title: Hindu Kush

text: Several other theories have been propounded as to the origins of the name. According to Nigel Allan, the term "Hindu Kush" has two alternate meanings i.e. 'sparkling snows of India' and 'mountains of India', with "Kush" possibly being a soft variant of the Persian "Kuh" ('mountain'). Allan states that Hindu Kush was the frontier boundary to Arab geographers. Yet others suggest that the name may be derived from ancient Avestan, meaning 'water mountain'.


title: Hindu Kush

text: It is also sometimes interpreted as the land of the Hindkowans (Hindki in Pashto) around the region who speak Hindko.


title: Hindu Kush

text: According to "Hobson-Jobson", a 19th-century British dictionary, "Hindukush" might be a corruption of the ancient Latin "Indicus (Caucasus);" the entry mentions the interpretation first given by Ibn Batuta as a popular theory already at that time, despite doubts cast upon it.


title: Hindu Kush

text: In Vedic Sanskrit, the range was known as "upariśyena", and in Avestan, as "upāirisaēna" (from Proto-Iranian *"upārisaina"- 'covered with juniper'). It can alternatively be interpreted as "beyond the reach of eagles". In the time of Alexander the Great, the mountain range was referred to as the "Caucasus Indicus" (as opposed to the Greater Caucasus range between the Caspian and Black Seas), and as "Paropamisos" (see "Paropamisadae") by Hellenic Greeks in the late first millennium BCE.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Some 19th-century encyclopedias and gazetteers state that the term "Hindu Kush" originally applied only to the peak in the area of the Kushan Pass, which had become a center of the Kushan Empire by the first century.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The range forms the western section of the "Hindu Kush Himalayan Region" ("HKH") and is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram and the Himalayas. It divides the valley of the Amu Darya (the ancient "Oxus") to the north from the Indus River valley to the south. The range has numerous high snow-capped peaks, with the highest point being Tirich Mir or Terichmir at in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. To the north, near its northeastern end, the Hindu Kush buttresses the Pamir Mountains near the point where the borders of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, after which it runs southwest through Pakistan and into Afghanistan near their border. The eastern end of the Hindu Kush in the north merges with the Karakoram Range. Towards its southern end, it connects with the Spin Ghar Range near the Kabul River.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Many peaks of the range are between , and some are much higher, with an average peak height of . The mountains of the Hindu Kush range diminish in height as they stretch westward. Near Kabul, in the west, they attain heights of ; in the east they extend from .


title: Hindu Kush

text: Numerous high passes (""kotal"") transect the mountains, forming a strategically important network for the transit of caravans. The most important mountain pass in Afghanistan is the Salang Pass (Kotal-e Salang) () north of Kabul, which links southern Afghanistan to northern Afghanistan. The Salang Tunnel at and the extensive network of galleries on the approach roads was constructed with Soviet financial and technological assistance and involved drilling through the heart of the Hindu Kush; since the start of the wars in Afghanistan it has been an active area of armed conflict with various parties trying to control the strategic tunnel. The range has several other passes in Afghanistan, the lowest of which is the southern Shibar pass () where the Hindu Kush range terminates.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Before the Salang Tunnel, another feat of engineering was the road constructed through the Tang-e Gharu gorge near Kabul, replacing the ancient Lataband Pass and greatly reducing travel time towards the Pakistani border at the Khyber Pass.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Other mountain passes are at altitudes of about or higher, including the Broghil Pass at 12460 feet in Pakistan, and the Dorah Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan at 14,000 feet. Other high passes in Pakistan include the Lowari Pass at 10,200 feet, the Gomal Pass. The Darmodar Aghost Pass is at elevation of .


title: Hindu Kush

text: The Hindu Kush form the boundary between the Indus watershed in South Asia, and Amu Darya watershed in Central Asia. Melt water from snow and ice feeds major river systems in Central Asia: the Amu Darya, Helmand River (which is a major source of water for the Sistan Basin in southern Afghanistan and Iran), and the Kabul Riverthe last of which is a major tributary of the Indus River. Smaller rivers with headwaters in the range include the Khash, the Farah and the Arashkan (Harut) rivers. The basins of these rivers serve the ecology and economy of the region, but the water flow in these rivers greatly fluctuates, and reliance on these has been a historical problem with extended droughts being commonplace. The eastern end of the range, with the highest peaks, high snow accumulation allows to long-term water storage.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Geologically, the range is rooted in the formation of the subcontinent from a region of Gondwana that drifted away from East Africa about 160 million years ago, around the Middle Jurassic period. The Indian subcontinent, Australia and islands of the Indian Ocean rifted further, drifting northeastwards, with the Indian subcontinent colliding with the Eurasian Plate nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Palaeocene. This collision created the Himalayas, including the Hindu Kush.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The Hindu Kush are a part of the "young Eurasian mountain range consisting of metamorphic rocks such as schist, gneiss and marble, as well as of intrusives such as granite, diorite of different age and size". The northern regions of the Hindu Kush witness Himalayan winter and have glaciers, while its southeastern end witnesses the fringe of Indian subcontinent summer monsoons.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The Hindu Kush range remains geologically active and is still rising; it is prone to earthquakes. The Hindu Kush system stretches about laterally, and its median north-south measurement is about . The mountains are orographically described in several parts. Peaks in the western Hindu Kush rise to over and stretch between Darra-ye Sekari and the Shibar Pass in the west and the Khawak Pass in the east. The central Hindu Kush peaks rise to over , and this section has numerous spurs between the Khawak Pass in the east and the Durāh Pass in the west. In 2005 and 2015 there were some major earthquakes.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The eastern Hindu Kush, also known as the "High Hindu Kush", is mostly located in northern Pakistan and the Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan with peaks over . This section extends from the Durāh Pass to the Baroghil Pass at the border between northeastern Afghanistan and north Pakistan. The Chitral District of Pakistan is home to Tirich Mir, Noshaq, and Istoro Nalthe highest peaks in the Hindu Kush. The ridges between Khawak Pass and Badakshan is over and are called the Kaja Mohammed range.


title: Hindu Kush

text: ICIMOD’s first annual regional 30-meter resolution land cover database of HKH generated using public domain Landsat images demonstrated that grassland was the most dominant land cover, followed by barren land, which includes areas with bare areas. In 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, grassland covered 37.2%, 37.6%, 38.7%, and 38.23%, respectively, of the total area of the HKH region. During the same years, the second dominant land cover was barren areas, including bare soil and bare rock. In 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, bare soil and bare rock covered 32.1, 31.37, 30.35, and 30.69%. The cropland cover in 2000 was about 5.1% and about 5.41% in 2015. Snow and glacier areas covered about 4% of the high-elevation section in 2018, while waterbodies and riverbeds/channels together accounted for 2%. The weather conditions also have an impact on the land cover patterns across the regions. In the HKH, forest cover is mostly distributed in the south and south-eastern areas, where precipitation is more; the grasslands are mostly distributed in the north and north-western parts, while cropland is mostly found in the southern part of the region.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The mountainous areas of Hindu Kush range are mostly barren or at the most sparsely sprinkled with trees and stunted bushes. From about , states Yarshater, "sclerophyllous forests are predominant with Quercus and Olea (wild olive); above that, up to a height of about one finds coniferous forests with Cedrus, Picea, Abies, Pinus, and junipers". The inner valleys of the Hindu Kush see little rain and have desert vegetation. On the other hand, Eastern Himalaya is home to multiple biodiversity hotspots, and 353 new species (242 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, two birds, two mammals and 61+ invertebrates) have been discovered there in between 1998 and 2008, with an average of 35 new species finds every year. With Eastern Himalaya included, the entire Hindu Kush Himalaya region is home to an estimated 35,000+ species of plants and 200+ species of animals.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The high altitudes of the mountains have historical significance in South and Central Asia. The Hindu Kush range was a major center of Buddhism with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. It has also been the passageway during the invasions of the Indian subcontinent, a region where the Taliban and al-Qaeda grew, and a scene of modern era warfare in Afghanistan. Ancient mines producing lapis lazuli are found in Kowkcheh Valley, while gem-grade emeralds are found north of Kabul in the valley of the Panjsher River and some of its tributaries. According to Walter Schumann, the West Hindu Kush mountains have been the source of the finest Lapis lazuli for thousands of years.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Buddhism was widespread in the ancient Hindu Kush region. The ancient artwork of Buddhism includes the giant rock-carved statues called the Bamiyan Buddhas, in the southern and western end of the Hindu Kush. These statues were destroyed by Taliban Islamists in 2001. The southeastern valleys of Hindu Kush connecting towards the Indus Valley region were a major center that hosted monasteries, religious scholars from distant lands, trade networks and merchants of the ancient Indian subcontinent.


title: Hindu Kush

text: One of the early Buddhist schools, the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda, was prominent in the area of Bamiyan. The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Lokottaravāda monastery in the 7th century CE, at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Birchbark and palm leaf manuscripts of texts in this monastery's collection, including Mahāyāna sūtras, have been discovered in the caves of Hindu Kush, and these are now a part of the Schøyen Collection. Some manuscripts are in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, while others are in Sanskrit and written in forms of the Gupta script.


