In the first year of this blog I happened to be anticipating the release of Quiet Flows the Don (2006) whereby I was researching the subject and came across Sholokhov’s 1926 manuscript. It was a...
The poem is a lullaby; the Poet tells the story of a secret room where, under the lock, are stored all the wonders of the world. Medieval landscape and feel of Czech and Slovak cities and towns are vi...
I‘ve just read the synopsis of The Diamond Arm (Brilliantovaya Ruka), a 1968 film by Leonid Gaidai, and it crossed my mind that it can be viewed as a comic improvisation on the theme of Hitchcoc...
The X Certificate, once used by the British Board of Film Classification, was first awarded on the 9th of January 1951, 60 years ago. As the tag suggested, it was used to mark “adult-only”...
It is not true that children shouldn’t think of romantic adventures; the tale of Nutcracker is a good example of how this juvenile adventurism can do magic. In Valek’s collection of poems,...
I have just risked my health by opening the kitchen window to take a few photos. We’re having a slow and silent snowfall in Moscow. It is by no means catastrophic, rather magical and serene. Wha...
In our family archive we have several newspapers that date back to the pre-Revolution times. One of them has just marked its 90th anniversary, and if you flick through the pages of the embedded docume...
I mentioned in a previous post that in the English-language literature the genre of villanelle has acquired the depth it didn’t use to have as a Mediterranean-born dance-song. You could see how ...
Previously on this blog you have found and read If I Could Tell You by W. H. Auden. It was a villanelle, a poetic form adopted by the English poetry in the 18th c. To England it came from Italy and Sp...
What would have happened if we had never had this wildly passionate and funny performance of Suspicious Minds? Apart from seeing the range of Presley’s singing and acting abilities, we wouldn...