Russian Literature vs. The World.

[JCamilo]

The most prominent examples, to me, of weak "happily ever after" Russian endings are Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace. The three are, nonetheless, among my all-time favorites, but the endings kind of made me cringe. I like the idea of abandoning endings altogether...That's very intriguing.

Yes, C&P is an example of Dostoievisky happiness, but the russian prime trait is the variation, he have Myshkin (his most christ -like figure) which end is tragic or the absolute no-conclusive end of Brother Karamozov, where you find the optmistic, the romantic, the pessimistic all together.

In the end, with him, you have a more romantic, melodramatic start. Then he starts to shift, gets bleak, ironical. Even all the happyness of C&P is a bit of cynical.

Similar to Tolstoy, he starts with a epic-romantic novelistic size but slowly he turns his bakc to it. Ivan Illitch for example is a psychological novel about a guy dying and coming to the conclusion his life pretty much sucked. No redemption, anything. He has some very dark short stories too. But at the end, his messianic transformation, he became way simplistic and really some happy stories, with a touch of oriental parables, which everyone reckons is the worst of Tolstoy.

As Gogol, irony all the time. He is a natural born critic. Pushkin has the romantic tragedy on him. Someone humor, but most tragic characters, he is a bit like a XVIII enlightment writer turning romantic. With Turgeniev, Tolstoy and Dostoievisky russians go for the psychological novel, so you will find their dark days.

As Tchekhov, it is really a matter of short stories. Not only this he wrote, but he is neither happy or sad. Tchekhov hated to give conclusions, moral readings, etc. At some point, he started to write stories, when finished he cut the begining and end (or just one) if he tought they would only make the reader not to think and because he considered those aspects were important for him to develop the real action in the middle of the story. His editor and him had many fights about it, so sometimes he had to send the full text, but he had that sense of using only the necessary. But if you dislike short stories, there is not much to do about him.

This is all just my opinion, though. Like I said before, I'm young and not quite so well-read as many people on here, so all of my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. I certainly don't mean to offend or disrespect anyone's favorite writers/works.

No worries, opinions are not blows, strong opinions are not strong blows.

[Dodo25]

The Germans can lay claim to Nibelungenlied, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Sebastian Brant, H.J.C von Grimmelshausen, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich von Schiller, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe, Holderlin, Moricke, Heinrich Hesse, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kleist, Gottfried Keller, Buchner, Frank Wedekind, Adalbert Stifter, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Franz Grillparzer, Friederich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamen, Ranier Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, Franz Kafka, Gottfried Benn, Robert Walser, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Joseph Roth, Max Frisch, Friederich Durrenmatt, Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachemann, etc...

You obviously know a lot about literature (much more than I), I don't want to start an argument here. I agree with most of what you said, but I want to add that I think it depends on how quality is weighed against quantity.

If it's not about quantity (and not about the philosophers either), meaning if we're looking for literature able to compare favorably to the best of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Solzhenizhyn, then, judging by my limited understanding of German literature, I'd narrow it down (even after including Fontane, Briest and others that were omitted) to Goethe, Schiller, Hesse (Hermann), Mann, Kafka and maybe Dürrenmatt -- these at least have a (small) chance. So while, as you rightly point out, it isn't easy (or even recommended) to play 'who's better', I personally am quite convinced that these Germans are no match for the Russians mentioned above.

Take for instance the comparison of 'Sorrows of Young Werther' to Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the Underground'. I admit this one is a matter for personal taste more than anything (though I personally would favor just about any book over 'Werther'), but as soon as you compare it to 'TBK', 'The Idiot' or 'C&P', it clearly can't compete in terms of scope and depth. 'Faust' is different I suppose, that's why I think Goethe is relevant, but that's one work (counted as one anyway since the parts are small), how is that going to compare to the several Russian masterpieces of even a single author like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?

