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The Importance of Ambitions

How about that? I’ve just written about the ambiguous use of the words “ambition” and “ambitious”. And now The Guardian published a short review of the results of a study of 13,669 essays written by schoolchildren in 1969. Although the authors of the study have warned against early conclusions, it seems very likely that the earlier in life people set high goals, the more likely they are to achieve them.

Personally, I wouldn’t use either word, and this is not just because the word “ambitious” is being used both to encourage and to dismiss one’s aspirations. I would rather say children should be encouraged to have goals in life that serve to realise their creative, physical, mental, etc. potential. Parents should, on the other hand, be able to recognise such potential in their children and help them realise it, help them formulate and achieve their goals. I feel, judging by the use of the word, “ambition” is often linked to politics, and when we say “ambitious” we picture a ruler who drives the entire nations to wars before dying rather disgracefully during the Ides of March. And because we don’t want to end like this, we often use “ambitious” in a negative sense.

However, having a goal in life is crucial, and setting a goal for yourself early in life is twice as important. It is possible to change goals, it is possible to abandon them, but the process of attaining experience and knowledge of achieving the goals takes years, and time is something we haven’t yet learnt to turn back.

The study has shown that children from the middle-class families had higher aspirations and did better than those from the working-class families. This made me remember about my own experience of going to the Moscow State University straight from school in 1997. Before I tell you this story though, I have to say a few words about Soviet/Russian social classes. Unfortunately, I cannot quite draw analogy between the Russian and British types of what is essentially one system. Nowadays, looking at my country since the fall of the Iron Curtain, I realise that we’ve always had classes there. Any attempt by the Communist government to erase the class differences wasn’t really successful. Perhaps, forming groups is proper to a man, and therefore the Soviet society had established its own classes instead of throwing the idea away completely. But when I was at school I was hardly aware of the class differences, to the point that even now I cannot categorise my classmates to suggest their belonging to the Soviet middle-class or Soviet working-class.

So, the story I want to tell is exactly about the importance of setting those high goals and the possibility of achieving them. At school I’d always been an excellent pupil and eventually graduated with distinction and a medal. I don’t remember when and who first suggested that I should go to study at the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU/MSU), Russia’s biggest, oldest and one of the world’s most respected universities. Time went by, the “Yulia will go to the MSU” became practically a figure of speech, so often was it used. I, however, began to feel that I did indeed want to go to the MSU, and nothing but the MSU. I wanted excellent education, I was happy to work hard to get it, so the MSU became my choice.

But it was thought to be extremely corrupt; they said it was impossible to enter the MSU without private tuition or public courses; in addition, it was thought to be extremely elitist. My family didn’t have money to bribe anyone, and was quite far from the elite. Finally, after attending a few public lectures I realised it was a loss of time and money (there was a small fee for each lecture), so I just continued to study on my own.

By all accounts, I shouldn’t have succeeded; against the social, financial and other possible odds, I did. When I was already in England, I watched Madonna talking to Michael Parkinson, who asked her how she’d been living in New York, and if she’d ever thought what she would do if she hadn’t succeeded. She said something along the lines of: “This wasn’t an option”. I can inscribe these words on the file in my head that has got the memories of my becoming an MSU student. The MSU was the only uni where I wanted to be. There was absolutely no option for not entering it. I suppose you can say I had considered myself the MSU student long before I got my student card. I wouldn’t call this “ambition”. It was a dream, and I also loved the place where I was going to study, and they say that when you love something with all your heart, you do eventually get rewarded.

And then I found out that those early predictions were indeed a figure of speech for many people. And although I cannot account for any instances of corruption, I have to admit that the MSU is elitist, but then so is Oxbridge. However, I’m sure I’m not the only person whose drive and passion overturned mountains.

Ambition, ambition… Nothing ever can protect anyone from failure, but usually we don’t know we are to fail until we actually do. To be afraid to realise our potential is the biggest disservice we can do ourselves. And why to think of the worst outcome? There’s a saying in Russia: “if you tell someone they’re a pig, they’ll start oinking”. So why not work hard and believe in success instead?

