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Archive · Art · Books
The Birth of Merlin to a Demon and the Baptism That Foiled Evil's Plan
A late medieval miniature by the artist known as the Master of Adelaide of Savoy illustrates one of the most mysterious episodes of the Arthurian cycle: the supernatural conception of Merlin. According to the medieval legendarium, the wizard Merlin was begotten by a demon who visited a pious maiden, wishing
NB! · The East · Art · Books · Saint Petersburg
Alexander Orlovsky's Illustrations to Gaspard Drouville's "Journey to Persia"
Alexander Orlovsky's illustrations to Gaspard Drouville's "Journey to Persia". Saint Petersburg, 1819–1821. A remarkable example of early Russian lithography.
Books · Monarchies · Society · Humour
You yourselves robbed and plundered, you yourselves set up unrighteous judges, you yourselves sold and bought yourselves in the courts
Our men of ill repute... judge themselves and pardon themselves Ivan the Terrible, in his letter to Prince Kurbsky and in his epistle to Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, 1570s
Archive · Books · Museums · Ethnography
Ryazan Kosobryukhie in an 1898 Photograph and Dal and Sakharov on the Nickname
There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies". What on earth are these slanting-bellies? Saltykov-Shchedrin writes of the slanting-bellies in "
Archive · Books · People
Vladimir Sorokin in 1992
Photo by Yury Rybchinsky
Archive · Books · People · Humour
Krupskaya recalls a peasant doubting the strength of a bridge when she travelled with Lenin
This Is Very Funny. From the reminiscences of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I remember how we once drove up to a bridge of decidedly doubtful sturdiness. Vladimir Ilyich asked a peasant standing beside it whether a motor car could cross. The peasant shook his head and said
Archive · Books · Ethnography
A Nenets Girl with a Book
Konstantin Dorokhov, 1938
Archive · The East · Art · Books · Mores · People · Saint Petersburg
Portrait of Alexei Arkadyevich Stolypin (Mongo) in Kurdish Costume
Watercolour by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, 1841 Alexei Stolypin was Mikhail Lermontov's first cousin once removed and a close friend. Alexei was the son of Arkady Alexeyevich Stolypin, Procurator-General of the Senate, who was the brother of Lermontov's grandmother. On completing the School of Guards Sub-
Archive · The East · Books · Mores
Street trade and shops of Cairo in Tatyana Vyacheslova's memoirs of the 1959 tour
In Cairo the shops stay open until nine in the evening, and sometimes later, depending on how trade is going. Light, colour, shouting, noise and movement stun the senses. Everything shouts: the Arabs shout, the cars hoot, the hawkers shout, the donkeys shout, but loudest of all shout the stallholders,
Books · Observations · Science · Society · Pop Culture
As early as 1903, the German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel described the effect of scrolling through a social-media feed:
This results in the nerves reacting with maximum intensity for so long a time that they finally cease to react at all. [ ... ] Thus there arises an incapacity to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy
Books · Observations
French theologian Pierre Charron on the fear of death and the sameness of days
Cowards... are angry that they die young... they are sorry to leave everyone behind, and why? You have seen it all here: one day is like all days; there is no other light, no other night, no different sun, no different order in the world: at most, one may see