A Decisive Evening

This evening I shall see you,
This evening my lot will be decided,
This evening I shall receive what I desire,
Or an abschied into retirement!

And tomorrow, the devil take it, I shall get tight as a tick,
I shall fly like an arrow in a dashing troika;
‎Having slept it off as far as Tver, in Tver I shall drink again,
And drunk I shall gallop to Saint Petersburg for more drinking!

But if happiness is appointed by fate
For one who has been a stranger to happiness his whole life,
Then... oh, even then I shall drink myself as drunk as a swine,
And in my joy drink away the travel money along with the purse!

Literal translation

Denis Davydov on his plans for the evening, 1818

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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

A Decisive Evening

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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