In the novel about Russia in 1993, the hero Roman Peskov makes his way into a mysterious sphere in the middle of the desert and finds himself in a hall where "Scarlatina one hundred and forty-one" is playing. This slip of the tongue is no accident. Domenico Scarlatti, a Baroque-era composer, created his music during a great transition, when the revolutionary spirit of the Renaissance gave way to an age of ostentatious luxury, ceremony, and commerce. Remarkably, this same transition repeated itself in 1990s Russia, when the revolutionary impulse of perestroika gave way to the commercial spirit of a new era.
The Baroque as a response to a crisis of ideals
The Baroque arose at the end of the 16th century as a reaction to a crisis in Renaissance ideals. The great age of the Renaissance ended suddenly and dramatically. Bramante died in 1514, Leonardo da Vinci in 1519, Raphael in 1520. Only Michelangelo continued working until 1564, but by then it was already a different era. The masterpieces of the High Renaissance seemed unattainable, and this produced a painful sense of the impossibility of reaching those same heights.
In much the same way, the revolutionary spirit of early-1990s Russia quickly ran out of steam. August 1991, the collapse of the coup, the dissolution of the USSR — all of it seemed like the start of a new era of freedom and democracy. But already by 1993, when the events of the novel about Roman Peskov unfold, the ideals of perestroika collided with a harsh reality. The shelling of the White House in October 1993 became a symbol of the end of revolutionary illusions.
The Baroque era's crisis of worldview
The Baroque took shape during a period of radical change in humanity's picture of the world. The great geographic discoveries expanded the boundaries of the known world: Columbus discovered America in 1492, Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India in 1498, Magellan circumnavigated the globe in 1519-1522. Scientific discoveries were shattering familiar notions: Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model, Galileo and Kepler proved the Earth revolved around the Sun.
The person of the Baroque era faced a contradiction between appearance and knowledge. What had seemed absolutely clear and immutable crumbled before their eyes. People still saw a flat, motionless earth, but scientists were proving it was a sphere revolving around the Sun. Blaise Pascal captured the tragedy of the age: man had become nothing more than a thinking reed, suspended between two abysses — infinity and nothingness.
1990s Russia went through a similar crisis of worldview. The Soviet ideology that had shaped the picture of the world for millions of people for decades collapsed. Suddenly it turned out that everything taught in school, every value and point of reference, was a lie or an illusion. Scientific communism, a bright future, the superiority of the socialist system — all of it turned to ash overnight.
From harmony to ornateness
If the Renaissance strove for clarity, harmony, and balanced forms, the Baroque rejected these principles as dull and lifeless. Everything new, unusual, ghostly, and dynamic came to seem beautiful. Above all else, unexpected juxtapositions, metaphors, and allegories were prized — what was called "concetto." Baroque artists created a fantastical atmosphere of the irreconcilable and the unprecedented through unusual perspectives, chiaroscuro effects, and optical illusions.
The commercial nineties in Russia likewise rejected the simplicity and asceticism of the Soviet era. Raspberry blazers, gold chains, mobile phones the size of a brick, jeeps and Mercedes — all of this was a display of a new aesthetic of luxury and excess. The more ostentatious, the better. The more showy luxury, the higher the status. The New Russians built mansions with columns and ornate stucco, resembling Baroque palaces, only even more lavish and tasteless.
Domenico Scarlatti: a composer of a transitional age
Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples in 1685 — the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. This trio defined the music of the late Baroque, but Scarlatti's fate turned out to be special. He became a bridge between the Baroque and Classicism, anticipating many features of the music of the future.
A life's path: from Italy to Spain
Scarlatti began his career in Italy, working as a composer and organist for the Viceroy of Naples from 1701. In 1709 he moved to Rome, where he served the exiled Polish queen Maria Casimira. There took place his famous contest with Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni — Scarlatti was judged the finer harpsichordist, but Handel surpassed him on the organ.
In 1720-1721, Scarlatti moved to Lisbon, where he gave music lessons to Princess Maria Magdalena Barbara. When she became Queen of Spain, Scarlatti followed her to Madrid in 1733 and spent the last quarter-century of his life there. It was in Spain that he composed more than five hundred keyboard sonatas, which brought him immortal fame.
