Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva - Comparison
Probably in the distant future and for our era will find an elegant synthesis. Contradictions will become dull, contrasts will be extinguished, variegation will be reduced to unity, and a…

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strip tease
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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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…

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beat the people

Goethe “Faust”

The great poet and thinker Goethe embodied all his life experience in the genius tragedy “Faust”. It was based on the German legend of the XVI century. about the magician and warlock, who entered into a contract with the devil. But the old story was for Goethe only a pretext to capture his thoughts on the burning issues of our time.

The plot of the tragedy combines fantastic situations and real-life scenes. This is a parable about the Man, about his duty, vocation, about his responsibility to other people. Continue reading

Bunin “Loopy ears”

Bunin’s story “Petty ears” is very inferior to “The Lord from San Francisco”, but written in the same powerful manner, with the same force of a full-sound and wonderfully heavy word. A terrible impression is made by the picture of night Petrograd, sustained in amazing colors. Reality is turned into dark fantasy. You believe the author on the word, on the word of the artist, the power that “at night, in a fog, Nevsky is terrible. He is deserted, dead; mist, fogging it, seems to be part of the very Arctic mist that comes from where the end of the world is, where something incomprehensible to the human mind is hidden and called the Pole. Continue reading

Bulgakov “Crimson Island”

But – yet, how much more I read in the house of E.S. [Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova]. At first I reached for the “Crimson Island” (1927) – a brilliant satire, to a production that was banned at the root at the same time, only slightly flashed in the Chamber Theater …

Parses laughter already from the subtitle of the play [1] and the confused list of characters. A double theater, a theater in a theater, the spirit of theatrical life – just a playwright cannot write such a thing, but a natural theater theater, which Bulgakov was. 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…

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BORIS GROYS "POLITICS OF POETICS"
Today, the philosopher, theorist of art and curator Boris Groys is one of the most respected critics in the world art community. His recent book, The Politics of Poetics, is…

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