her New Zealand stories:

They were really insights into the social isola-

tion that used to be common in New

Zealand . . . and they were written in a cultural

isolation that was total for their author: no one

who read them in London could have known

what they in fact achieved....The stories were

something that only a New Zealander could

have written at that time. They succeeded in re-

lating character to environment in a land of

“no tradition.”

Other Works by Katherine Mansfield

Bliss and Other Stories. London: Wordsworth, 1996.

Something Childish. North Pomfret, Vt.: Trafalgar

Square, 2000.

Works about Katherine Mansfield

Alpers, Antony. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. New

York: Viking Press, 1980.

Kobler,J.F.Katherine Mansfield: A Study of the Short

Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

Tomalin, Claire. Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life.

New York: Knopf, 1988.

Manzoni, Alessandro (1785–1873) poet,

novelist

Italian patriot Alessandro Manzoni, best known

for his fiercely nationalistic novel The Betrothed

(1827) was born on March 7 in Milan. His father

was a wealthy landowner, and his mother was the

daughter of Cesare Beccaria, a well-known jurist

and author of an influential treatise on crime and

punishment. His parents separated in 1792, and, as

a child, he moved with his mother to Paris where

he received his education at several Catholic

schools. His earliest works are characterized by a

deeply anticlerical sentiment, as well as by strong

support for Jacobean and democratic ideologies.

He later rejected deism for an equally fervent de-

votion to Roman Catholicism. Manzoni returned

to Italy in 1810, where he met and married En-

richetta Blondel.

Although he published several early works,

Manzoni’s most prolific period as a writer came

between the years of 1812 and 1815. During this

time, he began the poetry collection Inni Sacri,

which he concluded 10 years later with the final

Manzoni, Alessandro 283

piece, La Pentacoste (1822). His poetry is noted for

its warmth of religious feeling. He also wrote two

tragic dramas, Il Conte di Carmagnola (1820) and

Adelchi (1822), as well as an ode to Napoleon upon

his death, “Il Cinque Maggio” (1822).

Manzoni’s best-known work, I prommessi sposi

(1827; translated The Betrothed 1951), was writ-

ten between 1821 and 1827, during which the au-

thor was influenced by Sir Walter Scott.

Developed from a series of theoretical writings,

the historical novel is set in 17th-century Milan

and provides a lavishly detailed and fiercely patri-

otic look at life in Italy. In Lombardy, a local

tyrant thwarts the love between two peasants.

After initial publication of the work, Manzoni

continued to make revisions to create a stylisti-

cally superior version of the text, publishing the

final revised edition in 1840. It now stands as a

prime example of modern Italian prose. In revis-

ing, Manzoni sought to remove all traces of non-

Tuscan idiom. This act revived the age-long

conflict as to which dialect should be the standard

for Italian prose, an issue in which Manzoni was

interested. Manzoni was convinced that Tuscan

should be the standard, national Italian literary

language.

Beginning in 1842, Manzoni turned away from

writing fiction and concentrated on theoretical

works and as well as his involvement in politics. In

1860, he was elected senator of the new Italian

kingdom. He was also assigned as president for the

commission for the unification of the Italian lan-

guage. For his work in this capacity, he was granted

Roman citizenship.

Manzoni died on May 22 in Milan. He is best

remembered for his constant contribution to im-

proving the Italian prose style, as well as for his

patriotic ideology and religious fervor. His legacy

is such that, on the first anniversary of his death,

the composer Verdi wrote his Requiem in honor of

Manzoni.

A Work about Alessandro Manzoni

Barricelli, Gian Piero. Alessandro Manzoni. Boston:

Twayne, 1976.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso

(1876–1944) nonfiction writer

Emilio Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, one of the

founders and a leading proponent of the Italian

futurist movement (see

FUTURISM), was born in

Alexandria, Egypt. The son of a wealthy lawyer, he

was educated in a strict French Jesuit school in

Alexandria. He completed his studies in Paris and

then studied law at Pavia and Genoa universities.

His devotion to literature soon overshadowed his

plan for a career as a lawyer.

