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Vie de Voltaire (work by Condorcet)
Condorcet published his Vie de M. Turgot in 1786 and his Vie de Voltaire in 1789. These biographies of his friends reveal his sympathy with Turgot’s economic theories about mitigating the suffering of the French populace before the French Revolution and with Voltaire’s opposition to the church. Both works were widely and eagerly read and are perhaps, from a purely liter...
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“Vie des abeilles, La” (work by Maeterlinck)
...Sagesse et la destinée (1898; “Wisdom and Destiny”). His most widely read prose writings, however, are two extended essays, La Vie des abeilles (1901; The Life of the Bee) and L’Intelligence des fleurs (1907; The Intelligence of Flowers), in which Maeterlinck sets out his philosophy of the human conditi...
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“Vie devant soi, La” (film by Mizrahi [1977])
Other Nominees...
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Vie en rose, La (film by Dahan [2007])
Other Nominees...
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Vie en rose, La (popular song)
...executed. Although her vocal range was not great, her memorable renditions of songs such as Falling in Love Again, Lili Marleen, La Vie en rose, and Give Me the Man made them classics of an era. Her many affairs with both men and women were open secrets, but rather than destroying her career......
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“Vie est à nous, La” (film by Renoir)
In 1936, in sympathy with the social movements of the French Popular Front, Renoir directed the communist propaganda film La Vie est à nous (The People of France). The same year, he recaptured the flavour of his early works with a short film, Une Partie de campagne (released 1946; A Day in the Country), which he finished with great difficulty. A masterpiece of......
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Vie et aventures de Salavin (work by Duhamel)
...his writings is a five-volume autobiography, Lumières sur ma vie (“Lights on My Life”). His two novel cycles also contain many reflections of his own experiences. The Salavin cycle describes the frustrations and perplexities of a “little man” of the 20th century trying to work out his own salvation with no religious faith to sustain him. In the.....
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Vie et mort du roi boiteux, La (work by Ronfard)
...of poet Émile Nelligan. Jean-Pierre Ronfard, one of the founders of the Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental, created a defining moment in Quebec theatre with La Vie et mort du roi boiteux (1981; “The Life and Death of the Lame King”), a six-play cycle whose performance in 1982 lasted more than 10 hours and treated its spectators to a.....
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Vie et mort d’un étang (work by Gevers)
...Gevers also wrote several nature and travel books as well as children’s adventure stories. Her best and most renowned works are the autobiographical novels Madame Orpha (1933) and Vie et mort d’un étang (1961; “Life and Death of a Pond”)....
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Vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, La (work by Rabelais)
La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua (“The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua”) belongs to this period. The second edition is dated 1535; the first edition was probably published in 1534, though it lacks the title page in the only known copy. In Gargantua Rabelais continues to exploit medieval romances mock-heroically, telling of the birth, education, and......
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“Vie: mode d’emploi, La” (work by Perec)
...autobiography, using alternating chapters to tell two stories that ultimately converge. By far his most ambitious and most critically acclaimed novel is La Vie: mode d’emploi (1978; Life: A User’s Manual), which describes each unit in a large Parisian apartment building and relates the stories of its inhabitants....
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Vie moderne, La (French periodical)
In 1880 Manet had a one-man exhibition at the offices of the periodical La Vie moderne (“Modern Life”), but his legs were already affected by a malady that was to prove fatal. In 1881 he rented a villa at Versailles, and, by the following year, with his illness progressing at an alarming pace, he went to stay in a villa at Rueil. He took part in an......
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Vie, poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme (work by Sainte-Beuve)
...were then little known in continental Europe. His visit to England may also account for the appearance of elements of the style of William Cowper and George Crabbe in volumes of his own poetry, Vie, poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme (1829; “The Life, Poetry, and Thought of Joseph Delorme”) and Les Consolations (1830), which on their publication......
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“Vie sans joie, Une” (work by Thackeray)
...Yellowplush Correspondence, the memoirs and diary of a young cockney footman written in his own vocabulary and style; Major Gahagan (1838–39), a fantasy of soldiering in India; Catherine (1839–40), a burlesque of the popular “Newgate novels” of romanticized crime and low life, and itself a good realistic crime story; The History of Samuel Titm...
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“Vie, Une” (work by Maupassant)
...was with l’humble vérité—words which he chose as the subtitle to his novel Une Vie (1883; A Woman’s Life). This book, which sympathetically treats its heroine’s journey from innocent girlhood through the disillusionment of an unfortunate marriage and ends with her s...
