light gazing, ışığa bakmak

Sunday, March 9, 2014

daunting

qualquer festa deixa de ser assustadora comparada com o banquete do conde Rostov para trezentas pessoas no English Club de Moscovo em honra de Bagration.





"In this very Club the famous banquet in honour of the prince P.I. Bagration, the great general of the company 1812 took place, and this banquet is described in the roman “War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy” as organized by the elder Rostov. The building was erected in 1776 according the project of the architect M.F. Kozakov for the family of the princes Gagarin. During the Napoleon stay in Moscow the headquarters of the Main French Army Quartermaster were located in this palace. Stendhal, who belonged to that staff, had been living here and wrote; “There is no one club in Paris which could be compared with this one”. The building was practically completely fired in 1812 and then restored by the architect O.I. Bove up to 1833. In that time there was opened a hospital named Novo-Ekaterinenskaya, now this is a city hospital No 24." (Olga Yakovenko)

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"But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:
Conquest's joyful thunder waken,
Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest."

em Tolstoi, Guerra e Paz.
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uma inspiração para a festa dos meus 50 que, alas!, ainda não é este ano. se lá chegarmos todos as razões para celebrar são muitas (e nem se prendem como vitórias militares, ou outras vitórias quaisquer) e resumem-se a uma: estamos cá. tanta malta com pena de si própria: não há a mais pequena paciência.




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