I can't comment on Italian or French literature because I haven't read much of that (if even). Concerning English literature, given its long history and the number of people writing English, it shouldn't be a surprise if it could compete with Russian literature, and obviously I think it can (so yeah, Russian literature isn't undoubteldy 'number one'). I basically agree with a lot of what you're saying, I just wanted to agree with the ones saying that the famous Russian novelists really are extraordinary, and that I'd thus be interesting in reading more theories about why Russian literature developed in such a remarkable way.

[JCamilo]

I think you may have a point when you talk about the quality of the top russians be top (and I would say, a russian would probally produce a list of good authors which would make quantity a game), but really...

Goethe (Faust is not exactly small) will walk over Tolstoy. He has two fausts, he has Werther over Ivan Illytch, he has Wilheim Meister, his poetry, Elective Affinities... heck, you cann't dismiss his other texts, the guy is just a walking monster. We must be carefull, we blink and Goethe will be walking over Shakespeare or Dante too.

But the point is... if you narrow, why not narrowing to Schiller vs. Pushkin. Schiller can handle Pushkin pretty easily if you ask me. Goethe can certainly match any single writer. Kafka can match Tchekhov quite well too. (Or Dostoievisky). Hoffman too. And Rilke can match any poetry from any place.

The problem is not dismissing the philosophers (why anyways?) or the nordic sagas... It is just that Russia literature found a bridge to europe thru germany, like all. Germany started to challenged the franco-british center a century before and they did in apalling manner. Schiller and Goethe where huge shadows on all english and french romanticism. We only narrow it because well... in the end of the day, we know little of germans.

[sixsmith]

You obviously know a lot about literature (much more than I), I don't want to start an argument here. I agree with most of what you said, but I want to add that I think it depends on how quality is weighed against quantity.

If it's not about quantity (and not about the philosophers either), meaning if we're looking for literature able to compare favorably to the best of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Solzhenizhyn, then, judging by my limited understanding of German literature, I'd narrow it down (even after including Fontane, Briest and others that were omitted) to Goethe, Schiller, Hesse (Hermann), Mann, Kafka and maybe Dürrenmatt -- these at least have a (small) chance. So while, as you rightly point out, it isn't easy (or even recommended) to play 'who's better', I personally am quite convinced that these Germans are no match for the Russians mentioned above.

Take for instance the comparison of 'Sorrows of Young Werther' to Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the Underground'. I admit this one is a matter for personal taste more than anything (though I personally would favor just about any book over 'Werther'), but as soon as you compare it to 'TBK', 'The Idiot' or 'C&P', it clearly can't compete in terms of scope and depth. 'Faust' is different I suppose, that's why I think Goethe is relevant, but that's one work (counted as one anyway since the parts are small), how is that going to compare to the several Russian masterpieces of even a single author like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?

I can't comment on Italian or French literature because I haven't read much of that (if even). Concerning English literature, given its long history and the number of people writing English, it shouldn't be a surprise if it could compete with Russian literature, and obviously I think it can (so yeah, Russian literature isn't undoubteldy 'number one'). I basically agree with a lot of what you're saying, I just wanted to agree with the ones saying that the famous Russian novelists really are extraordinary, and that I'd thus be interesting in reading more theories about why Russian literature developed in such a remarkable way.

I agree that that it's not simply a numbers game Dodo, but I think you're being a little dismissive of the Germans, and Goethe in particular. It's probably true that few authors can compete with Dostoyevsky for scope, although the width of an author's purview is by no means correlative to the quality of his work. Indeed, for mine, Dostoyevsky's great weakness is his inability to balance the exposition of his philosophy with the aesthetic demands of fiction. Werther might be a slighter, more intellectually concentrated work, but it speaks to me with far greater intensity than Crime and Punishment. And let's not get started on Kafka, whose parables of anguish and futility make Dostoyevsky seem positively adolescent by comparison. I'm not sure that Solzhenitsyn advances the Russian case any further. I don't agree with J that Goethe 'walks all over Tolstoy', but nor do I agree that Tolstoy is unquestionably superior to Goethe.

