Interesting facts from the history of literature. To the "Interesting" collection: Interesting facts from the history of literature

If we forget most of what we read, what is the point of reading? What do books give us and what is the intellectual harvest that we reap in the process of reading?

Writer Charles Chu reflects on this topic. In his article, he explains why it's normal to "forget" and gives tips on how to improve your reading skills.

I write a lot about reading, and one of the most common questions I hear is what's the point of reading if you end up forgetting it all?

Paul Graham, essayist and founder of the business incubator Y Combinator, asks the same question in his essay "How Do You Know":

“I read Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade two, maybe even three times. And yet, if I were to put down on paper everything I remember, it would hardly amount to more than a page. Multiply this by several hundred, and you can imagine the feeling of anxiety that covers me when I look at my bookshelves. What is the use of reading all these books if so little remains in your memory?

Maybe if I move my finger, I'll remember more...

Many of us are familiar with this near-existential fear of “losing” all the wisdom that we managed to glean from the books we read. But there is no reason to be afraid.

First of all, if you like to read, then memory shouldn't bother you at all. If I read purely for pleasure, should I worry about short memory? After all, you can enjoy it again and again wonderful book– so what better gift could a book lover have than forgetfulness?

However, many people read books for other reasons. For example, we want to extract something from a text we read. Much has already been written about methods of remembering what you read (write it down, make connections, take notes, memorize it... longing...). But Paul Graham, it seems to me, has something new and interesting to say about this. Let's see.

A copy of the Greek Parthenon appeared in Germany with hundreds of thousands of books that were banned at various times.

Argentine artist Marta Minujín invented and, together with her assistants, built a copy of the Greek Parthenon in Kassel, Germany, using 100 thousand copies of books that were banned in the construction. different countries peace.

The temple was built within international exhibition contemporary art Documenta 14. According to the artist, it symbolizes resistance to political repression.

The books, sent specifically for the installation, were attached to a steel structure and wrapped in plastic. In total, about 170 different works were used, including “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, “On Western Front without change" by Remarque and "Doctor Zhivago" by Pasternak.

The installation did not use one of the most famous banned books - “ Mein Kampf» Adolf Hitler. Minuchin emphasized her stance against Nazi censorship by installing her installation on the site where they burned about two thousand books in 1933.

Why Bunin looked for ham at night, how much lemonade Pushkin drank, and why Nabokov needed lined cards.

Writers and poets are unattainable luminaries for us. But even they were earthly people - they thought about pressing problems, loved and hated someone, and sometimes did quite strange things.

Bunin and ham

“Bunin has a complicated relationship and scores to settle with ham. Even before the war, a doctor once ordered him to eat ham with his morning breakfast. The Bunins never kept servants, and Vera Nikolaevna, in order not to go with early morning for ham, I decided to buy it in the evening. But Bunin woke up at night, went to the kitchen and ate ham. This went on for about a week, Vera Nikolaevna began to hide the ham in the most unexpected places- sometimes in a saucepan, sometimes in a bookcase. But Bunin constantly found it and ate it. Somehow she managed to hide it so that he couldn't find it. But no sense came of it.

Did the unprecedented frosts take you by surprise? Cars don't start, down jackets don't help. How to escape the cold? The classics have the answer - read books. Maybe stories about the suffering of Akaki Akakievich in a leaky overcoat or about the hardships of the French who had frostbitten feet near Moscow will not warm you up on the way to work, but they will definitely tell you how to survive the cold.

"The Captain's Daughter", Alexander Pushkin

During testing, the algorithm learned to correctly identify the genre in 21.9% of cases. “This shows that classifying books based on cover design is possible, although very challenging task"say the authors.

Some genres were easier to recognize than others. For example, a neural network can recognize books about tourism and computer technology relatively easily because designers use typical images for books in these genres. The program also easily recognizes a cookbook if there is a picture of food on the cover, but has difficulty if instead, for example, there is a portrait of a chef on the cover.

The algorithm often classifies biographies and memoirs as related genres. historical literature, confuses children's books with comics and graphic novels, and hardly distinguishes medical literature from other scientific literature.

The study has a significant flaw: the scientists did not compare the results of the machine with the results of a person. In particular, it would be useful to know how accurately users of the Mechanical Turk platform on Amazon can determine the genre of a book by its cover.

