Routine Beauty

“This is a city for the half-mad. ... 

There are few more grim, harsh, and strange 

influences on a man’s soul than in Petersburg. 

Just think of the climatic influences!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 

Crime and Punishment

St. Petersburg is a treasure trove of uncommon beauty in common places. The trained eyes of Tatyana Gagarina and Pavel Tokarev offer 

a poetic interlude.

A couple of words about Akim Petrovich. He was a man of the old school, as meek as a hen, reared from infancy to obsequious servility, and at the same time a good-natured and even honorable man. He was a Petersburg Russian; that is, his father and his father’s father were born, grew up and served in Petersburg and had never once left Petersburg. That is quite a special type of Russian. They have hardly any idea of Russia, though that does not trouble them at all. Their whole interest is confined to Petersburg and chiefly the place in which they serve. All their thoughts are concentrated on preference for farthing points, on the shop, and their month’s salary. They don’t know a single Russian custom, a single Russian song except Lutchinushka, and that only because it is played on the barrel organs. However, there are two fundamental and invariable signs by which you can at once distinguish a Petersburg Russian from a real Russian. The first sign is the fact that Petersburg Russians, all without exception, speak of the newspaper as the Academic News and never call it the Petersburg News. The second and equally trustworthy sign is that Petersburg Russians never make use of the work ‘breakfast,’ but always call it Frühstuck with especial emphasis on the first syllable. By these radical and distinguishing signs you can tell them apart; in short, this is a humble type which has been formed in during the last thirty-five years.~

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 

“An Unpleasant Predicament”

I was born and raised in the Baltic marshes, near

the zinc-gray breakers, which always marched in twos,

and from these come all the rhymes, the wan flat voice,

that ripples between them like wet hair,

if it ripples at all. Propped on its side,

the helix emanates no rumble of the sea,

but the slap of canvas, of shutters, of hands, of a tea kettle,

boiling on a kerosene stove, of at most the seagull’s cry. 

In this flat region, the heart is protected from falsehood

because there is nowhere to hide and because you can see further.

It is only sound that is hindered by distance:

a glance does not lament the absence of an echo.

Joseph Brodsky, 1975