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The Gambler (novel)
''The Gambler'' (russian: Игрокъ, translit=Igrok; modern spelling: ) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novel reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novel in 1866 under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts. Inspiration ''The Gambler'' treated a subject Fyodor Dostoevsky himself was familiar with: gambling. Fyodor Dostoevsky gambled for the first time at the tables at Wiesbaden in 1863. From that time till 1871, when his passion for gambling subsided, he played at Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Saxon-les-Bains frequently, often beginning by winning a small amount of money and losing far more in the end. He first mentions his interest in gambling in a letter he sent to his first wife's sister on 1 September 1863 describing his initial success: Within a week he lost his winnings and was f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reforms Of Russian Orthography
The Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries. Early changes Old East Slavic adopted the Cyrillic script, approximately during the 10th century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. No distinction was drawn between the vernacular language and the liturgical, though the latter was based on South Slavic languages, South Slavic rather than East Slavic languages, Eastern Slavic norms. As the language evolved, several letters, notably the ''yuses'' (Ѫ, Ѭ, Ѧ, Ѩ) were gradually and unsystematically discarded from both secular and church usage over the next centuries. The emergence of the centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, the consequent rise of the state bureaucracy along with the development of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Sinner
''The Great Sinner'' is a 1949 American film noir drama film directed by Robert Siodmak. Based on the 1866 short novel '' The Gambler'' written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the film stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Frank Morgan, Ethel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead and Melvyn Douglas. Plot The film opens in the 1860s in a run-down attic room in Wiesbaden, with a man (whose name we soon learn is Fedya) lying on a bed in the foreground. A violent storm knocks open the windows, sending the pages of a manuscript flying around the room. A woman (later revealed to be Pauline Ostrovsky, a reformed gambling addict), enters and shuts the windows, looking tenderly at Fedya. Picking up the pages of the manuscript, she realizes that they are a memoir that Fedya has been writing. The main narrative follows as an extended flashback, sometimes with voiceover narration by Fedya. While traveling by train from Moscow to Paris, Fedya, a writer, meets Pauline, who passes the time playing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gambler (Prokofiev)
''The Gambler'' (Russian: Игрок — ''Igrok'' in transliteration) is an opera in four acts by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer, based on the 1866 story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Prokofiev had decided on this story as an operatic subject in 1914, and the conductor Albert Coates, of the Mariinsky Theatre, encouraged Prokofiev to compose this opera and assured him of a production at that theatre. Prokofiev wrote the opera in piano score between November 1915 and April 1916, and completed the orchestration in January 1917. Vsevolod Meyerhold was engaged as stage director. However, in the wake of the 1917 February Revolution, that production never occurred. Performance history The opera did not receive its first performance until 1929, after it had been extensively revised (in 1927), at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels. Prokofiev prepared an orchestral suite based on the opera in 1931 (see below). The Bolshoi Opera perform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from ''The Love for Three Oranges,'' the suite ''Lieutenant Kijé'', the ballet ''Romeo and Juliet''—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and ''Peter and the Wolf.'' Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The GamblerFyodorDostoyevsky
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Pevear And Larissa Volokhonsky
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's ''Anna Karenina'' and Dostoevsky's ''The Brothers Karamazov''). Their translation of Dostoevsky's ''The Idiot'' also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize. Richard Pevear Richard Pevear was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, on 21 April 1943. Pevear earned a B.A. degree from Allegheny College in 1964, and a M.A. degree from the University of Virginia in 1965. He has taught at the University of New Hampshire, The Cooper Union, Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and the University of Iowa. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the American University of Paris (AUP), where he taught courses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constance Garnett
Constance Clara Garnett (; 19 December 1861 – 17 December 1946) was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to render numerous volumes of Anton Chekhov's work into English and the first to translate almost all of Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction into English. She also rendered works by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Alexander Herzen into English. Altogether, she translated 71 volumes of Russian literature, many of which are still in print today. Life Garnett was born in Brighton, England, the sixth of the eight children of the solicitor David Black (1817–1892), afterwards town clerk and coroner, and his wife, Clara Maria Patten (1825–1875), daughter of painter George Patten. Her brother was the mathematician Arthur Black, and her sister was the labour organiser and novelist Clementina Black. Her father became paralysed in 1873, and two years later her mother died ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Whishaw
Frederick James Whishaw (14 March 1854 – 8 July 1934) was a Russian-born British novelist, historian, poet and musician. A popular author of children's fiction at the turn of the 20th century, he published over forty volumes of his work between 1884 and 1914. He was a prolific historical novelist, many of his books being set in Czarist Russia, and his "schoolboy" and adventure serials appeared in many boys' magazines of the era. Several of these were published as full-length novels, such as ''Gubbins Minor and Some Other Fellows'' (1897), ''The Boys of Brierley Grange'' (1906) and ''The Competitors: A Tale of Upton House School'' (1906).Watson, Benjamin. ''English Schoolboy Stories: An Annotated Bibliography of Hardcover Fiction''. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1992. (pg. 158) Other stories, such as ''The White Witch of the Matabele'' (1897) or ''The Three Scouts: A Story of the Boer War'' (1900), depicted colonial Africa. Whishaw was also one of the first translat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bad Homburg Vor Der Höhe
Bad Homburg vor der Höhe () is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, on the southern slope of the Taunus mountains. Bad Homburg is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. The town's official name is ''Bad Homburg v.d.Höhe'', which distinguishes it from other places named Homburg. The town has become best known for its mineral springs and spa (hence the prefix ''Bad'', meaning "bath"), and for its casino. Bad Homburg was one of the wealthiest towns in Germany (while the Hochtaunuskreis itself and the Landkreis Starnberg in Bavaria regularly vie for the title of the wealthiest district in Germany). the town used the marketing slogan ''Champagnerluft und Tradition'' (Champagne air and tradition). History Medieval origins Local tradition holds that Bad Homburg's documented history began with the mention of the ''Villa Tidenheim'' in the Lorsch codex, associated with the year 782. This ''Villa Tidenheim'' was equated with the historic city center, which is cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florin
The Florentine florin was a gold coin struck from 1252 to 1533 with no significant change in its design or metal content standard during that time. It had 54 grains (3.499 grams, 0.113 troy ounce) of nominally pure or 'fine' gold with a purchasing power difficult to estimate (and variable) but ranging according to social grouping and perspective from approximately 140 to 1,000 modern US dollars. The name of the coin comes from the ''Giglio bottonato'' ( it), the floral emblem of the city, which is represented at the head of the coin. History The ''fiorino d'oro'' (gold florin) was used in the Republic of Florence and was the first European gold coin struck in sufficient quantities since the 7th century to play a significant commercial role. The florin was recognized across large parts of Europe. The territorial usage of the '' lira'' and the florin often overlapped, where the lira was used for smaller transactions (wages, food purchases), the florin was for larger transactions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruble
The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named ''ruble'' in circulation include the Belarusian ruble (BYN, Rbl) in Belarus and the Russian ruble (RUB, ₽) in Russia. Additionally, the Transnistrian ruble is used in Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway province of Moldova. These currencies are subdivided into one hundred Kopek, kopeks. No kopek is currently formally subdivided, although denga, ''denga'' (½ kopek) and polushka, ''polushka'' (½ denga, thus ¼ kopek) were minted until the 19th century. Historically, the grivna, ruble and denga were used in Russia as measurements of weight. In 1704, as a result of monetary reforms by Peter the Great, the ruble became the first Decimalisation, decimal currency. The silver ruble was used until 1897 and the gold ruble was used until 1917. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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