The tram car stations and bridges were all under fire. The sound from the shrapnel echoed in the streets that were overgrown with grass or covered in snow. The winter dragged on. The water-supply system had stopped working. There were no newspapers. The news was transmitted only by radio. Between news reports you could hear the continuous beat of the metronome - an air-raid warning. This was the pulse of the city - it was still alive. In the winter, the Germans declared that they would occupy Leningrad on such and such a date. The city was covered in snow. There were narrow paths along the wide, seemingly abandoned streets - they looked like trails in a forest. Olga Berggolts told me from her recollections: "The Radio House was on Rakova Street, not too far away from Nevsky Prospect, close by the Public Library and across from the Manezh, where Lenin spoke in April 1917. "One morning Boris Mikhailovich Eichenbaum came to the Radio House. It must have been a very difficult walk; he had to cross Griboedov Canal, pass through several quarters of the city. Eichenbaum asked to speak on the radio - he wanted to talk to the Germans. This is what he said": I am an old professor. My son Dmitri is at the front. My son-in-law was killed. I live with my wife, daughter, and granddaughter in a single room and write a book about Tolstoy. You know him - he is the author of War And Peace. I know you are afraid of Tolstoy - you have read his book about victory after defeat. I left my desk with frozen ink to come here and tell you that I despise you. You can refute culture only with culture. We have cannons too - you can't prove anything with cannons. You can't destroy our culture, you can't break our culture, you can't break into our city." The speech wasn't recorded. People recall it from memory.
Viktor Shklovsky - Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar