A drop of literary analysis is shared with the immortal theme of casinoes and roulette which is often called,  the Russian roulette (if not accompanied by kankan of variete and other luxurious tokens).  

At the theme of gambing, I handle the palm of priority to Nice, Monte Carlo and Cannes. The Emerald Shore Keeps the misteries of the plots of Dostoevsky and   Nabokov. The Sicilian casino lurked for me at the time when I was cogitating the plot of dostoevskian "TheGThe . But actually I had faced the theme much earlier, when at the age of nine I read "A lonesome sail is whitely seeming..." by Kataev. I knew of Turkish gamblers and watched them in eyes of youngsters like myself. Much later I knew of the "pholisophic ship", quite a gambling experience of the age, and got to know that poets had reached "other shores" (by the expression of Nabokov) through the Bosphore. My first sea was the Black Sea, like for Cavafis, Brodsky's favorite poetician and his best human ideal perhaps (as Auden occurred much later at his bio). There existed a nest of poets in the Crimea, due to Maximilian Voloshin whise aquarellesof the Black Sea I estimate higher than paintings of Aivazovsky and Vereschagin... Beliy, Gumilyov and Akhmatova opened the marine estate of Magrib and South Italy, for myself. Poetic routes meant sometimes more for me in youth than the saints (which is sinful but pointing at that lyric icons are also partially sacred). Nicolas, Barbara, Paul the Apostle feed with their truly romantic stories, entire coasts; and we ought to discern tonalities, at early Christian legends. Fiction and religion are highly dependant on each other at spots and at times; so the humanitarian science reads. A thread of pondering, by Anna Polibina-Polansky.