Do we all agree that this was the peak of literature?
>>23622813It was the peak of novels, read more.
>>23622827Even in the novel, post war America mogs.
I'm not really impressed with Tolstoy desu, at least in translation. I've definitely read better realists, like George Eliot, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann.Dostoevsky and Chekhov are my jam. I definitely gotta try Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Sholokhov, Bely and Grossman.
>russian>bourgeois>peaklol
>>23622813Hasn't happened yet.
>>23622813Mediocre.
>>23622813yes but Chekhov and Gogol are carrying
I'm reading Dead Souls by Gogol currently and while I do enjoy it, I sometimes find the lengthy explanations concerning random things hard to focus on. I just started volume 2 and he's gone on for five pages concerning one of the newly introduced landowner's personality. I understand it's meant to emulate be an "epic poem in prose," but I sometimes find it tiring.
>>23622813I think you're forgetting someone
>>23622813interwar period
>>23622832If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
>>23622951volume 2 is shit, there's a reason why he burned it
>>23622813>no Sergey Aksakov
>>23622813Dumb Slavs.
Overrating Russian writers is the literary equivalent of overrating Brazilian footballers (though I suppose zoomers don't do that anymore).Just because he has a cool one word nickname doesn't mean he's better than someone from Sheffield
>>23622813Italy, Spain, England and Germany all had superior literary renaissances.
>>23625060>Just because he has a cool one word nickname doesn't mean he's better than someone from SheffieldYes it does
>>23622829LOL good one
>>23622813Based>>23622827>Reading non fictionlol
>>23622813Is 19th century Russia for literature the equivalent of 400BC-200BC Athens for philosophy?What happened that they became so great in that period of time?This is by far the greatest era of fiction and it is not like Russia had a literature tradition before (or even after).
Dostoevsky is dreadful. His work is terrible, and his terrible influence can be found on all sorts of media.
>>23626087>This is by far the greatest era of fictionLmao no it's not. Greece had the era or Homer and Hesiod, or Aeschylus and Sophocles, Italy had the era of Cavalcanti and Dante, Spain had the era of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, England had the era of Shakespeare and Spenser, Germany had the era of Schiller and Goethe. All greater than Russia's literary renaissance. And I love Russian literature, it's just that they get overvalued because they finally came onto the stage of world literature in one big go.
>>23623363I used to fully hate this copypasta, obviously because my own evaluation of Dostoevsky is entirely opposite that of Nabokov’s, but over time my opinion has softened. The vocabulary and structuring of this piece of criticism is, for whatever reason, so riveting to me. I don’t agree with a single sentiment posed yet I am enticed to hear a well-spoken man spew such harsh polemic. I think this is what criticism should aspire to on a certain level, the ability to be disagreeably interesting and amusing.
>>23625060>no you can’t like Tolstoy you have to like Vanity Fair and Tom Jones.Petition to ban anglos from reading
>>23626087western Europe was at the cutting edge of cultural trends busy sniffing progressive enlightenment farts, while Russia was following behind them with a more nuanced and critical view of the trends the west was embracing full stop. Russias "backwardness" gave it a much more sincere and genuinely human perspective on things, while the west was busy taking everything for granted chasing the latest intellectual trends
>>23628030I love it because it precisely captures every feeling I had while reading Dosto. Dosto's style of writing is completely contemptible, his novels are just a collection of outrageous contrivances coupled with either trite moralizing or entirely misguided philosophy. Dosto seems like a person completely incapable of seeing outside his own structure of beliefs, and thus, every character who he attempts to paint as outside of his structure, invariably collapse for want of believing exactly what Dosto believes. Not to mention the delight he seems to take in his maudlin and wretched characters who must endure what amounts to misery porn. I'm currently reading Pere Goriot by Balzac and am just amazed at how an actual genius author can construct characters and dilemmas and explore philosophical questions in an intriguing and enthralling manner. It's like what Crime and Punishment could have been if it were well written and poignant.
>>23628134>BalzacMediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes.
>>23622813Tolstoy alone carries Russian literature, no one can match up to him.
>>23628191He carries all of literature and utterly mogs everyone else
>>23628236>t. only read one book since high school and it was war and peace because it was trending on twitter or whatever
>>23628236He's a decent writer, but not first-rate. I wouldn't even put him above the likes of George Eliot.
>>23628460Middlemarch does the doubled counterpointed plot thing much better than Anna Karenina. The Levin strand runs out of gas after his marriage - the disputes with the peasants are tedious. Probably either Kitty or Levin or both should have been unfaithful, but Tolstoy wasn't brave enough for that.
>>23622813Let us not forget how Nagel demolished Tolstoy in Mysteries
>>23628460Eliot wasn't even the best female author of 19th century Britain, let alone first-rate.
>>23628030>it takes a russian to properly roast another russian
>>23626087First of all while Russia is though of as having poor education system, there's a little bit if a lie in there. Russian education system was poor if you were the 80% of the population(most likely there would be no system for you). The gymnasiums meanwhile were very high quality and the universities weren't bad either. As such a Russian coming from relative elite would be very well educated and capable.Additional part is that they were under intensive influence of what was called the slavophile movement which in terms of art promoted creating a sort of Russian-development of it, rather than sticking to universal classical norms. This didn't mean they went back to folk forms and tried to go up from there. No it mean that they looked at the folk forms, looked at the western classical forms and tried to make something completely new with it. It's much harder to notice when it comes to literature but it can't be unheard in music.
>>23628522Obviously she's not as good as Austen, but neither are any of the Russians.
Kuprin keeps getting left out of these Golden Age compilations because he described his self-insert fucking a Jewish preteen but being a race fetishist nonce aside he was a pretty good writer
>>23622813Yes. Everyone with a clue moved onto video as a more expressive artistic medium.
>>23632044Leaving only cargo culting retards who try and use concepts from math, music and poetry that they don't understand to write fiction for children.
>>23632044>>23632049?
>>23632077I never elucidate for those beneath me in understanding. I only discuss with peers.
>>23622813Never cared for the Russians. The best novels are by and large lowbrow English language genre fiction.
>>23632079That's because you're a poor thinker and communicator.
>>23627897in this list only the greeks compare and they of course did not write as well as the russians
>>23633017The Greeks are notable both because they were first and also because it was every major field they achieved wondrous heights in as opposed to Russian lit which was just novels but they sure as hell aren’t the very pinnacle of literature.
>>23633044then read what I wrote again. Greeks are the only one I will take seriously from that list and yes they had good stories and philosophy but because of their influence we have invariably reached a culture with more sophisticated storytelling and prose ie the Russians. Greeks win in philosophy and Russians win in storytelling and prose. Its a tie (with the acknowledgment that the Russians are more thought provoking because they are more novel in the culture)
>>23633017You're just a retard who equates your own pleasure with artistic value. Greek poetry and drama is worth a thousand times more than any Russian novel. And so is Hamlet, and Faust, and so forth.
>>23622829This, but unironically. The American 20th century gives us in poetry:Eliot, Moore, Crane, Frost, Bishop, Roethke, Ashbery, cummings, Lowell, Pound, H.D., Stevens, Williams, Plath, Tate, O'Hara, Gluck, SchuylerIn dramaO'Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee, Kushner, Shepherd, Mamet,In fiction (deep breath)Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Updike, Roth, Malamud, Bellow, Mailer, Singer, Capote, Pynchon, McCarthy, Gaddis, Yates, Cheever, O'Connor, Wharton, Morrison, Didion, Oates, Carver, dos Passos, De Lillo, London, Sinclair, Anderson, Miller, McElroy, Burroughs, Gass, and DFWYou may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like