Spanish influence and an anticipation of the future
His time in Spain radically transformed Scarlatti's music. He became acquainted with flamenco and Spanish folk music, and boldly incorporated these elements into his works. The use of the Phrygian mode, unexpected modulations into non-adjacent keys, dissonant clusters imitating the sound of a guitar — all of this was revolutionary for European music of that time.
Scarlatti quoted folk melodies almost unchanged, which was highly unusual for his era. Before Béla Bartók in the 20th century, no one had achieved such a sharp, authentic sound of folkloric quotation within academic music.
Technical innovations
Scarlatti's sonatas demanded a virtuosic technique that anticipated the modern school of piano playing:
- Rapid register shifts — leaps spanning four octaves
- Hand-crossing, with the left hand playing above the right
- Numerous passages and complex figurations
- Syncopations and cross-rhythms
- Bold harmonic writing and unexpected modulations
Music teacher Shirley Kirsten noted that Scarlatti's works are a true workout for a musician, demanding the most complex technique. It's no accident that Frédéric Chopin gave Scarlatti's sonatas to his students, or that Vladimir Horowitz included them in his repertoire.
Between Baroque and Classicism
The paradox of Scarlatti is that he lived in the Baroque era, but his style had an enormous influence on the music of Classicism. His sonatas display features that would become typical of classical music:
- Clarity of form — most of the sonatas are written in the old binary form, with a clear structure
- The device of the "crux" — a turning point in the middle of each movement, often set off by a pause or a fermata
- A balance between Baroque emotionality and Classical rationality
- An anticipation of sonata form, which would become the foundation of classical music
Scarlatti stood at the turning point between eras, uniting in his work the fading Baroque with the emerging Classicism. He was a revolutionary who did not break with tradition, but transformed it.
Baroque in architecture and interior design: an aesthetic of luxury
Baroque architecture embodied a new aesthetic of ostentatious luxury. The style's characteristic features included spatial grandeur, the fluidity of complex curvilinear forms, sweeping colonnades, and an abundance of sculpture on facades and interiors. Domes took on complex, multi-tiered shapes, like that of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Baroque interiors
The Baroque interior displayed a drive toward maximal luxury:
- Ceilings decorated with frescoes featuring illusionistic painting
- Walls covered in marble of various colors
- Abundant gilding on every decorative element
- Color contrasts — for instance, a checkerboard marble floor
- Mirrors in gilded frames with ornate stucco
- Furniture treated as a work of art, upholstered in expensive fabrics
- Tapestries on the walls, statuettes and vases with floral ornamentation
The description of the hall in the novel about Roman Peskov — a glossy turquoise floor, blue marble walls with a hundred lightbulbs forming an oriental pattern, a chrome-gleaming staircase — is a modern reinterpretation of the Baroque aesthetic. Luxury, an excess of detail, a drive to astonish the imagination — all of these are Baroque features, transplanted into a fantastical space.
Versailles as the quintessence of Baroque
The Palace of Versailles, with its formal garden, became a symbol of the era. Here the Baroque manifested itself not only in architecture, but in a whole philosophy of organizing space. The lime-tree avenues and canals seem drawn with a ruler, the trees trimmed into geometric shapes. It was the triumph of Reason over nature, of mathematics over chaos.
Versailles embodied the idea of the absolute power of Louis XIV, the "Sun King." Strict etiquette, elaborate ceremony, a costume governed by rules — all of this created an atmosphere of theatricalized life, in which every gesture had meaning.
The person of the Baroque era: from naturalness to ceremony
The rejection of naturalness
The person of the Baroque era rejected naturalness, equating it with savagery and ignorance. A woman prized pale skin, wore an elaborate hairstyle, a corset, and a skirt artificially widened over a whalebone frame. She walked on heels — yet another way of distancing herself from nature.
The ideal of a man became the gentleman — soft, gentle, calm. He shaved his mustache and beard, perfumed himself, wore powdered wigs. What need was there for strength, now that killing was a matter of pulling a musket's trigger? Naturalness became synonymous with brutality and vulgarity.
Ennobling nature through reason
The Baroque was characterized by the idea of ennobling nature on the principles of reason. Appetite was channeled into refined dining etiquette — it was in this era that forks and napkins appeared. Romantic interest was clothed in courtly flirtation. Quarrels turned into elegant duels governed by strict rules.
