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NB! · Books
On Fear Without Cause: "NOTHING WILL COME OF NOTHING, and from the empty there must needs be the hollow"
NB! · Books · Education · Humour
“It seems to me as if I had not eaten for three days”, “when I do not have supper, I cannot sleep” and other important phrases for not dying of hunger, in French, shed light on the origins of the education of Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, known as Kis
Books · Science · Humour
An old Russian book explains why stout people are less healthy than thin ones
Why are stout people not so healthy as lean ones? Because in a stout body the pores (passages) are all stopped up by the coldness of the phlegmatic spirits, and the excess of fatty humours, unable to escape from the body through the pores, is forced to return back into
Archive · Books · Monarchies · Observations · Society
Catherine II’s “Nakaz” as a portrait of the empress and its article on customs duties
I continue reading the draft of Catherine's Code, her "Instruction" of 22 chapters and 655 articles, that is, the direct guide for the deputies in drawing up the principal body of laws of the Russian Empire, a new Code to replace the "Sobornoye Ulozhenie"
NB! · Books · People · Nature · Humour
Edgar Poe said his stories were written by his cat Catarina
Edgar Allan Poe's beloved cat was called Catarina, and she would sit on his shoulder, watching him write. Poe liked to say that his stories had in fact been written by his faithful cat.
Art · Books · Paris · People
Rodin's Monument to Balzac, from the Nude Study to the Scandal at the 1898 Salon
While working on his famous monument to Balzac, often dismissed as a shapeless monstrosity, Auguste Rodin produced several models and sketches. Among them is this nude study. Apart from Rodin, hardly anyone ever saw Balzac like this. And it was in this form that Rodin first conceived the monument to
Books · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
I have learned of a wonderfully intriguing theory that the Harry Potter books are set in the Sixth Age of Middle-earth from The Lord of the Rings, when magic had ceased to be commonplace, the elves had left the stage, and those who remained turned into ho
Art · Books
Ruslan's Battle with the Head
Ruslan's Battle with the Head. Nikolai Ge, Ivan Kramskoy. Pensive rides our Ruslan And sees: through the night mist Far off a huge hill looms black, And something dreadful snores. He draws nearer to the hill, nearer, and hears: The marvellous hill seems to breathe. Ruslan listens and
Faith · Books
Tolkien in his letters on Eden on earth and the feeling of exile
But on this very unhappy earth there was, without doubt, an Eden. We all think of it: the whole of our nature, in its best and least corrupted, its tenderest and most human expressions, is still pervaded by a sense of “exile”. From Tolkien’s letters.
Archive · The East · Books · People
Pushkin on the body of the murdered Griboyedov taken to Tiflis and their last meeting
"Two oxen, yoked to a cart, were climbing a steep road. Several Georgians accompanied the cart. "Where are you from?" I asked them. "From Tehran." "What are you carrying?" "Griboyedov." It was the body of the murdered Griboyedov, which was being
Archive · The East · Books · People
Griboyedov tells Pushkin about the Persians on the eve of his last journey to Tehran
You do not yet know these people: you will see that it will come to knives. Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, on the Persians, on the eve of his last journey to Tehran