MA Comps ID's

Aleksei Peshkov:

Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov) this is Maxim Gorky 1868-1936 was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the 1890s, Peshkov began writing. He adopted the pseudonym Maxim Gorky (choosing the name Gorky because it meant "bitter"). He might have chosen the name Gorky, b/c of his very difficult and trying early years, e.g.: his father died of cholera when he was 5 and his mother left him with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather was a strict taskmaster and abusive, but his grandmother shared her knowledge of folktales with young Peshkov. Declining family income from his grandfather's dye shop meant that Peshkov had to begin working when he was just 8. His jobs included working as an apprentice, a ship's dishwasher and a factory worker. He learned to read and write along the way, but by the time he was 21 the misery of his life prompted Peshkov to become a hobo, and he spent the next couple years wandering about Russia

Define Dialogic and who came up with it

Bakhtin contrasts the dialogic and the "monologic" work of literature. The dialogic work carries on a continual dialogue with other works of literature and other authors. It does not merely answer, correct, silence, or extend a previous work, but informs and is continually informed by the previous work. Dialogic literature is in communication with multiple works. This is not merely a matter of influence, for the dialogue extends in both directions, and the previous work of literature is as altered by the dialogue as the present one is. Though Bakhtin's "dialogic" emanates from his work with colleagues in what we now call the "Bakhtin Circle" in years following 1918, his work was not known to the West or translated into English until the 1970s. For those only recently introduced to Bakhtin's ideas but familiar with T. S. Eliot, his "dialogic" is consonant with Eliot's ideas in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," where Eliot holds that "the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past".[1] For Bakhtin, the influence can also occur at the level of the individual word or phrase as much as it does the work and even the oeuvre or collection of works. A German cannot use the word "fatherland" or the phrase "blood and soil" without (possibly unintentionally) also echoing (or, Bakhtin would say "refracting") the meaning that those terms took on under Nazism. Every word has a history of usage to which it responds, and anticipates a future response. The term 'dialogic' does not only apply to literature. For Bakhtin, all language — indeed, all thought — appears as dialogical. This means that everything anybody ever says always exists in response to things that have been said before and in anticipation of things that will be said in response. In other words, we do not speak in a vacuum. All language (and the ideas which language contains and communicates) is dynamic, relational and engaged in a process of endless redescriptions of the world. Bakhtin also emphasized certain uses of language that maximized the dialogic nature of words, and other uses that attempted to limit or restrict their polyvocality. At one extreme is novelistic discourse, particularly that of a Dostoevsky (or Mark Twain) in which various registers and languages are allowed to interact with and respond to each other. At the other extreme would be the military order (or "1984" newspeak) which attempts to minimize all orientations of the work toward the past or the future, and which prompts no response but obedience. When scholars, like Julia Kristeva, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, rediscovered Bakhtin, his work seemed to fit with the then-nascent concepts of "intertextuality". And European social psychologists applied Bakhtin's work to the study of human social experience, preferring it as a more dynamic alternative to Cartesian monologicality.

Bashutsky: psychological sketch's (the cover of that detailed cover thing) t

Bashutsky: psychological sketch's (the cover of that detailed cover thing) the author almost disappears among the details. You will like my text b/c we killed the author, no opinion just facts. (not literarily)

Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak Characters: Yurii Andreevich Zhivago, Yura: Intelligent and pragmatic in life, but with a very strong creative and poetic impulse. He chooses to become a doctor because he views it as a profession, whereas poetry and philosophy are occupations, i.e. something worthwhile but only in one's free time. He's known as a talented diagnostician. Even after leaving Moscow, he consults locals about health issues until he's abducted by the Forest Brotherhood to act as their doctor. After he returns (runs away/defects) he consults at the hospital in Iuriatin until fear forces Lara and him to move to Varykino. He does get rusty Not faithful. Takes after his own father in being a absentee father. He has nightmares about abandoning his son Sasha for Lara. However, even after he returns to Moscow, he never tries very hard to be reunited with his first family. He even starts a second family. He dies on a malfunctioning trolley. He leaves behind poetry, which his brother sorts out to have published. Possibly the best term to describe him is fatalist. He has some political convictions (maybe understanding would be more accurate) however he does not support the Bolsheviks and shows no sign of wanting to be involved in any revolution. He and his first family leave Moscow to avoid being suppressed. He tries to retreat anytime he's threatened. The narrator rarely ventures into his private thoughts and convictions. There are a few diary entries and the poems which shed light on his philosophy. Generally, he's hopeful and enduring, but he does little to strive for what he wants. Part of his inertia is probably a desire to be with Lara (Why leave her to find his first family, even if he feels some responsibility toward them???) His mother: Maria Nikolaevna: dead at beginning of novel. His father: A good-for-nothing drunk who abandoned his wife and child. He comits suicide by throwing himself off of a moving train after being spurred to drink by His uncle: Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedeniapin: Takes Yura in when his mother dies. Gromekos: Yura spends his adolescence in this household in Moscow. Two brothers live together: Aleksandr and Nikolai Aleksandrovich, both chemistry professors. Anna Ivanovna: wife of Aleksandr Aleksandrobich and mother of Tonia. She falls ill after having a wardrobe fall on her. She tells Yura and Tonia they're made for one another and should get married when their older. She lets herself be consoled about death by the medical student, Yura. ***Antonina Aleksandrovna Gromeko, Tonia: Marries Yurii. She breaks down and becomes unapproachable when her mother dies. She is extremely perspicacious when it comes to Yurii's relationship with Lara. She writes to him while he's on the Westnern front that he can stay with Lara. Later, after he's disappeared and she goes to Moscow and then is exiled, she writes that she knows that he never truly loved her. She claims that if things had been different she might not have ever realized they didn't love each other (does she even love him???) because not loving someone is like killing them. She doesn't hold this against Yurii, but takes the blame on herself. Larisa Fedorovna, Lara: Fallen woman, but perceived by the men who love her as the paragon on beauty, femininity, and perfection. Mother: Amaliia Karlovna Gishar: Russianized Frenchwoman, widow of a Belgian engineer. Brother: Rodion, Rodia: He loses money gambling and begs for Lara to lend it to him. He never pays it back. Attends a military academy. Her daughter, Katenka: Antipov, Pasha: Son of a railroad worker arrested and sentenced after the 1905 strikes. As a child, he's able to imitate anyone and anything in a very comical way. He marries Lara. He becomes depressed when he finds out about her past. Their marriage is strained and he is bored in the Urals. He is extremely intelligent and can later recall almost everything he reads. He enlists in an attempt to get himself and his family out of the sticks and into one of the capitals. He supposedly dies in an explosion on the front. He resurfaces in the Civil War as a Red Army General. He uses the name Strel'nikov. He conceals his identity, though his conection with his father could potential make his life easier. He restrains himself from seeking out Lara and his daughter, though he loves her/them terribly. After the war, he has a falling out with the authorities. He comes to Varykino when Zhivago is there alone. They talk for an evening. In the morning Antipov shoots himself (his blood dotting the snow like frost covered Rowan berries....) Nika Dudorov: Misha Gordon: witnesses Yura's father's suicide. He becomes an enthusiastic Bolshevik after the revolution. He was always political and philosophical. Strongly influenced by Yura's uncle. He was one of the youthful triumvirate that idolized chastity (Tonia, Yura, and Misha). Komarovskii: the lawyer who has a thing for young girls. He seduces Lara. He's Amalia Karlovna's primary source of advice. A cold-blooded businessman. He continues to concern himself with Lara's fate after the revolution and civil war. He is able to succeed under the Bolsheviks despite probably being the epitome of a capitalist. The narrator doesn't explore this much. It takes it for granted that he would be successful in the pre- and post- revolutionary climates. He tries to convince Lara to take Katenka and go with him to Vladivostok to get away. Kologrivovs: Take on Lara as a tutor for their youngest daughter, while she's in school. They have property in the same region as Vedeniapin. Lavrentii Mikhailovich Kologrivov: The father and a philanthropist of the arts. Nadia: coeval of Lara and Nika. Lipa: Youngest daughter, tutored by Lara. She marries as soon as she graduates. Olia Demina: Lara's friend. The daughter of someone who works at the Gishar millenary shop. Becomes a delegate. Yurii meets her in Moscow after the revolution. She lives in the same building as Galliunin's mother. Yusupka, Galiullin??: Young boy during 1905 revolts. His father, Gimazdetdin, was a janitor. After the revolution he joined the Whites. He became a general. He was stationed in Iuriatin for a time. Lara would come to see him. Tiverzins: Take in Pasha Antipov. the Sventinskiis: distant relations of Yura. They host the Christmas parties. Samdeviatov: Iuriatin local. The son of a factory owner, he grew up conscious of workers' woes. He's a lawyer and knows everyone. He's seemingly able to procure anything for anyone he wants. He assists the Zhivagos when thwey arrive and helps Lara out during the Civil War. Plot Outline: Book one: Part 1: Funeral of Maria Nikolaevna Zhivago. Her borther, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedeniapin, takes Yura into his care. They spend a night in a monastery, where Yura watches a snow storm. They travel to Dyplianka (summer 1903). Nikolai Nikolaevich and Ivan Ivanovich Vockoboinikov discuss the social problems of the day, editing a liberal journal. Yura is excited to meet Nika Dudorov again, but Nika is older and avoids him. A train stops in the valley. Misha Gordon and his father are traveling on the train. Someone has thrown himself off the train. It turns out to be Zhivago's father. Nika avoids Yura and goes outside. He has a very solipsistic view of the world. At the same time he can't comprehend how a tree can be a plant, but an animal. He decides to drown Nadia and takes her out in a boat. They both flail around and fall in. He apologizes (like an adult) and they trudge home. Part 2: In Moscow, 1905. The war with Japan is not yet over and waves of revolution crashing. Amaliia Karlovna Gishar moves to Moscow with her two children on the advice of the lawyer Komarovskii. She buys and runs a sewing shop. During the fall, strikes break out. Piotr Khudoleev whipping his young shop assistant, Yusupka. Tiverzin stands up for the boy and a fight breaks out. Pasha's father is arrested and he moves in with the Tiverzins. Tiverzin's mother, Marfa Gavrilovna, joins a group of demonstrators, which is violently suppressed by the militia. She loses Pasha momentarily, but finds him unharmed. Nikolai Nikolaevich is in from Saint Petersburg. Out the window, he watches the demonstrators flee. He thinks about how Yura and his friends, Misha and Tonia, have developed an obsession with chastity and developed a habit of calling anything related to sensuality vulgar, Poshlyi. Yura has been in the care of the Gromeko. Komarovskii takes Lara to a ball and dances with her. Afterwards, she thinks how unpleasant being kissed is. He shows signs of being obsessed with her and seduces her. Her mother never finds out. He enslaves Lara. He offers to tell her mother everything and marry her. Lara goes to church out of a need for music, not religion. She feels like Katerina from "The Thunderstorm." Lara and Pasha get to know one another. He is entirely devoted to her. Lara hears shooting and thinks how good it is that the boys are shooting, how honest is makes them. They all go to the Svitenskii's for a party. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich is summoned because someone has been poisoned. Misha and Yura accompany him to the hotel. They wait in the hall, until the hotel employees tell them to go in the room and get out of the way. They see the sick woman, Amaliia Karlovna, who is soaked in sweat and more disgusting bodily fluids. They also see Lara sleeping. Komarovskii comes in and wakes her. Yura perceives their relationship and Komarovskii's enslavement of Lara upon seeing the look they exchange. Lara never notices the boys. Misha tells Yura that the man was the same Komarovskii who got his father drunk and harassed him on the train just before he committed suicide. Part 3: Anna Ivanovna injures herself on a wardrobe her husband gave her. She begins having issues with lung diseases. Despite his affinity for poetry and history, Yura decides to study medicine, because he thinks one should have a practical career. Misha goes in for philosophy. Both of the boys have been greatly influenced by Nikolai Nikolaevich's outlook on life. Misha is chained to the views and Yura thinks his pursuits frivolous and unpragmatic. Yura comes home from the university and Anna Ivanovna summons him. She's having a crisis and is afraid. He comforts her and tells her she'll get better and she shouldn't be afraid. She does get better, but he thinks he's a charlatan, pretending to heal by the laying on of hands, after the interaction. Anna Ivanovna tells Yura and Tonia that they should marry. Seeking to escape Komarovskii, but not willing to tell her mother what has been going on, Lara asks Nadia Kologrivova if she knows anyone looking for a governess. Nadia says her younger sister, Lipa, could use one. Lara lives with them for 3 years. She has to borrow money from them to help her brother pay back a gambling debt. She hasn't been able to pay them back by the time Lipa marries and leaves. She continues to live with them, but feels her situation is false. She spends one last summer in Duplianka, a place she loves. She tries to refuse her wages but they force them on her. She decides to demand the money she needs from Komarovskii so she can pay her debt and move somewhere else. She stops to see Pasha and asks him if he will marry her as soon as possible. She takes a pistol (the one she took from her brother, when he was contemplating suicide) with her when she goes to see Komarovskii. He's at the Svetinskiis' Christmas party. He plays cards and ignores her. She dances with the son of the advocate< Kornakov, who was so vicious during Tiverzin's trial. She tries to shoot Komarovskii, but the bullet scratches Kornakov, who's sitting at the same poker table. Yura witnesses the commotion. On his way to attend to the faint Lara (who he recognizes), he is intercepted and told Anna Ivanovna is having a crisis. He and Tonia leave. They find Anna Ivanovna died 10 minutes before their arrival. Tonia breaks down. She cries and cannot talk with people. The funeral is at the monastery where Yura's mother is buried. He sees some laundry hanging in the corner of the spot where he watched the snowstorm after his mother's funeral. Yura dreams of holing up for a few days to write everything about his memory, feelings toward, and experiences with Anna Ivanovna and his mother's funeral. Part 4: Lara's half delirious at the Sventinskiis'. Komarovskii feels he has to intercede, meaning he has to say she was aiming at him. He arranges for her to stay at an apartment. The landlady, Rufina Onisimovna, considers Lara a malingerer. Komarovkii does not come to see Lara often, but he leaves a giant watermelon (Dama co cobachkoi) as a housewarming present, which she interprets to be a sign of his power over her. Lavrentii Mikhailovich Kologrivov comes to see her. He gives her a huge bonus for Lipa's graduation. Lara tells Pasha he doesn't have to marry her, but he insists he wants to. During their wedding both try to hold their candle lower than the other. According to superstition, whoever holds their candle higher will have the upper hand. Later, their relationship is strained because both of them try to be the martyr of the relationship. That evening, Lara tells Pasha everything. He becomes depressed and changes drastically after the confession. After graduating, they both get teaching positions in Lara's hometown. At their farewell party a burglar breaks in while everyone is sleeping. Lara wakes up and sees that he hasn't taken the necklace Nadia gave her as a going away present. She wakes up the man next to her and they both scream. Yurii has married Antonia. He's a doctor. He's complimented for his skills as a diagnostician. Antonia is in labor. She has a boy. He's told he'll probably be transferred to the front lines. Lara and Pasha have a 3-year-old daughter, Katenka. Lara loves Yuriatin, but Pasha is very unhappy. He decides to enlist in the military academy in an attempt to secure work in a more metropolitan part of Russia. He goes to the front and his letters stop coming. Lara becomes a volunteer nurse. She leaves Katenka and goes to the front. Misha Gordon goes to visit Zhivago and gets stranded for a week. They see Lara attend to a man who has a bottle in his face. The man dies. It turns out to be Gimazetdin, Galiullin's father. Galliullin is on the front. He meets Antipov and sees the explosion in which he dies. He keeps his pictures of Lara. He's injured and ends up in the hospital Lara works at. Zhivago and Gordon see a Cossack harassing an old Jewish man. Afterwards they talk about when Zhivago saw the Tsar' on the front, who looked pathetic and weak. They talk about nations and how Christ made nations obsolete. Gordon argues that the Jews would be better off if they gave up the idea of nationality which has bound them for millennia and caused their isolation and harassment. Gordon leaves. Zhivago is injured in an explosion. He ends up in the hospital Lara works at. Galiullin tells Lara he knew Antipov. She has been told Antipov was killed in an explosion, but Galiullin tells her he was taken prisoner because he pities her. ZHivago recognizes Lara, but thinks it to forward to let her know that he's seen her twice before. He's cold and she thinks she must have offended him. Lara decides she will devote herself entirely to her daughter. They get word of the revolution in Saint Petersburg. In the English translation book one ends here Part 5: Takes place in Meliuzeevo (Мелюзеево) Yuri and Lara are working in a hospital, located in a converted estate. Galliunin is also there. In July, there had been a short-lived independent republic of Zybushino (name of local city), mainly run by deserters. Blazheiko, was a local leader, incendiary speaker, deaf and dumb at birth, he later overcame these difficulties (learned to read lips and speak). Two locals live and work in the hospital: Mademoiselle Fleri and Ustin'ia, a cook. A commissar arrives, a young man named Gints or Gents. There are meetings in the town square. The commissar speaks against the Bolsheviks, but he's not popular. Zhivago and Lara's relationship seems pretty cold and professional, but Fleri keeps trying to push them together. Zhivago mentions Lara in a letter to his wife. She writes back that he can abandon her and their son, if he loves Lara. He denies it and seeks out Lara in order to set things straight with her, too. Gints is booed down by some disserting soldiers. He runs but instead of seeking shelter, he hops up on a drum and tries to address him. They all stop amazed, but then he upsets the lid and falls down, landing with one leg in the barrel and one leg outside of it. The men start laughing and someone shoots Gints. Galliunin was forced to leave, presumably because of his politics. Lara leaves. There's mysterious knocking at the hospital one night, but no one's at the doors. Zhivago prepares to leave and eventually makes it on a secret train. At the hospital, Zhivago admitted to Lara that seeing her makes him want to protect her from all the bad things around. He meets a deaf-mute on the train and realizes it is the same Blazheiko. He calls himself Maxim Aristarkhovich Klintsov-Pogorevshikh. He gives Zhivago a bird he caught. Zhivago reflects on returning home. He thinks that this feeling, returning to one's family and home is what life and art are all about. Part 6: Zhivago's back in Moscow. Tonia's happy and stunned to see him. He son, Sashenka cries when he sees him. He's scared. The parents take the reaction as a bad sign though they both try to tell the other it means nothing. The difficulties of procuring food and firewood....There's fighting in the streets. Sashenka is sick but they cannot leave the apartment to get medicine or help. Yura has seen a yound Buriat boy at the "charmed spot" (intersection of Serebriany and Molchanovka) where he reads about the October revolution and the Bolsheviks seizing power. Gordon is very excited. He sympathizes with the Bolsheviks. ****The clocks. Zhivago goes to attend a woman who has had a nervous breakdown because a broken clock suddenly started chiming. Zhivago says its typhus. When he gets home, Tonia tells him about a clock that had been broken, which suddenly started to ring. The doctor jokes that his time has rung for typhus. Yurii falls ill. He has hallucinations about writing and the young Buriat boy, who he interprets to either represent or be his death. In his fever, he composes a poem not about the crucifixion or the resurrection but about the days in between. When he recovers he finds out the young man was actually there. It is his half-brother, Evrag (Grania) Zhivago. The Zhivago's (including Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and the nanny) decide to move to the Varykino estate that belonged to Maria Aleksandrevna's family. Part 7: The Zhivagos trying to get train tickets. The stations are full of the sick, who had been kicked out of the overcrowded hospitals. They get a ticket. The ride lasts for a long time. There are 3 convicts on the train who run away. The train gets stuck in the snow for a few days and the passengers have to dig out the tracks. When they are finally outside Iuriatin, ZHivago is poking around outside the train. Some soldiers find him and take him to headquarters. He meets Strelnikov (Antipov's pseudonym) Antipov says he's not the person they were looking for, but holds him for a private conversation. The Whites (led by Galliunin) have just been forced out of Iuriatin. Strelnikov tells Zhivago that his position is tenuous because he's not fighting. Prognosis of Strelnikov's personality: He's too passionate with too little imagination, making him exactly what is needed. He's unwavering and wants to prove himself. He's also willing to make sacrifices. Hence, he doesn't use his real name (though his father was a political prisoner sent to Siberia and became a leading Bolshevik) and he doesn't try to contact Lara even though he is stationed in the same area as her and their daughter. Yet he does yearn for them. He just puts off meeting them until an unspecified later. This is where Book 1 ends in the Russian edition. Part 8: The Arrival: Zhivago returns to the train. Tonia has been worried, but the guards told them what happened. She has met Samdeviatov, who tells them about the family who lives at the factory Tonia's ancestors owned. Again they are warned not to use Tonia's mother's maiden name. Samdeviatov tells them about the Mikulitsyns, including the three sisters, Avdotia, Glafira, and Serafima. They are met on the platform by a peasant driver, Bacchus. In wonderment they all remember the tales that Maria Aleksandrovna used to tell about a Bacchus, who made himself a gut of steel so he could drink anything. This Bacchus seems to be the incarnation of those stories, though they know that the original Bacchus was a bygone legend in Tonia's mother's time. The event adds a bit of magic or wonderment to their arrival. The Mikulitsyns let the family move into a shack and give them an unused corner of land to grow vegetables on. Part 9: Varykino: It's winter and Zhivago begins writing a journal. Reflections on art, on life and mimesis. Tonia is pregnant. He writes that he prefers most of all Chekhov and Pushkin now precisely because they ignore the so-called big questions and focus on life itself and the internal life. Yurii begins to visit the Iuriatin library to do research on the area, particularly during the Pugachov revolt. He sees Lara there. However, he finds her presence so soothing that he continues reading and misses his chance to talk to her. He gets her address from a return slip in a book at the librarian's desk. In early May, he goes to visit Lara. He runs into her in the yard as she's getting water. She does everything with ease, whether its reading or laborious chores (only arduous for others). She immediately shows him the spot where they hide the keys and takes him upstairs. She saw him at the library, too. They talk and touch one another naturally, as if they've always been together. Zhivago, forgetting the stories about Strel'nikov, mentions meeting him during the trip and tells Lara he thinks Strel'nikov and limited and will be discarded by the Bolsheviks after the war. Her expression reminds him of Strel'nikov's rumored history. She hasn't met or seen him, but she claims she knows he is her husband. She says he will not return to them until he can lay the laurels of his victory at their feet. Their affair starts. When he's home with Tonia, he feels guilty. Eventually, he decides to break it off with Lara, who cries. While returning home, he cannot resist running back to Lara to put off their parting for one more night. On the way he's intercepted by Kamennodvorskii, Liverii's deputy, and abducted to serve as the Forest Brotherhood's field doctor. Part 10 - The Highway: A village alongside the highway. Various forces, Red and White, have been traveling along the highway. The village is now part of Kolcak's Siberian Provisional Government. The young men have been called up to serve the forest brotherhood. Focus on primarily one family: the Galuzin's, the grocer, his wife, and son, Teriosha. It's Maundy Thursday. Galusina goes to church. Her son is off binging with friends before going off to join Kolchak's forces???? Meeting of the central committee. Tiverzin and the elder Antipov appear again. Kostoied-Amurskii, some anarchists ("Black Banner" Vdovichenko and Svirid), Berendey, Liberius, and Comrade Lidochka. The young men are getting soused. Colonel Strese is heading the recruitment office in a local building. There's an explosion. A group of local boys, including Teriosha Galuzin, hide in a barn and hear a search party go by and mention them by name. They run off to join the Forest Brotherhood. Part 11 - The Forest Brotherhood: Yurii Andreievich has spent more than a year with the brotherhood. He attempted and failed escape twice. Since then, he has not taken the risk again. He has to sleep in the same dugout as the leader, Liberius, who is entirely self-involved and treats Yurii Andreievich as if he willing joined the partisans and shares their goals, triumphs, and failures. A skirmish described: Zhivago watches the young men cross the field and get mown down. They all look familiar, like acquaintances. He thinks of defecting, but knows he'd be shot at by both sides if he ran out into the field. He has to take up a weapon. He shoots at a tree so as not to shoot at a person. He does hit someone. When things die down he finds a piece of paper with a butchered soldier's prayer written on it on the body of the Brotherhood soldier (Seriozhia Rantsevich) who was shot. He goes out to find the young man he shot. He finds the same prayer, but this one has been copied out by a literate person. He removes all insignia and brings the White soldier to the camp to recover as a Brotherhood soldier. This soldier runs away with the intention of rejoining the Whites. Liverii Arkadievich talks about reconstructing life. Zhivago tell him he's a fool. Life and the world is under constant reconstruction in Zhivago's philosophy. People try to wipe out the old and build the new, not realizing that they are caught in a machine (nature) in the middle of this process. No one is intelligent enough to catch on that they are in the middle of an era, not at the threshold between the old and new...Liverii doesn't get the concept or Zhivago. The doctor is overworked and gets no sleep, tormented by Liverii's chatter. He is told to go see Pamfil, who has been having hallucinations from stress. Pamfily's family, along with other partisan wives, is on the road to the partisan camp. He hasn't seen them since the World War broke out, but he never worried about their safety or his until the prospect of being reunited. Now he's terrified he will be ruined/compromised and they will be killed. Pamfil tells a story about shooting a representative on the front after the revolution. (It was Gints) He can't remember where or when it happened, but he talks about the man jumping on a cask and then falling in. As the men laughed, he took the first shot. On the way, the doctor lays down to nap. He wakes up to overhear a group of conspirators, plotting Liverii's death. The doctor is indignant. One of the plotters was a double agent, so it all came out. Another plotter was Terentii Galuzin. Part 12 - The Rowan Tree, Рябина в сахаре: The partisan families arrive. Yurii under the Rowan tree. The conspirators shot. Galuzin twitches on the field for the longest time. A witch doctor (folk veterinarian) woman, Kubarikha, arrives. Like all the families, Pamfil's wife has been worn down by the worries and wandering. Pamfil adores his two children and skillfully hews little wooden toys for them with his ax. Yurii watches Kubarikha bless some cattle. He has a vision dream of unlocking Lara's left shoulder and accessing her luminescent soul. After witnessing the execution and hearing the executed claim that the rest of them would be shot to by the new tyrants, Pamfil Palykh chops up his family with his ax to prevent their inevitable future suffering. They let him wander away. Zhivago leaves the camp. The Reds have pretty much won already. Zhivago simply walks off, picking up supplies that he buried by the Rowan tree, which he tells the sentry he's going to pick frozen berries at. Part 13 - Opposite the House of Sculptures: Yurii arrives at Varykino and goes up to the wall alongside the house with the sculptures. Its covered with various announcements. The desolate horror of his trek. He finds Lara's key in the same place. There is also a note for him. She has gone to Varykino thinking he would go check on his real family first. He wants to cut his hair and shave, so he goes to a sewing shop. One of the workers cuts his hair for him. She hints that she knows who he is and advises him not to talk too much about what he's seen. The seamstress turns out to be one of the Mikulitsyns. Yurii looks at the note again and finds out his family is in Moscow. He has a fever and falls asleep. The dream where Sasha is in a room filling with water, calling "papa, papa!!" and tuggin on the door. Zhivago wants to help his son, but instead he pulls the door shut, trapping the boy inside. He knows he does this to be with Lara. Lara gets back. Zhivago is sick for some days. They talk about him following his family and about Strel'nikov's fate. Strel'nikov has been forced to go into hiding. Lara talks about how she's been ruined by a crack running through her whole life (Komarovskii). She talks about how Antipov was the embodiment of cleanliness which she dreamed about. He dreamed about it too but his dreams were dashed when he found out about her past. Time passes. Zhivago works at the hospital, but has to stop working because of his political history. He gets in trouble for talking about nature and mimicry. They worry about their safety and decide it would be best if they went to Varykino to stay out of sight for a while. Sima Mikulitsyn lectures Lara on life, the world, and spirituality. Yurii eavesdrops and concludes that her philosophy is the same as his uncle's. He gets a letter from Tonia. She says the family and many people they know are being exiled. She tells him she knows he never loved her and she would never have realized she doesn't love him if it had not been for their prolonged separation. Afterall, not loving someone is as bad as murder. She says they will never see one another again. Yurii clutches his chest and faints. He has heart disease. Part 14: Back in Varykino: Further tension in Iuriatin. Lara wants Sima and her sisters to care for Katenka if anything happens to her. Komarovskii arrives and comes to see them. He proposes taking Lara over the border. Yurii tells Lara he saw her with Komarovskii once. They leave for Varykino. The shed the Zhivagos lived in was in too much disarray. They move into the main house. Someone has been living there but they aren't there anymore. Yurii works and writes. Lara nearly losses her mind worrying. She's afraid to be out in the wintry country alone. She hears what she thinks are dogs howling, but Yurii knows their wolves and sees them around the house. They get ready to leave a few times, but Lara changes her mind each time. Finally Komarovskii shows up after one failed attempt to leave. He tells Lara he can get them all across the border. Yurii refuses to go with him (apparently just because he has something against Komarovskii...his father's death and Lara's fall...). Then Komarovskii has a private conversation with Yurii, telling him Strel'nikov has been executed. If Lara and Katenka are found they will be ruined. He convinces Yurii to pretend that he will join them later. They leave, Yurii tries to call Lara back but she doesn't hear him. Samdeviatov comes to retrieve the horse he lent Yurii. Yurii is left entirely alone. He hears a shot and sees a flash in the gorge at night. He thinks its like a dragon. The next day he comes in to find Antipov in the house. He's the one that's been living there. Yurii and he talk about Lara. In the morning Antipov is gone. When Yurii goes outside he finds the body. Strel'nikov has shot himself. Blood is sprinkled across the white snow bank like Rowan berries covers in frost. (Candied Rowan berries) Part 15: Conclusion: The final 8 or 10 years of Zhivago's life: He returns to Moscow by foot, arriving in the spring of 1922. He meets Vasia Brykin, the political prisoner who escaped from the train. He avoided being killed when his village, Vereteniki, was wiped out by hiding in a millstone mine. When they get to Moscow they work together to publish various pamphlets. After they have a falling out, Yurii works as a janitor in the building Antipov grew up in. The Gromeko's former servant, Markel Schapov, and his family live there. Yurii meets Markel's daughter Marina, who becomes his third wife. (The Romance in 12 buckets). They have 2 daughters, Klavdiia and Kapitolina. Zhivago clashes heads with Gordon and Dudorov. Dudorov has just gotten back from political exile and hard labor. Dudorov claims he's been reformed and politically and personally refined by the ordeal. This assertion makes Yurii sick. One day Zhivago just disappears, leaving a note behind, saying not to look for him. He gets a job at a hospital. He takes a trolley to work. It keeps breaking down and stopping. He sees a woman in violet cross and re-cross the trolley's path. He thinks about the way people's lives are intertwined. He has an attack and runs off the trolley. He dies on the street. Two mysterious people seem to run the funeral. One is Yurii's half brother. The other is Lara. She wandered into the wake because she wanted to see Antipov's old apartment and finds Yurii's corpse. After the funeral, she helps Evgraf organize Yurii's papers and poems. Evgraf informs Lara that Antipov was not executed, but shot himself. She asks Evgraf about whether or not there is a register of parentless children. She wants to find someone. One day she goes out and doesn't come back. She's been arrested and is sent to a labor camp, where she perishes. Part 16: Epilogue: Now the Second World War is in progress. Dudorov has returned from a second exile. Evgraf is a general. Dudorov was engaged to a certain Christina Orletsova, who died heroically blowing up a German fortification. (Vasia had told a story in the previous chapter about a little girl, whose father, Orletsov, had been arrested, who became a more avid Bolshevik even as a child to remove the stain of his guilt) They are in the town of Karachev. The laundry girl, Tania Bezocheredeva, has been interviewed by Evgraf, who wants to record Christina's history. Tania tells Gordon and Dudorov that the Major-General Zhivago wants to interview her again and pay for her living expenses and education. She tells a story about her youth and being separated from her mother. A foster mother locks her own crippled son in the basement with a bandit and lets him be killed. Tania runs for help and stops a train. She leaves with the train, a Red Army convoy. They all realize she must be Lara's daughter, separated from her mother by Komarovskii and conclude that Evgraf will look after her. Her speech is very crude and her attitude boisterous. She doesn't think she's anything special, but they are all in wonderment of her, because they know her parents and origin. Five or ten years latter: Dudorov and Gordon are hanging out at dusk and looking over the book of Yurii Andreievich's poetry that Evgraf had put together and published. They reflect on the significance of the poetry and how well it reflects Russia's brilliant future. Part 17: The Poems of Doctor Zhivago. Dealt with in another document. Places/Time: -Moscow in 1905. The excitement of the revolution among the young folk. -Moscow in 1917: Lack of food and wood for stoves. October Revolution flares up. Now it is met with less enthusiasm and excitement than the 1905 one, except by Misha Gordon, who is an enthusiastic Bolshevik. -Moscow after the Civil War: -Duplianka, a special, bucolic place where many of the main characters lived during their youth. Meliuzeevo, summer of 1917: Town along the front. Very politicized. Different factions moving in and out of power. Seems that no one knows who is in charge (probably because no one is), but political disputes lead to violence. Iuriatin: -Varykino: -With the Forest Brotherhood during the Civil War. -The highways. Pass through abandoned and ruined towns. -The railroad lines...littered with trains that were abandoned. Some of them toppled off to the side. This image of miles and miles of abandoned trains deeply affects Yurii. The cars act as a barrier reef for all sorts: from bandits to runaways and the homeless. Literary and Historical References: -Some events reminiscent of Tolstoy and Chekhov: Anna Ivanovna falling mortally ill after trying to move furniture. The melon that Komarovskii gives Lara. Lara herself shares some similarities with Natalia Filipovna, the ruined woman. However Lara tries to physically harm Komarovskii, while N.F only tried to ruin Tomskii's reputation. Additionally, Lara does marry the man devoted to her, after trying to refuse. -Pugachev revolt. Yurii Andreievich studies the history of the revolt in the area when he and Tonia first move to Varykino. He writes pamphlets on the topic after he moves back to Moscow after the Civil War. Themes/Imagery: -poetry, creativity -Christianity -Christian understanding of historic time -The Rowan tree -Nature as cyclical. Life as cyclical. -Mimicry -The embodiment of eras/ages in people and their personal lives. National upheaval linked with personal upheaval. The person of Lara seems to be the perfect embodiment of the times that they have lives through (according to Zhivago's reflections on the matter. Personally I'm not sure how this woman is any more tied into events she didn't personally take part in than everyone else in the country who was affected. Plus, she unlike so many others does not seem to lose touch with the equanimity of identity....) Style and Structure: Novel. Third person narrator. Omniscient though generally focuses on visual/observable aspects. -Poetry at the end: Both Zhivago's legacy and a clearer insight into his thoughts and philosophy which are somewhat obscure throughout the book (especially given how closely Antipov and others are psychologically analyzed) In my opinion, after Zhivago's poetry has been built up for the entire novel, they fall short of the mark. It is interesting to find certain lines and images which arise from his own life. However, most references are (for me) lost in biblical parables/allegory. What is most noticeable is that the images and events that seem most striking and poetic in the course of the novel and Zhivago's "biography" are not blatant in the poetry. Where are the sugared Rowan berries? Is this too prosaic or saccharine for poetry?? Are these discrepancies/missing bits a commentary on the nature of art and life and the ability or the artist to create something lifelike??? Quotes: Further Reading: Further inquires: -Poetry at the end: Both Zhivago's legacy and a clearer insight into his thoughts and philosophy which are somewhat obscure throughout the book (especially given how closely Antipov and others are psychologically analyzed) In my opinion, after Zhivago's poetry has been built up for the entire novel, they fall short of the mark. It is interesting to find certain lines and images which arise from his own life. However, most references are (for me) lost in biblical parables/allegory. What is most noticeable is that the images and events that seem most striking and poetic in the course of the novel and Zhivago's "biography" are not blatant in the poetry. Where are the sugared Rowan berries? Is this too prosaic or saccharine for poetry?? Are these discrepancies/missing bits a commentary on the nature of art and life and the ability or the artist to create something lifelike??? Maybe look into Schlegel's theories and Romantic Irony. What exactly is Romantic Irony? Was it something that influenced Pasternak? Why is the poetry so abstract compared to prose? maybe that's a dumb question. However, it might gain importance if one examines how Pasternak thought of prose and poetry, the sublimation of the prosaic in poetry and the way prose uses poetry. (All this may be my own personal biases speaking...) -Do Rowan trees and berries have a folk connection with death or violence in Russian folklore??? Oh...what about Ovid's metamorphosis??? The separated lovers???? -Is the ending actually positive? The narrator lets Gordon and Dudorov play with such speculations about the promise of Russia's paradisiacal future. However, they were not presented as positive or discerning characters

Viktor Pelevin

Born November 22 1962 in Moscow, Pelevin has written thirteen novels and numerous short stories, many of which are considered classics of the Post-Soviet period. His stories include digressions into zen buddism and shifts in time. Often we encounter two time periods in opposition to each other re Buddha's Little Finger. He is an elusive literary figure who rarely if ever grants interviews. Intimations of Dost, Nabokov and Gogol can be seen in his work along with the music of pink Floyd. For more, see my notes I sent out on him

Stiva Oblonsky

Character in Anna Karenina: He is an ordinary man. He is not overly talented or hardworking, however, he is very likeable. He has a good position and salary. He is repeatedly described as honest. He is not very loyal, but that is part of why he is likeable. He is always able to be on the side of the acquaintance he is talking to and thus becomes friends with whomever he is addressing. He has had multiple affairs. Getting caught does not inspire remorse, but only annoyance. Politically, he is liberal, but only espouses "established" liberal views. The narrator does note that he is truly liberal in his treatment of people. He seems to make women into a science. He keeps discovering new "types" such as the sacrificing type and the "Ossianic" type. He is horrible with money. He would prefer Petersburg to Moscow. It turns out he doesn't value his marriage or children. They are just a hindrance. He wouldn't mind going into debt, just so he could live extravagantly (like much of the aristocracy does

background to Dost underground man

Dostoevsky is copying a novel from the year before ( bumping into the guy) its originally from Cherneskvysy chto delate and he walks right in to him to show him hes just the same, in cherneshevksy. Cities are problematic b/c cities don't have more poor people but no clear rules for how you should interact and the sidewalk is the perfect place for this b/c there are no rules for sidewalks Rich guy is like oh he'll get out of my way b/c I'm rich but the other guy is like ..etc. The poor need to to run the industrial revolution But French revolution " they could kill us " we've been oppressed for years ( re the poor oops this is dangerous). So your hometown in the city has a new thing you have never seen, like a slum. Phonebooks start at this time as do travel books. So the travel books are a guide to this.

what did Dost say about Egyptian Nights?

