Duras \diE- , ras\, Marguerite orig. Marguerite Donnadieu (b.
April 4, 1914, Gia Dinh, Cochinchina—d. March 3, 1996, Paris, France) French novelist, playwright, film director, and screenwriter. Indochina was the setting for Duras’s first successful novel, The Sea Wall (1950). Her writing grew increasingly minimal and abstract, and she is sometimes associated with the nouveau roman (“new novel”) movement. Perhaps her best-known novel is the semiautobiographical The Lover (1984, Prix Gon- court; film, 1992), about a French teenage girl’s love affair with an older Chinese man; she revised this work as The North China Lover (1991). Her original screenplay for Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and her adap¬ tation for film of her play India Song (1975) were highly acclaimed.
Durban City (pop., 1996: metro, area, 2,117,650) and chief seaport, South Africa. Located on Natal Bay of the Indian Ocean, it was the site of a European trading settlement from 1824 and was named Port Natal by the traders. Land was ceded to them by the Zulu king Shaka, and the Old Fort (now a museum) was built. Durban was founded in 1835 on the site of Port Natal. In the 1840s the Boers clashed with the British over control of Durban. One of the world’s major commercial ports, it is the headquarters of South Africa’s sugar industry and a centre of diverse manufacturing. Tourism is also important, based on the city’s proximity to game and nature reserves and to beaches.
Durer VdiEr-9r,\ English Vdur-3r\, Albrecht (b. May 21, 1471, Impe¬ rial Free City of Niimberg—d. April 6, 1528, Niimberg) German painter and printmaker. He worked as a draftsman in his father’s goldsmith workshop before being apprenticed at 15 to a painter and illustrator in his native Niimberg. He opened his own workshop c. 1494 and began produc¬ ing woodcuts and copper engravings.
His extensive travel took him twice to Italy; Italian influence can be seen in such engravings as The Four Witches (c. 1497) and Adam and Eve (1504). He became known for his penetrating half-length portraits and self-portraits. In 1506, in Venice, he completed his great altarpiece The Feast of the Rose Garlands for the German chapel in the church of San Bartolommeo. Later important graphic works include his famous Passion series of copperplate engravings (1507-13) as well as his greatest engravings: St. Jerome in His Study, Melencolia I and The Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513-14). Back in Ntirnberg he worked for
Self-Portrait in Furred Coat, oil on wood panel by Albrecht Durer, 1500; in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
ALTE PINAKOTHEK, MUNICH; PHOTOGRAPH, BLAUEL/GNAMM—ARTOTHEK
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
582 I Durga ► Durrenmatt
Emperor Maximilian I (1512-19). By 1515 he had achieved international fame. In 1518 he became a devoted follower of Martin Luther. His finest painting is the Four Apostles of 1526. He was the greatest Renaissance artist in northern Europe and had many pupils and imitators.
Durga In Hinduism, one of the forms of the goddess Devi or Shakti (see shakti), and the wife of Shiva. She was bom fully grown, created out of flames that issued from the mouths of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and other gods and embodying their collective energy (shakti). They created her to slay the buffalo-demon Mahisasura, whom they were unable to overcome. She is usually depicted riding a lion or tiger, each of her multiple arms bearing a weapon. See also Durga-puja.
Durga, Rajasthani miniature of the Mewar school, mid-17th century; in a private collection
PRAMOD CHANDRA
Durga-puja Vdur-ga-'pii-jaV Hindu festival held annually in northeast¬ ern India in September-October in honor of the goddess Durga. Images of the goddess are made, worshiped for nine days, and then immersed in water. The celebration includes colourful processions and much public and private festivity.
Durham See shorthorn
Durham Saxon Dunholme City (pop., 2001: district, 87,725), admin¬ istrative and historic county of Durham, northeastern England. It is on a peninsula in the River Wear. This natural defensive site, fortified by Wil¬ liam I (the Conqueror) against the Scots, became a seat of the feudal prince-bishops of Durham. Medieval Durham was a place of pilgrimage, holding the remains of St. Cuthbert in its cathedral (begun in 1093). The bishops of Durham helped establish the city as an educational centre. It is the site of the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art and Archaeology, part of the University of Durham.
Durham Vdor-onA Administrative (pop., 2001: 493,470), geographic, and historic county, northeastern England. Adjacent to the North Sea coast, it includes the city of Durham. The northern part of the county is cut by the valleys of the Rivers Wear and Tees; the Tees lowlands extend across the south. Under the Romans the region was a military outpost associated with Hadrian's Wall. Durham was later incorporated into the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. It was unimportant economically until the 19th century, when exploitation of its coalfields, now exhausted, made it a key area of industrial growth in Britain. The area is now a centre of light industry.
Durham, John George Lambton, 1 st earl of (b. April 12,1792, London—d. July 28, 1840, Cowes, Isle of Wight, Eng.) British colonial administrator in Canada. He was a member of the British House of Com¬ mons (1813-28) and served in the cabinet of Earl Grey (1830-33). In 1838 he was appointed governor-general and lord high commissioner of Canada. He appointed a new executive council to placate the rebellious
French Canadians of Lower Canada (later Quebec). Criticized in England for his action, he resigned. He later issued the Durham Report, which advocated the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada and the expan¬ sion of self-government to preserve Canadian loyalty to Britain.
durian Vdur-e-9n\ Tree ( Durio zibethinus ) of the bombax family (Bom- bacaceae) and its fruit, cultivated in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and southern Thailand. The tree has oblong, tapering leaves and yellow¬ ish green flowers and resembles the elm in shape. The spherical fruit has a hard spiny shell and contains five oval compartments, each filled with an edible, cream-coloured, custardlike pulp, in which are embedded one to five chestnut-sized seeds, which are edible if roasted. The ripe fruits are eaten by many animals. Though the durian has a mild, sweet flavour, it also has a pungent foul odour. It is seldom exported.
Durkheim \dmr-'kem\, Emile (b. April 1858, Epinal, France—d. Nov. 15, 1917, Paris) French social scientist. He developed a vigorous meth¬ odology combining empirical research with sociological theory and is widely regarded as the founder of the French school of sociology. Durkheim was greatly influenced by philosopher Auguste Comte, and his sociological reflections, never remote from the moral philosophy he was schooled in, were first expressed in The Division of Labor in Society (1893) and Suicide (1897). In his view, ethical and social structures were endangered by technology and mechanization. The division of labour pro¬ duced alienation among workers, and the increased prosperity of the late 19th century generated greed and passions that threatened the equilibrium of society. Durkheim drew attention to anomie, or social disconnectedness, and studied suicide as a decision to renounce life. Following the Dreyfus affair, he came to regard education and religion as the most potent means of reforming humanity and molding new social institutions. His Elemen¬ tary Forms of the Religious Life (1915) is an anthropological study— centring largely on totemism —of the origins and functions of religion, which Durkheim saw as expressing the collective conscience of a soci¬ ety and producing social solidarity. He also wrote influential works on sociological method. He taught at the Universities of Bordeaux (1887— 1902) and Paris (1902-17). See also Marcel Mauss.