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Viedma (Argentina)
city, capital of Río Negro provincia (province), south-central Argentina. It lies along the western bank of the Negro River 20 miles (32 km) from the river’s mouth at the Atlantic Ocean, opposite Carmen de Patagones in Buenos Aires province. A fort called Mercedes de Patagones, built there in 1779 by the ex...
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Vieil Homme, Le (play by Porto-Riche)
...sexes. His theme was sensual love, which he studied mainly in the maladjusted married couple. This is the subject of his best plays, Amoureuse (1891), Le Passé (1897), and Le Vieil Homme (1911), all of which examine the eternal triangle of the wife, the husband, and the lover. The so-called théâtre d’amour that Porto-Riche innovated was hi...
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Vieille Charité, Hospice de la (building, Marseille, France)
Nearby is the Old Charity Hospital (Hospice de la Vieille Charité), built between 1660 and 1750. The interior courtyard surrounds a chapel by Pierre Puget, regarded as the most powerful of French Baroque sculptors. Close by is the Hôtel Dieu, the oldest hospital in the city, built at the end of the 16th century. The principal building, by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, was erected 200......
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Vieille, Paul (French chemist)
French scientist, known for his invention of smokeless powder....
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Vieille, Paul-Marie-Eugène (French chemist)
French scientist, known for his invention of smokeless powder....
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Vieilles Chansons du pays Imérina (work by Rabéarivelo)
...sense of futility. His later work is more remote and impersonal, retaining a Baudelairean sense of form but exhibiting a more mature, individual style. A final collection of poems, Vieilles Chansons du pays Imérina (“Old Songs of the Imerina Country”), published two years after his death, is based on poetic love dialogues (hain-teny) adapted....
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Vieira, António (Portuguese author and diplomat)
Jesuit missionary, orator, diplomat, and master of classical Portuguese prose who played an active role in both Portuguese and Brazilian history. His sermons, letters, and state papers provide a valuable index to the climate of opinion of the 17th-century world....
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Vieira da Cruz, Tomaz (Portuguese poet, musician and journalist)
Portuguese poet, musician, and journalist best known for the poems he dedicated to the woman he called his “bronze flower.” His poetry evokes Angolan and African themes of beauty, drama, love, and misfortune....
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Vieira da Silva, Maria Elena (French artist)
Portuguese-born French painter of intricate, semiabstract compositions....
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Vieira de Mello, Sérgio (Brazilian diplomat)
Brazilian diplomat (b. March 15, 1948, Rio de Janeiro, Braz.—d. Aug. 19, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq), dedicated his life to attempting to bring peace, assisting refugees, and aiding humanitarian relief in many of the most volatile trouble spots all over the world. For over 30 years he worked at resolving conflicts—guiding such notable successes as the restoration of order in Kosovo in 1999 ...
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Vieira, João Bernardo (prime minister of Guinea-Bissau)
Foreign and domestic affairs under the new head of state, João Bernardo Vieira, were turbulent. Despite several coup attempts in the 1980s and early ’90s, some progress was made: the country’s first free elections were held in 1994; a 1995 agreement with Senegal confirmed the maritime borders between the two countries; and in 1997 Guinea-Bissau joined the Communauté......
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Vieira, João Fernandes (Brazilian landowner)
...make known to Europe the resources and beauties of Brazil; however, the profit-driven directors of the company refused to support John Maurice’s enlightened social policies, and he resigned in 1644. João Fernandes Vieira, a wealthy plantation owner, subsequently launched a rebellion that steadily gained ground against John Maurice’s incompetent successors. The Brazilians, a...
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Vieira, Luandino (Angolan author)
Angolan writer of short fiction and novels....
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Viejo (volcano, Nicaragua)
...that contains Lakes Nicaragua, Managua, and Masaya. They are divided into two groups: the Cordillera de los Marrabios in the north and the Pueblos Mesas in the south. The highest volcanoes include San Cristóbal (5,840 feet [1,780 metres]), Concepción (5,282 feet [1,610 metres]), and Momotombo (4,199 feet [1,280 metres])....
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Viejo, El (Spanish painter)
Spanish painter and engraver whose works mark the transition from Mannerism to Baroque....
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Viele, Egbert Ludovicus (French poet)
American-born French poet who became an important figure in the French Symbolist movement....