At 16, while still at the Jesuit College, Marinetti

began to develop his skills as a writer, publishing

a literary magazine from 1892 to 1894. He exper-

imented with the emerging poetic form of free

verse, publishing his first poems in that style in

1898. By 1900, he had abandoned all pretense of

aspiring to the legal profession and devoted him-

self full time to the study of French and Italian

poetry and literature. In 1905, he founded an-

other literary magazine, Poesia, which was pub-

lished in Milan until 1909. Through this journal,

he embarked on a crusade to liberate poetry from

the traditional constraints of language, form, and

meter by providing an outlet for emerging non-

traditional writers. Still a virtual unknown,

Marinetti gained instant recognition with a single

publication in Le Figaro on February 20, 1909.

His essay Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism

initiated a controversial shift in the nature of lit-

erature. In the work, he glorified the rapid pace of

the future—machines, danger, speed, violence,

and war. Other artists, unaware that Marinetti

was not only the movement’s leading theorist but

also its sole member, soon joined the trend so that

by 1910, a small but vocal group of artists, writ-

ers, and musicians were known as the first wave of

futurists.

A brilliant publicist, Marinetti spurred the

growth of the movement by inundating the public

with a series of manifestos, each one progressively

more vehement and filled with promises of the fu-

ture. His earliest manifestos were published in Poe-

sia, but subsequent works were printed in his new

journal Lacerba after its inception in 1913.

284 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso

Alongside his manifestos, Marinetti was also

hard at work as a novelist. His works, which fol-

lowed the tenets set forth by his own concept of fu-

turism, most particularly the denigration of

women, often caused controversy. The publication

of his experimental novel, Marfarka the Futurist

(1910), resulted in his arrest and imprisonment on

charges of pornography.

Marinetti continued to work to expand the

goals of futurism to encompass all areas of the arts,

including literature, music, painting, architecture,

costume design, and photography. Two years after

meeting his future wife, Benedetta Cappa, he pub-

lished another manifesto, Against Marriage (1919);

however, he broke from his own reasoning and the

two were finally wed in 1923.

The end of futurism and the end of Marinetti’s

life coincide. Italy’s defeat in the war changed the

popular opinion of violence and conflict, and, with

the loss of Marinetti in 1944, the movement was

unable to sustain its brief but explosive momen-

tum.

A Work about Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Blum, Cinzia Sartini. The Other Modernism: F. T.

Martinetti’s Futurist Fiction of Power. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1944.

Maron, Monika (1941– ) novelist, short-

story writer

Monika Maron was born in Berlin during World

War II. Her father was a Communist who served as

East Germany’s minister of the interior. Her

mother was a Pole of Jewish descent. After Maron

completed grammar school, she studied drama

and art history. She worked at a factory and for

East Berlin television before spending six years as a

journalist for Für Dich and Wochenpost. She be-

came a full-time writer in 1976.

Maron’s first novel, Flugasche (Flying Ash,

1981), was banned in East Germany for its critical

portrayal of conditions there; it was, however, suc-

cessful in the West. The novel describes the efforts

of a journalist to shut down a power plant that is

poisoning residents of an industrial city. Flugasche

is the first book to address the problems of pollu-

tion in East Germany. Maron’s second novel Die

Überläuferin (The Turncoat, 1986) continues her

theme of criticizing the East German state. In this

work, she describes a woman’s psychological col-

lapse while living in dehumanizing conditions.

Maron wrote a third novel in 1991 to form a tril-

ogy about East Berlin. Part of a rebellious and crit-

ical generation of German writers, her criticism of

East Germany also appears in her short stories and

essays. In 1992, Maron won the coveted Kleist

Prize.

Another Work by Monika Maron

Silent Close No. 6. Translated by David Newton

Marinelli. Columbia, La.: Reader’s International,

1993.

Masaoka Shiki (Masaoka Tsunenori)

(1867–1902) poet, diarist, critic

Masaoka Shiki was born in Matsuyama in present-

day Ehime Prefecture to Masaoka Hayata and Yae.

