Amid the Noisy Ball...

Each of us has known the song "My Little Bells" since childhood, and everyone is capable of singing at least the first verse of the romance "Amid the Noisy Ball." But if you ask about the author of the lyrics of these songs, practically anyone will attribute the authorship of "Little Bells" to Tyutchev and "Amid the Noisy Ball" to Pushkin, although their author is Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. A talented poet, over 80 of whose works were set to music by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other great domestic composers and became part of Russian culture at a literally subconscious level. It is the lyrical poems of A.K. Tolstoy that make up the first part of this collection. The second part includes ballads, parables, and stylizations of bylins, written on historical, mystical, fairy-tale, and fantastic themes…