Books · Museums · Science
The forerunner of the television: the oldest known “magic lantern” is recorded in the Physices elementa… of the Dutch physicist Willem Jacob 's Gravesande. 's Gravesande, a former lawyer from The Hague who became a professor of mathematics at Leiden, was the first of Newton's followers
NB! · Cinema · Books · Humour
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Young Tolkien in the Costume of Hermes. And four hobbits in plain white togas beside him. It is interesting to look at Gandalf through the prism of the antique pantheon. In part he may be an embodiment of Hermes-Mercury. First, as a messenger of the gods; second, as a
Books · Society · Humour
Little by little, backward and back, We shall come to such a road That they will drive us all, like calves, Beyond the Ural ridge, little by little. We shall raise ourselves a monument, Higher and fairer than all monuments, And into one colossal Tashkent Our fatherland will be turned
Cinema · Books · Observations
In the 1960 French film adaptation of Voltaire's "Candide, or Optimism" I noticed an interesting detail. In the twentieth-century version, Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh lives not in Westphalia but somewhere a few steps between Alsace and Lorraine, and this time he, like previous generations of
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June's days are running out, so here is a round-up of this month's publications. The June digest takes in literary parallels, architecture, vampires, henpecked husbands and the artefacts of the Louvre. 📌 In the Parnassian Mockingbird cinema rubric: a piece on the first vampire serial 📌 The
Archive · Books · Moscow · People
A poster for the evening held by Vasily Kamensky in memory of Mayakovsky at the Bolshoi Theatre. Vasily Kamensky was a Futurist poet and a close friend of Mayakovsky for more than ten years; after the latter's death he published several books about the poet's life.
Books · Mores · Society
"That little dog was my only comfort. Carlo slept with me, and in the daytime never left my side for a step, and what clever eyes he had, as though he understood everything. Well, the other day I gathered some scraps by the kitchen and was feeding him, and
Books · Observations · Society · Humour
Even so, you will understand, half a million people a year is catastrophically few for a literate, educated country of 140 million. Sad, comrades I alone visit some 300 times a year, though it is unclear here whether they counted unique visitors or the total number of visits. If the
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It is laughable to speak of literature now, because it is not the time of literature at all: visual practices have won a total victory and have entirely crushed the printed word. The word has been stripped of its former myth, and the influence of the visual will grow through
Cinema · Books · Pop Culture
Rowling is an executive producer of the project and is not involved in writing the scripts. Filming of the series will begin in summer 2025. Each season will be devoted to one book of the original series. Pictured: the new Severus Snape, Paapa Essiedu, a British actor whose parents came