Let’s face it, we keep talking about one’s private goals, whereas the whole mankind should be our example. How on Earth did the Egyptians erect those pyramids? How did Columbus discover America? How did Magellan circumnavigate the Earth? How did we end up flying not only from country to country, but into space? We are people, we cannot fly, and the law of gravitation is against the whole concept of flying. Yet in the 20th c. we’ve finally got wings, figuratively speaking. There is a burning desire, a dream behind each of these achievements to which we should be looking up, without doubt.

Links:

Lucy Ward, When I grow up… the dreams of primary pupils that came true (The Guardian, September 29, 2007).

Queuing: The National Passion (…and a correction to a Yahoo! article)

This article on Yahoo! News that I’ve just read credits foreign students with ruining a quintessentially British art of queuing. On the Isle of Wight, it is reported, while the British citizens form an orderly queue for a bus, these young rascals storm past them.

Not intending to take the blame off these illiterate students, may I remind you of my observation of my trip to London in April this year when on a tube a station officer had to address the crowd eager to get on the train that they’d have less trouble getting in, if they let others get off first. I can assure you, and you may very well guess yourself, not all of those who were behaving improperly were students, let alone foreign. I have seen a few examples of such disorderly queuing in Manchester. On the other hand, it is always very nice when a guy in a hoodie offers all women at the bus stop to get on the bus before him.

For my part, I’ve always queued, when and where it was necessary. Even when there is no queue-like chain of people but a few individuals wandering around, I still usually ask if any of them is queuing up. At the very least, it saves having an argument.

Anyway, what was interesting about Yahoo! article is this passage:

Orderly queuing — as seen during the recent Northern Rock banking crisis — is seen as a quintessentially British convention. One social anthropologist believes Britons are even capable of forming one-person queues at bus stops.

Hang on a second, I thought, I have read this before, and surely it wasn’t an academic study. You see, many years ago when I was preparing for my entrance exams to the University, I wanted to hone my translation skills from English into Russian while reading something entertaining. This is how I came across and fell in love with George Mikes’s How to be an Alien. As a matter of fact, last year’s seen 60 years since the book was first published.

A chapter called A National Passion is dedicated to the art of queuing, and, like with many other chapters, the observations are pretty much valid until this day. As Mikes said in the preface to his book, he expected a scandal to happen, but instead was showered with much praise. I highlighted the phrase that Yahoo! article seemingly alludes to. It is still possible of course that a social anthropologist could use this phrase in their study, but it looks like Mikes is our primary source for such comparison.

     Queueing  is the national passion of an  otherwise  dispassionate race.
The English are rather shy about it, and deny that they adore it.
On the Continent, if people are waiting at a bus-stop they loiter
around in a seemingly vague fashion. When the bus arrives they make a dash
for it; most of them leave by the bus and a lucky minority is taken away by
an elegant black ambulance car. An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an
orderly queue of one.
The biggest and most attractive advertisements in front of cinemas tell
people: Queue here for 4s 6d; Queue here for 9s 3d; Queue here for 16s 8d
(inclusive of tax). Those cinemas which do not put out these queueing signs
do not do good business at all.
At week-ends an Englishman queues up at the bus-stop, travels out to
Richmond, queues up for a boat, then queues up for tea, then queues up for
ice cream, then joins a few more odd queues just for the sake of the fun of
it, then queues up at the bus-stop and has the time of his life.
Many English families spend lovely evenings at home just by queueing up
for a few hours, and the parents are very sad when the children leave them
and queue up for going to bed.

Marcel Marceau: “Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities”

Looking back at the names of all those great people who have left us this year, including Vonnegut, Pavarotti, Bergman, and Antonioni, 2007 seems to have taken away too much of the incredible talent that had made the 20th c. And now Marcel Marceau, the man who not only revived the art of mime, but also, we are told, inspired Michael Jackson to create his famous moonwalk.

I have just found this interview with Marcel Marceau, but unfortunately I am still not well enough to transcribe and translate it. However, it is in French and has got Spanish subtitles, and I hope some of you will know either one or another. And I will endeavour to update this post soon with the English translation.