Dostoevsky's' reading of the end of Egyptian nights = this is what people would be like like Cleopatra if we did not have Jesus. But she's Cleopatra so the feeling dies out in her heart and she goes on with her blood thirsty way. Realism is fascinated with the poor vs Romanticism was all about the extraordinary individual like Cleopatra, Pechorin Napoleon and more so the aristocrat than the poor. "One poor person is like all of them" " the rich are all the same too" (depends on who is saying it.) Dostoevsky disagrees with this b/c we all have free will.

Eugene Onegin what is the rhyme pattern and synopsis etc

Eugene Onegin (Yevgeny Onegin, 1823-1831, first complete edition in 1833) Pushkin's most unique work, a "novel in verse," first appeared serially. Written in highly structured manner with iambic tetrameter and a strict rhyme pattern ("aBaBccDDeFFeGG," known as Onegin stanza),. The novel introduces many characters that are later found in most Russian novels such as the first superfluous man (Eugene Onegin). Tatyana is a healthy, young woman who does not fear falling in love and takes her love ideals from books and not real life. She is strong and vital but unable to find a man similar to her. The main character is technically the narrator, who makes witty comments about Russian upper-class society, art and relationships. Eugene inherits his uncle's estate, striking up a friendship with the poet Lensky. One day they go to have dinner with Olga Larina, whose bookish daughter, Tatyana, falls in love with Eugene, writing him a letter to profess this (contrary to what would have been considered proper for a girl during this time, though found in French novels, another symbol). Eugene does not reply. When they meet next he denies her again when she approaches him directly. When invited by Lensky to Tatyana's nameday celebration, unaware of what it is, Eugene does not know he is expected to appear as her "suitor" and instead flirts with Olga. Lensky leaves in a rage and challenges Eugene to a duel the next day, he obliges, kills him and then flees. Tatyana visits his empty mansion, and through a series of texts she finds there, reading through the margin notes, she finds he is a collage of literary heroes and determines there is no real Eugene Onegin. She is then taken to Moscow, where she is entered into society. When Eugene visits her again, he does not recognize her. He tries to win her affection even though she is married, using a letter as she one did, reversing their roles. She does not reply and when he approaches her directly she rejects him as he once rejected her.

Sandro iz Chegema

Fazil Iskande wrote this: This is the story of the comic adventures of Uncle Sandro ranges from the 1880s to the 1960s and satirizes life in a small village under Soviet domination. Originally published in 1973

Grigorovich re organ grinders

Grigorovich is separated from the story from the actors e.g. when he goes into a long digression about the history of the organ grinder. There are no conversations of him with the organ grinders but, in reality he did talk to them so he edited out all the conversations with them. When you do this, you would understand if you are getting biased answers = objectification of the narrator. As in object = oh you are this or that part of the social matrix. Is there social determinism at work in the story? Yes of course there is social determinism so we can presume something about him, the narrator, in that he is removed from the poor. When the narrator's questions are filtered out we can't second guess him and we can't treat him like an object, we don't know his methods and we can't dehumanize him so the poor become objects which de humanizes them. So the authors identity is all under his control and no de-humanized. Dostoevsky railed against this.

Ostap Bender

He is a fictional con man who appeared in the novels The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf written by Soviet authors Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov.The novels are examples of a picaresque novel genre, which was virtually non-existent in Russian literature, with some exceptions. The Picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish hero/heroine of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire. This style of novel originated in 16th-century Spain and flourished throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It continues to influence modern literature. Bender is an extremely attractive, resourceful crook, full of energy while operating within the law ("Bender knew 400 relatively legal ways to make population part with their money."); his description as "The Great Combinator" became a catch phrase in the Russian language. His exploits have been enjoyed by readers throughout the Soviet times and in modern Russia. In post-Soviet times Bender's character was elevated from the status of a con man to that of an entrepreneur. His statues may be found in several cities, and a commemorative plaque was set in Odessa, the city of his birth

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (/ˈbɔːlzæk, ˈbæl-/;[2] French: [ɔ.nɔ.ʁe d(ə) bal.zak], born Honoré Balzac,[1] 20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature.[3] He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities The novel sequence La Comédie Humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. . His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Jack Kerouac, Akira Kurosawa and Henry James, as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers.

Anna Bunina

January 7, 1774 in the Urusov Village of the Ryazhsk District of the Ryazan Province. She belonged to an old noble family, which later gave birth to the Ivan Bunin. She was the first woman poet to make a living writing poetry. She was influenced by the poet Shishkov. Recall the poem we read for Golden Age: Ей Же where she is like, "I will give you a simple lesson: don't be self-reliant or brave and from a young age (referring to women) be submissive. To us this is horrifying, perhaps yet hopefully! , yet in her day it was telling of the time. She received gifts of money from enough patrons, eventually including a pensionfrom tsar Aleksandr I, to devote herself to writing full-time. Bunina's poetry is often Neoclassical in form and content, devoted to narration of events from Russian history or Classical mythology; some of her works clearly present an individual voice and bridge the gap between the life of this unusual figure and the literary movements in which she participated

re Nekrasvo Petersburg corners

Nekrasov story: the narrator never says he's disgusted, he lists things, the mud was really bad....the woman spits on him he falls, etc etc but he never reacts at all. So since he does not tell us his emotions, makes him a mysterious figure. We don't know why he is there, we never find out. So his reaction is nothing the woman is yelling at him, spitting all over him...this is the narrator of realism the 3rd person omniscient narrator being born (was to some extent in Egyptian nights). So who is he? He pays incredibly close attention to details and he in not reacting to it which means that the details prove that it's an intellectual enterprise so he's like not describing a room he is used to b/c, of the details. If you were used to it there would be less detail. So the narrator is like assaulted by all the yuck and takes it as a spiritual/ scientific enterprise so we get a feel for the images. He is defined by the shape of his mind: we know him by what he notices, what he cares about, what he reacts to, and all of this is supposed to be about "caring for the poor" so this is BS and Dostoevsky was right. He also defines words which also proves he's not "poor".

Chevengur

Novel by Andrei Platonov 1978 Chevengur is a massive series of satirical scenes from Soviet life during the New Economic Policy instituted by Lenin in the 1920s, the story of the efforts of provincial builders of Communism, but in their grotesque Utopia, Cheka murders are the only thing efficiently organized

Lenskii

Onegin's rival

Define Plot as it relates to various schools and what is it?

Plot is things that make us care about the characters. Romanticism= yes pls as much at possible. Naturalism= just enough plot / almost none. Plot is something we are uncomfortable with in realism.

Tales of Belkin

Povesti Belkina (1831; The Tales of Belkin) represents Pushkin's major contribution to the short story form. The volume consists of five tales—"The Shot," "The Snowstorm," "The Stationmaster," "The Undertaker," and "Mistress into Maid" (or "The Lady Turned Peasant")—all of them framed by the commentary of a fictitious editor, Ivan Petrovich Belkin. The austere prose of this work, bereft of poetic embellishment, moves rapidly and with little psychological commentary

Domik v Kolomne

Pushkin's narrative poem of 1833, is connected with the shift in the poet's poetics from his early period to the post-1830s. In his article "Put´ Pushkina k proze," Boris Eikhenbaum describes some features of this shift, especially Pushkin's own and other contemporary writers' changed attitudes toward lyric poetry and their awakening interest in developing a Russian literary language that could be used in fictional prose genres. This poem presupposes an idea of the Romantic poet consciously cultivated by Pushkin. This image was produced by Pushkin starting in his earliest works and was fostered by a conventional relationship between author and reader. In such works as Bakhchisaraiskii fontan, Tsygany, and Pushkin's early lyric poetry readers expected to be provided with semantically rich biographical allusions that provided the key to the poem's meaning. Therefore, readers were equipped with a pre-existing awareness of the poet's literary oeuvre, gossip about the poet, and aspects of his "real"—as opposed to "fictional"—biography. ] In this paradigm the poet generates meaning by juxtaposing the meanings in the text with references to other texts and material from life experience he shares with readers. In fact, according to Iurii Lotman, at least until the mid-1820s readers explicated Pushkin's lyric poems by seeking biographical information from the poet's private letters. Although Pushkin extensively explored other genres besides lyric poetry during the second half of the 1820s, he did not fully repudiate the author-reader relationship cultivated earlier. According to D. Blagoi, Pushkin's concern with reader expectations was apparently so strong that even in 1828 he added the lyric "Dedication" to "Poltava" in order to give readers a biographical subtext for the poem. Source: Pushkin Review

How does realism relate to the poor?

Realism is fascinated with the poor vs Romanticism was all about the extraordinary individual like Cleopatra, Pechorin Napoleon and more so the aristocrat than the poor.

Зинаида Гиппиус

Russian Symbolist poet, 1869- 1945 married to Merezhekovsky was a Russian poet, playwright, novelist, editor and religious thinker, one of the major figures in Russian symbolism.[1][2] The story of her marriage to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, which lasted 52 years she was devastated when he died. Gippius treated her poetry differently, as something utterly intimate, calling her verses 'personal prayers'. Dealing with the darker side of the human soul and exploring sexual ambiguity and narcissism, many of those 'prayers' were considered blasphemous at the time.[5][10] Detractors called Gippius a 'demoness', the 'queen of duality', and a 'decadent Madonna'. Enjoying the notoriety, she exploited her androgynous image, used male clothes and pseudonyms, shocked her guests with insults ('to watch their reaction', as she once explained to Nadezhda Teffi), and for a decade remained the Russian symbol of 'sexual liberation', holding high what she in one of her diary entries termed as the 'cross of sensuality'. In 1901 all this transformed into the ideology of the "New Church" of which she was the instigator.[12]

Grigorovich/ Organ grinders

So like Grigorovich: all Italians are the same human being ....so Grigorovich is like " I'm going to write a report on the poor, society does not know the poor so I'm doing everyone a favor ( so like amateur sociologist ) plot introduces a bias b/c the details of the narrative will sway you one way or the other so, details explained and real life has not much that's great its boring. Plot is a distortion of reality in some ways. Romanism loves plot. E.g. Pechorin (less plot in him) b/c there is so much plot in Pechorin so life and death situations: that's plot! Yes! Got that right. in Pechorins life, so its not just action. Plot= good and bad. Everything is either great or terrible there is no waste: broken hearted, someone is dying, weeping about to be killed....thats a romantic plot that's Pechorins world.

What authors' works are representative of what Russian critics have called "chernuka"? What does this term refer to in the context of contemporary Russian literature

Source Seth Graham article above: Chernukha: Grotesque and sensational images of contemporary Russian life. Chernukha - with the root chern- black suggests it contemporary definition as representational art that emphasize the darkest bleakest aspects of human life- came into common usage during perestroika. Initially it was applied mostly to literature in particular to the drama and prose of Lyudmila Petrushevkaya, but since 1988 cultural commentators have used the term primarily in reference to cinema, both feature and documentary. Customary devices of cinematic Chernukha are not lacking and concur on the basics: typical settings are dirty and or crowded apartments often with pets depicted in proximity to exposed food, littered courtyards populated by feral dogs or cats urban streets at night, beer bars or liquor stores, police stations or prisons and hospitals. Characters live in either urban isolation or other members of truncated (motherless, fatherless or childless) families. Alcoholism and or drug addiction is de riguer as is general atmosphere of cruelty: physical violence is frequent , unpredictable shouting and arguments. Bodies are commonly deformed by illness or injury before the narration begins or during it. Sex is most often represented like rape though rarely acknowledging it in such a narrative. Female nudity is common and offer a precursor to a rape scene. of central importance to all of this is emphasis on physicality and naturalism.

Крейцерова соната

The Kreutzer Sonata (Russian: Крейцерова соната, Kreitzerova Sonata) is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, named after Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. The novella was published in 1889, and was promptly censored by the Russian authorities. The work is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage. The main character, Pozdnyshev, relates the events leading up to his killing his wife; in his analysis, the root cause for the deed were the "animal excesses" and "swinish connection" governing the relation between the sexes. summary: During a train ride, Pozdnyshev overhears a conversation concerning marriage, divorce and love. When a woman argues that marriage should not be arranged but based on true love, he asks "what is love?" and points out that, if understood as an exclusive preference for one person, it often passes quickly. Convention dictates that two married people stay together, and initial love can quickly turn into hatred. He then relates how he used to visit prostitutes when he was young, and complains that women's dresses are designed to arouse men's desires. He further states that women will never enjoy equal rights to men as long as men view them as objects of desire, yet describes their situation as a form of power over men, mentioning how much of society is geared towards their pleasure and well-being and how much sway they have over men's actions. After he meets and marries his wife, periods of passionate love and vicious fights alternate. She bears five children, and then receives contraceptives: "The last excuse for our swinish life -- children -- was then taken away, and life became viler than ever." His wife takes a liking to a violinist, Troukhatchevsky, and the two perform Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata (Sonata No. 9 in A Major for piano and violin, Op. 47) together. Pozdnyshev complains that some music is powerful enough to change one's internal state to a foreign one. He hides his raging jealousy and goes on a trip, returns early, finds Troukhatchevsky and his wife together and kills his wife with a dagger. The violinist escapes: "I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible." Later acquitted of murder in light of his wife's apparent adultery, Pozdnyshev rides the trains seeking forgiveness from fellow passengers.

Zhdanovshchina

The Zhdanov Doctrine (also called zhdanovism or zhdanovshchina/ (доктрина Жданова, ждановизм, ждановщина) was a Soviet cultural doctrine developed by Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. It was the Cultural policy of the soviet union during the cold war period following WWII. It was calling for stricter government control of art and promoting an extreme anti-Western bias. Originally applied to literature, it soon spread to other arts and gradually affected all spheres of intellectual activity in the Soviet Union, including philosophy, biology, medicine, and other sciences. It was initiated by a resolution (1946) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that was formulated by the party secretary and cultural boss Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov. It was directed against two literary magazines, Zvezda and Leningrad, which had published supposedly apolitical, bourgeois, individualistic works of the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova, who were expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. The union itself underwent reorganization, but the aims of the resolution were more far-reaching: to free Soviet culture from "servility before the West".

Irony

The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result. A literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character

Kniazhna Meri / Princess Mary

The longest novella in Hero of Our Time: written in 1839 published 1840 revised in 1841 by Lermontov. Pechorin flirts with the Princess of the title, while conducting an affair with his ex-lover Vera, and kills his friend Grushnitsky (of whom he is secretly contemptuous) in a duel in which the participants stand in turn on the edge of a cliff so that the loser's death can be explained as an accidental fall. Eventually he rejects one woman only to be abandoned by the other

Otets Sergeii

The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I. The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk. Many years of humility and doubt follow. He is ordered to become a hermit. Despite his being removed from the world, he is still remembered for having so remarkably transformed his life. One winter night, a group of merry-makers decide to visit him, and one of them, a divorced woman named Makovkina, spends the night in his cell, with the intention to seduce him. Father Sergius discovers he is still weak and in order to protect himself, cuts off his own finger. Makovkina is stunned by this act, and leaves the next morning, having vowed to change her life. A year later she has joined a convent. Father Sergius' reputation for holiness grows. He becomes known as a healer, and pilgrims come from far and wide. Yet Father Sergius is profoundly aware of his inability to attain a true faith. He is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust. He fails a new test, when the young daughter of a merchant successfully beds him. The morning after, he leaves the monastery and seeks out his cousin Pashenka (Praskovya Mikhaylovna), whom he, with a group of other boys, had tormented many years ago. He finds her, now in all the conventional senses a failure in life, yet imbued with a sense of service towards her family. His path is now clearer. He begins to wander, until eight months later he is arrested in the company of a blind beggar who makes him feel closer to God. He is sent to Siberia, where he now works as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant, teaching the gentleman's young children and working in the gardens.

Dal

Wrote a Russian Dictionary: his magnum opus, Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language, was published in four huge volumes in 1863-1866. T While studying at Cambridge, Vladimir Nabokov bought a copy of Dal's dictionary and read at least ten pages every evening, "jotting down such words and expressions as might especially please me"; Alexander Solzhenitsyn took a volume of Dal with him as his only book when he was sent to the prison camp at Ekibastuz.[3] The encompassing nature of Dal's dictionary gives it critical linguistic importance even today, especially because a large proportion of the dialectal vocabulary he collected has since passed out of use. The dictionary served as a base for Vasmer's Etymological dictionary of the Russian language, the most comprehensive Slavic etymological lexicon.

Serapion Brothers

Zoshchenko and Zamyatin to mention a few: Serapion Brothers, Russian Serapionovy Bratya, group of young Russian writers formed in 1921 under the unsettled conditions of the early Soviet regime. Though they had no specific program, they were united in their belief that a work of art must stand on its own intrinsic merits, that all aspects of life or fantasy were suitable subjects, and that experiments in a variety of styles were desirable. The writers were admirers of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the German Romantic storyteller who wrote a series of exotic tales supposedly exchanged by a group gathered around a hermit, Serapion. Consequently, the Brothers adopted this name as indicative of their interest in the art of storytelling. Though they could not entirely eliminate social themes from their work, the Serapion Brothers introduced to them a fresh use of intricate plots, surprise endings, and techniques of mystery and suspense. They regarded much of the escapist literature of the West, such as the romantic adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rider Haggard, as superior in technical artistry to traditional Russian realism. The Serapion Brothers met in the House of Arts, a cultural institute established in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) by Maksim Gorky. They learned their craft in the literary workshop of the innovative elder writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. The members, most of whom were in their early 20s, included Mikhail Zoshchenko, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin, Konstantin Fedin, Lev Lunts, Nikolay Nikitin, Nikolay Tikhonov, Vladimir Pozner, Mikhail Slonimsky, and Viktor Shklovsky. Their influence extended beyond their nuclear group and affected most of the other writers who remained aloof from political orthodoxy and dominated the literary scene in the early Soviet period.

Evgenii Baratynskii

a golden age poet ( golden age reached its height in the 1820's) was lauded by Alexander Pushkin as the finest Russian elegiac poet. After a long period when his reputation was on the wane, Baratynsky was rediscovered by Russian poets of the symbolist era as a supreme poet of thought. His style embodies elements of both Classicism and Romanticism and his poetry treats such themes as the role of the poet, disillusionment, the relationship between man and nature and the rise of industrialization. In the minds of his contemporaries, Baratynsky was a poet-philosopher, who expressed in his art the spiritual drama of the generation that felt the inexorable heavy tread of the "Iron Age." He is also best known for his sensitive elegies dealing with loss and despair and for the personal, revelatory tone of his love poems. Baratynsky was rediscovered by Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky as a supreme poet of thought.

Village Prose Деревенская проза, or Деревенская литература)

a movement in Soviet literature beginning during the Khrushchev Thaw, which included works that focused on the Soviet rural communities. Some point to the critical essays on collectivization in Novyi mir by Valentin Ovechkin as the starting point of Village Prose, though most of the subsequent works associated with the genre are fictional novels and short stories.[2] Authors associated with Village Prose include Aleksander Yashin, Vasily Belov,[3] Fyodor Abramov, Valentin Rasputin, Boris Mozhayev, Vasily Shukshin. Some critics also count Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among the Village Prose writers for his short novel Matryona's House Many Village Prose works espoused an idealized picture of traditional Russian village life and became increasingly associated with Russian nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s. Some have argued that the nationalist subtext of Village Prose is the reason the Soviet government remained supportive of Village Prose writers like Valentin Rasputin (who became a member of the Writers' Union) during the Time of Stagnation, even while they began to more heavily censor other dissenting movements, like Youth and Urban Prose. 1. Source: 1992 a book by Kathleen F. Parthé, Russian Village Prose, The Radiant Past: from the 1950s to the decline of the movement in the 1970s, Valentin Rasputin, Fedor Abramov, and other writers drew on "luminous" memories of their rural childhoods to evoke a thousand-year-old pattern of life that was disappearing as they wrote. In their lyrical descriptions of a vanishing world, they expressed nostalgia for Russia's past and fears for the nation's future; they opposed collectivized agriculture, and fought to preserve traditional art and architecture and to protect the environment. Assessing the place of Village Prose in the newly revised canon of twentieth-century Russian literature, Parth maintains that these writers consciously ignored and undermined Socialist Realism, and created the most aesthetically coherent and ideologically important body of published writings to appear in the Soviet Union between Stalin's death and Gorbachev's ascendancy. In the 1970s, Village Prose was seen as moderately nationalist and conservative in spirit. After 1985, however, statements by several of its practitioners caused the movement to be reread as a possible stimulus for chauvinistic, anti-Semitic groups like Pamyat.

Egyptian nights

a. In 1835 we are deep into Pushkin's non-poetry writing phase in Egyptian Nights: the last work that Pushkin did. In Egyptian nights every word matters and is carefully chosen akin to a mise en ambyme ad infinitum almost. Dostoevsky claimed that Egyptian nights was "the most perfect work, ever'. Pushkin was already famous as a teenager and lived in the hey-day of Russian poetry, then he moved into prose realism, b/c poetry was out of style/fashion in by the 1830's. In the 1830's writers of journals are beginning to get paid. Before this, like 1828 poetry was "clickish' undertaking of writing poetry as in its you and your yearbook friends a very small group.1811-1848

troika, semerka, tuz

from Pushkins' Pikovaia Dama these are the words that Herman continually mutters in the insane asylum: three, seven ace! which are numbers with intimations of the supernatural. The dead countess ghost, the 87-year-old woman whom he frightens to death when trying to get the secret to wining cards, visits him in a dream after she is dead the next day in which she reveals the secret formula. He tries it and it works for the first two cards, but on the third card he uses a queen which is the wrong card. Herman believes that she has wreaked revenge on him. Source: Pushkin and the genres of madness: the masterpieces of 1833

Stavrogin

from the Dostoevsky Novel Demons or Бесыi 1871-72, an "onslaught" on the danger of nilhism. is the central character of the novel but a highly ambiguous figure and often an observer or secondary participant in the novel's key events compared to the younger Verkhovensky, who drives much of the action and repeatedly attempts to involve Stavrogin in his schemes with limited success. Demons is an allegory of the potentially catastrophic consequences of the political and moral nihilism that were becoming prevalent in Russia in the 1860s. A fictional town descends into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky. The mysterious aristocratic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin—Verkhovensky's counterpart in the moral sphere—dominates the book, exercising an extraordinary influence over the hearts and minds of almost all the other characters. The idealistic, western-influenced generation of the 1840s, epitomized in the character of Stepan Verkhovensky (who is both Pyotr Verkhovensky's father and Nikolai Stavrogin's childhood teacher), are presented as the unconscious progenitors and helpless accomplices of the 'demonic' forces that take possession of the town.

Aiia Sofiia

holy wisdom" or sancta sophia in Latin, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), then a mosque, now a museum. For over 900 years, Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom" in Greek), built in 537, was Christendom's most important church, but when Constantinople (as Istanbul was then called) fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it became a mosque, and for nearly 500 years, it ranked among the Ottoman Empire's grandest places of worship. In 1935, the founders of Turkey's secular republic transformed Hagia Sophia into a museum. The iconic building continues to carry important political significance. İştar Gözaydin, a professor of law and politics at Doğuş University, an expert on the relationship between the state and religion, noted, "The Islamists always aspired for it to be a mosque", whilst Turkish secularists want it to remain "a neutral place", and Christians see it as a church

Social matrix =

how you relate in society e.g. Anna is a mother, a woman, the child is spoiled, connections all of these connections define who you are, it's not just about what's in your heart but its how people treat you and how you treat them. E.g. someone behaves badly b/c someone behave badly toward them = social matrix.

Deti Arbata

is a novel by Anatoly Rybakov originally published in 1987 that recounts the era in the Soviet Union of the build-up to the Congress of the Victors, the early years of the second Five Year Plan and the (supposed) circumstances of the murder of Sergey Kirov prior to the beginning of the Great Purge. It is the first book of the tetralogy, followed by the books 1935 and Other Years (Russian: Тридцать пятый и другие годы, 1989), Fear (Russian: Страх) and Dust and Ashes (Russian: Прах и пепел). Principally told through the story of the fictional Sasha Pankratov, a sincere and loyal Komsomol member who is exiled as a result of party intrigues, the novel is semi-autobiographical - Rybakov too was exiled in the early 1930s. The book recounts the growing hysteria of the period where simple mistakes or humour were seen as examples of sabotage or acts of wreckers. In effect the book exposes how, despite the honest intentions of Pankratov and older Bolsheviks like Kirov, Stalinism is destroying all their hopes. The novel is also notable for its portrayal of Joseph Stalin as a scheming and paranoid figure.

Чацкий -

main character of Woe from Wit author is Griboyedov 1823 Woe from Wit (Russian: Горе от ума, also translated as "The Woes of Wit", "Wit Works Woe", and so forth) is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy in verse, satirizing the society of post-Napoleonic Moscow, or, as a high official in the play styled it, "a pasquinade on Moscow." The play, written in 1823 in the countryside and in Tiflis, was not passed by the censorship for the stage, and only portions of it were allowed to appear in an almanac for 1825. But it was read out by the author to "all Moscow" and to "all Petersburg" and circulated in innumerable copies, so it was as good as published in 1825; it was not, however, actually published until 1833, after the author's death, with significant cuts, and was not published in full until 186

Ozhegov

re wrote a Russian Dictionary: Ozhegov was not without his detractors, especially among Russian émigrés. Vladimir Nabokov, for instance, compared his dictionary with that of Vladimir Dahl unfavorably and, in his novel Ada or Ardor, even called it "moronic" In 1935-1940, Ozhegov ( who was a Russian lexicographer) contributed to Dmitry Ushakov's four-volume explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. His main piece of work, the Dictionary and Culture of Russian Speech ("Словарь и культура русской речи"), as updated and corrected by Natalia Shvedova, is the most widely used reference for the Russian language today. Ozhegov was not without his detractors, especially among Russian émigrés. Vladimir Nabokov, for instance, compared his dictionary with that of Vladimir Dahl unfavorably and, in his novel Ada or Ardor, even called it "moronic".

re realism definition two:

that realism is an illusion of a subtler kind it is defined above all not as an objective depictions, which is not possible, but rather the lack of marked elements of other schools. Plot is a great example by "lack of things' . so realism is taking as much of plot and making it disappear without losing it completely. But in a story like "Poor Liza", could it have happened, yes (in real life), yet in the literary sense is it realist? Not in the literary sense, b/c the narrator himself is involved and lamenting and is like " for peasant women too know how to love" that is what ruins it, its there are marked elelments of another school and those are narrative intrusion. So in realism we have a narraotre who is an obseriving machine ...his view does not come across. no b/c, re Tolstoy's "devil" Tolstoy had a real peasant lover. Errrr realist= could it have happened, plot, we think of plot we think of the events could it have hapend but plot isa bad tool b/c plot has to be in everything. Eg Bela in Hero of our time lover of another cutlrues happens al the time that gets killed so.....

Strashnaia mest'

this is the Russian for Nikolai Gogol's " A Terrible Vengeance" this Gothic horror story was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, in 1832, and it was probably written in late summer 1831. The appearance of evil spirits, and specifically of an Antichrist figure, in A Terrible Vengeance was typical of Gogol's belief in the omnipresence of Evil in everyday life, an aspect of his religious philosophy that is uniquely direct in this story. The overall construction of the story is typical of what would come to be called skaz, wherein characters are identified to a large degree by linguistic specificities of their manner of speech. Another particularity of the piece is frequent narratorial intrusion, such as asides to the reader or other violations of the narratorial frame

about pushkin

ushkin is considered by most critics the greatest and most influential Russian writer of the early nineteenth century. As many commentators have noted, Eugene Onegin's realistic presentation of scene and character provided the model for the modern Russian novel. In his prose, scholars observe, Pushkin rejected a stagnant literary tradition that counted fiction as an inferior genre; his ventures away from the sentimental fiction of the late eighteenth century thus signaled a new direction for Russian literature. Among his admirers, Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol singled out "The Stationmaster" as an early influence in their own work.

Poema

verse epic. This, is a narrative poem was the verse genre most widley practiced by Pushkin. It enjoyed -especially the heroic epic version of it- enormous popularity and prestige in 18th century Russia. However, at the beginning of the 19th century tastes changed. The neo-classical epic, as well as other sub-genres of the poema, ceased to thrill the reading public or attract the professional poets. Instead the lyrical romantic poema captured imaginations. re Terras: byrons easstern poems iflunced: 1.the sujet, is dominated by a single hero a stong, somber, romantic personality; his inner world and his his conflict with his environment is described. 2. the composition of such a verse epic is characterized by devices such as "things unsaid" ( nedoskazonost) inner monologues, fragmentariness, an aura of mystery. 3. the acton is set in some exotic country ( the east the south, a gypsy camp etc); sometimes the exotic function is taken over by moving the action over to the past. 4 the classical verse epic was written in alexandrines, the romantic poema gravitates toward the iambic tetrameter. Pushkin's so called souther poemy are built according to these parameters. Pushkins' 1821 prisoner of the caucuses, fountains of bakchisarai 1823 and the gypsies 1824 in which , however, the hero's historical determinants, his imbeddedness in the cultural and social problems of russian life in the 1820's are more pronounced than in Byron. Byrons childe Harold and the eastern poems swept Russia as they had swept western Europe before. The heroic epic, with its lofty subjects and matching stilted style, its conventional idealized heroes with whom the impersonal author has no emotional contact, its slow moving episodic narrative which throws not light on the faceless characters but merely serves to illustrate the unreal, almost mediaeval struggle between good and evil, between black and white, all this was replaced by a poema with a new content. a new subjective attitude of life and a new interest in man's inner conflicts and emotions. ( Source: 19th century Russian literature studies of the 10 writers 1976 edited by John Lister Illingworth Fenell )

Samizdat

was a key form of dissident activity across the soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official soviet censor was fraught with danger; as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself

re realism: Definition number one:

what is objective what is reality? Determining social reality needs an observer you inject viewpoint and bias it can't be helped. If you objectively depict reality it's pretty boring. Its only the human element t that makes plot and plot is still essential to realism. Eg realist Cinderella. The sad story of the meaningless-ness of life= if we looked at Cinderella as a realist story.

comedic play Woe From Wit (or, Горе от ума),

written between 1822 and 1823 by Pushkin's contemporary, Alexander Griboedov. Woe from Wit was written in rhyming, conversational verse, and during an age in which spoken Russian was so rarely used as to be rusty in just about anyone's mouth. In Mirsky's words, "He achieved two things which seem incompatible: a metallic strength of the verse and a fluency and natural ease of diction which would seem impossible outside the loosest conversation. Griboedov is the greatest master of Russian dialogue." Though fluency is hard to verify for a contemporary American speaker reading 1925 British verse, an impression was made, and many lines (see below) were more than memorable.

