Faith · Books · Mores · Ethnography
"And here is Russian Hill," said our mighty driver, shifting the lever into second gear. The car whirred and began to clamber up the cobbled roadway. No, nothing here recalled San Francisco! This little street looked more like the outskirts of old Tula or Kaluga. We stopped beside
Books · People
Velimir Khlebnikov
Art · Books · Science
Epochs change, but the wish of artists to capture people's rapture in reading remains unchanged. Paintings of people reading are an excellent illustration to an account of an important article from Bookmate, the book service of Yandex Plus. The neurophysiologist who serves as the article's expert
Books · Moscow · Observations · People
I saw "Living T." at the Theatre of Nations, with Dmitry Lysenkov playing Protasov, more or less. It is ostensibly a staging of Leo Tolstoy's play "The Living Corpse", but the T. is meant to stand for "Living Tolstoy". Accordingly, the protagonist
Archive · Art · Books
Some miser was there once, who had no end of money, And as he used to tell it, he had grown rich Without dealing crookedly, Without plundering or ruining anyone, No, he swore to it, That God had sent him such wealth into his house And that he was not
NB! · Art · Books
Coming Up · Books · Observations
Viktor Pelevin's twentieth novel, "Journey to Eleusis", about a corporate simulation of Ancient Rome, has at last reached all bookshops, Bookmate and the Yandex Plus subscription, and for the first time all at once. The Eleusinian Mysteries, which for many centuries were a kind of centre
Archive · Books · Mores · People
A medical board refused 16-year-old John Kipling conscription for the front in the First World War because of short-sightedness. The youth was burning to serve, as earlier he had dreamed of entering a military school. His influential father, by then the world-famous writer Rudyard Kipling, used
Books · London · Monarchies · Society
It is held that nothing so enriched the English, or allowed so many of them to amass the vast fortunes they are known to possess, as the wars with the Spaniards in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Everyone was permitted to engage in privateering, and they plundered not only the
NB! · Cinema · Books
Archive · The East · Geography · Books
From the Methodical Geographical Description of the Russian Empire, with a Proper Introduction to a Thorough Knowledge of the Terrestrial Globe and of Europe in General, 1776. By Chinese Tartary, in all likelihood, are meant the lands of present-day Mongolia and China; by Free Tartary, the lands of Turkestan
Art · Books · Observations
There are faces like sumptuous portals, Where greatness seems to dwell in every trifle. There are faces, the likenesses of wretched hovels, Where liver is boiled and tripe lies steeping. Others, cold and dead faces, Are shut behind bars, like a dungeon. Others are like towers in which for long