Teacher Stabs Friend in Poetry vs. Prose Dispute

A Russian man has been arrested for allegedly stabbing and killing his friend, because that friend preferred prose to poetry, police revealed today. You will be shocked to learn that both men were drunk. The alleged killer, a 53-year-old former teacher, had been lodging in the 67-year-old victim's home for several months, the BBC reports. On the night of Jan. 20, the two were drinking when they got into a fight about literature, and the victim proclaimed that "the only real literature is prose," authorities tell RIA Novosti.

The dispute so enraged the poetry-loving ex-teacher that he allegedly stabbed his host to death. He then fled the scene. Police found him some days later, hiding at another friend's house, according to the AFP. Scholarly violence is apparently a trend in Russia; in September, a one man shot another in the head with an air gun during a fight over Immanuel Kant. (More stabbing stories.)