A silhouette of Czartoryski appears at Alexander’s headquarters at Olmütz in Tolstoy’sWar and Peace: haughty, surrounded by general dislike, taciturn and solitary, estranging people by the very fact ...of being a foreigner, but still regarded as the mainspring of the Emperor’s actions. Actually all that happened at that time was done against his advice and despite his opposition: the Treaty of Potsdam with all its implications, the Emperor’s stay at army headquarters and his taking over the real control of the operations, as well as his unfortunate decision to attack Napoleon instead of joining the armies of the Archduke
The reorganization of the central government late in 1906 was followed by a surge of reaction. Unreconstructed conservatives, those who had been deprived of their positions and those who feared they ...might lose them next, opposed even such compromising policies as the Throne had instituted.¹ Meanwhile, the foreign pressures which had necessitated the reform movement concontinued. Especially was this true in Manchuria, where Russia and Japan had divided the homeland of the Manchu dynasty into two spheres of interest. The weakness of the Throne’s foreign policy further decreased its prestige at home, thus providing a fertile field for revolutionary activity.
In the political ideology of the Byzantine Empire, there was place for only one ruler, the emperor “crowned by God” and blessed by the church, who united all his subjects within the known ...world,oikoumene. The notion of one state, one faith, and one emperor predominated, paralleled by only one court, the imperial court at Constantinople. Although aristocratic families might maintain palaces both in the provinces and in the capital, there was nothing to rival the Great Palace on the acropolis of the capital. And while many conflicts and civil wars were fought over the succession, once an emperor had
Yoshikawa Kōjiroō, “Du Fu Joshua A. Fogel; Fumiko Joō
Japanese for Sinologists,
07/2017
Book Chapter
Yoshikawa Kōjirō (1904–80) is one of those giants about whom people still tell stories in Kyoto. Even those who did not share his scholarly proclivities, such as Shimada Kenji (see chapter 6), ...admired his extraordinary breadth of learning. If forced, he would have defined his field of learning as Chinese literature, but that would hardly do justice to the numerous volumes and topics he addressed in his writings. The most recent edition of his collected works fills twenty-seven hefty volumes, and it was published a full decade before his death. He studied in Beijing for three years (1928–31)
Melania the Younger died in 439 c.e., more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, and the bitter conflicts that ensued. Nevertheless, theVita Melaniae Iuniorisportrays the saint as ...actively involved in numerous religious and political controversies thatpreceded her death. In the Greekvita, this involvement includes her denunciation of the teachings of Nestorius, which were rejected during his lifetime in 431 at the Council of Ephesus. Elizabeth Clark has built on earlier scholarship to argue persuasively that Greek rather than Latin is more likely to be the original language of theVita Melaniae,¹ and
Cavafy’s Byzantium Jeffreys, Peter
Reframing Decadence,
10/2015
Book Chapter
Of the many concepts that resonated with decadent aesthetes, Byzantium most powerfully captured the effete sophistication that fin de siècle writers and artists strove to convey in their creative ...works and critical writings. Indeed, the epithets “Byzantine” and “decadent” were often used synonymously; Byzantium, as either a historical reality or an aesthetic fantasy, appears frequently in the terminology and subject matter of decadent writers and theorists, who employed it both strategically and provocatively to conjure up notions of sumptuous decay, cruel despotism, and verbal intricacy. These associations were purposefully manipulated to both refract and deflect the Enlightenment’s negative critique of