The philosopher Spinoza argued that drives constitute the very essence of a person. The task of Baroque culture was not to suppress these drives, but to give them civilized form. A need was not to be endured, but "decorously offered in pleasant and courteous words," as taught by the 1717 conduct manual "An Honest Mirror of Youth."
1990s Russia: a new Baroque
Remarkably, the commercial nineties in Russia reproduced many features of the Baroque era. After the collapse of the Soviet system, with its asceticism and leveling, came an era of ostentatious luxury and excess.
The aesthetic of the New Russians
The New Russians created their own version of a Baroque aesthetic:
- Raspberry blazers and gold chains instead of wigs and lace
- Jeeps and Mercedes instead of carriages
- Mansions with columns and stucco ornamentation, often tasteless and excessively decorated
- Restaurants with gilding, crystal chandeliers, and "imperial" design
- Mobile phones the size of a brick as a status symbol
- Casinos and nightclubs with luxurious interiors
As in the Baroque era, naturalness was rejected. Simplicity was considered a sign of poverty. The more ostentatious, the better. The more gold, the higher the status. It was an era in which people were learning to live in a new frame of reference, one in which money had become the paramount value.
From revolution to commerce
The revolutionary spirit of perestroika quickly ran out of steam. The ideals of freedom, democracy, and building a state governed by law collided with the harsh reality of the redistribution of property, criminal wars, and the impoverishment of most of the population. Just as in the Baroque era, a gap opened between ideal and reality, between what seemed to be and what actually was.
1993, the year in which the novel about Roman Peskov's action unfolds, became a turning point. The shelling of the White House in October showed that the new government was prepared to use force to achieve its aims. Revolutionary romanticism was over; an era of cynical pragmatism had begun.
The culture and art of the nineties
The culture of the nineties also reproduced some features of the Baroque:
- A mixing of the high and the low — elite culture existed alongside criminal-underworld "chanson"
- Eclecticism and postmodernism — everything blended together, everything became relative
- The commercialization of art — art turned into a commodity
- The emergence of new media — commercial television, glossy magazines
- A cult of luxury and success — "how to become a millionaire," "business, Russian-style"
The music of the nineties reflected this transition. Pop music with primitive lyrics about love and money coexisted with a revival of interest in the classics. Rock music, a form of protest in the Soviet era, became commercialized. The first oligarchs, sponsoring cultural projects, appeared — just as, in the Baroque era, patrons supported artists and composers.
The sphere metaphor: Baroque space
In the novel, Roman Peskov finds a giant sphere, a hundred meters across, in the desert, and makes his way inside. This image is deeply symbolic. The sphere — a perfect geometric form, so prized by the Baroque era with its cult of reason and mathematics.
The interior space
The description of the sphere's interior reproduces typical features of Baroque space:
- The round shape of the hall — the Baroque loved curvilinear forms
- The glossy turquoise floor — a play of light and reflections
- The blue marble walls — luxurious materials
- A hundred lightbulbs forming an oriental pattern — abundant decoration
- The chrome-gleaming staircase — vertical dynamism
- Scarlatti's music — the sonic environment of the era
On the second floor everything repeats, but twice as large — a pale pink floor, lilac walls scattered with lamps. This is typical of the Baroque: the principle of repetition with variation, scaling, the creation of a hierarchy of spaces.
Illusion and reality
The hero's entry into an unreal world inside the sphere reflects the central theme of the Baroque — the contradiction between appearance and essence, illusion and reality. Baroque artists created trompe-l'œil deceptions; architects built churches with illusionistic domes, painted so as to seem to recede into infinity.
The feeling of euphoria the hero experiences, drawn toward the staircase, is likewise typical of the Baroque. Art of this era was meant to provoke powerful emotions, to bring the viewer to ecstasy. Considered the quintessence of this approach is Bernini's sculpture "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" — a marble group depicting religious ecstasy with theatrical expressiveness.
Music as a key to understanding the era
"Scarlatina one hundred and forty-one" — the hero's slip of the tongue is no accident. Scarlatina (scarlet fever) is an illness, something unpleasant and dangerous. But behind this pun hides a deep truth. Scarlatti's music is, in a way, a "sickness" of culture, a symptom of a transitional age, when the old is dying and the new has not yet been born.
