"Ah, Petka, Petka, I once knew a Chinese communist by the name of Zhe Zhuang"

"Ah, Petka, Petka, I once knew a Chinese communist by the name of Zhe Zhuang. He often had a dream in which he was a red butterfly flitting about in the grass. And when he woke up, he could not make out whether it was the butterfly who had dreamt that she was engaged in revolutionary work, or the underground man who had dreamt that he was fluttering among the flowers. …

"And what happened to him?"

"Nothing. They stood him up against a wall and woke him."

Victor Pelevin, Chapaev and Void

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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

"Ah, Petka, Petka, I once knew a Chinese communist by the name of Zhe Zhuang"

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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