“To move a man to correct morals, pointing out the proper way to him,” is the reason that prompted the author to create this woeful tale. Rich and noble Franval, corrupted by his education and “newfangled trends,” marries the charming Mademoiselle de Farney. The wife adores her husband, he is “amazingly cold-blooded” to her. Nevertheless, … Read more
AP Platonov Epiphany sluices English engineer William Perry, generously awarded by the Russian Tsar Peter for diligence in arranging locks on the Voronezh River, with a letter calling to Russia his brother Bertrand for the execution of a new tsar’s plan – the creation of a continuous navigable passage between Don and Oko. There are … Read more
Mishka Pryaslin did not have long to live at home. From autumn to spring – on logging, then rafting, then suffering, then again the forest. And how will appear in Pekashina – women are piled: this fix the roof, then lift the door. There are no peasants in Pekashino. This time, as always, houses were … Read more
A. Serafimovich The Little Miner The father-miner sends his 12-year-old son to work at the mine on the weekend of Christmas days. The boy “stubbornly and tearfully” tries to resist, but it is useless. “The boy, too, was black as an Ethiopian, cut off and also flashed his bare feet in his shoddy shoes.” Three … Read more
The story of “Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich” belongs to the Novgorod cycle of epic tales. The brief content of the work allows the reader to compare two different images: the prince’s nephew and a simple plowman-peasant. According to some reports, in this epic the main characters are two pagan gods: Mikula is responsible for agriculture, … Read more
In preparing for the publication of the notes of Murra, the descendant of the celebrated Hinz von Ginzenfeld, the publishers drew attention to the presence in the manuscript of apparently extraneous fragments – excerpts from the previously published narrative of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler and his friend Maestro Abraham. These pages were in Murrah’s manuscript for … Read more
MM Prishvin Kashcheev’s chain The first book. Kurymushka. In Yelets, my hometown, all the old merchants’ surnames were double. Our first family name, Prishvin, was generic, official, and the second, “street”, was the Alpatovs. I was born in 1873 in the village of Khrushchev, Solovyov volost, Yelets county, Orel province. The village of Khrushchev was … Read more
Nikolai Stepanovich Echevin marks his sixtieth birthday. He worked as a teacher for forty years, and his anniversary was an event for the whole city of Karasin: his portrait was printed in a local newspaper, congratulatory telegrams came down the stream, and musicians played for him in the local restaurant and solemnly made a cake … Read more
Like a pack of ravens “on piles of smoldering bones,” a gang of bandits flies to the Volga. Here people of different “tribes, dialects, states” – fugitives from the Don, long-haired Jewish outcasts, steppe inhabitants, gypsies, Finns. Danger, blood, debauchery, deceit – The essence of the terrible family ties. There comes a late night. The … Read more
L. Ariosto Furious Roland This unusual poem is a continuation poem. It begins almost with a half-word, picking up someone else’s plot. The beginning of it was written by the poet Matteo Boyardo – no fewer than sixty-nine songs under the title “Roland in Love”. Ariosto added to them another forty-seven of his own, and … Read more