William A. Bougereau – The Abduction of Psyche For the Quotes on the Front Page today I chose a beautiful sonnet 22 by William Shakespeare. Although it speaks of the age difference, I pay but a ...
Vision surges in front of you. You must seize this vision with the brush, because it can disappear suddenly, as the hare when the hunter approaches. Su Dongpo (Su Shi), a Chinese poet. The popularity...
A well-known poem by Alexander Blok was chosen to represent Russian poetry in the Leiden-centred project, Poems and Walls....
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...
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 discovered that someone landed on the blog while searching for Miroslav Valek‘s poem, Little Mice. To serious students of poetry, especially in Slavic languages, the name of Valek (1927-1...
I have noticed over the years that, unless someone who lives abroad is a serious Cinema student, Russian (and Soviet, especially) films are largely unknown in the West. Films by Andrei Tarkovsky will ...
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...
Exegi Monument, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia. My parents and I went recently to Kuskovo, a Moscow residence of the famous noble family of the Sheremetievs. The father, Pyotr, and his son...