May 27 2015
I have begun work on a very interesting, long-term translation project with a historian of literature, who is writing a book about Dostoevsky. For this project, I am translating hundreds of pages of obscure notes and reminiscences about Dostoevsky, some of his own writing, and comparing existing translations. Not only have I re-immersed myself in …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-why-i-brush/
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Sep 25 2013
My heart goes pitter-patter when the shuttle leaves Minneapolis and I catch the first glimpses of Minnesota birches. Then one after another birch groves begin to pass by and patches of tall, straight pines crowned at the top. Mixed foliage of maples, aspen, and ash, linden trees… This is the North, and I recognize the …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-mountain-ash-and-other-miracles/
Sep 05 2013
A couple of weeks ago, I had another one of my regular spats with friends or acquaintances that happen whenever there’s something Russian or other I refuse to explain or declare untranslatable. As much as I protested and tried ineptly to describe my bi-lingual, bi-cultural dilemma, all was in vain: I was once again accused …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-peter-and-the-mysterious-russian-soul/
Jan 14 2013
I was going to write about something else entirely, but thoughts and other things conspired and interfered and changed my mind. First, if you are my regular reader, you know that I am moving, and so I’ve been doing much talking lately about home and leaving it and being away from the places we love. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-what-i-miss-and-dont-part-i/
Jun 17 2012
History is complex and interpreted, and there isn’t a single objective account of “actual” events. People are complex and never fully known, and their intentions, feelings, opinions, and actions vary from object to object, from subject to subject, and from time to time. Historical narrative is re-written by each new regime that comes to power. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-giants-of-history/
Feb 23 2015
On who is to blame and what is to be done.
February 23, 2015
What does a three-thousand-year-old murder have to do with a 20th-century revolution? What does a queen of ancient Israel have to do with Stalinism, slavery, or internment camps? The interplay of two eternal questions humanity has asked, nurtured, abused, distorted, ignored, and bounced off each other since the dawn of its consciousness: When something goes …
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