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Alexis Carrel | short description | thumb|Carrel in 1912
Alexis Carrel (; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who spent most of his scientific career in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. Carrel was also a pioneer in tissue culture, transplantology and thoracic surgery. He is known for his leading role in implementing eugenic policies in Vichy France.Sade, Robert M. MD. Alexis Carrel, Pioneer Surgeon Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.(see Reggiano (2002) as well as Caillois, p. 107) |
Alexis Carrel | Biography | Biography
Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he had become an agnostic by the time he became a university student. He studied medicine at the University of Lyon.
Working as an intern at a Lyon hospital, he developed a technique for suturing small blood vessels using extremely fine needles. He published his first scientific article about this method in 1902.
In 1902, Carrel underwent a transformative experience that led him from being a skeptic of the reported visions and miracles at Lourdes to a believer in spiritual cures. This conversion came about after he witnessed the inexplicable healing of Marie Bailly, who then identified Carrel as the principal witness of her cure. Despite facing opposition from his peers in the medical community, Carrel refused to dismiss a supernatural explanation for the event. His beliefs proved to be a hindrance to his career and reputation in academic medicine in France, and as a result he left France for Canada. Carrel would write a book about the case The Voyage to Lourdes, which was released four years after his death.Alexis Carrel, The Voyage to Lourdes (New York, Harper & Row, 1950).
Shortly after arriving in Canada, he accepted a position at the University of Chicago. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head. Carrel would be awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for these efforts.
In 1906, he joined the newly formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career.Reggiani There he did significant work on tissue cultures with pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows.
In World War I, Carrel served as a major in the French Army medical Corps. During this time he developed the popular Carrel-Dakin method for treating wounds.
In the 1930s, Carrel and Charles Lindbergh became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law's heart, damaged by rheumatic fever, could be repaired. When Lindbergh saw the crudeness of Carrel's machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel's ideals after his death.
In 1939, Carrel returned to France and took a position with the French Ministry of Health. Due to his close proximity with Jacques Doriot's fascist Parti Populaire Français (PPF) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaboration, but died before the trial.
In his later life he returned to his Catholic roots. In 1939, he met with Trappist monk Alexis Presse on a recommendation. Although Carrel was skeptical about meeting with a priest, Presse ended up having a profound influence on the rest of Carrel's life. In 1942, he said "I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all the Catholic Church teaches." He summoned Presse to administer the Catholic Sacraments on his death bed in November 1944.
For much of his life, Carrel and his wife spent their summers on the which they owned. After he and Lindbergh became close friends, Carrel persuaded him to also buy a neighboring island, the Ile Illiec, where the Lindberghs often resided in the late 1930s. |
Alexis Carrel | Contributions to science | Contributions to science |
Alexis Carrel | Vascular suture | Vascular suture
Carrel was a young surgeon who was deeply affected by the 1894 assassination of the French president, Sadi Carnot, who died from a severed portal vein that surgeons believed was irreparable. This tragedy inspired Carrel to develop new techniques for suturing blood vessels, such as the "triangulation" technique using three stay-sutures to minimize damage to the vascular wall during suturing. Carrel learned this technique from an embroideress, and later incorporated it into his work. According to Julius Comroe, Carrel performed every feat and developed every technique in vascular surgery using experimental animals between 1901 and 1910, leading to his great success in reconnecting arteries and veins and performing surgical grafts. These achievements earned him the Nobel Prize in 1912. |
Alexis Carrel | Wound antisepsis | Wound antisepsis
During World War I (1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel–Dakin method of treating wounds with an antiseptic solution based on chlorine, known as Dakin's solution. This method, which involved wound debridement and irrigation with a high volume of antiseptic fluid, was a significant medical advancement in the absence of antibiotics. For his contributions, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur. The Carrel–Dakin method became widely used in hospitals. The mechanical irrigation technique developed by Carrel is still used today.Henry D. Dakin (1915): "On the use of certain antiseptic substances in the treatment of infected wounds". British Medical Journal, volume 2, issue 2852, pp. 318–310.H. D. Dakin and E. K. Kunham (1918). A Handbook of Antiseptics. Published by Macmillan, New York.H. D. Dakin (1915): Comptes rendues de la Academie des Sciences, CLXI, p. 150. Cited by Marcel Dufresne, Presse médicale (1916)thumb|Photograph of a ward of the Rockefeller War Demonstration Hospital. |
Alexis Carrel | Organ transplants | Organ transplants
Carrel co-authored a book with pilot Charles Lindbergh, The Culture of Organs. Together, they developed the perfusion pump in the mid-1930s, which made it possible for organs to remain viable outside of the body during surgical procedures. This innovation is considered to be a significant advancement in the fields of open-heart surgery and organ transplantation, and it paved the way for the development of the artificial heart, which became a reality many years later. Although some critics accused Carrel of exaggerating Lindbergh's contributions to gain publicity, other sources indicate that Lindbergh played a significant role in the device's development. In recognition of their groundbreaking work, both Carrel and Lindbergh appeared on the cover of Time magazine on June 13, 1938. |
Alexis Carrel | Tissue culture and cellular senescence | Tissue culture and cellular senescence
Carrel developed methods to keep animal tissues alive in culture. He was interested in the phenomenon of senescence or aging. He believed that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, which became a widely accepted view in the early 20th century. page 24. In 1912, Carrel began an experiment at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where he cultured tissue from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design. He supplied the culture with nutrients regularly and maintained it for over 20 years, longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. This experiment received significant popular and scientific attention, but it was never successfully replicated.
In the 1960s, Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead proposed the concept of the Hayflick limit, which states that differentiated cells undergo only a limited number of divisions before dying. Hayflick suggested that Carrel's daily feeding of nutrients continually introduced new living cells to the culture, resulting in anomalous results. J. A. Witkowski argued that the deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel's knowledge, could also explain the results.
Despite the doubts surrounding Carrel's experiment, it remains an important part of scientific history, and his work on tissue culture had a significant impact on the development of modern medicine. |
Alexis Carrel | Honors | Honors
Carrel was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1909 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. Carrel was a member of learned societies in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy, and Greece, and was elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He also received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast, Princeton University, Brown University, and Columbia University.
In 1972, the Swedish Post Office honored Carrel with a stamp that was part of its Nobel stamp series.The Nobel Stamps of 1972 Seven years later, in 1979, the lunar crater Carrel was named after him as a tribute to his breakthroughs. In February 2002, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's birth, the Lindbergh-Carrel Prize was established by the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston. Michael DeBakey and nine other scientists were the first recipients of the prise, a bronze statuette, named "Elisabeth" after Elisabeth Morrow, the sister of Lindbergh's wife Anne Morrow who died from heart disease. Lindbergh's frustration with the limitations of medical technology, specifically the lack of an artificial heart pump for heart surgery, led him to reach out to Carrel. |
Alexis Carrel | ''Man, the Unknown'' (1935, 1939) | Man, the Unknown (1935, 1939)
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In 1935, Carrel's book, L'Homme, cet inconnu (Man, the Unknown), became a best-seller. The book attempted to comprehensively outline what is known, and unknown, of the human body and human life "in light of discoveries in biology, physics, and medicine", to shed light on the problems of the modern world, and to provide possible routes to a better life for human beings.
In the book, Carrel argued that humans of "poor quality" were outbreeding those of good quality and causing the "enfeeblement of the white races." He advocated for an elite group of intellectuals to guide mankind and to incorporate eugenics into the social framework. He argued for an aristocracy that would come from individuals of potential and advocated for euthanasia for criminals and the criminally insane. Notably, Carrel's endorsement of euthanasia for criminals and the criminally insane was published in the mid-1930s, prior to the implementation of death camps and gas chambers in Nazi Germany.
In the 1936 German introduction of his book, Carrel added praise for the Nazi regime at the publisher's request, which did not appear in other language editions.As quoted by Andrés Horacio Reggiani: God's eugenicist. Alexis Carrel and the sociobiology of decline. Berghahn Books, Oxford 2007, p. 71. See Der Mensch, das unbekannte Wesen. DVA, Stuttgart 1937. After the second world war the book and his role with the Vichy regime would stain his reputation such that his name was removed from streets in more than 20 French cities and the Alexis Carrel Medical Faculty in Lyon was renamed in 1996. |
Alexis Carrel | French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems | French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems
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In 1937, Carrel joined the Centre d'Etudes des Problèmes Humains, which was led by Jean Coutrot. Coutrot's goal was to develop what he called an "economic humanism" through "collective thinking." However, in 1941, Carrel went on to advocate for the creation of the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems (Fondation Française pour l'Etude des Problèmes Humains). This foundation was created by decree of the Vichy regime in 1941, and Carrel served as a "regent." Carrel's connections to the cabinet of Vichy France president Philippe Pétain, specifically French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier, helped pave the way for the creation of the foundation.
The foundation played a significant role in the establishment of the field of occupational medicine, which was institutionalized by the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) through the 11 October 1946 law. The foundation's efforts were not limited to occupational medicine and extended to other areas such as demographics, economics, nutrition, habitation, and opinion polls. Notable figures associated with the foundation's work include Robert Gessain, Paul Vincent, Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, François Perroux, Jean Sutter, and Jean Stoetzel. The foundation achieved several notable accomplishments throughout its history. It played a crucial role in the promotion of the 16 December 1942 Act, which mandated the use of a prenuptial certificate before marriage. This certificate aimed to ensure the good health of spouses, particularly regarding sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and "life hygiene." Additionally, the institute created the livret scolaire, a document that recorded the grades of French secondary school students, allowing for the classification and selection of students based on academic performance.