Krasnyi tsvetok

written by Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin 1855-1888 a gifted writer who managed to write almost 20 stories before committing suicide. Garshin entered Russian lit during an interval in which the great realist tradition was grinding to a halt and no dominant literary manner had stepped in to replace it. Garshin's work combines a sharp eye for detail and psychological exactitude with a penchant for allegory and anticipates symbolism. His stories tend to be more dramatically concentrated than the short story of the earlier realist period which was focused on the sketch. In "The Red Flower" a madhouse furnishes yet another metaphor of the world as a prison. More than any other work it crystalized Garshin's concern- the issue of evil. The madman of the story imagines that the worlds evil is contained in three poppies growing in the courtyard of his asylum. He plucks them one by one, hoping to purify existence by draining off its corruption into his own body. Despite its allegorical abstractions, the story is an extremely convincing study of madness. In the Dostoevskyian "night " 1880 suicide is entertained and rejected as another path to perfection a relative of Garshin Ahkmatova wanted to marry but he was having an affair w/ another woman so A.A said he refused to marry her b/c he was nuts, due to the family gene

what is the message in Death of ivan Illiach?

written shortly after his religious conversion in the late 1870's: Nabokov said in his lectures on rus lit that, : To quote Nabokov: "The Tolstoyan formula is: Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God's living light, then Ivan died into a new life - Life with a capital L."[5] "Death of ivan illiiach: there is only one story that matters: everyone is the same. And it sucks and its boring and everyone is basically the same, everyone wants to get married etc so we all must become Christian in his view. Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a woman whom he often finds too demanding, he works his way up to be a magistrate, thanks to the influence he has over a friend who has just been promoted, focusing more on his work as his family life becomes less tolerable Tolstoy is able to impart his philosophy that success, such as Ivan Ilyich's, comes at a great moral cost and if one decides to pay this cost, life will become hollow and insincere and therefore worse than death.[7]

Обломов

Ивана Александровича Гончарева 1959 Oblomov (Russian: Обломов; [ɐˈbloməf]) is the second novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Ilya Ilych Oblomov is the central character of the novel, portrayed as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature. Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed. In the first 50 pages, he manages only to move from his bed to a chair.[1] The book was considered[by whom?] a satire of Russian nobility whose social and economic function was increasingly questioned in mid-nineteenth century Russia. It has been said[by whom?] that no other novel has been used to describe the ever-so-elusive "Russian mentality" or "Russian soul" as frequently as Oblomov. ( wikipedia) Characters: Илья Ильич Обломов: In his mid-thirties. His natural position is lying down. He shows and experiences little emotion or turmoil. He does not deal with his own business and lives an almost entirely secluded life. Some people come to visit him. He does not read or study because apathy takes over much sooner than enthusiasm: "Охлаждение овладевало им ещё быстрее, нежели увлечение" (93). He has a very active imagination and spends his days imagining an elaborate and exciting inner-life. He constantly asks himself "Когда жить? Когда же жить?" He pities everyone else any form of activity. He's too apathetic to strive for anything. Even if he thinks something sounds nice, it is never worth the effort involved. He was spoiled by his parents (at the end of the dream sequence, the narrator implies that their protectiveness led directly to his lack of will and squeamishness). He left the government service, because he could not stand the stress that came along with displeasing one's superiors. There are signs that he's capable, but he's too stunted to try to do anything without being nudged by another person, such as Stolz or Ol'ga. Wants to return to childhood, where he's under the care of a mother. He seems to fall in love with Agas'ia primarily because she coddles him. Can't keep track of his own affairs and is easily swindled. Stolz seems to be his only protection. Throughout the novel he always puts Stolz off by agreeing to do things and travel later. By the end of the novel, he outright refuses to leave the apartment. This severs the tie between Oblomov and the Stolzes for good. Захар Trofimich: Oblomov's manservant. He has enormous sideburns and always looks at Oblomov sideways. Sometimes all Oblomov can see are his sideburns. He argues with his master. He's grouchy and lazy and blames Oblomov's being in the way for the disorder of the room. Most likely he has just been trained by his master's lack of energy/effort/caring and doesn't see the point in constantly cleaning. He asks whether he came up with certain things that Oblomov complains about (bedbugs, dust, etc.) He's older than 50. He steals and tells lies about his master, but he would instinctively a sacrifice his own life for his master. He is married to Anis'ia in the second part. She helps him with chores. He uses her as a buffer to prevent conflict between himself and Oblomov. However, he also resents her abilities. He realizes she is smarter than him, when she demonstrates how to carry a tray without dropping or breaking anything - one of the weaknesses he's known for. He cannot forgive her for being smarter than him (or demonstrating it) He becomes a beggar after Oblomov dies, but he still loves his barin. Anis'ia: The cook. Marries Zakhar after they move from the city apartment. She is competent. She and Agas'ia meld into a single being. Штольц, Андрей Швагович: The one person/friend Oblomov truly loves. He's off traveling currently. He and Oblomov grew up together. He's intelligent and loves to be informed about current affairs, the world, and science. When he was in the city, he tried to nudge Oblomov into reading and learning about different subjects. He is very much the opposite of Oblomov. He also has a lot of faith in Oblomov and invents the term Oblomovshchina. He returns to Petersburg and gets Oblomov to move. He convinces Oblomov that he must go abroad "now or never." Oblomov agrees, but Stolz leaves and goes abroad on his own, with the promise that Oblomov will join him. Stolz's history given at the beginning of the second part of the novel. Mother Russian, died when he was a child. His father German. Local teacher. Stolz was adventurous, but also sharp and intellectually very capable. He learned trade and useful skills from his father. Once he finished school his father sent him away. The peasants that gather around to watch to farewell are surprised at the lack of emotion shown by either father or son. A woman calls out to Stolz to bless him as a mother because he has no mother. He cries when she makes the sign of the cross over him. Ольга Сергеевна: A young woman, acquaintance of Shtol'ts. She becomes curious about Oblomov when Stoltz points him out. Olblomov falls in love with her. She matures quickly. She loves Oblomov herself, though she denies at first that she is in love with him. He thinks that her loving him is less than being in love with him, but she takes the opposite stance. She's an orphan, who is cared for by an aunt. Their relationship is very practical. Neither demands much from the other, but they also are not more generous to one another than decorum demands. Тарантьев, Михей Андреевич: One of Oblomov's regulars. He hangs around to get food and wine. He's grumpy, demanding, and unlikeable. Presumably intelligent, he's able to come up with ideas, however he is entirely incapable of caring anything out. He's never for a loss of words. He's rude to everyone. Xenophobic. He's a born bribe-taker. Agaf'ia Matveevna Pshchitsyna: turns out to be a fantastic landlady and house keeper. She's shy at first, but offers Oblomovs pies and coffee by sticking her arm into the room. He enjoys watching her work, especially from behind, where he can watch the movement of her round elbows. She falls in love with him eventually, though she's not self-reflective to realize it. She's totally devoted to him. At the end of the novel, she refuses to leave her house to join her son at the Stolz's. She takes care off the household for people that do not care about her and whom she probably does not like. Yet, she says that she will die where she was born and lived and age. She mourns Oblomov deeply. Her children from the first marriage: Masha and Vania. Ivan Matveich Mukhoiarov: Agaf'ia's brother. He's a sybarite and a skinflint. He's giddy at the idea of ripping off Oblomov. Generally, pretty despicable. Isai Fomich Zatertyi: The bookkeeper who goes to Oblomovka to tend to Oblomov's affairs. He cheats him, giving a fair bit of the proceeds to Ivan Matveich and Tarant'ev. Волков: Stereotype of young dandy. He's in love with some Lidia. He's running around to see 10 different people in a day. Пенкин: Belletrist. He shows up begging Oblomov to read an exciting new work. Like many at that time, Penkin believes art should focus on social utility above all else. Oblomov argues that what he calls literature has no heart. It's only about unmasking people and their faults. Alekseev: Mediocrity incarnate. He has no distinguishing features. No one notices him and no one can remember his first name and patronymic or surname. Even the narrator equivocates and says one might as well call him Alekseev. He is good only insofar as he's not bad. He experiences no emotion in extremes. He continues to visit Oblomov throughout his lifetime. Plot Outline: First Part: Oblomov and his lifestyle introduced. He has a few problems that he does not have the energy to cope with. He must move out of the apartment he's been renting for 7 years. His steward wrote that there was a bad harvest and significantly less income that year. Zachar, his servant, reminds him he owes everyone money and it's the first, so no one will except any more credit. A stream of characters (mostly caricatures) stop by to see Oblomov. All attempt to get him to go out to Ekateringoff for the First of May celebrations, but he refuses. He can't get the first few to stay long enough to give him advice. Finally, Tarantiev gives him advice. He offers to help Oblomov move to his sister-in-laws residence. He tells him to write a few letters about the steward in a "natural tone" which includes a sob story about his non-existent 12 children. Zakhar and Oblomov's relationship examined. They bicker, but neither could really function without the other. Zakhar though a petty thief and gossip, would instinctively sacrifice his life for Oblomov. Oblomov spends the whole day not doing anything, but mentally preparing to do something and finding various excuses not to write. The doctor stops in and tells Oblomov he should go abroad and visit Europe, Egypt, and sail to America. Oblomov and Zakhar quarrel over the move. Oblomov waxes sentimental. When Zakhar says that other people move, OBlomov sends him away, only to call him back and lecture him on comparing him, Oblomov, Zakhar's barin, to other people, who are in Oblomov's description ragamuffins. Oblomov lays down to sleep. He feels that he has something like a treasure that was buried inside so long ago that it is unrecoverable. Oblomov's Dream: A long sequence, describing various scenes from Oblomov's childhood. The narrative describes the dreams in corporeal detail. Meanwhile, the narrator describes Oblomovka, the peasants, Oblomov's parents, and their way of life. Very idyllic. No one works, but they sit around and talk and drink tea and eat snacks. Even the receipt of a letter is disruptive to their calm, cut-off life. Food is their primary concern. They don't spend any money, but rather try to save it all. They don't like sending their son to school and come up with numerous excuses to keep him home. They don't let him wander outside when it's too hot or cold. They shelter him so much that the narrator concludes at the end, that despite their concern and kindness toward Il'ia Ilich, the best thing they could have done would be to let him run outside and play in the snow with the other young boys. Zakhar sneaks off while Oblomov is dozing. He complains to the drivers outside about their situation and Oblomov's harshness and (non-existent) alcoholism. The servants share their woes. Zakhar almost gets in a fight. It's resolved by a trip to the tavern. Zakhar returns to wake Oblomov in a comical scene. He mutters insults at the sleeping man, who refuses to get up. Finally, Oblomov hops out of bed to chase Zakhar off. They are interrupted by laughter. It's Stolz! He's back and witnessed the whole scene. Part 2: Stolz's history. He talks Oblomov into going out. Oblomov is reluctant. Eventually Stolz diagnoses Oblomov's life and his dream of living in an idyllic Oblomovka as "oblomovshchina." He talks Oblomov into moving to a dacha and going abroad with him, because it will either be "now or never." A phrase he repeats in various letters to Oblomov from abroad. Oblomov starts to prepare to leave. However, he ends up staying at the dacha, mainly because he meets Ol'ga. Stolz introduces them right before he leaves. Ol'ga is very curious about Oblomov. After she sings for him, he blurts out that he loves her. In a dramatic scene in the garden with a lilac branch (сирeнь), he takes it back. They spend a lot of time together. Ol'ga wants to wake Oblomov up to life and seems to succeed. He tries to break things off with her a number of times. They argue as to whether she loves him or not or whether she's in love with him of not. In the end, he says they have to see each other less because their behavior could be construed as being indecent. She agrees to parting, and then he proposes. They embrace. The section ends with that and the date it was written: 1857. Part 3: Tarant'iev comes to remind Oblomov about his moving into his in-law's apartment. Oblomov says that he can't, but he's already signed a contract. He goes to the apartment to talk to the owner, Pshchitsyna. She's very round (especially her elbows) and dumb. She can't tell him anything or understand anything and keeps referring him to her brother. He leaves, thinking he'll find an apartment somewhere else. He never makes it back to speak with the brother, Ivan Matveich. Everyone returns to Saint Petersburg. Oblomov moves into the Vyborg Side for a few weeks. When he finally speaks with the landlady's brother, Ivan Matveich tells him he can't leave without paying the amount in the contract. He goes over the various expenses which include a stable for Oblomov's non-existent horses and other things he does not need. He decides he'll find someone to take over the lease. He also manages to write a letter to Oblomovka to find out how things are going. Meanwhile, Oblomov and Ol'ga are waiting to announce their engagement. He visits the Ilin'skiis and goes to the opera to see her. He spends money until he's nearly broke. She can't get enough of him and sneaks away from her servants when she's out running errands. Agaf'ia Matveevna turns out to be a fantastic landlady and house keeper. She's shy at first, but offers Oblomovs pies and coffee by sticking her arm into the room. He enjoys watching her work, especially from behind, where he can watch the movement of her round elbows. When Zakhar mentions Oblomov's impending marriage to Ol'ga, he gets deeply offended. He avoids seeing her, imagining people are gossiping about them and judging their behavior immoral. Ol'ga comes out to his apartment and he admits this to her. She shrugs it off, saying her servants congratulated her long ago. She gets him to agree to do something. Oblomov finally gets a letter from the village. It's worse than he thought. Ivan Matveich talks him into sending someone, Isai Fomich Zatertyi, out to the village to take care of his business. Oblomov agrees. He goes to see Ol'ga. He begins to talk to her. Finally, she perceives that he's hopeless. The energy he showed over the summer was fleeting. He's not who she thought he was. She breaks their engagement. Oblomov, distressed spend half the night on the winter streets and the other half sitting in his room. By morning he has a fever. Part 4: -A year has passed. Oblomov has been ill. Agaf'ia worked herself thin taking care of him. Her love examined. It's completely selfless (cause Oblomov does not know about the candles she lights for him) and unaware (because not even she understands it). Generally, he lives like an automaton. Name-days. Ivan's day is a gourmet's delight. Il'ia's day is a small get-together. Ivan Matveich, Tarant'ev, and Alekseev attend. Stolz shows up, surprising Oblomov. They talk about Oblomov's affairs. Stolz talks him into a future trip to Oblomovka to look after his affairs. Meanwhile, Stolz declares he's going to rent Oblomovka, live there, and finally get things running smoothly. He also tells Oblomov that Ol'ga's happy and forgives him. Oblomov is truly relieved to hear she's happy, but turns down the invitation to go visit her at the dacha. ***End of chapter 2: Stolz and Oblomov debate about whether Oblomov can recover his life. Oblomov says nature made him without wings. Stolz says that men are made in such a way as to sculpt their own character and destiny. Stolz cuts Oblomov by saying "It starting with the inability to put on one's own socks and ended with the inability to live life." Tarant'ev and Ivan Matveich come up with a plan where they get Oblomov to sign an acknowledgement of a debt to Agaf'ia and Agaf'ia to sign an acknowledgement of a debt to her brother (both =10,000 rubles). Jump back in time. Stolz runs into the Ilinskiis in Paris. He begins to visit Ol'ga regularly. He lives a double life and thinks double thoughts, because everything he does he shares with her. He falls in love. She develops feelings for him too, but despairs over them, thinking about how she thought one could only fall in love once in life. That means one of her loves (or both) is false. They all go to Switzerland. Stolz decides to declare himself to her and find out once and for all where she stands. She resists. Finally, she tells him about Oblomov and their engagement. She even shows Stolz the letter Oblomov wrote, releasing her and telling her that she doesn't really love him but is only experiencing a foretaste of true love to come. Stolz convinces her that Oblomov was right, meaning she might still fall in love and that she'll torture herself with doubts aroused by her earlier experiences. They end up engaged. After they part, they both experience a dreamy, euphoric state, mixing current happiness with expectation of more to come. More time passes. Oblomov gives everything he has to Agaf'ia to pay his "debt", while she passes everything to her brother. The brother has moved out to marry, so he's no longer supplying the kitchen with good food. Stolz returns. He tells Oblomov that he and Ol'ga are married. Eventually he notices Oblomov's poverty. When he finds out about the debt, he goes to see Agaf'ia, who vehemently declares that Oblomov owes her nothing. Stolz figures out what's happening. He has Agaf'ia sign a statement and goes to see her brother. He leaves again, begging Oblomov to go with him. He can see a relationship forming between Oblomov and his landlady, which he feels will pin Oblomov down for good. The Stolzes in Italy. They are happy with one another a few years into the marriage. They are constantly keeping one another intellectually stimulated. Stolz reflects on this life, which is pretty homogenous, with his past life, which was constantly active. He also reflects on where one can find truth and true love. Nothing he's experiences matches any ideal he has read about, however, he also is satisfied with Ol'ga and seems happy to go with the flow and maybe discover love in the non-idealized relationship. He seems to be at peace. Ol'ga begins to suffer from depression because she fears she's reached the highest peak of happiness and can only stagnate or suffer losses from this point on. A conversation with her husband resolves her doubts. The narrator notes that he has to constantly work at improving himself and her, otherwise she would lose respect for him, and also fall out of love with him (as she did with Oblomov). The apartment on the Vyburg side has turned into a complete idyll. Oblomov lives "as if in the golden frame of a diorama" - he's surrounded by people who adore him and take care of him. Sometimes he drifts off into thought and cannot distinguish the past (his childhood at Oblomovka) from the present. The narrator also says that Oblomov lives like a mystic in the desert who has already dug his own grave. He's had a stroke, so he can't eat like he did or sleep during the day. And he must exercise. Agas'ia sees to it that he abides by these rules. They've had a child named Andrei, after Stolz. Stolz shows up. He told Ol'ga in Italy that he would drag Oblomov away forcibly if it came down to it and that he would never give up on Oblomov unless a gorge opened or a wall rose between them. As they talk, Oblomov refuses outright to leave. He doesn't even try to put it off until later. He also refuses to see Ol'ga. When Oblomov says he's married Agas'ia and the boy is his son, Andrei realizes the gorge has come between them. They part forever, though Oblomov asks Stolz to take care of his son. Five years have passed. The apartment on the Vybirg side has fallen into disarray. Oblomov has died. Ivan Matveich has moved back in. Agaf'ia still lives there and takes care of everything, but she was inconsolable after Oblomov's death. Andrusha is being brought up by the Stolzes. In the final chapter, Stolz is walking around the city with "a writer." The writer's wondering how people become poor, whether it happens willfully or by accident. Stolz suggests asking a poor man and calls out to someone. It's Zakhar. Zakhar tells him how he lost various jobs. He cries over the loss of his barin. Stolz offers to take him in, but Zakhar doesn't want to leave the city where his master is buried. The writer asks who this Il'ia Ilich is and what happened to him. Stolz's reply: oblovshchina. Then Stolz tells the writer everything that's contained in the preceding novel. Themes/Imagery: -Dreaming -Living and dream life vs reality. -Death through inactivity. -Peace. Fears that come with happiness. The fear of losing happiness. The horror of having already reached the pinnacle. Ol'ga experiences this after a few years of marriage. Stolz interprets these feelings by saying that it's the price people pay for knowledge (Prometheus's fire). There is a slightly disturbing parallel between Oblomov's stagnation and Ol'ga's lassitude, which does not feel entirely resolved in the novel. -Lilac branch. Used as a symbol of love between Oblomov and Ol'ga. There are lilac branches over his grave. -Wings. -Oblomov never sees the women he loves as walking. Ol'ga does not walk; she flies. Agas'ia does not walk; she floats. (swims) Style/structure: Novel in four parts. Many of the characters seem to be caricatures. Slightly humorous style. Possibly satirical, but lacking venom. Goncharov seems to like his characters, even if he doesn't approve of them (except for the few just despicable, greedy, self-involved ones like Tarant'ev). Setting/time: -Oblomov's apartment on Gorokhovaia Street: Everything is dilapidated and covered in dirt and dust. -Oblomovka. Pretty much an idyll. The people are not educated. They are not passionate, but they seem satisfied. Food is their primary concern, but they seem to eat abundantly. Everything else is ignored and falls into ruin. -The dachas. Romantic. Reinvigorating. -Saint Petersburg society. Mainly seems exhausting to Oblomov. Opera. Visiting days, etc. - Vyborg Side apartment. -Italy, another idyll. However, the Stolz's are not idle. Days pass with one closely resembling the next, but they fill their time with intellectually engaging tasks.

Smerdiakov says this

Так с is "yes sir" = Smerdikov makes him sound like a serpent but a weird and creepy serpent hahaha

Jacobson

• He was a linguistic and, literature expert: very rare he knew everything • In the article he wants to make it clear that realism is an oft times mis-used term. Jacobson metonymy = by contiguity = associating things that are normally associate Or by dictionary contiguity is a series of things in continuous connection; a continuous mass or extent and the state of being contiguous; contact or proximity. • Related ideas: 19th century science as in how would a scientist take apart the world, a social scientist that is.

Vissaron Belinsky

• RE Vissaron Belinsky: member of the raznochintsy, very shy and awkward, much 'lower" than Pushkin, underdressed and socially awkward he would attend aristocratic parties. The son of a provincial doctor, Belinsky was expelled from the University of Moscow (1832) and earned his living thereafter as a journalist. His first substantial critical articles were part of a series that he wrote for the journal Teleskop ("Telescope") beginning in 1834. These were called "Literaturnye mechtaniya" ("Literary Reveries"), and they established his reputation. In them he expounded F.W.J. Schelling's Romantic view of national character, applying it to Russian culture. • Belinsky was briefly managing editor of the Moskovsky nablyudatel ("Moscow Observer") before obtaining a post in 1839 as chief critic for the journal Otechestvennyye zapiski ("National Annals"). The influential essays he published there on such writers as Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolay Gogol helped shape the literary and social views of other Russian intellectuals for decades to come. By 1840 Belinsky had moved from the idealism of his early essays to a Hegelian view that art and the history of a nation are closely connected. He believed that Russian literature had to progress in order to help the still-embryonic Russian nation develop into a mature, civilized society. His theory of literature in the service of society became an article of faith among Russian liberals and was the distant progenitor of the Soviets' doctrine of Socialist Realism. • In 1846 Belinsky joined the review Sovremennik ("The Contemporary"), for which he wrote most of his last essays. In 1847 he wrote a famous letter to Gogol, denouncing the latter's Bybrannyye mesta iz perepiski s druzyami ("Selected Passages from Correspondence with My Friends") as a betrayal of the Russian people because it preached submission to church and state. • Belinsky's perceptive praise of such writers as Pushkin, Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and Ivan Goncharov helped establish their early reputations. He laid the foundation for modern Russian literary criticism in his belief that Russian literature should honestly reflect Russian reality and that art should be judged for its social as well as its aesthetic qualities.

Dostoevsky's underground man

• When his servant does not get paid he just walks in the room and waits • Underground man's servant smile and hes like wtf you are lowly why are you • So if you stand there in front of someone they must notice you/ respond even if they are there • • No one, even the UM servant, has his own agency/ power

Annenskii - 1855- , 1909 (Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky's)

1. a poet, critic and translator, representative of the first wave of Russian symbolism. Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky's literary legacy is not expansive, but diverse. He was a poet, a classical philologist, a dramatic author, a critic, and a poet. Many of his dramatic works were loosely based on ancient myths.

classicism

1. movement that reflects back on and looks to the classical world for inspiration (Greece, Rome, etc.)

Poprishchin

1. protagonist of the Gogol short story "Diary of a Madman" 1835 / Записки сумасшедшего. A farcical short story by Nikolai Gogol. The tale centers on the life of a minor civil servant during the repressive era of Nicholas the 1st. Following the format of a diary, the story shows the descent of the protagonist, Poprishchin, into insanity. "Diary of a Madman", the only one of Gogol's works written in first person, follows diary-entry format and is a nod to Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes 1605-1616.

Polyphony

1. the concept was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin using a metaphor based on the musical term polyphony. Polyphony (Russian: полифония) is a feature of narrative, which includes a diversity of points of view and voices. For Bakhtin the primary example of polyphony was Dostoevsky's prose. Bakhtin argued that Dostoyevsky, unlike previous novelists, does not appear to aim for a 'single vision' and goes beyond simply describing situations from various angles. Instead, according to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky aimed for fully dramatic novels of ideas in which conflicting views and characters are left to develop unevenly.

Chto takoe iskusstvo

1. written by Tolstoy in 1896 ( Tolstoy's dates are 1828-1910 ) Tolstoy's What is Art? (1896) is a treatise concerning the nature and purpose of art, describing how art can express moral values. Tolstoy does not define art in terms of its ability to express form and beauty, but instead defines art in terms of its ability to communicate concepts of morality. For Tolstoy, aesthetic values are defined by moral values. According to Tolstoy, art cannot be defined as an activity which produces beauty. Beauty cannot be defined objectively, and therefore cannot be used as a criterion to define what is, or is not, art. The aim of art is not merely to produce beauty, or to provide pleasure, enjoyment, or entertainment. Art is a means of communication, and is an important means of expression of any experience, or of any aspect of the human condition.

Maria Zhukova

1805-1855 was a female Russian writer of short stories and sketchs. : Zhukova's Evenings on the Karpovka (1838-1839) brought her immediate recognition and the praise of Belinsky. Short stories. Sketches of Southern France and Nice (1844). Travel accounts. A Summer Place on the Peterhof Road (1845). Novella. Her strong points: she captures a glimpse of human experience transforming it into something familiar even if not traditionally represented or in its typical associative value context. Her stories are not masterpieces of technique nor do they deal with the social or political situation of the primarily foreign settings and citizens which form the frame of her narratives

Vissarion Belinsky

1811, Sveaborg, Fin., Russian Empire—died 1848, St. Petersburg, Russia), eminent Russian literary critic who is often called the "father" of the Russian radical intelligentsia. The influential essays he published there on such writers as Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolay Gogol helped shape the literary and social views of other Russian intellectuals for decades to come. By 1840 Belinsky had moved from the idealism of his early essays to a Hegelian view that art and the history of a nation are closely connected. He believed that Russian literature had to progress in order to help the still-embryonic Russian nation develop into a mature, civilized society. His theory of literature in the service of society became an article of faith among Russian liberals and was the distant progenitor of the Soviets' doctrine of Socialist Realism. Belinsky's perceptive praise of such writers as Pushkin, Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and Ivan Goncharov helped establish their early reputations. He laid the foundation for modern Russian literary criticism in his belief that Russian literature should honestly reflect Russian reality and that art should be judged for its social as well as its aesthetic qualities

Nikolai Dobroliubov

1835-1861: was a radical Russian utilitarian critic who rejected traditional and Romantic literature. He was perhaps the most influential critic after Vissarion Belinsky among the radical intelligentsia; his main concern was the criticism of life rather than of literature. He is perhaps best known for his essay "What is Oblomovism" (1859-60). The essay deals with the phenomenon represented by the character Oblomov in Ivan Goncharov's novel of that name. It established the term Oblomovism as a name for the superfluous man of Russian life and literature.

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov

1853 - 1900) was a Russian philosopher , theologian, poet, pampleterr and literary critic. He played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century

Viktor Shklovskii

1893-1984), he was a literary critic and theorist, writer, and a founder of Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Iazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language; Opoiaz or OPOYAZ. He was a major voice of Formalism: a critical school that had great influence Russian literature in the 1920s.Shklovsky is perhaps best known for developing the concept of ostranenie or defamiliarization (also translated as "estrangement") in literature.[ He explained the concept in the important essay "Art as Technique" (also translated as "Art as Device") which comprised the first chapter of his seminal Theory of Prose, first published in 1925. He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché' in the literary canon, into something revitalized.The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important ( Shklovsky, "Art as Technique").He was a member of Formalism's most impetuous, insurrectionary and implicitly anti-Soviet precepts: namely, that art is untethered to dogma, state or any apparent "content" and that, as he once put it, "a writer should never be yoked to a trellis and forced to salute".

Red Cavalry

1926, Babel set during the Soviet Polish war: is a classic of modernist fiction. Expressed Babel' own inner conflict thought disturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russian society. Babel was torn all his life by an unyielding refusal to compromise his art by personal ties and by the moral dilemmas of revolution and war.

Nina Berberova

26 July 1901 - 26 September 1993) was a Russian Empire-born writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She left Russia in 1922 with poet Vladisalv Khodasevich (who died in 1939). The couple lived in several European cities before settling in Paris in 1925. There Berberova began publishing short stories for the Russian emigre publications Poslednie Novosti ("The Latest News") and Russkaia Mysl' ("Russian Thought"). The stories collected in Oblegchenie Uchasti ("The Easing of Fate") and Biiankurskie Prazdniki ("Billancourt Fiestas") were written during this period. She also wrote the first book length biography of composer Peter Illlych Tchaikovsky in 1936, which was controversial for its openness about his homosexuality. In Paris she was part of a circle of poor but distinguished visiting literary Russian exiles which included Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak, Tsvetaeva and Mayakovsky

Multiple viewpoints=

= W+P tells you that to get at the truth you cant use a single perspective so a kind of relativism creeps in. sounds like , after this, that everyone's view point has some validity. But, the belief in Christianity changes this, re Tolstoy: adultry is bad it should not happen.

Who were killed in duels in Russian literature ?

Pushkin and Lermentov

Ruslan i Liudmila

Pushkin's first major verse narrative, the mock epic Ruslan i Liudmila (1820), dates from his St. Petersburg period. Written in iambic tetrameter, the poem is a faux-fairy tale based on medieval Russian history. Pushkin's first major success, the poem also generated controversy for its break with prevailing verse traditions. Soon after its publication, Pushkin was sent into exile in southern Russia for his outspoken political views. During the first years of his exile (1820-1823), Pushkin traveled to the Caucasus and Crimea, writing lyrics and narrative poems that exhibited debts to his recent discovery, in French translation, of the works of George Gordon, Lord Byron.

Russian literature has a rich tradition of narratives about people losing their minds. Discussing at least four works (at least one form the 19th and one from the 20th century) write an essay about insanity and the changing development of the theme over the course of two centuries. How do various texts attempt to get the reader to react to insanity? If a character goes crazy, what does that tell us about him or her? Is insanity always depicted as an entirely negative phenomenon, or is there a positive side to it? (MA Comp Exam b) (60 minutes to answer)

Pushkin, Boris Godunov, Pikovaia Dama (German), Mednyi Vsadnik, Rusalka Gogol, Diary of a Madman Dostoevsky, The Double, Notes from the Underground, Dream of the Ridiculous Man, Crime and Punishment (Ekaterina Pavlovna) Holy Fool - Liza (Smiadikov's mom) Most other novels Tolstoy, Father Sergius (woman who visits and he sleeps with her), Kreutzer Sonata, Detstvo (Holy Fool) Chekhov, Palata No. 6 Sologub, Petty Demon (Peredonov) Bulgakov, Master and Margarita Chukovskaia, Sofia Petrovna (?) Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line? Pelevin, Chapaev and Pustota Tolstaia, Kris' Sedor, Development of insanity over centuries: 19th century (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy "Holy Fool") Bulgakov = madness connected to religion 20th century (creative or philosophical) Reader's Reactions to Insanity: Holy Fool = Another realm beyond reason that's more enduring Ties into Silver Age (madness ties into creativity and taking you to higher plane or existence) Society has a negative stereotype of insanity; challenges reader's perceptions of reality as well as madness itself Negative Examples: Peredonov and Dvoinik: obcessed with minute aspects of everyday life (byt) insainity misdirected at petty instead of spiritual or creative Pelevin = maybe carziness is sanity and sanity is insanity What does Madness tell us about the Character: Spiritually intune or a writer, creative connection Indication of spirituality/purity

M.A. 1995 The "exceptional individual", strong-willed, temperamental, and free of the fetters of society is a stock figure in Romantic literature. In what ways have Russian writers commented on such individuals? Discuss the represetnation of the Romantic individual in works by at least 3 different authors. Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Paternak, or others.

Raskolnikov--superhuman; wants to be like Napoleon. Thinks that the laws of society shouldn't apply to him. Very temperamental. But in all his striving to be free of the law, he actually fetters himself even more and proves that he is not a Napoleon. So Dostoevsky appears to claim that it is impossible to be such an "exceptional individual." Mozart i Salery (?) Salery poisons Mozart. Bronze Horseman--Pyotr Pervy. Peter was above the law. He created the law. Believed that he could do anything. But there is an ambiguous relationship between Evgeny and Peter, supporting the idea that such an "exceptional individual" is not necessarily a positive character. Vronsky--wants to be strong and independent. Going outside (?) of societal norms. He is not a successful character.