title: Hindu Kush

text: According to Alfred Foucher, the Hindu Kush and nearby regions gradually converted to Buddhism by the 1st century CE, and this region was the base from where Buddhism crossed the Hindu Kush expanding into the Oxus valley region of Central Asia. Buddhism later disappeared and locals were forced to convert to Islam. Richard Bulliet also proposes that the area north of Hindu Kush was center of a new sect that had spread as far as Kurdistan, remaining in existence until the Abbasid times. The area eventually came under the control of the Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kabul. The Islamic conquest of the area happened under Sabuktigin who conquered Jayapala's dominion west of Peshawar in the 10th century.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The significance of the Hindu Kush mountain ranges has been recorded since the time of Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander entered the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush as his army moved past the Afghan Valleys in the spring of 329 BCE. He moved towards the Indus Valley river region in the Indian subcontinent in 327 BCE, his armies building several towns in this region over the intervening two years.


title: Hindu Kush

text: After Alexander died in 323 BCE, the region became part of the Seleucid Empire, according to the ancient history of Strabo written in the 1st century BCE, before it became a part of the Indian Maurya Empire around 305 BCE. The region became a part of the Kushan Empire around the start of the common era.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The lands north of the Hindu Kush, in the Hephthalite dominion, Buddhism was the predominant religion by mid 1st millennium CE. These Buddhists were religiously tolerant and they co-existed with followers of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity. This Central Asia region along the Hindu Kush was taken over by Western Turks and Arabs by the eighth century, facing wars with mostly Iranians. One major exception was the period in the mid to late seventh century when the Tang dynasty from China destroyed the Northern Turks and extended its rule all the way to the Oxus River valley and regions of Central Asia bordering all along the Hindu Kush.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The subcontinent and valleys of the Hindu Kush remained unconquered by the Islamic armies until the 9th century, even though they had conquered the southern regions of the Indus River valley such as Sind. Kabul fell to the army of Al-Ma'mun, the seventh Abbasid caliph, in 808 and the local king agreed to accept Islam and pay annual tributes to the caliph. However, states André Wink, inscriptional evidence suggests that the Kabul area near Hindu Kush had an early presence of Islam. When the extraction of silver from the mines in the Hindu Kush was at its greatest (c.850), the value of silver in relation to gold dropped, and the content of silver in the Carolingian "denarius" was increased so that it should maintain its intrinsic value.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The range came under the control of the Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kabul but was conquered by Sabuktigin who took all of Jayapala's dominion west of Peshawar.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Mahmud of Ghazni came to power in 998 CE, in Ghazna, Afghanistan, south of Kabul and the Hindu Kush range. He began a military campaign that rapidly brought both sides of the Hindu Kush range under his rule. From his mountainous Afghani base, he systematically raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030. Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries of kingdoms, sacked cities, and destroyed Hindu temples, with each campaign starting every spring, but he and his army returned to Ghazni and the Hindu Kush base before monsoons arrived in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. He retracted each time, only extending Islamic rule into western Punjab.


title: Hindu Kush

text: In 1017, the Iranian Islamic historian Al-Biruni was deported after a war that Mahmud of Ghazni won, to the northwest Indian subcontinent under Mahmud's rule. Al Biruni stayed in the region for about fifteen years, learnt Sanskrit, and translated many Indian texts, and wrote about Indian society, culture, sciences, and religion in Persian and Arabic. He stayed for some time in the Hindu Kush region, particularly near Kabul. In 1019, he recorded and described a solar eclipse in what is the modern era Laghman Province of Afghanistan through which Hindu Kush pass. Al Biruni also wrote about early history of the Hindu Kush region and Kabul kings, who ruled the region long before he arrived, but this history is inconsistent with other records available from that era. Al Biruni was supported by Sultan Mahmud. Al Biruni found it difficult to get access to Indian literature locally in the Hindu Kush area, and to explain this he wrote, "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed wonderful exploits by which the Hindus became the atoms scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. (...) This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares and other places".


title: Hindu Kush

text: In the late 12th century, the historically influential Ghurid empire led by Mu'izz al-Din ruled the Hindu Kush region. He was influential in seeding the Delhi Sultanate, shifting the base of his Sultanate from south of the Hindu Kush range and Ghazni towards the Yamuna River and Delhi. He thus helped bring Islamic rule to the northern plains of the Indian subcontinent.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta arrived in the Delhi Sultanate by passing through the Hindu Kush. The mountain passes of the Hindu Kush range were used by Timur and his army and they crossed to launch the 1398 invasion of the northern Indian subcontinent. Timur, also known as Temur or Tamerlane in Western scholarly literature, marched with his army to Delhi, plundering and killing all the way. He arrived in the capital Delhi where his army looted and killed its residents. Then he carried the wealth and the captured slaves, returning to his capital through the Hindu Kush.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, was a patrilineal descendant of Timur with roots in Central Asia. He first established himself and his army in Kabul and the Hindu Kush region. In 1526, he made his move into north India, and won the Battle of Panipat, ending the last Delhi Sultanate dynasty, and starting the era of the Mughals.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Slavery, as with all major ancient and medieval societies, has been a part of Central Asia and South Asia history. The Hindu Kush mountain passes connected the slave markets of Central Asia with slaves seized in South Asia. The seizure and transportation of slaves from the Indian subcontinent became intense in and after the 8th century CE, with evidence suggesting that the slave transport involved "hundreds of thousands" of slaves from India in different periods of Islamic rule era. According to John Coatsworth and others, the slave trading operations during the pre-Akbar Mughal and Delhi Sultanate era "sent thousands of Hindus every year north to Central Asia to pay for horses and other goods". However, the interaction between Central Asia and South Asia through the Hindu Kush was not limited to slavery, it included trading in food, goods, horses and weapons.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The practice of raiding tribes, hunting, and kidnapping people for slave trading continued through the 19th century, at an extensive scale, around the Hindu Kush. According to a British Anti-Slavery Society report of 1874, the governor of Faizabad, Mir Ghulam Bey, kept 8,000 horses and cavalrymen who routinely captured non-Muslims as well as Shia Muslims as slaves. Others alleged to be involved in the slave trade were feudal lords such as Ameer Sheer Ali. The isolated communities in the Hindu Kush were one of the targets of these slave-hunting expeditions.


title: Hindu Kush

text: In the early 19th century, the Sikh Empire expanded under Ranjit Singh in the northwest as far as the Hindu Kush range. However, the people of so-called Kafiristan practiced had ancient polytheistic traditions until the 1896 invasion and conversion to Islam at the hands of Afghans under Amir Abdur Rahman Khan.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The Hindu Kush served as a geographical barrier to the British Empire, leading to a paucity of information and scarce direct interaction between the British colonial officials and Central Asian peoples. The British had to rely on tribal chiefs, Sadozai and Barakzai noblemen for information, and they generally downplayed the reports of slavery and other violence for geo-political strategic considerations.


title: Hindu Kush

text: In the colonial era, the Hindu Kush was considered, informally, the dividing line between Russian and British areas of influence in Afghanistan. During the Cold War the Hindu Kush range became a strategic theatre, especially during the 1980s when Soviet forces and their Afghan allies fought the Afghan mujahideen channelled through Pakistan. After the Soviet withdrawal and the end of the Cold War, many mujahideen morphed into Taliban and al-Qaeda forces imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law (Sharia), with Kabul, these mountains, and other parts of Afghanistan as their base. Other Mujahideen joined the Northern Alliance to oppose the Taliban rule.


title: Hindu Kush

text: After the 11 September 2001 terror attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., the American and ISAF campaign against Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies made the Hindu Kush once again a militarised conflict zone.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The 2019 Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment concluded that between 1901 to 2014, the Hindu Kush Himalaya (or HKH) region had already experienced warming of 0.1 °C per decade, with the warming rate accelerating to 0.2 °C per decade over the past 50 years.Over the past 50 years, the frequency of warm days and nights had also increased by 1.2 days and 1.7 nights per decade, while the frequency of "extreme" warm days and nights had increased by 1.26 days and 2.54 nights per decade. There was also a corresponding decline of 0.5 cold days, 0.85 extreme cold days, 1 cold night, and 2.4 extreme cold nights per decade. The length of the growing season has increased by 4.25 days per decade. There is less conclusive evidence of light precipitation becoming less frequent while heavy precipitation became both more frequent and more intense. Finally, since 1970s glaciers have retreated everywhere in the region beside Karakoram, eastern Pamir, and western Kunlun, where there has been an unexpected increase in snowfall. Glacier retreat had been followed by an increase in the number of glacial lakes, some of which may be prone to dangerous floods.