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Viélé-Griffin, Francis (French poet)
American-born French poet who became an important figure in the French Symbolist movement....
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vielle (lute)
medieval European bowed, stringed musical instrument. The medieval fiddle, a forerunner of the violin, emerged in 10th-century Europe, possibly deriving from the lira, a Byzantine version of the rabāb, an Arab bowed instrument. Medieval fiddles varied in size and shape but characteristically had front or back tuning pegs set in a flat and round or heart-shaped peg disk with three to ...
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vielle a roue (musical instrument)
squat, pear-shaped fiddle having strings that are sounded not by a bow but by the rosined rim of a wooden wheel turned by a handle at the instrument’s end. Notes are made on the one or two melody strings by stopping them with short wooden keys pressed by the left-hand fingers. Up to four unstopped strings, called bourdons, sound drones....
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Vien Chan, kingdom of (historical state, Laos)
...in the south Rama III strengthened Siamese control over tributary states of the Malay Peninsula. Rama III also put down a major uprising in the north led by Chao Anou, the young Lao ruler of the kingdom of Vien Chan (Vientiane). In 1827 Siamese armies razed and plundered Vientiane; thousands of Lao were taken prisoner and deported to central Siam....
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Vien, Joseph-Marie (French painter)
...killed in a duel in 1757, and the boy was subsequently raised, reportedly not very tenderly, by two uncles. After classical literary studies and a course in drawing, he was placed in the studio of Joseph-Marie Vien, a history painter who catered to the growing Greco-Roman taste without quite abandoning the light sentiment and the eroticism that had been fashionable earlier in the century. At......
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Vienna (Austria)
city and Bundesland (federal state), the capital of Austria. Of the country’s nine states, Vienna is the smallest in area but the largest in population....
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Vienna Award (Europe [1938])
...according to the Munich timetable were not Czechoslovakia’s only territorial losses. Poland obtained the Duchy of Teschen as a reward for its menacing attitude during the Munich crisis. By the Vienna Award (November 2), Hungary was granted large portions of Slovak and Ruthenian territories. By all these amputations Czechoslovakia lost about one-third of its population, and the country wa...
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Vienna Award (Europe [1940])
...the Soviet Union had occupied Bessarabia in June 1940, the Hungarian leaders compelled a reluctant Germany (but a willing Italy) to cede to Hungary northern Transylvania under the “Second Vienna Award” (August 30). They then allowed German troops to cross Hungarian territory into southern Romania and in November signed the Tripartite Pact....
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Vienna Basin (region, Austria)
...and extends southward to cross the Danube. The Weinviertel (“Wine District”) in the northeast is low, hilly country with extensive loess soil cover and a favourable climate. The Vienna Basin, a lowland area lying immediately east of Vienna, contains Austria’s richest and most productive farmland. Vienna itself is bordered on the west by the well-known Vienna Woods......
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Vienna Boys’ Choir (Austrian music group)
The Vienna Boys’ Choir, founded in 1498 (Haydn and Schubert were its most famous boy members), sings on Sunday mornings at the mass in the Hofburg Chapel. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gives frequent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning concerts and also performs during the week at the State Opera House. Altogether there are seven concert halls in Vienna. Among the highlights of the......
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Vienna Catholic Academy
...Nazism. His home subsequently became a refuge for Jews, while he strove to alleviate public distress and to restore the Austrian Church, disassociating himself from politics. In 1945 he founded the Vienna Catholic Academy for the training of the laity....
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Vienna Circle (philosophy)
a group of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed in the 1920s that met regularly in Vienna to investigate scientific language and scientific methodology. The philosophical movement associated with the Circle has been called variously logical positivism, logical empiricism, scientific empiricism, neopositivism, and the unity of science movement. The work of its memb...
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Vienna Codex (pre-Columbian manuscript)
...pictographs and ideograms rather than written script. They dealt with the ritual calendar, divination, ceremonies, and speculations on the gods and the universe. Among these codices are the Vienna Codex, the Codex Colombino, and the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, all believed to have been produced before the Spanish conquest of the region. Certain collections of formulas or......
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Vienna, Congress of (European history)
assembly in 1814–15 that reorganized Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Having begun in September 1814, five months after Napoleon’s first abdication, it completed its “Final Act” in June 1815, shortly before the Waterloo campaign and the final defeat of Napoleon. The settlement was the most comprehensive treaty that Europe had ever ...