Gwen Terrenoire's book, "Eugenics in France (1913–1941): a review of research findings," describes the Foundation for the Study of Human Problems as a pluridisciplinary center that employed approximately 300 researchers, primarily statisticians, psychologists, and physicians, from the summer of 1942 until the end of autumn 1944. Following the liberation of Paris, Alexis Carrel, the founder, was suspended by the Minister of Health, and he died in November 1944. The Foundation underwent a purge and emerged shortly afterward as the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED), which is still active today.Gwen Terrenoire, "Eugenics in France (1913–1941) a review of research findings", Joint Programmatic Commission UNESCO-ONG Science and Ethics, 2003 Although Carrel had died, most of his team transferred to INED, which was headed by demographer Alfred Sauvy, who coined the term "Third World." Other team members joined the Institut national d'hygiène (National Hygiene Institute), later known as INSERM. |
Alexis Carrel | See also | See also
HeLa |
Alexis Carrel | Notes | Notes |
Alexis Carrel | References | References |
Alexis Carrel | Citations | Citations |
Alexis Carrel | Cited sources | Cited sources
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Alexis Carrel | Further reading | Further reading
David Zane Mairowitz. "Fascism à la mode: in France, the far right presses for national purity", Harper's Magazine; 10/1/1997
Terrenoire, Gwen, CNRS. Eugenics in France (1913–1941) : a review of research findings, Joint Programmatic Commission UNESCO-ONG Science and Ethics, 24 March 2003 (Comité de Liaison ONG-UNESCO)
Borghi L. (2015) "Heart Matters. The Collaboration Between Surgeons and Engineers in the Rise of Cardiac Surgery". In: Pisano R. (eds) A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 53–68 |
Alexis Carrel | External links | External links
including the Nobel Lecture on 11 December 1912 Suture of Blood-Vessels and Transplantation of Organs
Research Foundation entitled to Alexis Carrel
Time, 16 October 1944
Death of Alexis Carrel, Time, 13 November 1944
Category:1873 births
Category:1944 deaths
Category:French eugenicists
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism
Category:French Nobel laureates
Category:Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
Category:French Roman Catholics
Category:French collaborators with Nazi Germany
Category:Knights of the Legion of Honour
Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Category:Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925)
Category:Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Category:Honorary members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Category:People from Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
Category:French fascists
Category:French vascular surgeons
Category:History of transplant surgery
Category:Rockefeller University people
Category:20th-century French physicians
Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society
Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
Alexis Carrel | Table of Content | short description, Biography, Contributions to science, Vascular suture, Wound antisepsis, Organ transplants, Tissue culture and cellular senescence, Honors, ''Man, the Unknown'' (1935, 1939), French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, See also, Notes, References, Citations, Cited sources, Further reading, External links |
All Souls' Day | short description | All Souls' Day, also called The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, is a day of prayer and remembrance for the faithful departed, observed by Christians on 2 November. In Western Christianity, including Roman Catholicism and certain parts of Lutheranism and Anglicanism, All Souls' Day is the third day of Allhallowtide, after All Saints' Day (1 November) and All Hallows' Eve (31 October). Before the standardization of Western Christian observance on 2 November by St. Odilo of Cluny in the 10th century, many Roman Catholic congregations celebrated All Souls' Day on various dates during the Easter season as it is still observed in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Eastern Catholic churches and the Eastern Lutheran churches. Churches of the East Syriac Rite (Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East, Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Chaldean Catholic Church), (Syriac Catholic Church). commemorate all the faithful departed on the Friday before Lent. As with other days of the Allhallowtide season, popular practices for All Souls Day include attending Mass offered for the souls of the faithful departed, as well as Christian families visiting graveyards in order to pray and decorate their family graves with garlands, flowers, candles and incense. Given that many Christian cemeteries are interdenominational in nature, All Souls Day observances often have an ecumenical dimension, with believers from various Christian denominations praying together and cooperating to adorn graves. |
All Souls' Day | In other languages | In other languages
Known in Latin as Commemoratio Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum, All Souls' Day is known
in other Germanic languages as Allerseelen (German), Allerzielen (Dutch), Alla själars dag (Swedish), and Alle Sjæles Dag (Danish);
in the Romance languages as Dia de Finados or Dia dos Fiéis Defuntos (Portuguese), Commémoration de tous les fidèles Défunts (French), Día de los Fieles Difuntos (Spanish), Commemorazione di tutti i fedeli defunti (Italian), and Ziua morților or Luminația (Romanian);
in the Slavic languages as Wspomnienie Wszystkich Wiernych Zmarłych or Zaduszki (Polish), Vzpomínka na všechny věrné zesnulé, Památka zesnulých or Dušičky (Czech), Pamiatka zosnulých or Dušičky (Slovak), Spomen svih vjernih mrtvih (Croatian), and День всех усопших верных or День поминовения всех усопших (Den' vsekh usopshikh vernykh; Den' pominoveniya vsekh usopshih) (Russian)
in the or
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and in . |
All Souls' Day | Background | Background
thumb|Nun visiting a graveyard at All Souls' Day
In the Catholic Church, "the faithful" refers essentially to baptized Catholics; "all souls" commemorates the church penitent of souls in purgatory, whereas "all saints" commemorates the church triumphant of saints in heaven. In the liturgical books of the Latin Church it is called the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (). The Catholic Church teaches that the purification of the souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the faithful on earth. Its teaching is based also on the practice of prayer for the dead mentioned as far back as 2 Maccabees 12:42–46. The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls which, on departing from the body, are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, alms, deeds, and especially by the sacrifice of the Holy Mass.
In the Lutheranism, "the whole people of God in Christ Jesus" are seen as saints and All Souls Day commemorates those believers who have died as the 'faithful departed'.
The United Protestant tradition emphasizes "the Christian belief in bodily resurrection and eternal life" in observances of All Souls Day.
All Souls Day is seen by many Christian leaders are one in which ecumenism is celebrated, given that believers from various denominations collectively visit Christian cemeteries that are interdenominational in nature. Christians from the Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist and Baptist denominations often come together to clean, repair and then decorate graveyards together. Ecumenical prayer services are often held at Christian cemeteries on All Souls Day. |
All Souls' Day | Observance by Christian denomination | Observance by Christian denomination |
All Souls' Day | Western Christianity | Western Christianity
thumbnail|All Souls' Day, painting by Jakub Schikaneder, 1888 |
All Souls' Day | History | History
In Western Christianity, there is ample evidence of the custom of praying for the dead in the inscriptions of the catacombs, with their constant prayers for the peace of the souls of the departed and in the early liturgies, which commonly contain commemorations of the dead. Tertullian, Cyprian and other early Western Fathers witness to the regular practice of praying for the dead among the early Christians.
In the sixth century, it was customary in Benedictine monasteries to hold a commemoration of the deceased members at Whitsuntide. In the time of St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) who lived in what is today Spain, the Monday after Pentecost was designated to remember the deceased. At the beginning of the ninth century, Abbot Eigil of Fulda set 17 December as commemoration of all deceased in part of what is today Germany.
According to Widukind of Corvey (c. 975), there also existed a ceremony praying for the dead on 1 October in Saxony. But it was the day after All Saints' Day that Saint Odilo of Cluny chose when in the 11th century he instituted for all the monasteries dependent on the Abbey of Cluny an annual commemoration of all the faithful departed, to be observed with alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the relief of the suffering souls in purgatory. Odilo decreed that those requesting a Mass be offered for the departed should make an offering for the poor, thus linking almsgiving with fasting and prayer for the dead.
The 2 November date and customs spread from the Cluniac monasteries to other Benedictine monasteries and thence to the Western Church in general. The Diocese of Liège was the first diocese to adopt the practice under Bishop Notger (d. 1008). 2 November was adopted in Italy and Rome in the thirteenth century.
In the 15th century the Dominicans instituted a custom of each priest offering three Masses on the Feast of All Souls. During World War I, given the great number of war dead and the many destroyed churches where Mass could no longer be said, Pope Benedict XV, granted all priests the privilege of offering three Masses on All Souls' Day. |
All Souls' Day | Roman Catholicism | Roman Catholicism
thumb|left|All Saints' Day at Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm. The graves are lighted with votive lights.
If 2 November falls on a Sunday, All Souls' Day is observed on that day. In the Liturgy of the hours of All Souls' day the sequence Dies irae can be used ad libitum. Every priest is allowed to celebrate three holy Masses on All Souls' Day.
