Archive for the ‘Ukrainian’ Category

A sculptor in Kyiv

February 10, 2023

An accidental find on Pinterest: Huzenko Kyrylo, a Ukrainian sculptor working in Kyiv, in a considerable range of forms, but specializing in emotionally intense male nudes, in socially and politically informed works of great power. (Note: there will be two of his male nudes reproduced below, which I believe to be acceptable on WordPress through the Fine Art Exemption for such things, but which some viewers might disapprove of.)

You can view a gallery of his daily life and works on his Instagram page (text in Ukrainian, but with — not very dependable — English translations available); there seems to be no on-line source of information about him and his career.

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Posted in Art, Male art, Ukrainian | Leave a Comment »

Armen Zakharyan

October 1, 2022

🐇 🐇 🐇 welcome, October (even though we know it ends in a celebration of death)

This posting is a report on an amazing body of work by Armen Zakharyan, about Russian literature in relation to world literatures, providing literary analysis both subtle and surprising, probing the range of lives as revealed in literary works, and directly and passonately engaging with hard questions about how to live a moral life and negotiate through a world of evil. Until a few days ago, I had no idea that such a thing existed, but then Vadim Temkin posted a “Wow” notice on Facebook about a Zakharyan video, with this image and a link to the video:


(#1) The link to the YouTube video is here

The wisps of Russian I recalled from 1960 Princeton classes carried me far enough to recognize the slogan MAN WAR ART, but no further. I appealed to Vadim to explain his “Wow”. And got the wonderful response below, which I reproduce with only slight editing as a guest posting (Vadim is multilingual and multicultural in a way I could not imagine being, so it would have been insane for me to try to paraphrase or interpret his take on Zakharyan).

From here on this is Vadim, with occasional back-commentary from me in square brackets.

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Posted in Literature, Russian, Ukrainian | Leave a Comment »

The Z of death

March 12, 2022

From Andras Kornai on Facebook today:

AK: As they say on Sesame Street: brought to you by the letter Z!


(#1) A tank (Andras says it’s a Pantsir missile system) with the glyph Z on it — not a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet (in which both Ukrainian and Russian are written) and now symbolizing the Russian iron fist of death

Livia Polanyi [pursuing the Sesame Street theme]: Zombie zombie zombie starts with Z

AZ > LP: The letter Z long ago became part of my identity, a symbol of who I was. Now it’s become the equivalent of a swastika, and I feel that I have personally been assaulted, dirtied, and shamed. (I manage to surmount Z is for Zombie as just a piece of cultural silliness. But the Z on the tanks is, literally, dead serious.)

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Posted in Greek, Historical linguistics, Language and politics, Linguists, My life, Names, Russian, Spelling, Switzerland and Swiss things, Ukrainian, Zwickys | 7 Comments »