Alternatively, – and this would be wonderful if it happened, – if there are any Francophones or native French speakers reading this blog, please feel free to lend a helping hand at transcribing and/or translating.

English translation (2007)

This is not a mystery. How to do it? Well, the art of mime is that one needs a great concentration, one needs to have a vision of what to show; and one also needs emotion, the laughter, the comical, but not a caricature because when it is too much, it is too much. This is why one needs to learn to restrain oneself and to communicate the essential.

I was a picture, therefore I am an artist who often paints pantomimes.

When I was six years old I had a very profound look, but it wasn’t a caricature, I have always had this depth. Chaplin was very deep, and his profundity touched me when I was little.

I think it is true that an artist remains a child within himself, but when he has had a really great experience in life, he changes, too.

When it was the Second World War, I wasn’t practising my art yet. I began to practise it. I started acting when Germany was occupied, and the war was over. Theatre is impossible during the war, for it is a terrible theatre. But I hadn’t had yet the knowledge I have now. I was more naive, even if I had seen the unhappiness of life I was still naive, I didn’t have this experience, the experience of terror, hoping all the time that I wouldn’t be killed. And today when I watch the documentaries about the war that I myself had lived through, I say: my God, what a courage they had ever had being so young! But I don’t have this courage any longer because I want no more wars, I hate the war, and this is what I am trying to show in my manner at the theatre.

Often the young don’t like the old, it’s like “the old are nothing any longer”, it’s the youth, the future that counts. But they will grow very old one day, too, and so I am instilling the respect to their parents. The respect to a grandfather, a grandmother, the respect to the old, the respect to those who taught us.

I have even written a book on this subject: “The memoirs of a mime who let out a scream of silence”. And even now I am trying to write, in part about the painting, in part about the family. From time to time I visit my children who have grown up now, and I love playing chess. But sometimes I feel great sadness when I say: what will happen if our world does not evolve so badly? Will one day the eternal piece really have arrived?

Russian translation (2007)

В этом нет никакой тайны. Как это делается? Искусство пантомимы в том, что нужно обладать огромной силой концентрации, нужно иметь перед глазами образ, который хочешь передать. И, конечно, нужна эмоция, смех, чувство комичного, но не карикатура, потому что слишком – это слишком. Поэтому нужно учиться сдерживать себя и передавать самое основное.

Я – это картина, поэтому я художник, который рисует пантомимы.

Когда мне было шесть лет, у меня был очень глубокий взгляд, но в этом не было ничего карикатурного, у меня всегда была эта глубина. Чаплин был очень глубок, и его глубина тронула меня, когда я был ребенком.

Я думаю, это верно, что художник остается ребенком, но когда он пережил сильный опыт, он меняется.

Во время Второй мировой я еще не занимался искусством. Я начал им заниматься, начал выступать, когда Германию оккупировали, и война закончилась. Во время войны театр невозможен, ибо это ужасный театр. Но у меня тогда еще и не было знания, которое есть сейчас. Я был наивнее, и даже если я видел несчастье жизни, я все равно был наивен, у меня не было этого опыта ужаса, когда ты боишься, как бы тебя не убили. Сегодня, когда я смотрю документальные фильмы о войне, которую и я пережил, я говорю: боже мой, как же смелы эти молодые люди! У меня нет больше этой смелости, потому что я больше не хочу войны, я ненавижу войну, и в театре я по-своему стараюсь это передать.

Часто молодые не любят старых, знаете, “старики ничего не значат”, это молодость, будущее, что имеет значение. Но ведь и они тоже однажды станут очень старыми, поэтому я воспитываю в них уважение к родителям. Уважение к дедушкам, к бабушкам, уважение к старикам, уважением к тем, кто нас учил.

Я даже написал книгу об этом: “Воспоминания мима, который кричал молча”. Даже сейчас я пытаюсь писать, что-то о живописи, что-то о семье. Время от времени я навещаю детей, которые уже выросли, и я люблю играть в шахматы. Но иногда мне становится очень грустно, когда я говорю: что произойдет, если наш мир не будет меняться так ужасно? Настанет ли когда-нибудь день, когда придет вечный мир?

