Name: Poblamiento del Continente Americano
ISBN: 978-9929-687-90-5

Books · Moscow · Paris · People

Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died

Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died. He missed his hundredth birthday by little more than a year. Chief choreographer of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1964 to 1995, Grigorovich was the creator of productions and editions of the classical ballets that formed the

Books · Humour

Alexander Levin's poem about the struggle between the Beaver and the Goat

The struggle of Beaver and Goat goes on, the eternal game. The Goat calls himself a Beaver, and calls the Beaver a Goat. But the Beaver does not lag behind: he calls himself a Beaver, sings bold songs and brandishes an axe. The Goat is put in jail to sit,

Books · Mores · People

Intelligence Is Moral Health, and Health Is Needed to Live Long, Not Only in Body but in Mind

The fundamental principle of the intelligentsia's ethos is intellectual freedom, freedom as a moral category. The cultivated person is unfree only in respect of his own conscience and his own thought. Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev, “Letters on the Good and the Beautiful”.

Archive · In the Press · Books · Monarchies · Moscow · Society

Bulgakov's play "The Cabal of Hypocrites", written in 1929 and devoted to the hardships of Molière's life under the yoke of Louis XIV, was permitted to be staged only after the vigorous intervention of Gorky, after a conversation between the author and St

Rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theatre dragged on, however, and the play reached the stage only in February 1936, to colossal success! But first in "Sovetskoye iskusstvo" and then, barely a week later, in "Pravda", there appeared devastating reviews. I give the text of the "

Art · Books · Science · Nature · Humour

I don't know why, but pineapples are trying to escape from the pages of one of the greatest botanical books of the eighteenth century

The hand-coloured botanical atlas Plantae Selectae by Christoph Jacob Trew, 1771. The engravings were made after drawings by the outstanding botanical draughtsman Georg Dionysius Ehret

Books · Monarchies · People · Saint Petersburg

Historian Adrien Richer on the deaths of Tsarevich Peter Petrovich and Tsarevich Alexey

In April 1719 Peter I's second son, Tsarevich Peter Petrovich, dies at the age of three and a half. The French historian Adrien Richer, in his History of … the Russians, published in 1770, suggests that Peter “felt that the priests and adherents of the old faith would not

A book page with an excerpt from a letter mentioning Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky, Yeltsin and Gaidar.

Archive · Books · Moscow · Society

Poet Inna Lisnyanskaya on the events of October 1993 in a letter to her daughter

Stinking Democrats, Cunning Communists, Screeching Liberals, Idiots, Suicides and Thieves. The exceptions are Yeltsin and, perhaps, Gaidar. The poet Inna Lisnyanskaya on the events of October 1993, in a letter to her daughter

Books · Observations · Mores · Humour

A Russian poem of the early seventeenth century, that is, of the close of the Time of Troubles, describing the sinful love of a sister for her brother

What is more, the sister has no fear of public censure and is ready to pursue her brother's love in spite of everyone around her. The displeasure of people at such conduct she calls envy. Of all places, here is where I never expected to find a fiery

Books · Observations

Inside Ourselves We Are All the Same Age

Gertrude Stein

NB! · Books · Observations · Humour

The bookshelf after you have bought another two thousand books without yet finishing The Wizard of the Emerald City

Black-and-white engraved portrait of a young woman with long dark ringlets and a lace shawl over her shoulders.

Archive · Books · Humour

Letter from Gustave Flaubert addressed to Louise Colet

"Pull as many faces as you like behind my back; my backside is watching you" Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet

Archive · Books · Observations · People

John Keats described the pleasure of eating a nectarine on 22 September 1819

On 22 September 1819 the English Romantic poet John Keats wrote in his journal: "Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine — good god how fine! It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy — all its delicious