Yep I did...if you search the forums, there must be at least one topic about it.
And I remember at least 2 threads about War and Peace.
edit: here you can find something about Zhivago
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=4342
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Yep I did...if you search the forums, there must be at least one topic about it.
And I remember at least 2 threads about War and Peace.
edit: here you can find something about Zhivago
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=4342
Actualy it's only realy cold in northern Sweden.
But you maybe find it cold, i only know that it's colder in
Russia.
But you're right, i heard it's -70 - +50 in some places.
I think -70 is impossible... if that's celsius...
Siberia is cold, like it can get to -40 I think, but in the summer they have +20 ore even +30.
Maybe the climate affects the writing
actualy, in Jakutsk they got - 70 deegrees celsius.
LOL maybe that's why they write long stuff...they can't go out and spend the time writing ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Pantelej
Actually, one thing that is said to have greatly affected Russian culture and therefore literature is the SPACE. Russia is HUGE, and the distances are immense, even hard to imagine for us European packed in (relatively) small countries. Moscow is impressive, everything is incredibly big and everything is so distant, even by metro, which is very fast, you can take one hour to get to a place... And a lot of the space in Russia is empty...sure Moscow is crowded, but there is a lot of empty countryside, I've seen kilometres of green from the plane while I was getting there...
So all that is part of the mystery of the Russian culture: the extreme distances and the extreme temperatures some places get...
I agree with you
It is very interesting to see how
climate and space affects the writting.
What do you think is the most interesting with Russian literature?
I think it's the details and the characters
Crime and Punishment: Possibly the most boring book I have read. I gave this book multiple chances but it never ceased to be anything more than a tremendous yawn-fest. Organic Chemistry textbooks are more interesting and I have had more fun reading laundry bills.
War and Peace: Did these guys get paid by words? Soap Opera at it's worst.
The Brothers K...: Some more of the above. I just don't get this Dostoevsky loving. He, along with Shakespeare and Joyce, has to be the most overrated fiction author in any language.
Doctor Zhivago: Did I say boring before?
Master and Margarita: Brilliant concept, excellent execution and some of the wittiest dialogue ever penned in speculative literature. Easily the most 'flowing' translation I have ever come across, in any language.
We: The predecessor of works like 'Brave New World' and 'Slaughterhouse Five', it is considered the first modern sci-fi dystopia and a huge influence on Orwell's seminal '1984'. I consider it better than just about any dystopian novel I have read with the exception of Philip K. Dick's 'Do Andriod's Dream of Electric Sheep' and Orwell's 'Animal Farm.'
Russian non-fiction, on the other hand, I have found to be almost uniformly entertaining and thought-provoking, be it spine-tingling accounts of escape from Gulag's, descriptions of German seiges, memoirs of deserter soldiers, political shifts within the Communist Party or tales of manned exploration and taming the frosty siberian whiteness.
what exactly do you like
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I actually agree on this: I found it terribly similar to a soap opera, and though I endured the whole thing, I appreciated let's say 20% of it. However I'm glad of having done that and having seen with my eyes what's it all about, especially being a student of Russian I couldnt really miss this part of its culture... Appreciating, well, that's another thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by EAP
I did like Anna Karenina though, it's possibly less soap-opera, and I was particularly surprised of how well Anna's feeling were described, even by a male writer.
Crime and Punishment, well, I've already claimed my love for it... What actually got me into Russian Lit. is actually another novel by Dostoevsky, The Demons, which I adored. I havent tried the Karamazov Brothers yet, possibly soon next year.
Funnily enough, what EAP liked, ie Master & Margarita, was the one I liked less...too much fantasy, too many people flying... but as I said I'll give it another chance soon.
I'm also looking forward to reading We, I'm surprised it's so famous cos when we were meant to read it for an exam, it was impossible to find it, book shops didnt even know about its existance, and a copy was finally found at a library of an obscure village where one of my course mates lived. However I didnt get to read it and I bought a copy in Moscow, which is waiting in line to be my next Russian original read, though I suppose it's going to be extremely challenging...
well whatever, you like what you like and i like what i like.
Can we agree to these terms?
The lines above are mentioned for EAP.
I can't tell if war and peace is to much of a soap opera
since i'm still reading it.
But the Russian aristocracy was much like a soap opera.
I was born in the USSR, so I can read all the Russian Classics in Russian.
I LOVE Russian Literature!
Bulgakov and Dostoevsky are amongst my absolute favourites!
I've started reading Dostoevsky when I was 11. It was a little early, but even then I liked it. Of course now and then I reread some of his work and suddenly see more than I used to. It's great.
I had the Brothers Karamazov as one my finals' books at high school and it was amazing to have the task to dive into a novel that deep.
At the beginning it was hard (over 1200 pages!) to find something to start with, but then everything, every sentence, every word fitted, everything had a meaning.
Of course, there are many, many other great Russian novellists.
I absolutely adore: Puschkin, Lermontow, Gogol, Turgenew and Tschechov
and if you count him as a Russian too: One of my absolute favourites is also Nabokov! Now, he's really great.
What do you think about Sholokhov,Gorki and Tolstoy?
I'm reading War and peace right now.
It's a bit like a soap, but, on the other hand
the Russian aristocracy was much like a soap.
feasts, silly secrets, overwelming wealth while the
porr starve
War and Peace isn't that great because of the plot, but because it's written wonderfully. At least, that's what I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pantelej
I've read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata. I must say, the Kreutzer Sonata had the biggest impact on me, it was the one novel, that was nearest to the reader, but of course, that's because the plot is set in a train and mostly there's just one person talking.
Gorki didn't write bad, but there's that slight shadow of the communistic propaganda writing over his work...
Until now, I've never read Sholokhov. Is he good?
Actualy i agree with you, In War and Peace it's more the writing than
the plot that effects me.
I think i read something about Gorki being forced by the Soviet regim
to write comunist-friendly.
Sholokhov is very interesting, He dosen't write so much like Dostoyevsky,
more like Tolstoy, though not realy as good ,but still good.
The characters are very interesting. In "The silent Don" the characters
change with the time, wich is very interesting.
The content is a bit different to, becouse most of his books are about the
Don-Cosacks. The inviorment is different to, sience the Cosacks were
living on the stepp. They also had their own laws, not caring to much
about the higher authorities. In most of Sholokhovs books you
can also see the changes each generation brings with it.
What exactly do you think makes Russian literature so special?
I think it's mostly the details and the characters.
Everything is always described so beautifully and the characters
are always very interesting and realistic.
Another thing , i think, is the fact that most Russian writers
make great things out of pretty simple plots.