In Divine Worship: The Missal, used by members of the Anglican Ordinariates, the minor propers (Introit, Gradual, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion) are those used for Renaissance and Classical musical requiem settings, including the Dies Irae. This permits the performance of traditional requiem settings in the context of the Divine Worship Form of the Roman Rite on All Souls' Day as well as at funerals, votive celebrations of all faithful departed, and anniversaries of deaths.Divine Worship: The Missal, pp. 871–875, 1024–1032
In the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, as well as in the Personal Ordinariates established by Benedict XVI for former Anglicans, it remains on 2 November if this date falls on a Sunday;Roman Missal, "The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed", and "Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar", 59Divine Worship: The Missal, "Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls)", p. 871 in the 1962–1969 form of the Roman Rite, use of which is still authorized, it is transferred to Monday, 3 November.Missale Romanum 1962, Rubricæ generales, "De dierum liturgicorum occurentia accidentali eorumque translatione", 96b
According to the sacred tradition of the Catholic Church, from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8, it is possible to gain plenary indulgence for the benefit of the souls of the departed who are in Purgatory. |
All Souls' Day | All Souls' indulgences | All Souls' indulgences
According to the Enchiridion of Indulgences, a plenary indulgence applicable only to the souls in purgatory (commonly called the poor souls) is granted to the faithful who devoutly visit a cemetery (graveyard) and pray for the dead. The plenary indulgence can be gained between the second and ninth days of Allhallowtide (November 1–8); a partial indulgence is granted on other days of the year. In order to gain the plenary indulgence, the Christian must have received confession and absolution and the eucharist twenty days before or after visiting the graveyard, in addition to praying for the intentions of the Pope.
A plenary indulgence, applicable only to the poor souls, can be obtained by visiting a church, chapel or oratory on All Souls Day and praying the Lord's Prayer there, along with the Apostle's Creed, Athanasian Creed or Nicene Creed. Alternatively, Christians can pray the Lauds or Vespers of the Office of the Dead and the Eternal Rest prayer for the dead. |
All Souls' Day | Lutheran churches | Lutheran churches
A graveyard outside a Lutheran church in the Swedish city of Röke during Allhallowtide|250px|thumb|right
Among continental Lutherans, its tradition has been more tenaciously maintained. During Luther's lifetime, All Souls' Day was widely observed in Saxony although the Roman Catholic meaning of the day was discarded; ecclesiastically in the Lutheran Church, the day was merged with and is often seen as an extension of All Saints' Day, with many Lutherans still visiting and decorating graves on all the days of Allhallowtide, including All Souls' Day. In the Lutheran Churches, "the whole people of God in Christ Jesus" are seen as saints and All Souls Day commemorates those believers who have died as the 'faithful departed'. Just as it is the custom of French people, of all ranks and creeds, to decorate the graves of their dead on the jour des morts, Germans come to the graveyards on All Souls' Day with offerings of flowers and special grave lights. |
All Souls' Day | Anglican Communion | Anglican Communion
right|thumb|All Souls Anglican Church in the Diocese of Sydney, a parish dedicated to All Souls
In the Church of England it is called The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed and is an optional celebration; Anglicans view All Souls' Day as an extension of the observance of All Saints' Day and it serves to "remember those who have died", in connection with the theological doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the Communion of Saints.
In the Anglican Communion, All Souls' Day is known liturgically as the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, and is an optional observance seen as "an extension of All Saints' Day", the latter of which marks the second day of Allhallowtide. Historically and at present, several Anglican churches are dedicated to All Souls. During the English Reformation, the observance of All Souls' Day lapsed, although a new Anglican theological understanding of the day has "led to a widespread acceptance of this commemoration among Anglicans". Patricia Bays, with regard to the Anglican view of All Souls' Day, wrote that:
As such, Anglican parishes "now commemorate all the faithful departed in the context of the All Saints' Day celebration", in keeping with this fresh perspective. Contributing to the revival was the need "to help Anglicans mourn the deaths of millions of soldiers in World War I". Members of the Guild of All Souls, an Anglican devotional society founded in 1873, "are encouraged to pray for the dying and the dead, to participate in a requiem of All Souls' Day and say a Litany of the Faithful Departed at least once a month".
At the Reformation the celebration of All Souls' Day was fused with All Saints' Day in the Church of England or, in the judgement of some, it was "deservedly abrogated". It was reinstated in certain parishes in connection with the Oxford Movement of the 19th century and is acknowledged in United States Anglicanism in the Holy Women, Holy Men calendar and in the Church of England with the 1980 Alternative Service Book. It features in Common Worship as a Lesser Festival called "Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls' Day)". |
All Souls' Day | Reformed churches | Reformed churches
Certain Reformed (Continental Reformed, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist) churches observe All Souls Day. In All Souls Day observances by the Reformed Churches, the theological doctrine of "the Christian belief in bodily resurrection and eternal life" is emphasized, along with a remembrance of the faithful departed. Additionally, dead are remembered on the feast of Totensonntag (Totenfest), the last Sunday before Advent. It was introduced in 1816, in Prussia, and in addition to the Reformed, it is observed by Lutherans in addition to Allhallowtide, particularly in areas with a large Germanic presence. |
All Souls' Day | Methodist churches | Methodist churches
In the Methodist Church, saints refer to all Christians and therefore, on All Saints' Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation are honoured and remembered. In Methodist congregations that celebrate the liturgy on All Souls' Day, the observance, as with Anglicanism and Lutheranism, is viewed as an extension of All Saints' Day and as such, Methodists "remember our loved ones who had died" in their observance of this feast. |
All Souls' Day | Eastern Catholic, Eastern Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox | Eastern Catholic, Eastern Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox
right|thumb|Kollyva offerings of boiled wheat blessed liturgically on Soul Saturday (Psychosabbaton)
Saturday of Souls (or Soul Saturday) is a day set aside for the commemoration of the dead within the liturgical year of the Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Lutheran and Byzantine Catholic Churches. Saturday is a traditional day of prayer for the dead, because Christ lay dead in the Tomb on Saturday.
These days are devoted to prayer for departed relatives and others among the faithful who would not be commemorated specifically as saints. The Divine Services on these days have special hymns added to them to commemorate the departed. There is often a Panikhida (Memorial Service) either after the Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning or after Vespers on Friday evening, for which Koliva (a dish made of boiled wheatberries or rice and honey) is prepared and placed on the Panikhida table. After the Service, the priest blesses the Koliva. It is then eaten as a memorial by all present. |
All Souls' Day | Radonitsa | Radonitsa
Another Memorial Day in the East, Radonitsa, does not fall on a Saturday, but on either Monday or Tuesday of the second week after Pascha (Easter).S. V. Bulgakov, Handbook for Church Servers, 2nd ed., 1274 pp. (Kharkov, 1900), pp. 586–589. Tr. by Archpriest Eugene D. Tarris © 2007. Radonitsa does not have special hymns for the dead at the Divine Services. Instead a Panikhida will follow the Divine Liturgy, and then all will bring paschal foods to the cemeteries to greet the departed with the joy of the Resurrection. |
All Souls' Day | East Syriac tradition | East Syriac tradition
East Syriac churches including the Syro Malabar Church and Chaldean Catholic Church commemorates the feast of departed faithful on the last Friday of Epiphany season (which means Friday just before start of Great Lent). The season of Epiphany remembers the revelation of Christ to the world. Each Friday of Epiphany season, the church remembers important evangelistic figures.
In the Syro Malabar Church, the Friday before the parish festival is also celebrated as feast of departed faithful when the parish remembers the activities of forebears who worked for the parish and faithful. They also request the intercession of all departed souls for the faithful celebration of parish festival. In East Syriac liturgy, the church remembers departed souls including saints on every Friday throughout the year since the Christ was crucified and died on Friday. |
All Souls' Day | Popular customs | Popular customs
On All Souls Day, Christians of various denominational backgrounds, including Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists, among others, often help one another clean the graves of cemeteries, along with adorning them with flowers. The General Secretary of the Church of North India described the ecumenism present in All Souls Day, stating that "This coming together shows Christian unity". With respect to the economy, vendors "sell flowers, candles and incense sticks" to those visiting the graveyards, who are Christians of the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Prayer services with representatives from different Christian denomination for All Souls Day are held at graveyards for those visiting them.