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Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985)
...to develop universal standards. Consequently, such laws and regulations usually are designed to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in scientific understanding and technological capacity. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985), for example, did not specify the measures that signatory states were required to adopt to protect human health and the environment from...
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Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (international relations)
...recognized. Ambassadors were deemed to represent the person and dignity of the sovereign (or head of state) and were entitled to personal access to the sovereign to whom they were accredited. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) reduced to three the categories of diplomatic representatives, which are: (1) ambassadors and other heads of mission of equivalent rank who are......
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Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (international agreement)
A treaty, the typical instrument of international relations, is defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties as an “agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation. Contractual treaties are treaties by which the parties.....
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Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Between States and International Organizations or Between International Organizations (international agreement)
...is directly referred to in many international agreements governing treaties, including the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), which concerns treaties between states, and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Between States and International Organizations or Between International Organizations (1986)....
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Vienna coup (bridge)
The characteristic of the Vienna coup is that a high card must be played early, apparently establishing a card in an opponent’s hand but actually subjecting him to a squeeze that could not have been effected had the high card remained unplayed. See figure....
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Vienna Court Opera (opera house, Vienna, Austria)
theatre in Vienna, Austria, that is one of the world’s leading opera houses, known especially for performances of works by Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Richard Strauss. The original theatre, located on the Ringstrasse, was built in 1869 to house the expanded operations of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper), by which name it was originally known. Particularly famed during the c...
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Vienna General Hospital
...trade and slavery. Meanwhile, the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II had harnessed new funds for orphanages, hospitals, medical schools, and special institutions for the blind and the insane. In 1785 the Vienna General Hospital had 2,000 beds. There was provision for deprived children of all sorts. Graduated charges and free medical care for paupers were among features of a policy that represented......
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Vienna Genesis (Byzantine manuscript)
...of the Iliad at Milan may perhaps have been copied and illustrated in a Byzantine scriptorium. Of the religious manuscripts, the most important is a copy of the book of Genesis (known as the Vienna Genesis) at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; there is a fragmentary copy of the Gospels in the Bibliothèque Nationale—usually known as the Sinop fragment, f...
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Vienna Group (literary group)
...contemporary with those of musique concrète, an experimental technique of musical composition. Max Bill and Eugen Gomringer were among the early practitioners of concrete poetry. The Vienna Group of Hans Carl Artmann, Gerhard Rühm, and Konrad Bayer also promoted concrete poetry, as did Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker. The movement drew inspiration from Dada,......
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Vienna Holding (Austrian corporation)
The government not only runs the city but also operates a major business, the Vienna Holding, a combination of state and private enterprise. Its firms include low-cost restaurants, a major publishing house, an insurance company, a cold-storage depot, shopping centres, cinemas, and the large, multifunctional Stadthalle (“City Hall”), with a seating capacity of 16,000, for sporting......
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Vienna International Centre (buildings, Vienna, Austria)
...world organizations. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) moved its headquarters to Vienna in 1965. On the outskirts of Vienna, across the Danube, the modern buildings of the Vienna International Centre, or UNO-City, include the offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and other UN agencies....
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Vienna International Exhibition
The political victory of German capitalism took place at the very moment of a severe economic crisis. The opening of the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873 was seen as a manifestation of the material progress and economic achievements of the Habsburg monarchy. The so-called Gründerjahre, or years of expansive commercial enterprise during the late....
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Vienna Museum of Natural History (museum, Vienna, Austria)
Endlicher turned from the study of theology to that of natural history and medicine while at the Universities of Budapest and Vienna (M.D., 1840). In 1836 he became curator of the Vienna Museum of Natural History, to which he would eventually donate his herbarium of 30,000 specimens. While reorganizing the museum’s botanical collections, he wrote the Genera Plantarum Secundum Ordines......
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Vienna porcelain
ceramic ware made at the Vienna factory in Austria between 1719 and 1864. Claudius Innocentius du Paquier (d. 1751), a Dutchman, began making porcelain there with the help of two workmen from Meissen in Germany. In 1744 he sold the enterprise to the Austrian state. After a succession of different directors, Konrad von Sorgenthal took over the direction in 178...
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Vienna Psychoanalytical Society (psychological organization)
Although Freud’s theories were offensive to many in the Vienna of his day, they began to attract a cosmopolitan group of supporters in the early 1900s. In 1902 the Psychological Wednesday Circle began to gather in Freud’s waiting room with a number of future luminaries in the psychoanalytic movements in attendance. Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel were often joined by guests such as.....
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Vienna school of ethnology (Austrian organization)
The first theoretician of the Vienna school of ethnology, Fritz Graebner, attempted to explain the forms of both individual totemism and group totemism and designated them as a moderately creedal or semireligious complex of ideas according to which individual members or subgroups of a society are thought to be in an especially close (but not cultic) relationship to natural objects. According to......
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Vienna Secession (Austrian art group)
...Nouveau decoration in his Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station (1899–1901) and in the Postal Savings Bank (1904–06), both in Vienna. Wagner’s pupils broke free of his classicism and formed the Sezessionists. Joseph Olbrich joined the art colony at Darmstadt, in Germany, where his houses and exhibition gallery of about 1905 were boxlike, severe buildings. Josef Hoffmann left Wagner ...
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Vienna Sezession (Austrian art group)
...Nouveau decoration in his Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station (1899–1901) and in the Postal Savings Bank (1904–06), both in Vienna. Wagner’s pupils broke free of his classicism and formed the Sezessionists. Joseph Olbrich joined the art colony at Darmstadt, in Germany, where his houses and exhibition gallery of about 1905 were boxlike, severe buildings. Josef Hoffmann left Wagner ...
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Vienna, Siege of (Europe [1529])
...them to Austria before undertaking to conquer the remainder of Hungary in 1527–28. In response Süleyman returned from Anatolia to drive the Habsburgs from all of Hungary and besieged Vienna in 1529, an effort that failed because of the difficulty of supplying a large force so far from the major centres of Ottoman power. Vienna thus stood as the principal European bulwark against.....
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Vienna, Siege of (Europe [1683])
(July 17–Sept. 12, 1683), expedition by the Turks against the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Leopold I that resulted in their defeat by a combined force led by John III Sobieski of Poland. The siege marked the beginning of the end of Turkish domination in eastern Europe....
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Vienna State Opera (opera house, Vienna, Austria)
theatre in Vienna, Austria, that is one of the world’s leading opera houses, known especially for performances of works by Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Richard Strauss. The original theatre, located on the Ringstrasse, was built in 1869 to house the expanded operations of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper), by which name it was originally known. Particularly famed during the c...
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Vienna steak (food)
ground beef. The term is applied variously to (1) a patty of ground beef, sometimes called hamburg steak, Salisbury steak, or Vienna steak, (2) a sandwich consisting of a patty of beef served within a split bread roll, with various garnishes, or (3) the ground beef itself, which is used as a base in many sauces, casseroles, terrines, and the like. The origin of hamburger is unknown, but the hambur...
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Vienna Stock Exchange (financial institution, Austria)
...owned and foreign banks, the Austrian Post Office Savings Bank (Österreichische Postsparkasse), smaller local savings banks, and commercial credit and agricultural credit cooperatives. The Vienna Stock Exchange (Wiener Börse), founded in 1771 by Empress Maria Theresa, is one of the oldest such institutions in Europe. Shares of both Austrian and foreign companies are traded there....
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Vienna summit (1961)
Kennedy and Khrushchev held a summit meeting in Vienna in June 1961. With Berlin and the Third World uppermost in his mind, Kennedy proposed that neither superpower attempt to upset the existing balance of power in any region where the other was already involved. Khrushchev evidently considered the young president to be weak and on the defensive and tried to intimidate him with a new ultimatum,......
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Vienna, Treaty of (European history)
...Béla IV of Hungary received Steiermark. Troubles in Salzburg, stemming from a conflict between Bohemia and Hungary, inspired a rising among Steiermark’s nobles. Otakar intervened and in the Treaty of Vienna (1260) took over Steiermark as well. The state of anarchy that prevailed in Germany during this period proved advantageous to Otakar, who was granted Austria and Steiermark in ...
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Vienna Union
...1921 delegates from the “centre” and “left” Socialist parties that had refused to join either the Second or the Third International met in a congress at Vienna and formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, also known as the Vienna Union, with the object of preparing the ground for an all-embracing International. In 1922 delegates from the Second an...
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Vienna, University of (university, Vienna, Austria)
state-financed coeducational institution for higher learning at Vienna. Founded in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world....
