I’ve been re-reading parts of E. H. Carr’s The Romantic Exiles (1933) in preparation for a couple of forthcoming posts on Alexander Herzen, and it’s left an unpleasant taste that I have to address before I can even get onto Herzen. Clearly I’m far from being the first person to take issue with Carr – Norman […]
All posts tagged Tolstoy
E. H. Carr on women
Posted by Sarah Young on September 25, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/09/25/e-h-carr-on-women/
Top ten food in Russian literature: part 2
I shall keep you in suspense no longer. 5. Shalamov, ‘Condensed Milk’. As in the case of Solzhenitsyn, hunger is ubiquitous in Shalamov’s stories, so food also plays a significant role. ‘Condensed Milk’ is unusual in depicting a moment of triumph and satiation: the narrator, offered a place on an escape, asks the ringleader Shestaskov […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 19, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/19/top-ten-food-in-russian-literature-part-2/
Top ten beards in Russian literature
I know I said I’d write another post about Mapping Petersburg, but I’m still thinking about that, so in the mean time, another top ten. But this time it is not the works, but the writers themselves, and specifically their facial adornments, that interest me. Beards, as Elif Batuman has affirmed, are hugely important to […]
Posted by Sarah Young on April 20, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/04/20/top-ten-beards-in-russian-literature/
Russian Literature and the Big Society
It comes as something of a relief to learn that the Observer’s story about the government linking research council funding to the study of the Big Society turns out to be exaggerated, but given that our funding is at the mercy of the AHRC’s decisions about research themes, which in turn are dictated by their need […]
Posted by Sarah Young on March 28, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/03/28/russian-literature-and-the-big-society/
Top Ten Animals in Russian Literature
As I have suggested previously, animals have a significant place in Russian literature, and I think this is quite unusual, probably reflecting the greater proximity of Russia literature to its folklore roots than is the case with other literary cultures. Although obviously children’s stories in English (as in other languages), are full of animal characters, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on March 4, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/03/04/top-ten-animals-in-russian-literature/
Top Ten Murders in Russian Literature
This is the first in a new occasional series in which I’ll look at different aspects of Russian literature through a ‘Top Ten’, and hopefully give people a few reading ideas. My main rule is that writers may only have one entry in any given list. Which makes my first subject slightly trickier than it […]
Posted by Sarah Young on February 11, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/02/11/top-ten-murders-in-russian-literature/
Russians in London: Turgenev
In the history of Russians in London, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) in many ways acts as a transitional figure, because although most of his visits were quite short (except during the Franco-Prussian war, when he decamped to England for a year), they were frequent, and span a much longer period than those of his contemporaries. He […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 26, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/26/russians-in-london-turgenev/
Russians in London: Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky left St Petersburg for his first trip to Europe on 7th June 1862. He spent most of his time in France and Italy, but also visited London for 8 days – his only trip to Britain – arriving on 9th July (Dryzhakov, p. 328). Like many other writers, one of his chief aims was […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 19, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/19/russians-in-london-dostoevsky/
Russians in London: Lev Tolstoy
There are two sources devoted solely to Tolstoy’s two-week stay in London in March 1861, Victor Lucas’s book Tolstoy in London (1979), and A. V. Knowles’s snappily titled article, ‘Some Aspects of L. N. Tolstoy’s Visit to London in 1861: An Examination of the Evidence’ (1978). They’re very different, but share a similar and telling fault: […]
Posted by Sarah Young on December 5, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/12/05/russians-in-london-lev-tolstoy/
Russians in London: Alexander Herzen, with a note on Nikolai Ogarev
When researching the history of Russians in London, Alexander Herzen presents a considerable problem. He is without doubt the most significant of all the writers and activists who visited London in the nineteenth century, not only because he settled in the capital for some years (1852-64), but also because many of his compatriots — Turgenev, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on November 28, 2010
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/11/28/russians-in-london-alexander-herzen-with-a-note-on-nikolai-ogarev/