title: Hindu Kush

text: In the future, if the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 °C of global warming is not exceeded, warming in the HKH will be at least 0.3 °C higher, and at least 0.7 °C higher in the hotspots of northwest Himalaya and Karakoram. If the Paris Agreement goals are broken, then the region is expected to warm by 1.7–2.4 °C in the near future (2036–2065) and by 2.2–3.3 °C (2066–2095) near the end of the century under the "intermediate" Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5). Under the high-warming RCP8.5 scenario where the annual emissions continue to increase for the rest of the century, the expected regional warming is 2.3–3.2 °C and 4.2–6.5 °C, respectively. Under all scenarios, winters will warm more than the summers, and the Tibetan Plateau, the central Himalayan Range, and the Karakoram will continue to warm more than the rest of the region. Climate change will also lead to the degradation of up to 81% of the region's permafrost by the end of the century.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Future precipitation is projected to increase as well, but CMIP5 models struggle to make specific projections due to the region's topography: the most certain finding is that the monsoon precipitation in the region will increase by 4–12% in the near future and by 4–25% in the long term. There has also been modelling of the changes in snow cover, but it is limited to the end of century under the RCP 8.5 scenario: it projects declines of 30–50% in the Indus Basin, 50–60% in the Ganges basin, and 50–70% in the Brahmaputra Basin, as the snowline elevation in these regions will rise by between 4.4 and 10.0 m/yr. There has been more extensive modelling of glacier trends: it is projected that one third of all glaciers in the extended HKH region will be lost by 2100 even if the warming is limited to 1.5 °C (with over half of that loss in the Eastern Himalaya region), while RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 are likely to lead to the losses of 50% and >67% of the region's glaciers over the same timeframe. Glacier melt is projected to accelerate regional river flows until the amount of meltwater peaks around 2060, going into an irreversible decline afterwards. Since precipitation will continue to increase even as the glacier meltwater contribution declines, annual river flows are only expected to diminish in the western basins where contribution from the monsoon is low: however, irrigation and hydropower generation would still have to adjust to greater interannual variability and lower pre-monsoon flows in all of the region's rivers.


title: Hindu Kush

text: A range of adaptation efforts are already undertaken across the HKH region: however, they suffer from underinvestment and insufficient coordination between the various state, institutional and other non-state efforts, and need to be "urgently" strengthened in order to be commensurate with the challenges ahead.


title: Hindu Kush

text: The 2019 Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment outlined three main "storylines" for the region between now and 2080: "business-as-usual" (or "muddling through"), with no significant change from the current trends and development/adaptation initiatives proceeding as they do now; "downhill", where the intensity of global climate change is high, local initiatives fail and regional cooperation breaks down; and "prosperous", where extensive cooperation allows region's communities to weather "moderate" climate change and increase their living standards while also preserving the region's biodiversity. In addition, it described two alternate pathways through which the "prosperous" future can be achieved: the first focuses on top-down, large-scale development and the latter describes a bottom-up, decentralized alternative.


title: Hindu Kush

text: Pre-Islamic populations of the Hindu Kush included Shins, Yeshkuns, Chiliss, Neemchas Koli, Palus, Gaware, and Krammins.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Honoré de Balzac ( , , ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence "La Comédie humaine", which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his "magnum opus".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. "La Comédie Humaine" reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska, a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love; he died in Paris six months later.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Honoré de Balzac was born into a family which aspired to achieve respectability through its industry and efforts. His father, born Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from an artisan family in Tarn, a region in the south of France. In 1760 he set off for Paris with only a "Louis" coin in his pocket, intent on improving his social standing; by 1776 he had become Secretary to the King's Council and a Freemason (he had also changed his name to the more noble sounding "Balzac", his son later adding—without official recognition—the nobiliary particle: ""de""). After the Reign of Terror (1793–94), François Balzac was despatched to Tours to coordinate supplies for the Army.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family's wealth was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and François Balzac fifty. As the author and literary critic Sir Victor Pritchett explained, "She was certainly drily aware that she had been given to an old husband as a reward for his professional services to a friend of her family and that the capital was on her side. She was not in love with her husband".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Honoré (named after Saint-Honoré of Amiens, who is commemorated on 16 May, four days before Balzac's birthday) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs; exactly one year earlier, Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Honoré's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his younger brother Henry-François in 1807.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: As an infant Balzac was sent to a wet nurse; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home. (Although Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential book "Émile" convinced many mothers of the time to nurse their own children, sending babies to wet nurses was still common among the middle and upper classes.) When the Balzac children returned home, they were kept at a frosty distance from their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. His 1835 novel "Le Lys dans la vallée" features a cruel governess named Miss Caroline, modeled after his own caregiver.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: At age ten Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. As a result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove", a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students. (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!") Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read every book which came his way.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac worked these scenes from his boyhood—as he did many aspects of his life and the lives of those around him—into "La Comédie humaine". His time at Vendôme is reflected in "Louis Lambert", his 1832 novel about a young boy studying at an Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. The narrator says : "He devoured books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history and literature, philosophy and physics. He had told me that he found indescribable delight in reading dictionaries for lack of other books."


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac often fell ill, finally causing the headmaster to contact his family with news of a "sort of a coma". When he returned home, his grandmother said: ""Voilà donc comme le collège nous renvoie les jolis que nous lui envoyons!"" ("Look how the academy returns the pretty ones we send them!") Balzac himself attributed his condition to "intellectual congestion", but his extended confinement in the "alcove" was surely a factor. (Meanwhile, his father had been writing a treatise on "the means of preventing thefts and murders, and of restoring the men who commit them to a useful role in society", in which he heaped disdain on prison as a form of crime prevention.)


