Apropos of Lermontov

As you may have realised while reading A Hero of our Time, most of the action in the first section takes place in the now heavily contested borders of “independent” (at least according to Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) South Ossetia.  With winter coming on, and most of the mountainous passes becoming impassable, it looked as though [...]

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on the calque

I received an email from Len today asking me to clarify the meaning of the “calque” that appears every once in a while when we talk about Pushkin’s innovations in the literary language.  If you check the trusty oed.com, you’ll find the only meaning it provides is a “loan-translation” … So I decided to offer [...]

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reading for tuesday

Here’s the reading for th next class, from Part I Chapter IV :
- Эй вы, Свидригайлов! Вам чего тут надо? – крикнул он, сжимая кулаки и
смеясь своими запенившимися от злобы губами.
- Это что значит? – строго спросил господин, нахмурив брови  и  свысока
удивившись.

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сенная площадь ~ 1830

not quite what one has in mind when one reads C&P I think …

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Dostoevsky in the 29th Century

Here is an excellent piece on the relevance and influence of Dostoevsky upon 29th century writers and thinkers.  It was written by Robert Louis Jackson in 1981 to mark the 100-year anniversary of Dostoevsky’s death.

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Chaikovskii in Dublin

Sarah wanted me to pass this on – looks interesting -
To whom it may concern,
This March, Opera Ireland is staging the Irish Premiere of Mazeppa by the great Russian composer, Tchaikovsky. The members of your faculty and your students will have a special interest in this production due to its numerous connections with Eastern Europe, [...]

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Достоевский и Петербург – Reading for Tuesday

By way of introducing our Russian reading for Tuesday, I thought it apt to mention that all the streets and buildings that Dostoevsky mentions are actual places – you can even go and visit the apartment where the fictional landlady lived.

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Free Russian Audio Books

I stumbled upon a great site today: a collection of free Russian audio books, including Goncharov’s Oblomov and Gogol’s Dead Souls. You can download them as mp3s, or let them stream online.  As this post is starting to resemble something that would come from a spammer, I’ll just go ahead and wrap it up.

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Lyadov folk song settings

Lyadov’s arrangements for orchestra of
Russian folk songs 

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‘Night on a Bare Mountain’

Mussorgsky’s amazing evocation of a witches’
sabbath, ‘Ночь на Лысом горе’…

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