Pushkin was right!

“To the orders of God or muse be obedient.

Don’t be afraid of insult,

don’t demand the laurel wreath.

Slander and praise receive

with equal indifference.

     And never argue with a fool.”

This is from a poem Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1836. The epigraph is from Horace – “Exegi Monumentum”

Maybe if he had taken his own advice, he would not have lost in life in a senseless duel in St. Petersburg not long after he wrote this. Nevertheless the advice is not to be ignored. I gave these words in a calligraphic poem, framed, as a gift to my teenaged grandchildren for their home or college room walls. It is advice we all should follow.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

“Never Talk to Strangers”

“Never Talk to Strangers” is the title of the first chapter of Bulgakov’s iconic novel The Master and Margarita.  If the Russian characters in the story had followed that advice; the one, the literary editor Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, would not have slipped on Annushka’s spilled sunflower oil and lost his head under the streetcar’s wheels; and the other one, the poet Bezdomny, would not have found himself stalking around Moscow on a hot summer night in winter underwear pursuing a transparent foreigner and a tall black cat who rode trolley cars and played cards. What to do with foreigners has forever perplexed the Russians.

Excerpted from  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Immortal Words

To the orders of God or muse be obedient.                                                     
Don’t be afraid of insult,
don’t demand the laurel wreath.
Slander and praise receive with equal indifference.

And never argue with a fool.

Alexander Pushkin 1836

From a poem Pushkin wrote in 1836.
The epigraph is from Horace –
“Exegi Monumentum”