“Siam Tutti Morti”
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The reason I did not blog on Tuesday is I went to see a film, the 1979 version of Don Giovanni. A friend invited me and I simply couldn’t refuse to see a Mozart opera. I absolutely loved it, though the final scene when the Commendatore appears was a bit disappointing. The statue simply wasn’t scary enough. (For those who are unfamiliar with the opera, Don Giovanni, a dissolute young nobleman, kills the father of a woman he’s slept with, then later invites the dead man’s statue to dinner with him. To his surprise, the statue appears and takes Don Giovanni down to hell.)
I like this version a bit more than the one from the film:
But nothing can ever compare with the version performed in the film Amadeus:
My favorite scene is this one, and my favorite line is the one sung by Leporello: Ah padron! Ah padron! Ah padron siam tutti morti! (Oh master, we’re all dead.)
I love Mozart. How can one not love someone who wrote such great music?
The Ukrainian Anthem
Posted by | Filed under Slavic, Ukraine
I always find the national anthems of other countries to be interesting. I just discovered the Ukrainian one this week and I think it’s quite beautiful. And best of all, I can understand some of the lyrics without ever having formally studied Ukrainian. “Ukraine’s glory and freedom still has not died. Fate still smiles on us, brother Ukrainians,” the first lines go.
I’m one of the few people I know who listens to random music in foreign languages. Another person who does is Zsuzsi, who writes an eponymous blog. Her blog is more personal and way less political than mine, and it’s absolutely great. She speaks loads of languages (probably more than I ever will) and wants to learn loads more. And she occasionally posts YouTube videos of random foreign music, which are always fun.
Putin Goes To Ukraine On An Official Visit
Posted by | Filed under Russia, Slavic, Ukraine
The Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, went to Ukraine today to negotiate a gas deal with his Ukrainian counterpart, Nikolai Azarov. From BBC Russian:
After negotiations in Kiev the Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have not said anything agreements in the gas industry.
Wednesday was Putin’s first official visit to Ukraine after his proposal in April to unite Gazprom [the Russian gas company] and Naftogaz [the Ukrainian gas company].
Analysts have expected that as a result of the negotiations Moscow can come closer to receiving a portion in Ukrainian gas transport in exchange for cheaper gas for Kiev.
[...]
The agreement has aroused criticism in the Ukrainian parliament.
This Is What Oxford Students Do On Weekends
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Picture this: Friday night and I have a mountain of reading. After a short Skype conversation with a friend, I decide to take a shower, tackle some of the reading, and go to bed. Sounds good, right?
Wrong! My plans were thwarted by an extremely loud and raucous party taking place in the hall next to mine. I did get some of the reading done; I just ended up going to bed much later then I’d planned.
I woke up at the rather unreasonable hour of 11:00 (and I mean unreasonably late, not unreasonably early) and was greeted by the following carnage from the prior night’s festivities.
What the picture doesn’t show is the glass all over the floor (the partygoers, once they were drunk enough, had the brilliant idea of throwing glass bottles at each other and down the stairs onto any people unfortunate enough to be on the stairs at that point) and the fact that the stairwell smells like a distillery. As my mother said, the smell could be worse, though, much worse.
For anybody who thinks that lowering the drinking age in the United States will help solve the problem of drinking among young people, I say you’re completely wrong. The drinking age here is eighteen and university students’ drinking is much, much worse than in the United States (and the United States is pretty bad). And don’t get me wrong, I love Oxford, but the drinking culture here frankly gets tiresome. It’s all some people talk about: all they do in their spare time is go out drinking, so every conversation they have when they’re sober is about–you guessed it–last night’s drinking. That’s just plain stupid, if you ask me.
Saturday Night Poetry: Pushkin’s ‘Autumn’
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We haven’t done Saturday night poetry in a long time, which is sad. I’m going to try to get back to doing Saturday night poetry. And yes, I know I should be conquering my huge mountain of reading but poetry is so much more interesting than nineteenth-century British economics.
Tonight’s poem is by the greatest of Russian poets, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. It’s an excerpt from his long poem called “Autumn.” In my Russian class last week, we read this very excerpt.
A melancholy time! So charming to the eye!
Your beauty in its parting pleases me -
I love the lavish withering of nature,
The gold and scarlet raiment of the woods,
The crisp wind rustling o’er their threshold,
The sky engulfed by tides of rippled gloom,
The sun’s scarce rays, approaching frosts,
And gray-haired winter threatening from afar.
