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I notice many blogs are posting poems related to autumn, capturing many of the attributes of fall through imagery and descriptions of the season. I’d like to volunteer a recording that, for me, aurally captures autumn, although it may be by association because of personal experience. The instrumental collaboration of Basic between Robert Quine and […]
“During late 1905 and several times in 1906, Andrei Bely stayed in one of the furnished rooms at the “Bel-vu” in the corner building on 64 Nevsky and Karavannaia Street. It was during these stays in Petersburg, prompted by his frenzied and tormented love for Blok’s wife Liubov Dmitrievna, that the vision of Petersburg began […]
Gabriel García Márquez in 1976 after Mario Vargas Llosa punched himPicture source and story
The post title is not a sequel to a John Candy movie (fortunately) but a recent release by the Yale University Press: The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb by Allen M. Hornblum. Even with the overstated title, this book caught my eye because of recent discussion about Solzhenitsyn’s In […]
Map of St. Petersburg, 1893 Picture sourceI wasn’t sure what I would read next but after opening Andrei Bely’s Petersburg and reading the two-page prologue, I am hooked. So Petersburg it is. I am reading the Pushkin Press release, translation by John Elsworth. A quick internet search on the author and title shows more available […]
From Open Culture, “Internet Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books.” Click on over and download any favorites or books you have been wanting to read.
In the previous post I provided a summary from the back cover of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical work. You can see a preview of the translation by Mirra Ginsburg at Google books. This was the perfect book I needed after finishing The Histories and I know I will return to it again—I loved it and highly […]
I started Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog this week and quickly fell in love with it. I also have a copy of the 1988 Russian movie that I hope to watch this weekend. For anyone not familiar with this short novel, it “tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the […]
I may be obliged to tell what is said, but I am not at all obliged to believe it. And you may consider this statement to be valid for my entire work. – from Book Seven, Paragraph 152 Wow. That’s about all I can manage at this point. What a long strange trip this has […]
This post covers Book Nine from Paragraph 90 through the end of the work, covering the battle of Mycale, the siege of Sestos, and the final anecdotes. The Greeks had sailed to Delos under the command of the Spartan Leotychidas. Messengers from Samos urge the Greeks to travel to their island to attack the Persians […]