Scarlatti's sonatas as a reflection of the era
Scarlatti's more than five hundred sonatas are a musical encyclopedia of the Baroque era. Most of them are written in the old binary form, but each is unique. They display:
- Contrast — sharp shifts in mood, register, dynamics
- Virtuosity — the most complex technique, anticipating Romanticism
- Harmonic boldness — unexpected modulations, dissonances
- A synthesis of traditions — Italian, Spanish, European
- A balance between emotion and form — Baroque and Classicism
Scarlatti's influence on the future
Scarlatti's music had an enormous influence on later generations of composers and performers. Johannes Brahms carefully preserved Scarlatti's manuscripts in his collection and quoted his music. Frédéric Chopin gave Scarlatti's sonatas to his students. Béla Bartók studied his harmonic innovations. Vladimir Horowitz included his works in his concert programs.
Scarlatti's sonatas had a strong influence on the Russian school of piano playing. This is no accident: Russian musical culture has always gravitated toward emotionality, virtuosity, and grandeur — qualities that manifest vividly in Scarlatti.
Polystylism: multiplicity within unity
One of the main characteristics of the Baroque is polystylism — the coexistence of different stylistic directions within a single era. There existed Italian Baroque, French Baroque, German Baroque, Spanish Baroque. In Russia, Petrine Baroque and Elizabethan Baroque developed. In Latin America, Ultrabaroque emerged.
Baroque in different countries
Each country adapted the Baroque to its own traditions:
- Italy — the birthplace of the style, the center of its development (Bernini, Borromini, Caravaggio)
- France — Baroque Classicism, Versailles, later Rococo
- Spain — Churrigueresque, blended with Moorish traditions
- Germany — combined with Gothic traditions and Neoclassicism
- Russia — the Naryshkin style, Petrine and Elizabethan Baroque
- Latin America — Ultrabaroque, the most ornate variant of the style
This diversity reflected the central idea of the Baroque: the world is many-faced, truth is relative, beauty can take an infinite variety of forms.
1990s Russia: regional diversity
The commercial nineties in Russia were likewise characterized by regional diversity. Moscow and St. Petersburg developed differently. Siberia and the Far East had their own specifics. The North Caucasus was going through a period of wars and conflicts. Every region adapted the new system in its own way, creating its own local variants of the "Baroque of the nineties."
The Baroque and the theatricality of life
The Baroque era turned life into theater. In place of pilgrimages — promenades in parks. In place of knightly tournaments — carousels (horseback rides) and card games. In place of mystery plays — theater and masquerade balls. Swings and fireworks appeared. In interiors, portraits and landscapes took the place once held by icons, and music transformed from something sacred into a pleasant play of sound.
The theatricalization of everyday life
The Baroque created a culture of everyday theatricality. Costume became stage costume, behavior became ritualized. The court ceremony of Versailles was a genuine performance, where even the process of the king's morning dressing (the lever du roi) turned into a public show with clearly scripted roles.
Baroque-era fashion was governed by etiquette. A woman wore an elaborate hairstyle, a corset, a skirt artificially widened over a frame, and heeled shoes. A man wore a justaucorps (a coat reaching to the knee), a waistcoat, rhinegraves (wide breeches resembling a skirt), and an elaborate powdered wig. An abundance of lace, bows, and buckles turned a person into a moving work of art.
The nineties as an era of performance
1990s Russia likewise turned life into theater. The New Russians created their own recognizable image — a raspberry blazer, gold chains, a leather briefcase full of dollars, a jeep with tinted windows. This was the costume of the new era, just as theatrical as the wigs and lace of the Baroque.
Restaurants turned into stages for displaying status. Nightclubs became places where performances of wealth and power were staged. Weddings turned into grandiose shows with limousines, fireworks, and pop stars. Just as in the Baroque era, what mattered was not so much content as form, not so much substance as display.
Baroque literature: vanitas and memento mori
The literature of the Baroque era developed three major themes: Vanitas (the vanity, the fleetingness of existence), Memento Mori (remember death), and Carpe Diem (seize the day). Writers and poets perceived the real world as an illusion and a dream. Realistic description was combined with allegorical depiction.
Techniques of Baroque literature
Baroque literature used particular devices:
- Symbols and metaphors in abundance
- Theatrical devices — dialogues, monologues, staginess
- Visual/graphic poetry — lines of verse forming a picture
- A dense use of rhetorical figures
- Antitheses, parallelisms, gradations, oxymorons
- A burlesque-satirical attitude toward reality
Well known is Pedro Calderón's play "Life Is a Dream," in which reality and dream are indistinguishable. Baroque ethics gravitated toward the symbolism of night, the theme of transience and impermanence. The English poet John Donne wrote, in his poem "An Anatomy of the World" (1611): "'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; / All just supply, and all relation: / Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot."