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I’m On Lang-8
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At the suggestion of Randy, who writes the excellent blog Yearlyglot, I signed up for the website Lang-8. Lang-8 is basically a language exchange website: you post writing on your journal, as they call it, in your target language and native speakers write corrections for you. It’s an excellent idea and loads of fun. So far, I’ve been helping a Japanese girl with her English and I’ve already received help from three Russians on my first post. My profile is here, if you’re interested. I really like the website so far and I’d highly recommend signing up if you’re a language learner.
Ukrainian Financial Criminal Arrested, Tymoshenko Defends Him
Posted by | Filed under Slavic, Ukraine
On October 19, the former Ukrainian Economic Minister, Bogdan Danilishin was arrested in the Czech Republic. He was on an international list of wanted people, wanted for financial crimes. While serving as Economic Minister, he caused the Ukrainian state to lose 13.9 million grivna (at today’s exchange rate, that’s almost 2 million dollars).
Predictably, the opposition in the Ukrainian parliament has said that the current government is allegedly “repressing” them. Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, the opposition fraction in parliament, has already issued a statement, in which it said, “The authorities have demonstrated again that they are only able to deal with the opposition by force.”
Of course. Every single criticism, every arrest of any corrupt individual even marginally affiliated with the repression, is construed as political repression. Because, don’t we all know, Yanukovych is obviously a neo-Stalinist supported by the Evil Putin Regime™. How could I have forgotten that fact?
Notice that Danilishin was defrauding the Ukrainian state: during Yushchenko’s presidency. My main reasons for not supporting the Orange Revolution are that Yushchenko stole the election and then proceeded to completely mess up Ukraine. Ukraine had financial troubles even before the financial crisis of 2008 began and, thanks to Yushchenko, Ukraine’s relationship with its most important neighbor, Russia, was completely frozen. Thank goodness he’s gone.
Based on this article.
The Oxford Russian Society
Posted by | Filed under Russia
The society for Russian students at Oxford is called, appropriately enough, the Oxford University Russian Society. I went to one of their events this weekend and joined. The event was great fun–we went out to dinner at a Russian restaurant–and, of course, I got to meet loads of Russian people.
But it’s the history of the Russian Society I want to talk about. (What else would you expect from a history student?) The society is 101 years old, as of this year. It was founded in 1909 by Felix Yusupov, who studied at Oxford from 1909 to 1912. Yusupov, who was related to Tsar Nicholas II by marriage (he married the tsar’s niece), is best known as one of the murderers of Grigory Rasputin, the dissolute priest who indirectly ruled Russia through his influence with Tsaritsa Alexandra.
Yusupov and his fellow conspirators murdered Rasputin in the Yusupov Palace (I’ve been to it!) on the night of December 16 and 17, 1916. For this, the murderers were punished with exile to various places, which ironically ended up saving them from being murdered in the Russian Revolution like so many others were.
The Russian Society, then, is part of quite a noble tradition–I am proud (perhaps inordinately) to be a member of an organization founded by a White Russian. Because of my sympathy for the White Russian movement, being a member means a lot to me.
Photos from Wikipedia.
Medvedev Honors Russian Spies
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Remember that whole spy scandal this summer, when everyone was obsessed with Anna Chapman? The whole thing was much ado about nothing, in my opinion. I mean, let’s face it: I don’t really think they had done anything. They didn’t know anything top secret and weren’t really in any position to know anything top secret.
Anyway, the spies are back in the news because Medvedev has given them state awards. From BBC Russian (translations mine; English version here):
President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev presented high state awards to officials of the Foreign Intelligence Service, including those who were arrested in the US this summer.
Ten Russian citizens were arrested in the United States at the end of June. In court they admitted to working for Russia as unregistered agents. Afterwards, they were traded in the airport in Vienna for four Russian citizens condemned earlier to lengthy prison terms on charges of espionage….
Those spies really have the US to thank for their honors–I bet if they had not been arrested, they probably would not have received the awards from Medvedev.
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Russia Today Editor Shot In Moscow
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This is one of the oddest stories I’ve seen, and let’s face it, Russia is a country that produces quite an amount of strange stories. From Gazeta.ru (in Russian):
Russia Today editor’s attacker might be the nephew of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg
Sergei Virolainen, who attacked Russia Today editor Natalia Arkhiptseva, might turn out to be the nephew of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg, journalist Bozhena Rinska wrote on her blog…
What the motivation for shooting the poor woman was, I have yet to find out.
