Russian Literature

[Svidrigailov]

Which one are you talking about, Sosnora or Shishkin?

Mihail Shishkin

[Hamlet]

Svidrigailov, hello, what's the general feeling in Russia about Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, is one preferred over the other nowadays, or are both seen as great literature, and do you get a split: say, readers who if they read D, aren't so keen on T, and vice-versa?

Dostyevsky is one of my favourite authors, I always go back to him and will probably reread Brothers Karamazov again later in the year. I think his works are timeless, the big themes are in there, and much that is difficult to explain, but that one just "feels" and "gets" on some profound level.

I personally can easily understand why Russians would return time and again to the pre-revolutionary authors of the 19th century, so much in there, in those great works that it could easily fill a lifetime of study and dipping in!

Anyway, they're both a part of European literature, Dostoyevsky was a fan of Dickens and Shakespeare, even though he had many reservations about the West and the advancement of technology, place of religion, etc.

[Liam]

Dostyevsky is one of my favourite authors

Maybe if you read him in the original, it would cool down your enthusiasm, somewhat: his style is very uneven, from book to book, and sometimes even within the same book. Translators tend to smooth things over a lot.

Tolstoy, like it or not, had a lot of time on his hands. I think he rewrote Anna Karenina, like, seven or eight times, and it shows, beautifully. But Dostoyevsky was probably a better (keener?) psychologist of the two, at least that's the conclusion I have come to.

In terms of favorites, however, I think I would go for Tsvetaeva, Platonov, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, in that order. I've only read AK by Tolstoy, so I can't draw any definitive conclusions.

[Hamlet]

I'm sure Liam, he's always struck me as writing from a position of mania, with all of that ruggedness and uneveness as an integral part of his mania and writing process. He was epileptic wasn't he, some even say post Siberia, a little crazy, and so I can't quite see him as ever writing polished prose in the way a writer like Tolstoy does, being that careful and methodical, but that said, I just don't know Tolstoy anywhere well enough to compare the two, it's just impressions!

The thing which initially attract me was the psychological probity, and in C & P that detective story excitement, the way chapters end, but I know he's been criticised for that, because it's seen by some as being part of the techniques of "lower fiction" - you know, build ups and suspense points, to keep us reading, and also on interest, the particular way he tackles warped and distorted states of psychology, deals with criminals and life's dropouts and lowlife, the misfits, the man or woman out on the streets, it's a gallery of rogues and oddballs!

Tolstoy for me is more upper society, and Dostoyevsky is therfore lower, both relevant of course -- with D, apart from the outcasts and psychological types there's the great themes, say with a work like Brothers K, the whole atheistic vs religous debates!

This seems very of timely at the moment, with such debates and books by folks such as Hitchens and Dawkins flying off the shelves.

I've also been looking over the many, 18 or so in all, theological books written by Dr Rowan Williams. You'll probably know him as the Archbishop of Canterbury over here, or at least he was until recently... who has written works which put the opposite case to the atheistic manifesto, and he's also written a book on Dostoyevsky!

Tolstoy seems to be an observer of the political issues of Russian life and some of the large canvass observations, society in disarray, ripped apart by war, what war does to us, and takes us inside the drawing room with beautifully drawn characters.

However, when I read an introduction to War & Peace recently, I was interested to see how it's assumed generally that Tolstoy does the refined or 'nice literature', carefully constructed, gentee, and so forth, but in fact it's written as an experiment thoughout, with characters appearing and disappearing and lot of loose ends, and so it's certainly a different kind of book to the one I'd expected to read when I first attempted it some years ago, so I'm glad that I abandoned it until now, as I have perhaps a better appreciation of the history.

I read a fairly interesting quote about Dos and Tolstoy some years ago -- it ran something like this: ". . . when we read D his stories strike us again like a shock and remind us of his talents, the excitement of C & P etc etc, whereas with the latter his greatness is with us all of the time."

It was said by John Jones in the intro to C & P, the Jessie Coulson translation, by OUP, the new edition has a new introduction but the essay by Jones is outstanding, I still remember it years later, it's nothing but pure enthusiam for the book.

I need to read more Tolstoy, I took out a few of the short stories last month, but didn't have enough time to give them a fair shot, so they went back to the library.

[Liam]

theological books written by Dr Rowan Williams

We have a thread on RW, of course, and there's even a Russian connection there (!)--he wrote a short but poignant little poem about Andrei Rublev (whom you may know from the Andrei Tarkovsky film).

[Hamlet]

Thanks Liam, didn't see that one, a quick skim through and it seem to be Eric, circling the wagons, again (!) and firing over the top at his foes. (wink)

[Eric]

Where do you get your weird metaphors from, Hamlet. Circling the foes and firing the hamlets is an odd way of speaking. Were you born in a cart?

[Liam]

Interesting article: The 7 Genres of Russia's Literary Giants (note that there are two pages to this).

[maidenhair]

And BANG, there is he again, Shishkin.

[Eric]

Is Rossiyskaya Gazeta an official newspaper, and establishment newspaper, a dissident newspaper, or one read by the girls of the Pussy Riot Brigade of Chained GuLag Prisoners? We khev to know!

I am complaining about disgusting filthy-cunty name of Pussy Riot. I know this expression only in pisstake. Is it serious underneath? Is it not taken, nay, stolen from great Russian writress Virginiya Wool'f's novel of the same name? She surely was writing "To the Shitehouse", "Mrs Getaway", "Between the Sexual Acts", "A Womb of One's Own", "Jacob's Womb" (the two first novels of the Womb Trilogy), "The Raves", "Whorelando", "Three Guinneses", and her most famous novel of all, "Pussy Riot".

[Liam]

^Eric, your lurid if playful perversions never cease to surface.

In other news, I have a strong suspicion that our new friend Maidenhair is... Mikhail Shishkin himself!

[Eric]

I khope so Liam, I khope so. I khev been waiting to worship this great Rassian writer even before I was born. Compared with him we are tales told by idyots, full of sounds and furies, signifying nothing.

(By the way, was that him I saw, hawking the French translations of his books near the Eiffel Tower last week, where he gave a nine-page pornographic pamphlet away with every two novels he sold, under the slogan "Buy two, pay for three and get a wank free"?)

[Liam]

I honestly don't understand what your deal is with Shishkin. I think it's OK to hate an author after you have read him or her, but you haven't. Also, if you think he's been overhyped, that's hardly his fault, he's just quietly writing and publishing his books, which some people happen to think are interesting. If certain establishments choose to praise him to the skies, where is his fault in that? Address your grievances to those establishments and leave the guy alone.

I am almost done with my Ukrainian author (reading him in Russian translation, as my library doesn't carry anything in Ukrainian); after which I fully intend to give Shishkin a chance and read Maidenhair. I'm going to Boston on Monday, so hopefully it'll be a nice and engrossing read on a four-hour bus-ride there and a four-hour return trip back to Brooklyn.

[Liam]

Russian Oligarchs Give Support to the Arts. The world must be coming to an end, .