February 22, 2018

A Holiday for Every Occasion


A Holiday for Every Occasion
A Second Russian Holiday Season

1. A blaze of glory seems to be the perfect descriptor for the cathedral-like wooden structure that artists burned to celebrate Maslenitsa, the Russian holiday that kicks off Lent. Every year, artists in the Kaluga region of Russia build a giant structure to burn during Maslenitsa, taking the usual Maslenitsa tradition of burning a scarecrow to the next level. Local Russian Orthodox officials condemned this year’s structure, as they thought it looked like a cathedral. The artists insist that this year’s structure is a castle, not a cathedral, and they successfully explained this to the Russian Orthodox Church. All’s well that ends well, but the lesson stands: if you play with fire, you might get burned.

Photo: Andrey Sharonov

2. The Year of the Dog, Moscow style! This week Moscow rang in Chinese New Year with an exhibition at the GUM state-owned department store. The celebration featured art that drew on both Chinese and Russian traditions: Russian Fabergé eggs and Chinese “blessed eggs,” Chinese Friendlies dolls and Russian Matryoshka dolls … you get the idea. The festivities also included silk painting, Chinese movies, and Chinese dance performances. This is one of many Russian celebrations this month: with Valentine’s Day, Maslenitsa, and International Women’s Day all being celebrated in late winter and early spring, it’s becoming hard to tell when the Russian holiday season ends!

3. A classic feature of Moscow’s landscape will soon disappear forever. No, the Kremlin isn’t being bulldozed, and no, St. Basil’s Cathedral isn’t getting a paint job. This might be even more drastic: banks will no longer be allowed to display currency exchange signs outside of their buildings. This is part of the new rules regulating banks that can make foreign currency transactions, but Russia’s Central Bank has not explained why this particular rule is necessary. But, to be fair, the signs were pretty ugly.

In Odder News:

Photo: Albert Jankowski

  • If there’s still ice, then no dice: St. Petersburg is holding a competition for new methods to remove icicles from rooftops.
  • The future is now: a Moscow apartment is being sold for bitcoin.
  • Russian students got the lay of the (is)land this week when they discovered a new island created by a melting glacier.
Quote of the Week:

“We are a very hungry group of guys… next game will be the biggest one.”

—Ilya Kovalchuk, forward for the Olympic Athletes from Russia hockey team after defeating Norway in the semifinal

Want more where this comes from? Give your inbox the gift of TWERF, our Thursday newsletter on the quirkiest, obscurest, and Russianest of Russian happenings of the week.

 

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Some of Our Books

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Tolstoy Bilingual

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. 
Fearful Majesty

Fearful Majesty

This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
At the Circus (bilingual)

At the Circus (bilingual)

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

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