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The Overgrown Pond by Valentin Serov (1888) Picture sourceA brief discussion covering the first seven of the “sketches”: Khor and Kalinich, Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife, Raspberry Water, The Country Doctor, My Neighbor Radilov, Ovsyanikov the Freeholder, Lgov. The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found here. All quotes are […]
During my week off, I finally read The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss that I mentioned a couple of months ago. Several books I’ve read lately raises the question of what makes a successful history when little trustworthy material is available on the subject. Persistent use of qualifiers like “perhaps”, “he might have seen”, and […]
I’ve been enjoying a week off from work and staying offline as much as possible. Here’s wishing everyone a happy Fourth of July.
We’re reading less Dr. Seuss and working our way through ‘first reader’ books with the oldest. But I did like this line from an interview with Dr. Philip Nel, professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the graduate program in children’s literature (who knew there was such a thing? and would Dr. […]
A Sportsman’s Notebook by Ivan Turgenev Translated by Charles and Natasha Hepburn The Cresset Press, London, 1950 I am glad that this book has come out; it seems to me that it will remain my mite cast into the treasure chest of Russian literature, to use the phraseology of the school-book… Much has come out […]
Book Illustration for ‘The Day Before’ by Ivan Turgenev, 1947 Konstatin RudakovThe text of “First Love” can be found at Project Gutenberg, Google Books, or The Literature Network A summary is provided at Wikipedia My post on links to Turgenev resources can be found here The library copy of “First Love” I read was translated by […]
Portrait of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev By Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1879) Picture sourceA few links on Turgenev. I’ll link to individual works as I cover them. BIOGRAPHY Wikipedia entry ONLINE WORKS Most online works use translations by Constance Garnett Works at Google Books or Project Gutenberg Audio works available at LibriVox ADDITIONAL (most of my previous links […]
No, not the picture of me from August 1982 (which I ran across this morning when looking for other files). Someone placed a hold on The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel at the library and I can’t renew it. Who knew it was in high demand? Unfortunately I had checked it out several weeks before I […]
Totally off-topic to anything and everything, but… Last night I watched We Jam Econo, the documentary on the Minutemen. It was 25 years ago that I last saw them, and the Minutemen t-shirt I had from that date was one of my prize possessions for quite a while. The documentary is decent, although I would […]
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis Translation by Kimon Friar Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958 They think of me as a scholar, an intellectual, a pen-pusher. And I am none of them. When I write, my fingers get covered not in ink, but in blood. I think I am nothing more than […]