In the comedy A.S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit” interjection "Oh!" used 54 times, and the exclamation "Oh!" appears on the pages of the work 6 times.

Pushkin wrote the prologue “There is a green oak at the Lukomorye...” of the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” for its second edition, which was released 8 years after the first publication.

In the novel “Eugene Onegin” there are the lines: “He settled in that chamber, // Where the village old-timer // For forty years, he was quarreling with the housekeeper, // He looked out the window and crushed flies.” The word fly in in this context used not in its literal meaning, but as a metaphor for alcohol. There is also another metaphor used to designate a drunk person - “under the fly”, where the word fly is used in the same sense.

Pushkin wrote more than 70 epigraphs to his works, Gogol used at least 20, and Turgenev used almost the same number.

The name of the main character of Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades" is unknown. In the work, the author used his last name Hermann (precisely with two n). This German surname, which is quite common in Germany. And the name Herman (with one n) began to dominate in the work after Tchaikovsky removed one n during the production of the opera “The Queen of Spades,” turning the surname Hermann into the name Herman.

In Krylov’s fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant” there are the lines: “The jumping dragonfly sang the red summer.” However, it is known that the dragonfly cannot make sounds. The fact is that at that time the word “dragonfly” served as a general name for several types of insects. And the hero of the fable is actually a grasshopper.

Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.

Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during the reburial it was decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he compiled a description of the yard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience- when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard.

When Mayakovsky introduced his famous poetic “ladder” into use, fellow poets accused him of cheating - after all, poets were then paid by the number of lines, and Mayakovsky received 2-3 times more for poems of similar length.

Prototype main character the novel “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy served as M.A. Hartung is the daughter of A.S. Pushkin: not by character, not by life, but by appearance. The author himself admitted this.

Daria Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!”

If you want to get more specific information about the life and work of Russian poets and writers, to get to know their works better, online tutors We are always happy to help you. Online teachers will help you analyze a poem or write a review about the work of the selected author. Training is based on specially developed software. Qualified teachers provide assistance in completing homework and explaining incomprehensible material; help prepare for the State Exam and the Unified State Exam. The student chooses for himself whether to conduct classes with the chosen tutor for a long time, or to use the teacher’s help only in specific situations when difficulties arise with a certain task.

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Interesting facts about age in literature:
. Juliet was 14 years old and Romeo was 16 years old.
. Juliet's mother, Senora Capulet, was 26 years old at the time of the events described in the play.

Marya Gavrilovna from Pushkin’s “The Snowstorm” was no longer young: “She was in her 20th year.”
. « Balzac age" - this is 30 years.

From the notes of 16-year-old Pushkin: “An old man of about 30 years old entered the room” (it was Karamzin).
. Ivan Susanin was 32 years old at the time of the feat (he had a 16-year-old daughter of marriageable age).

At the time of her death, Anna Karenina was 28 years old, Vronsky was 23 years old, Anna Karenina’s old husband was 48 years old (at the beginning of the events described in the novel, everyone was 2 years younger).

The old man Cardinal Richelieu was 42 years old at the time of the siege of the La Rochelle fortress described in The Three Musketeers.
. But old woman Nilovna (play “Mother” by Maxim Gorky) is 40.

From Tynyanov: “Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was older than all those gathered. He was thirty-four years old - the age of extinction”

What circumstances led to the mathematician Alexander Volkov becoming a writer?
The fairy tale "The Wise Man of Oz" American writer Frank Baum was not published in Russian until 1991. At the end of the 30s, Alexander Volkov, who was a mathematician by training and taught this science at one of the Moscow institutes, began to study English language and for practice I decided to translate this book in order to retell it to my children. They really liked it, they began to demand a continuation, and Volkov, in addition to the translation, began to come up with something of his own. This was the beginning of it literary path, which resulted in “The Wizard of Oz” and many other fairy tales about the Magic Land.

In which work was the Kasparo-Karpov system mentioned long before Kasparov and Karpov became known to the world?
The Strugatsky brothers' story “Noon, XXII Century” mentions the Kasparo-Karpov system - a method that was used to make a “copy” of the brain and build its mathematical model. The story was published in 1962 - Anatoly Karpov was only 11 years old at the time, and Garry Kasparov had not yet been born.