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, and Honoré was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years. This was an unhappy time in his life, during which he attempted suicide on a bridge over the river Loire.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1816 Balzac entered the Sorbonne, where he studied under three famous professors: François Guizot, who later became Prime Minister, was Professor of Modern History; Abel-François Villemain, a recent arrival from the "Collège Charlemagne", lectured on French and classical literature; and, most influential of all, Victor Cousin's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Once his studies were completed, Balzac was persuaded by his father to follow him into the Law; for three years he trained and worked at the office of Victor Passez, a family friend. During this time Balzac began to understand the vagaries of human nature. In his 1840 novel "Le Notaire", he wrote that a young person in the legal profession sees "the oily wheels of every fortune, the hideous wrangling of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart grappling with the Penal Code".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1819 Passez offered to make Balzac his successor, but his apprentice had had enough of the Law. He despaired of being "a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again... I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite". He announced his intention to become a writer.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: The loss of this opportunity caused serious discord in the Balzac household, although Honoré was not turned away entirely. Instead, in April 1819 he was allowed to live in the French capital—as English critic George Saintsbury describes it—"in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him", while the rest of the family moved to a house twenty miles [32 km] outside Paris.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called "Le Corsaire", based on Lord Byron's "The Corsair". Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1820 Balzac completed the five-act verse tragedy "Cromwell". Although it pales by comparison with his later works, some critics consider it a good-quality text. When he finished, Balzac went to Villeparisis and read the entire work to his family; they were unimpressed. He followed this effort by starting (but never finishing) three novels: "Sténie", "Falthurne", and "Corsino".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1821 Balzac met the enterprising , who convinced the author to write short stories, which Le Poitevin would then sell to publishers. Balzac quickly turned to longer works, and by 1826 he had written nine novels, all published under pseudonyms and often produced in collaboration with other writers. For example, the scandalous novel "Vicaire des Ardennes" (1822)—banned for its depiction of nearly-incestuous relations and, more egregiously, of a married priest—attributed to a "Horace de Saint-Aubin". These books were potboiler novels, designed to sell quickly and titillate audiences. In Saintsbury's view, "they are curiously, interestingly, almost enthrallingly bad". Saintsbury indicates that Robert Louis Stevenson tried to dissuade him from reading these early works of Balzac. American critic Samuel Rogers, however, notes that "without the training they gave Balzac, as he groped his way to his mature conception of the novel, and without the habit he formed as a young man of writing under pressure, one can hardly imagine his producing "La Comédie Humaine"". Biographer Graham Robb suggests that as he discovered the Novel, Balzac discovered himself.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: During this time Balzac wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the Society of Jesus. The latter, regarding the Jesuits, illustrated his lifelong admiration for the Catholic Church. In the preface to "La Comédie Humaine" he wrote: "Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being ... a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In the late 1820s Balzac dabbled in several business ventures, a penchant his sister blamed on the temptation of an unknown neighbour. His first enterprise was in publishing which turned out cheap one-volume editions of French classics including the works of Molière. This business failed miserably, with many of the books "sold as waste paper". Balzac had better luck publishing the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantès, with whom he also had a love affair.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac borrowed money from his family and friends and tried to build a printing business, then a type foundry. His inexperience and lack of capital caused his ruin in these trades. He gave the businesses to a friend (who made them successful) but carried the debts for many years. As of April 1828 Balzac owed 50,000 francs to his mother.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac never lost his penchant for "une bonne spéculation". It resurfaced painfully later when—as a renowned and busy author—he traveled to Sardinia in the hopes of reprocessing the slag from the Roman mines there. Near the end of his life Balzac was captivated by the idea of cutting of oak wood in Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". The moment the idea came to him, Balzac raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to become a genius!" Although he originally called it "Etudes des Mœurs" ( literally 'Studies of manners', or 'The Ways of the World ' ) it eventually became known as "La Comédie Humaine", and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: After the collapse of his businesses, Balzac traveled to Brittany and stayed with the De Pommereul family outside Fougères. There he drew inspiration for "Les Chouans" (1829), a tale of love gone wrong amid the Chouan royalist forces. Although Balzac was a supporter of the Crown, Balzac paints the revolutionaries in a sympathetic light—even though they are the center of the book's most brutal scenes. This was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him what one critic called "passage into the Promised Land". It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of Sir Walter Scott) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Soon afterwards, around the time of his father's death, Balzac wrote "El Verdugo"—about a 30-year-old man who kills his father (Balzac was 30 years old at the time). This was the first work signed "Honoré "de" Balzac". He followed his father in the surname Balzac but added the aristocratic-sounding nobiliary particle to help him fit into respected society, a choice based on skill rather than by right. "The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power", he wrote in 1830. The timing of the decision was also significant; as Robb explained: "The disappearance of the father coincides with the adoption of the nobiliary particle. A symbolic inheritance." Just as his father had worked his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: When the July Revolution overthrew Charles X in 1830, Balzac declared himself a Legitimist, supporting King Charles' Royal House of Bourbon, but not without qualifications. He felt that the new July Monarchy (which claimed widespread popular support) was disorganized and unprincipled, in need of a mediator to keep the political peace between the King and insurgent forces. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate..." He planned to be such a candidate, appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon. But after a near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street), Balzac decided not to stand for election.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: 1831 saw the success of "La Peau de chagrin" ("The Wild Ass's Skin" or "The Magic Skin"), a fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin which promises great power and wealth. He obtains these things, but loses the ability to manage them. In the end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own confusion. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1833 Balzac released "Eugénie Grandet", his first best-seller. The tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness, it also became the most critically acclaimed book of his career. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially the bourgeois title character) are dynamic and complex. It is followed by "La Duchesse de Langeais", arguably the most sublime of his novels.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: "Le Père Goriot" ("Old Father Goriot", 1835) was his next success, in which Balzac transposes the story of "King Lear" to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society bereft of all love save the love of money. The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position—not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau, but also the fact that he had fathered a child, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, with his otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay, who had been his source of inspiration for "Eugénie Grandet".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1836 Balzac took the helm of the "Chronique de Paris", a weekly magazine of society and politics. He tried to enforce strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies. As Rogers notes, "Balzac was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from the right or the left." The magazine failed, but in July 1840 he founded another publication, the "Revue Parisienne". It produced three issues.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: These dismal business efforts—and his misadventures in Sardinia—provided an appropriate "milieu" in which to set the two-volume "Illusions perdues" ("Lost Illusions", 1843). The novel concerns Lucien de Rubempré, a young poet trying to make a name for himself, who becomes trapped in the morass of society's darkest contradictions. Lucien's journalistic work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field. "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes" ("The Harlot High and Low", 1847) continues Lucien's story. He is trapped by the Abbé Herrera (Vautrin) in a convoluted and disastrous plan to regain social status. The book undergoes a massive temporal rift; the first part (of four) covers a span of six years, while the final two sections focus on just three days.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: "Le Cousin Pons" (1847) and "La Cousine Bette" (1848) tell the story of "Les Parents Pauvres" ("The Poor Relations"). The conniving and wrangling over wills and inheritances reflect the expertise gained by the author as a young law clerk. Balzac's health was deteriorating by this point, making the completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Many of his novels were initially serialized, like those of Dickens. Their length was not predetermined. "Illusions Perdues" extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas "La Fille aux yeux d'or" ("The Girl with the Golden Eyes", 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes a closely plotted novella of only fifty pages. According to the literary critic Kornelije Kvas, "Balzac's use of the same characters (Rastignac, Vautrin) in different parts of "The Human Comedy" is a consequence of the realist striving for narrative economy".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's work habits were legendary. He wrote from 1 am to 8 am every morning and sometimes even longer. Balzac could write very rapidly; some of his novels, written with a quill, were composed at a pace equal to thirty words per minute on a modern typewriter. His preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. He often worked for fifteen hours or more at a stretch; he claimed to have once worked for 48 hours with only three hours of rest in the middle.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac revised obsessively, covering printer's proofs with changes and additions to be reset. He sometimes repeated this process during the publication of a book, causing significant expense both for himself and the publisher. As a result, the finished product quite often was different from the original text. Although some of his books never reached completion, some—such as "Les employés" ("The Government Clerks", 1841)—are nonetheless noted by critics.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Although Balzac was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant", he managed to stay in tune with the social spheres which nourished his writing. He was friends with Théophile Gautier and Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, and he was acquainted with Victor Hugo. Nevertheless, he did not spend as much time in "salons" and clubs of Paris like many of his characters. "In the first place he was too busy", explains Saintsbury, "in the second he would not have been at home there... [H]e felt it was his business not to frequent society but to create it". However he often spent long periods at the Château de Saché, near Tours, the home of his friend Jean de Margonne, his mother's lover and father to her youngest child. Many of Balzac's tormented characters were conceived in the chateau's small second-floor bedroom. Today the chateau is a museum dedicated to the author's life.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In 1833, as he revealed in a letter to his sister, Balzac entered into an illicit affair with fellow writer Maria Du Fresnay, who was then aged 24. Her marriage to a considerably older man (Charles du Fresnay, Mayor of Sartrouville) had been a failure from the outset. In this letter, Balzac also reveals that the young woman had just come to tell him she was pregnant with his child. In 1834, 8 months after the event, Maria Du Fresnay's daughter by Balzac, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, was born. This revelation from French journalist in 1955 confirmed what was already suspected by several historians: the dedicatee of the novel Eugénie Grandet, a certain "Maria", turns out to be Maria Du Fresnay herself.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: In February 1832 Balzac received an intriguing letter from Odessa—with no return address and signed simply ""L'Étrangère"" ("The Foreigner")—expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in "La Peau de Chagrin" and its negative portrayal of women. His response was to place a classified advertisement in the "Gazette de France", hoping that his anonymous critic would see it. Thus began a fifteen-year correspondence between Balzac and "the object of [his] sweetest dreams": Ewelina Hańska.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Ewelina ("née" Rzewuska) was married to a nobleman twenty years her senior, Marshal Wacław Hański, a wealthy Polish landowner living near Kyiv. It had been a marriage of convenience to preserve her family's fortune. In Balzac Countess Ewelina found a kindred spirit for her emotional and social desires, with the added benefit of feeling a connection to the glamorous capital of France. Their correspondence reveals an intriguing balance of passion, propriety and patience; Robb says it is "like an experimental novel in which the female protagonist is always trying to pull in extraneous realities but which the hero is determined to keep on course, whatever tricks he has to use".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Marshal Hański died in 1841, and his widow and her admirer finally had the chance to pursue their affections. A rival of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Balzac visited Countess Hańska in St. Petersburg in 1843 and won her heart. After a series of financial setbacks, health problems and objections from Tsar Nicholas I, the couple finally received permission to wed. On 14 March 1850, with Balzac's health in serious decline, they travelled by carriage from her family seat at Park in Volhynia to St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Berdychiv (Russia's former banking city in present-day Ukraine), where they were married by Abbot Ożarowski. The ten-hour journey to and from the ceremony took a toll on both husband and wife: her feet were too swollen to walk, and he endured severe heart trouble.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Although he married late in life, Balzac had already written two treatises on marriage: "Physiologie du Mariage" and "Scènes de la Vie Conjugale". These works lacked firsthand knowledge; Saintsbury points out that "cœlebs cannot talk of [marriage] with much authority". In late April the newly-weds set off for Paris. His health deteriorated on the way, and Ewelina wrote to her daughter about Balzac being "in a state of extreme weakness" and "sweating profusely". They arrived in the French capital on 20 May, his fifty-first birthday.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Five months after his wedding, on Sunday, 18 August 1850, Balzac died in the presence of his mother — his wife, Eve de Balzac ("formerly" Countess Hańska) had gone to bed. He had been visited that day by Victor Hugo, who later served as a pallbearer and the eulogist at Balzac's funeral.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. At his memorial service, Victor Hugo pronounced "Today we have people in black because of the death of the man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of genius". The funeral was attended by "almost every writer in Paris", including Frédérick Lemaître, Gustave Courbet, Dumas "père" and Dumas "fils", as well as representatives of the Légion d'honneur and other dignitaries.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Later, a statue (called the "Monument to Balzac") was created by the celebrated French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Cast in bronze, the Balzac Monument has stood since 1939 nearby the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse at Place Pablo-Picasso. Rodin featured Balzac in several of his smaller sculptures as well.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: The "Comédie Humaine" remained unfinished at the time of his death—Balzac had plans to include numerous other books, most of which he never started. He frequently flitted between works in progress. "Finished articles" were frequently revised between editions. This piecemeal style is reflective of the author's own life, a possible attempt to stabilize it through fiction. "The vanishing man", wrote Sir Victor Pritchett, "who must be pursued from the rue Cassini to ... Versailles, Ville d'Avray, Italy, and Vienna can construct a settled dwelling only in his work".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's extensive use of detail, especially the detail of objects, to illustrate the lives of his characters made him an early pioneer of literary realism. While he admired and drew inspiration from the Romantic style of Scottish novelist Walter Scott, Balzac sought to depict human existence through the use of particulars. In the preface to the first edition of "Scènes de la Vie privée", he wrote: "the author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works". Plentiful descriptions of décor, clothing, and possessions help breathe life into the characters. For example, Balzac's friend Henri de Latouche had a good knowledge of hanging wallpaper. Balzac transferred this to his descriptions of the Pension Vauquer in "Le Père Goriot", making the wallpaper speak of the identities of those living inside.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Some critics consider Balzac's writing exemplary of naturalism—a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism, which seeks to explain human behavior as intrinsically linked with the environment. French novelist Émile Zola declared Balzac the father of the naturalist novel. Zola indicated that whilst the Romantics saw the world through a colored lens, the naturalist sees through a clear glass—precisely the sort of effect Balzac attempted to achieve in his works.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac sought to present his characters as real people, neither fully good nor fully evil, but completely human. "To arrive at the truth", he wrote in the preface to "Le Lys dans la vallée", "writers use whatever literary device seems capable of giving the greatest intensity of life to their characters". "Balzac's characters", Robb notes, "were as real to him as if he were observing them in the outside world". This reality was noted by playwright Oscar Wilde, who said: "One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of ["Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes" protagonist] Lucien de Rubempré... It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: At the same time, the characters depict a particular range of social types: the noble soldier, the scoundrel, the proud workman, the fearless spy, the alluring mistress. That Balzac was able to balance the strength of the individual against the representation of the type is evidence of the author's skill. One critic explained that "there is a center and a circumference to Balzac's world".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's use of repeat characters, moving in and out of the "Comédie" books, strengthens the realist representation. "When the characters reappear", notes Rogers, "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from the privacy of their own lives which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see". He also used a realist technique which French novelist Marcel Proust later termed "retrospective illumination", whereby a character's past is revealed long after she or he first appears.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: A nearly infinite reserve of energy propels the characters in Balzac's novels. Struggling against the currents of human nature and society, they may lose more often than they win—but only rarely do they give up. This universal trait is a reflection of Balzac's own social wrangling, that of his family, and an interest in the Austrian mystic and physician Franz Mesmer, who pioneered the study of animal magnetism. Balzac spoke often of a "nervous and fluid force" between individuals, and Raphaël de Valentin's decline in "La Peau de Chagrin" exemplifies the danger of withdrawing from other people's company.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Representations of the city, countryside, and building interiors are essential to Balzac's realism, often serving to paint a naturalistic backdrop before which the characters' lives follow a particular course; this gave him a reputation as an early naturalist. Intricate details about locations sometimes stretch for fifteen or twenty pages. As he did with the people around him, Balzac studied these places in depth, traveling to remote locations and comparing notes that he had made on previous visits.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: The influence of Paris permeates "La Comédie": nature defers to the artificial metropolis, in contrast to descriptions of the weather and wildlife in the countryside. "If in Paris", Rogers says, "we are in a man-made region where even the seasons are forgotten, these provincial towns are nearly always pictured in their natural setting". Balzac said, "the streets of Paris possess human qualities and we cannot shake off the impressions they make upon our minds." His labyrinthine city provided a literary model used later by English novelist Charles Dickens and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. The centrality of Paris in "La Comédie Humaine" is key to Balzac's legacy as a realist. "Realism is nothing if not urban", notes critic Peter Brooks; the scene of a young man coming into the city to find his fortune is ubiquitous in the realist novel, and appears repeatedly in Balzac's works, such as "Illusions Perdues".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac visited the Château de Saché in Touraine which was owned by his friend Jean de Margonne (who was also his mother's lover), between 1830 and 1837, and wrote many of his novels in the series "La Comedie Humaine" there. It is now a museum dedicated to Balzac where one can see his writing desk and quill pen and chair.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's literary mood evolved over time from one of despondency and chagrin to that of solidarity and courage—but not optimism. "La Peau de Chagrin", among his earliest novels, is a pessimistic tale of confusion and destruction. But the cynicism declined as his "oeuvre" developed, and the characters of "Illusions Perdues" reveal sympathy for those who are pushed to one side by society. As part of the 19th-century evolution of the novel as a "democratic literary form", Balzac wrote that ""les livres sont faits pour tout le monde"" ("books are written for everybody").