History and Blogging

I have only recently joined BlogCatalog, which the majority of you may already have discovered and exploited ages ago. So far I have been finding a lot of interesting blogs and discussions there. In particular, they’re inviting all BlogCatalog people to join Bloggers Against Abuse on September 27th. The conditions are simple:

On Sept. 27th, blog about putting an end to some sort of Abuse (you decide what kind of abuse to blog about).

To read more, follow this link.

And on Oct. 15th we’re invited to take part in the Blog Action Day. Bloggers from all over the world, in whatever language they write, are invited to blog about environment. Go to the Blog Action Day’s homepage to read about how you can participate.

You have obviously noticed the title of this post. The organisers of both days offer to their potential participants an opportunity to make history as a kind of incentive for joining the cause. Looking back, we had One Day in History project which accumulated blog entries from all over Britain; we had a similar project with emails. As far as various blog action days go, my favourite is still the last year’s Global Orgasm Day.

I very much like the fact that the blogging community is realising more and more that with every bit of writing they put on the web they’re making history. On one of the discussion boards on BlogCatalog I suggested that a couple of years down the line we’ll be using blogs as historical sources for all sorts of studies. I didn’t expand on this in that thread, but let’s consider for a minute an average blog. It combines writing with photos from Flickr, music from Last.fm, and videos from YouTube. All four – the written word, photos, audio, and video – are historical sources. So, not only will we soon stumble upon “The History of Blogging” in our nearest bookshop, but we will also begin to find links to blog posts in the academic and semi-academic studies.

And when this happens, the issue of privacy will probably be forgotten completely. For, if a leading academic approaches a blogger asking to use their musings about national economy, a recent war, or sex, in their research, will the blogger’s vanity be too weak to withstand a temptation of being quoted in a thick book? However much time we’ve begun to spend in the virtual world, being able to hold in your hands a tangible record of your stardom is still something we all crave.

Update:

I’ve had a comment from Pelf at The Giving Hands. This young woman who is a biologist and veterinarian (apart from many other things from A to Z she’s been in her life) has started a blog to write specifically on the issues of saving and protecting the environment. Her own blogging challenge has been to blog about environment for the whole month, from Sept 15th to October 15th. As she is inviting us to read and comment on her blog, I found this post about green gifts particularly interesting. A few of my colleagues at work are getting married next year, so I might start thinking of something “green” for them. Read 10 ways to green your gifts.

The Rule of Freebies?

A year ago Richard Fair wrote this evocative and thought-provoking post “Is it OK to blog while off sick?” Unfortunately, it’s absolutely not OK for me, not even because I’m afraid at work they may be reading my blog, but because I feel too bad to be sitting in front of the monitor. So, here is this unplanned pause, and apologies for any comments that I might not answer in the meantime.

In short, I’ve caught this cold. I had a family member having a bit of a temp last weekend, and on Tuesday at work I was shivering with cold inside. On Tuesday night I had high temperature myself, which I seem to have managed to stop. But my throat is so sore that I cannot fall asleep at night, and as from this morning I’m also coughing, and now I’m dreading going to the doctors.

I commend all the good health professionals for the job they do, and my gratitude to some of them is as deeper as they saved my life a couple of times. But there were other situations.

Several years ago, during my first year in England, I required an urgent X-ray in the stomach area. This happened on the first weekend after the New Year. At first, there was no GP available. Then there was no ambulance car. In excruciating pain, I went to the hospital in a family car, a Ford Mondeo. At the hospital, I had to wait for X-ray for three and a half hours. During this time, five or six people came in, told me about the drawbacks of X-ray (as if I didn’t know myself!), and then asked this question.

Are you sure you’re not pregnant?

Yes, I was totally sure. But again and again they kept asking me, as if the previous group didn’t communicate my answer to the next. Eventually I received my treatment, but the sheer amount of time that was spent dangerously in vain is staggering.