Where does the word "miniature" come from?
The word “miniature” comes from the Latin name for red paint “minium” and in the original designates ancient or medieval paintings in the genre of illuminated manuscript. Due to the small size of these paintings and the presence of the prefix “mini” in the word, an etymological metamorphosis later occurred, as a result of which any small drawings, especially portrait miniatures, began to be called miniatures. From painting, the term penetrated into literature, where it refers to works of small format.

Who came up with the plot of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo?
Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made significant contributions to The Three Musketeers.

What is the name of the main character of Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades”?
The main character of Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades" is not called Herman. His name is generally unknown, and Hermann (precisely with two n) is the surname of the hero, German by origin, which is quite common in Germany. But in the opera “The Queen of Spades” Tchaikovsky removed one n, turning the surname Hermann into the name Hermann.

How it was translated into Russian French novel, in which there is not a single letter e?
The novel was published in 1969 French writer Georges Perec "La disparition". One of key features the novel was that it did not contain a single letter e - the most commonly used letter in French. Using the same principle - without the letter e - the book was translated into English, German and Italian languages. In 2005, the novel was published in Russian, translated by Valery Kislov, under the title “Disappearance.” In this variant you cannot find the letter o, since it is the most common in the Russian language.

Which literary hero began to use many forensic methods before the police?
Arthur Conan Doyle in the stories about Sherlock Holmes, he described many forensic methods that were still unknown to the police. These include collecting cigarette butts and cigarette ashes, identifying typewriters, and examining traces at the crime scene with a magnifying glass. Subsequently, the police began to widely use these and other Holmes methods.


Which book was published under different titles in different countries based on exchange rates?
In 2000, Frederic Beigbeder’s novel “99 Francs” was published, recommended for sale in France at exactly that price. The same principle was the reason why publications in other countries were published under a different name, corresponding to the exchange rate: “39.90 marks” in Germany, “9.99 pounds” in the UK, “999 yen” in Japan, etc. In 2002, the book was republished in connection with the introduction of the euro and was called “14.99 euros.” After some time, the peak of the book’s popularity passed, and it was discounted to the title and corresponding price of “6 euros.”

How were Dostoevsky’s real walks around St. Petersburg reflected in the novel “Crime and Punishment”?
Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he drew up the description of the courtyard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience - when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself.

Where and when did Baron Munchausen live?
Baron Munchausen was a very real historical figure. In his youth, he left the German town of Bodenwerder for Russia to serve as a page. He then began a career in the army and rose to the rank of captain, after which he went back to Germany. There he became famous for telling extraordinary stories about his service in Russia: for example, entering St. Petersburg on a wolf harnessed to a sleigh, a horse cut in half in Ochakovo, fur coats going crazy, or a cherry tree growing on the head of a deer. These stories, as well as completely new ones attributed to the baron by other authors, led to the emergence of Munchausen as a literary character.

Where and when was a concept book made entirely of blank pages sold?
When asked what 5 books you would take with you to a desert island, Bernard Shaw replied that he would take 5 books with blank pages. This concept was embodied in 1974 by the American publishing house Harmony Books, releasing a book called “The Book of Nothing,” which consisted exclusively of 192 blank pages. She found her buyer, and subsequently the publishing house republished this book more than once.

Which literary character Was Dumas invented only to increase the fee?
When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative.

Which Kipling characters changed gender in the Russian translation?
In the original Jungle Book, Bagheera is a male character. Russian translators changed Bagheera's gender, most likely because the word “panther” is feminine. The same transformation occurred with another Kipling character: the cat became, in the Russian translation, “The cat that walks by itself.”

Which writer got the stone that lay on Gogol's first grave?
Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

Which famous English-language literary dystopia contains many words of Russian origin?
In dystopia " A Clockwork Orange“Anthony Burgess put into the mouths of the teenage heroes a slang he invented called Nadsat. Most of Nadsat's words had Russian origin- for example, droog (friend), litso (face), viddy (see). The word Nadsat itself is formed from the ending of the Russian numerals from 11 to 19, its meaning is the same as that of the word teenager. Translators of the novel into Russian faced the difficulty of how to adequately convey this slang. In one version of the translation such words were replaced in English words, written in Cyrillic (men, face, etc.). In another version, the jargon words were left in their original form in Latin letters.