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac concerned himself overwhelmingly with the darker essence of human nature and the corrupting influence of middle and high societies. His mission was to observe humankind in its most representative state, frequently wandering through the streets "incognito" among the masses of Parisian society to undertake his research. He used incidents from his life and the people around him, in works like "Eugénie Grandet" and "Louis Lambert".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac was a legitimist; in many ways, his views are the antithesis of Victor Hugo's democratic republicanism. He wrote, in his essay "Society and the Individual":


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac was influenced by the counter-revolutionary philosopher and statesman Louis de Bonald, and once remarked that "[w]hen it beheaded Louis XVI, the Revolution beheaded in his person all fathers of families." Nevertheless, his keen insight regarding working-class conditions earned him the esteem of many socialists including Marxists. Engels declared that Balzac was his favorite writer. Marx's "Das Kapital" also makes some references to the works of Balzac, and Trotsky famously read Balzac in the middle of meetings of the Central Committee, much to the consternation of his colleagues and comrades.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac influenced writers of his time and beyond. He has been compared to Charles Dickens and is considered one of Dickens' significant influences. Literary critic W. H. Helm calls one "the French Dickens" and the other "the English Balzac", while another critic, Richard Lehan, states that "Balzac was the bridge between the comic realism of Dickens and the naturalism of Zola".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Gustave Flaubert was also substantially influenced by Balzac. Praising his portrayal of society while attacking his prose style, Flaubert once wrote: "What a man he would have been had he known how to write!" While he disdained the label of "realist", Flaubert clearly took heed of Balzac's close attention to detail and unvarnished depictions of bourgeois life. This influence shows in Flaubert's work "L'éducation sentimentale" which owes a debt to Balzac's "Illusions Perdues". "What Balzac started", observes Lehan, "Flaubert helped finish".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Marcel Proust similarly learned from the Realist example; he adored Balzac and studied his works carefully, although he criticised what he perceived as Balzac's "vulgarity". Balzac's story "Une Heure de ma Vie" ("An Hour of my Life", 1822), in which minute details are followed by deep personal reflections, is a clear forebear of the style which Proust used in "À la recherche du temps perdu". However, Proust wrote later in life that the contemporary fashion of ranking Balzac higher than Tolstoy was "madness".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Perhaps the author most affected by Balzac was American expatriate novelist Henry James. In 1878 James wrote with sadness about the lack of contemporary attention paid to Balzac, and lavished praise on him in four essays (in 1875, 1877, 1902, and 1913). In 1878 James wrote: "Large as Balzac is, he is all of one piece and he hangs perfectly together". He wrote with admiration of Balzac's attempt to portray in writing "a beast with a hundred claws". In his own novels James explored more of the psychological motives of the characters and less of the historical sweep exhibited by Balzac—a conscious style preference; he stated: "the artist of the "Comédie Humaine" is half smothered by the historian". Still, both authors used the form of the realist novel to probe the machinations of society and the myriad motives of human behavior.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: William Saroyan wrote a short story about Balzac in his 1971 book, "Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody".


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac's vision of a society in which class, money and personal ambition are the key players has been endorsed by critics of both left-wing and right-wing political persuasions. Marxist Friedrich Engels wrote: "I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists and statisticians put together". Balzac has received high praise from critics as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Camille Paglia. He was also praised by James Baldwin, who said 1984: "I’m sure that my life in France would have been very different had I not met Balzac. [He taught me] the way that country and its society works." In 1970 Roland Barthes published "S/Z", a detailed analysis of Balzac's story "Sarrasine" and a key work in structuralist literary criticism. Carlos Fuentes, sometimes called "the Balzac of Mexico", cited Balzac as a major influence on his writing.


title: Honoré de Balzac

text: Balzac has also influenced popular culture. Many of his works have been made into popular films and television serials, including: Travers Vale's "Père Goriot" (1915), "Les Chouans" (1947), "Le Père Goriot" (1968 BBC mini-series), and "La Cousine Bette" (1974 BBC mini-series, starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren; 1998 film, starring Jessica Lange). Balzac is mentioned to humorous effect in Meredith Willson's musical "The Music Man". He is included in François Truffaut's 1959 film, "The 400 Blows". Truffaut believed Balzac and Proust to be the greatest French writers.


title: Jade

text: Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite (a silicate of calcium and magnesium in the amphibole group of minerals), or jadeite (a silicate of sodium and aluminium in the pyroxene group of minerals).


title: Jade

text: Jade is well known for its ornamental use in East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian art. It is commonly used in Latin America, such as Mexico and Guatemala. The use of jade in Mesoamerica for symbolic and ideological ritual was influenced by its rarity and value among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Olmecs, the Maya, and other ancient civilizations of the Valley of Mexico.


title: Jade

text: The English word "jade" is derived (via French and Latin 'flanks, kidney area') from the Spanish term (first recorded in 1565) or 'loin stone', from its reputed efficacy in curing ailments of the loins and kidneys. "Nephrite" is derived from , a Latin translation of the Spanish .


title: Jade

text: During Neolithic times, the key known sources of nephrite jade in China for utilitarian and ceremonial jade items were the now-depleted deposits in the Ningshao area in the Yangtze River Delta (Liangzhu culture 3400–2250 BC) and in an area of the Liaoning province and Inner Mongolia (Hongshan culture 4700–2200 BC). Dushan Jade (imitation jade) was being mined as early as 6000 BC. In the Yin Ruins of the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1050 BC) in Anyang, Dushan Jade ornaments were unearthed in the tomb of the Shang kings.