And now I’m trying to book in with my GP. Yesterday when I felt really bad and could barely leave the bed, I phoned the surgery asking if the doctor could visit me at home. It was very cold, windy, and exactly at the time of my call it’s been raining cats and dogs. Going out to see a doc in such weather would only make things worse for me.

Upon finishing listening to my symptoms, the receptionist said:

I’m afraid we only visit the patients at home in the case of emergency“.

Oh good, at least there was a confirmation that mine wasn’t the case of emergency (surely I didn’t expect it to be). That was a relief. But if it was such emergency case, surely I’d be dialling a three-digit number, wouldn’t I?

I wholeheartedly believe that education and healthcare are the two “luxuries” that must be available to everyone for free. At the same time, as we know through experience, a lot of “freebies” are often of average quality. It’s sad and alarming when the rule of freebies extends to at least one of the fields that help to build and to protect the society.

Me, Cardinal Wolsey, and Martin Luther King

It could hardly get any better than this – to stumble upon a post about Moscow in 1664 in a blog written by Cardinal Wolsey. The fact that it’s twenty minutes past eleven at night would make me doubt things, but no, this is true: while the life of Henry VIII is being adapted and re-adapted for the screen, his Humble Servant is blogging away “on Tudor history, medieval history, early-modern history and anything else that takes his fancy”.

All jokes aside, Cardinal Wolsey’s Today in History is a really interesting blog, which I haven’t read before. Having spent several years studying mid-Tudor history and specialising in the history of Edward VI’s reign, I was glad to find this post about child kings.

Thanks a lot to Cardinal Wolsey who got me started on remembering my Medieval and Early Modern History studies. I finally feel it is appropriate to tell the story that happened in Moscow in 2003. As you might know, in Russia we have predominantly oral exams, which involve learning a lot of facts, dates, names, definitions, etc., by heart. The exam is taken by a senior academic, who is often assisted by a junior member of staff. So, in my first (and by far the only) year of Ph.D. in History I assisted three or four times, and the final time it was during the summer exam session at the Early Modern History exam.

This 2nd year student had two questions: one on socio-economic history of England in the 16th c., another on the history of German Reformation. He knew his first question badly, and answering it to the senior examiner would have made no difference, as the main examiner was my supervisor, herself an English scholar.

We dragged through this first question, and then I finally “released” him from this turmoil and suggested he’d start answering his second question.

The student evidently thought that German Reformation was an easy question, and that since I was an English scholar I was therefore not a German scholar, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to impress me with some generic phrases. And thus, sitting opposite me at the desk, he almost struck a pose, and pronounced the first sentence that was supposed to start a memorable answer:

– Reformation in Germany was begun by Martin Luther King.

I made my best effort not to take a notice. Alas, the student heard what he said. He shrank and mumbled with a confused smile:

– I mean, simply Martin Luther.

One of my former teachers told me recently he thought this was a joke. It was, of course – except that it was true.

Anton Chekhov, The Joy

The Joy is a short story by a renowned Russian author and playwright, Anton Chekhov. I have long loved it for its satirical look at the individual’s awe of the press. In those days there was no media the way we now know it, but the power that the newspapers owed to their wide-spread circulation was well recognised and appreciated. There is thus no wonder that anyone of a low social standing who’d find his name in the newspaper would be overjoyed, like the protagonist of this story.

I don’t often read English translations of Russian literary classics, mainly because I have already read those in Russian, and there is much more to do other than to compare the differences between the original and its translation. In the case with The Joy, I wanted to translate it anew anyway, and I was convinced it was necessary after I read the English translation. The differences start at the very beginning: in the Russian text, the protagonist’s parents are only getting ready to go to bed, but the English translation says they had already gone to bed.

Why is this difference important? A few short sentences of the opening passages depict the Kuldarins family through the time they go to bed and through what they do, once in bed. The youngest, the brothers, are the earliest to go, so by midnight they’re fast asleep. Next, a sister, is also in bed, but is finishing a novel, of which her parents are probably oblivious. No doubt, the novel is a romance, and the girl is in that “romance-prone” age. The parents, being the oldest, are the last to go to bed, but also perhaps because they are waiting for their eldest child, the protagonist, to return home. This young man is leading a typical young man’s lifestyle, visiting public houses, working in the day as a college registrar, which was the lowest civil officer rank in Imperial Russia.

