Download or read book Letters from Russia written by Marquis de Custine and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marquis de Custine's unique perspective on a vast, fascinating country in the grip of oppressive tyranny In 1839, encouraged by his friend Balzac, Custine set out to explore Russia. His impressions turned into what is perhaps the greatest and most influential of all books about Russia under the Tsars. Rich in anecdotes as much about the court of Tsar Nicholas as the streets of St Petersburg, Custine is as brilliant writing about the Kremlin as he is about the great northern landscapes. An immediate bestseller on publication, Custine's book is also a central book for any discussion of 19th century history, as - like de Tocqueville's Democracy in America - it dramatizes far broader questions about the nature of government and society.
Download or read book A Taste for Freedom written by Anka Muhlstein and published by Helen Marx Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant, visionary, beautiful Astolphe-man of letters and man of society-finally gets his biography...French Elle Magazine
Download or read book The Marquis de Custine and His Russia in 1839 written by George Frost Kennan and published by Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The description for this book, The Marquis de Custine and His Russia in 1839, will be forthcoming.
Download or read book The Empire of the Czar written by Astolphe Louis L. Marq. De Custine and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 edition. Excerpt: ... find perfect models of Grecian statues, several of which I have indeed already seen in Petersburg, where the nobles are often attended by the men born on their distant estates. A low and confined room adjoined this immense shed; it reminded me of the cabin of some river boat; walls, ceiling, floor, seats, and tables, were all of wood rudely hewn. The smell of cabbage and pitch was extremely powerful. In this retreat, almost deprived of air and light, for the doors were low, and the windows extremely small, I found an old woman busy serving tea to four or five bearded peasants, clothed in pelisses of sheepskin, the wool of which is turned inwards, for it has already, and for some days past, become rather cold. These men were of short stature. Their leather pelisses were rather tasteful, but they were very ill scented: I know nothing except the perfumes of the nobles that could be more so. On the table stood a bright copper kettle and a teapot. The tea is always of good quality, well made, and, if it is not preCHARACTER OF THE RUSSIANS. 179 This is the 1st of August. ferred pure, good milk is every where to be obtained. This elegant beverage served up in barns, I say barns for politeness-sake, reminds me of the chocolate of the Spaniards. It forms one of the thousand contrasts with which the traveller is struck at every step he takes among these two people, equally singular, though in many of their ways as different as the climates they inhabit. I have often said that the Russian people have a sentiment of the picturesque: among the groups of men and animals that surrounded me in this interior of a Russian farm house, a painter would have found subjects for several charming pictures. The red or blue shirt of the peasants is buttoned over...
Download or read book Chasing Chopin written by Annik LaFarge and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern take on a classical icon: this original, entertaining, well-researched book uses the story of when, where, and how Chopin composed his most famous work, uncovering many surprises along the way and showing how his innovative music still animates popular culture centuries later. The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile. In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837–1840, when he composed his iconic “Funeral March”—dum dum da dum—using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads—musical, political, social, personal—is woven through the “Funeral March” in Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it’s known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know. As part of her research into Chopin’s world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists. The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways. A companion website, WhyChopin, presents links to each piece of music mentioned in the book, organized by chapter in the order in which it appears, along with photos, resources, videos, and more.
Download or read book Journey for Our Time written by Astolphe marquis de Custine and published by Phoenix. This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Condemned by the Soviets to the black list of forbidden publications, these journals of the French aristocrat who visited Russia in 1839 were first published in France in 1843.Long recognised as one of the most fascinating and revealing impressions of Russia by a foreigner, they abound in observations on the social, political and religious state and prospects of mid-nineteenth century Russia leading Custine to dire forebodings.Custine's conviction that as long as Russians remained enslaved, isolated and deceived by ambitious rulers they would remain a menace to the rest of the world, will strike a chord with all of us today.
Download or read book Monsieur Proust s Library written by Anka Muhlstein and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading was so important to Marcel Proust that it sometimes seems he was unable to create a personage without a book in hand. Everybody in his work reads: servants and masters, children and parents, artists and physicians. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations. Proust made literary taste a means of defining personalities and gave literature an actual role to play in his novels. In this wonderfully entertaining book, scholar and biographer Anka Muhlstein, the author of Balzac’s Omelette, draws out these themes in Proust's work and life, thus providing not only a friendly introduction to the momentous In Search of Lost Time, but also exciting highlights of some of the finest work in French literature.
Download or read book Balzac s Omelette written by Anka Muhlstein and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are. ”This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein’s erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy. Balzac uses them as a connecting thread in his novels, showing how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing more suggestively than money, appearances, and other more conventional trappings. Full of surprises and insights, Balzac’s Omelet invites you to taste anew Balzac’s genius as a writer and his deep understanding of the human condition, its ambitions, its flaws, and its cravings.
