It appears there isn't a thread for Russian authors. Let's fix that.
I'm currently reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. [Images don't work on this board??] It's the proto-1984/Brave New World/etc. If you ever read We, you have to read the Mirra Ginsburg translation.
So, russian literature ... Discuss away!
Last edited by Oof; 07-20-2012 at 11:07 AM.
There are sub forums for many authors,if you scroll down. Many of the great Russians are there, with many ongoing discussions.
Did you have anything specific you wanted to talk about?
For grievous war these arms don't ask,
No armor, save this joyous flask
Dostoevsky is the master of Russian literature in my mind. Then there's Tolstoy and Gogol. I have not read many of the greats. Haven't read Pushkin or Turgenev or Solzhenitsyn.
I consider the development of the Russian novel in the 19th century to have been a historical literary event grand on a level of the flowering of drama in Elizabethan England or tragedy in Ancient Athens.
The psychological profundity of Dostoevsky is perhaps unmatched in literature, in my mind only Shakespeare plunged more fully into the scape of the human mind, the light and the dark of the soul of mankind. The Underground Man presents a character so much like each of us, an extreme copy of ourselves, an eminent sufferer. The theme of God in Dostoevsky greatly interests me. His theology fascinates me and I have a high respect for the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of reading him.
I still have not read the entirety of Karamazov. I've read everything else but I'm saving that novel. That book is like a woman I've long known and had strong feelings for but am not confident enough to woo and claim as mine. Reading that book will be a peak event in my life. Judging from how I responded to all his other novels I know that it will seize me and alter the very fabric of my state of mind and my beliefs. Dostoevsky does that. Something about the Russians, they suffer very well and are able to turn their suffering into jaw-droppingly profound fiction.
Gogol does the same thing, but we have not much by him. Dead Souls I read a long time ago and cannot get into in depth. I'll just say it produced the same effect as Dostoevsky. It presented extremes of human nature as commonplace. Russia is such a diverse and interesting land its authors have always had much material with which to make these great books.
Solzhenitsyn I simply must read soon or else that hole in my literary experience will keep getting to me. So many of my bookish acquaintances peg him down as another great master of fiction and I've long been dying to find out what he was all about. From translated quotations I can see in him a remarkable stylist and thinker.
Same with Pushkin. There are intelligent well-read people who compare him to Shakespeare, which is a great honour.
I have been so engrossed with Dostoevsky for so long now that I often feel like an inhabitant of St Petersburg. I pretend I'm there. I go there in my mind when I read his books and when I read the works of so effective writer I inhabit in all but body, all but physicality, the settings he writes of and invents. St Petersburg, despite my having never gone anywhere near it, never left this continent, is like another home for me. A winter home.
One thing Russian novelists do particularly well is characterization. They can invent in a single paragraph a man, woman or child who you either love or despise. You FEEL for their characters. In few words they paint realistic characters, some quite caricaturish but still believable.
Dear Oof, Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Station" would be my recommendation.
Further, Michael Bulgakov is very good. His "A Country Doctor's Notebook"
is breathtaking. Or try "Master and Margarita".
Originally Posted by Darcy88
What are you waiting for Darcy? I believe you would enjoy Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
My interest in AS developed from a couple of his books left behind by my departed parents. You might consider One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to start with or Cancer Ward. Other AS works are daunting such as The Gulag Archipelago and the multi-part epic The Red Wheel. I have Part I August 1914 that has yet to be started, in fact the inspiration to crack it open is mounting as I type this.
Here’s a quick read from Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard address you might find interesting; A World Split Apart
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine...rvard1978.html
I’ll add Anton Chechov and his short stories into the mix.
I just finished We.
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
Oh yes, Cancer Ward, the translation of the title I have, is my favorite Solzhenitsyn book. I tend to prefer his fiction to his nonfiction, Gulag Archipelago was a chore to get through.
Bulgakov is great, Heart of a Dog is another great book, very short and sweet but quite brilliant.
A couple other Soviet era authors I love is Vladimir Voinovich, Victor Serge and Mikhail Sholokov, his And Quiet Flows The Don is simply beautiful.
I read We years ago and don't remember a tremendous about it but I do remember I really liked it. It might be time for a reread.
the luminous grass of the prairie hides
feet lovely and still as sleeping doves,
porcelain bones strong enough to carry a life,
but weighty and unmovable
As black Dakota hills. ~ Riesa
I agree with Darcy that Dostoevsky is really the height of Russian lit. I much prefer him to Tolstoy, not that I dislike Tolstoy.
Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) is absolutely wonderful, particularly if you are not experienced with 19th century Russian lit.
I enjoyed We, and it really made me enjoy 1984 less than I already did, but dystopian lit is not my favourite.
I would also encourage you, if you haven't yet, to familiarize yourself with Chekhov. The Seagull is one of the best (non-Shakespearean?) plays ever written.
