Faith · Monarchies · Humour

“God Is with Us

«С НАМИ Б҃ГЪ. РАЗУМѢЙТЕ ЯЗЫЦЫ И ПОКОРѦЙТЕСѦ», that is, “God is with us. Understand, O nations, and submit yourselves”. The quotation, in Church Slavonic, is from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and is inscribed on the obverse of the medal “For the Pacification of Hungary and Transylvania”. The

Books

Around the village thunderstorms wandered, And often, full of longing, Lightning strikes, through tears, Broke the sky into pieces. It lashed as if from a flask, And above the gathering of birches A feast of electricity and moisture Merged into furious ch

Returning from Work. Nikolay Zabolotsky, 1954

Painted scene in a drawing room: a woman in a patterned dress stands with her hand on her hip while girls and a boy sit by a piano with sheet music. Green walls hold framed pictures; a lamp

NB!

Green-walled drawing room with a woman and children at the piano

Painted interior with two women seated by an open balcony door, walls in blue patterned wallpaper and a round table with books in the foreground.

NB! · Art · Observations · Paris · People

French Post-Impressionist Édouard Vuillard becomes the author's new favourite artist

I officially have a new favourite artist. Allow me to introduce the French Post-Impressionist Édouard Vuillard (1868−1940)

NB! · Archive · People · Pop Culture

Tchaikovsky's Musical Autograph

A uniformed man leans on a drum beside a gun carriage; a boy bugler sits on it with a horn and a staff topped by an eagle. A large building looms behind.

NB! · Archive · London

Two Royal Artillery musicians with drum and bugle by a gun carriage, London, 1856

Photograph of Crimean War participants, London, 1856. Surviving trumpeters of the Royal Artillery hold a captured flagstaff with an eagle

Observations · Ethnography

The name Vyacheslav, its Slavic forms and its link to the name Stefan

It is curious that the Russian name Vyacheslav corresponds to the common Slavic name Wenceslas, popular among the Poles and Bulgarians. The name is occasionally found among Italians as well. Alexandra Superanskaya, a classic of Russian onomastics, points out that Wenceslas may have been a free rendering of the name

Art · Mores · Humour

A young man in very strange breeches points at his unfaithful sweetheart in the company of another man

Czech engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, 1646

NB! · Books · Observations

Our usual failing is that only what is new and extraordinary makes an impression on us

Our usual failing is that only what is new and extraordinary makes an impression on us. The ordinary, what we see every day and make use of, however great, ingenious and excellent it may be, holds either little charm for us or none at all, and does not draw our

NB! · Observations

Surely that's how everyone works, isn't it?

Art · Observations · People

Painting after the Ovruch cathedral frescoes, set beside Matisse's “Dance” and Ivanov's study

Boys at Play, Kuzma Sergeyevich Petrov-Vodkin, 1911. Dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Vrubel and Valentin Serov. The painting was made after the frescoes for the Cathedral of St Basil of the Golden Roof in Ovruch, among which was the biblical subject of Cain and Abel. Note the stone

Faith · Books

“I have four sons in the army, and I do not grieve”

“I have four sons in the army, and I do not grieve. It is all as God wills: a man may die lying on the stove, and in battle God may spare him,” came, without the slightest effort, from the other end of the table, the deep voice of Marya

Alexandr Radayev