Download or read book Aleksandr Sokurov written by Birgit Beumers and published by Intellect Books. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Released in 2002, Russian Ark drew astonished praise for its technique: shot with a Steadicam in one ninety-six-minute take, it presented a dazzling whirl of movement as it followed the Marquis de Custine as he wandered through the vast Winter Palace in St. Petersburg – and through three hundred years of Russian history. This companion to Russian Ark addresses all key aspects of the film, beginning with a comprehensive synopsis, an in-depth analysis and an account of the production history. Birgit Beumers goes on from there to discuss the work that went into the now-legendary Steadicam shot – which required two thousand actors and three orchestras – and she also offers an account of the film’s critical and public reception, showing how it helped to establish director Aleksandr Sokurov as perhaps the leading filmmaker in Russia today. A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik
Download or read book French Romantic Travel Writing written by Christopher W. Thompson and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2012 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering overview of the travel books produced by fourteen French Romantic writers - including Chateaubriand, Staël, Stendhal, Hugo, Nerval, Sand, Mérimée, Dumas, and Tristan - whose journeys ranged from Peru to Russia and from North America to North Africa and the Near East.
Download or read book The Humorless Ladies of Border Control written by Franz Nicolay and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009, musician Franz Nicolay left his job in the Hold Steady, aka “the world’s greatest bar band.” Over the next five years, he crossed the world with a guitar in one hand, a banjo in the other, and an accordion on his back, playing the anarcho-leftist squats and DIY spaces of the punk rock diaspora. He meets Polish artists nostalgic for their revolutionary days, Mongolian neo-Nazis in full SS regalia, and a gay expat in Ulaanbaatar who needs an armed escort between his home and his job. The Russian punk scene is thrust onto the international stage with the furor surrounding the arrest of the group Pussy Riot, and Ukrainians find themselves in the midst of a revolution and then a full-blown war.> While engaging with the works of literary predecessors from Rebecca West to Chekhov and the nineteenth-century French aristocrat the Marquis de Custine, Nicolay explores the past and future of punk rock culture in the postcommunist world in the kind of book a punk rock Paul Theroux might have written, with a humor reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart. An audacious debut from a vivid new voice, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control is an unforgettable, funny, and sharply drawn depiction of surprisingly robust hidden spaces tucked within faraway lands.
Download or read book Russian Orientalism written by David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, the author examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. He argues that the Russian Empire's bi-continental geography and the complicated nature of its encounter with Asia have all resulted in a variegated understanding of the East among its people.
Download or read book The Geography of Life and Death written by Laurence Dudley Stamp and published by London : Collins. This book was released on 1965 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the Russian Style written by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and published by Penguin Putnam. This book was released on 1976 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Man in Russia written by Oliver Bullough and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline—and near-certain economic collapse—driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment. In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale of a lone priest to give life to this national crisis. Father Dmitry Dudko, a dissident Orthodox Christian, was thrown into a Stalinist labor camp for writing poetry. Undaunted, on his release in the mid-1950s he began to preach to congregations across Russia with little concern for his own safety. At a time when the Soviet government denied its subjects the prospect of advancement, and turned friend against friend and brother against brother, Dudko urged his followers to cling to hope. He maintained a circle of sacred trust at the heart of one of history’s most deceitful systems. But as Bullough reveals, this courageous group of believers was eventually shattered by a terrible act of betrayal—one that exposes the full extent of the Communist tragedy. Still, Dudko’s dream endures. Although most Russians have forgotten the man himself, the embers of hope that survived the darkness are once more beginning to burn. Leading readers from a churchyard in Moscow to the snow-blanketed ghost towns of rural Russia, and from the forgotten graves of Stalin’s victims to a rock festival in an old gulag camp, The Last Man in Russia is at once a travelogue, a sociological study, a biography, and a cri de coeur for a dying nation—one that, Bullough shows, might yet be saved.
Download or read book Red Fortress written by Catherine Merridale and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial, richly detailed history of the Kremlin, and of the centuries of Russian elites who have shaped it—and been shaped by it in turn The Moscow Kremlin is the heart of the Russian state, a fortress whose blood-red walls have witnessed more than eight hundred years of political drama and extraordinary violence. It has been the seat of a priestly monarchy, a worldly church and the Soviet Union; it has served as a crossroads for diplomacy, trade, and espionage; it has survived earthquakes, devastating fires, and at least three revolutions. Its very name is a byword for enduring power. From Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin, generations of Russian leaders have sought to use the Kremlin to legitimize their vision of statehood. Drawing on a dazzling array of sources from hitherto unseen archives and rare collections, renowned historian Catherine Merridale traces the full history of this enigmatic fortress. The Kremlin has inspired innumerable myths, but no invented tales could be more dramatic than the operatic successions and savage betrayals that took place within its vast compound of palaces and cathedrals. Today, its sumptuous golden crosses and huge electric red stars blaze side by side as the Kremlin fulfills its centuries-old role, linking the country's recent history to its distant past and proclaiming the eternal continuity of the Russian state. More than an absorbing history of Russia's most famous landmark, Red Fortress uses the Kremlin as a unique lens, bringing into focus the evolution of Russia's culture and the meaning of its politics.
Download or read book Strangers written by Graham Robb and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh examination of this forbidden history shows the profound effects of gay culture on modern life. Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance.
