Vasily Belov “Everything is ahead”
"Everything is ahead" (1986). - After a ravnavnogo immersion in the irrevocable Russian past, Belov, the more painful it was to feel inappropriate in the uncomfortable present, in the swarming…

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strip tease
Image and theme of the war in Tolstoy's “Sevastopol Stories”
In the military stories (“Raid”, “Forest Cutting”, “Sevastopol in December 1854, in May and August 1855”) Tolstoy dwells on the question of how legitimate war, demanding so many bloody victims,…

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Leo Tolstoy "Confession"
The first of the works of Leo Tolstoy, in which he preached the moral-religious teaching (Tolstoyanism) that appeared in his mature age, was Confession (started in 1879 and completed in…

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being afraid

Afanasy Nikitin “Going beyond three seas”

“Going beyond the three seas of Afanasy Nikitin” (see its full text) – a description by a 15th century Russian man of his journey to far India.Afanasy Nikitin was a Tver merchant. In 1466, he joined the embassy of Grand Duke Ivan III, who was traveling to Azerbaijani Shemakha. Nikitin went to Shamakhi for commercial purposes, but on the way he was robbed by the Tatars, who took everything from him, even the Bible, which, as a very religious man, he never parted. Then he decided to try his luck and continue to trade: he did not want to return home empty-handed. So he made his trip “for three seas” (the Caspian, Black and Indian), and got by dry road to India before the famous navigator Vasco da Gama. Continue reading

Ariosto, “Furious Roland”

Poem Ludoviko Ariosto “Furious Roland” had more than 80 editions in the XVI century. The elegant and at the same time simple language brought her a quick triumph over the poem Boyardo. The adventures of Furious Roland are no less varied and much better narrated; the fantasy is rich, youthful fresh, courageous; the poem is imbued with a tender feeling that charmed women. Far surpassing Boyardo by the power of poetic creativity, Ludovico Ariosto surpasses her and his successor, Torquato Tasso. Even those scenes full of voluptuousness are depicted in Ariosto with tenderness and modesty. Continue reading

English theater of the era of Shakespeare

Along with the development of dramatic poetry in England, the stage production of plays was also improved. The great importance of Shakespeare’s dramas arouses interest in the design of the theater in his time. The knowledge of the stage situation is necessary for understanding the drama of Shakespeare, as the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides become clear only with the knowledge of the structure of the Greek theater. The English drama, like the Greek, is derived from religious plays. The Catholic Church allowed a comic element in the mysteries and morals; Reformation did not tolerate it. England adopted Calvinism in a gentle form given to him by the government. Continue reading

Homer Iliad
Homer's poem "The Iliad" (see its full text and analysis) begins with a description of the wrath of the protagonist of the Greek army - Achilles. Nine years already spent…

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"The Brothers Karamazov"
Dostoevsky writes not a philosophical treatise or a theological system, he writes a novel. Religious-philosophical material is introduced into the framework of the romantic genre and is developed according to…

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