All Souls Day emphasizes "the Christian belief in bodily resurrection and eternal life". Some All Souls' Day traditions are associated with the doctrine of the poor souls of purgatory (in Roman Catholicism) or the intermediate state (in Protestantism and Orthodoxy). Bell tolling is done in honour of the dead. Lighting candles serves variously to kindle a light for the poor souls, honour the dead, as well as to ward off demons. Soul cakes are given to children going souling—going from door to door to pray for the dead (cf. trick-or-treating, Pão-por-Deus). |
All Souls' Day | Europe | Europe
All Souls' Day is celebrated in many European countries with vigils, candles, the decoration of graves, and special prayers as well as many regional customs. Examples of regional customs include leaving cakes for departed loved ones on the table and keeping the room warm for their comfort in Tirol and the custom in Brittany, where people flock to the cemeteries at nightfall to kneel, bareheaded, at the graves of their loved ones and anoint the hollow of the tombstone with holy water or to pour libations of milk on it. At bedtime, supper is left on the table for the souls. All Souls' Day is known in Maltese as Jum il-Mejtin, and is accompanied a traditional supper including roasted pig, based on a custom of letting a pig loose on the streets with a bell around its neck, to be fed by the entire neighborhood and cooked on that day to feed the poor. In Linz, funereal musical pieces known as aequales were played from tower tops on All Souls' Day and the evening before. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia All Souls' Day is called Dušičky, or "little souls". Traditionally, candles are left on graves on Dušičky. In Sicily and other regions of southern Italy, All Souls' Day is celebrated as the Festa dei Morti or U juornu rii morti, the "Commemoration of the Dead" or the "Day of the Dead", which according to Joshua Nicolosi of the Sicilian Post could be seen "halfway between Christian and pagan traditions". Families visit and clean grave sites, home altars are decorated with family photos and votive candles, and children are gifted a special basket or cannistru of chocolates, pomegranate, and other gifts from their ancestors. Because of the gifting of sugary sweets and the emphasis on sugar puppet decorations, the Commemoration Day has spurred local Sicilian events such as the Notte di Zucchero ("Night of Sugar") in which communities celebrate the dead. (), a sweet focaccia topped with raisins, almonds, walnuts, and pine nuts, is traditionally eaten in November for All Souls' Day in the environs of Rimini, in Emilia-Romagna. |
All Souls' Day | Indian subcontinent | Indian subcontinent
thumb|A Christian woman in India decorates a grave with flower petals
In the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), Christians hold prayer services in which they pray for the faithful departed, especially remembering their loved ones. Christians of various denominations visit cemeteries and adorn graves with flower petals, garlands, candles and incense sticks. |
All Souls' Day | Philippines | Philippines
In the Philippines, Hallow mas is variously called "Undás", "Todos los Santos" (Spanish, "All Saints"), and sometimes "Araw ng mga Patay / Yumao" (Tagalog, "Day of the dead / those who have passed away"), which incorporates All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Filipinos traditionally observe this day by visiting the family dead to clean and repair their tombs. Offerings of prayers, flowers, candles, and food. Chinese Filipinos additionally burn incense and kim. Many also spend the day and ensuing night holding reunions at the cemetery with feasts and merriment. |
All Souls' Day | See also | See also
Purgatorial society
Guild of All Souls
Zaduszki
Flowering Sunday
Cemetery Sunday
Totensonntag |
All Souls' Day | References | References |
All Souls' Day | Citations | Citations |
All Souls' Day | Sources | Sources |
All Souls' Day | Further reading | Further reading
Tracey OSM, Liam. "The liturgy of All Souls Day", Catholic Ireland, 30 November 1999 |
All Souls' Day | External links | External links
Notes on Russian Orthodox observance by N. Bulgakov
N. Bulgakov
"Pope offers Mass for faithful departed on All Souls' Day", Vatican radio, 2 November 2016
Category:Allhallowtide
Category:Christianity and death
Category:Eastern Orthodox liturgical days
Category:Medieval legends
Category:Holidays based on the date of Easter
Category:November observances
Category:Observances honoring the dead |
All Souls' Day | Table of Content | short description, In other languages, Background, Observance by Christian denomination, Western Christianity, History, Roman Catholicism, All Souls' indulgences, Lutheran churches, Anglican Communion, Reformed churches, Methodist churches, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox, Radonitsa, East Syriac tradition, Popular customs, Europe, Indian subcontinent, Philippines, See also, References, Citations, Sources, Further reading, External links |
Anatole France | short description | (; born ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters."Anatole France, Great Author, Dies", The New York Times, October 13, 1924, p.1 He was a member of the Académie Française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel's literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. |
Anatole France | Early years | Early years
The son of a bookseller, France, a bibliophile, spent most of his life around books. His father's bookstore specialized in books and papers on the French Revolution and was frequented by many writers and scholars. France studied at the Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic school, and after graduation he helped his father by working in his bookstore. After several years, he secured the position of cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre. In 1876, he was appointed librarian for the French Senate. |
Anatole France | Literary career | Literary career
France began his literary career as a poet and a journalist. In 1869, Le Parnasse contemporain published one of his poems, "". In 1875, he sat on the committee in charge of the third Parnasse contemporain compilation. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote many articles and notices. He became known with the novel (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the Académie Française. thumb|left|France's home, 5 , 1894–1924
In (1893) France ridiculed belief in the occult, and in (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the . He was elected to the Académie Française in 1896.
France took a part in the Dreyfus affair. He signed Émile Zola's manifesto supporting Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage. France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret.
France's later works include Penguin Island (, 1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans – after the birds have been baptized by mistake by the almost-blind Abbot Mael. It is a satirical history of France, starting in medieval times, going on to the author's own time with special attention to the Dreyfus affair and concluding with a dystopian future. The Gods Are Athirst (, 1912) is a novel, set in Paris during the French Revolution, about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and his contribution to the bloody events of the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. It is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism and explores various other philosophical approaches to the events of the time. The Revolt of the Angels (, 1914) is often considered France's most profound and ironic novel. Loosely based on the Christian understanding of the War in Heaven, it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Bored because Bishop d'Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the bishop's books on theology and becomes an atheist. He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels, and meets the Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God. Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth." "Ialdabaoth", according to France, is God's secret name and means "the child who wanders".
thumb|France
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died on 13 October 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine Old Communal Cemetery near Paris.
On 31 May 1922, France's entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books") of the Catholic Church. He regarded this as a "distinction". This Index was abolished in 1966. |
Anatole France | Personal life | Personal life
In 1877, France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin, a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI. Their daughter Suzanne was born in 1881 (and died in 1918).
France's relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic. The affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910.
After his divorce, in 1893, France had many liaisons, notably with an American, Laura Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911 after he abandoned her.
In 1920, France married for the second time, his housekeeper Emma Laprévotte.
France had socialist sympathies and was an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party. In his book The Red Lily, France famously wrote, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread." |
Anatole France | Reputation | Reputation
thumb|Anatole France on a postage stamp of Armenia, 2015
The English writer George Orwell defended France and declared that his work remained very readable, and that "it is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motives". |
Anatole France | Works | Works |
Anatole France | Poetry | Poetry
thumb|France pictured by Jean Baptiste Guth for Vanity Fair, 1909
thumb|, illustrations by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (1900)
, poem published in 1867 in the Gazette rimée.
(1873)
(The Bride of Corinth) (1876) |
Anatole France | Prose fiction | Prose fiction
(Jocasta and the Famished Cat) (1879)
(The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard) (1881)
(The Aspirations of Jean Servien) (1882)
(Honey-Bee) (1883)
(1889)
(1890)
(Mother of Pearl) (1892)
(At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque) (1892)
(Our Children: Scenes from the Country and the Town) (1886) illustrated by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel
(The Opinions of Jerome Coignard) (1893)
(The Red Lily) (1894)
(The Well of Saint Clare) (1895)
(A Chronicle of Our Own Times)
1: (The Elm-Tree on the Mall) (1897)
2: (The Wicker-Work Woman) (1897)
3: (The Amethyst Ring) (1899)
4: (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris) (1901)
Clio (1900)
(A Mummer's Tale) (1903)
(The White Stone) (1905)
(1901)
(Penguin Island) (1908)
(The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche) (1908)
(The Seven Wives of Bluebeard and Other Marvelous Tales) (1909)
Bee The Princess of the Dwarfs (1912)
(The Gods Are Athirst) (1912)
(The Revolt of the Angels) (1914)
(1920) illustrated by Fernand Siméon |
Anatole France | Memoirs | Memoirs
(My Friend's Book) (1885)
(1899)
(Little Pierre) (1918)
(The Bloom of Life) (1922) |
Anatole France | Plays | Plays
(1898)
Crainquebille (1903)
(The Man Who Married A Dumb Wife) (1908)
(The Wicker Woman) (1928) |
Anatole France | Historical biography | Historical biography
(The Life of Joan of Arc) (1908) |
Anatole France | Literary criticism | Literary criticism
Alfred de Vigny (1869)
(1888)
(The Latin Genius) (1909) |
Anatole France | Social criticism | Social criticism
(The Garden of Epicurus) (1895)
(1902)
(1904)
(1906)
(1915)
, in four volumes, (1949, 1953, 1964, 1973) |
Anatole France | References | References |
Anatole France | External links | External links
List of Works
"Anatole France, Nobel Prize Winner" by Herbert S. Gorman, The New York Times, 20 November 1921
Correspondence with architect Jean-Paul Oury at Syracuse University
Anatole France, his work in audio version 15px
Category:1844 births
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Category:French bibliophiles
Category:Collège Stanislas de Paris alumni
Category:French fantasy writers
Category:French Nobel laureates
Category:19th-century French poets
Category:French satirists
Category:Members of the Académie Française
Category:Nobel laureates in Literature
Category:Dreyfusards
Category:19th-century French novelists
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Category:French male novelists
Category:19th-century French male writers
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Category:Burials at Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery
Category:19th-century pseudonymous writers
Category:20th-century pseudonymous writers |
Anatole France | Table of Content | short description, Early years, Literary career, Personal life, Reputation, Works, Poetry, Prose fiction, Memoirs, Plays, Historical biography, Literary criticism, Social criticism, References, External links |
André Gide | Short description | André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in the symbolist movement, to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, he was described in his obituary in The New York Times as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti."
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide expressed the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively). Gide engaged in child rape; having sex with young boys who were not of the age of consent. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints. He worked to achieve intellectual honesty. As a self-professed pederast, he used his writing to explore his struggle to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without betraying one's values. His political activity was shaped by the same ethos. While sympathetic to Communism in the early 1930s, as were many intellectuals, after his 1936 journey to the USSR he supported the anti-Stalinist left; during the 1940s he shifted towards more traditional values and repudiated Communism as an idea that breaks with the traditions of the Christian civilization. |
André Gide | Early life | Early life
thumb|left|150px|Gide in 1893
Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869 into a middle-class Protestant family. His father Jean Paul Guillaume Gide was a professor of law at University of Paris; he died in 1880, when the boy was eleven years old. His mother was Juliette Maria Rondeaux. His uncle was political economist Charles Gide. His paternal family traced its roots to Italy. The ancestral Guidos had moved to France and other western and northern European countries after converting to Protestantism during the 16th century, and facing persecution in Catholic Italy.Wallace Fowlie, André Gide: His Life and Art, Macmillan (1965), p. 11Pierre de Boisdeffre, Vie d'André Gide, 1869–1951: André Gide avant la fondation de la Nouvelle revue française (1869–1909), Hachette (1970), p. 29Jean Delay, La jeunesse d'André Gide, Gallimard (1956), p. 55
Gide was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy. He became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel The Notebooks of André Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter), in 1891, at the age of twenty-one.
