Or, Russian perspectives on the Great Exhibition (4). The late arrival of much of the Russian exhibit probably explains why we have to wait until the August issue of Sovremennik to read any details about what one assumes would have been of some significance to many Russian readers. The majority of the report is taken, […]
All posts tagged Dostoevsky
Chaucer, Chernyshevsky and the Crystal Palace
Posted by Sarah Young on July 15, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/07/15/chaucer-chernyshevsky-crystal-palace/
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/
Mapping St Petersburg: Literature as data?
Cross-posted with Mapping St Petersburg. We’ve added a map of Dostoevsky’s addresses to Mapping St Petersburg, and this seems like a good opportunity to discuss the question of data. In comparison with our work on the Crime and Punishment maps, mapping addresses was easy: information on where Dostoevsky lived is well established and available from […]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 1, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/06/01/mapping-st-petersburg-literature-as-data/
Thought for the day
Dostoevsky was something of a specialist in disastrous marriages. There are the doomed, poverty-striken, abusive marriages of tubercular women to alcoholic men — not only Marmeladov and Katerina Ivanovna in Crime and Punishment (English translation here), but also Efimov and his wife in Netochka Nezvanova. Some are just abusive and doomed without any help from illness or addiction, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on April 29, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/04/29/thought-for-the-day/
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/
Mapping Petersburg
Over the last few months I have been working with John Levin on the pilot for a digital Russian literature project, and last week we launched the website, Mapping Petersburg: Experiments in Literary Cartography. The project aims to explore the role of Petersburg’s topography in shaping the literature for which the city is so famous, […]
Posted by Sarah Young on April 6, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/04/06/mapping-petersburg/
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: Vladimir Solov’ev
On 11 July 1875, the philosopher and poet Vladimir Solov’ev arrived in London. Having finished his studies (in natural sciences, then history and philology) at Moscow University and at the seminary at Sergiev Posad, Solov’ev was already, at the tender age of 22, teaching philosophy at Moscow University. On the advice of various friends and […]
Posted by Sarah Young on January 2, 2011
https://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/01/02/russians-in-london-vladimir-solovev/