Which writer, at the end of his life, acknowledged the harm caused to nature by his own work?
Peter Benchley, the author of the novel Jaws, later filmed by Steven Spielberg, in the last years of his life became an ardent defender of sharks and the marine ecosystem as a whole. He wrote several works in which he criticized the negative attitude towards sharks, inflated in mass consciousness thanks in part to Jaws.

Which words from Pushkin's poem "Monument" were cut out by censors in 1949?
In 1949, Pushkin's 150th anniversary was celebrated. A report on his life and work was given on the radio by Konstantin Simonov. In one Kazakh town, people gathered at the loudspeaker large number Kalmyks deported here from their historical homeland. Somewhere in the middle of the report, they lost all interest in him and left the square. The thing was that while reading Pushkin’s “Monument,” Simonov stopped reading right at the moment when he was supposed to say: “And a friend of the steppes, the Kalmyk.” This meant that the Kalmyks were still in disgrace and censorship excluded any mention of them even in such harmless cases.

Why did the author of Peter Pan give him the property of never growing up?
James Barrie created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.

Who is awarded the Ig Nobel Prize and for what?
At the beginning of October of each year, when the Nobel Prize laureates are named, a parody Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in parallel for achievements that cannot be reproduced or there is no point in doing so. In 2009, among the laureates were veterinarians who proved that a cow with any name gives more milk than a nameless one. The Literature Prize went to the Irish police for issuing fifty traffic fines to a certain Prawo Jazdy, which means “driving license” in Polish. And in 2002, the Gazprom company received a prize in the field of economics for its application of the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers in business.

Who did the old woman from the fairy tale about the Goldfish by the Brothers Grimm want to become?
The basis for Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” was the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife.” Pushkin’s old woman finds herself broke after she wanted to become the mistress of the sea, and her German “colleague” at this stage became the Pope. And only after the desire to become the Lord God I was left with nothing.

How did cabin boy Richard Parker repeat the sad fate of his literary namesake?
In Edgar Poe's 1838 story The Narrative of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym, there is an episode where the ship is caught in a storm and four sailors are saved on a raft. Having no food, they decide to eat one of them by lot - and that victim is Richard Parker. In 1884, a real yacht sank, and four people on one boat also survived. They hardly read that story, but in the end they ate the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.

Why is Isaev not real name Stirlitz?
Stirlitz's real name is not Maxim Maksimovich Isaev, but Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov. Isaev is the first operational pseudonym of the intelligence officer, introduced by Yulian Semyonov in the first novel “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” and Stirlitz is already the second pseudonym. This is not reflected in the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”.

What insect actually is the dragonfly from Krylov's fable?
In Krylov’s fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant” there are the lines: “The jumping dragonfly sang the red summer.” However, it is known that the dragonfly does not make sounds. The fact is that at that time the word “dragonfly” served as a general name for several types of insects. And the hero of the fable is actually a grasshopper.

What violent scenes were removed from folk tales Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm?
Most of the fairy tales known to us by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and other storytellers arose among the people in the Middle Ages, and their original plots are sometimes distinguished by cruelty and naturalness everyday scenes. For example, in the tale of Sleeping Beauty, the foreign king does not kiss her, but rapes her. The wolf eats not only the grandmother, but half the village in addition, and before eating Little Red Riding Hood, he first raped her. Our folklore could not bear this, and this detail disappeared. Little Red Riding Hood then lures him into a pit of boiling tar. In the fairy tale about Cinderella, the sisters still manage to try on the shoe, for which one of them cuts off her toe, the other her heel, but then they are exposed by the singing of pigeons.

What topic in Soviet science fiction was so hackneyed that stories on it were not accepted by magazines for publication?
The theme of the Tunguska meteorite was very popular among Soviet science fiction writers, especially beginners. Literary magazine“The Ural Pathfinder” in the 1980s even had to be written as a separate paragraph in the requirements for publications: “Works that reveal the secret of the Tunguska meteorite are not considered.”