In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled in Northern Africa. There he came to accept his attraction to boys and youths.If It Die: Autobiographical Memoir by André Gide (first edition 1920, Vintage Books, 1935, translated by Dorothy Bussy: "but when Ali – that was my little guide's name – led me up among the sandhills, in spite of the fatigue of walking in the sand, I followed him; we soon reached a kind of funnel or crater, the rim of which was just high enough to command the surrounding country...As soon as we got there, Ali flung the coat and rug down on the sloping sand; he flung himself down too, and stretched on his back...I was not such a simpleton as to misunderstand his invitation"..."I seized the hand he held out to me and tumbled him on to the ground." [p. 251]
Gide befriended Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Paris, where the latter was in exile. In 1895 the two men met in Algiers. Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but Gide had discovered homosexuality on his own.Out of the past, Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the present (Miller 1995:87)If It Die: Autobiographical Memoir by André Gide (first edition 1920) (Vintage Books, 1935, translated by Dorothy Bussy: "I should say that if Wilde had begun to discover the secrets of his life to me, he knew nothing as yet of mine; I had taken care to give him no hint of them, either by deed or word....No doubt, since my adventure at Sousse, there was not much left for the Adversary to do to complete his victory over me; but Wilde did not know this, nor that I was vanquished beforehand or, if you will...that I had already triumphed in my imagination and my thoughts over all my scruples." [p. 286]) |
André Gide | The middle years | The middle years
thumb|Gide photographed by Ottoline Morrell in 1924.
thumb|André Gide by Paul Albert Laurens (1924)
In 1895, after his mother's death, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he was elected mayor of La Roque-Baignard, a commune in Normandy.
Gide spent the summer of 1907 in Jersey, with friends Jacques Copeau and Théo van Rysselberghe and their families. He rented a room in La Valeuse Cottage in St Brelade. Whilst there he worked on the second chapter of Strait Is the Gate (French: La Porte étroite), and van Rysselberghe painted his portrait.
In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française (The New French Review).
During World War I, Gide visited England. One of his friends there was artist William Rothenstein. Rothenstein described Gide's visit to his Gloucestershire home in his autobiography:
In 1916, Gide was about 47 years old when he took Marc Allégret, age 15, as a lover. Marc was one of five children of Élie Allégret and his wife. Gide had become friends with the senior Allégret during his own school years when Gide's mother had hired Allégret as a tutor for her son. Élie Allégret had been best man at Gide's wedding. After Gide fled with Marc to London, his wife Madeleine burned all his correspondence in retaliation– "the best part of myself," Gide later commented.
In 1918, Gide met and befriended Dorothy Bussy; they were friends for more than 30 years, and she translated many of his works into English.
Gide also became close friends with the critic Charles Du Bos. Together they were part of the Foyer Franco-Belge, in which capacity they worked to find employment, food and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris following the 1914 German invasion of Belgium. Their friendship later declined, due to Du Bos's perception that Gide had disavowed or betrayed his spiritual faith, in contrast to Du Bos's own return to faith.
Du Bos's essay Dialogue avec André Gide was published in 1929. The essay, informed by Du Bos's Catholic convictions, condemned Gide's homosexuality. Gide and Du Bos's mutual friend Ernst Robert Curtius criticised the book in a letter to Gide, writing that "he [Du Bos] judges you according to Catholic morals suffices to neglect his complete indictment. It can only touch those who think like him and are convinced in advance. He has abdicated his intellectual liberty."
In the 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for such writers as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky. When he defended homosexuality in the public edition of Corydon (1924), he received widespread condemnation, so much so that he was blocked from being nominated to the Académie Française. He later considered this his most important work.
In 1923, Gide sired a daughter, Catherine, by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe, a much younger woman. He had known her for a long time, as she was the daughter of his friends Maria Monnom and Théo van Rysselberghe, a Belgian neo-impressionist painter. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide, and damaged his friendship with Théo van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual relationship with a woman, and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine was his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady").
Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage the practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built on the rue Vavin). She worshipped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship.
In 1924, he published an autobiography If it Die... (French: Si le grain ne meurt). In the same year, he produced the first French-language editions of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.
After 1925, Gide began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. His legal wife, Madeleine Gide, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in Et nunc manet in te, his memoir of Madeleine, published in English in the United States in 1952. |
André Gide | Africa | Africa
From July 1926 to May 1927, Gide traveled through the colony of French Equatorial Africa with his lover Marc Allégret. They went successively to Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), briefly to Chad and then to Cameroon. He kept a journal, which he published as Travels in the Congo (French: Voyage au Congo) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad).
In this work, he criticized the behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: Régime des Grandes Concessions). The government had conceded part of the colony to French companies, allowing them to exploit the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related that native workers were forced to leave their village for several weeks to collect rubber in the forest, and compared their exploitation by the companies to slavery. The book contributed to the growing anti-colonialism movements in France and helped thinkers to re-evaluate the effects of colonialism in Africa.Voyage au Congo suivi du Retour du Tchad , in Lire, July–August 1995 |
André Gide | Political views and the Soviet Union | Political views and the Soviet Union
During the 1930s, Gide briefly became a Communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any Communist party), but he, an individualist himself, advocated the idea of Communist individualism. Despite supporting the Soviet Union, he acknowledged the political repression in the USSR. Gide insisted on the release of Victor Serge, a Soviet writer and a member of the Left Opposition who was prosecuted by the Stalinist regime for his views. As a distinguished writer sympathizing with the cause of Communism, he was invited to speak at Maxim Gorky's funeral and to tour the Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet Communism. In his work, Retour de L'U.R.S.S. (Return from the USSR, 1936), he broke with such socialist friends as Jean-Paul Sartre; the book was addressed to pro-Soviet readers, so the purpose was to expose a reader to doubts instead of presenting harsh criticism. While admitting the economic and social achievements of the USSR compared to the Russian Empire, he noted the decay of culture, the erasure of the individuality of Soviet citizens, and the suppression of any dissent:
Gide does not express his attitude towards Stalin, but he describes the signs of his personality cult: "in each [home], ... the same portrait of Stalin, and nothing else"; "portrait of Stalin... , in the same place no doubt where the icon used to be. Is it adoration, love, or fear? I do not know; always and everywhere he is present."Return from the U. S. S. R. translated in English, D. Bussy (Alfred Knopf, 1937), pp. 25; 45 However, Gide wrote that these problems could be solved by raising the cultural level of Soviet society.
When Gide began preparing his manuscript for publication, the Kremlin was immediately informed about it, and soon Gide would be visited by the Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg, who said that he agreed with Gide, but asked to postpone the publication, as the Soviet Union assisted the Republicans in Spain; two days later, Louis Aragon delivered a letter from Jef Last asking to postpone the publication. These measures didn't help, and as the book was published, Gide was condemned in the Soviet press and by the "friends of the USSR": Nordahl Grieg wrote that the reason of writing the book was Gide's impatience, and that with his book he made a favour to the Fascists, who greeted it with joy. In 1937, in response, Gide published Afterthoughts on the U. S. S. R.; earlier, Gide read Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed and met Victor Serge who provided him more information about the Soviet Union.Alan Sheridan. André Gide: A Life in the Present (1999) In Afterthoughts, Gide is more direct in his criticism of the Soviet society: "Citrine, Trotsky, Mercier, Yvon, Victor Serge, Leguay, Rudolf and many others have helped me with their documentation. Everything they have taught me so far I had only suspected it – has confirmed and reinforced my fears".Afterthoughts: A Sequel to Back from the U.S.S.R (1937) The main points of Afterthoughts were that the dictatorship of the proletariat became the dictatorship of Stalin, and that the privileged bureaucracy became the new ruling class which profited by the workers' surplus labour, spending the state budget on projects like the Palace of Soviets or to raise its own standards of living, while the working class lived in extreme poverty; Gide cited the official Soviet newspapers to prove his statements.Gide answers his Bolshevik critics libcom.org
During the World War II Gide came to a conclusion that "absolute liberty destroys the individual and also society unless it be closely linked to tradition and discipline"; he rejected the revolutionary idea of Communism as breaking with the traditions, and wrote that "if civilization depended solely on those who initiated revolutionary theories, then it would perish, since culture needs for its survival a continuous and developing tradition." In Thesee, written in 1946, he showed that an individual may safely leave the Maze only if "he had clung tightly to the thread which linked him with the past". In 1947, he said that although during the human history the civilizations rose up and died, the Christian civilization may be saved from doom "if we accepted the responsibility of the sacred charge laid on us by our traditions and our past." He also said that he remained an individualist and protested against "the submersion of individual responsibility in organized authority, in that escape from freedom which is characteristic of our age."The God that failed chinhnghia.com
Gide contributed to the 1949 anthology The God That Failed. He could not write an essay because of his state of health, so the text was written by Enid Starkie, based on paraphrases of Return from the USSR, Afterthoughts, from a discussion held in Paris at l'Union pour la Verite in 1935, and from his Journal; the text was approved by Gide. |
André Gide | 1930s and 1940s | 1930s and 1940s
In 1930 Gide published a book about the Blanche Monnier case titled La Séquestrée de Poitiers, changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years.Pujolas, Marie. En tournage, un documentaire sur l'incroyable affaire de "La séquestrée de Poitiers". France TV info. Feb 27, 2015 Levy, Audrey. Destins de femmes: Ces Poitevines plus ou moins célèbres auront marqué l'Histoire. Le Point. Apr 21, 2015.
