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Spring Is Descending Upon Moscow

It is almost strange to say this, but spring finally seems to be coming to Moscow. The winter has been hesitant to start, and then it did not want to end. Even now the snow is still on the ground, although the temperature is rising.

As we did not change the clocks last year, the past winter has been anything but “easy” for me and many Muscovites, in fact. We left the house in darkness and before we finished work it had been dark once again. I decidedly took a positive look at things: I thought that I was – for once! – sharing the lives of medieval people whose history I used to study. They got up in darkness and finished work in the dark. The Middle Ages descended on my native city.

Gustav Klimt, Frauenbildnis

And then in mid-January the Renaissance began. As with the historic Renaissance, we first enjoy the poetry of Dante Alighieri that bridged the Middle Ages with the new epoch; and as soon as the snow is gone and the sunshine is in full rage, we enter the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio. And towards August we quietly move to the period of Late Renaissance and Baroque, when Nature shows us the tints of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, and Velazquez. This is an overly simplified look at the change of seasons through the prism of art epochs, of course.

I’d like to think that I have survived the medieval blues. The proverb I shared yesterday is actually very true. Last week I realised that with all the work and diverse and sundry things I had to do I did not laugh as much as I’d normally do. That meant that I was too busy, indeed. And while it’s wonderful, and I don’t complain in the slightest, it’s better when I laugh, not merely smile. I indulged in a selection of terribly funny, if silly, citations from ladies’ novels (as they are published in Russian), and on Saturday I had to satisfy an overwhelming crave for McFlurry. I had two ice-creams.

So, let’s start the Spring season with this delicate painting by Gustav Klimt, and let us enjoy all the Life’s gifts and godsends in whatever shape they come.

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