Sep. 22nd, 2019

seminarist: (Default)
360-градусная фотопанорама Петербурга в 1861 году.

Пару лет назад я постил в ЖЖ отрывки из книги викторианского писателя Augustus Hare о путешествии в Россию. В России ему не понравилось ничего, начиная с Петербурга. Его описание кажется на первый взгляд нелепой карикатурой.

Can we still be in Europe? we wonder, as we emerge from the station into the first of those vase, arid, dusty, meaningless squares with which we afterwards become so familiar...
How wide the streets are, how shabby, and (in summer) how empty, only a foot-passenger or two being visible in the whole of the far-stretching distance! How the wind rushes through the vast spaces!..
How mean and pitiful are the shops, with their names inscribed in the bewildering Greek characters which testify to the Greek origin of Russian literature and religion, and with their walls covered all over with pictures of their contents, coats, gowns, boots, portmanteaux, &c. - pictures apparently far more important than the objects they represent. Then comes a square more hugely disproportionate then the streets, the palaces which surround it built of bad brick covered with worse stucco, and, however immense, seeming paltry and puerile in the vast space, girt on one side by the Isaac Church, which, though only a poor imitation of S. Paul's in London, has at least the advantage of stateliness in proportions, when seen against a sunset sky...
The best hotels in S. Petersburg, though sufficiently comfortable, would be considered very second-rate in any other capital, and the food they supply is very indifferent...
The Grand Moskoi, a broad street ending, close the the hotel, in a huge archway, of an aimless architectural character thoroughly characteristic of S. Petersburg...
Opposite us was the Winter Palace, which, with the exception of the Vatican and Versailles, is the largest palace in the world intended for a residence, and, though tasteless and rococo, has a certain grandeur from its immensity.

Но взгляните на панораму. Это тот самый город, который видел в 1884 году несчастный Огастус.

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