Tender and affectionate beast

My Tender and Affectionate Beast (also called A Hunting Drama) is a fim directed by Emil Lotyanu starring Galina Belyayeva and the wonderful Oleg Yankovsky. It was based on a Chekhov short story.

 

Everything is beautiful. 

 

Perfect.

 

 

Tragic.

Russian hair (1)

'Her hair, bright gold and pulled high off a smooth luminous forehead, was wound in a thick coil, heavy as a ship's rope.'
From The Wolf Princess

Image from 'Mirror' by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Papa don't preach

'I started out very quiet and beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendahl, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in the ring with Mr. Tolsoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.'

Ernest Hemingway

Photograph of Leo Tolstoy by Produkin-Gorsky

A call to arms

'There is the inner life, which is the world of inner reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence... There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn...'

Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making (Faber).

The Polish Winged Hussars' battle tactic was the charge. Starting slowly, and in loose formation, the riders gathered pace, closing ranks, as they approached the enemy. And then they rode, at terrifying speed, directly at and through, the opposing army like a hammer smashing into soft wood.
Their 'wings' were made from feathers attached to a wooden frame.

Winter Palace

'It seemed ridiculous and yet marvellous at the same time, that anyone could have been brave enough and foolish enough to build such a palace here, in a world made out of winter.'
From The Wolf Princess

Palace from the film, My Tender and Affectionate Beast, directed by Emil Lotyanu, based on a short story by Anton Chekhov.

Produkin-Gorsky

A young Russian peasant girl photographed by Sergei Mikhaylovich Produkin-Gorsky in the early c20th. This is one of the images I had on my pinboard whilst writing The Wolf Princess.

James Salter