Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
One of the memorable works at last year’s Someone 1917 exhibition in Moscow was this 1917 painting (alternative links: 1, 2) by Vladimir A. Kuznetsov (1877-1960). Its title can be translated as God’s People or Godly Folk. These are Old Believers praying…
Some three weeks ago, Himadri (the Argumentative Old Git) wrote about the change in his perception of Bruckner’s symphonies, which he used to love as a young man: But it struck me recently that it has been a long time…
Two extracts from 20th-century Russian classics in lieu of commentary to Thursday’s State of the Federation address. “What the hell are you trying to get out of me?” “The same thing that my childhood friend, Kolya Osten-Baken, wanted to get…
Ivan Bunin, the first Russian author to win the Nobel prize in literature, was prone to grumbling about fellow writers’ and poets’ follies. His bitter shots hit the mark most of the time, but occasionally he missed and got hit…
Almost three weeks ago now, the Argumentative Old Git (Himadri Chatterjee) wrote of his plan to re-read Ibsen’s mature works, which include Brand, Peer Gynt and the twelve plays from The Pillars of Society (1877) to When We Dead Awaken…
I’ve seen a dozen and a half theater performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg this year. Some turned out first-rate, as I expected from their creators – Yuri Butusov, Mikhail Bychkov, Dmitry Krymov, Evgeny Marcelli, Andrey Moguchy, Rimas Tuminas. Andriy…
What’s the principal connection between this song, which Juliette Gréco recorded in 1952 and sang at concerts for decades afterwards, and this 1984 number by the semi-underground Soviet-Russian band called (the?) Strange Games (Strannye Igry; here’s the same song performed…
On a slightly lighter note, Dmitry Bykov, “one of Russia’s most colorful, versatile, and recognizable public intellectuals” and currently a visiting professor at UCLA, occasionally suffers from a condition typical of preternaturally productive speakers and writers: getting facts wrong in…
I’ve spotted this little detail in Wikipedia’s article on Tchaikovsky; On 10 June 1859, the 19-year-old Tchaikovsky graduated as a titular counselor, a low rung on the civil service ladder. Appointed to the Ministry of Justice, he became a junior…
The organizers of Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932 – the London show mentioned in this post – seem to believe that Russian arts burst into dazzling blossom in 1917 as the revolutionary spring ushered in a kingdom of liberty: …we will mark the historic centenary by…
I can’t recall whose portrait, and by whom, this visitor is photographing. However, the painting to the right of it is the 1917 portrait of the Russian Futurist poet Vasily Kamensky by another famous Futurist, David Burliuk. (Here’s another image of…
In the London Review of Books, T.J. Clarke reviews Revolution: Russian Art 1917-32, an art show put on by the Royal Academy in London. His review is illustrated, among other images, with this photograph, captioned “The Red Army with the black square.” It gets…