In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis from December 1942 until it was re-taken by French, British and American forces in May 1943 and he was able to travel to Algiers where he stayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952.André Gide Biography (1869–1951). eninimports.com |
André Gide | Gide's life as a writer | Gide's life as a writer
Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual:
"Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it."Alan Sheridan, p. xii. But his "capacity for love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into a concern for others less fortunate than himself."Alan Sheridan, p. 624. |
André Gide | Writings | Writings
André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters."Article on André Gide in Contemporary Authors Online 2003.
But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work."Information in this paragraph is extracted from André Gide: A Life in the Present by Alan Sheridan, pp. 629–33. "Here, as in the oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences."
Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression."Information in this paragraph is extracted from André Gide: A Life in the Present by Alan Sheridan, p. 628. "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs, Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to the narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my Journal.'''" Beginning at the age of 18 or 19, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to 1,300 pages.Journals: 1889–1913 by André Gide, trans. by Justin O'Brien, p. xii.
Struggle for values
"Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay, is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'"Quote taken from the article on André Gide in Contemporary Authors Online, 2003. Gide wrote in his Journal in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental."Journals: 1889–1913 by André Gide, trans. by Justin O'Brien, p. xvii.
As a whole, "The works of André Gide reveal his passionate revolt against the restraints and conventions inherited from 19th-century France. He sought to uncover the authentic self beneath its contradictory masks."Quote taken from the article on André Gide in the Encyclopedia of World Biography, Dec. 12, 1998, Gale Pub.
Sexuality
In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as the latter.
Gide's journal documents his behavior in the company of Oscar Wilde.
Gide's novel Corydon, which he considered his most important work, includes a defense of pederasty. At that time (before 1945), the age of consent for any type of sexual activity was set at 13.
Bibliography
See also
Mise en abyme Pederasty
References
Citations
Works cited
Edmund White, André Gide: A Life in the Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998]
Further reading
Noel I. Garde [Edgar H. Leoni], Jonathan to Gide: The Homosexual in History. New York:Vangard, 1964.
For a chronology of Gide's life, see pp. 13–15 in Thomas Cordle, André Gide (The Griffin Authors Series). Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969.
For a detailed bibliography of Gide's writings and works about Gide, see pp. 655–678 in Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present. Harvard, 1999.
External links
Website of the Catherine Gide Foundation, held by Catherine Gide, his daughter
Center for Gidian Studies
List of Works
André Gide at Goodreads
Amis d'André Gide in French Period newspaper articles on Gide interface in French''
André Gide, 1947 Nobel Laureate for Literature
André Gide: A Brief Introduction
Gide at Maderia in Jersey, 1901–07
Category:1869 births
Category:1951 deaths
Category:Writers from Paris
Category:French novelists
Category:French Protestants
Category:French travel writers
Category:French anti-communists
Category:French communists
Category:Nobel laureates in Literature
Category:French Nobel laureates
Category:Writers about the Soviet Union
Category:Modernist writers
Category:Fyodor Dostoyevsky scholars
Category:Lycée Henri-IV alumni
Category:French male essayists
Category:French male novelists
Category:French people of Italian descent
Category:Anti-Stalinist left
Category:Nouvelle Revue Française editors
Category:Pederasty |
André Gide | Table of Content | Short description, Early life, The middle years, Africa, Political views and the Soviet Union, 1930s and 1940s, Gide's life as a writer, Writings |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Short description | Algorithms for calculating variance play a major role in computational statistics. A key difficulty in the design of good algorithms for this problem is that formulas for the variance may involve sums of squares, which can lead to numerical instability as well as to arithmetic overflow when dealing with large values. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Naïve algorithm | Naïve algorithm
A formula for calculating the variance of an entire population of size N is:
Using Bessel's correction to calculate an unbiased estimate of the population variance from a finite sample of n observations, the formula is:
Therefore, a naïve algorithm to calculate the estimated variance is given by the following:
Let
For each datum :
This algorithm can easily be adapted to compute the variance of a finite population: simply divide by n instead of n − 1 on the last line.
Because and can be very similar numbers, cancellation can lead to the precision of the result to be much less than the inherent precision of the floating-point arithmetic used to perform the computation. Thus this algorithm should not be used in practice, and several alternate, numerically stable, algorithms have been proposed. This is particularly bad if the standard deviation is small relative to the mean. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Computing shifted data | Computing shifted data
The variance is invariant with respect to changes in a location parameter, a property which can be used to avoid the catastrophic cancellation in this formula.
with any constant, which leads to the new formula
the closer is to the mean value the more accurate the result will be, but just choosing a value inside the
samples range will guarantee the desired stability. If the values are small then there are no problems with the sum of its squares, on the contrary, if they are large it necessarily means that the variance is large as well. In any case the second term in the formula is always smaller than the first one therefore no cancellation may occur.
If just the first sample is taken as the algorithm can be written in Python programming language as
def shifted_data_variance(data):
if len(data) < 2:
return 0.0
K = data[0]
n = Ex = Ex2 = 0.0
for x in data:
n += 1
Ex += x - K
Ex2 += (x - K) ** 2
variance = (Ex2 - Ex**2 / n) / (n - 1)
# use n instead of (n-1) if want to compute the exact variance of the given data
# use (n-1) if data are samples of a larger population
return variance
This formula also facilitates the incremental computation that can be expressed as
K = Ex = Ex2 = 0.0
n = 0
def add_variable(x):
global K, n, Ex, Ex2
if n == 0:
K = x
n += 1
Ex += x - K
Ex2 += (x - K) ** 2
def remove_variable(x):
global K, n, Ex, Ex2
n -= 1
Ex -= x - K
Ex2 -= (x - K) ** 2
def get_mean():
global K, n, Ex
return K + Ex / n
def get_variance():
global n, Ex, Ex2
return (Ex2 - Ex**2 / n) / (n - 1) |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Two-pass algorithm | Two-pass algorithm
An alternative approach, using a different formula for the variance, first computes the sample mean,
and then computes the sum of the squares of the differences from the mean,
where s is the standard deviation. This is given by the following code:
def two_pass_variance(data):
n = len(data)
mean = sum(data) / n
variance = sum((x - mean) ** 2 for x in data) / (n - 1)
return variance
This algorithm is numerically stable if n is small. Metadata also listed at ACM Digital Library. However, the results of both of these simple algorithms ("naïve" and "two-pass") can depend inordinately on the ordering of the data and can give poor results for very large data sets due to repeated roundoff error in the accumulation of the sums. Techniques such as compensated summation can be used to combat this error to a degree. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Welford's online algorithm | Welford's online algorithm
It is often useful to be able to compute the variance in a single pass, inspecting each value only once; for example, when the data is being collected without enough storage to keep all the values, or when costs of memory access dominate those of computation. For such an online algorithm, a recurrence relation is required between quantities from which the required statistics can be calculated in a numerically stable fashion.
The following formulas can be used to update the mean and (estimated) variance of the sequence, for an additional element xn. Here, denotes the sample mean of the first n samples , their biased sample variance, and their unbiased sample variance.
These formulas suffer from numerical instability , as they repeatedly subtract a small number from a big number which scales with n. A better quantity for updating is the sum of squares of differences from the current mean, , here denoted :
This algorithm was found by Welford,Donald E. Knuth (1998). The Art of Computer Programming, volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms, 3rd edn., p. 232. Boston: Addison-Wesley. and it has been thoroughly analyzed. It is also common to denote and .
An example Python implementation for Welford's algorithm is given below.
# For a new value new_value, compute the new count, new mean, the new M2.
# mean accumulates the mean of the entire dataset
# M2 aggregates the squared distance from the mean
# count aggregates the number of samples seen so far
def update(existing_aggregate, new_value):
(count, mean, M2) = existing_aggregate
count += 1
delta = new_value - mean
mean += delta / count
delta2 = new_value - mean
M2 += delta * delta2
return (count, mean, M2)
# Retrieve the mean, variance and sample variance from an aggregate
def finalize(existing_aggregate):
(count, mean, M2) = existing_aggregate
if count < 2:
return float("nan")
else:
(mean, variance, sample_variance) = (mean, M2 / count, M2 / (count - 1))
return (mean, variance, sample_variance)
This algorithm is much less prone to loss of precision due to catastrophic cancellation, but might not be as efficient because of the division operation inside the loop. For a particularly robust two-pass algorithm for computing the variance, one can first compute and subtract an estimate of the mean, and then use this algorithm on the residuals.