More on Realism from class notes

Realism is more profound (it's like the photographic urge) it's a gigantic examination of causality. Using the tools of science, you look at the social reality. Tracing things like, determinism. Like Tolstoy examines many viewpoints (hallmark of realist novel) as in war and peace. Realism devotes a lot more words to fewer events. So why, are the details there? Like to give an representation of a battle you need the weather and everything War and peace is fascinated by romanticism but does not like it Crime and punishment (both books are Napoleon) The romantic hero would ride into the battel and you get his viewpoint only (romanticism) and in EO Eugenie is a romantic Byronic hero. Detail why do we have so much of it? The 19th century is where most science as we know it flourish's vs the 18th cent only zoology and like two others. It also helps us organize reality Europeans don't believe anymore in religion/ Christs Re Kant: questioning objectivity as in critical reasoning which is the belief that every human being has to challenge and understand reality and pick their own stance. Kant says that truth comes from critical thought which is a crucial element that structures the novel. Hegel: history moves by like an idea, philosophy, or political party eg too much Christianity for too long produces its own critique so then the two combine into a synthesis so history moves forward which is associated with the idea of progress. Antithesis and synthesis = Hegel. It's the march of progress that we will always be progressing's so its more romantic in a sense, as in struggle is good! Why so much detail? b/c Russians are trying to analyze reality. They cant look up anything like we can and the Russians are like "who are we are we orthodox or are we French" so the novelists depict reality so we / they can argue about it as in, what's the relationship between peasants and ourselves or between men and women. So Belinsky is super happy b/c we have a long complex detail of reality. The realist novel is a great picture of how the world works. Eg steava grew up w/out parental love and anna is an orphan and has had to appeal to people vs kitty who has a dif kind of charm yet she grew up w/ parents. Kitty does not have that restless desired to get love/ be loved like anna . Leovin is an orphan as well. Leovins brother Nikolai is an orphan. Leovin and his brother don't go around charming people kitty instead they withdraw and they are loners . so this is the " how parents shape children " is Tolstoy's thing here in AK. All, the orphans are restless: it's a scientific examination of this. The little baby Annie is by Annna at the end of the novel, she crawls around and looks back at Dolly and Dolly is like "you are awesome" the little girl has the same craving for love that Anna did. Little Annie is not sure her mother is there so (this is where detail really works). Social relations. How poverty influences people in Dost novels.

Lermentov

Russia's next great poet after Pushkin. His life was short and he too died in a duel as the previous poet, killed amongst lightening and thunder. He had a rather unhappy childhood filled with family strife, which certainly affected his outlook on society as he grew older. His poetry is highly romantic, frequently featuring images of the poet as a prophet with some sort of otherworldly connection with God and nature. There are also numerous hints at a sense of loneliness in the world, often due to this connection, where the rest of society refuses to listen to him and he only feels at peace in the wilderness. In 1837 he wrote his famous poem to Pushkin after the duel entitled "Death of a Poet," which led to his court-martialing and exile to the Caucuses.

Мать

Setting and time: Russian factory town at the beginning of the 20th century. Tsar Nicholas is on the throne and the entire country is on shaky ground as it reels from its ignominious defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War February 8, 1904 - September 5, 1905. Overview/ General Plot: Imagery by way of metaphor, color, and music play an emotional role in this novel thus provoking the readers senses in a direct appeal for the heart. For example, at the novels beginning we are presented with grave and dreary motifs, which punctuate the monotonous life that is the soviet factory: a place of yellow grease, and grey smoke. A factory whistle blows, which sadly trumps the sound of the bell, which gloomily heralds the changing times and the conflict between the old agrarian world, the Tsar, and this new machine of churning oily gears that has swallowed the very soul of the people. Nicholas the II, was just as removed from reality as his people were if not more, thus an interesting metaphor or comparison can be made between these for future study. But first, lets look at the text for a closer description of the atmosphere which pervades the novel and one in which a few, boldly attempt to change. " With somber faces they hastened forward like frightened roaches, their muscles stiff from insufficient sleep....the tall stone cage that waited them with cold assurance, ilimunining their muddy road with scores of greasy, yellow, square eyes." In this passage on p.3, even the people themselves are characterized like a piece of machinery, as their eyes are even square, just like machine parts. The muddy road implies stagnation. Life is dark, dreary, and depressing in the industrial town where Pavel Vlasov was born. The men drink copiously, work tirelessly in the factory, and generally live without hope, while the women live equally hopeless lives. Pavel's father Mikhail beat his mother Pelageya ruthlessly, and he died when Pavel was young. It seemed as though Pavel might be headed on the same cyclical track that generations in the town followed, but Pelageya notices something peculiar about him. He doesn't go out drinking with the other young people, but instead he spends all of his time reading political books inspired by the new and prevalent philosophical and scientific ideologies of the day. Eventually, it is revealed to Pelageya that Pavel is involved with a group of people who want to devote their lives to justice for workers, which is a dangerous thing to do. At first, Pelageya is frightened, but when she meets Nakhodka, Natasha, and Sashen'ka she realizes that these are good people. Nakhodka even ends up living with Vlasovs. Their plan seems to rapidly move along until the group gets in trouble for putting up political fliers in the factory, which only increases the growing, adamantine bond between them. The authorities come to the Vlasovs' and Nakhodka is arrested. Pavel continues his work in the town and eventually begins to gain respect amongst the citizens. He is instrumental in fighting against an unfair income tax, in which one kopeck from every rouble earned by the workers of the factory is put to drying out the swamp behind it. This tax is particular offense because officials at the factory don't have to pay it. Pavel writes down information about the incident on a piece of paper and gives it to Pelageya to bring to the town's newspaper. This is the first time Pelageya actively helps out with Pavel's socialist cause. Pavel organizes a meeting in the factory against the tax, bringing his views to other workers. He is arrested for this. Pelageya continues distributing flyers, at first to reduce Pavel's culpability, and eventually out of personal desire to help with the cause. Pavel and Andrei are released from prison, but they soon get arrested again after leading a manifestation where they a banner proclaiming workers' rights through the town. Pelageya devotes herself entirely to her son's cause. Pavel has a trial, which results in his exile. Pavel speaks very beautifully about socialist ideas at the trial, and Nikolai Ivanovich has the idea to print his words and disperse them in fliers. Pelageya takes a suitcase of fliers to a nearby town, but is apprehended by the authorities at the station. The novel ends with her throwing the fliers to the crowd, trying to yell to the public, as her voice is muffled by the authorities who arrest her History: In 1905, there was a revolt by Russian revolutionaries. The cause was social unrest, which led to: military mutinies, peasant unrest, and worker strikes. Nicholas the II was the Tsar, but he managed to stay on the throne. However, in response to the uprising In 1906 the prominent German Sergei Witte, was imported to develop a state led program of industrialization. Nicholas the II, drafts the October manifesto or the Russian Empires first constitution thus implying a limited monarchy, which was supposed to satisfy the revolutionaries and quell discontent. Gorkii embedded this general social atmosphere into his text, which was begun when he went on a trip to America at the beginning of the 20th century. Gorkii also includes his concept of "god-building" in the text with his representation of Pelageya Nilovna. Main Characters: a. Пелагея Ниловна Власова - The focus of the novel; an illiterate woman in a factory town who is inspired to spread socialist ideology by her son, Pavel. -Михаил Власов - the best locksmith in the factory who dies at age fifty at the start of the novel. b. Павел Михайлович Власов - A young revolutionary, the son of Pelageya, who inspires her with socialist ideas. c. Наташа Васильевна - A teacher who is involved in Pavel's revolutionary group. d. Андрей Находка - also called "khokhol" endearingly. Works with Pavel, and lives with the Vlasovs for a period of time e. Сашенька - young from a bourgeois family; part of Pavel's socialist group. She and Pavel love each other. f. Софья Ивановна -- sister of Nikolai, helps Pelageya complete her revolutionary work. Ideological Position: This story seems to illuminate two opposing views within the still developing party of the social democrats, to which Pavel and his entourage belong. This new view of humanities potential and or ( личност/ Lichnost ) to which Gorky himself belonged, manifested in a worldwide revolution of overthrowing the old, stale, and lifeless regime, crushing the bourgeois, on the way to a path and place full of goodness in equal measure for all. Even the name of Caesar of early Rome, is invoked thus imbuing the new denizens of the land with a pre-destiny and firm purpose. However, not everyone is on board with this. The old believers and those who still view the almighty Tsar as their God and father refuse to be turned, resulting in enough civil unrest to plunge the land into one of varied and incongruous ideologies which lead to an overall de-stabilization, compounded with Russia's ignominious loss to Japan in 1905. The land was ripening for a takeover, which Lenin and his Bolsheviks eventually did with the ouster of the Tsar, in 1917. Leitmotifs: a. The central figure in this novel of the mother is metaphorical for the only one who can truly look after her children under the new ideology after and inspired by God. Thus, Пелагея Ниловна Власова , is characterized as a maternal figure, the embodiment of unconditional love and what will replace, the father figure of the Tsar ( Nicholas II) with that of a female mother figure, that cares for her children without judgment or compromise. She is longsuffering, steadfast, and unmovable in her convictions. She is an amalgamation of the old fertile motherland and female prototype for a new woman who keeps her children as close to her as possible and looks after them, as she does herself and will gladly go to prison and/or die for them. She will never turn or abandon them as the Tsar has. She is a mother Mary figure (as this is imagined in the Christian bible) and her son Pavel, is comparable to Jesus and immortalized in a picture that hangs in their home of 3 headstrong young people walking into the future and smiling abreast. This surly heralds the number three, thus invoking the holy trinity. If we look at the words on p. 91 " its hard for everybody...maybe only those who understand, its easier...If you understand, granny, then it means that everybody needs you, everybody ! she looked at him and laughed without saying anything" This brief passage, suggests that Пелагея Ниловна Власова, by her "understanding" is like the unconditional understanding that a mother instinctually provides her children. b. The theme of justifiable murder originally introduced and explored by Dostoevsky in his novel "Crime and Punishment 1866, is revisited. On p148 " you must destroy those who hinder the progress of life". This theme is borrowed from Raskolnikov's lengthy diatribe about the possibility of, even the ultimate forgiveness of weeding out the apparently more useless among us. The death of Isay, at the hands of the Ukrainian who decides that his death was not desired, but justifiable and good that it happened because he was in the way of progress, is an example of this. c. The color Red as symbol for the blood that will surly be shed in the name of the revolution. d. Iron spikes occur frequently through the hearts and souls of the revolutionaries in this story. Mortally, even almost fatally wounded with their own words and ideas, as well as those of the opposition, suggests that the real battle, is not one between grey men on horseback brandishing rapiers, or the Tsars solders or any other soldiers for that matter, but instead one of ideologies and beliefs; whereby there is no union between iron and the human soul, or the factory workers smelting, or the fighting between battleships that failed to cross the "t" in japan (1905) but now the real conflict exists between words and opposing scientific viewpoints. e. Music speaks to the heart like no other medium can. On pp. 211 and 213 Sonya plays a piece by Edvard Grieg for her brother, and the mother. Grieg wrote many waltzes that were very intricately layered pieces of music, such as " Anitras Dance". Grieg's style is complicated, rich, and not easy for a "simple mind" to comprehend. The mother, has some difficulty with fully comprehending the full meaning, however the contrast in emotions that the song reveals suggests a mix of struggles lost to the past comingled with an uncertain, yet hopeful future. When those who are not enlightened speak, they do so angrily, and flatly, however when the revolutionaries speak, their words are "sonorous" to the mother. These sonorous words are the song of the revolution that speaks to her heart. The words, then, become in essence, a song. Or a fundamental song of the human soul. f. People are compared to cattle and insects and hope takes flight as a bird metaphorically encompassing the long history of suffering at back-breaking work and enduring factory enslavement of the people. The people look to the skies marveling at birds, both the weary peasants and the revolutionaries for hope for the future.

Meaning of "type" in literature

So if you have to depict reality the book gets long so you go after types or people and representative action. So you choose the latter as in characters that are representative of social class. A type is the opposite of an individual: a human that is flawed and can have conflicting thoughts as in an indivudal is conceptually messy and you cant say that they represented this or that are they kind or cruel etc. A kind person is a psychological type A social type already implies determinism. So is like Petersburg organ grinders is an example of a type: so organ grinders are representative of the very poor in general, so having a job defines your interiority so much that others will have a job like you. Type is offensive as in "what type is a Slavic grad student'. So one of the implications of definition one ( last notes ) social reality is almost never in romantiscm. So when we see it , social reality, it is shocking b/c no one has ever looked at them before and we look at the poor and we are shocked. The messages is a kind of social critique in that it's a hard life so in order to show that it's just depicting reality they pick subjects that are strikingly unexpected, like the poor which is a social criticism as in we are human beings too so where is your Christianity. It's easier to win greater sympathy of the poor if there are many poor not just an individual. What do you mean when you say it's pure fiction in romanticism? Its good! Imagine is good! But for social types it is disastrous. So when we are talking about imagination or fiction it's a bad thing can't have it in realism. You get Romanic stories about the war with napoleon it's all about napoleon and the leaders but in Tolstoy you get (he thinks this is ridiculous) b/c you get 3000000 people all spread thought the forest and you take 20 steps and everyone gets confused and everyone gets lost and off to fight. So 20, 0000 soldiers made 20, oooo decisions and each one has a different viewpoint as in, ah the French are behind us I'm hungry so let's fight so I can eat. They all had different stories/ backgrounds and live, so this is how you tell reality objectively and the book will get really long but its better, in Tolstoy view than the Romantic napoleon stories. So you need representative types in order to pull this off. Dostoevsky's underground man is Dost is afraid that the reader would be like omg you are a nut he's not a real character nobody does this crap and Not only can and must this character exist (he states at the novels start) b/c there must be an infinite number of people like this and it makes the character representative and he is a powerful character in society and the unrepresented is weak in society. So in Russia we have science, photography, industrialism, ( argraian to city etc ) encyclopediism as in war and peace. So from the chritan viewpoint recoring everything is waste of time but now we have secularism so now its important.

•Is there a narrative or plot in Nekrasov and Grigorovich?

So do they have a narrative? Not really re physiological sketches / Nekrasov and Grigorovich so there is no plot in our sketches.

Discuss the theme of Slavophile vs. Westernizer in at least 4 works (3x) Belinsky sparked the debate between the two ideas in 1834?. Letter saying Russia has no culture. Chadaev was 1836. Slavophile

Sobornost--community (obschina) Peasants as the embodiment of the Russian spirit because they were uncorrupted by European culture War and Peace Natasha dancing--she has an innate ability to dance like a Russian Pierre and Platon Kiradaev--peasant gave the answer to life Anna Karenina Plowing scene with Levin out in the field with the peasants. Lots of farming and peasant scenes. Hunter's Sketches Showing the peasants as they haven't really been seen before. Vera Pavlovna's 4th dream (Chto Delat) Community elements Dostoevsky Winter note on summer impressions Pochvinichvost--Europe isn't as great as we say it is We need to create our own thing and not rely on Europe Pushkin, Bronze Horseman Ambiguous about Peter and the West This goes both ways, so you could use this to talk about the differences Westernism Europe is the perfect example Modernization Scientific progress Critiquing Orthodoxy Progressive--Russia should move with the times Individualism Chto Delat' Idea of progression

Can Gogol be considered a realist? Does this differ between his Ukrainian Tales and Petersburg Tales? (MA exam)

Some people argue that Gogol does have elements of realism because of his attention to detail and everything in his descriptions of people, but this may not be a good argument because they are caricatures and relatively exaggerated and absurd. Dikanka Tales are not realistic whatsoever. It is possible that he gets more encyclopedic/realistic/scientific as he goes along. The Dikanka Tales have lots of appearances of the devil and other things that are supernatural. They probably fit more in the realm of Romanticism--documenting an exotic location and people (Ukraine); invented world; the people are caricatures and stereotypes; fear at things like pigs poking through the window. Narrator for first 4 is the bee-keeper and the second 4 have a different narrator. (While he is writing Petersburg Tales he is writing more tales about Ukraine that are a little more realistic.) Petersburg Tales have a more realistic setting, but it's still not completely realistic because noses can run away and the devil can turn out the lights. The world has different rules. The characters react to supernatural events as if they are the most mundane and normal actions--characters are bound by the illusion that what's happening is realistic. But the audience and the people know that it is not realistic. Nevsky Prospekt--devil turns out the lights; detailed descriptions of people and such. Makes fun of a romantic storyline--following a woman home and then getting punched in the face--realism's tendency to change previous traditions. Characters are stereotypes. "Revisor"--written about the same time as the Petersburg Tales, but the most realistic of Gogol's works. Even though at the end they break the fourth wall and asks the audience why they are laughing. Northrup article--Dead Souls is the most realistic of Gogol's works. (But the chatty omniscient narrator breaks the illusion of realism because he knows too much and talks about the process of creating female characters etc.)

M.A. 1995 The first half of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of the so-called "superfluous man." Was there also a "superfluous woman"? Discuss the depiction of women in Russian literature in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Superflous woman: "the woman question" Ambrose ( google books) - she is harder to identify in context. - Tolstoy is contemptuous of women's emancipation yet he does not seem to depict any superfluous women. why? it can be argued that his works are not against the female role of housekeeping and raising children, the path all women should follow ( in his view). so i would say no. ... Superfluous man is superfluous to society--society doesn't need him. (But the novel does.) Bored, moody, aloof Tatiana is definitely not superfluous. Perhaps Olga is. Olga is necessary for the story, but she only really exists to move the plot forward between Lensky and Onegin. Does this make her superfluous? Princess Mimi--vindictive; she doesn't really have anything to do with her life, so she ruins other people's. She is kinda like Pechorin. Fathers and Sons--Bazarav likes a woman name Anna Odintsova. She goes from man to man; has a lot of money; wise to the world; world weary. Possibly superfluous.

M.A. 1995 The first half of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of the so-called "superfluous man." Was there also a "superfluous woman"? Discuss the depiction of women in Russian literature in the first half of the nineteenth centur

Superfluous man is superfluous to society--society doesn't need him. (But the novel does.) Bored, moody, aloof Tatiana is definitely not superfluous. Perhaps Olga is. Olga is necessary for the story, but she only really exists to move the plot forward between Lensky and Onegin. Does this make her superfluous? Princess Mimi--vindictive; she doesn't really have anything to do with her life, so she ruins other people's. She is kinda like Pechorin. Fathers and Sons--Bazarav likes a woman name Anna Odintsova. She goes from man to man; has a lot of money; wise to the world; world weary. Possibly superfluous.

Tadeusz Borowski

Tadeusz Borowski 12 November 1922 - 1 July 1951) was a Polish writer and journalist. His wartime poetry and stories dealing with his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz are recognized as classics of Polish literature and had much influence in Central European society. While a member of the educational underground in Warsaw, Borowski was living with his fiancee Maria. After Maria did not return home one night in February 1943, Borowski began to suspect that she had been arrested. Rather than staying away from any of their usual meeting places, though, he walked straight into the trap that was set by the Gestapo agents in the apartment of his and Maria's close friend. Arrested himself, he was placed in the infamous Pawiak prison and then was transported to Auschwitz. Forced into slave labor in extremely harsh conditions, Borowski later reflected on this experience in his writing. In particular, working on a railway ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he witnessed Jews first being told to leave their personal property behind, and then being transferred directly from the trains to the gas chambers. While a prisoner at Auschwitz, Borowski caught pneumonia; afterwards, he was put to work in a Nazi medical experiment "hospital." He was able to maintain written and personal contact with his fiancee, who was also imprisoned in Auschwitz.[1] In late 1944 Borowski was transported from Auschwitz to the Dautmergen subcamp of Natzweiler-Struthof, and finally to Dachau. Dachau-Allach, where Borowski was imprisoned, was liberated by the Americans on May 1, 1945 and after that Borowski found himself in a camp for displaced persons near Munich.

Zhdanovism/ Socialst Realsim:

Terras: Socialist realism is the official artistic method determined by the 17th conference of the soviet communist party 1932. this was during the second 5 year plan. emphasis shifted from the proletarian facets of the soviet state to socialist ones. Rapp was sacked: or russian assoc. of proletarian writers b/c of its dialectical- materialist creative method" In 1934 Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only acceptable form of writing. Henceforth, literature was to be governed by a series of official directives regarding details of style and content in order to ensure that each work offered a "truthful" depiction "of reality in its revolutionary development." Literature had to be "party-minded" and "typical" (that is, avoiding unpleasant, hence "atypical," aspects of Soviet reality), while showing the triumph of fully "positive heroes." The need to rally support in World War II brought a loosening of Communist Party control. The war itself created the opportunity for a large "second wave" of emigration, thus feeding émigré literature. The period from 1946 until the death of Stalin in 1953 was one of severe repression known as the zhdanovshchina, or Zhdanovism. During this campaign, attacks on "rootless cosmopolitans" involved anti-Semitism and the rejection of all foreign influences on Russian literature. The Soviet practice of samokritika (public denunciation of one's own work) was frequent.

The Russian Formalists

The Russian Formalists were a school of critics closely tied to the Futurists. They developed a vibrant, comprehensive theory of literature and culture that inspired structuralism, an influential critical movement in the West. Two of them, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov, wrote significant fiction illustrating their theories: Shklovsky's Zoo; ili, pisma ne o lyubvi (1923; Zoo; or, Letters Not About Love) and Tynyanov's "Podporuchik kizhe" (1927; "Second Lieutenant Likewise"). Their respectful opponent, Mikhail Bakhtin, whom some consider the most original, far-ranging, and subtle theorist of literature in the 20th century, wrote Problemy tvorchestva Dostoyevskogo (1929, 2nd ed., 1963; Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) and essays about the relation of novelistic form to time, language, psychology, and ethics. The 1920s also produced novels that became classics of official Soviet literature, including Dmitry Furmanov's Chapayev (1923) and Aleksandr Serafimovich's Zhelezny potok (1924; The Iron Flood). Fyodor Gladkov's Tsement (1925; Cement) became a model for the "industrial production" novel. Also in this period, Sholokhov began writing the best-known official work, a four-part novel published as Tikhy Don (1928-40; "The Quiet Don"; translated in two parts as And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea). The Stalin era Profiles of Famous Writers The decade beginning with Stalin's ascendancy in the late 1920s was one of unprecedented repression. The "war in the countryside" to enforce the collectivization of agriculture cost more than 10 million lives, about half of them by starvation. Purges took the lives of millions more, among them Babel, Kharms, Mandelshtam, Pilnyak, the peasant poet Nikolay Klyuyev (1887-1937), and the director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). In 1932 all independent literary groupings were dissolved and replaced by an institution that had no counterpart in the West, the Union of Soviet Writers. The union became the state's instrument of control over literature, and expulsion from it meant literary death. In 1934 Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only acceptable form of writing. Henceforth, literature was to be governed by a series of official directives regarding details of style and content in order to ensure that each work offered a "truthful" depiction "of reality in its revolutionary development." Literature had to be "party-minded" and "typical" (that is, avoiding unpleasant, hence "atypical," aspects of Soviet reality), while showing the triumph of fully "positive heroes."

ivan illyich

The bad people are the ones who think about themselves =

Hadji Murat Plot, Story synopsis

The narrator prefaces the story with his comments on a crushed, but still living thistle he finds in a field (a symbol for the main character), after which he begins to tell the story of Hadji Murat, a successful and famed separatist guerrilla who falls out with his own commander and eventually sides with the Russians in hope of saving his family. Hadji Murat's family is being contained and controlled by the Chechen leader who abducted his mother, two wives, and five children. Aside from the fact that Murat wants to save his family, he additionally wants to avenge the deaths of other family members. The story opens with Murat and two of his followers fleeing from Shamil, the commander of the Caucasian separatists, who is at war with the Russians. They find refuge at the house of Sado, a loyal supporter of Murat. The local people learn of his presence and chase him out of the village. His lieutenant succeeds in making contact with the Russians, who promise to meet Murat. He eventually arrives at the fortress of Vozdvizhenskaya to join the Russian forces, in hopes of drawing their support in order to overthrow Shamil and save his family. Before his arrival, a small skirmish occurs with some Chechens outside the fortress, and Petrukha Avdeyev, a young Russian soldier, dies in a local military hospital after being shot. Tolstoy makes a chapter-length aside about Petrukha: childless, he volunteered as a conscript in place of his brother who had a family of his own. Petrukha's father regrets this because he was a dutiful worker compared to his complacent brother. While at Vozdvizhenskaya, Murat befriends Prince Semyon Vorontsov, the Viceroy's son, his wife Maria and his son, and wins over the good will of the soldiers stationed there. They are at once in awe of his physique and reputation, and enjoy his company and find him honest and upright. The Vorontsovs give him a present of a watch which fascinates him. On the fifth day of Murat's stay, the governor-general's adjutant, Mikhail Loris-Melikov arrives with orders to write down Murat's story, and the reader learns some of his history: he was born in the village of Tselmes and early on became close to the local Khans due to his mother being the royal family's wetnurse. When he was fifteen some followers of Muridism came into his village calling for a holy war (ghazavat) against Russia. Murat declines at first but after a learned man is sent to explain how it will be run, he tentatively agrees. However, in their first confrontation, Shamil—then a lieutenant for the Muslims hostile to the Russians—embarrasses Murat when he goes to speak with the leader Gamzat. Gamzat eventually launches an attack on the capital of Khunzakh and kills the pro-Russian khans, taking control of this part of Dagestan. The slaughter of the khans throws Hadji and his brother against Gamzat, and they eventually succeed in tricking and killing him, causing his followers to flee. Unfortunately, Murat's brother is killed in the attempt and Shamil replaces Gazmat as leader. He calls on Murat to join his struggle, but Murat refuses because the blood of his brother and the khans are on Shamil. Once Murat has joined the Russians, who are aware of his position and bargaining ability, they find him the perfect tool for getting to Shamil. However, Vorontsov's plans are ruined by the War Minister, Chernyshov, a rival prince who is jealous of him, and Murat has to remain in the fortress because the Tsar is told he is possibly a spy. The story digresses into a depiction of the Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, which reveals his lethargic and bitter nature and his egotistical complacency, as well as his contempt towards women, his brother-in-law Frederick William IV of Prussia, and Russian students. The Tsar orders an attack on the Chechens and Murat remains in the fortress. Meanwhile, Murat's mother, wife and eldest son Yusuf, whom Shamil hold captive, are moved to a more defensible location. Realizing his position (neither trusted by the Russians to lead an army against Shamil, nor able to return to Shamil because he will be killed), Hadji Murat decides to flee the fortress to gather men to save his family. At this point the narrative jumps forward in time, to the arrival of a group of soldiers at the fortress bearing Murat's severed head. Maria Dimitriyevna—the companion of one of the officers and a friend of Murat—comments on the cruelty of men during times of war, calling them 'butchers'. The soldiers then tell the story of Murat's death. He had escaped the fortress and shook off his usual Russian escort with the help of his five lieutenants. After they escape they come upon a marsh that they are unable to cross, and hide amongst some bushes until the morning. An old man gives away their position and Karganov, the commander of the fortress, the soldiers, and some Cossacks surround the area. Hadji Murat and his men fortify themselves and begin to fire upon the troops, dying valiantly. Hadji himself runs into fire after his men are killed, despite being wounded and plugging up his fatal wounds in his body with cloth. As he fires his last bullet his life flashes before him and the soldiers think he's dead; he gets up for one final struggle and falls to his death. Victorious, the Russian soldiers fall upon and decapitate him. The nightingales, which stopped singing during the battle, begin again and the narrator ends by recalling the thistle once more.

byt

The organizing theme of the study is the binary of byt (everyday life) and bytie (spiritual and intellectual life), with emphasis on the former. In Russian culture, byt is consistently linked to women, whereas bytie is a masculine province. Byt is traditionally equated with a "corrosive banality" that threatens the "higher aspirations" of bytie, which is aligned with sweeping cultural changes such as Marxism, and the grand narratives of religion, politics and philosophy (Sutcliffe 4-5). Sutcliffe's analysis focuses on how the theme of everyday life reflects the massive cultural changes that took place in this turbulent period, and on how women's prose both mirrors and critiques the changing social and cultural milieu. Byt is equated with passivity, reaction, mundanity, corporeality, ephemerality, and domesticity: the sum of these qualities is unworthiness [End Page 147] and subordination to the male, with the vaunted gender egalitarianism of the Soviet Union proving to be "as illusory as its citizen's political freedoms" (5). Although the feminine and everyday was considered secondary, it was also seen as crucial, from the intelligentsia's point of view, as "a conduit to bytie" (6). The intelligentsia was in almost constant crisis during the Soviet era. The onus was on women to preserve normality and domesticity during the Stalinist terror and the war against Nazi Germany. This contradictory evaluation of the status of women and byt as subordinate yet crucial was maintained during the Thaw (1953-1968). The binary division continued during Stagnation (1969-1984), and kept byt and women's contribution to culture and modernity largely unnoticed (7).

