An exciting book haul from my trip to Sydney to visit my son. Definitely influenced by recent travels 🛳 ⛩ ✈️ with A Gentleman in Moscow and Petersburg, The Train was on time a German novella and Before the Coffee Gets Cold based in Tokyo. Throw in Ian McEwan and John Le Carre...I don‘t know what to read first 🤭Some were on my TBR wish list and the others just had to be bought 🤣🤣😂
“Petersburg, Petersburg!
Falling like fog, you have pursued me, too, with idle cerebral play: you are a cruel-hearted tormentor; you are an unquiet ghost [...]”
“Oh great bridge, shining with electricity!
I remember a certain fateful moment; over your damp railings I too leant on a September evening night: a moment - and my body would have flown into the mists.
O, green waters, seething with bacilli!”
Image source: http://palytra.com/en/about_russia/information_saint-petersburg/bridges_info_pic...
“... in his soul -tremors without name were rising there; something sinister and sweet was singing there: it was as though within him Aeolus‘ bag of winds had flown to pieces and the sons of foreign gusts were cruelly chasing him away with whistling lashes to strange and incomprehensible lands.”
Just love Bely‘s intricate imagery, a very interesting book so far.
“There is an infinity of prospects racing in infinity with an infinity of intersecting shadows racing into infinity. All Petersburg is the infinity of a prospect raised to the power of n.
While beyond Petersburg there is - nothing.”
Has anyone read this book? I‘m looking for advice on which translation to use. There are a few floating around and I can‘t decide which one to choose. Thanks!
#russianliterature
Petersburg | 
