A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Borodino

Battles
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A bloody 1812 clash between Napoleon and Kutuzov near Moscow, leading to French occupation but ultimate retreat.

Detailed Definition
Borodino epitomizes the pyrrhic victory and national sacrifice. In poetry—especially in Russian verse like Lermontov’s—it symbolizes patriotic martyrdom and spiritual resistance, becoming a mythic site where the soul of Russia defied foreign invasion through sheer endurance and faith.
Example
Example in poetry:
Borodino, the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic Wars, inspired Tolstoy’s poetic prose in “War and Peace”; A modern elegy might list the regiments lost in Borodino’s redoubts; In a dramatic lyric, a Russian militiaman defends his home soil at Borodino; A sonnet could frame Borodino as the pyrrhic heart of 1812; Contemporary poets use Borodino to reflect on patriotic sacrifice; A free-verse poem might voice a French grenadier freezing in retreat from Moscow.
Additional Notes
Borodino (1812) was a Pyrrhic victory for Napoleon that led to the occupation—and eventual burning—of Moscow; Tolstoy’s War and Peace immortalized its chaos, and poets often use it to meditate on sacrifice, national spirit, and the illusion of conquest.
Also Known As
Battle of Borodino
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