[stlukesguild]

If literature were a slugfest, I would most certainly put my money on Goethe unless he were up against Dante or Shakespeare. He would seemingly be more than an equal for anyone else. His oeuvre is huge... and more than impressive even limited to essential works such as The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Faust I & II, The Italian Journey, Egmont, Goetz von Berlichingen, Torquato Tasso, Elective Affinities, From my Life: Poetry and Truth (Goethe's Autobiography in 4 Volumes), and his large collection of poetry. Hölderlin and Novalis are towering poets of the Romantic era, every bit equal to Pushkin. Kafka might not rival Dostoevski, but he surely rivals Checkoff. Arguably his truncated short fictions are among the most central works of Modernism... to such an extent that his very name has been employed as an adjective: Kafkaesque. That leaves Dostoevsky. Hermann Hesse might not be a rival for him... even though Hesse's oeuvre is severely hampered by the fact that his poetry... which Thomas Mann argued was his finest achievement... is largely unknown outside of Germany. But what of Hesse & Mann? The Russians have some brilliant poets in the 20th century including Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelshtam, and Boris Pasternak... the latter of whom is generally acknowledged as the greatest of them all. Yet none can rival Rilke. Pasternak himself was profoundly impacted by Rilke's poetry. Beyond Rilke, the major 20th century German poets include Paul Celan, Hermann Hesse, Ingeborg Bachmann, etc... This still leaves major figures such as Gunter Grass, Hermann Broch, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kleist, Schiller, Lessing, Hermann Hesse, Friederich Durrenmatt, Heinrich Boll, Bertolt Brecht, etc... THis doesn't even touch upon the philosophical and critical literature of Germany that has been so influential... even upon writers such as Dostoevsky: Nietzsche, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Walter Benjamen, Theodor Adorno, Sigmund Freud, etc...

France vs Russia? I would argue that this would be a blow out. Only the British in the West might rival them. Proust in surely every bit the equal to Tolstoy... and if he weren't we could throw in Zola for good measure. Flaubert could dispense with Dostoevsky... and if he had any difficulty we'd always have Balzac to back him up. That would leave Victor Hugo... not only the novelist, but the towering critic and poet to do away with Pushkin. Checkoff? Moliere and Cornielle can handle him... and we still have Racine, Jean Genet, Beaumarchais, and half a dozen other major playwrights. What does this leave the Russians? A half dozen 20th century poets (are they any match for Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Ronsard, and easily a dozen other major poets? Bely, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, and Turgenev vs Montaigne, Rousseau, and Voltaire? With La Fontaine, Stendhal, Maupassant, Valery, Sartre, Camus, Rabelais, Alfred Jarry, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and at least several dozen others left in reserve. If the Napoleonic invasion had been a war of French literature vs the Russians the outcome would have been quite different.

Again, I find the competition thing somewhat absurd and a waste of time... I don't think we can easily establish the hegemony of any national body of literature... especially as we become more versed in what exists in the bodies of literature beyond those that are frequently read as part of the usual English-language high-school and college courses. I also ponder over what it all proves? I am almost certain that Shakespeare was the greatest writer who ever lived... but does that mean that I'm not going to read Dante, Tolstoy, Cervantes... or even such "lesser" writers as Poe, Verlaine, Umberto Eco, or Donald Bartheleme ever again? I have little doubt that bach was the greatest composer ever... but I still love Faure, Samuel Barber, Muddy Waters, and the Rolling Stones.

I think what JBI and others have suggested is that it would be far more interesting to discuss what a reader admires about a specific writer than to argue that he is the "greatest"... especially when there is so much that any of us has not read. Mortal Terror and I have repeatedly championed Firdowsi as a rival to Dante among the great epic poets. Others who haven't even read Firdowsi have rolled their eyes. Several members have proclaimed that contemporary poetry is but a bleak failure... and yet from just a brief discussion with them it has become obvious that they haven't even made the least serious attempt to read anything by the leading contemporary poets.

