Slavic Folklore

Letter from Fryderyk Chopin to Jan Białobłocki

the letter should not be too short. chopin is using a lot of words without really saying anything concrete in part because it'll be nice for his friend to open a long letter. a letter that's too short may seem rude, like maybe he didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. in future letters, he often comments on the length of the letter he's writing (e.g., i have to end the letter because i'm running out of paper, or because i'm writing on the back, or because i'm squeezing too many words in, etc), or on the length of the letter he received, either expressing gratitude that it was long or jokingly chastising the correspondent for making it too short. in one letter from 1831, he literally counts the number of lines in the letter he received

2. you should establish that you welcome the correspondence. chopin complains that his friend hadn't written to him, not because he's genuinely upset about it, but because it lets him know that he's eager to correspond. sometimes when you get a letter, it's a chore more than anything because now you have to take time to write a response, take your response to the post and probably pay for the postage, stocking paper in the house is itself non-trivial. it's a process. by insisting that he's really anticipating getting his friend's letter, he establishes that he's happy to put the effort in to maintain their communication. this is a tricky one because when other people complain in letters to him that he should write more to them, it's easy for biographers to take it literally and assume that chopin hates writing letters, and in fact chopin as a reluctant letter writer is canon in the field. not sure how much of that is actually true, and how much is just his correspondents' social etiquette.

Prima ballerina - sculptures in Poddębice by Małgorzata Chodakowska, 2025:

propaganda: I love the way the water skirt makes it look like the dancers are turning even though they are stationary.

submitted by @slaviclore

Rosa's passage - installation in Łódź by Joanna Rajkowska, 2014:

this piece is an art installation

[no propaganda has been submitted]

Reality movie poster by Waldemar Świerzy, 1961:

[no propaganda has been submitted]

The Fly movie poster by Marta Szmyd, 2014:

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Lady with a squirrel by Roman Kramsztyk, 1935:

[no propaganda has been submitted]

Portrait of Zofia with a cactus by Tadeusz Pruszkowski, 1920:

[no propaganda has been submitted]

Nina Šenk (b.1982) - Violin Concerto No1 (2004)

Anja Bukovec, violin

Square scene in Slavonski Brod, Croatia

A Demon of Noontime

A Poludnytsia is a spirit in Slavic folk belief, the embodiment of noon heat and heatstroke. In order to avoid her attacks, it was seen as best practice to avoid field work at the height of day.

A fiery summer morning in Šilo! 🔥🌅