Books · Observations · Mores · People
In 1919 Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the poem "To You, in a Hundred Years", addressed to an admirer from the distant future. Piercing yet lyrical, sad yet spirited. "Friend! Do not seek me! Fashions are other now. Not even the old folk remember me." In this unusual
Books · People
To You, in a Hundred Years. To you, who are to be born A century hence, once 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! The fashion is different! Even the
Archive · Books · Society · Saint Petersburg
Illustrations to the rare émigré publication “There! Pictures of the Soviet Paradise” of the early 1920s. The new life in Bolshevik Petrograd is depicted by the authors with scrawny cows in city courtyards, starving people in a canteen, unbuttoned sailors and their drunken girlfriends from the Cheka, and workers sleeping
Books · Mores · Saint Petersburg · Society Pages
While Moscow plunges into the raging art scene, Saint Petersburg calmly opens the autumn social season. And in the history of Petersburg, as you know, the society dinner was always more than a mere taking of nourishment: it was a form of conversation, a platform for ideas and a place
Art · Books · Observations · Society Pages
Bulgakov and Akhmatova were not friends. Having met in 1933 at the artist Nikolay Radlov's, they saw each other only a few times, when Akhmatova came to visit the Bulgakovs. By all appearances there were no more than seven meetings. Even so, in that short time Akhmatova did
Books · Moscow · Science · Pop Culture
The "Tolstoy's Word" project and Yandex Maps have joined forces for the classic's birthday. As a result, Maps now has a Tolstoy profile, with genuine quotations from his diaries and letters about places in Moscow. It looks as though the writer were sharing his
Faith · Books
Saint Augustine
Books
"The Waves", Virginia Woolf
Archaeology · Art · Books · Observations · Heritage
As Virginia Woolf wrote in "The Waves", “Life is the mainspring of a watch. How swiftly life runs from January to December! We are borne along by a stream of things, so familiar now that they cast no shadows. We float, we float…”. I hope that one more
Books · Observations · Humour
I am inclined to think that the Romans rather irritated one another with their noses. Hence, perhaps, such a restless people came of them. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations
Faith · Books
Who could be luckier than those who assure us that they will attain supreme bliss by reading, every day, seven short verses from the sacred psalms? There is a tradition that a rather talkative demon once mentioned to Saint Bernard the existence of seven verses, the daily reading of which
Books · Observations · Society
A culture builds forts when it is on the way down. When it is on the rise, it builds fleets and fights for trade, for growth and for the spread of its own civilisation. When it builds forts, it is already on the defensive, static, waiting to be conquered. Forts