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Dante
Dante. Salvador Dalí
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· 1788 stories
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Books · Observations · Mores · Society
Charles Dickens in “American Notes” on evening amusements and the press
Is there no amusement here? Why, yes. There, across the road, is the lecture-room, from which sheaves of light pour out, and then three times a week, or more often, there are evening services for the ladies. For the young gentlemen there are the counting-house, the store and
NB! · Archive · Books · People · Humour
George Bernard Shaw with a surfboard on the South African coast at the age of 75, 1931
Books · Monarchies · Mores · People · Saint Petersburg
Catherine II and Denis Diderot, from the invitation to Russia to the fate of his library
Within ten days of her accession to the throne, Catherine II had invited Denis Diderot to come to Russia. She even proposed that he move the publication of the "Encyclopédie", which kept running into bans in France, to Riga or Saint Petersburg. But Diderot did not take up
Books · Society
Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the independent existence of government and the structure of the state
The State must always be ready to sacrifice the government for the people, and not the people for the government. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract. in order that the body of the Government may have an existence of its own, a real life that distinguishes it from the body
Books · Humour
John Updike in “Rabbit, Run” on an adult walking down an alley instead of driving
It is quite unclear why a grown man is walking down the street on foot. Where is his car? John Updike, Rabbit, Run
NB! · Books · Moscow · Observations · Pop Culture
Watching “What? Where? When?”
Watching “What? Where? When?” I am astonished that not a single person in an entire hall of clever-clogs could identify the book lift from the Lenin Library! They are practically identical in nearly all libraries. Well, well: our respected citizens stray ever further from the temple of knowledge
Art · Books · People
In 1887 Repin painted two portraits of Tolstoy and “The Ploughman” at Yasnaya Polyana
The Ploughman. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy at the Plough Ilya Repin, 1887. In the course of a week at Yasnaya Polyana in August 1887, Repin painted two large portraits of Tolstoy, made a great many drawings and produced a small picture, "The Ploughman". Repin watched Lev Tolstoy devote entire
Books · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society
It is sad to see the dusty window of the Writers' Bookshop on Kuznetsky Most, closed for a year now
It is sad to see the dusty window of the Writers' Bookshop on Kuznetsky Most, closed for a year now. It is, it turns out, the oldest surviving bookshop in Moscow. One feels moved to appeal to the city authorities. In the capitalist race, not every cultural institution can
Books · Society
Alexander Solzhenitsyn on a lie that both sides know is a lie
They lie, we know they are lying, and they know that we know they are lying. But they go on lying all the same Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Archive · The East · Geography · Books · Science · People · Ethnography
The 1914 Pamir expedition of Gauthiot and Zarubin and Paléologue's memoir of the scholar
In the memoirs of Maurice Georges Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, there is a curious recollection of meeting the well-known linguist Robert Edmund Gauthiot, who explored the Russian territories of the Pamirs together with the young Russian schola. The story runs as follows. In 1914 Zarubin, as a linguist
Books · Observations
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them
Epictetus