Tolstoy's work: classifications for various periods

The works of the early period may be regarded as the "school" in which Tolstoi taught himself to write. He isolated the themes and developed the literary techniques which characterize his more mature writings. The spirit of trial and error is reflected in the journal which he began in 1847 and continued to keep, with greater or lesser regularity, throughout the remainder of his life. The journals, especially those of the 1850s, are one of the richest sources for the study of the development of Tolstoi's literary style, so much so that their reliability as sources of biographical detail has always to be assessed in the light of the fact that they are also (according to some views, primarily) the record of his literary experiments. Tolstoi's first substantial literary endeavor, "The History of Yesterday" ("Istoriya vcherashnego dnya") reflects the psychological self-analysis characteristic of the journals. Written in 1851, it was not submitted for publication, perhaps because its young author feared that its originality would occasion public rejection. The story is an account of the sequence of thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of the protagonist in the course of a single day. Tolstoi's fascination with the operation of the psyche found a more conventional outlet in Childhood (Detstvo, 1852), where it is cloaked in the format, familiar to contemporary readers, of childhood reminiscences. Childhood and its sequels, Boyhood (Otrochestvo, 1854) and Youth (Yunost', 1857), were conceived as parts of a tetralogy to be called The Four Ages of Development (the fourth volume was never written). The spontaneous impressions of the child as child alternate with the analysis of those impressions by the child grown up. The result is a combination of the lyrical representation of the memories of childhood (typical of the genre) and a detached, quasi-scientific investigation of the operations and growth of the conscious mind at various stages of its development. The Trilogy (as the three novels are collectively called) abounds with autobiographical material, a feature characteristic also of Tolstoi's later works. Another noteworthy element is the unconcealed presence of the author's voice (the author as narrator), i strategy which Tolstoi seems to have adopted on the basis of his fascination with the work of Sterne. Boyhood and Youth continue the account of the child-hero's development through his late teens. In the former he discovers philosophy, and considerable attention is given to the phenomenon of the paralysis of the will when it seeks to be guided by reason alone. The distinction drawn here between the enervation arising from abstract mentation and the more practical philosophy in which the head and the heart cooperate remained thereafter a prominent motif in many of Tolstoi's works, e.g., the tension between "reason" and "consciousness" in War and Peace. Youth concerns the hero's education in manners and concentrates on the theme of social comme il faut, a favorite target also in War and Peace (the characters of Berg and Vera) and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoi's tales of military fife reflect his experiences in the Caucasus and the Crimea. "The Raid" (Nabeg, 1853) and "The Woodfelling" (Rubka lesa, 1855) belong superficially to the familiar Russian genre of the Caucasian military tale. They contain an indirect polemic with the romantic clichés of fearless heroism, the glory of battle, and exaggerated patriotism characteristic of such earlier practitioners of the genre as Aleksandr Bestuzhev (Marlinsky). Tolstoi reduced the conventional exciting plots of such stories to the level of mere incidents which he used as a framework to display his true interest, a neatly categorized series of psychological portraits of the Russian soldiers and officers and their opponents, the mountain tribesmen. The stories blend the traditional Caucasian military tale of the 1820s with the strategies and devices characteristic of the Natural School of the 1840s. Tolstoi's interest in the latter, be- [478] spoken by his high opinion of Grigorovich (a leading practitioner of the "Physiological sketch"). is also reflected in "Notes of a Billiard Marker" (Zapiski markera, 1855) with its use of skaz (i.e., the interposition of a narrative persona, usually one with a "local color" value and characterized by dialectal or sub-literary speech, between author and reader), and "The Snowstorm" (Metel', 1856), a physiological sketch of the Russian coachman. The three Sevastopol Stories ("Sevastopol' v dekabre mesyatse," 1855; "Sevastopol' v mae," 1855; "Sevastopol' v avguste 1855 goda," 1856) are difficult to classify. They represent a blend of fiction and reportage with a startling admixture (in "Sevastopol in December") of the stylistic conventions of a tourist guidebook. They also (especially "Sevastopol in May") make extended use of the narrative device of stream of consciousness ("the dialectic of the soul" as it was called by the critic N. G. Chernyshevsky) with which Tolstoi had first experimented in "The History of Yesterday." The stories, especially the first of them, display the characteristically Tolstoian device of estrangement whereby familiar sights and events are made to seem new and striking by distorting or ignoring the conventions which usually govern our perception of them. This descriptive technique was to become a hallmark of Tolstoi's style. The loci classici are the account of Natasha at the opera in War and Peace, the description of the service in the prison church in Resurrection, and the ridiculing of the rehearsal of a Wagnerian opera in What Is Art? Finally, it was in "Sevastopol in May" that Tolstoi proclaimed that the "hero" of his fiction was not any of the characters who appeared in it but rather that which "I love with all the power of my soul" and which "has been, is, and will be beautiful," namely, The Truth. The stories of the later 1851)3 illustrate several more of the themes and devices which became characteristic of Tolstoi's work. He had already touched upon death and various attitudes toward it in the Trilogy and the military tales. He devoted "Three Deaths" (Tri smerti, 1859) exclusively to this subject. The story describes the pain and anxiety attendant on the death of a wealthy noblewoman, the patient and uncomplaining acceptance of his death by a poor coachman, and the death of a tree. Despite his physical suffering, the coachman dies with less anguish than the noblewoman. The death of the tree is the least painful, because the tree is unaware that it is dying. "Three Deaths" makes its point through comparison and contrast of the experiences of its three protagonists. This device, ubiquitous in Tolstoi's work, also forms the structural basis of "Two Hussars" (Dva gusara, 1856). He describes incidents from the lives of two Hussar officers, father and son. The comparison is distinctly unflattering to the younger generation, as the "progressive" critics of the time were quick to note and regret. They saw the story as proof of Tolstoi's disaffection from the liberal cause and of his recalcitrance in the face of their demand for literary works which would reflect modern ideas and ideals. Tolstoi added offense to innuendo with two stories based upon the experiences of his first trip to Europe. "Lucerne" (Iz zapisok knyazya D. Nekhlyudova. Lyutsern, 1857) contains a diatribe against the moral shortcomings of the values of "civilized" Europeans (especially the English) as compared with their rural brethren, and reminds us of Tolstoi's continuing interest in the ideas of Rousseau. "Albert" (1858) expresses the idea that art is valuable in itself and not merely as a medium for the communication of ideological or social concerns. Tolstoi worked on The Cossacks (Kazaki, 1863) throughout the entire period of his literary apprenticeship, and it reflects the whole range of themes and stylistic techniques which then preoccupied him. The novel breaks new ground as well. More comprehensively and directly than in any other of his early works, Tolstoi here delves into the theme of the relationship between the individual and the group. The hero's (Olenin) inability to find a satisfying place for himself, the unattached individual, either in the Moscow society which he leaves at the beginning of the novel or the Cossack village which he leaves at the end is a foretaste of the investigation of the role of the individual in the context of the historical and social collective which Tolstoi will conduct in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The foundation of Tolstoi's reputation is the work of his middle period (1863-77). It was then that he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both of which are, by common consent, well up on the list of the greatest novels ever written. War and Peace defies facile categorization. It is a sui generic combination of the psychological novel, the Bildungsroman, the family novel, and the historical novel, with a liberal admixture of the scope and tone of the epic. Set amidst the historical conflict between the France of Napoleon and the Russia of Alexander I, it deals primarily with the events of the years 1805 to 1812 and ends with an epilogue set in about 1820. Against a backdrop of alternating periods of peace and war Tolstoi unfolds the stories of the Bolkonsky and Rostov families, and of Pierre Bezukhov. The novel's epic qualities are most prominent in the account of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. All the classes of Russian society (with the exception of some portions of the St. Petersburg elite) unite in the defense of the homeland and in a spirit of national solidarity. On the family level it is the Rostovs who are the primary bearers of the epic spirit: the naturalness and spontaneity of Natasha; the courage and devotion of Nikolai; the scenes, most of which are associated with the Rostovs, of feasting and hunting, singing and dancing. The novel as Bildungsroman is preoccupied with the moral and psychological growth of Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. Andrei passes from dreams of military glory to disillusionment, from dreams of honor in the career of statesman to disillusionment, from dreams of love to a final disillusionment which ends in a death which is, at least in part, a voluntary withdrawal from "vital life." Pierre's road is similarly bumpy. He passes, with intermediate periods of despair, from sensuality to Freemasonry and philanthropy to mysticism. At last he seems to find the truth which he has sought in the example of the peasant soldier Platon Karataev. In the "First Epilogue," however, it is suggested that Pierre has begun to slip away from that truth, too, as from its predecessors. Unlike Andrei, but like the novel itself, he continues along the undulating curve of life, from indeterminate beginnings to an indefinite and unspecifiable end. The various aspects of War and Peace are united in a variety of ways. Tolstoi interweaves the fates of the fictional characters and connects them to those of the historical personages. The novel as a whole is marked by the vividness, fullness, and plasticity of description which is recognized as the hallmark of the Tolstoian manner. Life itself is, in a way, the unifying hero of this multi-dimensional book and Tolstoi is everywhere fascinated with its various aspects (youth and age, peace and war, mind and spirit, reason and intuition, the individual and the swarm) and its key moments: birth, love, and death. He raises many questions and explores many answers. In one of its dimensions War and Peace is a historical novel. As a whole, however, it would be better described as a novel about history. Especially in the later parts of the novel proper and in the "Second Epilogue" Tolstoi is preoccupied with the investigation of the forces that move history. His primary target is the "great-man" theory of historical causation, both in direct argument and in his portrayal of Napoleon (the epitome of the great man) as limited ineffectual, and essentially powerless to control the movement of history. The Russian commander Kutuzov, the salutary contrast to the pretentious Napoleon, succeeds precisely because he seeks to accommodate himself to the flow and flux of history rather than trying to manipulate it. The "Second Epilogue" of War and Peace extends the discussion of historical causation into the realm of the more general philosophic question of freedom and necessity, a topic which was to retain a vital interest for Tolstoi throughout the remainder of his career. In reading Tolstoi, "freedom" and "necessity" can be understood as rubrics which summarize nearly all of his central thematic concerns. Under "freedom" come consciousness, life, the individual; under "necessity" fall reason (i.e., logic without intuition), death, the group. War and Peace explores the role of the individual within the group conceived of as the historical mass. Here is another unifying factor in the novel, for Tolstoi presents not only the involvement of the historical characters in the great events of history but that of the fictional characters as well. They all face situations which exemplify the tension between the immediacy of the individual's sense of freedom as individual and the feelings of powerlessness and constraint within the group. The intuitive freedom perceived by consciousness does battle with the indubitable ne- [479] cessity proven by reason, and from this war not one of the leading characters is allowed, in fife, an unbroken peace. The same questions, cloaked in a different setting and explored in the context of another dimension of the "group," emerge again in Tolstoi's second great novel. Anna Karenina is an account of two marriages. The story of the ruin of Anna's in her adulterous affair with Count Aleksei Vronsky alternates with the story of the courtship and family life of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. The two main characters, Anna and Levin, are brought together on only one occasion, however, so that while it is easy to see the contrast between these two characters and their respective fates, it is more difficult to understand the sense in which they are also comparable to one another. At the beginning of the novel Anna is a highly respected member of society. She enters into a love affair and finds herself unable to conduct it discreetly. She abhors hypocrisy and deceit. She cannot be content with the stolen moments of passion in which so many of the women and men of her acquaintance indulge. Anna is caught between the power of the passionate "aliveness" within her and the equally pressing demands of the society to which she belongs. She finds herself in the position of serving two masters: her individuality, with its striving for freedom and self‑expression through love, and her social self, with its need to belong to an authentic group context. As she herself says, she is, in her affair, "guilty, and yet not to blame." Anna commits suicide when she becomes convinced that Vronsky, the only remnant of social context remaining to her, wishes to leave her. Levin's course is the reverse of Anna's. He begins as an acknowledged "outsider," an independent individualist, and gradually becomes ever more enmeshed in the web of social and familial constraints. Like Anna, he senses the tension between the force of his individual ideals and the obstructions of recalcitrant social reality. Unlike her, he finds a middle course which allows him to function with the social group while yet retaining a part of himself, what he calls on the last page of the novel his soul's "holy of holies," under his absolute control. In this hidden part of himself he is neither constrained nor obstructed by his continuing attachment to the group. His life, in this respect at least, is "full of the meaning with which I have the power to invest it." In this respect the stories of Anna and Levin are truly comparable. Both experience the frustration of having their expression of themselves as individuals thwarted by an unmanageable social reality. As in War and Peace Tolstoi had shown the powerlessness of individuals to force historical reality to conform to their own ambitions and plans, so here he explores their inability to realize the ideals of the free imagination in the context of society and the family. Although the group is of a different order of magnitude, the question is the same: wherein is a person free, wherein subject to the constraints of necessity. The hopeful implication of War and Peace that people are at least relatively free in the context of their personal and familial affairs is replaced in Anna Karenina by the suggestion that they are really free only within themselves, in that "holy of holies" which they alone may enter. Tolstoi devoted rest of the first seven years of his later period (1878-1910) to non-fictional writing. When, in 1885, he returned once again to literature, he was determined to forswear the "nonsense" of his former style and to make all his fictional works conveyances for the message of the Christian teaching as he understood it. He distinguished between the educated and the popular audiences, and his first literary efforts were intended for the latter. Tolstoi's primary problem in writing "for the people" was to devise a style that was both accessible to them and commensurate with his artistic standards. He employed narrative models and subjects familiar from fairy tales, religious legends, and proverbs. He trimmed his customarily complex literary style to the bare bones, much as be had in the stories, especially "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (Bog pravdu vidit, da ne skoro skazhet, 1872), written for The Russian Readers. To this simplified base he added, through appropriate lexical and syntactic selection, either a folkish or Biblical flavor. He consulted a well-known teller of folktales and was in the habit of eavesdropping on the conversations of simple folk in search of choice words and phrases. The stylistic innovation produced by these efforts is the chief glory of the collection of moral exempla which Tolstoi called his Stories for the People. They represent a, genre unto themselves within Tolstoi's work and include such gems as "What Men Live By" (Chem lyudi zhivy, 1882), "Where Love Is, God Is" (Gde lyubov', tam i Bog, 1885), "Two Old Men" (Dva starika, 1885), "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno?, 1885), and "The Three Hermits" (Tri startsa, 1886). Tolstoi's concern to bring the message of his teaching to the popular audience also led him into dramatic work. There were efforts afoot in the mid‑1880s to develop a repertory of plays suitable for production in "popular" theaters. Tolstoi, who had experimented briefly with and then abandoned the drama in the 1860s, was invited to contribute. In response he wrote The Power of Darkness (Vlast' t'my, 1886). This peasant tragedy, its five acts neatly apportioned to rising action, climax, and denouement, is constructed very much in the classical manner. As it happened, it was not produced for the popular audience, but it had a notable theatrical success in the 1890s under the direction of K. S. Stanislavsky. It has since remained a fixture of the Russian repertory. Tolstoi's several later plays do not reach the level of The Power of Darkness. The best known is The Fruits of Enlightenment (Plody prosveshcheniya, 1889-90), a comedy in which Tolstoi ridicules the spiritualism which was fashionable in the 1880s. The major literary achievements of Tolstoi's later period are to be found among the works which he wrote for the educated audience. Like the Stories for the People, these works are nearly all invested with the teaching; unlike them, they are written in a style which is much more typically Tolstoian. Tolstoi seems to have felt that his peers were in need of instruction mainly with respect to the themes of death and sex, subjects which appear rarely and never, respectively, in the Stories for the People. The theme of death evoked the short novels The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Smert' Ivana II'icha, 1886) and Master and Man (Khozyain i rabotnik, 1895). Both portray the encounter between a solid, respectable citizen and his death, an encounter which reveals that the very solidity and respectability of the lives of the protagonists was what was most wrong with them. Both works are painstakingly structured, densely allusive, and profoundly symbolic. It is here that Tolstoi best succeeded in converting the raw material of his religious teaching into genuine works of art. The stories on the theme of sex are less well realized from the artistic point of view. The Kreutzer Sonata (Kreitserova sonata, 1889) aroused a storm of controversy. Tolstoi was accused of advocating a celibacy so complete that it would, if practiced, result in the extinction of the human race. The pernicious results of sexual attraction are also the focus of The Devil (D'yavol, 1890 unfinished) and Father Sergius (Otets Sergii, 1898). Tolstoi's last long novel, Resurrection (Voskresenie, 1899) occupied him intermittently for eleven years. He published it to raise money for the transportation of the Dukhobors, a Christian sect with whose style of life he sympathized, to Canada. It is generally conceded that Resurrection does not compare well with its predecessors, and Tolstoi himself felt that the novel was published before it had reached a fully satisfactory state of readiness. In Resurrection Tolstoi attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the ills of contemporary society as seen from the vantage point of his religious teaching. The church, the government, the institution of private property, the judicial and penal system, the conventions of upper-class social life: all are mercilessly attacked and ridiculed. Tolstoi uses his considerable gifts as a satirist with telling effect. Resurrection is also Tolstoi's final fictional word on the perplexing question of freedom and necessity. He had left Levin (in Anna Karenina) in a state marked by the coexistence of an external, physiological obeisance to the laws of determinism and a spiritual, but wholly internalized, sense of freedom and individual worth. The hero of Resurrection, Prince Dmitry Nekhlyudov, strives to resolve this contradiction by externalizing the dictates of his spiritual consciousness. He abandons his position in society, turns his property over to his peasants, and follows the heroine (for whose ruin he feels responsible) into her Siberian exile. For the later Tolstoi the mere recognition of the spiritual essence of man is no longer enough, even when (as in The Death of Ivan Ilyich) the recognition is total and entails the complete rejection of a life lived with the spirit submerged. Levin's compromise is replaced by Nekhlyudov's decision to act so as to remove from his life every vestige of dissonance with the commands of the spirit. Freedom seems at last to win its long struggle with [480] necessity in the work of Tolstoi. The freedom exemplified in Resurrection is the freedom to act in accord with the requirements of the spirit, to control the fears and desires which were, for the later Tolstoi, the necessary adjuncts of the "animal life" of man, and to reject as irrelevant the physical death which was its determined end. With his last remarkable work of fiction, Hadji-Murad (Khadzhi-Murad, 1904), Tolstoi's literary career seems to come full circle. This novel's Caucasian setting and descriptions of armed conflict and the warrior's life mark a recurrence of themes which had engaged Tolstoi's interest at the beginning of his career. He himself referred to Hadji-Murad as a return to his former manner of writing. Indeed, its stylistic artifice and the relative absence of the later Tolstoi's customary moral certitude are hardly in full accord with the principles expressed in What Is Art?. It was perhaps for this reason that HadjiMurad was held back by Tolstoi and published only after his death.

Teatral'nyi roman

This is Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical story of a writer who fails to sell his novel and fails to commit suicide. When his play is taken up by the theatre, literary success beckons, but he has reckoned without the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors and theatre managers. The original name of what was later known as Theatrical Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov was Notes of a Dead Man or Записки покойника the novel was written in 1936-37 and is based on the real story of his relations with the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) and its artistic leaders K. Stanislavskii and V. Nemirovich-Danchenko in the course of rehearsing his novel-play Belaia Gvardiia/Dni Turbinykh and the play Moliere. A. Kobrinskii "decoded" this novel and disclosed prototypes of the main characters in the play

Nakanune

Turgenev On the Eve , Накану́не is the third novel by Ivan Turgenev. Turgenev embellishes this love story with observations on middle class life and interposes some art and philosophy. In his essay "When Will the Real Day Come?", Nikolay Dobrolyubov analyzed On the Eve through a political lens that Turgenev disagreed with, offending the author

Varlam Shalamov

Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales is generally recognised — at least by Russians and readers of Russian — as a masterpiece of Russian prose and the greatest work of literature about the Gulag; this thousand-page cycle of stories draws mainly on Shalamov's experiences as a prisoner in Kolyma, a vast area in the far northeast of the USSR that, throughout most of the Stalin era, was in effect a mini-State run by the NKVD; most of the inmates of its hundreds of camps were either felling trees or mining coal or gold. Shalamov's poetry, however, still has few readers even in Russia, although he himself seems to have valued it above his prose.

about Byron

Why was Byron kicked out of England? He had an affair / incest. So the hero in all his stories there is a character who is kicked out. This makes this the author and the story merge somewhat.

Masters Comp Question: · Where did the concept of "Socialist Realism" come from? What did it consist of? When was it practiced, and when did it go into decline?

Zhdanov = 1934 = First Congress of Soviet Writers Socialist realism was neither a movement nor a single genre, but spanned all art forms in the Soviet Union. Zhdanov brought the term to widespread use in his 1934 speech at the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers. Generally, the rise and peak of Socialist realism can be linked with the Stalin era. It became the enforced method in all art forms in the 30s and 40s. Only after Stalin's death, in 1953, were Soviet critics and authors comfortable criticizing the term. Therefore, its decline began in the 50s. Pomerantsev's 1956 call for sincerity in literature may be considered the first public death knell of socialist realism. By the 60s and 70s, it was being replaced by literary movements such as village prose and urban prose. Although a simple timeline is provided above, many of the canonical works of socialist realism predate the period described. Positive hero = class-aware, goes through process of being converted to the part, story of his triumph, ordinary becomes extraordinary, flat character ...Most texts can be identified by the ever-present positive hero, who is often of the working class. The positive hero consistently devoted to the cause and willing to sacrifice everything for the cause of world communism. Pavel Korchagin from Ostrovskii's How the Steel Was Tempered provides good example of the positive hero, who sacrifices his health and body/Additionally, as Katerina Clark has pointed out, socialist realism is identifiable by the progression from spontaneity (stikhinost') to (ideological) consciousness (soznatel'nost'). According to Clark, crossing the boundary from the spontaneous to the conscious involved a ritualized sacrifice or mutilation. Three pillars hold up any socialist realist artwork: ideology, nationality, and partiinost' (party-mindedness). Works: Mat' -Gorkii (pre-revolution) -Razgrom - Fadeev (1927?) (war-story) -Chapaev - Furmanov (19 -Kak zakalialas' stal'. - (1934) -Tsement - Gladkov

Masters Comp Questions: (answer both; 2 25 minute questions instead of 1 60 minute question) · Where did the concept of "Socialist Realism" come from? What did it consist of? When was it practiced, and when did it go into decline?

Zhdanov = 1934 = First Congress of Soviet Writers Socialist realism was neither a movement nor a single genre, but spanned all art forms in the Soviet Union. Zhdanov brought the term to widespread use in his 1934 speech at the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers. Generally, the rise and peak of Socialist realism can be linked with the Stalin era. It became the enforced method in all art forms in the 30s and 40s. Only after Stalin's death, in 1953, were Soviet critics and authors comfortable criticizing the term. Therefore, its decline began in the 50s. Pomerantsev's 1956 call for sincerity in literature may be considered the first public death knell of socialist realism. By the 60s and 70s, it was being replaced by literary movements such as village prose and urban prose. Although a simple timeline is provided above, many of the canonical works of socialist realism predate the period described. Positive hero = class-aware, goes through process of being converted to the part, story of his triumph, ordinary becomes extraordinary, flat character ...Most texts can be identified by the ever-present positive hero, who is often of the working class. The positive hero consistently devoted to the cause and willing to sacrifice everything for the cause of world communism. Pavel Korchagin from Ostrovskii's How the Steel Was Tempered provides good example of the positive hero, who sacrifices his health and body/Additionally, as Katerina Clark has pointed out, socialist realism is identifiable by the progression from spontaneity (stikhinost') to (ideological) consciousness (soznatel'nost'). According to Clark, crossing the boundary from the spontaneous to the conscious involved a ritualized sacrifice or mutilation. Three pillars hold up any socialist realist artwork: ideology, nationality, and partiinost' (party-mindedness). Works: Mat' -Gorkii (pre-revolution) -Razgrom - Fadeev (1927?) (war-story) -Chapaev - Furmanov (19 -Kak zakalialas' stal'. - (1934) -Tsement - Gladkov

Simile

a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox)

re Russian Novel:

addressing the reader on how to read the novel is a main point ( perhaps it is the main point). Pushkin (in Onegin), Lermontov ( in Geroi nashego vremeni) and Gogol (in Mertvye sushi) trying to "create" their readers by instructing them on how to read (or not to read) their works. One such critic is William Mills Todd in his book Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin.

Fet

ater known as Shenshin he was illegitimate child with brothers who loved him, tolstoy was a friend yet his biological father denied he was his son for a time. In retrospect, Afanasy Fet is regarded as the greatest lyric poet of Russia. His verses were highly esteemed by Vissarion Belinsky, who ranked him on par with Mikhail Lermontov. "Such lyrical insight into the very core of the Spring and human emotion risen by it was hitherto unknown in Russian poetry," wrote critic Vasily Botkin in 1843.[1] Osip Mandelstam considered Fet to be the greatest Russian poet of all time. Fet, whose sensual and melancholic lyric was often imbued with sadness and tragedy, exerted powerful influence upon Russian Symbolists, notably Innokenty Annensky and Alexander Blok, the latter referring to him as his "great teacher." Among those influenced by Fet were Sergey Yesenin and Boris Pasternak.[3] Tchaikovsky wrote:ater

was gogol a realist writer?

both cherneshevsky and belinsky saw gogol as the originator or russian realism despite, the obvious preponderance of romanticism in gogol's art and of realism in pushkin's art. ( they were comparing him to pushkin) both cherneshevksy and belinsky saw gogol alone, as opposed to pushkin whom he was the heir to, 1843 they thought he was supposed to take pushkin's place, they say him as a totally independent writer with no influences models or predecessors either in foreign or russian literature as opposed to pushkin. cherneshevksy saw him as the "father of russian prose" before belinksy. Although Gogol was considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in his work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore.[14][15] His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works

nobel laureates in Russian literature ( in order)

bunin pasternak sholokov Agnon solzhenitzen brodsky

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

by Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, also known as Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber, is a collection of short stories by Tadeusz Borowski, which were inspired by the author's concentration camp experience. The original title in the Polish language was Pożegnanie z Marią (Farewell to Maria).[1] Following two year imprisonment at Auschwitz, Borowski had been liberated from the Dachau concentration camp in the spring of 1945, and went on to write his collection in the following years in Stalinist Poland.[2] The book, translated in 1959, was featured in the Penguin's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s

Smerdiakov

character in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov, widely rumored to be the illegitimate son of Fyodor Karamazov, is the son of "stinking Lizaveta", a mute woman of the street who died in childbirth. His name, Smerdyakov, means "son of the 'reeking one'". He was brought up by Fyodor Karamazov's trusted servant Grigory Vasilievich Kutuzov and his wife Marfa. Smerdyakov grows up in the Karamazov house as a servant, working as Fyodor's lackey and cook. He is morose and sullen, and, like Dostoyevsky, suffers from epilepsy. The narrator notes that as a child, Smerdyakov collected stray cats to hang and bury them. Generally aloof, Smerdyakov admires Ivan and shares his atheism

Maksim Maksimych

character in Hero of Our Time: written in 1839 published 1840 revised in 1841 by Lermontov. MM is a Captain in the army who narrates his encounter with Pechorin to the unnamed traveler. Being charmed by Pechorin, Maksim sends for him when they are at two, close military bases, but is distressed when Pechorin is seemingly uninterested with him. Maksim Maksimych is also the title of the third section in the book after authors preface and bela in the 7 parts of the book (counting the authors preface) Pechorin is shown through the eyes of others in the sections "Bela" and "Maxim Maximych,"

Aleksandr Griboedov

famous for the 1823 play Горе от ума, also translated as "The Woes of Wit", "Wit Works Woe", and so forth) is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy in verse, satirizing the society of post-Napoleonic Moscow, or, as a high official in the play styled it, "a pasquinade on Moscow." The work was a compulsory read In soviet schools. Griboedov background: born January 1795 - 11 died February 1829), was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. He is recognized as homo unius libri, a writer of one book, whose fame rests on the verse comedy Woe from Wit or The Woes of Wit. He was Russia's ambassador to Qajar Persia, where he and all the embassy staff were massacred by an angry mob as a result of the rampant anti-Russian sentiment that existed through Russia's imposing of the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), which had forcefully ratified for Persia's ceding of its northern territories comprising Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus. Griboyedov had played a pivotal role in the ratification of the latter treaty

simile

figure of speech comparing two unlike things

Describe Pechorin

from Hero of Our Time: Considered first Russian novel of 'psychological realism,' though he is traditionally part of the Romantic movement. Expresses then current repressive political and social ideals that could only be commented on indirectly. Lermontov called Pechorin a portrait of all of his generation's "vices in full bloom" (impulsive, emotionally distant, bored with life). Pechorin comes from Pechora River in homage to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, named after the Onega River. He is the 'Byronic' character, both sensitive and cynical. He treats women as incentive and endless conquest. The main characters are Pechorin, Maxim Maximych (served with Pechorin in Caucasus), an unnamed narrator officer who talks to reader directly, exposes Pechorin through Maxim and then his own journal told through a third, unnamed soldier, ending abruptly. Pechorin kills his friend Grushnitsky (whom he secretly despised) in a duel over Princess Mary, whom he was wooing while having an affair with Vera, a former love. He rejects both of them by the end. Grushnitsky is tricked during the duel when Pechorin realizes he gave him an empty gun

Provide a detailed analysis of a Narrative Poem ( thematic and if you wish, formal ) of any narrative poem, poema by Pushkin:

gypsies: • Iambic tetrameter • Nabokov's eternal garden/ arrest time/ live in perfect harmony forever • Attack on Rousseu using Rousssea-ist thems to ultimately deliver and anit Rousseausit message. • This poem explains the tragic failure of European liberalism by tracing it back to its philosophical l roots in the enlightenment. The Gypsies is the last of Pushkin's "Southern Poems", and is usually considered to be the most mature and sophisticated of these works. The "Southern Poems" are indebted to Byron: they use exotic and orientalized settings, rapid transitions, and chart sexual and military conquest.[8] However, critics agree that The Gypsies, while inheriting much from the Byronic tradition, also strives to move away from it. Michael Wachtel argues that "the grim, fatalistic acceptance of life as a tragedy and of individual experience as endless repetition brings the work closer to Antiquity than to Byron".[9] Antony Wood suggests that The Gypsies is a parody of both Rousseau's Noble Savage idea and Byron's verse tales, pointing out that "Aleko, pursuing the ideal of the Noble Savage, himself comes to present the spectacle of an ignoble citizen."[10] John Bayley argues that The Gypsies "shows the problem of a poet as naturally classical as Pushkin in an epoch fashionably and self-consciously romantic. Pushkin wrote a letter to the genral expressing his wish to volunterr for the army ( greek turkish was that the greeks lost) but he sours on the idea later which in essesnce is what "Gypsies" is about. Finaly pushkins attitude toward the greeeks shifted from admiration to derision in ~ 1823-24. the greeks lost to the turks, ultimately and b/c the Russian Tsar feared a conflict witjt the ottoman empire that would be an oopen breach of the holy alliance. Re " Noble Savage": The poem addresses and interrogates the concept of the noble savage, an idea which had gained popular currency in the Romantic Age which held that those people who live further from civilization live, in harmony with nature and a more simple, childlike and blessed life than the alienated and unhappy people in European cities.[7] Aleko's failure to integrate with the gypsies and his continued insistence on the moral standards of the city in the gypsy encampment challenge the notion that happiness can be found by reverting to nature. The poem closes with a clear attack on the idea of the noble savage: "But even among you, poor sons of nature, there is no happiness! Tormenting dreams live below your bedraggled tents". [Но счастья нет и между вами, / Природы бедные сыны!... / И под издранными шатрами / Живут мучительные сны.] (ll.562-565)

realism and hegel ( class notes)

in realist literature a bad omen would be located in the worldview of a character or in the objective reality of the story This is taken from Kazian in a Hunters sketches: While in a carriage the narrator comes across a funeral procession and goes to Yudin village to get a new axle when theirs breaks. There he meets Kasyan, a fifty-year-old dwarf who lives in the village and who belongs to some unnamed religious sect. He takes them to get a new axle and the narrator notices how at one he seems with his environment and incredibly generous. Kasyan establishes his hatred of established society through his glorification of the world of folklore. Whats important in a hunters sketch's= serfdom is a huge question/ the slavophile problem so Turgenev is writing one of the first works that asks us to look at the Russian peasant/ to pay attention. Romantic and realist works Anna k: more complicated / realist: anna and Leoven anna goes on the wrong path but maybe shes on the right path we can aruge about that but he introduces Leoven to show what the right path is. So following your passions into adultery is the "wrong path". Leoven gets married. There is much event and excitement and much detail but its really not much so its like "some people got married and others divorced" we can sum up that's it. Hero of our time: is in segments / and focused on just one person as compared to Anna k Is enormous amount of plot, very rich multifaceted we can't, sum it up much at all so A LOT OF plot here. Realism is more profound (it's like the photographic urge) it's a gigantic examination of causality. Using the tools of science, you look at the social reality. Tracing things like, determinism. Like Tolstoy examines many viewpoints (hallmark of realist novel) as in war and peace. Realism devotes a lot more words to fewer events. So why, are the details there? Like to give an representation of a battle you need the weather and everything War and peace is fascinated by romanticism but does not like it Crime and punishment (both books are Napoleon) The romantic hero would ride into the battel and you get his viewpoint only (romanticism) and in EO Eugenie is a romantic Byronic hero. Detail why do we have so much of it? The 19th century is where most science as we know it flourish's vs the 18th cent only zoology and like two others. It also helps us organize reality Europeans don't believe anymore in religion/ Christs Re Kant: questioning objectivity as in critical reasoning which is the belief that every human being has to challenge and understand reality and pick their own stance. Kant says that truth comes from critical thought which is a crucial element that structures the novel. Hegel: history moves by like an idea, philosophy, or political party eg too much Christianity for too long produces its own critique so then the two combine into a synthesis so history moves forward which is associated with the idea of progress. Antithesis and synthesis = Hegel. It's the march of progress that we will always be progressing's so its more romantic in a sense, as in struggle is good! Why so much detail? b/c Russians are trying to analyze reality. They cant look up anything like we can and the Russians are like "who are we are we orthodox or are we French" so the novelists depict reality so we / they can argue about it as in, what's the relationship between peasants and ourselves or between men and women. So Belinsky is super happy b/c we have a long complex detail of reality. The realist novel is a great picture of how the world works. Eg steava grew up w/out parental love and anna is an orphan and has had to appeal to people vs kitty who has a dif kind of charm yet she grew up w/ parents. Kitty does not have that restless desired to get love/ be loved like anna . Leovin is an orphan as well. Leovins brother Nikolai is an orphan. Leovin and his brother don't go around charming people kitty instead they withdraw and they are loners . so this is the " how parents shape children " is Tolstoy's thing here in AK. All, the orphans are restless: it's a scientific examination of this. The little baby Annie is by Annna at the end of the novel, she crawls around and looks back at Dolly and Dolly is like "you are awesome" the little girl has the same craving for love that Anna did. Little Annie is not sure her mother is there so (this is where detail really works). Social relations. How poverty influences people in Dost novels.

Nikolai Kavalerov

main character in Envy / Зависть a novel published in 1927 by the Russian novelist Yuri Olesha. The other main character is Andrei Babichev who is the trade director of the Food Industry Trust, as a good -natured, happy, corpulent, go getting apparatichik. This image of Babichev is deliberated refracted through the prism of propaganda and the newly Sovietized Russian language, meant to accommodate revolutionary politics and the new communal and mechanized way of life. Andrei would indeed appear to be a positive character, if he were not mitigated through the eyes of Kavalerov a spiteful young intellectual whom Andrei has rescued after finding him drunk in the street. Nicolai bitterly envies Andrei's professional success and mocks the optimism of the revolution. Envy's most vivid scenes and dialogues don't actually occur- Nikolai invents them and Nikolai's black fantasies drive the novel. For example, when Andrei goes to a communal apartment house on an official visit, he's expelled by housewives angry at their domestic situation. Its Nikolai who derisively tells the reader ( not, Andrei) that Andrei should have used that moment ot promote the Two Bits ( the name of a communal dining hall that Andrei intents to build). Andrei has a subversive brother named Ivan Babichev. Nikolai meets him after glimpsing his reflection in a mirror on the street ( a trick better deployed / with greater dexterity, by Nabokov ). Nikolai quickly identifies Ivan as "my friend, teacher, and consoler" - his secret sharer. Ivan is an alternate Nikolai in antiquated costume, most notably a bowler hat. Like his brother Andrei, his form is not necessarily consistent with reality. Its Nikolai's shiftlessness and his inability to adapt to the optimism of the new age make him hate Andrei. If Andrei's' character is defined by propagandistic bombast, and Nicolai's by malice, Ivan exists within rumors and hearsay: he's is a poet, a dreamer, an inventor of a robot and a rabble rouser who breaks up weddings and stalks his brother at official functions . ( Source: Intro to Envy, from the book ) The book was an immediate sensation in Russia. Envy shows us Nikolai Kavalerov's world as he might have also seen our own: as false, overbearing, fractured and inhuman

Liutov/ Luitov

narrator of Babel's Konarmiia Isaac Babel (1894-1940) His most famous work, the cycle of short stories and vignettes, Konarmiia (Red Cavalry), was first published in a separate edition in 1926. It dealt with the experiences of the Russo-Polish War of 1920 as seen through the bespectacled eyes of a Russian Jewish intellectual working, as Babel himself had done, for the newspaper of the red Cossack army. This autobiographical aura played a key rôle in the success and popularity of the cycle. The thirty three jewel-like pieces, strung together to form the first edition of Red Cavalry, were composed in a short period of time, between the summer of 1923 and the beginning of 1925, and together constitute Babel's lengthiest work of fiction (two more pieces would be added subsequently). They also represent his most innovative and daring technical accomplishment. For the first time, in Russian letters at least, the opulence and subtlety of modernism lent themselves to the expression of the cruelest and basest sensibility

Абрам Терц

pen name of Andrey Sinyavsky, modern writer, most known for On Socialist Realism and The Trial Begins

Silentium

poem by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873), a poet from the Golden Age of Russian literature. This is a lyric-philosophical poem highly appreciated for its special rhythm and tone. The poem is written in regular iambic tetrameter, however, some critics and performers believe (based on Russian normative placement of accent in the words zaHOdyat , zVYOZdy and razGOnyat ) that in lines 4, 5, and 17, Tyutchev uses amphibrachic feet (Attridge, 1995, pp. 102, 143). When editing Tyutchev's work in 1854, Turgenev even corrected the poem by altering the offending lines into regular iamb's. Nabokov did a translaton of it as well

А.А. Фет

poet at the end of the 19th century in Russia, little known today and not well-liked in his time, his themes are usually quite simple but his ability to weave words and sometimes write poems without single verbs is fascinating, he had a very impressionistic style

"Requiem"

recall Gumilev was shot ( her writer husband) after they divorced and her son put in prison ( probably b/c he was son of writers) and her writing involved tales of death etc. Requim is an epic of grief and remembrance 15 short poems the ten internal numbered poems form a chronological revelation that documents the suffering of the Russian people during the years of Stalinist terror the poem is considered a poem "cycle" or "sequence" because it is made up of a collection of shorter poems. These poems are not meant to be read in isolation, but together as part of one cohesive longer work. Akhmatova plumbs the depths of unimaginable suffering, and charts the journey of mourning and memorial. The poem opens with a declaration of the pain of one woman, an individual circumstance but recognizable to all who lived through the era. With each successive poem, the central figure experiences a new stage of suffering: mute grief, growing disbelief, rationalization, raw mourning, steely resolve. Sometimes writing in the first person, sometimes in the third person, Akhmatova becomes the voice of the people as she universalizes her personal pain over the repeated imprisonment of her son and the loss of friends and literary peers to execution and exile. At the climax of the cycle of grief, however, three figures of Christian religious significance appear: Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Christ, and John, the beloved disciple. Critics hold various opinions about why Akhmatova incorporated these personages who are closely associated with Catholic religious beliefs, and about whom significant people in the poet's life each figure represents. Within the work as a whole, however, these religious figures, placed outside the context of their New Testament roles, reinforce the poet's subtext of the inevitability of suffering. Akhmatova allows the central figure to transcend her personal circumstances in an almost mystical, supernatural way—not to mitigate her pain or allow her a measure of peace, but to dignify and honor the ability of this woman, and all women, to confront their deepest grief and fear and survive. In Requiem, writes Amanda Haight, Akhmatova "has taken suffering to its limit and so there is nothing to fear." , Akhmatova couches references to actual times and places in such a way that the work transcends its era and becomes a universal and timeless voice for the victims of persecution anywhere and any time Although it was composed in large part prior to 1940, Akhmatova considered Requiem too dangerous to be written down, much less published, at the time, so until the mid-1960s it remained unpublished, and existed only as individual verses memorized by the poet and a handful of her most trusted confidants. Akhmatova lived in Russia during Stalin's reign of terror. Her poems seek to bear witness to the oppressive silence during that time. The "Requiem" cycle was written as a response to the imprisonment of Akhmatova's son, during which time she stood in a line outside of the jail every day for seventeen months waiting for news. One day, a women in the crowd recognized her, and asked her to write a poem about the experience. "Requiem" is the response to the woman's request. In the poem, Akhmatova addresses many themes, including religion, the desperation and hopelessness of war, censorship and silencing, grief, and whether it is possible to maintain hope in the midst of darkness. "Requiem" is Akhmatova's best known work, considered by many to be her magnum opus, or masterpiece.