The parallel algorithm below illustrates how to merge multiple sets of statistics calculated online. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Weighted incremental algorithm | Weighted incremental algorithm
The algorithm can be extended to handle unequal sample weights, replacing the simple counter n with the sum of weights seen so far. West (1979) suggests this incremental algorithm:
def weighted_incremental_variance(data_weight_pairs):
w_sum = w_sum2 = mean = S = 0
for x, w in data_weight_pairs:
w_sum = w_sum + w
w_sum2 = w_sum2 + w**2
mean_old = mean
mean = mean_old + (w / w_sum) * (x - mean_old)
S = S + w * (x - mean_old) * (x - mean)
population_variance = S / w_sum
# Bessel's correction for weighted samples
# Frequency weights
sample_frequency_variance = S / (w_sum - 1)
# Reliability weights
sample_reliability_variance = S / (1 - w_sum2 / (w_sum**2)) |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Parallel algorithm | Parallel algorithm
Chan et al. note that Welford's online algorithm detailed above is a special case of an algorithm that works for combining arbitrary sets and :
.
This may be useful when, for example, multiple processing units may be assigned to discrete parts of the input.
Chan's method for estimating the mean is numerically unstable when and both are large, because the numerical error in is not scaled down in the way that it is in the case. In such cases, prefer .
def parallel_variance(n_a, avg_a, M2_a, n_b, avg_b, M2_b):
n = n_a + n_b
delta = avg_b - avg_a
M2 = M2_a + M2_b + delta**2 * n_a * n_b / n
var_ab = M2 / (n - 1)
return var_ab
This can be generalized to allow parallelization with AVX, with GPUs, and computer clusters, and to covariance. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Example | Example
Assume that all floating point operations use standard IEEE 754 double-precision arithmetic. Consider the sample (4, 7, 13, 16) from an infinite population. Based on this sample, the estimated population mean is 10, and the unbiased estimate of population variance is 30. Both the naïve algorithm and two-pass algorithm compute these values correctly.
Next consider the sample (, , , ), which gives rise to the same estimated variance as the first sample. The two-pass algorithm computes this variance estimate correctly, but the naïve algorithm returns 29.333333333333332 instead of 30.
While this loss of precision may be tolerable and viewed as a minor flaw of the naïve algorithm, further increasing the offset makes the error catastrophic. Consider the sample (, , , ). Again the estimated population variance of 30 is computed correctly by the two-pass algorithm, but the naïve algorithm now computes it as −170.66666666666666. This is a serious problem with naïve algorithm and is due to catastrophic cancellation in the subtraction of two similar numbers at the final stage of the algorithm. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Higher-order statistics | Higher-order statistics
Terriberry extends Chan's formulae to calculating the third and fourth central moments, needed for example when estimating skewness and kurtosis:
Here the are again the sums of powers of differences from the mean , giving
For the incremental case (i.e., ), this simplifies to:
By preserving the value , only one division operation is needed and the higher-order statistics can thus be calculated for little incremental cost.
An example of the online algorithm for kurtosis implemented as described is:
def online_kurtosis(data):
n = mean = M2 = M3 = M4 = 0
for x in data:
n1 = n
n = n + 1
delta = x - mean
delta_n = delta / n
delta_n2 = delta_n**2
term1 = delta * delta_n * n1
mean = mean + delta_n
M4 = M4 + term1 * delta_n2 * (n**2 - 3*n + 3) + 6 * delta_n2 * M2 - 4 * delta_n * M3
M3 = M3 + term1 * delta_n * (n - 2) - 3 * delta_n * M2
M2 = M2 + term1
# Note, you may also calculate variance using M2, and skewness using M3
# Caution: If all the inputs are the same, M2 will be 0, resulting in a division by 0.
kurtosis = (n * M4) / (M2**2) - 3
return kurtosis
Pébaÿ
further extends these results to arbitrary-order central moments, for the incremental and the pairwise cases, and subsequently Pébaÿ et al.
for weighted and compound moments. One can also find there similar formulas for covariance.
Choi and Sweetman
offer two alternative methods to compute the skewness and kurtosis, each of which can save substantial computer memory requirements and CPU time in certain applications. The first approach is to compute the statistical moments by separating the data into bins and then computing the moments from the geometry of the resulting histogram, which effectively becomes a one-pass algorithm for higher moments. One benefit is that the statistical moment calculations can be carried out to arbitrary accuracy such that the computations can be tuned to the precision of, e.g., the data storage format or the original measurement hardware. A relative histogram of a random variable can be constructed in the conventional way: the range of potential values is divided into bins and the number of occurrences within each bin are counted and plotted such that the area of each rectangle equals the portion of the sample values within that bin:
where and represent the frequency and the relative frequency at bin and is the total area of the histogram. After this normalization, the raw moments and central moments of can be calculated from the relative histogram:
where the superscript indicates the moments are calculated from the histogram. For constant bin width these two expressions can be simplified using :
The second approach from Choi and Sweetman is an analytical methodology to combine statistical moments from individual segments of a time-history such that the resulting overall moments are those of the complete time-history. This methodology could be used for parallel computation of statistical moments with subsequent combination of those moments, or for combination of statistical moments computed at sequential times.
If sets of statistical moments are known:
for , then each can
be expressed in terms of the equivalent raw moments:
where is generally taken to be the duration of the time-history, or the number of points if is constant.
The benefit of expressing the statistical moments in terms of is that the sets can be combined by addition, and there is no upper limit on the value of .
where the subscript represents the concatenated time-history or combined . These combined values of can then be inversely transformed into raw moments representing the complete concatenated time-history
Known relationships between the raw moments () and the central moments ()
are then used to compute the central moments of the concatenated time-history. Finally, the statistical moments of the concatenated history are computed from the central moments:
|
Algorithms for calculating variance | Covariance | Covariance
Very similar algorithms can be used to compute the covariance. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Naïve algorithm | Naïve algorithm
The naïve algorithm is
For the algorithm above, one could use the following Python code:
def naive_covariance(data1, data2):
n = len(data1)
sum1 = sum(data1)
sum2 = sum(data2)
sum12 = sum([i1 * i2 for i1, i2 in zip(data1, data2)])
covariance = (sum12 - sum1 * sum2 / n) / n
return covariance |
Algorithms for calculating variance | With estimate of the mean | With estimate of the mean
As for the variance, the covariance of two random variables is also shift-invariant, so given any two constant values and it can be written:
and again choosing a value inside the range of values will stabilize the formula against catastrophic cancellation as well as make it more robust against big sums. Taking the first value of each data set, the algorithm can be written as:
def shifted_data_covariance(data_x, data_y):
n = len(data_x)
if n < 2:
return 0
kx = data_x[0]
ky = data_y[0]
Ex = Ey = Exy = 0
for ix, iy in zip(data_x, data_y):
Ex += ix - kx
Ey += iy - ky
Exy += (ix - kx) * (iy - ky)
return (Exy - Ex * Ey / n) / n |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Two-pass | Two-pass
The two-pass algorithm first computes the sample means, and then the covariance:
The two-pass algorithm may be written as:
def two_pass_covariance(data1, data2):
n = len(data1)
mean1 = sum(data1) / n
mean2 = sum(data2) / n
covariance = 0
for i1, i2 in zip(data1, data2):
a = i1 - mean1
b = i2 - mean2
covariance += a * b / n
return covariance
A slightly more accurate compensated version performs the full naive algorithm on the residuals. The final sums and should be zero, but the second pass compensates for any small error. |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Online | Online
A stable one-pass algorithm exists, similar to the online algorithm for computing the variance, that computes co-moment :
The apparent asymmetry in that last equation is due to the fact that , so both update terms are equal to . Even greater accuracy can be achieved by first computing the means, then using the stable one-pass algorithm on the residuals.
Thus the covariance can be computed as
def online_covariance(data1, data2):
meanx = meany = C = n = 0
for x, y in zip(data1, data2):
n += 1
dx = x - meanx
meanx += dx / n
meany += (y - meany) / n
C += dx * (y - meany)
population_covar = C / n
# Bessel's correction for sample variance
sample_covar = C / (n - 1)
A small modification can also be made to compute the weighted covariance:
def online_weighted_covariance(data1, data2, data3):
meanx = meany = 0
wsum = wsum2 = 0
C = 0
for x, y, w in zip(data1, data2, data3):
wsum += w
wsum2 += w * w
dx = x - meanx
meanx += (w / wsum) * dx
meany += (w / wsum) * (y - meany)
C += w * dx * (y - meany)
population_covar = C / wsum
# Bessel's correction for sample variance
# Frequency weights
sample_frequency_covar = C / (wsum - 1)
# Reliability weights
sample_reliability_covar = C / (wsum - wsum2 / wsum)
Likewise, there is a formula for combining the covariances of two sets that can be used to parallelize the computation: |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Weighted batched version | Weighted batched version
A version of the weighted online algorithm that does batched updated also exists: let denote the weights, and write
The covariance can then be computed as |
Algorithms for calculating variance | See also | See also
Kahan summation algorithm
Squared deviations from the mean
Yamartino method |
Algorithms for calculating variance | References | References |
Algorithms for calculating variance | External links | External links
Category:Statistical algorithms
Category:Statistical deviation and dispersion
Category:Articles with example pseudocode
Category:Articles with example Python (programming language) code |
Algorithms for calculating variance | Table of Content | Short description, Naïve algorithm, Computing shifted data, Two-pass algorithm, Welford's online algorithm, Weighted incremental algorithm, Parallel algorithm, Example, Higher-order statistics, Covariance, Naïve algorithm, With estimate of the mean, Two-pass, Online, Weighted batched version, See also, References, External links |
Almond | short description | The almond (Prunus amygdalus, syn. Prunus dulcis) is a species of tree from the genus Prunus. Along with the peach, it is classified in the subgenus Amygdalus, distinguished from the other subgenera by corrugations on the shell (endocarp) surrounding the seed.
