Saturday 6 October 2012

People Who Gained Fame After Their Death


Thousands of people in this world die daily. Some people are forgotten over time, whereas some are always remembered due to their work or their personality. Some people try all their life to get fame through their work in any field they are good in. Some of them see their dreams getting fulfilled and gain fame during their life time, some other unfortunate people become more famous than they could even imagine, but after their death. Below is the list of some such people who gained fame after their death.

9. Franz Kafka

Franz was an Austrian writer who was born on July 3, 1883, to a middle class Jewish family. Many people don’t know about his life and his work, but those who do, little do they know that he got famous after his death because during his life time his work never received publication, which was until in 1924 i.e. after his death. Kafka actually spent much of his short life working in insurance and factories with the occasional dabbling in theater. Most of his dark, deeply psychological short stories, novels, novellas, letters, and essays never saw publication in his lifetime, in fact he ordered his old friend Max Brod to burn his work without reading it, after his death. Obviously Brod disobeyed his last request and began exploring his friend’s work, and started publishing it later on. His work was translated into English and was studied by many people. His work went on to heavily inspire not only other writers, but artists, musicians, and other creative types as well.

8. Gregor Johann Mendel

Gregor John was a scientist from Austria. He gained fame as the founder of the modern science of genetics. He did some experiments with the pea plants and came up with the results of genetic structures, he said that the inheritance of certain structures in pea plants follow particular patterns which is now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. The work of Gregor was not rewarded during his life time because people were not able to understand it. But his work was recognized in the beginning of the 20th century, the rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of modern science of genetics.

7. Henry Darger

Henry was born in 1892. He had lived his life as a troubled person from the beginning, but he used his experiences and journeys to bring out his hidden talent which was creating amazing art and literature. His parents died when he was really young and was left to live at a catholic mission house. But there he was not treated well; he was often disciplined for making strange noises which were said to be caused by some disease/syndrome of his. After growing up in 1930, Dargar moved into a second-floor room on Chicago’s North Side, in the Lincoln Park section of the city. He had lived a quiet and secret life. And no one knew what Henry was capable of until after his death in 1973, Darger’s secret life was discovered. Today his work is considered as an “outsider art”, which means those people who have little contact with the world/society or those who have never received some proper/formal art or writing lessons. His most widely known literature is The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolour paintings which illustrated the story. The length of the book was 15,145 pages. Today his work commands upward of $80,000 and his room has been re-created at a new permanent exhibition at the Centre for Intuitive and Outsider Art, a gallery in Chicago.

6. Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is a name known to many people. The reason of his fame was his paintings. Van Gough was born in 1853. He was considered as a shy child with low self-esteem who at first did missionary work to become a priest. But then turned to drawing and painting. When he reached his 20s he developed the career of an artist. He tried to show the meaning of life through his paintings. His paintings reflected the southern sun in France and often contained bright colours; his life was sadly the complete opposite. He suffered from epilepsy and depression. The mental instability had led to his suicide. His work is considered to be one of the most praised artworks ever created. His work included 900 pictures and almost 1,100 drawings. His 2,000 pieces of art were never discovered until his death. Though he had been a painter since his 20s, he never got fame during his life time. He was so unknown that many people didn’t even know about his death. His work became famous during the 1890s. His work started to spread throughout Europe with the help of his brother’s wife. Today, Van Gogh’s work is worth millions of dollars. His painting Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for 82.5 million dollars in 1990 and is valued at 134 million today.


5.Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger, 28, was an Australian actor who was rising through his career that he suddenly died due to over dose of his medication. Heath is currently known for many films over the past couple of years, his big break was as a cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. But before his death, his last movie of his career was The Dark Knight, in which he was cast as The Joker which became his biggest success ever. The controversial death of his caused the movie to even succeed more than expected. Ledger received an academy award for his performance in the Dark Knight, which was received by his father. He had been awarded with many awards. Fans intend to remember him always as the person who devoted his life to his work.

