Russian_literature

We were silent again for a minute. “Cher,” he concluded at last, getting up quickly, “do you know this is bound to end in something?” “Of course,” said I. “Vous ne comprenez pas. Passons. But … usually in our world things come to nothing, but this will end in something; it’s bound to, it’s bound to!” Summary Dostoyevsky chose as the epigraph to this story the passage of Luke where Jesus sends the demons into the swine, and they subsequently throw themselves off a cliff. A curious passage, and one that will come up over and over in this book. I won’t bother to write a plot summary because spoilers, and also like all of Dostoyevsky’s books, the plot is the tortilla of the burrito. It serves mainly to deliver the contents of the book. The contents are the conversations. The characters are unforgettable, you have a fifty-year-old child, who was influential once, but is of no practical use and literally runs away from home. You have Stavrogin, a man who can’t bring himself to believe in anything, but apparently can’t stop influencing people with the force of his ideas. You have the power-hungry revolutionary sociopath Pyotr Stepanovich who is always willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Last but not least, one of the most compelling characters Kirillov, the atheists par excellence, consumed by an idea, courageous, selfless, and ultimately doomed. In short, this work is a literary masterpiece that managed to divine the future of Russia with astonishing clarity. ...

Summary Evgenni Onegin, pronounced as best as I can tell yev-gainy on-yay-gen is a Russian aristocrat, that seems to be the only stories from Russia I read. Onegin evidently falls into a literary category known as “superfluous men”, Onegin has drank the glass to the bottom and is bored. Bored of the fancy balls, the gossip, the incessant conversation, of everything. Inheriting his uncle’s estate he moves there with no real hopes or ambitions but is surprised to run into a young poet named Vladimir Lensky. This young poet is still full of life and hope much like Onegin’s younger self and helps to lift the boredom and bring color back into Onegin’s life. The poet falls in love with a pretty coquettish girl named Olga, but we ignore her in favor of her more interesting sister Tatyana. Olga had the looks and Tatyana the brains, unfortunately for her she falls in love, the way that only a sixteen-year-old can, with Onegin. She writes him a letter declaring her love and putting herself at his mercy. He replies in what is now known as “Onegin’s Sermon” the essence of which is that Onegin felt like the marriage would be a disaster because he would become bored with her, and eventually her with him. The tone of his reply was polite but also condescending. This of course completely devastates Tatyana who retires into the background of the novel for a time. Shortly thereafter the poet Lensky tricks Onegin into coming to a country ball. This upsets Onegin, who hates the society and finds nothing diverting there. He chooses quite unaccountably to start flirting with the poet’s fiancé Olga, they dance, and she appears to be attracted by Onegin’s studied advances. This causes the poet to callout Onegin and demand satisfaction by a duel. The once friends now face off, with Onegin surviving he is of course distraught by his friend’s death and decides to travel to take his mind off of it. The novel then jumps forward a couple years, Onegin back from his travels goes to a St. Petersburg ball and is surprised to find the innocent 16-year-old transformed into a lady of high society, and now married to a older general. Immediately smitten he does everything he can think of to rekindle their relationship but in an epic turnabout Tatyana gives him her own sermon. She essentially says that she is going to remain faithful to her husband and the novel ends with Onegin yet again in turmoil. ...

Gogol is one more of those Russian authors (actually born in Ukraine) that was an inspiration to many other authors (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, etic) I thought it was about time to take the old boy out himself. Dead Souls follows a mysterious character that the reader gets to know as the book unfolds who just as mysteriously wants to buy dead serfs from Russian aristocrats. The writing style was easy to digest, and the book is filled with many charming and ridiculous characters. This book was somewhat unique as the author would break the fourth wall from time to time and give his own views about things. Full of insightful social commentary and awkward predicaments the book was called the Russian Pickwick Papers, but I wouldn’t go that far, I would say this book is a lot less ridiculous and more surreal, which I would guess is why it appealed to Kafka. The book surprisingly ends in mid-sentence leaving scholars to argue whether or not it was supposed to be that way. Whether it was or not it definitely felt like the rug was pulled from under you. Gogol was another one of those Russian authors that seemed to live like a character from his books. A complete chad that wanted to teach Cossack history but instead was offered a job teaching Medieval History at the university of St. Petersburg a subject of which he had no qualifications. ...

This book was published after Crime and Punishment. Pretty good, definitely not my favorite of Dostoevsky. This book is I think his first iteration on the idea of a beautiful soul. The main character (Prince Myshkin) is a man who is guileless and deeply compassionate. As a result, everyone he comes in contact with assumes he is an idiot. The simple soul is dropped into the current of crazy Russians and you are left to watch what happens and where the soul ends up. While personally I feel like the character of the prince was perfected in story the brothers Karamazov, some of the transcendent goodness of father Zosima and Alyosha can be seen here. Enough of it is visible to make you wish you were a little more like the prince even though the consequences would be unbearable. Fyodor Dostoevsky