Vishnevyi

sad - one of Chekhov's most famous plays

AK

starts out with the line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina is a novel first published in periodical installments from 1875 to 1877 . The novel appeared as a serial in the periodical Ruskii Vestnik ("Russian Messenger") -- but Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final installment. Therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form. Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered this book his first true novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (1832-1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy started reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character. Although most Russian critics panned the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion is seconded by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style" and the motif of the moving train, which is subtly introduced in the first chapters (the kids playing with a toy train) and inexorably developed in subsequent chapters (Anna's nightmare dream), thus heralding the novel's majestic finale.

. Strashnaia mest'

the Russian for Nikolai Gogol's " A Terrible Vengeance" this Gothic horror story was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, in 1832, and it was probably written in late summer 1831. The appearance of evil spirits, and specifically of an Antichrist figure, in A Terrible Vengeance was typical of Gogol's belief in the omnipresence of Evil in everyday life, an aspect of his religious philosophy that is uniquely direct in this story. The overall construction of the story is typical of what would come to be called skaz, wherein characters are identified to a large degree by linguistic specificities of their manner of speech. Another particularity of the piece is frequent narratorial intrusion, such as asides to the reader or other violations of the narratorial frame

ward 6

the apathetic dr rabin ends up as patient in the hospital he works at. As one of Chekhov's longer and more politicized stories, Ward No. six was published to universal acclaim in 1892. It explores the conflict between reality and philosophy—namely, how people intellectualize reality to justify their own inaction. These two conflicting ideas are personified in the lunatic Gromov and the apathetic Dr. Rabin. A die-hard realist, Gromov declares that Rabin's isolationism is only "laziness, fakirism and stupefaction." This is a harsh but essentially true judgment. In particular, we see that the doctor retreats into the comfort of "rationalization" to assuage his own conscience. Rabin knows that the hospital is an "immoral institution ... prejudicial to the health of the townspeople," but he feels no compassion for its patients or inmates. As he remarks to Gromov, there is "nothing but idle chance" in his being a doctor and in Gromov being an asylum patient. Rabin thus justifies his indifference to others' plight by suggesting that everything is subject to chance. This doctrine is both unconvincing and heartless, and the author seems to scorn Rabin's philosophy. We see how Rabin, a self-confessed stoic, is forced to confront pain and loneliness. Ultimately, goaded on by Gromov, the doctor ends up condemning the senseless reality of suffering and rejecting his previous philosophy. The tale's supreme irony is that this conversion occurs within an asylum that the protagonist had held to be permissible, on the grounds that it was provided for by chance. But ward no. six is more than a setting for Rabin's moral conversion, it is also a microcosm of Russian society. The porter Nikita monitors his inmates like a prison warden; Moiseika represents the capitalist mindset with his fascination for collecting money; and Gromov personifies society's activist element, railing against injustice. This paranoid lunatic condemns the status quo: Gromov is a radical who dares to challenge what David Margarshack terms Rabin's "non- resistance to evil." To better understand Chekhov's sympathetic characterization of Gromov and his condemnation of Ragin, one should note that the author visited the notorious Sakhalin prison in 1890. Chekhov was profoundly affected by his experiences at the prison, where he surveyed the inmates and witnessed first- hand the horrors of prison life. It thus comes as no surprise to see the author challenging society's dehumanization of criminals and lunatics in Ward No. 6. In particular, he questions the abuses committed by officials whose authority is upheld by the state. However, Chekhov does not use his story to force a personal or political philosophy onto his readers. Ultimately, we are left to make up our own minds on the issue of state control and institutional corruption. Ward No. six is a work that raises important issues regarding the relationships between citizens and state, and between people in positions of power and those whom they incapacitate.

bezkonfliknost

the ficton of the late 1940's seems excruciating dull to outsiders but it certainly fit into a cultural system which reached a pinnacle in the post war years. Bezkonfliknost ( absence of major conflict) was its avowed organizing principle and laikirovka ( glossing over reality with a bright smile) was its hidden agenda. The role of the party was elevated and the political element served to de-emotionalize the plot and reduce the action. Definition from Russian popular culture: entertainment and society since 1900.

Zashchita Luzhina

this is Vladimir Nabokov's original title for his 3rd novel The Defense, written during his emigration in berlin and published in 1930. The novel appeared first under Nabokov's pen name V. Sirin in the Russian emigre quarterly "Sovremennye Zapiski" and was thereafter published by the emigre publishing house Slovo as "Защита Лужина" (The Luzhin Defense) in Berlin. In the forward to the English edition, Nabokov links the events in the central chapters to chess problems. Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin is the protagonist of the novel

Kuznetsov

wrote a Russian dictionary in 1998

re Tolstoy conversion:

wrote childhood, boyhood, war and peace and cossaks. but when he got to AK he had probs: In 1873 Tolstoi's thoughts turned once again to literature, and in the course of the next four years he 'wrote his second long novel, Anna Karenina. His work on the later parts of the novel was disturbed by ever more frequent fits of emotional distress. This condition was brought on by his inability to find an acceptable answer to the question: "What meaning can a person's life have which would not be annihilated by the awful inevitability of death?" Tolstoi became more and more convinced that the bitter truth was that life is meaningless, that there is no escape from the power of death. By the mid-1870s Tolstoi was occasionally so depressed that he entertained thoughts of suicide. By 1878, however, his "crisis" had culminated in what is customarily referred to as a "conversion" to the ideals of human life and conduct which he found in the teaching of Jesus. after an interim where he propagated his religious views, Tolstoi resumed literary activity in the mid-1880s with a series of stories written for the popular audience (i.e., for the common people, especially the peasants). To facilitate the publication and distribution of the "Stories for the People" he and his friend and disciple V. G. Chertkov founded (1884) a non‑profit publishing house which they called The Intermediary (Posrednik). Tolstoi also developed an interest in the drama and wrote his only major play, The Power of Darkness. The leading examples of Tolstoi's fiction written for the educated audience also reflect his religious teachings. These include the short novels The Death of Ivan llyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Master and Man. He also wrote two more novels, Resurrection and Hadji-Murad, and more than a dozen short stories

Fyodor Sologub

wrote petty demon: Fyodor Sologub (Russian: Фёдор Сологу́б, born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, Russian: Фёдор Кузьми́ч Тете́рников, also known as Theodor Sologub; 1 March [O.S. 17 February] 1863 - 5 December 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.

With reference to at least three different texts, discuss how the "fallen woman" is depicted in nineteenth century Russian literature. Which traits are common to all depictions of prostitutes of women with ruined reputations, and which are unique to only one or some authors? Do authors defend or condemn the fallen woman? (25 minutes; MA Exam b)

Соня Мармеладова Достоевский The Idiot Dostoevskij Анна Каренина Толстой Семейное счастие Толстой Лесков Lady McBeth Невский Проспект Гоголь links to Notes from the Underground of meeting a prostitute and wanting to save her or seeing her as a pure woman who needs saving, which links to Shto Delat' The Underground Man Traits: society looks down on them for their actions, they don't want to be saved, something in society is stopping them from being with the one they love Author: Gogol condemns, Dostoevskii defends but condemns society, Tolstoi sees this as a development of society condemns

Realsim:

• Objective depictions of contemporary social reality:= realism is about the poor In a fundamental way the aristocrat is represented already in romanticism quite well, so the poor become the main topic. E.g. crime and punishment deals with the poor, in the idiot you've got rohgozin who has too much money and natasya filliopovna and myshkin who Is dirt poor.

MA comp question: Third wave émigré Russian literature is far from a cohesive, unified phenomenon. What are the issues explored and the idea's expressed in third-wave literature and what are the fault lines along which these writers were divided?

•recall how Babel could not understand VN's ablility to write abroad. on jewish lit: The nineteenth-century image of the poet who died before his time was replaced in the twentieth century by that of the writer who disappeared in the Terror. This time, Jews (Osip Mandel'shtam, Isaac Babel) took their places as Russian artist-martyrs. Jewish writers who lost their lives in the Terror were not singled out because they were Jews. But outbreaks of state-sponsored antisemitism in the post-World War II years made it advisable for writers to conceal their Jewish origins as much as they could. • Under Stalinism and for decades afterward, the arts were an enterprise of high seriousness. "Official" literature that toed the party line was offset by "unofficial" variants: "literature for the drawer," written for the future; and "Aesopic" writings, whose coded references to difficult subjects eluded censors but not readers. By the 1970s, unofficial poetry and prose were circulating in typescript (a form known as samizdat), and unofficial manuscripts that were smuggled abroad often returned to the Soviet Union as Western-published books. • State pressure, and the responses to it, created two enduring paradigms for the Soviet writer: the writer as toady, and writer as recorder of truth • This is bold ( the fact that Babel for example remained in the soviet union during stalins reign) in that dost, gogol, turgneve but not tolsty characterized jews mockingly ( not favorably ) eg in c+P Svidrigailov commits suidicde after talking to a jew The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 radically changed Russian literature. After a brief period of relative openness (compared to what followed) in the 1920s, literature became a tool of state propaganda. Officially approved writing (the only kind that could be published) by and large sank to a subliterary level. Censorship, imprisonment in labour camps, and mass terror were only part of the problem. Writers were not only forbidden to create works that were dissident, formally complex, or objective (a term of reproach), but they were also expected to fulfill the dictates of the Communist Party to produce propaganda on specific, often rather narrow, themes of current interest to it. Writers were called upon to be "engineers of human souls" helping to produce "the new Soviet man." As a result of Bolshevik rule, the literary tradition was fragmented. In addition to official Soviet Russian literature, two kinds of unofficial literature existed. First, a tradition of émigré literature, containing some of the best works of the century, continued until the fall of the Soviet Union. Second, unofficial literature written within the Soviet Union came to include works circulated illegally in typewritten copies ("samizdat"), works smuggled abroad for publication ("tamizdat"), and works written "for the drawer," or not published until decades after they were written ("delayed" literature). Moreover, literature publishable at one time often lost favour later; although nominally acceptable, it was frequently unobtainable. On many occasions, even officially celebrated works had to be rewritten to suit a shift in the Communist Party line. Whereas pre-Revolutionary writers had been intensely aware of Western trends, for much of the Soviet period access to Western movements was severely restricted, as was foreign travel. Access to pre-Revolutionary Russian writing was also spotty. As a result, Russians periodically had to change their sense of the past, as did Western scholars when "delayed" works beeame known. From a literary point of view, unofficial literature clearly surpasses official literature. Of Russia's five winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature during the Soviet period, Bunin emigrated after the Revolution, Boris Pasternak had his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) published abroad, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918) had most of his works published abroad and was expelled from the Soviet Union, and Joseph Brodsky (1940-96) published all his collections of verse abroad and was forced to emigrate in 1972. Only Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-84) was clearly an official Soviet writer. In the early years following the Revolution, writers who left or were expelled from the Soviet Union included Balmont, Bunin, Gippius, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Kuprin, and Merezhkovsky. Émigrés also included the poets Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939) and Georgy Ivanov (1894-1958). Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941), regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, eventually returned to Russia, where she committed suicide. Vladimir Nabokov, who later wrote in English, published nine novels in Russian, including Dar (published serially 1937-38; The Gift) and Priglasheniye na kazn (1938; Invitation to a Beheading). From the 1920s to c. 1985 • Experiments in the 1920s Within Russia the 1920s saw a wide diversity of literary trends and works, including those by mere "fellow travelers" (Leon Trotsky's phrase) of the Revolution. Isaak Babel wrote a brilliant cycle of linked stories, collected as Konarmiya (1926; Red Cavalry), about a Jewish commissar in a Cossack regiment. Formally chiseled and morally complex, these stories examine the seductive appeal of violence for the intellectual. A modern literary genre, the dystopia, was invented by Yevgeny Zamyatin in his novel My (1924; We), which could be published only abroad. Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, which are modeled on it, We describes a future socialist society that has turned out to be not perfect but inhuman. Yury Olesha's Zavist (1927; Envy) is a satire in the tradition of Notes from the Underground. Like Chekhov, Zoshchenko was a master of the comic story focusing on everyday life. Pasternak, who had been a Futurist poet before the Revolution, published a cycle of poems, Sestra moya zhizn (1922; My Sister—Life), and his story "Detstvo Lyuvers" (1918; "Zhenya Luvers's Childhood"). Other important novels include Boris Pilnyak's "ornamental" Goly god (1922; The Naked Year); Andrey Platonov's deeply pessimistic Kotlovan (The Foundation Pit), which was written in the late 1920s and published in the West in 1973; Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's clever satire Dvenadtsat stulyev (1928; The Twelve Chairs); Konstantin Fedin's novel Goroda i gody (1924; Cities and Years); and Leonid Leonov's Vor (1927; The Thief). • The Russian Formalists were a school of critics closely tied to the Futurists. They developed a vibrant, comprehensive theory of literature and culture that inspired structuralism, an influential critical movement in the West. Two of them, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov, wrote significant fiction illustrating their theories: Shklovsky's Zoo; ili, pisma ne o lyubvi (1923; Zoo; or, Letters Not About Love) and Tynyanov's "Podporuchik kizhe" (1927; "Second Lieutenant Likewise"). Their respectful opponent, Mikhail Bakhtin, whom some consider the most original, far-ranging, and subtle theorist of literature in the 20th century, wrote Problemy tvorchestva Dostoyevskogo (1929, 2nd ed., 1963; Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) and essays about the relation of novelistic form to time, language, psychology, and ethics. The 1920s also produced novels that became classics of official Soviet literature, including Dmitry Furmanov's Chapayev (1923) and Aleksandr Serafimovich's Zhelezny potok (1924; The Iron Flood). Fyodor Gladkov's Tsement (1925; Cement) became a model for the "industrial production" novel. Also in this period, Sholokhov began writing the best-known official work, a four-part novel published as Tikhy Don (1928-40; "The Quiet Don"; translated in two parts as And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea). Stalin: The decade beginning with Stalin's ascendancy in the late 1920s was one of unprecedented repression. The "war in the countryside" to enforce the collectivization of agriculture cost more than 10 million lives, about half of them by starvation. Purges took the lives of millions more, among them Babel, Kharms, Mandelshtam, Pilnyak, the peasant poet Nikolay Klyuyev (1887-1937), and the director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). In 1932 all independent literary groupings were dissolved and replaced by an institution that had no counterpart in the West, the Union of Soviet Writers. The union became the state's instrument of control over literature, and expulsion from it meant literary death. In 1934 Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only acceptable form of writing. Henceforth, literature was to be governed by a series of official directives regarding details of style and content in order to ensure that each work offered a "truthful" depiction "of reality in its revolutionary development." Literature had to be "party-minded" and "typical" (that is, avoiding unpleasant, hence "atypical," aspects of Soviet reality), while showing the triumph of fully "positive heroes." Some talented writers turned to the safer areas of children's literature and translation. Others, such as Valentin Katayev in his production novel Vremya, vperyod! (1932; Time, Forward!) and Fedin in Pervyye radosti (1946; Early Joys), sought to infuse official writing with some interest. Quite popular was Nikolay Ostrovsky's fictionalized autobiography Kak zakalyalas stal (1932-34; How the Steel Was Tempered). In his unfinished novel Pyotr Pervy (1929-45; Peter the Great) and his play Ivan Grozny (1941-43; "Ivan the Terrible"), Aleksey Tolstoy, an émigré who returned to become one of Stalin's favourite writers, praised tyrannical tsars admired by Stalin. The moral nadir of Soviet literature was reached in a collaborative volume, Belomorsko-Baltiski kanal imeni Stalina: istoriya stroitelstva (1934; Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea). With Gorky as an editor and 34 contributors, including Gorky, Katayev, Shklovsky, Aleksey Tolstoy, and Zoshchenko, the volume praised a project (and the secret police who directed it) using convict labour and costing tens of thousands of lives. During these dark years the work now generally regarded as the finest post-Revolutionary novel, Mikhail Bulgakov's Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita), was written "for the drawer" (1928-40); it appeared (expurgated) in Russia only in 1966-67 and unexpurgated in 1973. It tells of the Devil and his retinue visiting Soviet Russia, where they play practical jokes of metaphysical and political significance. A novel within the novel gives the "true" version of Christ's encounter with Pilate. The result is a joyful philosophical comedy of enormous profundity. The need to rally support in World War II brought a loosening of Communist Party control. The war itself created the opportunity for a large "second wave" of emigration, thus feeding émigré literature. The period from 1946 until the death of Stalin in 1953 was one of severe repression known as the zhdanovshchina, or Zhdanovism. During this campaign, attacks on "rootless cosmopolitans" involved anti-Semitism and the rejection of all foreign influences on Russian literature. The Soviet practice of samokritika (public denunciation of one's own work) was frequent. • Thaws and freezes The years from the death of Stalin until the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 saw several "thaws" separated by "freezes." Ilya Ehrenburg's novel Ottepel (1954; The Thaw) provided this term for a period of relative liberalism. In 1956 Khrushchev delivered a famous speech denouncing certain Stalinist crimes. From that time on, it was possible for Russians to perceive orthodox communists as people of the past and to regard dissidents not as holdovers from before the Revolution but as progressives. The harsher years under Leonid Brezhnev following Khrushchev's fall opened with the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of two writers, Andrey Sinyavsky (whose pseudonym was Abram Terts) and Yuly Daniel (pseudonym Nikolay Arzhak), for publishing "anti-Soviet propaganda" abroad. In the years that followed, well-known writers were arrested or, in one way or another, expelled from the Soviet Union, thus generating the third wave of émigré literature. Among those who found themselves in the West were Brodsky, Sinyavsky, Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Aksyonov, Georgy Vladimov, Vladimir Voynovich, and Aleksandr Zinovyev. • Significant literary works written in the post-Stalin years include Pasternak's poetic novel set at the time of the Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (first published in Italy in 1957), which sees life's meaning as transcending politics. Sinyavsky's book-length essay Chto takoye sotsialistichesky realizm? (1956; On Socialist Realism), attacking Socialist Realist aesthetic doctrine and advocating the use of fantasy, and a number of "phantasmagoric works," including Lyubimov (1961-62; The Makepeace Experiment), were published abroad. Charged with being the author of these works, Sinyavsky was tried and imprisoned in 1966. Some have considered the transcripts of his trial to be one of his most interesting "works." After his emigration to France in 1973 he published the novel Spokoynoy nochi (1984; Goodnight!) under the name Terts and Osnovy sovetskoy tsivilizatsii (1989; Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History) under the name Sinyavsky. • A movement called "village prose" cultivated nostalgic descriptions of rural life. Particularly noteworthy is Valentin Rasputin's elegiac novel Proshchaniye s Matyoroy (1976; Farewell to Matyora) about a village faced with destruction to make room for a hydroelectric plant. The novel's regret for the past and suspicion of the new dramatically marks the difference between village prose and the Socialist-Realist collective farm novel. Yury Trifonov wrote about what he called "the ordeal of ordinary life" in Dom na naberezhnoy (1976; The House on the Embankment) and Starik (1978; The Old Man). Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's plays portray family life; her collection of stories Bessmertnaya lyubov (1988; Immortal Love) could be published only under Mikhail Gorbachev. Works first published in full in the West and in fundamental ways critical of Soviet ideology and culture include Andrey Bitov's experimental novel Pushkinsky dom (1978; Pushkin House), Venedikt Yerofeyev's alcoholic, hallucinatory novel Moskva-Petushki (1977; Moscow to the End of the Line), Zinovyev's Ziyayushchiye vysoty (1976; The Yawning Heights), and Voynovich's satire Zhizn i neobychaynyye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina (1975; The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin). • Solzhenitsyn first earned fame with Odin den Ivana Denisovicha (1963; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), an understated novel about the horrors of a Soviet camp. As part of his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev personally saw to its publication. Under Brezhnev, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the U.S.S.R. Solzhenitsyn's Arkhipelag GULag, 1918-1956: opyt khudozhestvennogo issledovaniya, 3 vol. (1973-75; The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation) is arguably the greatest work of Soviet prose. It narrates the history of the Soviet camp system with controlled fury and in an ironic mode reminiscent of the 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon. • The Russian Formalists were a school of critics closely tied to the Futurists. They developed a vibrant, comprehensive theory of literature and culture that inspired structuralism, an influential critical movement in the West. Two of them, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov, wrote significant fiction illustrating their theories: Shklovsky's Zoo; ili, pisma ne o lyubvi (1923; Zoo; or, Letters Not About Love) and Tynyanov's "Podporuchik kizhe" (1927; "Second Lieutenant Likewise"). Their respectful opponent, Mikhail Bakhtin, whom some consider the most original, far-ranging, and subtle theorist of literature in the 20th century, wrote Problemy tvorchestva Dostoyevskogo (1929, 2nd ed., 1963; Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) and essays about the relation of novelistic form to time, language, psychology, and ethics. The 1920s also produced novels that became classics of official Soviet literature, including Dmitry Furmanov's Chapayev (1923) and Aleksandr Serafimovich's Zhelezny potok (1924; The Iron Flood). Fyodor Gladkov's Tsement (1925; Cement) became a model for the "industrial production" novel. Also in this period, Sholokhov began writing the best-known official work, a four-part novel published as Tikhy Don (1928-40; "The Quiet Don"; translated in two parts as And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea). • The Stalin era the decade beginning with Stalin's ascendancy in the late 1920s was one of unprecedented repression. The "war in the countryside" to enforce the collectivization of agriculture cost more than 10 million lives, about half of them by starvation. Purges took the lives of millions more, among them Babel, Kharms, Mandelshtam, Pilnyak, the peasant poet Nikolay Klyuyev (1887-1937), and the director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). In 1932 all independent literary groupings were dissolved and replaced by an institution that had no counterpart in the West, the Union of Soviet Writers. The union became the state's instrument of control over literature, and expulsion from it meant literary death. In 1934 Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only acceptable form of writing. Henceforth, literature was to be governed by a series of official directives regarding details of style and content in order to ensure that each work offered a "truthful" depiction "of reality in its revolutionary development." Literature had to be "party-minded" and "typical" (that is, avoiding unpleasant, hence "atypical," aspects of Soviet reality), while showing the triumph of fully "positive heroes." • Some talented writers turned to the safer areas of children's literature and translation. Others, such as Valentin Katayev in his production novel Vremya, vperyod! (1932; Time, Forward!) and Fedin in Pervyye radosti (1946; Early Joys), sought to infuse official writing with some interest. Quite popular was Nikolay Ostrovsky's fictionalized autobiography Kak zakalyalas stal (1932-34; How the Steel Was Tempered). In his unfinished novel Pyotr Pervy (1929-45; Peter the Great) and his play Ivan Grozny (1941-43; "Ivan the Terrible"), Aleksey Tolstoy, an émigré who returned to become one of Stalin's favourite writers, praised tyrannical tsars admired by Stalin. The moral nadir of Soviet literature was reached in a collaborative volume, Belomorsko-Baltiski kanal imeni Stalina: istoriya stroitelstva (1934; Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea). With Gorky as an editor and 34 contributors, including Gorky, Katayev, Shklovsky, Aleksey Tolstoy, and Zoshchenko, the volume praised a project (and the secret police who directed it) using convict labour and costing tens of thousands of lives. During these dark years the work now generally regarded as the finest post-Revolutionary novel, Mikhail Bulgakov's Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita), was written "for the drawer" (1928-40); it appeared (expurgated) in Russia only in 1966-67 and unexpurgated in 1973. It tells of the Devil and his retinue visiting Soviet Russia, where they play practical jokes of metaphysical and political significance. A novel within the novel gives the "true" version of Christ's encounter with Pilate. The result is a joyful philosophical comedy of enormous profundity The need to rally support in World War II brought a loosening of Communist Party control. The war itself created the opportunity for a large "second wave" of emigration, thus feeding émigré literature. The period from 1946 until the death of Stalin in 1953 was one of severe repression known as the zhdanovshchina, or Zhdanovism. During this campaign, attacks on "rootless cosmopolitans" involved anti-Semitism and the rejection of all foreign influences on Russian literature. The Soviet practice of samokritika (public denunciation of one's own work) was frequent. Thaws and freezes The years from the death of Stalin until the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 saw several "thaws" separated by "freezes." Ilya Ehrenburg's novel Ottepel (1954; The Thaw) provided this term for a period of relative liberalism. In 1956 Khrushchev delivered a famous speech denouncing certain Stalinist crimes. From that time on, it was possible for Russians to perceive orthodox communists as people of the past and to regard dissidents not as holdovers from before the Revolution but as progressives. The harsher years under Leonid Brezhnev following Khrushchev's fall opened with the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of two writers, Andrey Sinyavsky (whose pseudonym was Abram Terts) and Yuly Daniel (pseudonym Nikolay Arzhak), for publishing "anti-Soviet propaganda" abroad. In the years that followed, well-known writers were arrested or, in one way or another, expelled from the Soviet Union, thus generating the third wave of émigré literature. Among those who found themselves in the West were Brodsky, Sinyavsky, Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Aksyonov, Georgy Vladimov, Vladimir Voynovich, and Aleksandr Zinovyev. Significant literary works written in the post-Stalin years include Pasternak's poetic novel set at the time of the Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (first published in Italy in 1957), which sees life's meaning as transcending politics. Sinyavsky's book-length essay Chto takoye sotsialistichesky realizm? (1956; On Socialist Realism), attacking Socialist Realist aesthetic doctrine and advocating the use of fantasy, and a number of "phantasmagoric works," including Lyubimov (1961-62; The Makepeace Experiment), were published abroad. Charged with being the author of these works, Sinyavsky was tried and imprisoned in 1966. Some have considered the transcripts of his trial to be one of his most interesting "works." After his emigration to France in 1973 he published the novel Spokoynoy nochi (1984; Goodnight!) under the name Terts and Osnovy sovetskoy tsivilizatsii (1989; Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History) under the name Sinyavsky. • A movement called "village prose" cultivated nostalgic descriptions of rural life. Particularly noteworthy is Valentin Rasputin's elegiac novel Proshchaniye s Matyoroy (1976; Farewell to Matyora) about a village faced with destruction to make room for a hydroelectric plant. The novel's regret for the past and suspicion of the new dramatically marks the difference between village prose and the Socialist-Realist collective farm novel. Yury Trifonov wrote about what he called "the ordeal of ordinary life" in Dom na naberezhnoy (1976; The House on the Embankment) and Starik (1978; The Old Man). Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's plays portray family life; her collection of stories Bessmertnaya lyubov (1988; Immortal Love) could be published only under Mikhail Gorbachev. Works first published in full in the West and in fundamental ways critical of Soviet ideology and culture include Andrey Bitov's experimental novel Pushkinsky dom (1978; Pushkin House), Venedikt Yerofeyev's alcoholic, hallucinatory novel Moskva-Petushki (1977; Moscow to the End of the Line), Zinovyev's Ziyayushchiye vysoty (1976; The Yawning Heights), and Voynovich's satire Zhizn i neobychaynyye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina (1975; The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin). Solzhenitsyn first earned fame with Odin den Ivana Denisovicha (1963; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), an understated novel about the horrors of a Soviet camp. As part of his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev personally saw to its publication. Under Brezhnev, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the U.S.S.R. Solzhenitsyn's Arkhipelag GULag, 1918-1956: opyt khudozhestvennogo issledovaniya, 3 vol. (1973-75; The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation) is arguably the greatest work of Soviet prose. It narrates the history of the Soviet camp system with controlled fury and in an ironic mode reminiscent of the 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon.

Sasha Sokolov

(born Александр Всеволодович Соколов/Alexander Vsevolodovitch Sokolov on November 6, 1943, in Ottawa, Canada he is still alive and is 73 and live in Canada as of now 2017. Sokolov is a paradoxical writer of Russian literature. He became known worldwide in the 1970s after his first novel, A School for Fools, had been published in translation by Ardis Publishing (Ann Arbor, Michigan) in the US, and later reissued by Four Walls Eight Windows. Sokolov is one of the most important authors of 20th-century Russian literature. He is well acclaimed for his unorthodox use of language, playing with rhythms, sounds and associations. The author himself coined the term "proeziia" for his work—in between prose and poetry (English close form of the term can sound as "proetry

Poema bez geroia

1. (written 1940-62) is Ahkmatova's longest and most difficult work, and was the main focus of her creative endeavor for a quarter of a century. It was begun in Leningrad Dec 1940 yet it may have had its origins as early as 1917. The poem is in three parts, preceded, in its later version (s) by silence of years of political terror. It features abrupt shifts in time, disconnected images linked only by oblique cultural and personal allusions, half quotations, inner speech, elliptical passages, and varying meters and stanzas. The themes of this poema (long narrative poem) may be narrowed to three: memory as a moral act; the ritual of expiation; and the funeral lament. Confronting the past in Poema bez geroia, Akhmatova turns to the year 1913, before the "real—not the calendar—Twentieth century" was inaugurated by its first global catastrophe, World War I. That time of her youth was marked by an elegant, carefree decadence; aesthetic and sensual pleasures; and a lack of concern for human suffering, or the value of human life. Shadows of the past appear before the poet as she sits in her candlelit home on the eve of 1940. Her acquaintances, now all dead, arrive in the guise of various commedia dell'arte characters and engage the poet in a "hellish harlequinade."

Obryv

1. - Goncharov's last novel, criticizes nihilism and supports the religious and moral values of old Russia

Viktor Shklovskii

1. 1893-1984), literary critic and theorist, writer, and a founder of Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Iazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language; Opoiaz or OPOYAZ. He was a major voice of Formalism: a critical school that had great influence Russian literature in the 1920s.Shklovsky is perhaps best known for developing the concept of ostranenie or defamiliarization (also translated as "estrangement") in literature.[ He explained the concept in the important essay "Art as Technique" (also translated as "Art as Device") which comprised the first chapter of his seminal Theory of Prose, first published in 1925. He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché' in the literary canon, into something revitalized.The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important ( Shklovsky, "Art as Technique").He was a member of Formalism's most impetuous, insurrectionary and implicitly anti-Soviet precepts: namely, that art is untethered to dogma, state or any apparent "content" and that, as he once put it, "a writer should never be yoked to a trellis and forced to salute".

