Il coinvolgimento che suscita per la materia trattata a tale da spingere a un sempre maggiore approfondimento delle proprie conoscenze. Astonishingly, his wife, together with many other wives of political exiles and convicts, followed him on foot. I was a subscriber to the local opera company for a 20 year period during which they staged at least one Russian work per year.

I began this book not knowing much more than what I had been taught in a Russian history module at A-Level, which also meant I brought with me what could be described as a moderate amount of confusion about Russia, its practices, and people. Intrigante, divertente, scritto magnificamente, ricco di aneddoti interessanti e commoventi, questo saggio, che si legge come un romanzo, è stato un compagno di viaggio impagabile.Figes has a knack too for writing accessibly about music, and his understanding of peasant melody allows him to put Stravinsky into the same national frame. Vast in scale and woven through with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendour of eighteenth-century St Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiatic shamans, from the poetry of Pushkin to the music of Mussorgsky and the film of Eisenstein, bringing to life an extraordinary cast of serf artists and aristocrats, revolutionaries and exiles, priests and libertines. Beautifully written and gloriously vivid, Natasha's Dance is a triumphant assertion of the greatness of Russia's culture and the remarkable lives of those who have shaped it. Peter, and subsequent generations of nobility, idolized Western Europe to an almost embarrassing degree (Russian aristocrats of this era not only spoke French among themselves, but punished their children for learning Russian), as reflected in the construction and culture of “the Window on the West,” St. There is more than one reference to this and as I result I cannot give this book five starts as it leaves a question over Figes’ validity.

Yazar burada karakterin farklı öğretilerle büyütülmüş olmasına rağmen içindeki Rus ruhunu her daim korumasından etkilenerek bu tarih kitabına bu ismi vermiş. The 19th Century high culture of Count Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky have captured worldwide imagination ever since, with their colourful characters of aristocrats, soldiers, prostitutes, drunks and down and outs, this combined with grand ideas of war, society and the individual make timeless classics.Natasha's Dance is Orlando Figes's epic, richly evocative and unparalleled exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Eğer bir tarihçi, kültürel tarih kitabında Sovyet Rusya dönemindeki edebi eserleri ve akımları incelerken Ahmatova gibi sembolist, rejim karşıtı yazarların hayatlarına en ince ayrıntısına kadar yer verirken Ehrenburg gibi yazarları sadece “ Stalin döneminde ölmemeyi becerebilmiş birkaç Yahudi aydından biri” şeklinde geçiştiriyorsa ben bunda art niyet ararım. Figes does a good job of pushing less conspicuous cultural trends to the fore, examining their more recent development in a clearly written and engaging way. I'm tempted to say that this is a great book because like Russian art it has a soul, but that sounds presumptuous since I've not an expert on any Russian art and I've never been to Russia. tuhaf tarafı bu bölümde anlatılanların izlerini bir süredir tanıdığınız Rusların zihinlerinde de görebilirsiniz.

Published first in 2002, the book takes its name from a scene in a giant of Russian literature, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which Natasha Rostova’s innate Russian-ness breaks through the veneer of enlightened European thinking she has acquired, highlighting the dual-nature of Tsarist Russian society. From Bulgakov to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy to Nabokov, I've enjoyed a lot of works that came out of Russia both before and after the rise of the Soviet Union.Josef Stalin’s favourite novel was The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov, an author who’s published works mostly weren’t published until after his death! The story of Russian art is tied closely to the story of Russia as a country, one caught between its status as a "second-class" European power regarded warily by the "more cultured" centers of Western Europe and its Asian footprint, where it had a colonial empire right next door as opposed to overseas like the British or French.

Natasha's Dance" by Orlando Figes is a great examination of Russia's cultural history over the years, from the founding of St. The great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was interviewed during one of her master classes teaching German Lieder to foreign singers.The only bone I'd pick is that Figes stops around 1962: I'd have been very interested in his account continuing into the great age of satire and rise of pop music in the late Soviet years. He skillfully interweaves the great works-by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall-with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.