title: Jade

text: Jade was considered to be the "imperial gem" and was used to create many utilitarian and ceremonial objects, from indoor decorative items to jade burial suits. From the earliest Chinese dynasties to the present, the jade deposits most used were not only those of Khotan in the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang but other parts of China as well, such as Lantian, Shaanxi. There, white and greenish nephrite jade is found in small quarries and as pebbles and boulders in the rivers flowing from the Kuen-Lun mountain range eastward into the Takla-Makan desert area. The river jade collection is concentrated in the Yarkand, the White Jade (Yurungkash) and Black Jade (Karakash) Rivers. From the Kingdom of Khotan, on the southern leg of the Silk Road, yearly tribute payments consisting of the most precious white jade were made to the Chinese Imperial court and there worked into "objets d'art" by skilled artisans as jade had a status-value exceeding that of gold or silver. Jade became a favourite material for the crafting of Chinese scholars' objects, such as rests for calligraphy brushes, as well as the mouthpieces of some opium pipes, due to the belief that breathing through jade would bestow longevity upon smokers who used such a pipe.


title: Jade

text: Jadeite, with its bright emerald-green, pink, lavender, orange and brown colours was imported from Burma to China only after about 1800. The vivid green variety became known as Feicui (翡翠) or Kingfisher (feathers) Jade. It quickly became almost as popular as nephrite and a favorite of Qing Dynasty's nouveau riche, while scholars still had strong attachment to nephrite (white jade, or Khotan), which they deemed to be the symbol of a nobleman.


title: Jade

text: In the history of the art of the Chinese empire, jade has had a special significance, comparable with that of gold and diamonds in the West. Jade was used for the finest objects and cult figures, and for grave furnishings for high-ranking members of the imperial family. Due to that significance and the rising middle class in China, in 2010 the finest jade when found in nuggets of "mutton fat" jade – so-named for its marbled white consistency – could sell for $3,000 an ounce, a tenfold increase from a decade previously.


title: Jade

text: The Chinese character 玉 (yù) is used to denote the several types of stone known in English as "jade" (e.g. 玉器, jadewares), such as jadeite (硬玉, 'hard jade', another name for 翡翠) and nephrite (軟玉, 'soft jade'). But because of the value added culturally to jades throughout Chinese history, the word has also come to refer more generally to precious or ornamental stones, and is very common in more symbolic usage as in phrases like 拋磚引玉/抛砖引玉 (lit. "casting a brick (i.e. the speaker's own words) to draw a jade (i.e. pearls of wisdom from the other party)"), 玉容 (a beautiful face; "jade countenance"), and 玉立 (slim and graceful; "jade standing upright"). The character has a similar range of meanings when appearing as a radical as parts of other characters.


title: Jade

text: Jade in Japan was used for jade bracelets. It was a symbol of wealth and power. Leaders also used jade in rituals. It is the national stone of Japan.


title: Jade

text: Examples of use in Japan can be traced back to the early Jomon period about 7,000 years ago. XRF analysis results have revealed that all jade used in Japan since the Jomon period is from Itoigawa.


title: Jade

text: The jade culture that blossomed in ancient Japan respected green ones, and jade of other colors was not used. There is a theory that the reason why the meaning is that it was believed that the color of green enables the reproduction of fertility, the life, and the soul of the earth.


title: Jade

text: The use of jade and other greenstone was a long-term tradition in Korea (c. 850 BC – AD 668). Jade is found in small numbers of pit-houses and burials. The craft production of small comma-shaped and tubular "jades" using materials such as jade, microcline, jasper, etc., in southern Korea originates from the Middle Mumun Pottery Period (c. 850–550 BC). Comma-shaped jades are found on some of the gold crowns of Silla royalty (c. 300/400–668 AD) and sumptuous elite burials of the Korean Three Kingdoms. After the state of Silla united the Korean Peninsula in 668, the widespread popularisation of death rituals related to Buddhism resulted in the decline of the use of jade in burials as prestige mortuary goods.


title: Jade

text: The Jain temple of Kolanpak in the Nalgonda district, Telangana, India is home to a high sculpture of Mahavira that is carved entirely out of jade. India is also noted for its craftsman tradition of using large amounts of green serpentine or "false jade" obtained primarily from Afghanistan in order to fashion jewellery and ornamental items such as sword hilts and dagger handles.


title: Jade

text: The Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad has a wide range of jade hilted daggers, mostly owned by the former Sultans of Hyderabad.


title: Jade

text: Today, it is estimated that Myanmar is the origin of upwards of 70% of the world's supply of high-quality jadeite. Most of the jadeite mined in Myanmar is not cut for use in Myanmar, instead being transported to other nations, primarily in Asia, for use in jewelry and other products. The jadeite deposits found in Kachinland, in Myanmar's northern regions is the highest quality jadeite in the world, considered precious by sources in China going as far back as the 10th century.


title: Jade

text: Jadeite in Myanmar is primarily found in the "Jade Tract" located in Lonkin Township in Kachin State in northern Myanmar which encompasses the alluvial region of the Uyu River between the 25th and 26th parallels. Present-day extraction of jade in this region occurs at the Phakant-gyi, Maw Se Za, Tin Tin, and Khansee mines. Khansee is also the only mine that produces Maw Sit Sit, a type of jade. Mines at Tawmao and Hweka are mostly exhausted. From 1964 to 1981, mining was exclusively an enterprise of the Myanmar government. In 1981, 1985, and 1995, the Gemstone laws were modified to allow increasing private enterprise. In addition to this region, there are also notable mines in the neighboring Sagaing District, near the towns of Nasibon and Natmaw and Hkamti. Sagaing is a district in Myanmar proper, not a part of the ethic Kachin State.


title: Jade

text: Carved nephrite jade was the main commodity trade during the historical Maritime Jade Road, an extensive trading network connecting multiple areas in Southeast and East Asia. The nephrite jade was mined in east Taiwan by animist Taiwanese indigenous peoples and processed mostly in the Philippines by animist indigenous Filipinos. Some were also processed in Vietnam, while the peoples of Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia also participated in the massive animist-led nephrite jade trading network, where other commodities were also traded. Participants in the network at the time had a majority animist population. The maritime road is one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world. It was in existence for at least 3,000 years, where its peak production was from 2000 BCE to 500 CE, older than the Silk Road in mainland Eurasia. It began to wane during its final centuries from 500 CE until 1000 CE. The entire period of the network was a golden age for the diverse animist societies of the region.


title: Jade

text: Nephrite jade in New Zealand is known as "pounamu" in the Māori language (often called "greenstone" in New Zealand English), and plays an important role in Māori culture. It is considered a "taonga", or treasure, and therefore protected under the Treaty of Waitangi, and the exploitation of it is restricted and closely monitored. It is found only in the South Island of New Zealand, known as "Te Wai Pounamu" in Māori—"The [land of] Greenstone Water", or "Te Wahi Pounamu"—"The Place of Greenstone".


title: Jade

text: Pounamu taonga increase in "mana" (prestige) as they pass from one generation to another. The most prized taonga are those with known histories going back many generations. These are believed to have their own mana and were often given as gifts to seal important agreements.


title: Jade

text: Tools, weapons and ornaments were made of it; in particular adzes, the 'mere' (short club), and the hei-tiki (neck pendant). Nephrite jewellery of Maori design is widely popular with locals and tourists, although some of the jade used for these is now imported from British Columbia and elsewhere.


title: Jade

text: Pounamu taonga include tools such as toki (adzes), whao (chisels), whao whakakōka (gouges), ripi pounamu (knives), scrapers, awls, hammer stones, and drill points. Hunting tools include matau (fishing hooks) and lures, spear points, and kākā poria (leg rings for fastening captive birds); weapons such as mere (short handled clubs); and ornaments such as pendants (hei-tiki, hei matau and pekapeka), ear pendants (kuru and kapeu), and cloak pins.


title: Jade

text: Functional pounamu tools were widely worn for both practical and ornamental reasons, and continued to be worn as purely ornamental pendants (hei kakï) even after they were no longer used as tools.


title: Jade

text: Jade was a rare and valued material in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The only source from which the various indigenous cultures, such as the Olmec and Maya, could obtain jade was located in the Motagua River valley in Guatemala. Jade was largely an elite good, and was usually carved in various ways, whether serving as a medium upon which hieroglyphs were inscribed, or shaped into symbolic figurines. Generally, the material was highly symbolic, and it was often employed in the performance of ideological practices and rituals.


title: Jade

text: Jade was first identified in Canada by Chinese settlers in 1886 in British Columbia. At this time jade was considered worthless because they were searching for gold. Jade was not commercialized in Canada until the 1970s. The mining business Loex James Ltd., which was started by two Californians, began commercial mining of Canadian jade in 1972.


title: Jade

text: Mining is done from large boulders that contain bountiful deposits of jade. Jade is exposed using diamond-tipped core drills in order to extract samples. This is done to ensure that the jade meets requirements. Hydraulic spreaders are then inserted into cleavage points in the rock so that the jade can be broken away. Once the boulders are removed and the jade is accessible, it is broken down into more manageable 10-tonne pieces using water-cooled diamond saws. The jade is then loaded onto trucks and transported to the proper storage facilities.