Those first few sentences are also important because, in spite of a long list of brilliant short stories, Chekhov’s perhaps largest contribution as an author was to the world’s theatre with his poignant dramas and comedies. The Joy is exemplary in that, being written in 1883, it anticipates Chekhov’s plays by setting a stage for the story: a half-asleep house, disturbed by a “joy”. The momentum is built by getting the secondary characters out of their beds only gradually, while also, through many repetitions, pointing to the protagonist’s hunger for fame and his total disregard to the kind of fame that had befallen him.

Links:
Joy by Anton Chekhov
А. П. Чехов, Радость (original Russian text)

Anton P. Chekhov, The Joy (1883)


It was midnight.
Mitya Kuldarov, all excitement, his hair dishevelled, stormed into his parents’ house and quickly walked across all the rooms. The parents were just getting ready for bed. His sister was already in bed, reading the last page of a novel. His brothers, the schoolboys, were fast asleep.
Where have you come from? – the parents asked in amazement. – What’s the matter?
Oh, don’t ask! I didn’t expect this! Oh, I didn’t expect this at all! It’s… it’s simply unbelievable!
Mitya burst out laughing and then sank into the armchair, unable to cope with his happiness.
It’s incredible! You can’t even imagine this! Look!
His sister leaped out of the bed and, wrapping herself in the quilt, went to see her brother. The schoolboys woke up.
What’s the matter with you? You’re not yourself!
Oh, it’s a joy, Mother! For now entire Russia knows about me! Entire Russia! Before it was only you who knew about a college registrar Dmitry Kuldarov, and now the whole of the country knows! Mother! Oh my God!
Mitya quickly raised on his feet, ran around the house again, and then returned to the armchair.
But what happened? Can’t you say exactly?
You live like animals in the wild, read no newspapers, pay no notice to the news, yet the papers print so many splendid things! Once something happens, it’s promptly reported, nothing is concealed! Oh, I’m so happy! Oh my God! In the papers, they only write about the celebrated people, and now they wrote about me!
What do you say? Where?
The father went pale. The mother looked at the holy image and crossed herself. The schoolboys left their bed and as they were, in their short nightgowns, came up to their brother.
Exactly! They wrote about me! Now entire Russia knows me! Mother, you put this issue away and keep as a memory! We’ll be reading it occasionally. Look!
Mitya drew a newspaper out of his pocket, gave it to the father and pointed with his finger to a passage highlighted with a blue pencil.
Read!
The father put on his glasses.
Come on, read it!
The mother looked at the holy image and crossed herself, and the father coughed and began to read:
On December 29th, at 11 o’clock at night, a college registrar Dmitry Kuldarov…
You see? See? Carry on!
… a college registrar Dmitry Kuldarov, upon leaving a porter-serving public house located at Kosikhin’s in Malaya Bronnaya, and being in the inebriated state…
I was with Semyon Petrovich… No detail is missed! Carry on! On! Listen!
… and being in the inebriated state, slipped and fell under the horse of a cab-driver that parked there, which driver is known as Ivan Drotov, a peasant of the Durykina village of the Yukhnovsky district. A frightened horse stepped over Kuldarov, and dragged over him the sledge in which was sitting Stepan Lukov, a 2nd rank Moscow merchant, and then galloped down the street, but was stopped by the street cleaners. Kuldarov, initially unconscious, was later taken to the police station, where he was checked by a doctor. A contusion that he received on his nape…
I was struck by a thill, father. Go on! Read on!
… received on his nape is considered light. The incident is being put on file. The victim received medical help”.
They told me to foment my nape with cold water. So, have you read it now? Yes? See! Now it’s all over Russia! Give it here!
Mitya snatched the paper, folded it and put it back in his pocket.
I’ll go round to the Makarovs, show them, too… And then to the Ivanitskys, and Natalia Ivanovna, and Anissim Vasillich… I’ll run now! Farewell!
Mitya put on his hat with a badge and, joyous and triumphant, stormed out of the house.

