美國時間：每日珠璣 (By Hanching Chung)

上排左：列寧 中排左：史達林 下排左：列寧兄；右：列寧太太 弗拉基米爾·列寧 A British spy, posted to the border as a passport control officer, tried gamely to delay Lenin from returning to Russia. But the authorities believed that a democratic country should not ban its own citizens from entry. For that mistake, millions died The story of the world’s most fateful railway journey Vladimir Lenin died on January 21st 1924 ECONOMIST.COM

“Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.” — John Steinbeck John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45 EDITOR’S NOTE: John Steinbeck had agreed to a Paris Review interview late in his life. He had earlier been coy about it, but then wanted the interview very much. He was, unfortunately, too sick to work on the project, though it was… THEPARISREVIEW.ORG John Steinbeck - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr was an American author. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters", and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature. During his writing career, he authored 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic ...

"A Dream Within a Dream" (1849)  Edgar Allan Poe, Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? * Edgar Allan Poe’s gift for the macabre–his genius in finding the strangeness lurking at the heart of things–was so extraordinary that he exerted a major influence on Baudelaire and French symbolism, on Freudian analysis, and also on the detective novel and the Hollywood mo...