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Five Things: Thing One: Russian Lit
meme:
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
On the first day of memeing,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aralias gave to me: russian lit, delgado!master, the jews, inappropriate whale porn/will write anything except doctor/donna, rap
These may run a touch long, turns out, so have the first. Heather also gave me one, so that'll come up inna bit.
Russian Lit:
Kind of unfair, as have I read classics like Gogol's The Overcoat, or even had more than a cursory stab at Pushkin? Not really, no. I’m underqualified to love, here. I think the first time I thought I might love Russian Lit was when I was fourteen, like Natalia Rostov herself when she first comes out whirling at us, vivacious, awkward and splendid in War and Peace (or War and the World, depending on how you translate the slippery Russian word 'mir,'). I was at Ragtag, the independent Cinema Cafe in Columbia, Missouri, watching an omnibus presentation of the short films up for the Oscars. One of the elect was "Speed for Thespians" (or however one refers to a short film under the auspices of MLA).
IMDB describes the project as follows: "Three actors and a director perform Chekhov's The Bear on a New York City bus (actually, a succession of buses, as they keep getting thrown off). The other riders on the final bus get progressively more interested." The film was fine (not nearly as good as "The Accountant," a ruthless Southern Gothic ode, which did win), and I do love a palimpcest, but what caught my attention really was "The Bear" itself (variously rendered as "The Boar").
It's not an incredibly popular play. It's an excellent, sharp, perfect play. Give it an extra measure of oats today.
Just look at this bit:
Then in high school I was introduced to Crime and Punishment. You've been in love, haven't you? You tend to, with a feeling of indulgent softness reminiscent of a rotting apple, adopt the beloved's bad habits. I picked up Dostoevsky's faults as a writer: the verbosity, the tangents, the ripe, rank sentimentality. I can only hope for his strengths. The sharp, instant, breakingly true way he creates characters, how adroitly he uses environment--St. Petersburg is a /character/ in the novel, the sonambulent beauty of his narrative: he deals in dreams. Katerina Ivanova's funeral lunch lingers in me like a tedious wretched aching quiet old nightmare.
What Nabakov refuses to understand in his critical dismissal of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is that the writer's reactionary moralist strain cannot overcome Dostoevsky’s imagination, his creative power or the work he produces. Nabakov thinks the religiousity of the ending contrived? So do I. It's beside the point: while being stood in front of a firing squad may have corrupted intellectual!leftist!Dostoevsky irreprably, but Crime and Punishment is too big, too complex to be about Sonya's love for god or Rodya’s path to absolution. It defies a reductionist 'aboutness.' It is as rich-textured and labrynthine as the city itself. Sonya is real, and so's Svidrigailov.
Dostoevsky makes you a building, from the stains in the carpet to the span of the structural support. He writes architecture, dense with shadow and substance. Tolstoy, however, draws you a vast panoramic landscape. Though I'm told most people are violently either/or, I love both, very differently. War and Peace and Anna Karennina are perfect novels, and Tolstoy indulges my weakness for sweeping family sagas. Tolstoy's store of incredible moments is also very rich, and while you may have to suffer through a long slog of Masonic nonsense you don't really care about, he creates characters you fall a bit in love with. On multiple occasions, Tolstoy has made me cry. I may even like him best, if I had to pick.
Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
On the first day of memeing,
aralias gave to me: russian lit, delgado!master, the jews, inappropriate whale porn/will write anything except doctor/donna, rapThese may run a touch long, turns out, so have the first. Heather also gave me one, so that'll come up inna bit.
Russian Lit:
Kind of unfair, as have I read classics like Gogol's The Overcoat, or even had more than a cursory stab at Pushkin? Not really, no. I’m underqualified to love, here. I think the first time I thought I might love Russian Lit was when I was fourteen, like Natalia Rostov herself when she first comes out whirling at us, vivacious, awkward and splendid in War and Peace (or War and the World, depending on how you translate the slippery Russian word 'mir,'). I was at Ragtag, the independent Cinema Cafe in Columbia, Missouri, watching an omnibus presentation of the short films up for the Oscars. One of the elect was "Speed for Thespians" (or however one refers to a short film under the auspices of MLA).
IMDB describes the project as follows: "Three actors and a director perform Chekhov's The Bear on a New York City bus (actually, a succession of buses, as they keep getting thrown off). The other riders on the final bus get progressively more interested." The film was fine (not nearly as good as "The Accountant," a ruthless Southern Gothic ode, which did win), and I do love a palimpcest, but what caught my attention really was "The Bear" itself (variously rendered as "The Boar").
It's not an incredibly popular play. It's an excellent, sharp, perfect play. Give it an extra measure of oats today.
Just look at this bit:
MRS. POPOV: [Trying to cry him down.] Boor, boor, boor!
SMIRNOV: It is high time to do away with the old superstition that it is only the man who is forced to give satisfaction. If there is equity at all let there be equity in all things. There's a limit!
MRS. POPOV: You wish to fight a duel? Very well.
SMIRNOV: Immediately.
MRS. POPOV: Immediately. My husband had pistols. I'll bring them. [She hurries away, then turns.] Oh, what a pleasure it will be to put a bullet in your impudent head. The devil take you!
[She goes out.]
SMIRNOV: I'll shoot her down! I'm no fledgling, no sentimental young puppy. For me there is no weaker sex!
LUKA: Oh, sir. [Falls to his knees.] Have mercy on me, an old man, and go away. You have frightened me to death already, and now you want to fight a duel.
SMIRNOV: [Paying no attention.] A duel. That's equity, emancipation. That way the sexes are made equal. I'll shoot her down as a matter of principle. What can a person say to such a woman? [Imitating her.] "The devil take you. I'll put a bullet in your impudent head." What can one say to that? She was angry, her eyes blazed, she accepted the challenge. On my honor, it's the first time in my life that I ever saw such a woman.
LUKA: Oh, sir. Go away. Go away!
SMIRNOV: That is a woman. I can understand her. A real woman. No shilly-shallying, but fire, powder, and noise! It would be a pity to shoot a woman like that.
LUKA: [Weeping.] Oh, sir, go away.
[Enter MRS. POPOV.]
MRS. POPOV: Here are the pistols. But before we have our duel, please show me how to shoot. I have never had a pistol in my hand before!
It's a perfect romance in one act, balanced like a blade. It's so very short, why not read it? This is the most decent translation I can find at the moment, by the by, beware the weaker ones floating about. Chekov's other plays are similarly worth perusal.SMIRNOV: It is high time to do away with the old superstition that it is only the man who is forced to give satisfaction. If there is equity at all let there be equity in all things. There's a limit!
MRS. POPOV: You wish to fight a duel? Very well.
SMIRNOV: Immediately.
MRS. POPOV: Immediately. My husband had pistols. I'll bring them. [She hurries away, then turns.] Oh, what a pleasure it will be to put a bullet in your impudent head. The devil take you!
[She goes out.]
SMIRNOV: I'll shoot her down! I'm no fledgling, no sentimental young puppy. For me there is no weaker sex!
LUKA: Oh, sir. [Falls to his knees.] Have mercy on me, an old man, and go away. You have frightened me to death already, and now you want to fight a duel.
SMIRNOV: [Paying no attention.] A duel. That's equity, emancipation. That way the sexes are made equal. I'll shoot her down as a matter of principle. What can a person say to such a woman? [Imitating her.] "The devil take you. I'll put a bullet in your impudent head." What can one say to that? She was angry, her eyes blazed, she accepted the challenge. On my honor, it's the first time in my life that I ever saw such a woman.
LUKA: Oh, sir. Go away. Go away!
SMIRNOV: That is a woman. I can understand her. A real woman. No shilly-shallying, but fire, powder, and noise! It would be a pity to shoot a woman like that.
LUKA: [Weeping.] Oh, sir, go away.
[Enter MRS. POPOV.]
MRS. POPOV: Here are the pistols. But before we have our duel, please show me how to shoot. I have never had a pistol in my hand before!
Then in high school I was introduced to Crime and Punishment. You've been in love, haven't you? You tend to, with a feeling of indulgent softness reminiscent of a rotting apple, adopt the beloved's bad habits. I picked up Dostoevsky's faults as a writer: the verbosity, the tangents, the ripe, rank sentimentality. I can only hope for his strengths. The sharp, instant, breakingly true way he creates characters, how adroitly he uses environment--St. Petersburg is a /character/ in the novel, the sonambulent beauty of his narrative: he deals in dreams. Katerina Ivanova's funeral lunch lingers in me like a tedious wretched aching quiet old nightmare.
What Nabakov refuses to understand in his critical dismissal of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is that the writer's reactionary moralist strain cannot overcome Dostoevsky’s imagination, his creative power or the work he produces. Nabakov thinks the religiousity of the ending contrived? So do I. It's beside the point: while being stood in front of a firing squad may have corrupted intellectual!leftist!Dostoevsky irreprably, but Crime and Punishment is too big, too complex to be about Sonya's love for god or Rodya’s path to absolution. It defies a reductionist 'aboutness.' It is as rich-textured and labrynthine as the city itself. Sonya is real, and so's Svidrigailov.
Dostoevsky makes you a building, from the stains in the carpet to the span of the structural support. He writes architecture, dense with shadow and substance. Tolstoy, however, draws you a vast panoramic landscape. Though I'm told most people are violently either/or, I love both, very differently. War and Peace and Anna Karennina are perfect novels, and Tolstoy indulges my weakness for sweeping family sagas. Tolstoy's store of incredible moments is also very rich, and while you may have to suffer through a long slog of Masonic nonsense you don't really care about, he creates characters you fall a bit in love with. On multiple occasions, Tolstoy has made me cry. I may even like him best, if I had to pick.