Catherine the Great @280 [1]

Catherine the Great (May 2, 1729 – November 17, 1796), — sometimes referred to as an epitome of the “enlightened despot” — reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years. She cultivated Voltaire, Diderot and D’Alembert — all French philosophes encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. Her collection of erotic art is documented in the documentary film The Lost Secret of Catherine the Great.

Jerome Klapka Jerome @150  [2]

Jerome Klapka Jerome (May 2, 1859 – June 14, 1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.

Link Wray @80 [3]

Fred Lincoln “Link” Wray Jr (May 2, 1929 – November 5, 2005) was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer. Wray was noted for pioneering a new sound for electric guitars, as exemplified in his hit 1958 instrumental “Rumble“, by Link Wray and his Ray Men, which pioneered an overdriven, distorted electric guitar sound and paving the way for punk and heavy rock.

Tomorrow Thursday 22nd is Grigori Rasputin‘s and August Strindberg‘s anniversary. Rasputin is then at 140, Strindberg at 160.

Grigori Rasputin

Edel‘s Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1995)

Rasputin is known today for the sensationalized accounts as playboy, mystical healer, debauched religious charlatan and political demiurge. Accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend, such as the story of his most honest organ.

Rasputin’s member, fact or fiction?

Strindberg is known for his misogyny (Strindberg’s misogyny), his interest in oneirism and the unconsciousness (A Dream Play and a chronology of the discovery of the unconscious in the 19th century) and as a founding father of literary realism.

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Mike Figgis‘s Miss Julie, the”And now kiss my shoe”-scene

Your best introduction to the life of Strindberg is his autobiographical novel Inferno. Written in French in 1897 at the height of Strindberg’s troubles with both censors and women, the book is concerned with Strindberg’s life both in and after he lived in Paris, and explores his various obsessions, including alchemy, occultism, and Swedenborgianism, and showing signs of paranoia and neuroticism.

August Strindberg

Inferno has often been cited as proof of Strindberg’s own personal neuroses, such as a persecution complex, but evidence also suggests that Strindberg, although experiencing mild neurotic symptoms, both invented and exaggerated much of the material in the book for dramatic effect.