Evgenii Baratynskii:

1. : a golden age poet ( golden age reached its height in the 1820's) was lauded by Alexander Pushkin as the finest Russian elegiac poet. After a long period when his reputation was on the wane, Baratynsky was rediscovered by Russian poets of the symbolist era as a supreme poet of thought. His style embodies elements of both Classicism and Romanticism and his poetry treats such themes as the role of the poet, disillusionment, the relationship between man and nature and the rise of industrialization. In the minds of his contemporaries, Baratynsky was a poet-philosopher, who expressed in his art the spiritual drama of the generation that felt the inexorable heavy tread of the "Iron Age." He is also best known for his sensitive elegies dealing with loss and despair and for the personal, revelatory tone of his love poems. Baratynsky was rediscovered by Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky as a supreme poet of thought. (source: russiapedia and Wikipedia)

Dym -

1. Dym - one of Turgenev's last works, not looked upon as highly as his earlier writing, considered inferior because of poor character development

Egyptian nights more details

1. Compare Egyptian nights to Arabian nights: in the latter Scheherazade improvises stories for the sultan and as long as he can keep her entertained he wont die. This is the "poetry is love" theme which, is the overall message in Pushkin. a. In 1835 we are deep into Pushkin's non-poetry writing phase in Egyptian Nights: the last work that Pushkin did. In Egyptian nights every word matters and is carefully chosen akin to a mise en ambyme ad infinitum almost. Dostoevsky claimed that Egyptian nights was "the most perfect work, ever'. Pushkin was already famous as a teenager and lived in the hey-day of Russian poetry, then he moved into prose realism, b/c poetry was out of style/fashion in by the 1830's. In the 1830's writers of journals are beginning to get paid. Before this, like 1828 poetry was "clickish' undertaking of writing poetry as in its you and your yearbook friends a very small group.1811-1848 We can begin to see realism emerge as in social details. Class now matters vs in his poem Poetu, (written 5 years prior) it's in your soul regardless of social standing yet not in Egyptian nights where class matters. In place of your soul is your clothes and job. Charsky is carefree, no wife hes free and unburdened in chapter one. The Italian could very well be, for one interpretation, a creation of Charsky's. We see this in works that followed ETA Hoffman and Gogol, where strange things can be "true". Charsky describes the Italian as one who could be taken for a robber or charlatan who sells elixirs and arsenic: elixir is life vs arsenic which is death. It's like, if you keep telling stories you will live longer: perhaps this is a nod to Arabian knights. Re Charsky's cloths: he's dressed like a dandy unnecessary luxury, oriental style b/c this is an oriental tale/ re Byron. In Byron: love and murder, one lover murders the other. A Byronic hero is like a guy who is so wonderful that he has sex with people w/out even trying. • Pushkin Egyptian nights: agency is in Cleopatra's hands she goes from being victim to perpetrator but then this switches when the youth comes along (re passion in his eyes for her Power = all your ego and you are bored to death e.g. Cleopatra. Protect Egypt from the roman empire b/c so she has to love mark Antony and Cesar. So Charsky and the Italian vs Cleopatra and the youth= young man is the Italian re loving the low, Everything starts to crumble around the rich and famous as in charsky and Cleopatra. The Italian and the youth: they're identities are unfixed as in they can be anybody they want to be. The definition of poetry is the ability to become anyone Runs parallel to Arabian nights So what has to happen to close off the frame narrative? The ending will be very hard for Charsky and here he would have to be dragged out and acknowledged as a poet ( he has already in some way during the choosing of the poem for recitation ) And he has to bring this Italian, greedy and dirty, and his friends from Petersburg society, he will have to get them to accept one another. Realism is coming...for poetry to survive it will be a freak show like the Italian. As an artist purely he is gorgeous. Yet he's a poor man too which exposes him to all the hardships of life. Pushkin can just say " I'm Pushkin leave me alone" but the Italian cant hes poor and has to work hard suffer, put himself out there, be a chameleon or sorts. She's the lofty empress as high as it gets (compared to Charsky and the Italian) high and low so she has freedom to love the low , same as the 1st improvisation. So at the end you've got Cleopatra a staring at the youth and him staring at her, the audience staring at charsky and the Italian .... It's the rich or the high, looking at the low or the poor and everyone has the power to save them and the question is what will happen? So you don't want the story of your life b/c if you can't finish the story you die. Egyptian nights has to do with all our themes eg determism etc.

Ivan Khlestakov

1. Ivan Khlestakov - main character of The Inspector General, the petty clerk mistaken for the incognito inspector

Pepp Peppovich Pepp

1. Pepp Peppovich Pepp - a reference to the sardine tin in Petersburg, appears to be Bely's way of approximating the ticking of the time bomb inside

Pir vo vremia chummy

1. Pir vo vremia chummy - Cui's opera Feast in Time of Plague, title taken from one of Pushkin's four little tragedies and was performed for his bicentennial

Sofia Petrovna -

1. Sofia Petrovna - Chukovskaya's most famous work and one of the few surviving accounts of the Great Purge, the title character's son is falsely arrested and she attempts to win his freedom, swamped by a sea of bureaucracy, she eventually receives a letter from him explaining his situation, but she burns it Sofia Petrovna is a novella by Russian author Lydia Chukovskaya, written in the late 1930s in the Soviet Union. It is notable as one of the few surviving accounts of the Great Purge actually written during the purge era. synopsis: Sofia Petrovna, a typist in the Soviet Union in 1937 is proud of the achievements of her son Nikolai (Kolya). Kolya, an engineering student and strong Communist, is at the beginning of a promising career, with his picture featured on the cover of Pravda. Before long, however, the Great Purge begins and Sofia's coworkers begin vanishing, amid accusations of treachery. Soon, Kolya's best friend Alik reports that Kolya has been arrested. Sofia and her friend and fellow typist Natasha try to find out more but are drowned in a sea of bureaucrats and long lines. More people vanish, and Sofia spends ever more time in lines at government buildings. Natasha makes a typographical error that is mistaken for a criticism of the Red Army and she is fired. When Sofia defends her, she is criticized and soon forced out as well. Alik is questioned, and when he does not renounce Kolya, he, too, is arrested and vanishes. Natasha and Sofia both lose their will to live. Natasha commits suicide via poison, and Sofia immerses herself in a fantasy of Kolya's return. When she finally gets a letter from Kolya, in which he reaffirms his innocence and tells more of his own story, Sofia tries to fight for his freedom again, but realizes that, in this bizarre, chaotic place, she will likely only place more suspicion on herself and Kolya. Out of desperation, she burns the letter.

Iurii Nagibin

1. Soviet writer, best known for The Red Tent Yuri Markovich Nagibin (Russian: Ю́рий Ма́ркович Наги́бин; April 3, 1920 - June 17, 1994) was a Russian Soviet writer, screenwriter and novelist. he Red Tent novel based on the history of Umberto Nobile's expedition to the North Pole. It was later adapted by him for the film of the same name (heavily rewritten during the filming process).[3] He also co-wrote the screenplay for the Soviet-Japanese movie Dersu Uzala directed by Akira Kurosawa which received an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.[4]

Moi diadia samykh chestnykh pravil

1. first line from Eugene Onegin, he talks about his uncle and how he is of the highest ideals

Arabeski -

1. one of Bely's essays on the state of poetry, spoke of the importance of Symbolism

Gladkov

1. one of the prototypical Socialist Realist writers, known for his work Cement

Zashchita Luzhina

110. this is Vladimir Nabokov's original title for his 3rd novel The Defense, written during his emigration in berlin and published in 1930. The novel appeared first under Nabokov's pen name V. Sirin in the Russian emigre quarterly "Sovremennye Zapiski" and was thereafter published by the emigre publishing house Slovo as "Защита Лужина" (The Luzhin Defense) in Berlin. In the forward to the English edition, Nabokov links the events in the central chapters to chess problems. Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin is the protagonist of the novel.

Pushkin

1799-1837: educated at the lyceum always wrote a poem on oct 19 oct 14 was his first poem. He learned from Batushkov and Zhukovsky. In 1815 Derzhavin visited him thus the "re-animated corpse" them in his writing, b/c Derzhavin rushed to embrace him when he read canto 8 of EO (Connolly).

Nikolai Nekrasov

1821- 1878 poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about peasant Russia made him the hero of liberal and radical circles of Russian intelligentsia as represented by Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue (On the Road, 1845). he wrote the poem "poet - citizen" As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential

about Grigorovich and who he influenced

1822-1900 regarded as the first writer to have shown the real life of the Russian rural community in its full detail, following the tradition of the natural school movement to which he belonged in the 1840's. a harsh critic of serfdom he's linked to the line of Radishchev, griboyedov and pushkin. the plight of the mushiik made russian society aware of it. tolstoy praised him for depicting the peasants with love respect etc. was a fellow student at the nikolaysevksy institute with Dostoevsky. joined the academy of arts and met Nekrasov was praised by Belinsky who Nekrasov introduced him to soon after. Dostoevsky read him poor folk in 1846 which impressed him c.f poor folk 1844-45 his short novel, the village was influenced by Dicken's oliver twist his realistic portyral of russian peasants was admired by fellow writers like Tolstoy and Shchedrin. early 1850's he was less famous eclipsed by Turgenev's hunters sketches and chernevshevkshky's more liberal views were gaining popularity at the time kramskoy the natrualist/ realist painter did his portrait.

Silentium

1830/ Tiutchev iambic tetrameter: speak to lie hidden and conceal the way you dream, the things you feel. Deep in your spirit let them rise akin to stars in crystal skies that set before the night is blurred: delight in them and speak no word. How can a heart expression find? How should another know your mind? Will he discern what quickens you? A thought once uttered is untrue. Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred: drink at the source and speak no word. Live in your inner self alone within your soul a world has grown, the magic of veiled thoughts that might be blinded by the outer light, drowned in the noise of day, unheard... take in their song and speak no word. Tiutchev. Молчи, скрывайся и таи И чувства и мечты свои - Пускай в душевной глубине Встают и заходят оне Безмолвно, как звезды в ночи,- Любуйся ими - и молчи. Как сердцу высказать себя? Другому как понять тебя? Поймёт ли он, чем ты живёшь? Мысль изречённая есть ложь. Взрывая, возмутишь ключи,- Питайся ими - и молчи. Лишь жить в себе самом умей - Есть целый мир в душе твоей Таинственно-волшебных дум; Их оглушит наружный шум, Дневные разгонят лучи,- Внимай их пенью - и молчи!.

Leskov

1831-1895) Considered by some to be the most Russian writer of all. Lefty (1881) This story is deeply embedded into Russian consciousness as an archetype of relationships between Russia and the West. The language of the story is unique; many of its folk-flavored neologisms and colloquialisms (very funny and natural, though mostly invented by Leskov) have become common sayings and proverbs. Ironically, both Slavophiles and Westernizers used the story in support of their views; indeed the story of Levsha may signify Russian ingenuity and craftsmanship that amaze the world, or it may just as well be used as a symbol of the oppressive Russian society that mistreats its most talented people. Sometimes translated as "Southpaw" or the "Left-Handed Craftsman," this is perhaps Leskov's most well-known story. The full title is "A Tale of the Cross-eyed, Left-Handed Craftsman of Tula and the Steel Flea." Styled as a folk tale, it tells a story of a left-handed arms craftsman from Tula (traditionally a center of Russian armaments industry). Tsar Nicolas I, while visiting England with his servant the Cossack Platov, is shown a variety of modern inventions. Platov keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better (embarrasing a guide at one point when he finds something that appears well made that turns out to be a Russian gun), until they are shown a small mechanical flea. Nicolas orders Platov (after he tries to hide the flea) to find someone to outperform the English who had created the clockwork steel flea (as small as a crumb, and the key to wind it up can only be seen through a microscope). Platov travels to Tula to find someone to do even better than the English. Three gunsmiths agree to do the work and barricade themselves in a workshop. Villagers try to get them to come out in various ways (for example by yelling "fire"), but no one can get them to come out. When it's time to see their work Platov arrives, furious, and has some Cossacks try to open the workshop. They succeed in getting the roof to come off, but the crowd is disgusted when the trapped smell of body odor and metal work comes out of the workshop. The gunsmiths hand Platov the same flea he gave them and he curses them, believing that they've done absolutely nothing. He ends up dragging Lefty with him in order to have someone to account for the mistake. The flea is given to the czar, to whom Lefty explains that he needs to look closer and closer at the flea to see what they've done after he winds it up and finds that it doesn't move. He discovers that, without any microscopes ("We are poor people"), Lefty and his accomplices managed to put appropriately-sized horseshoes (with the craftsmen's engraved signatures) on the flea (Lefty made the nails, which cannot be seen since they are so small), which amazes the Tsar and the English (even though the flea now cannot dance as it used to). Lefty then gets an invitation and travels to England to study the English way of life and technical accomplishments. The English hosts try to talk him into staying in England, but he feels homesick and returns to Russia at the earliest opportunity. On the way back, he engages in a drinking duel with an English sailor, and they arrive in St.Petersburg. The sailor is treated well, but Lefty, authorities finding no indentification on him and believing him to be a common drunkard, send him off to a hospital to die. The sailor, after sobering up, decides to find his new friend and with the aide of Platov they locate him. While dying (his head is smashed from being thrown onto the pavement), he tells them to tell the emperor to stop having their soldiers clean their muskets with crushed brick (after he sees a dirty gun in England and realizes it fires so well because they keep it oily). The message never arrives, however, because the man who had to inform the emperor never does. Leskov comments that the Crimean War may have turned out differently if he got the message. The story ends with Leskov commenting on the replacement

Key things about Chekov:

1860-1904 rough childhood ( he explained that is was not , a childhood at all) frequent beatings he was the son of a serf who bought his freedom. edu was stressed, however and he went into the medical field ( doctor) in his writings we can see where he is more like a careful observer than a critic of the lives he writes about, like a doctor carefully listening and examine a patient and not giving an opinion. just the facts. re/ c.f. ( for example ): the play Ivanov which is very chekovian in that it deals with a superfluous man full of good intentions but ineffectual yet chekhov treats him with understating neither condemning him nor exonerating him. in ward 6 or palata 6 is it safe or even right to opt out of life in order to contemplate the world from a safe distance. re waste, lack of fulfillment and frustration in life: we see these three things in 1898 trilogy of stories "man in th case", "gooseberries" and "o lubvii" chekhov was a versatile writer re chekhov plays: they are highly innovative in method, in that chekhov's works from the premised that the real drama is found in the give and take of ordinary human relations not in heightened conventailly "dramatic" actions. even when they occur in his plays, such as then treplev commits suicide in the seagull/ chaika, or uncle vanya's shot at his brother in law, such actions never produce fundamental changes in relationships. next, the action is always diffused among several characters, not focused on a single one and third just as he does in his short stories he stresses the poor communication , lack of emotional reciprocity in that people talk, yet seldom do they listen to each other. they love and hate yet seldom are either of these returned proportionally although chekov is not preachy at all he does stress the importance of nature, the little things in life, the slow advance of civilization thought the hard work of us all. as a doctor he would have seen people at the worst times in their lives which makes for a great case study of humans and how they react to trauma this is probably where he learned this. his work as a doctor is crucial i think. he died of TB in 1904

Bulgakov:

1891-1940 had a happy childhood from kiev went into the medical practice. was exposed to/ witnessed violence cruelty and murders in the civil war. most significant features of his satire such as a skillful blending of fantastic and realistic elements, grotesque situations and a concern for important ethical issues had taken shape in his earlier works like in 1925 in heart of a dog ( never published in the soviet union) which contained bitter satire and elements of science fiction heart of a dog= fate of a scientist . all this had developed prior to his last novel, M+Margerita. in his lifetime he was mostly know as a playwright, although most of his plays were banned. in the 1960's his four novels were published in the soviet union granting him posthumous fame. from humorous sketches he progressed through gogolian grotesque and surrealist stories to end with a philosophical novel M+M. he transformed ugly reality by elevating the problem of evil to the realm of metaphysics. along with the castigation of everyday triviality lies dishonesty and hypocrisy the main themes of bulgakovs works are crucial confrontations of an individual with the hostile forces of his environment, the arbitrariness of the authorities ,and the cruelty of man to man. the unending struggle of light vs dark show that he was interested in ethics, that is, in M+M adding the yeshua figure into the story shows that its just as important ( darkness against the light ) as it was 2000 years ago.

Neznakomka

1906, 24 April poem by Alexander Blok 1880-1921: critics divide his work into three periods: the first was between 1898 and 1904 where the beautiful lady is the invocation of the divine and the object of ideal love yet this poem neznakoma was written in 1906 ( his second period ) where Blok seeks out his beloved in the material rather than the spiritual world like: in taverns, brothels, and city tenements. the imagery of the poems—snowstorms, howling winds, and the darkness of night—reflects the poet's emotional state. In the most famous poem from this period, "Neznakomka" (1907; "The Unknown Lady," a title he also used for a later drama), Blok views his beloved through a wine-induced haze in a noisy suburban restaurant. Toward the end of the decade, Blok's poetry changed course once again. His love of Russia and concern for its future replaced the quest for the feminine idea. re Blok's " the twelve" written in 1918 Here is the poem: По вечерам над ресторанами Горячий воздух дик и глух, И правит окриками пьяными Весенний и тлетворный дух. Вдали, над пылью переулочной, Над скукой загородных дач, Чуть золотится крендель булочной, И раздается детский плач. И каждый вечер, за шлагбаумами, Заламывая котелки, Среди канав гуляют с дамами Испытанные остряки. Над озером скрипят уключины, И раздается женский визг, А в небе, ко всему приученный, Бессмысленно кривится диск. И каждый вечер друг единственный В моем стакане отражен И влагой терпкой и таинственной, Как я, смирен и оглушен. А рядом у соседних столиков Лакеи сонные торчат, И пьяницы с глазами кроликов «In vino veritas!»* кричат. И каждый вечер, в час назначенный, (Иль это только снится мне?) Девичий стан, шелками схваченный, В туманном движется окне. И медленно, пройдя меж пьяными, Всегда без спутников, одна, Дыша духами и туманами, Она садится у окна. И веют древними поверьями Ее упругие шелка, И шляпа с траурными перьями, И в кольцах узкая рука. И странной близостью закованный, Смотрю за темную вуаль, И вижу берег очарованный И очарованную даль. Глухие тайны мне поручены, Мне чье-то солнце вручено, И все души моей излучины Пронзило терпкое вино. И перья страуса склоненные В моем качаются мозгу, И очи синие бездонные Цветут на дальнем берегу. В моей душе лежит сокровище, И ключ поручен только мне! Ты право, пьяное чудовище! Я знаю: истина в вине.

Fugitive Poetry

A. From article: In D. S. Mirsky's A History of Russian Literature, published between 1926 and 1927, Mirsky suggests the influence of this French fugitive poetry on the 'Golden Age' of Russian literature. With Vasily Zhukovsky at its head and Alexander Pushkin flourishing as its preeminent figure, this Golden Age began with the first publications of a young generation of poets across the late 1800s and early 1810s: Mirsky places its birth precisely in 1808, with the appearance of the 'independent and original accent in the first mature work of Zhukovsky'. The Golden Age reached its height in the 1820s before fading in the following decade: the suppression of the Decembrist Revolt at the end of 1825 decisively shifted the outlook for its artists, a number of whom were involved with the rebels; then Anton Delvig died in 1831, Pushkin in 1837, and others moved abroad as the novel began to usurp poetry's place in Russian letters. Depicting these poets as successors to Nikolay Karamzin, who in the preceding decades had brought a French style and a heightened sensitivity to the practice of Russian literature; and referring to the 'Arzamas' literary society which they formed, and which included Vasily Pushkin, Alexander's uncle, Mirsky writes: 'The younger Karamzinians and Arzamasians cultivated with greatest zest what the French eighteenth century called "fugitive" poetry. Even Zhukovsky's high seriousness stooped to such light verse, and Batyushkov made his literary reputation with the epistle My Penates, which was considered the masterpiece of the kind. Pushkin's work before his exile to the south of Russia consists almost entirely of fugitive poems. Two masters of fugitive poetry in the first decade of the Golden Age were Davydov and Vyazemsky. Though lesser poets than Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, these two men are even more characteristic of their generation and more typical of their school. Both are high-spirited, healthy, virile, unromantic, and - ultimately - shallowish. Both were great wits and fond of fun, in life as well as in literature.' Alexander Pushkin had high praise for Denis Davydov's originality, while Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky was one of Pushkin's closest friends. Their correspondence alone is considered a high-water mark of Russian. Pushkin used a line from Vyazemsky, translated by Vladimir Nabokov as 'To live it hurries and to feel it hastes', as the epigraph to the first chapter of Eugene Onegin. Mirsky states of Vyazemsky: 'Though he was the journalistic leader of Russian romanticism, there can be nothing less romantic than his early poetry: it consists either of very elegant, polished, and cold exercises on the set commonplaces of poetry, or of brilliant essays in word play, where pun begets pun, and conceit begets conceit, heaping up a mountain of verbal wit. His later poetry is more significant. It never became strictly personal, like Zhukovsky's or Pushkin's. It remained universal and typical - essentially classical.' Of the French poets associated with the fugitive school who were of particular importance to Russian writers, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset's 'La Chartreuse' was a model for Konstantin Batyushkov's 'Moi Penaty' ('My Penates'); and both Batyushkov and Pushkin thoroughly embraced the varied works of Évariste de Parny. Indeed, Parny had written a collection of ten Poésies fugitives which he published with his Chansons madécasses in 1787; and in 1803 he delivered an address to the French Academy on the influence of fugitive poetry on the French language. Later, in a different atmosphere, Fyodor Dostoevsky referenced Alexis Piron in The Brothers Karamazov, when Father Zosima's wit is compared to that of the French poet and epigrammatist. Elsewhere - and only loosely connecting to the fugitive poetry of France, and to its encouragement upon the Golden Age Russian poets - there stands Mikhail Lermontov's poem 'The Fugitive'. Lermontov apparently composed the poem in 1838, but it was not published until 1846. It expresses Lermontov's empathy for the people of the Caucasus, an area Lermontov had visited often from his youth, and to which he had been exiled to serve in the midst of the ongoing Caucasian War. The poem bears some similarities with Pushkin's unfinished poem 'Tazit', published in Sovremennik at the end of 1837. Considered the last poem of Lermontov's Caucasian cycle, Mirsky writes that it saw him treating a romantic theme 'with a concise clarity worthy of Pushkin and with a martial go that was his alone'

Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich[a] Solzhenitsyn (/ˌsoʊlʒəˈniːtsɪn, ˌsɔːl-/;[2] Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]; 11 December 1918 - 3 August 2008) day of ivan denisovich ( one actual day) nobel prize winner lauded by Krushcev 1952 alyosha, some of the characters are dostoevsksian

Sholokhov

And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (Тихий Дон, literally "Quiet Don") is an epic novel in four volumes by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The first three volumes were written from 1925 to 1932 and published in the Soviet magazine Oktyabr in 1928-1932, and the fourth volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the first three volumes appeared under this title in 1934. The novel is considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature in the 20th century. It depicts the lives and struggles of Don Cossacks during the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and Russian Civil War. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for this novel. The authorship of the novel is contested by some literary critics and historians, who believe that it mostly wasn't written by Sholokhov.

Andry Bely

Andrei bely or Bugaev: His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century Bely's symbolist novel Petersburg (1916; 1922) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905. To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolai Apollonovich, a ne'er-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official—his own father. At one point, Nikolai is pursued through the Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great.[citation needed] In his later years Bely was influenced by Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy[3][4] and became a personal friend of Steiner's. He spent time between Switzerland, Germany, and Russia, during its revolution. He supported the Bolshevik rise to power and later dedicated his efforts to Soviet culture, serving on the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers.[5] He died, aged 53, in Moscow. Bely was one of the major influences on the theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold.[citation needed] The Andrei Bely Prize (Russian: Премия Андрея Белого), one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him. His poems were set on music and frequently performed by Russian singer-songwriters

Characters from Anna Karenina

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina - A beautiful, aristocratic married woman from St. Petersburg whose pursuit of love and emotional honesty makes her an outcast from society. Anna's adulterous affair catapults her into social exile, misery, and finally suicide. Anna is a beautiful person in every sense: intelligent and literate, she reads voraciously, writes children's books, and shows an innate ability to appreciate art. Physically ravishing yet tastefully reserved, she captures the attentions of virtually everyone in high society. Anna believes in love—not only romantic love but family love and friendship as well, as we see from her devotion to her son, her fervent efforts to reconcile Stiva and Dolly Oblonsky in their marital troubles, and her warm reception of Dolly at her country home. Anna abhors nothing more than fakery, and she comes to regard her husband, Karenin, as the very incarnation of the fake, emotionless conventionality she despises. Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin - Anna's husband, a high-ranking government minister and one of the most important men in St. Petersburg. Karenin is formal and duty-bound. He is cowed by social convention and constantly presents a flawless façade of a cultivated and capable man. There is something empty about almost everything Karenin does in the novel, however: he reads poetry but has no poetic sentiments, he reads world history but seems remarkably narrow-minded. He cannot be accused of being a poor husband or father, but he shows little tenderness toward his wife, Anna, or his son, Seryozha. He fulfills these family roles as he does other duties on his list of social obligations. Karenin's primary motivation in both his career and his personal life is self-preservation. When he unexpectedly forgives Anna on what he believes may be her deathbed, we see a hint of a deeper Karenin ready to emerge. Ultimately, however, the bland bureaucrat remains the only Karenin we know. Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky - A wealthy and dashing military officer whose love for Anna prompts her to desert her husband and son. Vronsky is passionate and caring toward Anna but clearly disappointed when their affair forces him to give up his dreams of career advancement. Vronsky, whom Tolstoy originally modeled on the Romantic heroes of an earlier age of literature, has something of the idealistic loner in him. Yet there is a dark spot at the core of his personality, as if Tolstoy refuses to let us get too close to Vronsky's true nature. Indeed, Tolstoy gives us far less access to Vronsky's thoughts than to other major characters in the novel. We can never quite forget Vronsky's early jilting of Kitty Shcherbatskaya, and we wonder whether he feels guilt about nearly ruining her life. Even so, Vronsky is more saintly than demonic at the end of the novel, and his treatment of Anna is impeccable, even if his feelings toward her cool a bit. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin - A socially awkward but generous-hearted landowner who, along with Anna, is the co-protagonist of the novel. Whereas Anna's pursuit of love ends in tragedy, Levin's long courtship of Kitty Shcherbatskaya ultimately ends in a happy marriage. Levin is intellectual and philosophical but applies his thinking to practical matters such as agriculture. He aims to be sincere and productive in whatever he does, and resigns from his post in local government because he sees it as useless and bureaucratic. Levin is a figurehead in the novel for Tolstoy himself, who modeled Levin and Kitty's courtship on his own marriage. Levin's declaration of faith at the end of the novel sums up Tolstoy's own convictions, marking the start of the deeply religious phase of Tolstoy's life that followed his completion of Anna Karenina. Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty) - A beautiful young woman who is courted by both Levin and Vronsky, and who ultimately marries Levin. Modeled on Tolstoy's real-life wife, Kitty is sensitive and perhaps a bit overprotected, shocked by some of the crude realities of life, as we see in her horrified response to Levin's private diaries. But despite her indifference to intellectual matters, Kitty displays great courage and compassion in the face of death when caring for Levin's dying brother Nikolai. Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky (Stiva) - Anna's brother, a pleasure-loving aristocrat and minor government official whose affair with his children's governess nearly destroys his marriage. Stiva and Anna share a common tendency to place personal fulfillment over social duties. Stiva is incorrigible, proceeding from his affair with the governess—which his wife, Dolly, honorably forgives—to a liaison with a ballerina. For Tolstoy, Stiva's moral laxity symbolizes the corruptions of big-city St. Petersburg life and contrasts with the powerful moral conscience of Levin. However, despite his transgressions, the affable Stiva is a difficult character to scorn. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly) - Stiva's wife and Kitty's older sister. Dolly is one of the few people who behave kindly toward Anna after her affair becomes public. Dolly's sympathetic response to Anna's situation and her guarded admiration for Anna's attempt to live her life fully hint at the positive aspects of Anna's experience. Well acquainted with the hardships of matrimony and motherhood, Dolly is, more than anyone else in the novel, in a position to appreciate what Anna has left behind by leaving with Vronsky. The novel opens with the painful revelation that Dolly's husband has betrayed her, and her even more painful awareness that he is not very repentant. Sergei Alexeich Karenin (Seryozha) - Karenin and Anna's young son. Seryozha is a good-natured boy, but his father treats him coldly after learning of Anna's affair. Anna shows her devotion to Seryozha when she risks everything to sneak back into the Karenin household simply to bring birthday presents to her son. Nikolai Dmitrich Levin - Levin's sickly, thin brother. The freethinking Nikolai is largely estranged from his brothers, but over the course of the novel he starts to spend more time with Levin. Nikolai is representative of liberal social thought among certain Russian intellectuals of the period; his reformed-prostitute girlfriend, Marya Nikolaevna, is living proof of his unconventional, radically democratic viewpoint. Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev - Levin's half-brother, a famed intellectual and writer whose thinking Levin has difficulty following. Koznyshev embodies cold intellectualism and is unable to embrace the fullness of life, as we see when he cannot bring himself to propose to Varenka. Agafya Mikhailovna - Levin's former nurse, now his trusted housekeeper. Countess Vronsky - Vronsky's judgmental mother. Alexander Kirillovich Vronsky - Vronsky's brother. Varvara Vronsky - Alexander Vronsky's wife. Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky - The practical aristocrat father of Kitty, Dolly, and Natalie. Prince Shcherbatsky favors Levin over Vronsky as a potential husband for Kitty. Princess Shcherbatskaya - Kitty, Dolly, and Natalie's mother. Princess Shcherbatskaya initially urges Kitty to favor Vronsky over Levin as a suitor. Countess Lydia Ivanovna - A morally upright woman who is initially Anna's friend and later her fiercest critic. Hypocritically, the religious Lydia Ivanovna cannot bring herself to forgive or even to speak to the "fallen woman" Anna. Lydia Ivanovna harbors a secret love for Karenin, and induces him to believe in and rely on psychics. Elizaveta Fyodorovna Tverskaya (Betsy) - A wealthy friend of Anna's and Vronsky's cousin. Betsy has a reputation for wild living and moral looseness. Marya Nikolaevna - A former prostitute saved by Nikolai Levin, whose companion she becomes. Madame Stahl - A seemingly devout invalid woman whom the Shcherbatskys meet at a German spa. Madame Stahl appears righteous and pious, but Prince Shcherbatsky and others doubt her motivations. Varvara Andreevna (Varenka) - A pure and high-minded young woman who becomes Kitty's friend at the German spa. Varenka, who is a protégée of Madame Stahl, nearly receives a marriage proposal from Koznyshev. Yashvin - Vronsky's wild friend from the army. Yashvin has a propensity for losing large sums of money at gambling. Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky - A friend of Levin who lives in a far-off province. Fyodor Vassilyevich Katavasov - Levin's intellectual friend from his university days. Vasenka Veslovsky - A young, pleasant, somewhat dandyish man whom Stiva brings to visit Levin. The attentions Veslovsky lavishes on Kitty make Levin jealous. Landau - A French psychic who instructs Karenin to reject Anna's plea for a divorce.

Chekov (1860-1904)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a physician, major Russian short story writer and playwright. Many of his short stories are considered the apotheosis of the form while his playwriting career, though brief, has had a great impact on dramatic literature and performance. Chekhov is better known in modern-day Russia for his several hundred short stories, many of which are considered masterpieces of the form. Yet his plays are also major influences on twentieth-century drama. From Chekhov, many contemporary playwrights have learned how to use mood, apparent trivialities and inaction to highlight the internal psychology of characters. Chekhov's four major plays—The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard—are frequently revived in modern productions

EO

At the end 1823, Pushkin began work on his masterpiece, Evgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin). Written over seven years, the poem was published in full in 1833. In it, Pushkin invented a new stanza: iambic tetrameter with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. The poem is also notable for its inventive and exuberant language and social critique. And while Pushkin played with autobiography, the verse novel turned out to be more autobiographical than even he knew: like Pushkin himself, Onegin dies in a duel. In general, Pushkin's life was marked by political and romantic scandal. Though Nicholas I eventually released him from exile, Pushkin's work was frequently censored, his letters intercepted, and his status with the court remained tenuous until his death.

Issac Babel/ Red Cavelry Lyutov

Babel: he fits in well with the general picture of soviet writing of the 1920's. the story cycle Red Cavalry bears many similarities to other works by Soviet writers about the civil war, like Furmanov's Chapaev, Fadeyev's The Rout and the short stories of Vsevolod Ivanov. Its experimentalism is in some ways related to that of the Serapion Brothers group of writers, and its pictorial vividness has a counterpart in Shokolov's Quiet Flows the Don. Likewise, the evocation of the gangster underworld in Babel's Odessa Stories is linked to the general preoccupation with criminal matters re inability to create under Stalinism. Re Red Cavalry has, w/out it being right away obvious, it has two narrators: one is the Jewish war correspondent Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, bespectacled bookish and sensitive and the other is the person that Lyutov himself would like to become and constantly strives to be- a true revolutionary and Bolshevik soldier with no fear of blood and killing. This dichotomy accounts for the extreme physical violence that is manifested in many of the stories: it is as thought Babel were trying to overcome his own horror of what he has seen and witnessed, and to turn it into a kind of vivid, surreal poetry. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the character of the Jew Gedali, who believes in the "international of good men' and with whom Lyutov vainly remonstrates, more than half convinced that the old man is right. Bratslavsky could be seen as Lyutov's double, manifesting in an extreme form the latter's uncertainty about his personal, social and historical identity. He a red army soldier who dies of typhoid on the floor of the editorial train. Babel himself was anxious and remained in soviet Russia looking down on those who left it, the emigres' like Nabokov and believed that he had to remain in Russia, in his homeland to write. Did he support bolshevism? Hard to say his bio tells us hardly anything about his true motivations. He was afraid a lot. He was hauled off by the secret police and shot for being a trotky-ite in 1940.

Letter to N. V. Gogol

Belinsky 1847 Belinsky Gogol', born in Ukraine, became Russia's most famous writer of prose in the 1830s. Belinskii, Russia's most influential literary critic, praised Gogol's work extravagantly, reading such satirical works as The Inspector General and Dead Souls as exposés of Russia's social and political ills and thus as blows struck for liberation. Gogol's personal views were extremely conservative, however. He made them plain in an eccentric book called Selected Excerpts from Correspondence with Friends, in which he praised autocracy and orthodoxy and instructed serfholders how to run their estates. Belinskii's published review of Selected Excerpts was unfavorable, but subdued by the pressure of censorship. Gogol' was nonetheless moved to complain. Belinskii wrote this letter in reply. It circulated in hundreds of manuscript copies and is one of the fundamental texts of Russian radicalism. It was published in Russia only in 1906 Russia only in 1906 excerpts: "but one cannot endure an outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion and the protection of the knout." publishes a book in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and Church....And would you expect me not to become indignant?..." Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals - what are you about! Look beneath your feet - you are standing on the brink of an abyss!... That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it? What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom. And this teaching was men's salvation only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of Orthodoxy for its foundation

MA exam question: Discuss the theme of Slavophile vs. Westernizer in at least 4 works (3x

Belinsky sparked the debate between the two ideas in 1834?. Letter saying Russia has no culture. Chadaev was 1836. Slavophile Sobornost--community (obschina) Peasants as the embodiment of the Russian spirit because they were uncorrupted by European culture War and Peace Natasha dancing--she has an innate ability to dance like a Russian Pierre and Platon Kiradaev--peasant gave the answer to life Anna Karenina Plowing scene with Levin out in the field with the peasants. Lots of farming and peasant scenes. Hunter's Sketches Showing the peasants as they haven't really been seen before. Vera Pavlovna's 4th dream (Chto Delat) Community elements Dostoevsky Winter note on summer impressions Pochvinichvost--Europe isn't as great as we say it is We need to create our own thing and not rely on Europe Pushkin, Bronze Horseman Ambiguous about Peter and the West This goes both ways, so you could use this to talk about the differences Westernism Europe is the perfect example Modernization Scientific progress Critiquing Orthodoxy Progressive--Russia should move with the times Individualism Chto Delat' Idea of progression Discuss the varying treatment and meaning of dueling scenes in 19 th century literature. In which works do duels appear? Are the consequences of duels primarily physical, or do they reach into other realms (emotional, spiritual, etc.)? What scenes (particularly in Dostoevsky) function as surrogate duels—battles that do not involve guns? What characters decline to duel and why? (PhD, 60 minutes) Pushkin Eugene Onegin Tormented by the fact that he killed his friend Lensky Symbol of the death of young, romantic Pushkin The Shot Self-affirmation Lermontov Hero of our Times Duel is self-affirmation Guy is not afraid of death Smert' poeta (Pushkin died in a duel) How could society be so bad that this would happen. Turgenev Father's and Sons Matter of pride. Shoots him in the leg and helps take care of him. Tolstoy War and Peace Pierre's duel He duels Dolokhov, but didn't want to. But he does it anyway. He sort of accidentally shoots him, but doesn't kill him. One of the points where he decides to join the masons. Duel represents rock bottom in someone's life. The Duel, Chekhov Dostoevsky Dvoinik--duel with self Effects are both physical and spiritual. Duel is a social construct that is often being condemned. Sometimes people feel forced into it.  

