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The great Russian novel (Read 1614 times)
bogarde73
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The great Russian novel
Sep 30th, 2013 at 11:57am
 
What got me to thinking about this was that I was listening again to a doco in my archive about the Battle of Borodino (1812), as described over about 20 chapters in War & Peace. Historians argue that the whole saga of Napoleon's invasion of Russia is not very accurately told in War & Peace.
So is War & Peace (Tolstoy) the great Russian novel?
The Russians I think regard it so and so would I had not Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak) come along.
Both are epic works. Maybe Zhivago is more lyrical and appealing to me, while Tolstoy tends to be filled with mysticism. (Or maybe I was just influenced by the film when it came along with Julie Christie)

But much later I read And Quiet Flows the Don by Michail Sholokhov and this would now be my pick.
It covers much of the same period as Zhivago but it is more an epic story of the Cossack people and less a love story.

One thing is for sure, the Russians can certainly deliver epics.
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #1 - Sep 30th, 2013 at 12:56pm
 

Lolita was one of the most beautiful book I have read.
Despite the topic, its not 'about the topic'.
Written by Vladimar Nabakov, a russkie

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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #2 - Sep 30th, 2013 at 1:13pm
 
Pasternak is a marvellous writer, so too is Dostoevsky whose 'The Idiot' I would recommend to serious readers.

Of course the thread brought to mind Ambrose Bierce's 'Devil's Dictionary'.

"NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes – some of which have a large sale."

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Frank
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #3 - Aug 11th, 2023 at 3:20pm
 
Russian aborigines and their tales of fancy and adventure.

...

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/man-people
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #4 - Nov 20th, 2023 at 12:16pm
 
Tolstoy is regarded as the greatest because he painted on the largest canvas.
But even if you disregard War and Peace and Anna Karenina for a moment, he is still a superb writer. His novellas and short stories and masterful. I love them all, but especially his 23 Tales.
Then there is Gogol, a supreme humorist and absurdist, a generation before Tolstoy and Chekhov a generation after, whose short stories and plays are the very best of the genres.
Dostoyevsky can be thrilling and superb but also heavy going, all in his own way.
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #5 - Nov 20th, 2023 at 12:27pm
 
Meanwhile the rain continued to beat sonorously down upon the wooden roof, and could be heard trickling into a water butt; nor for a single moment did the dogs cease to bark with all the strength of their lungs. One of them, throwing up its head, kept venting a howl of such energy and duration that the animal seemed to be howling for a handsome wager; while another, cutting in between the yelpings of the first animal, kept restlessly reiterating, like a postman’s bell, the notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. Naturally, from a canine chorus of such executants it might reasonably be inferred that the establishment was one of the utmost respectability.
Gogol
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #6 - Nov 20th, 2023 at 12:58pm
 
Cool
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #7 - May 7th, 2024 at 7:39pm
 
Works by Russian literary greats such as Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol were substituted with valueless counterfeits from European libraries.

European authorities say they have rounded up a criminal gang who stole rare antique books worth €2.5 million from libraries across Europe.

In a press release, Europol announced they had arrested nine Georgian nationals in Georgia and Lithuania who are thought to have collaborated in the plot, in which at least 170 books were stolen.

"In 2022 and 2023, the criminal group managed to steal rare books from national and historical libraries in Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Switzerland," Europol explained in its account of the arrests.
https://www.euronews.com/2024/04/25/police-rumble-gang-stealing-antique-books-ac...
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #8 - Jul 31st, 2024 at 7:19am
 
I'll just write a few more names, and you can decide whether to try to get acquainted with their works or not.

Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Konstantin Paustovsky, Nikolai Leskov, Alexandr Kuprin, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin, Alexandr Grin, Vladimir Odoyevsky.

Among modern writers (I don’t know if his works are translated into other languages) is Victor Pelevin.
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Re: The great Russian novel
Reply #9 - Jul 31st, 2024 at 8:01am
 
I like Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita".

The story concerns a visit by the devil and his entourage to the officially atheistic Soviet Union.
Quote:
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland. He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely dressed valet; Behemoth, a black cat; Azazello, a hitman; and Hella, a female vampire. They target the literary elite and Massolit, their trade union.

The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate: Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth), his recognition of an affinity with (and spiritual need for) Yeshua, and his reluctant acquiescence to Yeshua's execution.


...
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Reality is a figment of imagination
 
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