kropotkin

Filed under: anarchism, culture, literature, people I'd like to meet, philosophy, russia, science, trivia

burns, lermontov and nabokov

On Tuesday the very nice Russian woman at work came over to speak to me. Somehow we got talking about Burns and Russia. She didn’t seem to realise that (at least at one time) Burns was very big in Russia (she’s only 25 and I’m talking the 1950s and 1960s). It came back to me as we spoke that my former employer John Aitkenhead had told me that one year he and some others travelled by car from Scotland to Moscow to attend a Burns supper there.

Anyway I wanted to substantiate some of this and did a search on robert burns and russia. The number one link returned was From Rabbie with love.

“Pushkin, the great Russian poet, had an edition of Burns in his library,” says Fedosov, “and Lermontov, a man who is as big as Pushkin in our literature and whose forebears came from Fife, even translated small bits from Ae Fond Kiss. Unfortunately Lermontov was killed in a duel so he couldn’t follow it up.”

I knew that Lermontov had Scottish family connections (on his mother’s side I thought) but not that they had come from Fife. Over to the Wikipedia to discover that the family name had been Learmonth. So that’s interesting fact number one—learmonth becomes lermontov.

Lermontov was killed in a duel in 1841 in a part of the Caucasus called Little Scotland, an area where Scottish missionaries had settled. So that was also interesting to learn from the Scotsman article.

What really interested me though was that Nabokov’s Pnin (a book of which I am somewhat fond) took Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time as its model.

I don’t know about you but I just love learning things like this.

Filed under: culture, literature, russia

di lampedusa and the leopard

Last week I managed to finish rereading The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. I say managed to but the book is a pleasure to read (it’s my laziness that’s the problem). In fact it is one of those books which are touted as great novels but clearly is a great novel, dealing as it does with the decline in fortunes of a family of Sicilian nobility.

There is a very poignant chapter in which the main character Don Fabrizio dies.

He must have had another stroke for suddenly he realised that he was lying stretched on the bed. Someone was feeling his pulse; from the window came the blinding implacable reflection of the sea; in the room could be heard a faint hiss; it was his own death rattle, but he did not know it. Around him was a little crowd, a group of strangers staring at him with frightened expressions. Gradually he recognised them: Concetta, Francesco Paolo, Carolina, Tancredi, Fabrizietto. The person holding the pulse was Doctor Cataliotti; he tried to smile a greeting at the latter but no one seemed to notice; all were weeping except Concetta; even Tancredi, who was saying: “Uncle, dearest Nuncle”.

I urge everyone to read it:)

Note: the Wikipedia article points out the animal mentioned in the title is really a serval and not a leopard.

Filed under: books, culture, literature, reading

perec on the way over to portobello

Georges Perec

Whilst waiting on the bus this AM I was debating with myself whether to read on my way over to Portobello (journey time about 30 minutes). One of the books that I currently have on the go — Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec — was in my knapsack, it’s quite cold in Edinburgh today btw. Don’t be so lazy I was telling myself here’s a good half hour opportunity to read — take it. So that’s what I did.

Opening the book at the place where I’d left off on Thursday I found I’d already started the chapter where Perec talks about reading (Reading: A Socio-physiological Outline). Under the section on Transport this is what I read:

Cars and coaches are no use (reading gives you a headache); buses are better suited, but have fewer readers than you might have expected, no doubt because of all there is to see on the street.

That is true for me at any rate (as well as laziness) .

Perec goes onto say that the place for reading is the Métro (he was a Parisian not a Geordie).

I’m surprised that the Minister of Culture, or the Secretary of State for the universities has never yet exclaimed : ‘Stop demanding money for libraries, Messieurs. The true library of the people is the Métro!’ (thunderous applause from the majority benches).

Sadly Edinburgh does not have a Métro, so the bus will have to do despite the distractions of the street.

Filed under: books, culture, literature, oulipo, reading