Author: Andrei Navrozov

Even the dialectically materialist children’s books of my Soviet youth nurtured the idea of an “animal kingdom,” the realm where the lion was tsar.  Presumably this autocrat ruled in consultation with his ministers, other imposing mammals like the elephant and the buffalo, and of course the principal temptation for a youthful intellect was to arrange the whole planetary zoo on the lines of the Table of Ranks introduced in 1722 by Peter the Great, whereby every citizen held a civilian rank corresponding to its military equivalent. 

Life is rife with disappointments, none more bewildering, perhaps, than the crash of adolescent illusions.  Ever since the distant days of youth I have had a soft spot for the nostalgia of the Russian gypsy song, those early twentieth-century laments that, rather like a gypsy fortune teller, seemed to foretell the impending loss of our homeland and of our liberty.

In a world growing evermore progressive – I suspect the Gadarene swine thought this tendency marvelous as they went off the cliff – one has to work hard to stay in place. 

We’re now in what British journos call the Silly Season, and what could be sillier than the silly invitation for silly President Zelensky of Ukraine from silly U.S. President Biden to come and see him in Washington at the end of August, when Congress is in recess and there’s nobody to say they’re being silly?

Though now back in my own bed, thoughts of the fancy hotel where we stayed in Apulia keep me awake at night.  What is it about such places?  The first answer that comes to mind is that it has something to do with the success of “virtual worlds,”

It was like something out of a movie, one of those Eastern European flicks of vaguely subversive import in fading color from directors with names like Tomasz or Janos which in my childhood the dissidents of the day so cravenly admired.

I had planned to be late with this week’s post to recount something of Rome, but our visit here developed in ways so spectacularly unforeseen – such as five hours on the train from Naples to Milan to meet one friend for a saffron risotto and then another three hours to make it to Rome in time for a spaghetti amatriciana with another – that I decided to throw in the towel and just write what’s on my mind. And what’s on my mind is the reading I’ve done during those eight hours on the Freccia Rossa.