Russian literature of the nineties
Russian literature of the nineties likewise developed the themes of the illusory nature of reality, the relativity of truth, and the mixing of the high and the low. Postmodernism became the dominant direction. Victor Pelevin, in the novels "Chapaev and Pustota" and "Generation P," explored the nature of reality and illusion. Vladimir Sorokin deconstructed Soviet myths. Dmitri Prigov created conceptualist texts that played with language and ideology.
Crime literature — detective novels, action thrillers, "chernukha" (grim social realism) — became a mass phenomenon. This was a lowbrow variant of Baroque literature, with its contrasts, dynamism, and heightened sensuality.
Mechanism and deism: the philosophy of the Baroque
The Baroque is characterized by the idea of a sleeping god — deism. God was conceived not as a Savior, but as the Great Architect, who created the world like a clockwork mechanism. Having created the universe, the Lord rested from his labors and no longer intervenes in the affairs of the world. Praying to such a God is pointless — one can only learn from Him.
The triumph of reason
The Baroque is the age of Reason and Enlightenment. The philosopher Descartes proclaimed: true is everything that is thought "clearly and distinctly," or that has a mathematical expression. Isaac Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation and wrote the "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1689). Carl Linnaeus systematized biology in his work "Systema Naturae" (1735).
Academies of Sciences and scientific societies were founded everywhere in the capitals of Europe. Galileo pointed his telescope at the stars and proved the Earth's revolution around the Sun (1611). Leeuwenhoek discovered tiny living organisms under the microscope (1675). Great sailing ships plied the world's oceans, erasing the blank spaces on maps.
The nineties: the triumph of economics
In 1990s Russia, communist ideology gave way to a new religion — the market economy. The invisible hand of the market replaced divine providence. Economic laws came to be perceived as natural and inevitable, like the laws of physics.
Western economic consultants played the role of new prophets, bearing the revelation of the market. The IMF and the World Bank took the place of the church. Economics textbooks became sacred texts. The entrepreneur turned into the hero of the age, just as the natural scientist had been the hero of the Baroque era.
Contradictions and paradoxes
The Baroque is a style "so rich in contradictions and paradoxes with no parallel in any other period of art." These contradictions form its very essence:
- Rationalism and irrationalism — the mathematical precision of formal gardens coexists with the mysticism of religious ecstasy
- Realism and illusionism — naturalistic accuracy of detail creates a fantastical overall picture
- Spirituality and sensuality — religious themes are embodied in overtly erotic imagery
- Order and chaos — strict symmetry is disrupted by dynamic asymmetrical elements
- Tradition and innovation — reliance on classical heritage is combined with radical innovation
The paradoxes of the nineties
1990s Russia was full of analogous contradictions:
- Democracy and crime — formal democracy coexisted with rampant crime
- Freedom and poverty — political freedom arrived alongside the economic impoverishment of most of the population
- Modernization and archaization — modern technologies were introduced against a backdrop of collapsing infrastructure
- Cosmopolitanism and nationalism — openness to the world was accompanied by rising xenophobia
- Optimism and cynicism — belief in a bright future quickly gave way to total cynicism
Roman Peskov in the sphere: a metaphor for transition
Returning to the image from the novel — Roman Peskov, in the desert, finds a giant sphere and makes his way inside, where Scarlatti's music is playing. This episode can be interpreted as a metaphor for cultural and historical transition.
The desert as a symbol
The desert is a space between worlds. It's territory where the old world has already died, and the new one has not yet been born. The hero exists in a transitional state, like a person of the Baroque era or a person of the nineties. Familiar bearings have vanished; new ones have not yet formed.
The sphere as a perfect form
A sphere a hundred meters across is a utopian space of perfect geometry. The Baroque strove to subordinate the chaos of existence to mathematical order. Formal gardens, symmetrical facades, strict musical forms — all of these are attempts to create an ideal world out of the imperfect material of reality.
1990s Russia likewise dreamed of a perfect geometry — a market economy, a state governed by law, a civil society. But reality turned out to be far from the ideal.
Scarlatti's music as the code of the era
Scarlatti's music, playing inside the sphere, is a key to understanding the space. It points to the transitional character of this world. Just as Scarlatti stood between the Baroque and Classicism, so Roman Peskov stands between the Soviet past and the post-Soviet future, between reality and fantasy.
The slip "Scarlatina one hundred and forty-one" instead of "Scarlatti sonata one hundred and forty-one" is a Freudian error, betraying a subconscious perception of the situation as sickly, pathological. Transitional eras are always sickly. They demand the abandonment of the familiar and the acceptance of the unfamiliar.
The two-story structure
On the sphere's second floor, the hero discovers the same thing, but twice as large — a pale pink floor, lilac walls scattered with lamps. This is a principle of Baroque architecture — repetition with variation, the creation of a hierarchy of spaces.
The two-story structure may symbolize two levels of reality — visible and hidden, superficial and deep. Or two stages of historical development — revolutionary and post-revolutionary. The first floor is 1991-1993, a time of revolutionary change. The second floor is the commercial nineties, when everything became bigger, more luxurious, but also more cynical.
The legacy of the Baroque: eternal return
The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier proclaimed the baroque a "human constant." He wrote: "The spirit of the baroque can be reborn at any moment... For it is a spirit, not a historical style... The baroque is more than the Baroque style. It is a peculiar creative impulse that recurs cyclically throughout the history of art."
The baroque as a cultural constant
The baroque manifests itself at critical moments in history, when an old system is being destroyed and a new one is taking shape. This is a time of contradictions, when incompatible tendencies coexist:
- Rationalism and mysticism
- Asceticism and luxury
- Individualism and conformism
- Tradition and innovation
- Optimism and pessimism
In such eras, art strives for maximal expressiveness, emotionality, theatricality. Forms become complex, dynamic, excessive. A synthesis of different art forms occurs, in an attempt to create a total artistic statement.
The cycles of history
History develops cyclically. After every revolutionary upsurge comes a period of stabilization and commercialization. After the French Revolution came the era of the Napoleonic Empire and the Restoration. After the Russian revolutions of 1917 — the NEP, and then Stalinist industrialization. After perestroika — the nineties, and then Putin-era stabilization.
Each of these transitions, in its own way, reproduced a baroque logic: from revolutionary asceticism to post-revolutionary luxury, from idealism to pragmatism, from collectivism to individualism.
Conclusion: lessons of the Baroque for the present
Studying the Baroque and Scarlatti's work helps us understand the mechanisms of cultural and historical transitions. The Baroque era shows that:
- Transitions are inevitable and painful. The destruction of an old system of values is always accompanied by a crisis of identity and worldview.
- Luxury follows asceticism. After a period of deprivation and idealism comes an era of consumption and conspicuous luxury.
- Art reflects the contradictions of the era. Baroque aesthetics, with their contrasts and paradoxes, precisely express the spirit of a transitional time.
- Tradition and innovation are inseparable. Great artists, such as Scarlatti, rely on tradition but transform it, anticipating the future.
- Form matters more than content. In transitional eras, when content is blurred and uncertain, form becomes a way of organizing chaos.
1990s Russia went through its own baroque — a transition from Soviet to post-Soviet, from ideology to pragmatism, from asceticism to consumerism. This transition left a deep mark on the culture and psychology of society.
The novel about Roman Peskov, who finds a sphere with Baroque-style interiors and Scarlatti's music playing in the desert, captures the essence of this transition. The hero exists between worlds — between the real and the unreal, between the past and the future. Scarlatti's music, playing in this fantastical space, is a reminder that all transitions have already happened before in history. The baroque is an eternal return, the cyclical repetition of the same patterns on different turns of the historical spiral.
Understanding these patterns helps us orient ourselves in the present and anticipate the future. The Baroque teaches us that after every revolution comes a time of compromise, that ideals inevitably collide with reality, that luxury and cynicism come to replace asceticism and idealism. But the Baroque also shows that in these transitional eras, great works of art are created — Scarlatti's sonatas, Caravaggio's paintings, Bernini's architecture. Crisis breeds creativity; contradictions stimulate the imagination.
21st-century Russia still lives with the legacy of the nineties, its own baroque. Understanding this legacy through the lens of the historical Baroque era helps make sense of the road traveled and see the prospects for future development. History doesn't repeat itself literally, but it rhymes, creating recognizable patterns and rhythms.