Landscape sag

On December 31 at 9 o’clock in the evening in the program of Alexander Genis - shooting Eifman, the music of winter, a postcard from Iceland, verses of the year.

The exhibition, which was arranged in New York, the Scandinavian fund was conceived very original. Two parallel series of exhibits. One represents the work of the English artist-acwalerist and philologist Collingwood. In the 19th century, he traveled to Iceland, armed with Icelandic sagas, and sketched landscapes of those places where the described events took place. A century later, the largest Icelandic photographer Einar Inglefson traveled the same places and shot them, taking luxurious species photos. The focus, however, is that little has changed. Iceland of the times of sagas, and this is the 10th century, remained the same in the 19th century, and in the 21st. Empty and beautiful, she provided her mountains and valleys at the disposal of literature - the first and best prose of Europe.

Saga is the main treasure of Iceland. No wonder the only policeman that I met throughout the country guarded the parchment manuscript of the best of them - “Saga about Nyal”. Clutching the glass, I eagerly stared at the non -proclaimed book. Bead letters fled along the lines, like ants, if they could survive in the Icelandic climate. In a neighboring rack, the "elder Edda" was waiting for me, and I stopped breathing with reverence. The chartr of the North, this dilapidated book with time -united fields was the great monument that preserved the alternative to Olympic mythology to Europeans.

The most amazing thing is that the Icelanders can still read all this. Not like we are “a word about Igor’s regiment”, not like the British - “Beowulf”, but as children - “three musketeers”: for the sake of fights and pleasure. Having declared their language to be lively fossil, the authorities forbids to use other people's roots, and when the need for new words comes, officials and poets create them from the old ones. The phone is called the “thread”, the TV is made up of the verbs “see” and “throw a fishing rod”, the computer combines the word “figure” with the prophet “Valva”, which indicates the ability of the machine to calculate the future that awaits us in 2013.

And also today at 21 hours Moscow time in the program

"On top of the barriers. American hour":

How to take off the ballet.

Guest Ach - photographer and ballet critic Nina Alvert

The festive New York is given to the ballet. According to the established tradition, the New Year cannot be well celebrated without a “Nutcracker”. This time there are eight different productions, including one Ratmansky, plus - a broadcast from the Mariinsky Theater in 3D. However, the ballet, and not only the “Nutcracker”, is always a festive sight, which is why we decided to invite a ballet photographer and criticism in this New Year's program, my good friend, with whom we still worked in the Dovlatovsk “new American”, Nina Alvert.

I must admit that Nina was an example for me. She always - no matter what! - She did only and exactly what she wanted: she shot the ballet, wrote about him, lived them. The reason for today's conversation was Nina’s new book - “Boris Eifman. Yesterday, today ... ".

Vladimir Gandelsman: Poem of the Year

According to a long tradition, in every New Year's release “Ach” the “poem of the year” sounds, which the poet Ach Vladimir Gandelsman chooses for our listeners and readers. This time we asked him to choose not someone else's, but his poem, which he considered the most successful opus of 2012.

... Car-naval is over. With general NAR - and free,

The rhyme is in the sky. Here is a candle, but a dozen.

Here is a smoke - look, he melts. Here is the east - look, lights up.

The word pure hovers, discharging from the black spells,

And the district acquires clarity to the devil. I do not hear "Carr-r!"

Something I do not hear "Carr-r!"