NB! · Faith · The East · Observations
A photograph capturing the Pope's visit to Iraq
The Pope in Iraq. Sometimes a photograph alone is enough
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Books · Observations · Mores · People
The pink dress in Marina Tsvetayeva's 1919 poem and the wish to be loved
In 1919 Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the poem "To You, a Hundred Years Hence", addressed to an admirer from the distant future. Piercing and lyrical at once, sad yet spirited. "Friend! Do not look for me! Another fashion! Not even the old folk remember me." In this
Books · People
Marina Tsvetaeva addresses a reader born a century later in a poem of August 1919
To You, in a Hundred Years. To you, who are to be born A century hence, when I have breathed my last – From the very depths – like one condemned to death, I write with my own hand: – Friend! do not look for me! Another fashion! Even the old men do
NB! · Moscow · Museums · Observations
Dropped in at the flea market at the Museum of Moscow on Zubovsky Boulevard
Dropped in at the flea market at the Museum of Moscow on Zubovsky Boulevard. Spent only 1,000 roubles. But I have my eye on a few things
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Saint Petersburg
The wedding of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and Rebecca Bettarini will take place on 1 October 2021 in Saint Petersburg
The wedding of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and Rebecca Bettarini will take place on 1 October 2021 in Saint Petersburg. It will be the first grand-ducal marriage in Russia in more than a hundred years, since the wedding of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna in 1917. That was the second
NB! · Art · People · Humour
“I hate flowers
“I hate flowers. I paint them because they are cheaper than models and they don’t move,” - Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), the first American modernist woman artist
Aristocracy · Books · Mores
Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukov recalled how, as a child, he was allowed to go and watch the wedding of Vladimir Poluektov and Ekaterina Argamakova, where he met Katerina Obukhova, with whom he fell instantly in love, and the two at once resolved to b
Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukov recalled how, as a child, he was allowed to go and watch the wedding of Vladimir Poluektov and Ekaterina Argamakova, where he met Katerina Obukhova. The two fell in love on the spot and there and then resolved to become bridegroom and bride, in token whereof
Books · Observations · Mores
Othello's Handkerchief in Shakespeare's Play and the Contradictions in Its Origin
Othello gave his young wife a rather modest gift, an embroidered handkerchief that had come to him from his mother, which in the end played a fatal part, being planted on the jealous Moor's comrade as a token of infidelity. With this handkerchief everything is very far from
In the Press · Books · Mores · Ethnography · Humour
Gifts in world culture from ancient gift exchange systems to the presents of literary heroes
What is better to give one's beloved: sperm whale teeth, a leg of lamb, a little gold, or a bouquet of tulips in the old-fashioned way? In the pre-holiday Kommersant Style supplement I have mused on the place of gifts in the annals of world culture.
NB! · Observations
Out at the crack of dawn to the corner of the house for a newspaper
Archive · Books · Observations · Mores · Rome
Michel de Montaigne's journal for February 1581 mentions a Muscovite ambassador in Rome, dressed in a crimson cloak, a cassock of gold brocade, a nightcap-shaped hat of gold brocade trimmed with fur, and a skufia of silvery linen…
Michel de Montaigne's journal for February 1581 mentions a Muscovite ambassador in Rome, dressed in a crimson cloak, a cassock of gold brocade, a nightcap-shaped hat of gold brocade trimmed with fur, and a skufia of silvery linen, who had come to ask Pope Gregory to help
Books · Observations · Humour
Mikhail Pogodin's 1846 Remark on the West and Muscovite Russia
In his "Historical and Critical Fragments", Mikhail Pogodin has an amusing phrase dating from 1846, setting the Renaissance West against Muscovite Rus': "... with them propaganda, with us preservation, with them movement, with us tranquillity...". It makes one smile that today these words would most likely