Summary
Yevgeny Zamyatin: Moscow - Petersburg
"Moscow is feminine, Petersburg is masculine" - wrote Gogol exactly one hundred years ago. That seemingly random joke, a grammatical play on words, hits the very core of the character of both Russian capitals so accurately that even today, a hundred years later, we still remember it. Removed from literature, Zamyatin found himself in despair. In a letter to Mikhail Bulgakov, from the end of October 1931, he was more than upset: "It seems that you go to the dramatists, and I go to the Ahasfers." In fact, it was a farewell for two pen pals, because Zamyatin left Russia two weeks later and, as it turned out, never returned.
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