title: Jade

text: Russia imported jade from China for a long time, but in the 1860s its own jade deposits were found in Siberia. Today, the main deposits of jade are located in Eastern Siberia, but jade is also extracted in the Polar Urals and in the Krasnoyarsk territory (Kantegirskoye and Kurtushibinskoye deposits). Russian raw jade reserves are estimated at 336 tons.


title: Jade

text: Russian jade culture is closely connected with such jewellery production as Fabergé, whose workshops combined the green stone with gold, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.


title: Jade

text: It was not until 1863 that French mineralogist Alexis Damour determined that what was referred to as "jade" could in fact be one of two different minerals, either nephrite or jadeite.


title: Jade

text: Nephrite consists of a microcrystalline interlocking fibrous matrix of the calcium, magnesium-iron rich amphibole mineral series tremolite (calcium-magnesium)-ferroactinolite (calcium-magnesium-iron). The middle member of this series with an intermediate composition is called actinolite (the silky fibrous mineral form is one form of asbestos). The higher the iron content, the greener the colour. Tremolite occurs in metamorphosed dolomitic limestones and Actinolite in metamorphic greenschists/glaucophane schists.


title: Jade

text: Jadeite is a sodium- and aluminium-rich pyroxene. The more precious kind of jade, this is a microcrystalline interlocking growth of crystals (not a fibrous matrix as nephrite is.) It only occurs in metamorphic rocks.


title: Jade

text: Both nephrite and jadeite were used from prehistoric periods for hardstone carving. Jadeite has about the same hardness (between 6.0 and 7.0 Mohs hardness) as quartz, while nephrite is slightly softer (6.0 to 6.5) and so can be worked with quartz or garnet sand, and polished with bamboo or even ground jade. However nephrite is tougher and more resistant to breakage. Among the earliest known jade artifacts excavated from prehistoric sites are simple ornaments with bead, button, and tubular shapes. Additionally, jade was used for adze heads, knives, and other weapons, which can be delicately shaped.


title: Jade

text: As metal-working technologies became available, the beauty of jade made it valuable for ornaments and decorative objects.


title: Jade

text: The name Nephrite derives from the Greek word meaning "kidney". This is because in ancient times it was believed that wearing this kind of jade around the waist could cure kidney disease.


title: Jade

text: Nephrite can be found in a creamy white form (known in China as "mutton fat" jade) as well as in a variety of light green colours, whereas jadeite shows more colour variations, including blue, brown, red, black, dark green, lavender and white. Of the two, jadeite is rarer, documented in fewer than 12 places worldwide. Translucent emerald-green jadeite is the most prized variety, both historically and today. As "quetzal" jade, bright green jadeite from Guatemala was treasured by Mesoamerican cultures, and as "kingfisher" jade, vivid green rocks from Burma became the preferred stone of post-1800 Chinese imperial scholars and rulers. Burma (Myanmar) and Guatemala are the principal sources of modern gem jadeite. In the area of Mogaung in the Myitkyina District of Upper Burma, jadeite formed a layer in the dark-green serpentine, and has been quarried and exported for well over a hundred years. Canada provides the major share of modern lapidary nephrite.


title: Jade

text: Jade may be enhanced (sometimes called "stabilized"). Some merchants will refer to these as grades, but degree of enhancement is different from colour and texture quality. In other words, Type A jadeite is not enhanced but can have poor colour and texture. There are three main methods of enhancement, sometimes referred to as the ABC Treatment System:


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The Game Awards 2021 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2021. The event was hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of The Game Awards, and was held to an invited audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 9, 2021. The preshow ceremony was hosted by Sydnee Goodman. The event was live streamed across more than 40 digital platforms. It featured musical performances from Imagine Dragons, JID, Darren Korb, and Sting, and presentations from celebrity guests including Reggie Fils-Aimé, Keanu Reeves, Ben Schwartz, and Ming-Na Wen. Activision Blizzard was excluded from the show outside of its nominated games after the company was sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing on allegations of sexual harassment and employee discrimination in July 2021; Keighley's comments about the company received some criticism.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: "Deathloop" led the show with nine nominations; it won Best Game Direction and Best Art Direction. "Forza Horizon 5" and "It Takes Two" tied for the most wins with three awards, and the latter won Game of the Year. "Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy" was awarded Best Narrative, and Maggie Robertson won Best Performance for her role as Lady Dimitrescu in "Resident Evil Village". Several new games were announced during the show, including "Alan Wake II", "", and "Sonic Frontiers", and the first full trailers for "Halo" and "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" premiered. The show was viewed by over 85 million streams, the most in its history to date. It received mixed reviews, with some praise directed at new game announcements and criticism for its length and focus on announcements over awards.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: As with previous iterations of The Game Awards, the show was hosted and produced by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley; the 30-minute preshow was hosted by Sydnee Goodman. Following the success of The Game Awards 2020—which was broadcast virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic—Keighley received suggestions to follow the same format; around mid-2021, he decided the show would return to an in-person event at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles as he "really missed the energy of people accepting their awards live and the reactions". Several safety protocols were put in place, including halving live attendance, mandating vaccines, and requiring face masks; contingency plans were also established in case of unexpected COVID-19 variants or other issues. Keighley noted an excitement to return to the in-person event, stating it was the first time in two years the industry was able to gather.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The Game Awards partnered with Spotify to produce a four-episode podcast titled "Inside the Game Awards", hosted by Keighley and featuring "IGN" Tina Amini, "Giant Bomb" Jeff Gerstmann, and "The Guardian" Keza MacDonald; it was released weekly from November 22, 2021, with episodes focusing on the history of the show and musical performances, the 2021 nominees, and a post-show recap. The Game Awards 2021 was the second show to feature Future Class, a list of individuals from across the video game industry who best represent the future of video games; the inductees included industry professionals such as Capybara Games producer Farah Coculuzzi, Xbox social marketing manager Hailey Geller, "Gayming Magazine" editor-in-chief Aimee Hart, disability rights activist Amy Kavanagh, and Deck Nine Games narrative director Felice Kuan.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The show was executive produced by Keighley and Kimmie Kim, with LeRoy Bennett serving as creative director and Richard Preuss as director. The presentation was aired on December 9, 2021, live streamed across more than 40 online platforms. The show partnered with Nodwin Gaming for distribution in India, where it was broadcast on platforms such as Disney+, Jio TV, MTV India, MX Player, and Voot. It was available to watch in the interactive environment of "Axial Tilt", built within the video game "Core"; players could interact with the red carpet before the event and a virtual party after it. Several days before the show, Alice O'Connor of "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" described the experience as "dead boring", which she said "seems perfectly fitting" for The Game Awards.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Keighley said he was reevaluating the show's relationship with Activision Blizzard after the company was sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing on allegations of sexual harassment and employee discrimination in July 2021, adding he wanted the show to support employees and developers without diminishing individual achievements; "Kotaku" Ethan Gach characterized Keighley's statement as a refusal to "take sides", and noted the show's advisory board included Activision president Rob Kostich. After some criticism, Keighley stated Activision Blizzard would not be part of the ceremony outside of its nominated games, and wrote the show was committed to "work together to build a better and a more inclusive environment".


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Before the event, some Activision Blizzard employees and supporters stood outside the Microsoft Theater in protest of the company's recent laying off of around 20 workers at subsidiary company Raven Software. Early in the show, Keighley denounced abuse in the industry; "Kotaku" Gach criticized Keighley's statement, noting he did not refer to Activision Blizzard by name and his statement failed to "meaningfully expand" on his promised commitments, and "PC Gamer" Rich Stanton described it as a "statement you expect from a producer who doesn't want to take any position that will threaten valuable industry relationships". Stanton and "Bloomberg News" Jason Schreier identified the hypocrisy of following up Keighley's statement with the announcement of a game by Quantic Dream, a studio accused of a hostile workplace culture of racism, sexism, and misconduct. Keighley stated he wanted to ensure that spreading a message was balanced with the show's upbeat nature; he said using its platform to reprimand poor behavior is "always something worth thinking about, but it's not a referendum on the industry".


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: According to Keighley, the show featured around 50 games, with new announcements "probably in the double digits"; he later claimed there would be six major reveals and several film trailers. He said it was a busy year for announcement pitches, noting the show's popularity and accessibility meant more developers and publishers sought involvement. Keighley claimed some studios had specific requests for the placement of their announcements within the show, but he decided about a month prior to allow for all submissions. He felt some of the game announcements were taking advantage of the new generation of consoles for the first time. Keighley noted the show would attempt to include related media, including television shows and films; the first full trailers for the television series "Halo" and film "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" premiered during the show. Keighley described the show as "half an awards show and half a look into the future". Announcements on released and upcoming games were made for:


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Nominees were announced on November 16, 2021. Any game released for public consumption on or before November 19, 2021 was eligible for consideration. The nominees were compiled by a jury panel composed of members from 103 media outlets globally. Winners were determined between the jury (90 percent) and public voting (10 percent); the latter was held via the official website and on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Bilibili until December 8. The exception is the Players' Voice award, fully nominated and voted-on by the public; the winner was announced on December 8 after three rounds of voting. Specialized juries decided the nominees and winners for categories such as accessibility and esports. Voting for the best esports team category was also held through the show's Discord server and through direct messages on Twitter. More than 23.2 million votes were submitted on the official website, a 27 percent increase over the previous year.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Keighley found his ownership of the show led to him receiving blame for snubs in nominations, despite not being involved in the voting process. Regarding potential winners, Keighley felt "it's kind of anyone's game this year" but, as the show's producer, he prefers shows like The Game Awards 2018 with the rivalry between "God of War" and "Red Dead Redemption 2". He noted future shows could see the addition of awards for adaptations and user-generated content, but felt "there's just not enough yet".


