Following the Example of Their Elders

In the painting by Vasily Maximov (1844-1911) from the collection of the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, we see a boy secretly drinking wine, unbeknown to his parents. The painting is called "Following the Example of Their Elders".

Our youth love luxury, they are badly brought up, they mock authority and have not the slightest respect for their elders. Our children nowadays have become tyrants, they do not rise when an elderly person enters the room, they contradict their parents. Quite simply, they are very bad.

In principle, Socrates is right about everything. But he forgot to specify that children are merely what adults have made of them.

Maximov, the painter, did not forget this. Nor, of course, did the sculptor Shemyakin, with his monument "Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices". But it is far too ghastly, and we shall not look at it. Maximov, after all, expressed the thought more elegantly.

Report a translation error

September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of 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

Following the Example of Their Elders

Read more

September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

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