Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin in the story "The Overcoat"
The Gogol story “The Overcoat” (see its full text, summary and analysis) depicts a petty, downtrodden and pathetic official Akaky Akakiyevich Bashmachkin (see his description in the text of the…

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strip tease
What to read: 10 books on contemporary art and culture
Be In Trend has prepared a selection of 10 books on contemporary art, which will help from different angles to look at the art of the last 100 years. The…

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Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog"
A homeless dog Sharik, who lived in Moscow, was scrubbed with a boiling water by one cruel cook. It was December, and Sharik, with his side wounded from the burn,…

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focus on the problem

“Woe from Wit” and “Misanthrope” by Moliere

Of foreign works, the comedy by Moliere “Misanthrope” was especially important for “Woe from Wit” (see the summary, analysis and the full text). Studies by Professor Alexei Veselovsky showed that the image of Alceste was reflected in Chatsky: in the work of Griboyedov, the love story of the main character of “The Misanthrope”, Alceste, was repeated. Finally, the similarities are observed in some trifles. Of course, such a borrowing doesn’t make Griboedov’s comedy non-independent: if the form and some details were borrowed, then its content remained deeply Russian. Continue reading

“Woe from Wit” – analysis, briefly

“Woe from Wit” is the main work of Griboyedov’s entire life and is one of the best works of Russian dramatic literature. Despite the fact that Griboyedov describes Russian society in a very specific historical era (the first half of the 19th century), the comedy has not lost it and will never lose its freshness, will not become outdated, will enjoy the same success. In this we see undoubted proof of her genius of the work.

“Woe from wits” – and the picture of morals, and the gallery of living types, and the ever-acute burning satire on “Famusov society”, and at the same time, comedy, most of all – comedy, which can hardly be found in other literatures, ”writes another major Russian writer, Goncharov, in his remarkable article “A Million Torments”. Continue reading

Watch books, read pictures

“The boundaries of my language represent the boundaries of my world.” This is what Wittgenstein said. And then, of course, you can not argue. Man is a creature: he likes to give names to everything. Even things that obviously do not need names. For us, a thing exists only if it has a name / title.

And most of us, if we ask what literature is, will say something like: “this is a story told through words.”

We are so used to it. So we were taught in school. Well, in general, all these old libraries, manuscripts, archives – because there are solid words, right? We grew up in an environment where text is primary. Continue reading

Corneille "Sid" - analysis with quotes
In the best works of the founder of the classic tragedy Pierre Corneille (1606 - 1684), speaking in the early period of classicism, at the time of absolute monarchy flourishing,…

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Two crosses of Konstantin Batiushkov
This year marks the 230th anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov (1787–1855) and the 200th anniversary of the release of his only book, the two-volume book Experiments in…

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