Can we discuss literature in a way that moves beyond an arm-wrestling match of "Is Shakespeare the greatest poet" ?

[mortalterror]

If literature were a slugfest, I would most certainly put my money on Goethe unless he were up against Dante or Shakespeare.

Or Homer, Virgil, Vyasa, Valmiki, Firdawsi...

He would seemingly be more than an equal for anyone else. His oeuvre is huge... and more than impressive even limited to essential works such as The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Faust I & II, The Italian Journey, Egmont, Goetz von Berlichingen, Torquato Tasso, Elective Affinities, From my Life: Poetry and Truth (Goethe's Autobiography in 4 Volumes), and his large collection of poetry.

There are a couple of guys I think have bodies of work equal to Goethe's. Ovid had his Metamorphoses which I'd place alongside Faust for greatness, then he had the Amores, Heroides, Ars Amatoria, Cures for Love, Tristia, Fasti, and other minor works. Chaucer wrote Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, and the Parliament of Foules. Milton has Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, Areopagitica, Lycidas, as well as various sonnets and psalms. Tasso and Spenser are pretty powerful.

Victor Hugo is another match I'd make for Goethe. His novels are far more beloved than Goethes. Between Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame there can be no comparison to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship or Elective Affinities. In addition, he wrote a number of good plays: Hernani, Cromwell, Ruy Blas, Lucrece Borgia, Torquemada, and Le Roi S'Amuse was even adapted by Verdi into the opera Rigoletto. Hugo is also a a master poet: Odes and Diverse Poems, Odes and Ballads, The Orientals, The Chastisements, The Contemplations, and The Legend of the Ages. The man was a triple threat and highly prolific.

Hölderlin and Novalis are towering poets of the Romantic era, every bit equal to Pushkin.

I agree that they are all very good, but what work of Holerlin or Novalis would you say was equal to Eugene Onegin? Pushkin also has major dramas and prose fiction to his credit Boris Godinov, The Queen of Spades, The Captain's Daughter. They reminded me of Tolstoy the prose style was so good.

Kafka might not rival Dostoevski, but he surely rivals Checkoff. Arguably his truncated short fictions are among the most central works of Modernism... to such an extent that his very name has been employed as an adjective: Kafkaesque.

I wouldn't give Kafka the prize for short fiction as long as Hemingway, De Maupassant, Poe, Akutagawa, and Borges are around. But what makes Chekhov great is primarily his plays. The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanye, and Three Sisters are probably more important than The Lady with the Dog. A better match for him there would be Ibsen, who fairly crushes him in the drama department.

That leaves Dostoevsky. Hermann Hesse might not be a rival for him... even though Hesse's oeuvre is severely hampered by the fact that his poetry... which Thomas Mann argued was his finest achievement... is largely unknown outside of Germany. But what of Hesse & Mann? The Russians have some brilliant poets in the 20th century including Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelshtam, and Boris Pasternak... the latter of whom is generally acknowledged as the greatest of them all. Yet none can rival Rilke.

Or Cavafy, Eliot, Neruda, and Lorca.

France vs Russia? I would argue that this would be a blow out. Only the British in the West might rival them.

Or if we are going to consider literature from all time periods there are the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Tang Chinese, Sanskrit, and medieval Persian. Instead of simply putting Proust or Cervantes up against Tolstoy for greatest novelist we might add Cao Xueqin or Luo Guanzhong.

[JCamilo]

I do not know if Tchkehov is mostly renowed due his plays. When the english modernists talk about him, they metion more often his short stories. When Hemingway laments that Tchekhov was married with Medicine, he says Tchekhov wrote a handful of short stories that were perfect and didnt mention plays. Futhermore, Tchekhov status as short story writer is considerable, often listed alongside Maupassant, Poe, Borges,kafka and cia. while his plays, as good as they are, were not the exactly the same status.

