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,…

Continue reading →

strip tease
Heroes "Minor" Fonvizin
The most famous comedy of Fonvizin, “The Minor,” is one of the first-class works of Russian literature. The playwright portrayed in it, firstly, the ignorant, ancient education of noble children;…

Continue reading →

"The Tale" by Abraham Palitsyna
The famous figure of the Time of Troubles, Avraham Palitsyn, described the circumstances of protection from the Polish troops of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and his personal exploits in a work…

Continue reading →

is not surprising

“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 its laws. A tense-dramatic plot is being built, in the center of which stands a mysterious crime; ideological masses are involved in a whirlwind of action and, colliding, cause spectacular explosions. In The Brothers Karamazov, the religious mystery is paradoxically combined with a criminal novel. For all its philosophical depth, it is one of the most fascinating and popular works of Russian literature. 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

Books about the art market

Several years ago I bought almost all books on the art market almost in a row and gradually created my own library of this literature. I have it all in English, because, firstly, I see no reason to read translations of what can be read in the original language (I have this snobbery in relation to both Steinbeck and Financial Times), and secondly, I don’t I heard that someone from compatriots wrote some impressive folio on the topic, like in Russia they built and built (yes they never built) the art market.

So let’s get started. Continue reading

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,…

...

Puglia "Golden Ass"
The Roman writer Apuleius won his main glory with the novel Metamorphoses (Transformations). Subsequently, this novel, in connection with the high appreciation of its readers, received another name, the Golden…

...