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Notes from the Underground

Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | Russian Literature | No Comments

This novel by Dostoevsky is partly like the voice in your head, and partly like the voice you secretly wonder whether other people have in their heads, strange people. It’s bitter and it’s funny and it’s so modern that this has been called the first modern novel, though it was written in the 19th century, which sounds so long ago now.

It’s not really a novel. It’s just some thoughts without beginning or end. It’s sort of like the quiet desperation quote but it’s so angry. It’s recognisable, not necessarily from yourself, but in parts it is yourself. It sounds like Dostoevsky the gambler.

Faust

Saturday, October 6th, 2007 | Russian Literature | No Comments

I was attracted to this novella by Turgenev because I love the Faust story, and indeed this is a sort of variation on the myth. A young man meets a girl who has been brought up in isolation, never having read anything fictional, never hearing any stories. He’s attracted to her, but her strong mother suggests that they’re not a good match; humbled, he agrees. Years later, when the girl is married, they meet again; this time her mother is dead. He introduces her to Goethe’s Faust, and she’s altered irrevocably.

It’s a great idea, but while Turgenev is supposed to be one of the great Russian writers, I wasn’t touched by it – it lacked that spark that the other authors have, that real passion – it felt more like a writing exercise than anything that the author really felt, even though apparently he was a great fan of Goethe. Great writing of course, but it didn’t grab me.

The Idiot

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 | Russian Literature | No Comments

I think I love Prince Myshkin, the hero of this novel by Dostoevsky. He’s a heroically good, heroically innocent man who doesn’t follow the ordinary patterns of life in Russia, nor the ordinary way of speaking – and so he alters everyone around him. Such uniqueness can’t survive forever, though. He is insulted, cheated and laughed at. Everyone in this story is either laughing hysterically or getting really angry. In the end, he goes back to the asylum from whence he came; because there is no place for a good man in that society.

Dostoevsky is of course a writer and a half. I love his sympathetic and simple description of an epileptic seizure, clear because he suffered from epilepsy himself. I love Myshkin’s quiet defence of himself when someone calls him an idiot. The humour in portraying Russian upper-class society, as well as its ugly tragic nature, is deftly portrayed. There are a lot of small stories within this larger picture, from one character or another, and they’re all engaging and vivid. There’s nothing simplistic about the people or the incidents, even though they are ordinary people and ordinary incidents.

There are some very funny moments – like Aglaia demanding, “Did you get my hedgehog?” – and then, soon after, you’re brought to tears by Ippolit’s simple question on the best way to die, and Myshkin’s perfect answer: “Pass us by, and forgive us for living.” There are all sorts of digressions on nature and death and life and different philosophies like nihilism, and then there’s stories about eating Catholic monks . . . the women in the story are incredible, Shakespearean characters, and so are half the odd generals who wander in and out. The love story is beautiful and yet the strangest you’ve ever come across, and altogether this is a wonderful, incredible, amazing book, and I’m so glad that it exists and I’ve found it.

Resurrection

Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | Russian Literature | No Comments

This is the last novel that Tolstoy wrote, and it covers his philosophies on land ownership, relationships, personal morality, religion and the state. It’s also an extremely accessible story. Basically, a prostitute is accused of murder, and one of the jurors at the trial turns out to be the man who initially seduced her, got her pregnant and thrown out of her home and in short set her on her way. He’s a wealthy but weak man who is horrified at what he has done. Through his attempts to help her, he discovers an entire world he never realised existed, and he begins to see his own world in a different way. The resurrection is a personal one, even though the reader is left to wonder whether it is permanent.

Tolstoy is rightly a household name, one of the most famous writers ever. He writes a clear, convincing and powerful prose. His characters are balanced and human and fascinating. The details of the prison and judicial systems are obviously well-researched and thoroughly believable. He doesn’t try to be subtle – his beliefs are very clearly stated in this book – and yet he doesn’t come across as unreasonable.

How strange that all of this – the unfairness of the courts, the bitter cruelties towards prisoners – is before the Russian Revolution! And yet, why not? It’s the basis of the KGB and the gulags to come. Solzhenitsyn argues that it was much kinder than the system of his day – if so, how terrible, how inhumanely terrible! His main argument is that there is nothing, nothing more important than human compassion – and that once this is forgotten there is no cruelty that cannot be justified.

Dr Zhivago

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 | Russian Literature | No Comments

I tried to read this when I was 13 and didn’t get very far. I’m so glad - it’s wonderful to find another really great book out there in the world. What I don’t understand is that there doesn’t seem to be another English translation since the original, and it doesn’t seem to be in print anywhere. Crazy, since both it and the movie are such classics!

All right, I admit it’s a flawed book. The beginning and the end both ramble on; there’s too many unexplained coincidences; and it ends - sadly - on a note of optimism, just before Stalin comes into the picture.

But you know what, that’s what makes it such a real and human book. In real life what strange coincidences occur! (My sister and I talking about a cousin while travelling through Turkey; hours later we happen to bump into her there. We hadn’t even realised she was out of Australia.) In real life nothing begins or ends dramatically, and in real life we say that things have to get better just before they get much, much worse! (The hopeful millenium celebrations spring to mind). I love the way Dr Zhivago spends the post-revolutionary years thinking about poetry. And how messy are his relationships! Too messy, really, for modern readers who prefer Anna Karenina and her ending.

But who couldn’t love Lara. Who couldn’t love Yuri and Lara in love! It’s the best, best love writing in a novel written by a man.

And how couldn’t you be struck by some of the truest lines in the world; “Every man is born a Faust, longing to examine, experience and embrace the world”. I’ve thought that all my life! Hooray for Pasternak writing it down. He’s really a poet, and his poetical mind created this gorgeous classic which is now in my top 100 books.

Pale Fire

Friday, December 23rd, 2005 | Russian Literature | No Comments

This isn’t a book about the Russian taiga - and I’m sure you didn’t think it was, either. Everytime I read Nabokov though, part of me thinks it will be set in Russia, in the countryside. This book, like Lolita, is American.

The sun is a thief; she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.

There’s a reason this book is famous; it’s very good. How beautiful is that quote! And it’s a clue, as well, to the whole book. It’s ostensibly a book of poetry with commentary - actually it’s a mystery. Is any of it real? Who is really writing the book? The wonderful thing is that there’s no orthodox view on it all. You can read it and decide for yourself if the writer is Nabokov, or one of the people in the story - John Shade, the poet; Kinbote, his commentator; Botkin, the crazy university professor; or someone else altogether.

It’s a very funny book, and it’s very brilliant and clever, with lots of literary allusions (the one above is a “translation” of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athen, Act IV, Scene 3), and lots of games. Perhaps it’s too clever and intellectual to love ardently - but as food for the mind, it is wonderful.