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Vienna Woods (forest, Austria)
town, northeastern Austria. It lies on the west bank of the Danube River at the foot of the Leopoldsberg (1,394 feet [425 metres]) and at the north edge of the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), just northwest of Vienna. It was originally the site of a Roman fortress (Asturis). Later, a settlement called Neuburg developed around a castle on the Leopoldsberg and an Augustinian abbey, both of which were......
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Vienne (department, France)
région of France encompassing the western départements of Vienne, Charente, Charente-Maritime, and Deux-Sèvres. Poitou-Charentes is bounded by the régions of Pays de la Loire to the north, Centre to the northeast, Limousin to the east, and Aquitaine to......
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Vienne (France)
town, Isère département, Rhône-Alpes région, southeastern France. It lies along the Rhône River where the latter is joined by the Gère River. In ancient times Vienne was the capital of the Celtic tribe known as the Allobroges. It was conquered by the Romans in 121 bc and was subsequently one of the most important towns of Gaul ...
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Vienne, Council of (French history)
15th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic church (1311–12), convoked by Pope Clement V at the insistence of Philip IV of France, who demanded the posthumous trial of Pope Boniface VIII and the suppression of the Knights Templars, one of the great military religious orders founded during the Crusades. Vienne, near Lyon, was chosen ...
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Vienne River (river, France)
river, western France, 217 mi (350 km) in length, a left-bank tributary of the Loire. Rising on the Plateau de Millevaches, the Vienne winds through the agricultural regions of five départements. It flows west-northwest into the Haute-Vienne département, receiving the Maulde and Taurion tributaries, which are dammed in several places, before it flows past the city of L...
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Vienne River Bridge (bridge, Châtellerault, France)
The most prolific designers first using reinforced concrete were Hennebique and the German engineer G.A. Wayss, who bought the Monier patents. Hennebique’s Vienne River Bridge at Châtellerault, France, built in 1899, was the longest-spanning reinforced arch bridge of the 19th century. Built low to the river—typical of many reinforced-concrete bridges whose goal of safe passage...
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Viennese waltz (dance)
...music. Later he conducted the orchestra of Josef Lanner and in 1826 performed at the gardens of the “Zwei Tauben” the Täuberl-walzer, the first of many sets of Viennese waltzes named for the places where they were first played....
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Vient de paraître (work by Bourdet)
...were not successful. His reputation was secured, however, by La Prisonnière (1926; The Captive), a psychological study of the sufferings of a sexually maladjusted woman. With Vient de paraître (1928; “Just Appeared”), a satire on the literary world, Bourdet established a formula for the series of satirical comedies that he produced between the wo...
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Vientiane (Laos)
largest city and capital of Laos, situated on a plain just northeast of the Mekong River. The city’s central river port location in a country relying heavily on its rivers for transportation and its surrounding hinterland of intensive rice cultivation have made Vientiane the major economic centre of Laos. The city has a tropical monsoon climate, every month having an average daytime tempera...
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Vientiane Agreement (1973, Laos)
...called for a cease-fire in each of the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, but only in Laos was there peace. In February, just a month following the agreement, the Laotian factions signed the Vientiane Agreement, which provided again for a cease-fire and for yet another coalition government composed of factions from the left and right, presided over by Souvanna Phouma. As political......
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Vientiane, kingdom of (historical state, Laos)
...in the south Rama III strengthened Siamese control over tributary states of the Malay Peninsula. Rama III also put down a major uprising in the north led by Chao Anou, the young Lao ruler of the kingdom of Vien Chan (Vientiane). In 1827 Siamese armies razed and plundered Vientiane; thousands of Lao were taken prisoner and deported to central Siam....
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Vieques Island (island, Puerto Rico)
island and municipio (“municipality”), Puerto Rico. It lies 13 miles (21 km) east of the main island, fronting south on the Caribbean Sea and north on the Vieques Sound, which connects the Caribbean with the Atlantic Ocean. Composed mostly of volcanic and granite intrusives, the generally hilly island is 21 miles (34 km) long and 3 miles (5 km)...
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Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (work by Arndt)
The principal work among his many writings, which were inspired by the mystics St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Johann Tauler, and Thomas à Kempis, is Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1605–09; “Four Books on True Christianity”). Translated into most European languages and widely distributed in Arndt’s time, it served as the foundation of many devotional...
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“Vier ernste Gesänge” (work by Brahms)
In 1896 Brahms completed his Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), for bass voice and piano, on texts from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, a pessimistic work dealing with the vanity of all earthly things and welcoming death as the healer of pain and weariness. The conception of this work arose from Brahms’s....