He began to write prose and poetry while still in

grade school there. He left Matsuyama in 1883 to

attend University Preparatory College in Tokyo. In

1890, he entered the Literature Department of

Tokyo Imperial University but left in 1893 to de-

vote himself to literature. During his university pe-

riod, he traveled around Japan, and in 1895, he

volunteered to become a war correspondent in

China during the Sino–Japanese War (1894–95).

In the last years of his life, tuberculosis virtually

confined Masaoka to a sickbed. He succumbed to

this illness in 1902.

While still at university, Masaoka published

three analytical books that were highly critical of

modern haiku poetry, in particular attacking the

stature of widely acclaimed haiku master Basho¯

Matsuo (1644–94). By 1896, he had softened his

perspective and published Buson the Haiku Poet,

which praised the style of Buson Yosa (1716–83).

In 1897, he started the magazine Hototogisu to pro-

vide an outlet for modern haiku. He then wrote a

Masaoka Shiki 285

critique of tanka poetry called Letters to the Tanka

Poets, published in 1898. His most highly regarded

poetry was written from his sickbed toward the

end of his life and published posthumously in a

volume called Poems from the Bamboo Village

(1904).

Masaoka is known more for revitalizing the

haiku and tanka forms of poetry than for writing

poetry. He espoused a new style of poetry based on

shasei (copying life). He claimed the traditional

poetic conventions that restricted haiku and tanka

were killing them as art forms.

Other Works by Masaoka Shiki

Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems. Translated by Burton

Watson. New York: Columbia University Press,

1997.

Peonies Kana. Translated by Harold J. Isaacson. New

York: Theatre Arts, 1972.

A Work about Masaoka Shiki

Beichman, Janine. Masaoka Shiki. New York: Kodan-

sha International, 1986.

Maupassant, Guy de (1850–1893)

novelist

Although some accounts vary, Henri-René-Albert-

Guy de Maupassant was most likely born at the

Château de Miromesniel in Dieppe, France, to a

noble family. He spent his childhood in Normandy,

where, graced with an almost photographic mem-

ory, he began to gather the rich and vivid details

that he would later use in his stories about the

Norman people.

In 1869, Maupassant went to Paris, where he

began to study law, but he left school at age 20 to

serve in the Franco–Prussian War. When he re-

turned to Paris, he became obsessed with the idea

of becoming a writer and sought out the company

of other writers including Gustave

FLAUBERT,from

whom he learned much about the writer’s craft. He

also began to search his memories for ideas of his

own and soon published the short story “La Main

ecorchée” (1875), in which he richly details the

haunting image of a mummified hand. The story

was based on an experience Maupassant had as a

teenager when he actually saw a mummified hand

up close. The details of his description reveal not

only the vividness of Maupassant’s memories but

also his adherence to accuracy.

Aligning himself with the naturalist school (see

naturalism), Maupassant published collections of

poetry, the first of which was Des Verse (1880). It

was his short stories, however, that gained critical

and popular acclaim. In a journal edited by Émile

ZOLA, Maupassant published what has come to be

regarded as one of his greatest works, “Boule de

Suif” (“Ball of Fat,” 1880). Set during the Franco-

Prussian War, it is the sad tale of a prostitute and

her inhumane treatment by the bourgeois passen-

gers with whom she must travel on a coach. She is

forced to spend the night with a Prussian officer

so that he will allow the coach to proceed. The next

day, she is scorned by her fellow travelers, even

though it is her action that allows them to com-

plete their journey.

Throughout the 1880s, Maupassant wrote more

than 300 short stories, six novels, and three travel

books. All of his works are marked by his atten-

tion to detail, objectivity, and a remarkable sense of

comedic timing. Most often, they focus on every-

day events in the lives of common people, while re-

vealing the hidden sides of human nature. Two of

his best-known works include A Woman’s Life

(1883), which details the frustrating and unhappy

existence of a Norman wife, and Pierre et Jean

(1888), a psychological tale of two brothers. The

latter inspired debate about its morality, as the

hero of the tale is successful only because he com-

mits acts that are morally questionable.