English translation © Julie Delvaux (JS) 2007.

In the Mood for a Weekend

Staying only for half of the day at work on Friday is already enough to put you in the mood for weekend. I was properly in the mood for it on Friday morning, when I discovered that Notebooks – Los Cuadernos de Julia is shortlisted for this year’s Manchester Blog Awards. I couldn’t blog about it last night, as my internet didn’t work, so it’s Saturday morning, and I’d like to say to everyone who nominated me a huge “thank you”. Incidentally, the event will take place at MohoLive in our dear Northern Quarter on October 10th, and although the event is free we’re all advised to book tickets. So, if you’re up to travelling to Manchester on October 10th to see me and other Manchester bloggers in flesh, let us know or just turn up at the event. As for me, I’d be absolutely chuffed to see my reader. Likewise, I’m looking forward to seeing everyone I already know, especially because meeting with some of them is sometimes tricky to organise.

To move on to more digital randomage, I notice that an email is something that gets our heads turn in the past few months: first, the 15th c. email, then mine Short history of the email, and now Google has finally assembled the Gmail users’ submissions for their video about how a Google mail travels. To check the video out, go to Gmail: A Behind the Scenes Video.

Google has also introduced BloggerPlay: in simple terms, they made all photos uploaded to blogs in real time publicly available. In their own words,

Blogger Play will show you a never-ending stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs. You can click the image to be taken directly to the blog post it was uploaded to, or click “show info” to see an overlay with the post title, a snippet of the body, and some profile information about the blogger who uploaded it.

Sounds like real fun, and being a woman (after all), I couldn’t resist clicking on catwalk photo that brought me directly to Cuantos Trapitos blog. I don’t know Spanish, but looking at the blog, it’s all about fashion, fashion, fashion, and it’s likely to become one of those that I visit very often. Thanks to Blogger Play, what can I say!

(The image in the post is courtesy of Manchizzle).

Vladimir Solovyov: A Parody on Russian Symbolists

Vladimir Solovyov A Parody on Russian Symbolists mocks an affected, indulgent style of young Symbolist poets and their love for opulent imagery

Russian Symbolism was a branch of European artistic movement under the same name. I first discovered Russian Symbolist poets more than 10 years ago, when I was still at school (Alexander Blok and Konstantine Balmont were my favourite). I suspect, however, that outside Russia Russian symbolism may be primarily associated with theatre, especially the names of Diaghilev and Meyerhold.

vladimir-solovyov-ivan-kramskoy

Russian Symbolism was occasionally criticised for its superfluous imagery, and the poem that I translated highlights just this sort of criticism. It was composed by Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian philosopher, who was close enough to the Russian literary circles to be able to smile at these sarcastically. The Parodies on Russian Symbolists were printed in 1895 and consist of three parodies, but my favourite has always been the one I have just translated from Russian. It is very much an impromptu, completed chiefly on the bus on my way home. As you may see, Solovyov’s poem is more of a parody on symbolism per se: he generously fills every line with a “symbol”, to create a hilarious image of a jealous lover. So, please welcome, Vladimir Solovyov A Parody on Russian Symbolists, in Russian and English.

Vladimir Solovyov – A Parody on Russian Symbolists

The skies are burning with the lanterns’ fire –
Dark is the Earth!
So, have you been with him, oh woeful liar?
Let truth shine forth!

But tease not the hyena of misgiving
And mice of gloom!
Or else the leopards of revenge come bringing
In teeth your doom!

And call you not the owl of discretion
This fateful night!
The mokes of poise and elephants of question
Have taken flight!

You bore yourself the monstrous crocodile,
Which is your fate!
Oh let the skies burn with the lanterns’ fire –
Dark is the grave!

© Julie Delvaux 2007

Владимир Соловьев, Пародии на русских символистов (1895)

На небесах горят паникадила,
А снизу – тьма!
Ходила ты к нему иль не ходила?
Скажи сама!