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
I am likely rare among fans of Tolstoy. I have never made it through War and Peace, but love The Death of Ivan Ilyich. That book, alongside the short story "What Men Live By" are my particular favorites of his. Of Dostoevsky, I've read just Crime and Punishment, which I liked immensely. Perhaps if I had read more of his, I'd be more in agreement with those above who place him above Tolstoy. For now, though, Tolstoy is my one Russian love.
I just find it very hard to compare the two. They are two very different authors and reading their respective works are very different experiences. If you pick up a Tolstoy book looking for a Dostoevskyan experience, you're going to be disappointed and the opposite is true as well. I find Tolstoy to be more readable, and by that I mean the flow of his prose is a little more smooth and natural, whereas Dostoevsky is a little more work. I can fly right through Tolstoy, I finished War and Peace much quicker than it takes me to read a book a fourth of it's size. Dostoesvky takes a little more thought and time and I think because of that, you feel a more invested, his work is always provocative and challenging and personal, for lack of a better word. Tolstoy tells these wonderful stories, you are more of an observer to his tragedies and triumphs, there is an emotional distance. With Dostoevsky, you are right smack dab in the middle of it, you are caught in the vice, it's hard to remove yourself from it, it simply gets inside your head. I am much more likely to reread Tolstoy than Dostoevsky simply because reading Dostoevsky is such an intense psychological experience, at least it is for me, I have to be in the right mood and I have to be in a really good place emotionally or he will put me in a very bad place. Although, I have to say, The Possessed is a book of his I can reread without feeling overwhelmed and his short stories.
And on that note, Tolstoy writes some amazing short stories. I think his style of writing lends itself very well to that genre whereas Dostoevsky's doesn't. Not that he hasn't written some brilliant stories but I find them a little more 'clunky' than Tolstoy's.
the luminous grass of the prairie hides
feet lovely and still as sleeping doves,
porcelain bones strong enough to carry a life,
but weighty and unmovable
As black Dakota hills. ~ Riesa
Very well put!
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
I read the complete tales of Gogol, didn't get the humor.
Russian authors are some of my favorites, I do indeed love Zamyatin's We and anything by Dostoyevsky. About to start reading some Tolstoy and Daniil Kharms is one of my absolute favorite writers and inspirations.
“Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Great thread, I'm struck into a response by so many of the comments on here that I can't use quotations (there would be too many) but Darcy's post which really started it off is interesting because I hope he isn't disappointed when he finally gets to the Karamazov novel. I was. It's a very slow novel, takes time to build up, and after all that (I too took the recommendations very seriously) I thought it didn't quite deliver. Maybe something gets lost in translation on this one, but i thought Crime and Punishment was a better, more timeless work, and Underground Man for that matter.
I really wouldn't wait any longer to read it, loved your analogy about the lover you're a little afraid of, but sometimes (infact often) a fantasy of a lover doesn't live up to the reality and you don't want to wait until you're dying thinking that novel is your consolation and then it lets you down.
And if you do love it as much as you expect to well reading it now will leave you longer to savour the experience and maybe even reread.
As Gurgle implies Soljenitsyn (spelling) is simply brilliant. Cancer Ward is the tale of how he gets out of Stalin's camps because he gets the disease, (it is a direct sequel to his first novel which is a description of life in the camps) while he is in convalescence Stalin dies, he recovers and is released, the description of how he walks the streets and buys food from a street vendor, you really live those first moments of freedom moment by moment with him, extraordinary writing, extraordinary author.
Djameson agree about Ivan Ilyich, did that at Uni and it took the classes' breath away, but never got around to War and Peace, guess I understand Darcy in that respect.
Agree with Charles Darney that Fathers and sons is Turgenev's great novel, I read that several times as part of my degree and it does stand up to the rereading (always the acid test for a great novel, I think).
And Crusoe mentions my favorite Russian novel of them all: The Master and Margarita written in the following century like Soljenitsyn (The emphasis in Russian lit critisism often focuses on the 19th C but there were some great writers in the 20th C too) such a funny book, and what happened to Bulgakov - the personal interventions by Stalin in his career - make him a fascinating author, and in the tradition of great Russian wives Bulgakov's widow risked imprisonment by hiding the manuscript of the Margarita novel for years in a drawer at home after Bulgakov died until things changed after Stalin died too, think it was finally published in the 1960s, although some versions are still censored.
Other Russian novels I loved are Oblomov and Hope against Hope.
Last edited by neilgee; 07-22-2012 at 02:03 PM.
What are regrets? Just lessons we haven't learned yet - Beth Orton
I felt the same way about Brothers Karamazov. It's often touted as his greatest work but it just did nothing for me. Every now and then I consider rereading it, to see if something will click on a second read but I can never muster up the motivation.
the luminous grass of the prairie hides
feet lovely and still as sleeping doves,
porcelain bones strong enough to carry a life,
but weighty and unmovable
As black Dakota hills. ~ Riesa
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