Over a nearly eighty-year career,
Michelangelo (1475–1564) was
celebrated as the greatest of living
artists, a reputation only slightly
diminished by the passing of
centuries. Giorgio Vasari called
him “a spirit endowed with universality of power in each art, and
in every profession, one capable
of showing by himself alone what
is the perfection of art.”
Jamaica Kincaid (1949–)
changed her name from Elaine
Potter Richardson in 1973 because her parents disapproved of
her writing. Of her books she has
said, “I don’t want to write that
kind of great novel, the great family novel. I enjoy reading it, but I
myself don’t want to write it.”
In 1113, Peter Abelard (1079–
1142) entered the Paris home
of a canon named Fulbert in
order to instruct the man’s
niece, Héloïse. Teacher and
student soon fell in love and
secretly married. Angered by
their deception, Fulbert hired
men to castrate Abelard; they
attacked the theologian at night
while he slept.
Maria Theresa (1717–1780) became Holy Roman empress in
1740 when her father Charles VI
died without a male heir. Outrage
at her accession led to the War of
the Austrian Succession and the
Seven Years’ War. To avoid a lack
of sons again leading to war, Maria Theresa gave birth to sixteen
children, five of them boys.
The Chinese poet Tao Qian
(365–427) yearned to abandon
government service. An anecdote relates that at age forty he
resigned an official post when
called before his superior, because he did not want to bow to
him just for the sake of receiving
his paltry salary. To celebrate his
release, he wrote the poem, “On
Returning Home.”
In 1890, Henry James (1843–
1916), having found international success with the novels
Daisy Miller and The Europeans,
turned his attention to drama.
Five years later he was booed
off the stage following a performance of his play Guy Domville.
He quit the theater, going on to
write The Turn of the Screw and
The Wings of the Dove.
Juvenal (c. 60–c. 127) is the
greatest of the Roman satirists,
unwavering in his belief that
Rome groaned under the weight
of scoundrels and fools. Accounting for his preferred form of expression, he wrote, “It is harder
not to be writing satires; for who
could endure this monstrous city,
however callous at heart, and
swallow his wrath?”
Before co-creating Seinfeld and
creating Curb Your Enthusiasm,
Larry David (1947–) endured
a lackluster standup-comedy career and a short stint as a writer
on one season of Saturday Night
Live. His lack of success as a
standup he has attributed to an
aversion to travel, saying, “I don’t
like packing. It doesn’t suit me.”
The pen name of Nadezhda
Buchinskaya, Teffi (1872–1952)
is best known as a chronicler of
Russian émigré life in Paris.
Endowed by the critics with a
reputation as a humorist, she
countered the impression by
saying she possessed “two faces,
one laughing and one weeping.”
