Letters from Russia
Mar. 16th, 2021 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliLetters from Russia by Astolphe de Custine
A slightly abridged version of La Russie en 1839. Full of his observations on Russia -- I have read someone who worked at the American Embassy in the USSR recommend it as the best guide to understanding the country -- and smaller details.
American merchants who are not Puritans but Jansenists of the Protestant variety. Admiring the Russian habit of having plants growing inside your home and suggesting it might be a nice habit for the French to adopt. The enormous fairs -- one of rags, which was so important the government strictly forbade the export of rags. His personal impressions of the emperor and empress and many courtiers. Criticism of the ill-advised importing of Greek architecture to a landscape very different from Greece.
His knowledge of Russian current events is distinctly -- filtered by means that the book makes clear, so a reader may catch him unaware of things now known.
A slightly abridged version of La Russie en 1839. Full of his observations on Russia -- I have read someone who worked at the American Embassy in the USSR recommend it as the best guide to understanding the country -- and smaller details.
American merchants who are not Puritans but Jansenists of the Protestant variety. Admiring the Russian habit of having plants growing inside your home and suggesting it might be a nice habit for the French to adopt. The enormous fairs -- one of rags, which was so important the government strictly forbade the export of rags. His personal impressions of the emperor and empress and many courtiers. Criticism of the ill-advised importing of Greek architecture to a landscape very different from Greece.
His knowledge of Russian current events is distinctly -- filtered by means that the book makes clear, so a reader may catch him unaware of things now known.