Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
The clock’s inexorable strokes, Night’s agonizing tale! A language alien equally to all And clear to everyone like Conscience. Of us, who could ungrieving heed Midst universal silence The hollow groans of Time, The oracular, the parting voice? And thus…
Aaron Haspel disposes of the Innisfree scald thus: To take most of Yeats’s poetry seriously it is not necessary to believe in ghosts. It is, however, necessary to prefer aristocratic to democratic government, assertions to reasons, instinct to intellect, astrology…
Tatyana (see her comments e.g. to this entry) sent me this: A Slate Author on Russian “Pulp Literature”. I haven’t read anything as funnily clueless since I don’t remember how long ago. If you’re unfamiliar with the Russian belle lettres,…
Yes, I have finally seen that movie (Nebo. Samolyot. Devushka). There’s little sense in blogging about a film most of my readers have never seen, and never will, but I’ll indulge my whim. It’s a 2002 movie by Vera Zvonareva…
…from The Preserve (Zapovednik) by Sergei Dovlatov. The scene is set in the Pskov oblast’ in the 1970s. They did not like Stalin in the village. I had long noticed that. They must have well remembered collectivization and other Stalin…
Not only is all the world a stage, said Nikolai Evreinov, but the men and women around should be encouraged to act. But, as Brecht taught, there should remain a distance between the actor and his part. There is a…
I suppose I’m not alone in this: Sometimes, coming across a political or literary review, I feel helpless rage at the author’s hopeless inability to understand a goddamn bit of what they examine. I may even scream, “This is stupid!”…
It is the iambic tetrameter, known as the “four-foot iambus” in Russian. The author is Vladislav Khodasevich (Wladyslaw Chodasiewicz in Polish, his father’s mother tongue, with the l’s crossed), whom Nabokov rated the best Russian poet of the 20th century.…
Kat — formerly of uberspiffy.com — has moved her blog over to NeoZiggurat. Don’t expect to frighten us with ziggurats, neo or paleo: we have one right in the heart of town, in Red Square. It’s called the Lenin Mausoleum.…
O wondrous Psyche! Where are gone the azure wings, The light eyes, And the golden braids? How terrible is the eyes’ incinerated look, Still enamored with pure expanses! Into a dreadful wood your life has entered; Burnt out, you’re doomed to…
Im feeling bluish today — it must be the weather (not really, but it’s an excuse). I’ve sketched a translation of two poems by a Russian author who is among the dearest to me — Konstantin Vaginov (pronunciation hint: it’s…
I don’t know if Tupak Shakur was a great artist, but if you read his name the way most Russians do, you get “too-PAHK” — that is, a sort of blockhead in Russian. If Mark Steyn got it right, which…