[phillipgr]

Wow, I must remark, I am delighted witht he discussion and dialouge running through this thread. By all means, continue, and I shall read/observe - for I am out of my league haha.

[iverson]

that is complicated. history reason and so on. well, be honest, i do little thing about this.

[tonywalt]

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy do create imbalance, but in total weight of talent Russia is no greater or lesser.

I can easily be swayed, because it's a very subjective topic.

[kelby_lake]

Kafka might not rival Dostoevski, but he surely rivals Checkoff. Arguably his truncated short fictions are among the most central works of Modernism... to such an extent that his very name has been employed as an adjective: Kafkaesque.

Chekhov has also spawned an adjective: Chekhovian. Mainly thrown about when discussing theatre.

Kafka is important to Modernism but Chekhov is important to Naturalism.

[WyattGwyon]

Who's best threads are tiresome. This one attains great heights of silliness. Proust (massively trivial) a better novelist than Tolstoy? Please! Seriously comparing Flaubert with Dostoyevsky? (putting aside the insurmountable apples and oranges thing) Yeah right. (To JBI: perfection is overrated and a pretty cheap aspiration; If you want a perfect French novel, Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris—or Les Miserables—is a better choice.) Has no one recognized Kafka's debt to Gogol and Dostoyevsky? If you are talking about Goethe, why Werther and Elective Infinities (snore) instead of Wilhelm Meister?

Anyway, Russia and France produced lots of great literature and I see no point in this exasperating comparative rating game.

Bely, Aksyanov, Bunin, Babel, Platonov, Nabokov, Grossman? Bulgakov was mentioned at least, if not well appreciated.

[JBI]

Who's best threads are tiresome. This one attains great heights of silliness. Proust (massively trivial) a better novelist than Tolstoy? Please! Seriously comparing Flaubert with Dostoyevsky? (putting aside the insurmountable apples and oranges thing) Yeah right. (To JBI: perfection is overrated and a pretty cheap aspiration; If you want a perfect French novel, Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris—or Les Miserables—is a better choice.) Has no one recognized Kafka's debt to Gogol and Dostoyevsky? If you are talking about Goethe, why Werther and Elective Infinities (snore) instead of Wilhelm Meister?

Anyway, Russia and France produced lots of great literature and I see no point in this exasperating comparative rating game.

Bely, Aksyanov, Bunin, Babel, Platonov, Nabokov, Grossman? Bulgakov was mentioned at least, if not well appreciated.

Thank you for your comments, however ridiculous and self centered.

You seem to be of the mind that only authors passing your approval, or writers you like are worth mentioning, and we are all fools for only slightly and not over-praisingly mentioning Balgakov and the like, so I will say, do I need to say more? Your argument speaks to the maturity and seriousness, as well as the respect your opinion seems to hold for others. At least you could have mentioned something about the texts besides the essential quality they have of you liking them (which, by the way, is irrelevant to anybody else).


As for these types of threads being tiresome, I agree with you wholeheartedly - however, you fueling them with statements of everyone is wrong but me, and "this author is better because I say he is" doesn't quite do anything that isn't tiresome either.

[Mr.lucifer]

Doestosvky is the best cause i say so. Tolstoy is overrated because he bored me, even though he has a good measure of influence on western literature.

[stlukesguild]

Kafka is important to Modernism but Chekhov is important to Naturalism.

"Kafkaesque" is a term that exists beyond the literary world. It has become somewhat synonymous with "Surreal" although Surrealism often suggests something fantastic (ala Dali) where Kafka's fits more within the merger of the mundane and the absurd (ala Magritte). His name is connected in many ways with the absurdity and inhumanity of modern Bureaucracy. I cannot help but think of him when I look at a painting like this:





Of course I wouldn't underestimate Checkoff... although I tend to prefer his marvelous short stories to his plays. My favorite Russian tale, however, might be that most Kafka-esque tale by Gogol: The Nose... made even more memorable as an opera by Shostakovitch.