The fruit of the almond is a drupe, consisting of an outer hull and a hard shell with the seed, which is not a true nut. Shelling almonds refers to removing the shell to reveal the seed. Almonds are sold shelled or unshelled. Blanched almonds are shelled almonds that have been treated with hot water to soften the seedcoat, which is then removed to reveal the white embryo. Once almonds are cleaned and processed, they can be stored for around a year if kept refrigerated; at higher temperatures they will become rancid more quickly. Almonds are used in many cuisines, often featuring prominently in desserts, such as marzipan.
The almond tree prospers in a moderate Mediterranean climate with cool winter weather. It is rarely found wild in its original setting. Almonds were one of the earliest domesticated fruit trees, due to the ability to produce quality offspring entirely from seed, without using suckers and cuttings. Evidence of domesticated almonds in the Early Bronze Age has been found in the archeological sites of the Middle East, and subsequently across the Mediterranean region and similar arid climates with cool winters.
California produces about 80% of the world's almond supply. Due to high acreage and water demand for almond cultivation, and need for pesticides, California almond production may be unsustainable, especially during the persistent drought and heat from climate change in the 21st century. Droughts in California have caused some producers to leave the industry, leading to lower supply and increased prices. |
Almond | Description | Description
The almond is a deciduous tree growing to in height, with a trunk of up to in diameter. The young twigs are green at first, becoming purplish where exposed to sunlight, then grey in their second year. The leaves are long,Bailey, L.H.; Bailey, E.Z.; the staff of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium. 1976. Hortus third: A concise dictionary of plants cultivated in the United States and Canada. Macmillan, New York. with a serrated margin and a petiole.
The fragrant flowers are white to pale pink, diameter with five petals, produced singly or in pairs and appearing before the leaves in early spring. Almond trees thrive in Mediterranean climates with warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. The optimal temperature for their growth is between and the tree buds have a chilling requirement of 200 to 700 hours below to break dormancy.
Almonds begin bearing an economic crop in the third year after planting. Trees reach full bearing five to six years after planting. The fruit matures in the autumn, 7–8 months after flowering.
The almond fruit is long. It is not a nut but a drupe. The outer covering, consisting of an outer exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh, fleshy in other members of Prunus such as the plum and cherry, is instead a thick, leathery, grey-green coat (with a downy exterior), called the hull. Inside the hull is a woody endocarp which forms a reticulated, hard shell (like the outside of a peach pit) called the pyrena. Inside the shell is the edible seed, commonly called a nut. Generally, one seed is present, but occasionally two occur. After the fruit matures, the hull splits and separates from the shell, and an abscission layer forms between the stem and the fruit so that the fruit can fall from the tree. During harvest, mechanised tree shakers are used to expedite fruits falling to the ground for collection. |
Almond | Taxonomy | Taxonomy |
Almond | Sweet and bitter almonds | Sweet and bitter almonds
thumb|Almond blossom
thumb|Blossoming of bitter almond tree
The seeds of Prunus dulcis var. dulcis are predominantly sweet but some individual trees produce seeds that are somewhat more bitter. The genetic basis for bitterness involves a single gene, the bitter flavour furthermore being recessive, both aspects making this trait easier to domesticate. The fruits from Prunus dulcis var. amara are always bitter, as are the kernels from other species of genus Prunus, such as apricot, peach and cherry (although to a lesser extent).
The bitter almond is slightly broader and shorter than the sweet almond and contains about 50% of the fixed oil that occurs in sweet almonds. It also contains the enzyme emulsin which, in the presence of water, acts on the two soluble glucosides amygdalin and prunasin yielding glucose, cyanide and the essential oil of bitter almonds, which is nearly pure benzaldehyde, the chemical causing the bitter flavour. Bitter almonds may yield 4–9 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide per almond and contain 42 times higher amounts of cyanide than the trace levels found in sweet almonds. The origin of cyanide content in bitter almonds is via the enzymatic hydrolysis of amygdalin. P450 monooxygenases are involved in the amygdalin biosynthetic pathway. A point mutation in a bHLH transcription factor prevents transcription of the two cytochrome P450 genes, resulting in the sweet kernel trait. |
Almond | Etymology | Etymology
The word almond is a loanword from Old French or , descended from Late Latin , , modified from Classical Latin , which is in turn borrowed from Ancient Greek () (cf. amygdala, an almond-shaped portion of the brain). Late Old English had amygdales 'almonds'.
The adjective amygdaloid (literally 'like an almond, almond-like') is used to describe objects which are roughly almond-shaped, particularly a shape which is part way between a triangle and an ellipse. For example, the amygdala of the brain uses a direct borrowing of the Greek term . |
Almond | Origin and distribution | Origin and distribution
The precise origin of the almond is controversial due to estimates for its emergence across wide geographic regions. Sources indicate that its origins were in an area stretching across Central Asia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, or in an eastern Asian subregion between Mongolia and Uzbekistan. In other assessments, both botanical and archaeological evidence indicates that almonds originated and were first cultivated in West Asia, particularly in countries of the Levant. Other estimates specified Iran and Anatolia (present day Turkey) as origin locations of the almond, with botanical evidence for Iran as the main origin centre.
The wild form of domesticated almond also grew in parts of the Levant. Almond cultivation was spread by humans centuries ago along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea into northern Africa and southern Europe, and more recently to other world regions, notably California.
Selection of the sweet type from the many bitter types in the wild marked the beginning of almond domestication. The wild ancestor of the almond used to breed the domesticated species is unknown. The species Prunus fenzliana may be the most likely wild ancestor of the almond, in part because it is native to Armenia and western Azerbaijan, where it was apparently domesticated. Wild almond species were grown by early farmers, "at first unintentionally in the garbage heaps, and later intentionally in their orchards". |
Almond | Cultivation | Cultivation
thumb|upright|Persian miniature depiction of the almond harvest at Qand-i Badam, Fergana Valley (16th century)
thumb|A grove of almond trees
thumb|An almond shaker before and during a tree's harvest
Almonds were one of the earliest domesticated fruit trees, due to "the ability of the grower to raise attractive almonds from seed. Thus, in spite of the fact that this plant does not lend itself to propagation from suckers or from cuttings, it could have been domesticated even before the introduction of grafting". Domesticated almonds appear in the Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC), such as the archaeological sites of Numeira (Jordan), or possibly earlier. Another well-known archaeological example of the almond is the fruit found in Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt (c. 1325 BC), probably imported from the Levant. An article on almond tree cultivation in Spain is brought down in Ibn al-'Awwam's 12th-century agricultural work, Book on Agriculture. (pp. 260–263 (Article XX)
Of the European countries that the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh reported as cultivating almonds, Germany is the northernmost, though the domesticated form can be found as far north as Iceland. |
Almond | Varieties | Varieties
Almond trees are small to medium-sized but commercial cultivars can be grafted onto a different root-stock to produce smaller trees. Varieties include:
– originates in the 1800s. A large tree that produces large, smooth, thin-shelled almonds with 60–65% edible kernel per nut. Requires pollination from other almond varieties for good nut production.
– originates in Italy. Has thicker, hairier shells with only 32% of edible kernel per nut. The thicker shell gives some protection from pests such as the navel orangeworm. Does not require pollination by other almond varieties.
Mariana – used as a rootstock to result in smaller trees |
Almond | Breeding | Breeding
Breeding programmes have found the high shell-seal trait. |
Almond | Pollination | Pollination
The most widely planted varieties of almond are self-incompatible; hence these trees require pollen from a tree with different genetic characters to produce seeds. Almond orchards therefore must grow mixtures of almond varieties. In addition, the pollen is transferred from flower to flower by insects; therefore commercial growers must ensure there are enough insects to perform this task. The large scale of almond production in the U.S. creates a significant problem of providing enough pollinating insects. Additional pollinating insects are therefore brought to the trees. The pollination of California's almonds is the largest annual managed pollination event in the world, with over 1 million hives (nearly half of all beehives in the US) being brought to the almond orchards each February.
Much of the supply of bees is managed by pollination brokers, who contract with migratory beekeepers from at least 49 states for the event. This business was heavily affected by colony collapse disorder at the turn of the 21st century, causing a nationwide shortage of honey bees and increasing the price of insect pollination. To partially protect almond growers from these costs, researchers at the Agricultural Research Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), developed self-pollinating almond trees that combine this character with quality characters such as a flavour and yield. Self-pollinating almond varieties exist, but they lack some commercial characters. However, through natural hybridisation between different almond varieties, a new variety that was self-pollinating with a high yield of commercial quality nuts was produced. |
Almond | Diseases | Diseases
Almond trees can be attacked by an array of damaging microbes, fungal pathogens, plant viruses, and bacteria. |
Almond | Pests | Pests
Pavement ants (Tetramorium caespitum), southern fire ants (Solenopsis xyloni), and thief ants (Solenopsis molesta) are seed predators. Bryobia rubrioculus mites are most known for their damage to this crop. |
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