Why do we have a tradition of signing the spines of books from bottom to top, while Europeans do the opposite?
IN Western Europe And in America, book spines are signed from top to bottom. This tradition goes back to the times when there were few books: if the book is lying on the table (or in a small stack), the reader should be able to easily read the title. And in Eastern Europe and Russia has adopted the tradition of signing the spines from bottom to top, because it is more convenient to read when the books are on the shelf.

Where did the expression “no brainer” come from?
The source of the expression “It’s a no brainer” is a poem by Mayakovsky (“It’s even a no brainer - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It first became widespread in the Strugatskys’ story “Country crimson clouds", and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (classes A, B, C, D, D) or one year (classes E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, the two-year students were already ahead of them in the non-standard program, so at the beginning academic year The expression “no brainer” was very relevant.

Which book was imprisoned in the Bastille?
The prisoners of the Bastille were not only people. Once the famous French Encyclopedia compiled by Diderot and D'Alembert was imprisoned. The book was accused of harming religion and public morality.

What did Lenin's phrase about the cook and the state actually sound like?
“Any cook is capable of ruling the state,” Lenin never said. This phrase was attributed to him, taken from Mayakovsky’s poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”. In fact, he wrote this: “We are not utopians. We know that any laborer and any cook are not capable of immediately entering into government... We demand that training in public administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that it begin immediately.”

Which science fiction writer wrote reviews of non-existent books?
Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.

How did Leo Tolstoy feel about his novels?
Leo Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.”

What is the meaning of the word peace in War and Peace?
In the title of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" the word world is used as an antonym to war (pre-revolutionary "peace"), and not in the meaning " the world around us"(pre-revolutionary "mir"). All lifetime editions The novel was published under the title “War and Peace,” and Tolstoy himself wrote the title of the novel in French as “La guerre et la paix.” However, due to typographical errors in different editions, different times, where the word was written as “mir”, debates about the true meaning of the title of the novel are still raging.

Which writer encouraged readers to use their own punctuation?
The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.

Why didn’t poets like Mayakovsky for writing poetry with a ladder?
When Mayakovsky introduced his famous poetic “ladder” into use, fellow poets accused him of cheating - after all, poets were then paid for the number of lines, and Mayakovsky received 2-3 times more for poems of similar length.

What pessimist died of laughter?
The Cuban poet Julian del Casal, whose poems were distinguished by deep pessimism, died of laughter. He was having dinner with friends, one of whom told a joke. The poet began an attack of uncontrollable laughter, which caused aortic dissection, bleeding and sudden death.

What was the name of the city where Anna Karenina threw herself under a train?
In the novel by Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina threw herself under a train at the Obiralovka station near Moscow. IN Soviet era this village became a city and was renamed Zheleznodorozhny.

Where a radio drama was mistaken for a real Martian invasion?
On October 30, 1938, a radio dramatization of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds was broadcast in New Jersey as a parody of a radio report from the scene. Of the six million people who listened to the broadcast, one million believed in the reality of what was happening. Mass panic arose, tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes (especially after President Roosevelt’s alleged call to remain calm), the roads were clogged with refugees. Telephone lines were paralyzed: thousands of people reported allegedly seeing Martian ships. It subsequently took authorities six weeks to convince the population that the attack had not occurred.

What is the real name of Korney Chukovsky?
Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.

Who preserved Kafka's works for the whole world?
Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame.

How long did Robinson Crusoe spend in Russia?
The novel about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe has a sequel, in which the hero is shipwrecked off the coast of Southeast Asia and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. In particular, he waits out the winter in Tobolsk for 8 months. There he teaches English literacy to local children. He eats crackers and drinks kvass. Poor…

When did the prologue “Near the Lukomorye green oak...” appear?
Pushkin wrote the prologue “There is a green oak at the Lukomorye...” of the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” for its second edition, released 8 years after the first publication.

What book did the writer ask to sell for exactly the same price as a bottle of vodka?
When the poem “Moscow - Petushki” was published as a separate book, at the request of the author Venedikt Erofeev, the price was set at 3 rubles 62 kopecks. This is how much a bottle of vodka cost at the time the poem was written.

How did Andrei Bitov learn about a new word in his work?
According to Andrei Bitov, he first learned about Zen Buddhism at the age of thirty, having read the dissertation of an English literary critic entitled “Zen Buddhism in early work Andrey Bitov."