Но не дразни гиену подозренья,
Мышей тоски!
Не то смотри, как леопарды мщенья
Острят клыки!

И не зови сову благоразумья
Ты в эту ночь!
Ослы терпенья и слоны раздумья
Бежали прочь!

Своей судьбы родила крокодила
Ты здесь сама!
Пусть в небесах горят паникадила,
В могиле – тьма!

More posts on Vladimir Solovyov, Alexander Blok, Translation.

A Short History of the Evolution of the Email

My favourite seminar at the Moscow State University was in Modern History, not exactly because I enjoy the time period, but because we had a fantastic tutor who made us read Rousseau, and Montesquieu, and Toynbee, and Febvre, and Jaspers, and engaged us in sometimes high-flown philisophical discussions.

He also had a great sense of humour. Once we were comparing the gone and present civilisations. The question was, whether or not those medieval people, forever stinking and superstitious, were less happy than modern people, who have got things that medieval people wouldn’t even think of. The answer was, of course, that medieval people simply didn’t know about the things that we’ve got, so they were neither less, nor more happy. Had they been transported into our time, tried out different things, and then went back to their time, then they would probably be very unhappy.

Today, however, I saw this video on YouTube, and it made me contemplate on how far the world would have gone, had the 15th c. folks really had Macs in their sacks. In the 15th c. they’d retype their emails many times before entrusting a Mac to a messenger. In the 16th c. they’d discover the spell-checker and possibly some drawing programs. The latter would become extremely useful in the 17th c., during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), as it would allow to draw the schemes of the enemy’s headquarters and positions on the battlefields, as well as the enemy’s portraits. They still wouldn’t know how to save these things, which is exactly the reason why this early electronic history of mankind is not available, not even in cache.

However, because of war, people would realise how costly it may be to send a Mac with a messenger, so they’d create logins. (I anticipate some archaeological discoveries or the mentions in the 17th c. manuscripts of the destroyed white metallic boxes that didn’t seem to contain any information and had been broken in parts in the hope of uncovering the information). The logins and passwords would be sent, as previously, with pigeons.

In the 18th c., inspired by the great surge in development of natural and social sciences, as well as by the new literary genres, people would further experiment with their Macs. They’d learn to use Word, to write their novels and dramas; they’d use Excel to manipulate the complex economic figures (as you might know, Adam Smith was undoubtedly familiar with Excel functions); and the antiquarians would master the use of Access, to catalogue their stupendous collections.

Moreover, in the 18th c. they’d not be content with using just a Mac (which, some people say, is rubbish at RSS applications), so they’d invent a PC. At this time, because of the all-pervasive influence of computers, they’d briefly get back to writing letters on paper. But soon the Revolution would strike, and they’d realise that sending a paper letter may cost one their life. A messenger was now much more dangerous a mercenary than ever before, and it was vital to find the means to avoid using him to send the information. So people would go back to emails, and this time they’d finally discover the “send” button. The 19th c. would thus have started.

But the email users still had to discover many things. By coming across the “send” button, they would be able to avoid the use of messengers, but they still couldn’t protect themselves from being framed. That’s until they’d discover the way to archive private information and to delete sent and received messages. But this would only happen under the influence of the world wars.

In the 20th c., during the wars, it would become clear that it was impossible to spend time typing every word at full, so the electronic shorthand would have been developed. The wars having been finished, shorthand wouldn’t disappear but instead would become an inherent part of email writing. The email users would appreciate the enormous possibilities of punctuation at communicating moods and emotions: 0), ^_^, :-(((, ;-). As there was no longer any real danger in keeping hold of one’s correspondence, people would be deleting sent and received emails less and less often, and already in the new millenium many email applications would offer their users the unlimited mailboxes, and even an option of searching their growing email archives.

But as technology doesn’t stop, neither does email. We’d enter the 21st c. with a huge array of means to deploy emails, which would include sending them via a mobile phone. And if you’d ever had any reservations about the human ability to progress, this short story of the evolution of the email (had it been true) would have proved you wrong once and for all.

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