Another of Maupassant’s works, Le Horla (The

Hallucination, 1887), established him as a master of

the horror tale. The main character, probably suf-

fering from syphilis, believes he has summoned the

Horlas, invisible cousins to vampires, and, in an at-

tempt to get rid of them, burns down his house,

killing his servants. When this does not work, he

commits suicide. Maupassant himself suffered

from syphilis, contracted at age 20, and the increas-

286 Maupassant, Guy de

ing madness brought on by the disease is readily

apparent in his later works. One-tenth of his total

literary output is in the form of horror stories and,

of these, the main recurring theme is madness.

Maupassant attempted to end his own life on

January 2, 1892. The attempt was unsuccessful but

did lead to his admission to a private asylum,

where he died one year later.

Other Works by Guy de Maupassant

A Life: The Humble Truth. Translated by Roger Pear-

son. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

The Necklace. Translated by Jonathan Sturges. Lon-

don: Pushkin, 1999.

A Work about Guy de Maupassant

Lerner, Michael G. Maupassant. New York: George

Braziller, 1975.

Mayakovsky, Vladimir (1893–1930) poet

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was born in

Bagdadi, Georgia. Vladimir Konstantinovich,

Mayakovsky’s father, was employed as a forest

ranger. Mayakovsky started school in 1902 but was

not very interested in his studies. His older sister

Ludmila, a student in Moscow, brought home po-

litical pamphlets, which Mayakovsky read avidly.

When Mayakovsky’s father died in 1906, his

mother, Alexandra Alexeevna, moved her family to

Moscow. Mayakovsky was instantly absorbed by

the political situation of Moscow: At age 14, he was

a full member of the Moscow Bolshevik Party.

Expelled from school in 1908 for nonpayment

of tuition, Mayakovsky served as a messenger and

lookout for the Bolsheviks. He was arrested for his

activities but soon was released on probation. A

year later, he was again placed in jail for his associ-

ation with the revolutionaries. He wrote his first

poem in solitary confinement. In 1911, he decided

to study art and was admitted to the Moscow In-

stitute for the Study of Painting, Sculpture, and Ar-

chitecture. Painter David Burliuk introduced

Mayakovsky to modern painting and poetry and

was the first person to read Mayakovsky’s poetry.

Mayakovsky joined the futurist movement, de-

nouncing the rich literary tradition of Russia. He

labeled Aleksandr PUSHKIN and Maxim GORKY, for

instance, “insignificant.” He did not rebel against

only the literary canon but also against the con-

ventional use of language. Many of Mayakovsky’s

poems contains words that do not actually exist in

the Russian language. Mayakovsky published his

first two poems, “Night” and “Morning,” in 1912;

they were published the same year in a collection

with other poems and some prose pieces entitled A

Slap in the Face of Public Taste.

In 1913, Mayakovsky produced his first play,

Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy. The play consists

of a number of poetic monologues that explore the

self-perception of the poet, and the leading part

was played by Mayakovsky himself. It was not a big

success with the public. Mayakovsky’s first major

poem, “A Cloud in Trousers,” appeared in 1915.

The poem is a tale of love and uses unusual im-

ages to denounce the traditional romantic repre-

sentation of the poet in such lines as: “I am spit of

the filthy night on a palm of a beggar.”

Between 1915 and 1918, Mayakovsky produced

a number of poetic works that dealt mostly with

political ideology and were clearly propaganda for

the Communist Party, which took control of the

country in October 1917. He was an enthusiastic

supporter of the Bolshevik regime and wrote in

1924 a poem in praise of Lenin.

In 1925, Mayakovsky visited the United States,

attending meetings of labor unions, giving lectures

about workers’ rights, and sometimes joining the

picketers during a strike. Mayakovsky described

these experiences in two collections of poems,

Poems of America and My Discovery of America

(1926). In 1927, Mayakovsky established a literary

journal, Novy Lef, in which he attacked Maxim

Gorky. The short-lived journal published purely

political poems that criticized capitalism, the West,

and the “vices of the bourgeoisie.” After a trip to

Europe in 1929, Mayakovsky produced Poems

About a Soviet Passport, a collection that recounted

the reactions produced by his passport as he trav-

eled across Europe. During 1928 and 1929, he also

Mayakovsky, Vladimir 287