Autumn
As an atheist Leo Tolstoy looked into Oblivion: What made the great writer to overestimate life
In the life of Leo Tolstoy once there was a strange case when the writer either became a victim of an attack, or met face to face with something otherworldly, not from the world of the living. It happened in Arzamas, the town where Tolstoy stopped for the night, heading in the Penza province. At that moment the writer was forty-one years old – by a strange coincidence, it was exactly half of his earthly journey.
Overnight in Arzamas
It was the autumn of 1869, and most recently saw the light of the novel “War and peace”, quickly won success with readers despite the mixed reviews of critics. Continue reading
What was fantasy before “the Hobbit” and “the Lord of the rings”: 10 stories that inspired Tolkien
For many readers journey in genre fantasy began with Professor John Ronald Ruel Tolkien. “Hobbit”, “Lord of the rings” or even Peter Jackson’s screen version… these stories “hooked” millions of people. It is known that Tolkien was inspired by some of the masters of modern fantasy, from George R. R. Martin to Terry Brooks. But the fantasy genre was not born in a day when middle earth was created.
Tolkien himself drew inspiration from old works, as well as from the writings of his close friend and colleague on the work of Clive Lewis (once they even planned to write a book together, which began to write Lewis). Continue reading
As the son of a samurai Matsuo Basho glorified Japanese three-line haiku to the whole worl
Haiku (haiku) remains popular largely due to the fact that perfectly conveys the undertones of funny, allows you to achieve a funny understatement – a couple of expressive strokes, a reference to the mysterious Eastern nature – and the joke is ready. But when haiku, which was initially called “haiku”, appeared in Japanese culture, the role he had just such – comic. But thanks to the poet Matsuo Basho haiku genre rose to the very top of Japanese art – it turned out that “haiku space is infinite and can accommodate the whole world”, in the words of another famous author haiku, or Haijin, Masaoka Shiki.
The roots of Japanese poetry, as befits everything that this culture is famous for, go back to the deep past. The genre, which appeared on haiku is the poetry Renga, or Tanka, in the form of the quintet, which includes exactly 31 syllables. Continue reading
