How the cat looked at kings and other memoirs. Milchina V.A.

Vera Arkadyevna Milchina is a leading researcher at the Institute of Higher Humanitarian Studies of the Russian State University and the school of relevant humanitarian research of the RANEPA, the author of seven books and three hundred scientific articles, a translator and commentator of French writers of the first half of the 19th century. In a word, it would seem, a solid person. However, in a new book, it departs from the usual role and performs in an unexpected genre, for which she came up with a special name - memo -names. Memoisracles are not a thorough serious story about one’s own life from birth to maturity and/or old age. This is a series of short and, as a rule, funny sketches.

Heroes of “Memoismos” are serious and famous people: Mikhail Bakhtin, George Knabe, Vladimir Toporov, Omri Ronen and others. But they all appear in an unusual perspective. And besides, there are stories about how people bought and “got” books in Soviet times, about how Soviet censors fought with Kramole, about the French who came to the Soviet Union, and about the Jesuits-Slavists in France. The main character of the book is a language and a language game. A large and best part of the stories told is devoted to the words - spoken, heard, printed, appropriate and inappropriate, accurate and inaccurate, joking and serious.