Who came up with the name Svetlana?
The name Svetlana is not originally Slavic. It was invented and first used by the poet Vostokov in the romance “Svetlana and Mstislav”, and gained wide popularity after the publication of Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana” in 1813.

Who predicted the sinking of the Titanic in a literary work?
14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, Morgan Robertson published a story that became her prediction. In the story, the ship Titan, much like the Titanic in size, also collided with an iceberg on an April night, killing most of the passengers.

Why was Winnie the Pooh named so?
Winnie the Pooh got the first part of his name from one of the real toys of Christopher Robin, the son of the writer Milne. The toy was named after a female bear at the London Zoo named Winnipeg, who came there from Canada. The second part - Pooh - was borrowed from the name of the swan of acquaintances of the Milne family.

Where did the expression “things smell like kerosene” come from?
Koltsov’s 1924 feuilleton talked about a major scam uncovered during the transfer of an oil concession in California. The most senior US officials were involved in the scam. It was here that the expression “things smell like kerosene” was used for the first time.

Where did the expression “let's go back to our sheep” come from?
In medieval French comedy A rich clothier sues a shepherd who stole his sheep. During the meeting, the clothier forgets about the shepherd and showers reproaches on his lawyer, who did not pay him for six cubits of cloth. The judge interrupts the speech with the words: “Let's return to our sheep,” which have become winged.

Which writer wrote a story about a religious feat based on a story about a campaign for vodka?
In Leskov’s story, an Old Believer walks from one bank of the river to the other along the chains of an unfinished bridge during a stormy ice drift in order to return an icon confiscated from the Old Believers from the monastery. According to the author, the plot is based on real events, only a mason appears there, and he went not for the icon, but for cheaper vodka.

Who valued books more than people?
In 267, the Goths sacked Athens and killed many of the inhabitants, but did not burn the books.

How did Bernard Shaw react to receiving the Nobel Prize?
In 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

Who used "Albanian language" at the beginning of the 20th century?
In 1916, the futurist Zdanevich wrote a play without observing the normative rules of spelling and using “albanskava izyka”. The Padonki language, which appeared in the 2000s, whose spelling is based on similar principles, is sometimes called the “Albanian language,” but the coincidence with Zdanevich’s experience is accidental.

What pornographic scene is in "Woe from Wit"?
In the 19th century, actresses refused to play Sophia in “Woe from Wit” with the words: “I am a decent woman and I don’t play in pornographic scenes!” They considered such a scene to be a night conversation with Molchalin, who was not yet the heroine’s husband.

How were books protected in libraries before?
Historical fact: in Europe, until the 18th century, all library books were chained to shelves. So that they don't take it away.

Why did Daria Dontsova get a D in her essay?
Daria Dontsova, a well-known detective, is the daughter of the famous Soviet writer Arkady Vasilyeva. She was familiar with V. Kataev, the author of the book “The Lonely Sail Whitens.” When it was necessary to write an essay on this work, Dasha turned to him for help - and as a result she received a bad mark with the words: “Kataev didn’t think about this at all when he wrote the book.”

2. "Fahrenheit 451" - Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury once “invented” the most popular headphone format today - the so-called “droplets”. In the acclaimed book “Fahrenheit 451,” he wrote: “In her ears, miniature “Shells” are tightly inserted, tiny, thimble-sized, bushing radios, and an electronic ocean of sounds - music and voices, music and voices - washes the shores of her in waves. waking brain." He wrote the novel in 1950, you yourself understand what kind of headphones there were at that time!

3. "The Inspector General" - N.V. Gogol
The source of the plot for Gogol's play "The Inspector General" was real case in the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province, and Pushkin told the author about this incident. These great classics were good friends. It was Pushkin who advised Gogol to continue writing the work when he more than once wanted to give up this work. Throughout the time he was writing The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, telling him what stage it was at. By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it.
In the translation of the play into Persian, the mayor's wife was replaced by the second daughter, since courting a married woman in Iran is punishable by death.

