Learn Russian with Short Stories (2): Max Reads Grin
Зелёная лампа (The Green Lamp) is a short story from 1930 by Aleksandr Grin (1880-1932), the surname being an abbreviation. Regarding Aleksandr Grinevski (Russian: Александр Гриневский), Wikipedia offers a real recommendation: “His stories mainly revolve around the sea, adventures, and love.”
Read!
Зелёная лампа tells the story of a beggar who, in exchange for money, must keep a lamp burning for several hours each day and stay by it. What seems like a cruel prank or humiliation turns out to present opportunities. If you just read.
Reading in Russian
Russian With Max has a series where short stories are read and explained: Reading in Russian. Some episodes include, besides the Introduction and Part 1 (51 m), Fat and Thin by A. Chekhov (2019, 63 m) and Princess Frog | Wisdom in Fairy Tales (2019, 59 m). See also Reading Russian Contemporary Literature | A Short Story About Coffee (42 m).
In the February 2019 episode, The Green Lamp by A. Grin (60 m), Max reads Grin’s famous short story. You can also order a bilingual audiobook of The Green Lamp via Max’s website, supporting his work and keeping his lamp lit. Definitely worth checking out!
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Text and Summary
This 90-year-old story was also read in the podcast «Зелёная лампа» on
Lampa.fm (June 2019, 29 m) and (with violin music) on
Akniga.org (2017, 13 m). The full Russian text is available on
Wikisource. Summaries and tests can be found on
Obrazovaka.ru and
Briefly.ru.
Film
Two film adaptations of Зелёная лампа are entertaining to watch but little more than that. In this sense, they serve as an argument for reading, which makes them successful in their own way. Check out this
trailer (directed and produced by Юрий Тепляков, 2018) and the full adaptation below (2017). Directed by Берюх Евгений, with music by Kronos Quartet.
Reading
Check out
The Green Lamp (Mihai Avram, Medium.com, 2018), where the author draws a parallel between Grin’s story and
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. Stilton as a symbol for “capitalists and big profit-driven corporations.”
Work and Bio
More from Aleksandr Grin at
Аркадий Бухмин.
- Измена (2020, 17 m)
- Гнев Отца (2018, 12 m)
- Слова (2017, 13 m)
- Ученик чародея (2015, 36 m)
The channel Книги о Главном has a playlist of Aleksandr Grin stories (25 videos). Another user, Андрей, compiled a diverse playlist of film adaptations (19 videos).
More about Aleksandr Grin in:
- Жизнь и книги Александра Грина (1984) (Советское телевидение, 2020, 49 m)
- Александр Грин: как советский писатель искал Бога (Академия “Фомы”, 2018, 42 m)
- Александр Грин (Истории, 2016, 2 m)
- По страницам биографии А.С.Грина (Татьяна Пивоварова, 2015, 3 m)
- Александр Грин. Гении и злодеи. (Жизнь замечательных людей, 2014, 25 m)
- Александр Грин (VideoIdeaProduction, 2012, 5 m)
- Александр Грин (RifeyTV, 2010, 2 m)
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Language
Verbs work for those who want to make sentences. There - work and make, there you already have two. And try to make Russian out of that sentence if you if you don’t know работать or делать. So work, also on your vocabulary.
Even with bad news there is good news: there is a lot to learn from it. Russian news articles are excellent teaching material, even for the more advanced student.
The sixth noun, in Russian предложный падеж, is for most students the first one they learn. The reason is simple: the sixth grammatical case itself is.
And then it became war. Or should we say began the special military operation. On
February 24 2022 Russian troops entered Ukraine. It was allowed
neither war nor invasion be called, but it was akin to both.
This often comes as a setback for students of Russian: of (almost) every Russian verb there are two. Which do mean approximately the same thing, but express very different things. So you need to know both, and of both learn the conjugations.
Making mistakes in Cyrillic is no big deal. Everyone does. But wrong Cyrillic, that’s the biggest mistake you can make. And the worst thing you can do with that noble Cyrillic can do.
