Tag: pushkin

Is being productive the issue? Producing art or understanding thereof is more often about the analysis of the unproductive or listless: in Russian, the state of ‘khandra’. This blog is a case study based on preparions for seeing The Metropolitan Opera’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ streamed to Durham Gala on the 6th June.

April 28, 2026

Tchaikovsky could only mount the story of Eugene Onegin according to the strict material limits of the nineteenth century opera and its conventions. There must be three Acts. What must have been clear to him that these acts needed each to revolve around a central dramatic encounter – of course three such were obvious. And … More Is being productive the issue? Producing art or understanding thereof is more often about the analysis of the unproductive or listless: in Russian, the state of ‘khandra’. This blog is a case study based on preparions for seeing The Metropolitan Opera’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ streamed to Durham Gala on the 6th June.

Of course it is Donald Trump! But why argue with a manipulator. Instead here’s a political parable. ‘…, dost thou know / Wherein our true strength lies? Not in the army? / Nor yet in Polish aid, but in opinion – /Yes, popular opinion’.

May 1, 2025

Of course it is Donald Trump! But why argue with a manipulator. Instead here’s a political parable. Pushkin’s namesake in his play ‘Boris Godunov’ threatens the Russian state with a fundamental question about the true nature of political power, as Pushkin saw it in the early nineteenth century: ‘…, dost thou know / Wherein our true … More Of course it is Donald Trump! But why argue with a manipulator. Instead here’s a political parable. ‘…, dost thou know / Wherein our true strength lies? Not in the army? / Nor yet in Polish aid, but in opinion – /Yes, popular opinion’.