Andrei Bely's most famous work

Bely's symbolist novel Petersburg (1916; 1922) was regarded by VN as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century and it is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905. To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolai Apollonovich, a ne'er-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official—his own father. At one point, Nikolai is pursued through the Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great

Appolon Ableukov

Character in book by Andrei Bely: Petersburg (Russian: Петербургъ, Peterburg) is a novel by Russian writer Andrei Bely. A Symbolist[citation needed] work, it arguably foreshadows James Joyce's[1] Modernist ambitions.[citation needed] First published in 1913, the novel received little attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written. Today the book is generally considered Bely's masterpiece; Vladimir Nabokov ranked it one of the four greatest "masterpieces of twentieth century prose", after Ulysses and The Metamorphosis, and before In Search of Lost TimeThe novel is based in Saint Petersburg in the run up to the Revolution of 1905 and follows a young revolutionary, Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, who has been ordered to assassinate his own father, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a high Tsarist official, by planting a time bomb in his study.

Gogol's writing style:

D. S. Mirsky characterized Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected - in the strictest sense, original[32] - worlds ever created by an artist of words".[33] The other main characteristic of Gogol's writing is his 'impressionist' vision of reality and people.[citation needed] He saw the outer world romantically metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, "A Terrible Vengeance" and "A Bewitched Place". His pictures of nature are strange mounds of detail heaped on detail, resulting in an unconnected chaos of things. His people are caricatures, drawn with the method of the caricaturist - which is to exaggerate salient features and to reduce them to geometrical pattern. But these cartoons have a convincingness, a truthfulness, and inevitability - attained as a rule by slight but definitive strokes of unexpected reality - that seems to beggar the visible world itself. The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the Russian word poshlost', which means something similar to "triviality, banality, inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society. Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and of romantic illusions. He undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had reigned.[35] "Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror."[36] His stories often interweave pathos and mockery, while "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" begins as a merry farce and ends with the famous dictum, "It is dull in this world, gentlemen!"

· What does the term "Decadence" refer to in Russian literature? What works and authors may be representative of this trend? What happened to the movement? (MA Comp 1994)

Decadents = focus on the decay of the world, apocolyptic views (felt they were living in an age at the end of world history), because it's all in decline, all ending we can do what we want; because civilization is coming to an end, they can focus on death or rebirth, a next world; discontent with present and want something unearthly in the future, First generation of symbolists (final decade of the 19th century) Merezhokovsky's "On the Reasons of the Decline of Russian Literature" (1892) Brink of an abyss, decline of Russian culture Something new can be created (symbolism) Decline of russian language and literature is also decline of russian soul The greats have already written, so the lesser ones can do so now Deti nochi = Children of the night, sun will make us disappear because we are shadows Sologub The Created Legend = see decline of an island kingdom, very ominous setting with volcano erupting, also see idealized world created by teacher/poet/scientist, end of world and sublimation into created world Bunin Model decadent, even though he detests them Briusov O zakroj tvoi blednye nogi = decay of the world Published "The Russian Symbolists" (1894) supposed to be an anthology, but majority were poems written by him under a pseudonym Tormenting Gift = Poetry, reaching for something, no place for poet in prosaic world Sonnet to Form = 2 quatrains, 2 tercets = cutting open a volume of poetry and revelling in it, words becoming concrete and staying eternally

Discuss Realism: romantic realism of early Dostoevsky, critical realism of 19 th century, socialist realism of 20 th century, magical realism of late 20 th and early 21 st.

Define realism, and then say if the various things fit into it. Romantic realism--interim period between the end of realism and the complete formation of realism. Transition between eras. Early Dostoevsky Dvoinik--the magical appearance of the double Reading where the dvoinik is mystical--romanticism Reading where he has gone insane--realistic. Early strains of realism--talking about the doctor and shopkeeper and such. Critical realism--high realism (this is what the Soviets called just realism) Crime and Punishment War and Peace Kreutzer Sonata Socialist Realism Selfless, true hero. Often has a crisis of conscience but then goes back to the Party. Realistic elements Must have typical characters under "typical circumstances" seen from the Marxist point of view. The characters were supposed to show the best traits of their class.It isn't showing the most common phenomena, but the path to communism. Someone's journey This is essentially not even realism. Formulaic. Happy ending. Party comes first--before family and all else. Стихийность и сознательность (spontaneity vs. consciousness) Three pillar of socialist realism Народность--popular spirit Идейность--ideological commitment Паритиность--party-mindedness How the steel was tempered. Pavel Korchagin By the age of 23 he uses his last strength to get to Moscow which is the center of socialism. He has given his whole life and health and friends and love for the party. Magical realism Understanding that there is a supernatural element. It starts in this world and then goes to magical things. Petrushevskaia Pelevin Chapaev i pustota Combination of realistic elements and a magical world

Determinism

Determinism= different viewpoint based on your social matrix, as in if you are born poor then you will be poor etc vs the "my soul is great in the Romanic argument "determinism is against this.

kosnost

Dostoyevsky refers to as kosnost or spiritual stagnation that results from material pursuits.[4]

Discuss the development of the genre of the novel in Russian literature. Begin discussion with the evolution of the novel in the early 19th century and trace its developmental course through Lermontov, Gogol, Goncharov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. What becomes of the genre of the novel in 20th century Russian literature? Be sure to follow its evolution ( or dissolution ) into the contemporary period.

Early writers not just forming the genre but also telling the reader how the genre should be read. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin 1832 Роман в стихах--already playing with form Poetry was starting to go out of style Narrator is present--makes comments about the process of writing a novel Mixture of movements--romanticism; neoclassicism; elements of realism Published serially Lermontov "Hero of our Time" 1840 No longer in verse Playing with style Narrator that is involved in the story. Some diary entries. Mixing of forms. Gogol "Dead Souls" 1842 Poema Gogol criticizes the Russian reader and himself. Satirical caricaturization of landowners. Goncharov "Oblomov" 1859 Satire of the superfluous man. He wants to do something but does nothing the entire book. Social commentary on a literary character who is also a social character. Gets into realism. Sociological type in Russia. Lots of attention to what made him so lazy. Both the lazy person and the person who works harder are criticized--this is an element of realism because you're not told exactly what to think. Narrator seems to be omniscient, but at the end a "Я" comes out with Oblomov's friend. Narrator is unmasked as part of this Russian noble society. Dostoevsky Realism. Psychological novels. One epistolary novel-- "Poor Folk" 1846 His early works are a combination of natural school and sentimentalism. Experiment with novel form--diary novels, journalism combining with fiction (Diary of a Writer). Long novels--Crime and Punishment; Brothers Karamazov Free, indirect discourse Narrative voice uses the style and opinions of a character. Transitions smoothly and imperceptibly between the narrator and the character. Like the narrator channeling the character. Dvoinik when the narrator starts talking as the main character. Tolstoy More clear in his narratorial style than Dostoevsky. Long realistic novels. Realism. Lots of attention to detail. More encyclopedic and broad in time scope than Dostoevsky. Nabokov's chart of literary descendancy. Two lines: Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy Gogol, Dostoevsky and some others 20th century Bulgakov--still playing with style and different settings; two books in one Ulitskaia Solzhenitsyn--descendant of Tolstoy Pelevin Sologub Zamiatin Nabokov 20th century novels continuously quote previous literature. (Connolly quote--Russian literature is incestuous.) Socialist realism made novels in Russia schematic for a long time. Post-modernism plays a lot with form. Narrator comes back into play and is very present.

Encyclopedism

Encyclopedism = literary manifestation of the scientific urge to catalog everything just to see patterns so we can predict things, draw conclusions etc. re Belinksy: who are we, we need writers to depict society and the ones that become popular will give us some direction something to bounce ideas off of.

Free indirect discourse

Free indirect discourse is essentially when an author quotes a character's thoughts without using words like "he thought" to introduce the thoughts themselves. Also, it's like a direct quotation, but without quotation marks, and often, in English, the tense of the verb is shifted to the past. So, a good example from Dvoinik is when the narrator shows Golyadkin waiting outside the back entrance to the Olsufiev apartment near the beginning of Chapter Four (right after the long passage where the narrator tries to describe the feast that's going on inside). The narrator says things like: "He was just watching... He could go in if he wanted." This is the free indirect discourse way of recording G's thoughts, which in direct discourse would be something like "I am just watching... I can go in if I want." And regular 3rd person narration might say something like: Golyadkin told himself that he was just watching, but that he could go in if he wanted to."

Petty Demon

Fyodor Sologub (Russian: Фёдор Сологу́б, born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, Russian: Фёдор Кузьми́ч Тете́рников, also known as Theodor Sologub; 1 March [O.S. 17 February] 1863 - 5 December 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose. The Petty Demon attempted to create a description of poshlost', a Russian concept that has characteristics of both evil and banality. The antihero is a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. The novel recounts the story of the morally corrupt Peredonov going insane and paranoid in an unnamed Russian provincial town, parallel with his struggle to be promoted to governmental inspector of his province. The omniscient third-person narrative allowed Sologub to combine his Symbolist tendencies and the tradition of Russian Realism in which he engaged throughout his earlier novels, a style similar to Maupassant's fantastic realism. Realistic elements of The Petty Demon include a vivid description of 19th-century rural everyday life, while a fantastic element is the presentation of Peredonov's hallucinations on equal terms with external events. While the book was received as an indictment of Russian society, it is a very metaphysical novel and one of the major prose works of the Russian Symbolist movement.[citation needed] James H. Billington said of it: The book puts on display a Freudian treasure chest of perversions with subtlety and credibility. The name of the novel's hero, Peredonov, became a symbol of calculating concupiscence for an entire generation... He torments his students, derives erotic satisfaction from watching them kneel to pray, and systematically befouls his apartment before leaving it as part of his generalized spite against the universe.[6]

Goncharov

Goncharov "Oblomov" Satire of the superfluous man. He wants to do something but does nothing the entire book. Social commentary on a literary character who is also a social character. Gets into realism. Sociological type in Russia. Lots of attention to what made him so lazy. Both the lazy person and the person who works harder are criticized--this is an element of realism because you're not told exactly what to think. Narrator seems to be omniscient, but at the end a "Я" comes out with Oblomov's friend. Narrator is unmasked as part of this Russian noble society.

Hadji Murat

Hadji Murat : Хаджи-Мурат [Khadzhi-Murat]) is a short novel written by Leo Tolstoy from 1896 to 1904 and published posthumously in 1912 (though not in full until 1917). It is Tolstoy's final work. The protagonist is Hadji Murat, an Avar rebel commander who, for reasons of personal revenge, forges an uneasy alliance with the Russians he had been fighting.

Andrei Bely

His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев; IPA: [bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ bʊˈɡajɪf] ( listen)), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely (Russian: Андре́й Бе́лый; IPA: [ɐnˈdrʲej ˈbʲelɨj] ( listen); 26 October [O.S. 14 October] 1880 - 8 January 1934), was a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic.

Silentium

Iambic tetrameter nabokovs translatoin out of four of them is considered to be the best one He argues that the form of expression (rhythm, meter, sound devices, etc.) is essential to communicating the spirit of the message to the audience and insists that some approximation to the form must be retained, even with some loss or alteration of content (Nida, 2000, p.131; 2003, p.25). Joseph Brodsky maintains that metres in verse are kinds of spiritual magnitudes for which nothing can be substituted... They cannot be replaced by each other and especially not by free verse (quoted in Connolly, 1998, p.173). A similar view concerning the necessity to preserve the poem s poetic form is expressed by Viggo Pedersen (1999, p.54). He also suggests that the meter of the original should be imitated in translation as closely as possible, for different rhythmic forms may differ in emotional and esthetic appeal and suggestiveness (A

About Nekrasov's " The Petersburg Corners", how it was published and who it influenced

In spring 1844 Nikolai Nekrasov tried to publish "The Petersburg Corners", an excerpt from his autobiographical novel The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov, in Literaturnaya Gazeta, but the piece, described by biographer Korney Chukovsky as "by far superior to everything he'd written before," was stopped by censors.[3] It was then that the author came up with the idea of compiling an almanac which would unite the authors of the Nikolai Gogol-led "natural school". He found an enthusiastic supporter in Vissarion Belinsky who at the moment was "waging the war for Gogol" against the Russian literary retrogrades and instantly recognized in the proposed project a handy vehicle for his agenda. In fact, the style of the introduction written by Belinsky suggested he was a de facto co-editor who took at least some part in compiling the material, Chukovsky argued.[3] Among the works included into the collection were pieces by Dmitry Grigorovich, Ivan Panayev, Vladimir Dal, Evgeny Grebyonka as well as four articles by Vissarion Belinsky ("The Introduction", "The Alexandrinsky Theatre", "Petersburg and Moscow", "The Literature of St. Petersburg"), but Nekrasov's novelette was its centerpiece. Again, it caused trouble: censor Amply Otchkin found "The Petersburg Corners" "outrageous and indecent," and Nekrasov had to wait almost a year before the offending item was finally censor-approved in February 1845.[2] The publication proved hugely successful. Gogol himself expressed interest, asking his friend Smirnova-Rossette to send a copy to Germany where he was staying at the time. The conservative critics denounced the book unanimously. L. Brandt wrote in Severnaya Ptchela: "Nekrasov is just another component of this newest trend, set by Gogol, tending to shy all things sensitive and solemn, preferring instead to reveal scenes that are dirty and dark..., seeing art's goal as the glorification of all things ugly and obscene."[3] Legacy[edit] The almanac, aiming to bring the readership as close to the real life in Russia as it was possible (by exposing "all the dark corners of our social life, and all the hidden mechanisms of our existence," as Nekrasov put it), became the triumph for the "natural school". This publication, along with the 1845's Saint Petersburg Collection (the latter featuring among other works, the Poor Folk, Dostoyevsky's debut) are seen as precursors of Nekrasov's Sovremennik.[2][3] this is my book with the Grigorovich story in it as well, "the organ grinders"

Zakliate smekhom

Incantation by laughter : Velimir Khlebnikov is the co-inventor along with his fellow Russian poet Aleksei Kruchenykh of trans-sense or transrational language (zaum). This new approach to poetic language adopted by the Russian Futurists aimed at liberating sound from meaning to create a primeval language of sounds. One of the first examples of Futurist trans-sense poetry is Khlebnikov's Zakliatie smekhom ('Incantation by Laughter'). This poem performs its title. It achieves this by using the one word stem, smekh or smeiat'sia (Russian for laughter/to laugh) to which prefixes and suffixes are added to generate new words without any external references or associations, so the poem becomes just the sound of laughter itself. It was first published in Studiia impressionistov ('Impressionists' studio'

re Master and margarita lesser know facts and plot summary:

It should be noted that the traditional interpretation of The Master and Margarita ignores the facts delineating the true Bulgakov's intention. The novel turned out to be a bitter satire aimed at the Soviet repressive regime. It depicts V. Lenin as devil Woland who brought disaster to Russia. The satirical characters of Master and Margarita do not depict Bulgakov and his third wife as it is traditionally believed. The Master represents the odious figure of M. Gorky, whom the Soviet regime officially endowed with the functions of supervising the whole literary process in the Soviet Russia. The image of Margarita reflects the odious figure of unofficial Gorky's wife Maria Andreyeva, a myrmidon of V. Lenin. It was on Lenin's demand that Maria Andreyeva involved gifted writer M. Gorky into the Bolshevik's activities. That very situation has been satirically described in the Master and Margarita. A more detailed analysis of the multiple reflections pointing to Lenin, Gorky and Andreyeva as being depicted as Woland, the Master, and Margarita has been presented in my earlier book Mikhail Bulgakov's Novel The Master and Margarita: a New Approach. Should the true content of The Master and Margarita be disclosed in the thirties, Mikhail Bulgakov most certainly would have been executed. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita during the brutal Stalinist purges of the nineteen-thirties, and expressed an anti-Stalinist theme through a complicated allegory of good and evil. As an example of protest literature, The Master and Margarita is unique for its structural strangeness, for it is a novel within a novel, and is paced by multiple narratives which raise profoundly troubling questions about human nature, atheism, totalitarianism, and human society. The chief character in The Master and Margarita is Satan, who disguises himself as a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician by the name of Woland. Satan's henchmen are a raggedy group of dirty, bizarre-looking outcasts who plot and scheme their way into Soviet society. This portrayal is significant, for the Bolsheviks of Lenin were a ragged group of odd misfits who plotted and schemed their way to power in Russia. One of the many psychological themes of this compelling book involves the reactions of the supposedly rational, atheist citizens of Moscow to Woland's powers. This of course is an analogy that compares their similar reactions to Stalin's powers. Just as the citizens of Moscow are willing to accept unbelievable events perpetrated by Woland if it benefits them, the citizens of the Soviet Union were willing to accept unbelievable Stalinist policies when it benefited them. Both reactions are absurd and irrational. Satan is a monster and so was Stalin. They both victimize everyone sooner or later. It is just a matter of time before the price of accommodating evil must be paid, for living in Stalinist Russia required a Faustian pact with the devil (Barkov) and by the time communism fell everyone in the Soviet Union had suffered. In the meantime, Stalin and his heirs took great satisfaction in manipulating people, and savored the power they had over others. So did Woland, which is to be expected, for in the novel he is in fact Stalin. The vodka-swilling cat is another interesting analogy in The Master and Margarita, for it represents the common Russian trait of drowning one's troubles in alcohol. Most Russians drink vodka like water, which is understandable, because for most Russians in the communist era, and in the long tsarist era before 1917, alcohol was the only comfort they could find in life. Sorting out the three separate plots in this novel is well worth the effort, for Bulgakov offers numerous insights into the human condition, and weaves these three stories together in order to better emphasize his themes. As we have discussed, one story concerns the visit to Stalinist Moscow of Satan disguised as Woland, who terrorizes the capital's intellectual community just as Stalin actually did, and for the same reasons. In this story, Bulgakov satirizes communist society and exposes the inner hypocrisy nearly everyone was guilty of, especially the intellectual elites. (Barkov) The second story of course has clear New Testament overtones, for it involves a character by the unique and rather recognizable name of Pontius Pilate who encounters a wandering spiritual man named Yeshua. Jesus of Nazareth of course was an itinerant spiritual figure, whose name in Hebrew was Yeshua. Bulgakov had an agenda here, for in Stalinist times it was illegal and mortally dangerous to criticize anything about the Soviet Union, so Bulgakov disguised his criticisms of Soviet society by criticizing biblical societies. (Barkov) To balance this, biblical aspects of The Master and Margarita involving baptism, the trinity, and resurrection occur in the city of Moscow. Russians are a sophisticated literary people, so most of Bulgakov's readers understood what he was up to and appreciated his insights and the powerful, entertaining manner in which he expressed his themes. They could see very well who was who, why they acted as they did, and what the consequences were. (Barkov) Through the interactions of Pontius Pilate and Jeshua, it seems that Bulgakov was saying that the godless society that was Russia under Stalin's communism had no understanding of the divine, and because it didn't it was doomed to soon degenerate into despair and disaster. He couldn't actually say that openly in the nineteen-thirties USSR (Barkov) so he said it through a New Testament analogy involving Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ. Finally, there is the story of the separated lovers, the Master and Margarita, whose tale is interwoven between the other two stories. The Master allowed his critics to destroy his literary career, while Margarita had to watch him fall apart over the rejection of his retelling of Pontius Pilate's story. Woland takes a special evil interest in these two separated lovers, and encounters Margarita at a critical moment when she may be tempted to offer him too much for a reunion with her beloved Master. Theirs is a touching and unforgettable love story which balances all of the evil, loathing, hypocrisy, and despair in the novel. It should be noted that the brilliance of this novel is not just its satire, but the masterful way in which Bulgakov links the three stories together to make a profound literary statement about life. In the context of the New Testament, it is especially effective how he links Pontius Pilate's interaction with Jesus to the desolate life of The Master and his lover Margarita by developing parallel plots that harmonically blend together as the novel reaches its climax. In conclusion, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita during the brutal Stalinist purges of the nineteen-thirties, and expressed an anti-Stalinist theme through a complicated allegory of good and evil. Bulgakov's novel is structured in three parts, but is not only a satiric tale about the strange characters in these three plotlines, it is also about the absurdity of communist politics, the evils of hypocrisy, and the hollowness of literary pretensions. In a larger political sense, it is about oppression and persecution, and in a moral sense, it is about courage, devotion, and the power of love.

Varlam Shalamov

It was not until 1989 that his "Kolyma Tales" were published in the Soviet Union. prison in the murals kolyma, initially for being a trotskyite ( against lenin and stalin) A political prisoner for seventeen years, Varlam Shalamov committed an unfathomable act - he survived in the deadliest of Stalin's camps and preserved an inner strength so great, it enabled him to turn the bottom of life he had hit into an art of the first order. his father was an orthodox priest who instilled a strong "right from wrong in him". The '50s and '60s were in general very creative decades for Shalamov, as he completed over a hundred stories. However, editors of the Khrushchev era did not want the Kolyma horrors revived for the readers, and were reluctant to publish Shalamov's works. The time required literature that hailed enthusiasm and a positive labor attitude, while Shalamov's stories were said to be full of "abstract humanism". Therefore, during Shalamov's lifetime, very little of his work was published in the Soviet Union. Shalamov was shattered by the constant rejection: everything that seemed to nurture his very being turned out obsolete; years of his struggling and hard work were in vain. He didn't give up writing, however, even after the Literature Foundation put him into a retirement home. His health had been broken by years in camps, but he still managed to write poetry and dictate his memoirs. He met with Solzheiten and was "unimpressed" and disagreed with the him that the camps could work to better a person. Shalamov met with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but had an ambivalent feeling toward him: he recognized Solzhenitsyn as an inferior writer but envied his fame. He commented on Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" saying: "The camp described here was one in which you could happily have spent a lifetime. It was an improved postwar camp, nothing like the hell of Kolyma."

Korney Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His catchy rhythms, inventive rhymes and absurd characters have invited comparisons with the American children's author Dr. Seuss.

ode - lyrical poetry

Lomonosov is one of the most famous figures to write in this style

Aleksandr Voronskii

Marxist critic and editor, created Red Virgin Soil, eventually purged by Stalin because of his association with Trotsky, supported a number of suspicious Soviet writers, such as Babel and Pasternak

More on Peshkov:

Maxim Gorky, Background: Maxim Gorky was born, Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov March 28, 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod. When compared to his literary contemporary Anton Chekhov, Gorky is on the other end of the social strata. He was orphaned at age 11, and raised by his grandmother. He survived a suicide attempt in 1887 after which he traveled around the land for about 4 years working at various jobs and gathering impressions, which were later employed in his writing. Gorky publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested several times. He became a close friend of Lenin's after their initial meeting in 1902. At the heart of Gorky's work was a belief in the inherent potential and worth of a human person (личность, 'lichnost'). Gorky paid a visit to the industrial prison camp prototype of Solovki where it is believed that he was given the promise of better conditions for the prisoners there, in exchange for his neglecting to mention the real evil that was taking place at the time of his visit. Gorky survived exile and was later invited by Stalin to return and stay for good. After 68 years of life, and only two years after the death of his son, Maxim Peshkov, he died suddenly during medical treatment. Some scholars argue that Stalin ordered his death, July 18, 1936. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried his coffin.

Миргород

Mirgorod (Russian: Миргород) is a collection of short stories written by Nikolai Gogol, composed between 1832-1834 and first published in 1835.[1] It was significantly revised and expanded by Gogol for an 1842 edition of his complete works. The title Mirgorod refers to the Ukrainian city of the same name. It is also the setting for the final story in the collection, "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich". The title reflects the stories' portrayal of provincial Ukrainian life, similar to Gogol's successful previous collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. To solidify this connection between the two works, he attached the subtitle: "Stories which are a continuation of the Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Mirogorod: The Ukraine appears in The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforo Миргород - collection of Gogol's short stories, one of his earliest publications, two of the stories carry his earlier, shponka tradition, the other are more realist

About Nekrasov

Nikolai Nekrasov is considered one of the greatest Russian poets of the 19th century, alongside Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.[3] In 1850s-1860s Nekrasov (backed by two of his younger friends and allies, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov) became the leader of a politicized, social-oriented trend in the Russian poetry (evolved from the Gogol-founded natural school in prose) and exerted the strong influence upon the young radical intelligentsia. "What's prompted the Russian student's trend of 'merging with the people' was not the Western Socialism, but the Narodnik-related poetry of Nekrasov, which was immensely popular among the young people," argued the revolutionary poet Nikolai Morozov.[36]

who wrote Silentium? there were two poets

OSIP MANDELSTAM WAS BORN IN WARSAW TO A POLISH JEWISH family; his father was a leather merchant, his mother a piano teacher. Soon after Osip's birth, the family moved to Saint Petersburg. After attending the prestigious Tenishev School, Mandelstam studied for a year in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and then for a year in Germany, at the University of Heidelberg. In 1911, wanting to enter the University of Saint Petersburg - which had a quota on Jews - he converted to Christianity; like many others who converted during these years, he chose Methodism rather than Orthodoxy. Under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilyov, Mandelstam and several other young poets formed a movement known first as the Poets' Guild and then as the Acmeists. Mandelstam wrote a manifesto, 'The Morning Of Acmeism' (written in 1913 but published only in 1919). Like Ezra Pound and the Imagists, the Acmeists valued clarity, concision and craftsmanship. In 1913 Mandelstam published his first collection, STONE. This includes several poems about architecture, which always remained one of his central themes. His poem about the cathedral of 'Nôtre Dame' ends with the declaration: Fortress Nôtre Dame, the more attentively I studied your vast ribs and frame, the more I kept repeating: one day I too will craft beauty from cruel weight. In its acknowledgment of earthly gravity and its homage to the anonymous architects and masons of the past, 'Nôtre Dame' is typically Acmeist. Throughout his life Mandelstam continued to write about the various arts, but he was also a great love poet. Several women - all of them important in their own right - were crucial to his life and work. An affair with Marina Tsvetaeva inspired many of his poems about Moscow. His close friendship with Anna Akhmatova helped him withstand the persecution he suffered during the 1930s. He had intense affairs with the singer Olga Vaksel in 1924-25 and with the poet Maria Petrovykh in 1933. Most important of all was Nadezhda Khazina, whom he married in 1922. Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam moved to Moscow soon after their marriage. Mandelstam's second book, TRISTIA, published later in 1922, contains his most eloquent poetry; the tone is similar to that of Yeats's 'Sailing to Byzantium' or some of Pound's first CANTOS. Several poems were inspired by the Crimea, where Mandelstam had stayed as a guest of Maximilian Voloshin. Once a Greek colony, the Crimea was for Mandelstam a link to the classical world he loved; above all, it granted him a sense of kinship with Ovid, who wrote his own TRISTIA while exiled to the western shores of the Black Sea. The final section of Mandelstam's 1928 volume POEMS (the last collection he was able to publish in his life) is titled 'Poems 1921-25'. These twenty poems differ from any of his previous work. Many are unrhymed, and they are composed in lines and stanzas of varying length. This formal disintegration reflects a sense of crisis that Mandelstam expresses most clearly in 'The Age': also re Nadezhda Mandalstam Hope against hope

Osip Brik

Osip Maksimovich Brik (Russian: Осип Максимович Брик) (16 January 1888 in Moscow - 22 February 1945 in Moscow), Russian avant garde writer and literary critic, was one of the most important members of the Russian formalist school, though he also identified himself as one of the Futurists. Brik, Lilya Kagen and Mayakovsky: He met his future wife, Lilya Kagan, when he was 17 and she 14; they were married on 26 March 1912. (Her sister Elsa was Louis Aragon's wife and a notable French writer.) The daughter of a prosperous Jewish jurist, the handsome, erotically obsessed, highly cultivated Lili grew up with an overwhelming ambition prevalent among women of the Russian intelligentsia: to be perpetuated in human memory by being the muse of a famous poet. ... The two made a pact to love each other "in the Chernyshevsky manner" - a reference to one of nineteenth-century Russia's most famous radical thinkers, who was an early advocate of "open marriages." Living at the heart of an artistic bohemia and receiving the intelligentsia in the salon of his delectable wife, Osip Brik, true to his promise, calmly accepted his wife's infidelities from the start. In fact, upon hearing his wife confess that she had gone to bed with the famous young poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, Brik exclaimed "How could you refuse anything to that man?" ... In 1918, when Mayakovsky and the Briks became inseparable, he simply moved in with them. Throughout the rest of his life, he made his home at a succession of flats that the Briks occupied.[8]

Nekrasov Petersburg Corner:

Petersburg Organ grinder: intro by Belinky, Petersburg corners ....locations as in here is what goes on in this kind of space. So space shapes personality and they will be shaped by their social surroundings Physiological sketch: research record your results, eg Grigorovich gives us different types like Italians and Germans and Russians. So the romantic author was like " omgit will be fabulous I'll right a story like Pechorin, cliffs! Sex! Murder! But in realism the author hides in the sketch by acting like it's a question of science, as in methods that guarantee truth. So Grigorovich would be like here I am giving you my results and its true. Vs Egyptian nights where there is not a shred of evidence. How hard their lives are and that they suffer. Nekrasov story Petersburg corner we only see the people in their down time / the physical space is awful = guy meets his roommates gets drunk so we are like what's the point. So what do we get out of this boring ness? That there are people like this who barley have names b/c names smack of romanticism eg the green man, the house servant released on обрак= you can go anywhere or stay on the estate but you pay vs баршин you work about 5 days a week. The green guy looks and smells like a wine bottle. It dehumanizes them, a bit. All these rich peopel you can introduce them to the horror of life author might be thinking. The story is more and more depressing eeryting stinks and everything is falling apart. Like nekrasov wants us all to feel like we are getting beat up by reality.

Discuss the place of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita in twentieth century Russian literature. In what ways did it challenge the prevailing conventions of Soviet literature, and in what ways does the novel continue trends or themes from earlier periods of Russian literature? (25 minutes; MA Exam b)

Place: Even though it was written in the 30s it was not published until the redacted version in the late 60s so it doesn't have an affect on Russ Lit until that point. It had a social function more than literary one, especially during Glasnost and postmodernist works. Considering the themes of controlled society, the motif of the insane asylim, sincerity and insincerity, religion and superstition. All these themes question existing institutions, just as postmodernism tries to do. It challenges social literary social conventions specifically the structure of the novel - the novel within a novel. This is a trend that continues in postmodernism. It continues the conversation with Dostoevskii's grand inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov and the conversation with the devil. By continuing Gogol's fantastic themes, Bulgakov challenges Soviet literary conventions of avoiding the fantastic and supernatural. Continues the Romantic and Neoromantic trend of considering the poet as a genius, thus challenging the Soviet idea that the proletariat can become a poet or author. Challenging social realism of the 30s with supernatural themes but also comments on the Soviet censorship and social realism requirement for authors by including authors and censors in his novel.

Post-Soviet Literature

Post-Soviet Literature - Almost no one expected the Soviet Union to come suddenly to an end. The effects of this event on literature have been enormous. The period of glasnost (verbal openness) under Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse of the U.S.S.R. led first to a dramatic easing and then to the abolition of censorship. Citizenship was restored to émigré writers, and Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. Doctor Zhivago and We were published in Russia, as were the works of Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Voynovich, and many others. The divisions between Soviet and émigré and between official and unofficial literature came to an end. Russians experienced the heady feeling that came with absorbing, at great speed, large parts of their literary tradition that had been suppressed and with having free access to Western literary movements. A Russian form of postmodernism, fascinated with a pastiche of citations, arose, along with various forms of radical experimentalism. During this period, readers and writers sought to understand the past, both literary and historical, and to comprehend the chaotic, threatening, and very different present.

Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky

Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (Russian: Владимир Федорович Одоевский; 13 August [O.S. 1 August] 1803 - 11 March [O.S. 27 February] 1869) was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism. Aspiring to imitate Ludwig Tieck and Novalis, Odoyevsky published a number of tales for children (e.g., "The Snuff-Box Town") and fantastical stories for adults (e.g., "Cosmorama" and "Salamandra") imbued with the vague mysticism in the vein of Jakob Boehme and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. Following the success of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Odoyevsky wrote a number of similar stories on the dissipated life of the Russian aristocracy (e.g., Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi). On account of his many short stories from the 1820s and 1830s, Odoyevsky should be listed among the pioneers of the impressionistic short story in Europe. His most mature book was the collection of essays and novellas entitled The Russian Nights (1844). Loosely patterned after the Noctes Atticae, the book took two decades to complete. It contains some of Odoyevsky's best known fiction, including the dystopian novellas The Last Suicide and The Town with No Name. The stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists.