понедельник, 25 декабря 2017 г.

A Christmas Carol 2009


A Christmas Carol is a 2009 American 3D computer animated motion-capture dark fantasy film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. It is an adaptation of the Charles Dickensstory of the same name and stars Jim Carrey in a multitude of roles, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge.[5]The film also features supporting roles done by Gary OldmanColin FirthBob HoskinsRobin Wright, and Cary Elwes.

Watch BBC TV LIVE outside UK without VPN ! On BBC One live- Little Women, The Miniaturist

Doctor Who- BBC TV 2017 Christmas Special- Twice upon a time

Doctor Who- BBC TV 2017 Christmas Special- Twice upon a time
Two Doctors stranded in a forbidding snowscape, refusing to face regeneration. A British army captain, seemingly destined to die in the First World War but taken from the trenches to play his part in the Doctor's story. In the final chapter of the Twelfth Doctor's epic adventure, he must face his past to decide his future. Along the way he realises the resilience of humanity, discovering hope in his darkest frozen moment. It is the end of an era, but the Doctor's journey is only just beginning

четверг, 14 декабря 2017 г.

RBTH:Russian words impossible to translate into English



The English language has more than 1 million words. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to find an exact translation for certain Russian words, especially if the meaning is related to the enigmatic "Russian soul."

1. Poshlost

Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov, who lectured on Slavic Studies to students in America, admitted that he couldn’t translate this word, which every Russian easily understands.
What is poshlost (пошлость)? Nabokov gives the following example: "Open any magazine and you’ll certainly find something like this - a family just bought a radio (a car, a refrigerator, silverware, it doesn't matter), and the mother is clapping her hands, mad with joy, the children gathered around her with their mouths agape; the baby and the dog are leaning towards the table on which the `idol’ has been hoisted… a bit to the side victoriously stands the father, the proud breadwinner. The intense "poshlosity" of such a scene comes not from the false exaggeration of the dignity of a particular useful object, but from the assumption that the greatest joy can be bought and that such a purchase ennobles the buyer."
"This word includes triviality, vulgarity, sexual promiscuity and soullessness," added the late Professor Svetlana Boym from Harvard University.

2. Nadryv

German Wikipedia has an entire article dedicated to the word nadryv (надрыв). This is a key concept in the writings of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. The word describes an uncontrollable emotional outburst, when a person releases intimate, deeply hidden feelings.
Moreover, Dostoevsky's nadryv implies a situation in which the protagonist indulges in the thought that he can find in his soul something that may not even exist. That's why the nadryv often expressed imaginary, excessively exaggerated and distorted feelings. One part of the novel, Brothers Karamazov, is called "Nadryvs."

3. Khamstvo

Soviet émigré writer Sergei Dovlatov wrote about this phenomenon in the article "This Untranslatable Khamstvo," commenting that "Khamstvo is nothing other than rudeness, arrogance and insolence multiplied by impunity."
In Dovlatov's view, it’s with impunity that khamstvo(хамство) outright kills us. It's impossible to fight it; you can only resign yourself to it. "I've lived in this mad, wonderful, horrifying New York for ten years and am amazed by the absence of khamstvo. Anything can happen to you here, but there’s no khamstvo. You can be robbed but no one will shut the door in your face," added the writer.

4. Stushevatsya

Some linguists believe stushevatsya (стушеваться) was introduced by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who used it for the first time in a figurative sense in his novella, The Double. This word means to be less noticeable, go to the background, lose an important role, noticeably leave the scene, become confused in an awkward or unexpected situation, become meek.

5. Toska

This Russian word can be translated as "emotional pain," or "melancholy," but this does not transmit all of its depth. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that, "Not one word in English can transmit all the nuances of toska (тоска). This is a feeling of spiritual suffering without any particular reason. On a less dolorous level, it’s the indistinct pain of the soul…vague anxiety, nostalgia, amorous longing."

6. Bytie

This word comes from the Russian byt'(to exist). In Russian-English dictionaries this philosophical concept is translated as "being." However, bytie (бытие) is not just life or existence, it’s the existence of an objective reality that is independent of human consciousness (cosmos, nature, matter).

7. Bespredel

Eliot Borenstein, professor of Slavic Studies at New York University, explains that bespredel (беспредел) literally means "without restrictions or limits." Translators often use "lawlessness" (bezzakonie). In Russian, however, the meaning of bespredel is much broader, and refers to the behavior of a person who violates not only the law, but also moral and social norms.

8. Avos'

It’s rather difficult to explain to people of other nationalities what this means. Interestingly, many people believe that avos' (авось) is the main Russian national trait. Hoping for the avos' means doing something without planning, without putting in much effort, counting on success.

9. Yurodivy

Yurodivys (юродивые) in ancient Rus' were people who voluntarily renounced earthly pleasures in the name of Christ. Such people looked like madmen, and led a wandering lifestyle with the aim of obtaining inner peace and defeating the root of all sin - pride. They were valued and were considered close to God. Their opinions and prophecies were taken into consideration and they were even feared.

10. Podvig

This word is often translated into English as "feat" or "achievement," but it has other meanings. Podvig (подвиг) is not just a result, or the achievement of an objective; it’s a brave and heroic act, an action performed in difficult circumstances. Russian literature often mentions military, civilian podvigsand even scientific podvigs. Moreover, this word is a synonym for selfless acts, for example, a podvig in the name of love.

10 Russian words impossible to translate into English: Vol. 2


There’s no equivalent in other languages for the Spanish mañana, German doppelgänger, or English privacy. Russian language is definitely not an exception to the rule.
We have already written about some barely translatable words like ‘toska’ or ‘bespredel.’ The article attracted much comment with readers suggesting other words they consider exist only in Russian. Let’s have a look at them.

1. Soviest

This word comes from the old Slavic language and copies the Greek “syneidesis” (conscience, sense of duty). However, in Russia the meaning of soviest is much broader and refers to the deep personal interpretation of good and evil and the feeling of responsibility not only before society, but before God and yourself.
Russians consider soviest as a vivid notion, saying “soviest tortures” («испытываю угрызения совести» - if you’ve done a bad thing), “done by soviest” («сделано на совесть» - good-quality, well done).

2. Zapoy

There is a widespread belief that Russians are big drinkers. Undoubtedly, plenty of words connected to the Russian drinking culture can be found in the language.
For example, there is no direct translation for the word “zapoy”. It’s not just a lengthy bender, but a recurrent condition sometimes lasting for more than a week. Some historians claim that merchants in tsarist Russia were legally prescribed taking a rest cure due to "soul illness".
Nowadays there are not many Russians who believe zapoy is a reboot required from time to time. There's also an expression "to do something by zapoy," (for example, to read by zapoy – «читатьзапоем») which means to do something for a long time without interruption, to be fully immersed in the process.

3. Pogrom

The term pogrom has multiple meanings as a riot or massacre. However, mostly it describes the act of organized cruelty or killing that is done to a large group of people because of their race or religion. The act should be approved or condoned by the local authorities, too.
The term is usually applied to anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries according to Encyclopædia Britannica. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely depending on the specific incidents, at times leading to, or culminating in massacres.
Later the term entered the English language in order to describe mass violence in other countries, for instance, in Germany (“Kristallnacht” also called Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms).

4. Baba

Originally this word had a specific meaning – an old woman, a female witch doctor. Some linguists believe the combination of the sounds "BA BA" is a child’s reaction to another woman who lives in the family home.
One version claims this word transformed into famous babushka (grandmother). In the 18th century this term got another meaning: the wife of serf (peasant) and became a synonym for a plain, uneducated woman.
The embodiment of the Russian baba is well-known due to Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem Who Is Happy in Russia?baba is a woman who can stop a horse at full tilt and enter a burning house!
Nowadays the word will sound offensive to a Russian woman.

5. Muzhik

Originally this word meant “a married peasant man”. After the Russian revolution in 1917 the status muzhik made their holder proud of being the opposite of bourgeois. It was at that time when the idiom "real muzhik" entered the Russian language and it remains well known to this day.
Who is a real muzhik? It's a man in possession of a wide range of qualities: he's not just strong, but patient, what you see is what you get, and he uses his smekalka (see next paragraph) every now and then.
However, the word is not so unequivocal: it may also signify an uneducated, boorish man.

6. Smekalka

Smekalka is one of the typical features of the "mysterious Russian soul": it’s not just being savvy, ingenious or inventive - it’s the skill to solve problems quickly and simply in imaginative ways.
In Russian folktales, good characters always have a lot of smekalka. It helps them to overcome difficulties and win over bad characters.
Smekalka helped honored Russian commanders achieve great and miraculous victories. When military general Alexander Suvorov had to cross a broken bridge in the Alps, he made his soldiers knit the logs with their scarves, which enabled them to fix the bridge!

7. Brodyaga

This Russian word can roughly be translated as hobo – a person who has no home and wanders constantly. But a brodyaga is not homeless in the traditional sense. He just likes to live in different places, sort of a downshifter. As Russians say about brodyagas: he's a rolling stone, here today - and gone tomorrow.

8. Dukh

This is a philosophical cornerstone of Russian literature and culture in general. According to religious beliefs, dukh is an immortal immaterial basis close to the word dusha (soul).
Besides, dukh is related to the inner condition of the human – “the strength of dukh” («сила духа») means the individual moral strength. “Dukh of freedom” («дух свободы») means a spirit.

9. Khalyava

This word is often used in the expression "nakhalyavu" which means to get something completely free, without any effort. This untranslatable concept, similar to the concepts of “freebie”, might help to get the philosophy of the Russian collective unconscious (Russians say: vinegar is sweet if you get it “nakhalyavu”).
Khalyava is the complete opposite of the typical American dream in which you become successful as a result of a hard work. Russian happiness includes wealth obtained by pure luck or a rich relative who suddenly appears, immediately dies and leaves you a fortune.
A day before exams, students who didn’t succeed in their studies try to attract " khalyava" (which is supposed to help them) by opening their textbooks and shouting out of the window of their dorm " khalyava, come here!"

10. Zapadlo

The word comes from prison slang, but today you can hear many Russians using it. It was derived from the word "padla" which means a sneaky, bad man.
When Russians say zapadlo, it implies they don't want to be like this bad man. “Mne zapadlo” (For me it’s zapadlo) means the person doesn't want to do something because he considers this action humiliating, beneath his dignity.
Keep in mind that the word has an expressive negative subtext. Being among decent people, you’d rather say “nikaknemoguizvinite” (I would rather not do it, sorry).
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среда, 29 ноября 2017 г.

BBC World Service Radio-Hardtalk- Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak-


 Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak-
Russian TV journalist Ksenia Sobchak announced last month that she will run to be President of Russia at elections due in March 2018. She is the daughter of the late Anatoly Sobchak who was Mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s and was a mentor to Vladimir Putin when he was starting in politics. Ksenia Sobchak says the situation in Russia is unjust and although it would be unlikely she could beat President Putin if he decides to run again she hopes to build a strong democratic coalition capable of winning at the following election.



пятница, 17 ноября 2017 г.

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen- THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen- 
THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION

National Book Foundation: Why did you write this book?
Masha Gessen: At a certain point, after years - like, more than 20 - of thinking and writing about Russian life and politics - I felt that I understood something huge about it. So I set out to make the case for this understanding. It seems important to note that when I was researching and writing the book, the argument seemed a bit far-fetched - that was all back in the pre-2017 era, before The Origins of Totalitarianism hit the bestseller lists. So I set out to make the most compelling and methodical argument I could.
***
PROLOGUE
i have been told many stories about Russia, and I have told a few myself. When I was eleven or twelve, in the late 1970s, my mother told me that the USSR was a totalitarian state—she compared the regime to the Nazi one, an extraordinary act of thought and speech for a Soviet citizen. My parents told me that the Soviet regime would last forever, which was why we had to leave the country.
When I was a young journalist, in the late 1980s, the Soviet regime began to teeter and then collapsed into a pile of rubble, or so the story went. I joined an army of reporters excitedly documenting my country's embrace of freedom and its journey toward democracy.
I spent my thirties and forties documenting the death of a Russian democracy that had never really come to be. Different people were telling different stories about this: many insisted that Russia had merely taken a step back after taking two steps toward democracy; some laid the blame on Vladimir Putin and the KGB, others on a supposed Russian love of the iron fist, and still others on an inconsiderate, imperious West. At one point, I was convinced that I would be writing the story of the decline and fall of the Putin regime. Soon after, I found myself leaving Russia for the second time—this time as a middle-aged person with children. And like my mother before me, I was explaining to my children why we could no longer live in our country.
The specifics were clear enough. Russian citizens had been losing rights and liberties for nearly two decades. In 2012, Putin's government began a full-fledged political crackdown. The country waged war on the enemy within and on its neighbors. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, and in 2014 it attacked Ukraine, annexing vast
territories. It has also been waging an information war on Western democracy as a concept and a reality. It took a while for Western observers to see what was happening in Russia, but by now the stories of Russia's various wars have become familiar. In the contemporary American imagination, Russia has reclaimed the role of evil empire and existential threat.
The crackdown, the wars, and even Russia's reversion to type on the world stage are things that happened—that I witnessed—and I wanted to tell this story. But I also wanted to tell about what did not happen: the story of freedom that was not embraced and democracy that was not desired. How do you tell a story like that? Where do you locate reasons for the absences? When do you begin, and with whom?
Popular books about Russia—or other countries—fall into two broad categories: stories about powerful people (the czars, Stalin, Putin, and their circles) that aim to explain how the country has been and is run, and stories about "regular people" that aim to show what it feels like to live there. I have written both kinds of books and read many more. But even the best such books—perhaps especially the best such books—provide a view of only one part of the story of a country. If we imagine reporting, as I do, in terms of the Indian fable of six blind men and an elephant, most Russia books describe just the elephant's head or just its legs. And even if some books supply descriptions of the tail, the trunk, and the body, very few try to explain how the animal holds together—or what kind of animal it is. My ambition this time was to both describe and define the animal.
I decided to start with the decline of the Soviet regime—perhaps the assumption that it "collapsed" needed to be questioned. I also decided to focus on people for whom the end of the USSR was the first or one of the first formative memories: the generation of Russians born in the early to middle 1980s. They grew up in the 1990s, perhaps the most contested decade in Russian history: some remember it as a time of liberation, while for others it represents chaos and pain. This generation have lived their entire adult lives in a Russia led by Vladimir Putin. In choosing my subjects, I also looked for people whose lives changed drastically as a result of the crackdown that began in 2012. Lyosha, Masha, Seryozha, and Zhanna
—four young people who come from different cities, families, and, indeed, different Soviet worlds—allowed me to tell what it was to grow up in a country that was opening up and to come of age in a society shutting down.
In seeking out these protagonists, I did what journalists usually do: I sought people who were both "regular," in that their experiences exemplified the experiences of millions of others, and extraordinary: intelligent, passionate, introspective, able to tell their stories vividly. But the ability to make sense of one's life in the world is a function of freedom. The Soviet regime robbed people not only of their ability to live freely but also of the ability to understand fully what had been taken from them, and how. The regime aimed to annihilate personal and historical memory and the academic study of society. Its concerted war on the social sciences left Western academics for decades in a better position to interpret Russia than were Russians themselves—but, as outsiders with restricted access to information, they could hardly fill the void. Much more than a problem of scholarship, this was an attack on the humanity of Russian society, which lost the tools and even the language for understanding itself. The only stories Russia told itself about itself were created by Soviet ideologues. If a modern country has no sociologists, psychologists, or philosophers, what can it know about itself? And what can its citizens know about themselves? I realized that my mother's simple act of categorizing the Soviet regime and comparing it to another had required an extraordinary measure of freedom, which she derived, at least in part, from having already decided to emigrate.
To capture the larger tragedy of losing the intellectual tools of sense-making, I looked for Russians who had attempted to wield them, in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The cast of characters grew to include a sociologist, a psychoanalyst, and a philosopher. If anyone holds the tools of defining the elephant, it is they. They are neither "regular people"—the stories of their struggles to bring their disciplines back from the dead are hardly representative —nor "powerful people": they are the people who try to understand. In the Putin era, the social sciences were defeated and degraded in new ways, and my protagonists faced a new set of impossible choices.
As I wove these stories together, I imagined I was writing a long Russian (nonfiction) novel that aimed to capture both the texture of individual tragedies and the events and ideas that shaped them. The result, I hope, is a book that shows not only what it has felt like to live in Russia over the last thirty years but also what Russia has been in this time, what it has become, and how. The elephant, too, makes a brief appearance (see here).

среда, 15 ноября 2017 г.

The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga by Sylvain Tesson

The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga  by Sylvain Tesson
A meditation on escaping the chaos of modern life and rediscovering the luxury of solitude. Winner of the Prix Médicis for nonfiction, The Consolations of the Forest is a Thoreau-esque quest to find solace, taken to the extreme. No stranger to inhospitable places, Sylvain Tesson exiles himself to a wooden cabin on Siberia’s Lake Baikal, a full day’s hike from any "neighbor," with his thoughts, his books, a couple of dogs, and many bottles of vodka for company. Writing from February to July, he shares his deep appreciation for the harsh but beautiful land, the resilient men and women who populate it, and the bizarre and tragic history that has given Siberia an almost mythological place in the imagination. Rich with observation, introspection, and the good humor necessary to laugh at his own folly, Tesson’s memoir is about the ultimate freedom of owning your own time. Only in the hands of a gifted storyteller can an experiment in isolation become an exceptional adventure accessible to all. By recording his impressions in the face of silence, his struggles in a hostile environment, his hopes, doubts, and moments of pure joy in communion with nature, Tesson makes a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary experience relatable. The awe and joy are contagious, and one comes away with the comforting knowledge that "as long as there is a cabin deep in the woods, nothing is completely lost."

15 FEBRUARY
My first evening on my own. In the beginning, I don’t dare move around much, anaesthetized by the perspective of the days ahead. At ten o’clock, explosions shatter the stillness. The air has warmed up to 10°F, and the sky looks like snow. The cabin couldn’t shake any harder if Russian artillery were pounding the lake. I step outside into the mild flakes to listen to the staggering blows. Currents are heaving at the lake ice.
Imprisoned, the water pleads for release. Setting a screen between life and the stars, the ice separates creatures from the sky: fish, seaweed, micro-organisms, marine mammals, arthropods.
The cabin measures ten feet by ten feet. Heat is supplied by a cast-iron stove, which will become my friend. I put up with the snoring of this particular companion. The stove is the axis of the world, around which everything is organized. It’s a little god with its own life, and when I offer it wood, I honour Homo erectus, who mastered fire. In his The Psychoanalysis of Fire, Gaston Bachelard imagines that the idea of rubbing two sticks to kindle a spark was inspired by the frictions of love. While fucking, man intuited the creation of fire. Nice to know. To dampen the libido, remember to stare at dying embers.
I have two windows. One looks southward, the other to the east. Through the latter I see, some sixty miles away, the snowy crests of Buryatia, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, while through the other window I can trace, behind the branches of a fallen pine, the line of the bay as it curves away to the south.
My table, set right up against the eastern window, occupies its entire width, in the Russian fashion. Slavs can sit for hours watching raindrops on window panes. Once in a while they get up, invade a country, have a revolution and then go back to dreaming at their windows in overheated rooms. In the winter they sip tea interminably, in no hurry to go outside.
16 FEBRUARY
At noon, outdoors.
The sky has powdered the taiga, shaking velvety down over the vert-de-bronze of the cedars. Winter forest: a silvery fur tossed onto the shoulders of the terrain. Waves of vegetation cover the slopes. This desire of the trees to invade everything. The forest, an ocean swell in slow motion. At every fold in the relief, black streaks darken the egg-white crowns of the trees.
How can people adore abstract fancies more than the beauty of snow crystals?
17 FEBRUARY
This morning the sun hoisted itself over the peaks of Buryatia at 8.17. A sunbeam came through the window, striking the logs of the cabin. I was in my sleeping bag. I thought the wood was bleeding.
The last flickers in the stove die at around four a.m. and by dawn, the room is freezing. I have to rise and light the fire: two actions that celebrate the passage from hominid to man. I begin my day by blowing on embers, after which I go back to bed until the cabin has reached the temperature of a new-laid egg.
This morning I grease the weapon Sergei left with me, a signal flare pistol like the one used by sailors in distress. The barrel launches a blinding charge of phosphorus to squelch the ardours of a bear or an intruder.
I have no gun and will not be hunting. To begin with, hunting is not allowed in the nature reserve. Secondly, I would consider it a dirty trick to shoot down the living creatures of these woods in which I am a guest. Do you like it when strangers attack you? It doesn’t bother me that creatures more noble, better made and far more muscular than I roam freely in the open forest.
This place isn’t the Forêt de Chantilly. When poachers run into the gamekeepers, guns are drawn. Sergei never patrols without his rifle. Along the shores of the lake lie tombs bearing the names of rangers: a simple cement stele decorated with plastic flowers and every so often, the guy’s photo engraved on a metal medallion. As for the poachers, they have no graves.
I think about what happens to minks. Being born in the forest, surviving the winters, falling into a trap – and winding up as coats for old hags who wouldn’t last three minutes out in the taiga. If at least they were as graceful as the mustelids that are skinned for them… Sergei told me a story. The governor of the Irkutsk region was hunting bears from his helicopter in the mountains overlooking Baikal. Destabilized by the wind, the Mi-8 crashed. Tableau de chasse: eight dead. Sergei: ‘The bears must have danced a polka around the bonfire.’
My other weapon is a dagger made in Chechnya, a handsome knife with a wooden handle, which never leaves my side all day. In the evening, I stick it into the beam over my bed. Deeply enough so that it doesn’t fall down while I’m dreaming and slice open my belly.
18 FEBRUARY
I wanted to settle an old score with time. I had discovered that walking provided a way to slow it down. The alchemy of travel thickens seconds: those spent on the road passed less quickly than the others. Frantic with restlessness, I required fresh horizons and conceived a passionate interest in airports, where everything is an invitation to departure. I dreamed of ending up in a terminal. My trips began as escapes and finished in track races against the hours.
Two years ago, I chanced to spend three days in a tiny izba, a traditional Russian log cabin. A ranger, Anton, had welcomed me into his home on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. Anton was so farsighted that, behind his glasses, his goggle-eyes gave him the look of a gleeful toad. At night we played chess, and during the day I helped him haul in the nets. We spoke hardly at all but we read a lot: for me, the ‘decadent’ nineteenth-century novelist Huysmans, and for him, Hemingway (which he pronounced ‘Rhaymingvayee’). He sloshed down gallons of tea; I went walking in the woods. Sunlight flooded the room. Geese were fleeing the autumn, and I thought about my dear ones. We listened to the radio. Whenever the female announcer reported the temperatures in Sochi, Anton would say: ‘It must be nice, down at the Black Sea.’ From time to time he’d toss a log into the stove, and at day’s end, he’d get out the chessboard. We’d sip at some Siberian vodka from Krasnoyarsk and push the pawns around: I was always white and often lost. The endless days passed quickly, and when I left my friend I thought, This is the life for me. All I had to do was ask of immobility what travel no longer brought me: peace.
That was when I promised myself I would live alone in a cabin for a few months. Cold, silence and solitude are conditions that tomorrow will become more valuable than gold. On an overpopulated, overheated and noisy planet, a forest cabin is an Eldorado. Over 900 miles to the south, China is humming with a billion and a half human beings running out of water, wood and space. Living in the forest next to the world’s largest reserve of fresh water is a luxury. One day, the Saudi oilmen, the Indian nouveaux riches and the Russian businessmen who drag their ennui around the marble halls of palaces will understand this. Then it will be time to go a step up in latitude to the tundra. Happiness will lie beyond the 60th parallel north.
Better to live joyfully in a wilderness clearing than languish in a city. In the sixth volume of The Earth and Its Inhabitants, the geographer Élisée Reclus – a master anarchist and antiquated stylist – proposes a superb idea. The future of humanity would lie in ‘the complete union of the civilized with the savage’. There would be no need to choose between our hunger for technological progress and our thirst for unspoilt places. Life in the forest offers an ideal terrain for this reconciliation between the archaic and the futuristic. An eternal existence unfolds beneath the treetops, literally at one with the Earth. There we can reconnect with the truth of moonlit nights, submitting to the doctrine of the forests without renouncing the benefits of modernity. My cabin shelters the happy union of progress and the past. Before I came here, I selected from the department store of civilization a few products indispensable to happiness: books, cigars, vodka, and I will enjoy them in the rugged surroundings of the woods. I followed the intuitions of Reclus so faithfully that I’ve equipped my home with solar panels, which run a small computer. The silicon of my integrated circuits feeds on photons. I listen to Schubert while watching the snow, I read Marcus Aurelius after my wood-chopping chores, I smoke a Havana to celebrate the evening’s fishing. Reclus would be pleased.
In What Am I Doing Here? Bruce Chatwin quotes Jünger quoting Stendhal: ‘The art of civilization consists in combining the most delicate pleasures with the constant presence of danger.’ An observation that echoes Élysée’s injunction. The essential thing is to live one’s life with a brave hand on the tiller, swinging boldly between contrasting worlds. Balancing between danger and pleasure, the frigid Russian winter and the warmth of a stove. Never settling, always oscillating from one to the other extremity on the spectrum of sensations.
Life in the woods allows us to pay our debts. We breathe, eat fruit, pick flowers, we bathe in a river’s waters and then one day, we die without paying the bill to the planet. Life is sneaking a meal in a restaurant. The ideal would be to go through life like the Scandinavian troll who roams the moorland without leaving any tracks in the heather. Robert Baden-Powell’s advice should be made a universal principle: ‘When through with a campsite, take care to leave two things behind. Firstly: nothing. Secondly: your thanks.’ What is essential? Not to weigh too heavily on the surface of the globe. Shut inside his cube of logs, the hermit does not soil the Earth. From the threshold of his izba, he watches the seasons perform the dance of the eternal return. Possessing no machines, he keeps his body fit. Cut off from all communication, he deciphers the language of the trees. Released from the grip of television, he discovers that a window is more transparent than a TV screen. His cabin provides comfort and brightens up the lakeshore. One day, we tire of talking about ‘de-growth’ and the love of nature: we want to get our actions in sync with our ideas. It’s time to leave the city and close the curtains of the forest over speechifying.
The cabin, realm of simplification. Beneath the pines, life is reduced to vital gestures, and time spared from daily chores is spent in rest, contemplation, small pleasures. The array of tasks to be done has shrunk. Reading, drawing water, cutting wood, writing, pouring tea: such things become liturgies. In the city, each action takes place to the detriment of a thousand others. The forest draws together what the city disperses.

воскресенье, 12 ноября 2017 г.

Revolution: New Art for a New World (2016)- UK Documentary Film

Drawing on the collections of major Russian institutions, contributions from contemporary artists, curators and performers, and personal testimony from the descendants of those involved, the film brings the artists of the Russian avant-garde to life. It tells the stories of artists like Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich and others - pioneers who flourished in response to the utopian challenge of building a new art for a new world, only to be broken by implacable authority after 15 short years.
Stalin's rise to power marked the close of this momentous period, consigning the avant-garde to obscurity. Yet the Russian avant-garde continues to exert a lasting influence over art movements up to the present day. The film confirms this, exploring the fascination that these colourful paintings, inventive sculptures and propaganda posters retain over the modern consciousness 100 years on.
It was filmed entirely on location in Moscow, St Petersburg and London, with access to the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the State Hermitage Museum and in co-operation with the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The film features paintings previously banned and unseen for decades, and masterpieces which rarely leave Russia.
Contributors include museum directors Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky and Zelfira Tregulova, and film director Andrei Konchalovsky. The film also features the voices of Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Hollander, James Fleet, Eleanor Tomlinson and Daisy Bevan.


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