4.Anne Frank

Marie Anne Frank is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the holocaust. She was born in Germany but lived most of her life in Amsterdam. Her family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, this is the year when Nazis gained control over Germany. By the beginning of 1940, her family was trapped in Amsterdam by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As the murder of Jewish population started to increase, her family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of Anne’s father, Otto Frank’s office building. They stayed there for nearly two years when they were betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne and her sister were eventually transferred to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp where unfortunately both died from typhus in March 1945. Marie Ann is one of the youngest writers to be discussed due to the quality of her writing. Her diary has become one of the most read books across the globe, and has been the basis for several films and plays. Her diary documents her experiences of hiding during German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Unfortunately her work had not been published during her life time. After the war only her father, Otto frank was the survivor of the family. He returned to Amsterdam and found out that Anne’s diary had been saved. He did everything he could do for the publication of her daughter’s diary, and led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original language Dutch and first published in English in 1952 and was titled as “The Diary of a Young Girl”. Since its publication it has been translated into many languages. This diary was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, which contains her life story from 12 June 1942 till 1 August 1944.

3.Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse, 27, was a British singer who was famous for her distinctive soul songs and beehive hairdo, struggling with drinking and drug problems throughout most of her career. She died recently on July 23rd, 2011. Her cause of death is still unknown. After a week of the troubled singer’s death, her album “Back to Black” shot back to the top from 59th position of the British albums chart Sunday. The album was released in 2006, reaching no.1 in Britain at the time and winning five Grammy awards. The renewed popularity of the album pushed Adele to the second place. Amy earned two more spots in the top 10 best-selling albums. Her album release “Frank” came in fifth position, proving more successful after her death than it ever was in her lifetime. The album reached 10th position. Her death caused much ruffle in the singles chart, including five of her tracks in the top 40. The best-selling song was a new entry, “She Makes Me Want to” by British boy band JLS. U.S music fans honoured Amy by snapping up 50,000 copies of her CDs in the week ended July 24, compared with 44,000 units that were purchased in all other weeks of 2011, record sales tracker Nielsen Sound Scan said Tuesday.

2.Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was a scientist, mathematician and an astronomer who was born on February 15, 1564. He contributed very valuable information and astrological tools to the scientific world. His biggest invention was a telescope which allowed him to look at the planets, including Jupiter and Saturn, and from there he was also able to discover the moons orbiting these planets. He is also said to be the first one to discover sunspots, moon craters and even lunar mountains. But at his time, he was often criticized by ignorant people who were too much involved in religion (the way of life at that time), that they believed that the world was in a fixed place and no way could it revolve around the sun. He was accused of heresy by Pope Urban VIII and was put on house arrest until his death. If people at his time had accepted his theories during his life time there could have been more advancement to the respective fields Galileo had given his theories about. However today, Galileo stands as the father of modern physics and his work is highly appreciated.

1.Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a poet, her poetry is said to be some of the best written material by a female in English language. She was born on December 10, 1830. She lived a quiet life and had not shared her talent with others due to the fact that she was extremely shy and introverted. She was a person who was said to have an odd personality. Having set of beliefs, or having a different behaviour pattern. Some people believed that some sort of love affair had pulled some spark into her, after which she focused her writing style on being very personal and related to her own life events. After 1880, many of the Dickinson family members began to die mostly because of diseases, Emily Dickinson died in 1886 from Bright’s disease. Before she died, only seven of her poems among 1800 were published publicly. The poems that had been published were highly edited so they could fit the proper rules of poetry at that time. Even though she wrote over 1800 poems, most of them are ones which she wanted to keep hidden and away from the public. She mostly wrote about immortality and death. The other themes which came to light after her death included nature as well. Her desire was to keep her poetry as her own and had wished for her sister to burn them after her death, but her sister Lavinia and two friends edited her work and then published it. In 1890 a collection of her poems were published. Her work is taught in literature and poetry classes from middle school to college. And her poetry is frequently anthologized and used by many artists today.

No comments:

Post a Comment