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: "Deathloop" received the most nominations with nine. Other games with multiple nominations included "It Takes Two" and "" with six, and "Psychonauts 2" and "Resident Evil Village" with five. Xbox Game Studios led the publishers with thirteen nominations, followed by Sony Interactive Entertainment and Electronic Arts with eleven, and Bethesda Softworks and Square Enix with ten.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: "Forza Horizon 5" and "It Takes Two" led the show with three wins each, followed by "Deathloop", "Final Fantasy XIV", and "" with two awards each. Square Enix and Xbox Game Studios won a total of five awards each, while Electronic Arts won three.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or introduced trailers. All other awards were presented by Keighley or Goodman.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The following individuals or groups performed musical numbers. All performances were backed by the Game Awards Orchestra, conducted by Lorne Balfe.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Some journalists felt "Forza Horizon 5" and "Returnal" were snubbed in the nominations for the show's Game of the Year category. "Den of Geek" Matthew Byrd criticized the absence of nominations for "The Forgotten City" in Best Narrative, "Hitman 3" in Best Action/Adventure Game, and "Unpacking" in Best Independent Game, and felt "Cyberpunk 2077" Best Role-Playing Game and "Far Cry 6" Best Action Game nominations were undeserved. "Game Rant"s John Higgs similarly considered "Unpacking" among the biggest snubs. "TheGamer"s Josh Coulson felt "The Forgotten City", "Lost Judgment", and "MLB The Show 21" were unrecognized, and Keanu Reeves deserved a nomination for his role as Johnny Silverhand in "Cyberpunk 2077". Rachel Kaser of "VentureBeat" praised the diversity of the Best Performance nominees.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: The show received a mixed reception from media publications. "Push Square" Liam Croft enjoyed the new announcements, noting they continued to improve each year. BBC's Steffan Powell considered the announcement of "Wonder Woman" the biggest surprise, and "Kotaku" Ari Notis found "Have a Nice Death" to be among the best reveals. "VentureBeat" Dean Takahashi praised the announcements, describing "The Matrix Awakens" as "one of the most inspiring demos of the show", and felt the winners were well-deserved and focused on "innovation and gameplay over brands"; he noted the show proved the mainstream success of the video game industry with presenters and performers like Reeves, Liu, Sting, and Imagine Dragons. Kellen Browning of "The New York Times" called the show "a victory lap of sorts for the video game community", identifying its crossover with other entertainment mediums.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Schreier of "Bloomberg News" described the show as "an exhausting experience" after 2020's virtual ceremony, and heard in-person audience members complaining about the "non-stop barrage of trailers" and the show's length. From "The Washington Post", Nathan Grayson claimed the crowd stopped paying attention towards the end of the show, and Shannon Liao said some were leaving the venue at least ten minutes before the conclusion; Grayson described some of the presenters' speeches as "jokey, canned", and felt the show was missing "unexpected live moments that capture everybody's attention" like previous ceremonies. "Eurogamer"s Wesley Yin-Poole echoed the latter sentiment, and wrote "the awards part of The Game Awards felt rushed". Todd Marten of the "Los Angeles Times" similarly felt the ceremony spent more time on announcements than awards, and criticized the lack of activism compared to the backlash of other awards shows like the Academy Awards and Golden Globes; he enjoyed the "Halo" television series preview and the performances of Imagine Dragons and Sting, but lambasted Doug Bowser's "Metroid Dread" acceptance speech as "hit-the-snooze-button marketing talking points". "PC Gamer" Stanton felt the show needed to halve its length and focus solely on announcements to become "the true digital E3". Gavin Lane of "Nintendo Life" disliked that, despite the show's length, several awards were presented during the preshow.


title: The Game Awards 2021

text: Over 85 million livestreams were used to view the ceremony, the most in the show's history to date. On Twitch, the show received a total of 3.35 million viewers, including co-streams from participating channels, and performance on the show's official YouTube channel increased by 14 percent over the previous year, with more than 1.75 million hours watched. On Twitter, 1.6 million tweets were made about the event—the most in the show's history—and it topped the trends for the eighth year in a row, with a peak of 11 of the top 30 trends related to the show.


title: Ataxia

text: Ataxia is a neurological sign consisting of lack of voluntary coordination of muscle movements that can include gait abnormality, speech changes, and abnormalities in eye movements. Ataxia is a clinical manifestation indicating dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum. Ataxia can be limited to one side of the body, which is referred to as hemiataxia. Several possible causes exist for these patterns of neurological dysfunction. Dystaxia is a mild degree of ataxia. Friedreich's ataxia has gait abnormality as the most commonly presented symptom. The word is from Greek α- [a negative prefix] + -τάξις [order] = "lack of order".


title: Ataxia

text: The term cerebellar ataxia is used to indicate ataxia due to dysfunction of the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for integrating a significant amount of neural information that is used to coordinate smoothly ongoing movements and to participate in motor planning. Although ataxia is not present with all cerebellar lesions, many conditions affecting the cerebellum do produce ataxia. People with cerebellar ataxia may have trouble regulating the force, range, direction, velocity, and rhythm of muscle contractions. This results in a characteristic type of irregular, uncoordinated movement that can manifest itself in many possible ways, such as asthenia, asynergy, delayed reaction time, and dyschronometria. Individuals with cerebellar ataxia could also display instability of gait, difficulty with eye movements, dysarthria, dysphagia, hypotonia, dysmetria, and dysdiadochokinesia. These deficits can vary depending on which cerebellar structures have been damaged, and whether the lesion is bi- or unilateral.


title: Ataxia

text: People with cerebellar ataxia may initially present with poor balance, which could be demonstrated as an inability to stand on one leg or perform tandem gait. As the condition progresses, walking is characterized by a widened base and high stepping, as well as staggering and lurching from side to side. Turning is also problematic and could result in falls. As cerebellar ataxia becomes severe, great assistance and effort are needed to stand and walk. Dysarthria, an impairment with articulation, may also be present and is characterized by "scanning" speech that consists of slower rate, irregular rhythm, and variable volume. Also, slurring of speech, tremor of the voice, and ataxic respiration may occur. Cerebellar ataxia could result with incoordination of movement, particularly in the extremities. Overshooting (or hypermetria) occurs with finger-to-nose testing and heel to shin testing; thus, dysmetria is evident. Impairments with alternating movements (dysdiadochokinesia), as well as dysrhythmia, may also be displayed. Tremor of the head and trunk (titubation) may be seen in individuals with cerebellar ataxia.


title: Ataxia

text: Dysmetria is thought to be caused by a deficit in the control of interaction torques in multijoint motion. Interaction torques are created at an associated joint when the primary joint is moved. For example, if a movement required reaching to touch a target in front of the body, flexion at the shoulder would create a torque at the elbow, while extension of the elbow would create a torque at the wrist. These torques increase as the speed of movement increases and must be compensated and adjusted for to create coordinated movement. This may, therefore, explain decreased coordination at higher movement velocities and accelerations.


title: Ataxia

text: The term sensory ataxia is used to indicate ataxia due to loss of proprioception, the loss of sensitivity to the positions of joint and body parts. This is generally caused by dysfunction of the dorsal columns of the spinal cord, because they carry proprioceptive information up to the brain. In some cases, the cause of sensory ataxia may instead be dysfunction of the various parts of the brain that receive positional information, including the cerebellum, thalamus, and parietal lobes.


title: Ataxia

text: Sensory ataxia presents itself with an unsteady "stomping" gait with heavy heel strikes, as well as a postural instability that is usually worsened when the lack of proprioceptive input cannot be compensated for by visual input, such as in poorly lit environments.


title: Ataxia

text: Physicians can find evidence of sensory ataxia during physical examination by having patients stand with their feet together and eyes shut. In affected patients, this will cause the instability to worsen markedly, producing wide oscillations and possibly a fall; this is called a positive Romberg's test. Worsening of the finger-pointing test with the eyes closed is another feature of sensory ataxia. Also, when patients are standing with arms and hands extended toward the physician, if the eyes are closed, the patients' fingers tend to "fall down" and then be restored to the horizontal extended position by sudden muscular contractions (the "ataxic hand").


title: Ataxia

text: The term vestibular ataxia is used to indicate ataxia due to dysfunction of the vestibular system, which in acute and unilateral cases is associated with prominent vertigo, nausea, and vomiting. In slow-onset, chronic bilateral cases of vestibular dysfunction, these characteristic manifestations may be absent, and dysequilibrium may be the sole presentation.


title: Ataxia

text: The three types of ataxia have overlapping causes, so can either coexist or occur in isolation. Cerebellar ataxia can have many causes despite normal neuroimaging.