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Viereck, Peter Robert Edwin (American poet, historian, and theorist)
American poet, historian, and theorist (b. Aug. 5, 1916, New York, N.Y.—d. May 13, 2006, South Hadley, Mass.), helped usher in the mid-20th-century conservative movement as the author of Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Revolt, 1815–1949 (1949; rev. ed., 1978), which proscribed extremism at any end of the spectrum and sought to dispel the notion that conservatism was...
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vierge (chess)
Each player has one queen, which combines the powers of the rook and bishop and is thus the most mobile and powerful piece. The White queen begins at d1, the Black queen at d8....
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Vierge Dorée, Master of the (French artist)
Late sculptural developments of the early Gothic period were of great importance for the High Gothic period. The Joseph Master at Reims and the Master of the Vierge Dorée at Amiens both adopted a drapery style that, in various forms, became extremely common for the next century or more; both introduced into their figures a sort of mannered daintiness that became popular. These features......
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Vierne, Louis (musician)
Among Widor’s students at the Paris Conservatory were many of the most distinguished European organists active around the turn of the century, including Louis Vierne and Marcel Dupré. Albert Schweitzer studied organ under him, and Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud studied composition....
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Viertel, Peter (German-born novelist and screenwriter)
German-born novelist and screenwriter who was wholly or partly responsible for the scripts of such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942); The African Queen (1951), for which he wrote the dialogue; White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), which he adapted from his own 1953 novel of the same name; and the screen versions of the Ernest Hemingway novels The Sun Also Rises...
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Viertel-jahrsschrift für Musikwissen-schaft (German magazine)
...and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1880. Two years later he became a lecturer and completed a work on the history of harmony. In collaboration with Philipp Spitta and K.F.F. Chrysander, Adler founded the Viertel-jahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft (“Quarterly of Musicology”) in 1884. The following year he was appointed professor of the history of music at the German......
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Vierwaldstätter See (lake, Switzerland)
principal lake of central Switzerland, surrounded by the cantons of Lucerne, Nidwalden, Uri, and Schwyz. The lake is named after the city of Lucerne, which lies at its western end. The lake is most beautifully situated between steep limestone mountains, the best-known being the Rigi (north) and Pilatus (west), at an elevation of 1,424 feet (434 m). The lake’s area is 44 s...
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Vierzehnheiligen, church of (church, Germany)
...for the Schönborns, including those for the prince-bishops at Bruchsal (1728–50) and Werneck (c. 1733–45). In the 1740s he designed his masterpiece, the pilgrimage church at Vierzehnheiligen (1743–53), as well as the pilgrimage church known as the Käppele (1740–52) near Würzburg and the abbey church at Neresheim (1747–53)....
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Vierzig Jahre (work by Holtei)
Holtei led a varied and unsettled life, travelling between Hamburg, Paris, and Graz as a playwright, actor, and theatre manager, a life vividly described in his autobiography, Vierzig Jahre (1843–50; “Forty Years”). Two of his best plays, Der Alte Freiherr (1825; “The Old Baron”) and Lenore (1829), a dramatization of Gottfried August......
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“vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh, Die” (work by Werfel)
...der Oper (Verdi, A Novel of the Opera). In 1929 he married Alma Mahler. International fame came with Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933; The Forty Days of Musa Dagh), an epic novel in which Armenian villagers resist Turkish forces until rescued by the French....
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Vierzon (France)
city, Cher département, Centre région, central France. It lies along the Canal du Berry, at the confluence of the Cher and Yèvre rivers, northwest of Bourges. The city grew from a rail and industrial complex formed in 1938 from several small communes (Vierzon-Ville, Vierzon-Village, Vierzon-Forges, and Vier...
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Vies des hommes illustres Grecs et Romains, Les (translation by Amyot)
French bishop and classical scholar famous for his translation of Plutarch’s Lives (Les Vies des hommes illustres Grecs et Romains, 1559), which became a major influence in shaping the Renaissance concept of the tragic hero....
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Viet (people)
aboriginal people of South China who in the 5th–4th century bce formed a powerful kingdom in present-day Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. The name Vietnam means “south of the Yue,” and some Chinese scholars consider the Vietnamese to be descendants of the Yue. ...
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Viet Cong (Vietnamese military and political organization)
the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam (late 1950s–1975) and the United States (early 1960s–1973). The name is said to have first been used by South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to belittle the rebels....
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