Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
When Eduard Limonov died, five days ago, obituaries appeared the world over. The New York Times, The Los Angeles TImes, Le Monde, La Repubblica, El País, O Público. Limonov was a uniquely talented, original poet, a gifted fiction writer, and…
Early in 1892, Chekhov bought a modest estate in Melikhovo, forty miles south of Moscow. In March, he moved there from Moscow together with his parents and sister, and would live in Melikhovo until 1899. From time to time, he…
Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem in 1933 that begins approximately like this: Do not tempt alien tongues – rather try to forget them:No matter what, you won’t be able to bite glass with your teeth. It’s not an invective against…
More on M. Blanchard’s adventures in France and other European countries. (Part 1; part 2.) Here’s a brief recap: J. D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. Jean-Baptiste Rossi, later known as Sébastien Japrisot, translated it into…
The Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16, 1951. A French version appeared two years later, perhaps the first translation into a major literary language. The translator was a young man, Jean-Baptiste Rossi, who had published his first…
A Maggot was the first book by John Fowles I had read. It was his last novel, published in 1985. Soon afterwards, I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, first published in 1969. Much later, I added The Collector (1963) to…
Last year, the Tretyakov gallery hosted a large-scale Vasily Vereshchagin retrospective. As a leading expert on the Russian empire’s Asian policy put it: Vereshchagin was also Russia’s Orientalist painter par excellence, using the adjective in the traditional art historical sense.…
Brick and mortar buildings like this, this, and this are a common sight in post-Soviet cities. They are colloquially called transformer booths because they house transformer (sub)stations. They are not all ugly but it’s understandable that some people would rather…
Stephen Kotkin, the author of two biographical books on Stalin, wrote in this week’s issue of the Times Literary Supplement: Solzhenitsyn wrote it [The Gulag Archpelago] conspiratorially, in fragments, hiding his completed sections in the homes of trusted allies… In…
Eimuntas Nekrošius, the great Lithuanian theater director, died in Vilnius on November 20 on the day before his 66th birthday. He was loved and revered by Russian theater-goers and theater-makers. He was one of the masters whose achievement made possible…
I’ve linked before to James Wood’s review of Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon. I’m linking to it again for this observation: Sylvia Plath once longed to write a poem that might be roomy enough to include a toothbrush. But…
A few weeks ago, at an airport, I heard a lady instruct her kids over the phone to not use a floordrobe the coming night. A much-needed word! The next moment, I thought of a 101-year-old Russian poem: Truly, at…