Archive · Books · Observations
"When I think of Russia, I picture to myself what I have read in Turgenev and in my friend Maurice Baring. I picture a country where the winters are so long, and the summer is sultry and bright; where expanses of carelessly tilled fields stretch far and wide; where
Archive · Books · People · Ethnography
The lines in the third stanza of Pushkin's "Monument" listing the peoples of Russia who will remember the poet. "And the proud grandson of the Slavs, and the Finn, and the now-savage Tungus, and the Kalmyk, friend of the steppes" - Literal translation in
Archive · Art · Observations
The series of engravings of 1800 is called “Hieroglyphs”, a reference to the general excitement that followed the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops in 1799. True, the reference betrays a naive understanding of hieroglyphs as the mere reproduction of certain concepts and phenomena by means
Archive · Books · Moscow · Society
And long shall I be loved by the people for this, That with my lyre I awakened kindly feelings. As early as 1880 it became known that the version of "Monument" published in Zhukovsky's edition contained censorial corrections and differed considerably from the original, touching important
Archive · Books · People
Saltykov-Shchedrin in a letter to Nekrasov, 14 November 1875:. “Goncourt writes excellently… Zola’s article on the Goncourts is very good… Zola’s despatch on the floods is the kind of thing that makes one’s hair stand on end. A whole appalling drama… If it does not work
Archive · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Humour
Princess Elizabeth and Prince Charles, photograph by Cecil Beaton, 1948, Vogue. Although the child here is only a month old, there is no tiger-cub emoji on his face. Besides being the first published photograph of Prince Charles in the magazine, it is the first royal photograph printed in the
Archive · Monarchies · Paris
19 March 1815: French army officers salute King Louis XVIII. 20 March 1815: the same officers fall on their knees before Napoleon. Napoleon's return from exile on the island of Elba to Paris was a veritable triumph. The newspapers modestly saw off the king, who had left the
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Mores · People
Archive · Observations · Humour
1993: Sailors find a child from the Titanic! The little girl, dressed in the fashion of 1912, was calling for her mother! Child from the Titanic found alive! On the whole, these are the only newspapers I see any point in reading.
Archive · Books · People
“Gnedich was arrested right at the end of the war, in 1945. By her own account, she had denounced herself. What she told was scarcely plausible, yet it may have been the product of a peculiar wartime psychosis: supposedly she, then a candidate member of the Party (at the Central
Archive · Books · People
"I despise my fatherland from head to foot, of course, but it vexes me if a foreigner shares this feeling with me" Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, in a letter to his friend Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky, 27 May 1826
NB! · Archive · Faith · People
Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, on the day of his ordination to the priesthood in July 1951. Here Joseph is 24 years old. The Pope Emeritus is now 94