Pushkin and Tolstoy

[Leopard]

I've been wondering, why is it that Tolstoy is generally seen as the greatest writer in Russian (and one of the greatest writers in general) outside Russia, whereas the Russians themselves seem to consider Pushkin the center of their literary canon? I suppose Pushkin, being a poet, loses a great deal more in translation than Tolstoy does. But Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, etc. surely lose just as much, yet they're acknowledged as the greatest writers in their respective languages both in their native countries and abroad...

[JCamilo]

Pushkin is not only a poet and being the center of the canon does not mean someone is better or not, it is simply that western discovered russian literature with dostoievisky and tolstoy, in an age of novels where those two influence is massive, so giants like Gogol and Pushkin are not as popular to us.

[Olexa Panin]

I wouldn't say that in Russia Pushkin meant to be a greatest writer. Pushkin created the new Russian literature. Before him wrote Derzhavin, Radishcheff etc that wrote in style of Classicism in very hard language, and he began to write in more flexible one. Despite this in Russia Pushkin well know as a poet and a bit less as a novelist and playwright.

But Pushkin is not so much mentally Russian (like Lermontoff, and especially Gogol/Hohol). Tolstoy weren't influenced much by European (French, for example) culture. If you know at the end of his life he even wore peasant clothes to remark his unity with Russian people. Also his style was much stronger than Pushkin's. That's why in Russia (like Nabokoff sais) Tolstoy is the #1 writer.

In West there were translated novels that were popular at that time. Like previous speaker told, people discovered first Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. And then they began to learn more about Russian culture and literature.