Batiushkov received
Grossman “Life and Fate”
How strikingly disappeared all the Soviet spells and formulas, enumerated above! [cm. Grossman’s article “For the Right Cause” – analysis by A. Solzhenitsyn] – and no one will say that this is from the author’s insight of 50 years? And what Grossman really didn’t know and didn’t feel until 1953–1956, he managed to catch up in the last years of work on Volume 2, and now, with passion, it’s all missed into the fabric of the novel.
Now we learn that not only in Hitler Germany, but also here: the mutual suspicion of people towards each other; It is a matter of suspicion if people talk over a glass of tea. Continue reading
Bitter “Chelkash”
The hero of Maxim Gorky’s story “Chelkash” is Grishka Chelkash, an old wounded man, an avid drinker and a clever, courageous thief and smuggler in one of the southern Black Sea ports. Barefoot, in old, worn plush pants, in a dirty calico shirt, with a torn collar, which opened it with moving, angular, dry bones covered with brown skin, long, bony, slightly stooping, he immediately drew attention to himself by his resemblance to a steppe hawk, his with a predatory thinness and aiming gait, as smooth and calm in appearance, but internally agitated, with a sharp look, like the flight of an angry, nervous bird that he resembled. Continue reading
Homeric epic
Epic means nothing more than a word about exploits (in Greek “epic” – “word”), songs that were performed by wandering singers. To the accompaniment of the lyre, they were sung or aed – the songwriter, or the rhapsodist – the performer and collector of heroic tales.
Tradition considers the creator of the ancient Greek epic of Homer, a blind stray aed, a beggar singer. Already in ancient Greece, his name was surrounded by legends. Many later considered this name to be a household name. “Homer” in one of the Greek dialects means “blind.” Many scientists, not understanding how one person could create verbally and keep in memory thousands of poems of the Iliad and Odyssey, questioned the existence of Homer himself (see Homer’s question). Continue reading
