Music In this short story, Nabokov’s protagonist, Victor, encounters his ex-wife at a concert. Despite his proclamation that he has “no ear for music,” the experience awakens profound memories and feelings in him, as the music acts a shield from the chaos of the everyday world. Music
The Sixth Night This selection is taken from Russian Nights (1844), a novel by Odoyevsky that probes a great number of topics, genres, and philosophical questions. Odoyevsky was a talented music critic in his own right and a huge proponent of the works of Mikhail Glinka. Music
Tolstoy Bilingual This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
Chulpan Khamatova, actor There are some actors who symbolize Russia’s new generation, the new times. Rising star Chulpan Khamatova (her Tatar first name translates at “morning star”) has been one of those actors since the mid-1990s. 100 Young Russians
Sculpture, Painting and Music Written in 1834 and published the next year in Gogol’s collection of essays Arabesques, this brief statement compares and ranks the three titular arts. Curiously, Gogol pays little attention to verbal art, focusing instead on the transcendent qualities he sees in music. Art
Zhanna Semenova, neurosurgeon Pediatric neurosurgeon Zhanna Semenova was born in the tiny mountain republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, home to the towering Mount Elbrus (5,642 meters)—a mountain which could well be a symbol of the heights which Semenova has scaled in her career. 100 Young Russians
Aidan Salakhova, artist Aidan Salakhova has a boiling mixture of southern blood in her veins: Uzbek, Azerbaidzhani and Armenian. Yet she identifies herself as a Muscovite and a patriot of contemporary Russian art. 100 Young Russians
Turgenev Bilingual A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages. Bilingual Books Fiction Language Learning
The Resurrection of Mozart Berberova sets her haunting story in a France on the verge of invasion in 1940. The image of an unexpectedly resurrected Mozart represents the immortality of art and culture. Music
Yuri Rodionov, soldier Forty-year-old Colonel Yuri Rodionov’s military career has literally taken him to the four corners of Russian earth. 100 Young Russians
Writing About Music Any author who chooses to write about music faces an immense task. The most abstract of all arts, music forces the writer to put into words and descriptions – much more concrete things by comparison – its ephemeral nature. Writing about music is indeed a form of translation: it comes with its sacrifices, but it also opens up new perspectives that would otherwise remain undiscovered. Music
