Alla Demidova on ships and their names:

For more than forty years now I have watched from my dacha window this picture of ships sailing past. We had a game: who could make out a name first. Little by little I grasped a certain regularity: the two-deckers were given the names of poets: "Akhmatova", "Yesenin", "Blok". The three-deckers were writers: "Lev Tolstoy", "Maxim Gorky"... Once a four-decker came by, the "14th Party Conference"... Years went by... The "Blok", as is well known, became for a time a restaurant near the "Udarnik", the "Akhmatova" stood moored for a long while not far from us, then she was sawn up and carted off. The names of the ships changed... Recently I looked out and recognised the "14th Party Conference" sailing by; I fetched my spyglass (my eyes have grown worse) and read "Lenin"... Some things change, some do not...

Report a translation error

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Alla Demidova on ships and their names:

Read more

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s