4. "The Master and Margarita" - Mikhail Bulgakov
The first edition of the novel contained (now almost completely lost) a detailed description of Woland’s signs, 15 handwritten pages long, as well as the opening of the first “Yershalaim” chapter detailed description meeting of the Sanhedrin at which Yeshua was condemned.
In one of the editions the novel was called “Satan”.
Woland's name in the early editions of the novel was Astaroth. However, this name was later replaced, apparently due to the fact that the name "Astaroth" is associated with a specific demon of the same name, different from Satan.
The Variety Theater does not exist in Moscow and never has existed. But now several theaters sometimes compete for the title.
According to the writer’s widow, Elena Sergeevna, last words Bulgakov about the novel “The Master and Margarita” before his death were: “So that they know... So that they know.”

5. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" - Arthur Conan Doyle
At the time the Sherlock Holmes stories were written, the house with the address 221b Baker Street did not exist. When the house appeared, a flood of letters fell to this address. One of the rooms in this building is considered the room of the great detective. Subsequently, the address 221b Baker Street was officially assigned to the house in which the Sherlock Holmes Museum is located. Moreover, to do this, they even had to break the numbering order of the houses on the street.
In the first version of the novel there was no Holmes at all; instead, Ormond Sacker investigated the crime. Then Doyle nevertheless removed Sacker and inserted Sherlock Holmes into the book, but in the second version the detective’s name was not Sherlock, but Sheringford. The writer borrowed his surname from his favorite American writer and doctor, Oliver Holmes. At first Doyle planned to give deductive method, for which Holmes became famous, to the doctor Watson - and this is how the surname Watson sounds in English - but then he changed his mind and endowed Sherlock Holmes with the amazing ability to investigate crimes.

6. "1984" - George Orwell
The famous formula “Twice two equals five,” which George Orwell repeatedly emphasized in the dystopian novel “1984,” came to his mind when he heard the Soviet slogan “Five-Year Plan in Four Years!”
Most of the features of Orwell's totalitarian society are from his prototypes - Soviet Union during the dictatorship of Stalin and Hitler's Germany. The personality cult of Big Brother, a black-haired, black-mustachioed middle-aged man, is identified by most commentators with the cult of Stalin in the USSR.
Orwell depicted a dark future for humanity in his novel. A society in which there is no right to free thought, the search for truth or privacy is doomed to decay. Attempts to describe the evil that comes with the power of totalitarianism and censorship ended with a ban on the book.

7. "The Three Musketeers" - Alexandre Dumas
When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative.
Dumas, who constantly used the work of literary blacks, worked on The Three Musketeers together with Auguste Macquet (1813-1886). The same author helped him when creating “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Black Tulip”, “The Queen’s Necklace”. Macke later sued and demanded that the 18 novels he co-wrote with Dumas be recognized as his own works. But the court recognized that his work was nothing more than preparatory.

8. “Woe from Wit” - Alexander Griboedov
In the 19th century, actresses refused to play Sophia in “Woe from Wit” with the words: “I am a decent woman and I don’t play in pornographic scenes!” They considered such a scene to be a night conversation with Molchalin, who was not yet the heroine’s husband.

9. "Kolobok"
The fairy tale “Kolobok” is known not only in Russia, but also far beyond its borders. The plot of “Kolobok” has analogues in the fairy tales of many other peoples: from eastern Uzbek and Tatar, to Western - English, German and Scandinavian. According to the Aarne-Thompson plot classifier , the fairy tale belongs to the 2025 type - “the runaway pancake.” Since the 19th century, in world culture, the most common “colleague” of Kolobok can be called the Gingerbread Man from the USA (in the picture below). He first appeared in print in 1875. Since then, it has been one of the most famous Anglo-Saxon fairy tales. By the way, although according to the tale, he was running away from other animals and beasts, the American was also eaten by a fox. Our Kolobok appeared in print a little earlier than the American one - in 1873, but some researchers. claim that the tale of the kolobok has been part of Slavic folklore since the 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

10. "Cathedral" Notre Dame of Paris" - Victor Hugo
Before the novel was published, the Cathedral in France was not so famous; they even wanted to demolish it. The novel was written by Hugo with the aim of introducing him as the main character gothic cathedral Paris, which at that time was going to be demolished or modernized. He wrote in the preface: “One of my main goals is to inspire the nation with a love for our architecture.”
Following the publication of the novel, a movement for the preservation and restoration of Gothic monuments developed in France and then throughout Europe.