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La Vie en Jaune: Ivan Bunin’s Cursed Days and the Christ Saviour Cathedral in Moscow

Christ the Saviour Cathedral

 

Christ the Saviour Cathedral

I am reading Cursed Days by Ivan Bunin, the Russian 1933 Nobel Laureate in Literature. In the 1917-18 Diary that precedes the narrative there are many remarks about the advance of autumn season. First, Bunin notes the slight chill of August mornings. As September wears on, he painstakingly jots down the changes in colour: maple burn red, while many more trees turn different shades of yellow. “Life in the yellow colour“, he says at one point.

As someone who’s always loved autumn, I was touched by this sentence – all the more so that it could so perfectly be translated into French and to become a paraphrase of a famous song by Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose.

A chapel by the cathedral

Жизнь в желтом цвете. Life in the yellow colour. La vie en jaune. Naturally, when I was walking from one venue of the Moscow Design Week to another, passing the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the cathedral’s dome seen through the leaves was something I instantly knew I had to photograph.

 

Author: Julia Shuvalova

Julia Shuvalova is the author of Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. She is an author of several books, a translator, and a Foreign Languages tutor. She lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

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