Many years ago I got a book full of lovely rhymed short stories. They were written by Bulgarian children author, Radoj Kirov. He was born on February 6, 1916, and studied Engineering in Prague, Bratis...
Moskvich car at the 1971 car exhibition This is a photo from 1971 car exhibition featuring Moskvich (“Muscovite”, literally). By 1970s this Soviet automobile had broken records in c...
I was reading Nabokov this morning, a translation of his celebrated Dar. It opens with a beautiful passage describing the appearance of a rainbow after the rain, particularly noting the puprle hues. I...
One of the father-founders of Licedei, a pantomime theatre, Felix Agadzhanyan died unexpectedly in St. Petersburg. He was 56. Together with Vyacheslav Polunin, Agadzhanyan was one the first five membe...
In March, when winter wasn’t showing any sign of resignation, a joke circulated: “Those who survived 3 months of winter have got the fourth free of charge”. I think it can now be add...
Representation of Venus Anadyomene in painting and in Arthus Rimbaud's sonnet reveal two strikingly different viewpoints....
The song below was performed in 1981, and I listened to it on a vinyl disk throughout 1980s and early 1990s, for as long as my vynil disk player was OK. On my way back from Tallinn in 2002 I shared a ...
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. – Samuel Butler, the English author (biography at Encyclopaedia Britannica)...
When I travelled to England in late February I was surprised and relieved at once that it did not rain a bit. It did not occur to me that something drastic may be coming, but now I hear in the news th...