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Showing posts from November, 2018

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Whaling

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Large expanses of water are so mysterious and precious that they cannot be fully investigated so far. There are a lot of organisms living in water that are part of nature. Instead of taking care of the habitat of those living creatures, people keep tampering with nature and damaging it. One of the illuminating literary examples of this issue is depicted in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Moby Dick is Great American Novel written in 1851. Vengeful Captain Ahab is ‘determined to kill the whale that sank his previous ship, and severed his leg at the knee’ (Leadbeater, 2016) . Melville’s sea is not a simple background; it is a full participant of the action intruding into man’s consciousness. Take, for example, Ishmael, the narrator, who is going on ‘whaling voyage’ (Melville, 1851) : Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his isla

Colors of nature in the paintings of artists of the Baltic States

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“Greenpeace, green literature, think green!” – everything seems to be clichéd, when it comes to the issues connected with nature and ecology. However, nature is definitely much more varicolored. Konrad Mägi On the Road from Viljandi to Tartu         Photo by S.Hatšaturjan All sorts of hues, shades, contrasts are present in nature. Look at the gold, amber, burnt orange leaves in autumn, or aquamarine, cyan, cobalt blue sea, or hot pink, vermilion, scarlet clouds at dawn.   Photo by S.Hatšaturjan            Konrad Mägi Landscape with Sun   You should not be an artist to notice the multifarious picturesqueness of nature. And yet, paraphrasing Etienne Terblanche´s words from his article “Butterfly Dialectics in Modern Poetry” artists´ flaming “undermining of cliches that have over time ” narrowed perception of nature, helps to discover its beauty and discern the slightest gradations of the colors of nature. Antanas Žmuidzinavičius The Land of Tu

Nature in Russian Folk Tales

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Currently, the problem of environmental education has become very acute. In the age of technology, there is not enough time to stop, look around, and observe the nature. The lack of communication with nature subsequently turns into immorality and disrespectful attitude towards all living world. The fairy tale in turn gives the opportunity to observe the life of the wild nature. The importance of considering the natural and geographical factors reflected in national folklore lies in the fact that they can have a considerable influence on the self-consciousness and ideology of the people. Nature has always occupied a large place in the life of ancient people, in contrast to modern. Here we will briefly analyze the value of nature in Russian folk tales. In Russia there are different geographic zones, ranging from the arctic tundra in the extreme North to semi-desert in the south. These natural conditions determined the type of activity and the general way of life.  What is the

Secret Whistle in the Forest

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                                                                                                                                                   Photo by Kogo Gallery Recently, our team visited Kogo Gallery in Tartu. The gallery held a duo exhibition “Secret whistle in the forest by two artists, Kristi Kongi and Mari-Leen Kiipli. The exhibition was inspired by light and shadow and it revolved around the idea of blurring the boundaries between life forms. As a result, we first enter an installation by Kristi Kongi where the different shades of textile create a maze of light that takes us to different places like Mexican Jungle or South-Estonian forests. The light blurs the line between humans and plants and we wonder and get lost in the geometric shapes of light we ourselves transform into plants.                                                                               Photos and video by Mariam Meparishvili                                        As the maz

Glehni Rahula

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Once, during one of the many strolls that common people are so prone to make on sunny, autumn days, I had stumbled upon an interesting place. Everything seemed strange about it. It was a tiny piece of land that claimed to be “a park,” and a cemetery at the same time. The feeling of strangeness was further amplified by it being the park in the middle of a district consisting entirely of private residences – as if the park appeared there by chance. But what is more likely,  is that the houses appeared around the park, and not the park among them.                                                 pictures are by the author,   Maksim Kamrõš An entrance had a plate with a description. It turned out to be the grave of a one named Carolina Henriette Marie Berg , a wife of Nikolai von Glehn. N. von Glehn was a prominent nobleman at the turn of the century in Estonia; he built a lot, including Glehn Castle, and wanted to bury his wife in a poetic place. Two other members of t