You may love it or hate it, but one thing is for sure – Poland will not leave you indifferent. This post is dedicated to people who love to explore underrated places around the world. Warsaw is a city you won’t really hear about on travel blogs. Most of the travel agencies would rather recommend you to visit the tourist towns of Poland, such as … Continue reading Top 3 Things You Can’t Miss in Warsaw, Poland | Art of Saudade
Art will save the world… Yes, I am strongly convinced that art will save the world. I don’t need any proof. Just Chopin’s soft piano during the dark night hours. The year is 1787. What can be left of a world ravaged by tuberculosis and wars? Art, that strong human desire to fight destruction through creation. Nicolas Chopin, a talented flute player from France, moves … Continue reading From Żelazowa Wola To Paris | The Story Of Chopin, The Poet Of The Piano | Art of Saudade
Why do some language learners reach fluency faster than others? How come some people can learn more languages than others? Is there such a thing as an “innate ability” for learning foreign languages? Kató Lomb, the most multilingual woman in the 20th century, debunked all the myths about learning languages in her book Polyglot: How I Learn Languages. Born in 1909, in Hungary, she only … Continue reading How Do Polyglots Learn So Many Languages? | The Story Of Kató Lomb | Art of Saudade
Lockdown, transmission, and quarantine are some of the words that have been part of our daily vocabulary for the past two years. These same words can be found in Camus’ philosophical novel The Plague. Published only two years after the Second World War, many literary critics believe that the plague symbolizes the battle against Nazism. However, digging into the book, it is easy to conclude … Continue reading Did Albert Camus Really Predict The Pandemic? | Art of Saudade
If life in the Middle Ages was rough, imagine being a speaker of a regional language in 20th century France, when the government banned the use of minority languages. For Occitan poets, the struggle to preserve their authentic language and culture only got harder. The Occitan language is a Romance language spoken in Southern France. However, it has no official status in France. In the … Continue reading Writing Poetry In A Minority Language: The Story Of The Occitan Poets | Art of Saudade
Ah, southern France… the scents of the Mediterranean, the fabulous history, and the architecture remaining its most loyal witness. Today I wonder if we can discover Béziers, one of the most beautiful historical towns in the South of France… in less than 24 hours! C’est parti ! You can arrive in Béziers by plane (yep, the town has an airport!), car, bus, or train (the … Continue reading 24 Hours In Béziers | Discover One Of France’s Oldest Towns In Only One Day | Art of Saudade
Jazz music follows no rules. The beauty of jazz lies in improvisation and spontaneity. Unlike monarchies, the kingdom of Jazz imposed no rules or limitations. That’s why it’s hard to name one and only king or queen of jazz. Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald… All of these jazz masters are worthy of being called kings and queens. One of the … Continue reading Duke Ellington and his mistress named Music | Art of Saudade
“Hey, write something about the French elections!” How do I get political without getting political? By doing what the 18th-century French philosophers did, I guess… use extra irony and turn everything into satire. One of the masters of irony during the Age of Enlightenment was Voltaire. In 1759, he wrote the biggest parody of his time – Candide, where he criticized every rotten detail of … Continue reading Candide and Martin in 2022 | Art of Saudade
Vidas Secas is one of the greatest classics of Brazilian literature. Published in 1938, this novel tells the tragic story of a poor family living in the Northeast Region of Brazil and describes their everyday life. The cyclical way of writing that the author adopts makes it possible to read the first chapter as a continuation of the last chapter. This means that the destiny … Continue reading Brazilian literature: Life In The Brazilian Backlands | Vidas Secas by Graciliano Ramos | Art of Saudade
Only a little less than a century after the Europeans “discovered” new lands, one of the greatest French thinkers Montaigne meets someone who spent some time with the “barbarous and savage cannibals”, as they called the Indigenous people. Where did the word ‘barbarous’ come from? The name barbarous was given by the Greeks to any people that didn’t speak their language. The term simply meant … Continue reading Fear Of The Other According To Montaigne | Art of Saudade
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