These stories, mostly translated by the Maudes in the early 20th c. document the early years when Tolstoy began, about half a century before, and justThese stories, mostly translated by the Maudes in the early 20th c. document the early years when Tolstoy began, about half a century before, and just a few years before Dostoevsky began publishing, the predominantly straightforward first steps on his long career. As John Bayley critiques in his sharp introduction, mastery of Tolstoy's craft had yet to happen. He tends towards too much telling, not enough showing. He explains needlessly. He doesn't have pacing down. He can sound limp in print.
And the reliance we must continue to have on these translated versions, being public domain, limits our options, contrasted with his famous novels. For instance, Peter Carson's powerful Death of Ivan Ilych (and Confession) nearly a decade ago conveyed the prose memorably. And the Maudes as was their style fall into a Victorian barracks-room slang that hasn't aged well. Lots of the content, based on the author's experiences in the military, naturally sounds of its time. The Sebastopol sketches, all the same, offer us gritty and often censored dramatizations of the Crimean port under French siege.
I didn't get too invested in some of these 1850s narratives, as even at their best, the uneven quality shows in their structure, wobbly, digressive. And as in The Raid, tedious despite the martial setting. I lack enthusiasm for gambling, hunts, and cards, so those backdrops don't draw me in. I sympathize with the moral of Lucerne, but it wears out its earnest premise. Albert echoed Bartleby, if accidentally?
Unexpectedly, Strider, partially told by the doughty horse himself, kept my attention. It's engaging to follow Tolstoy as he shifts away from humans in exposing our hypocrisy and vanity. You can sense Tolstoy formulating his concerns with brutality towards peasants, animals, and the insane, glimmers of compassion emanating from the chunky, rambling, and stolid recitals of hardscrabble rural lives.
As I reviewed David McDuff's Penguin Classics Poor Folk and Other Stories, and Alan Myers' Oxford collection A Gentle Creature the other day, it's telling how Dostoevsky stumbled through imitation of predecessors shared by Tolstoy, at nearly parallel progression. We seem to promote both men's big books, and jape at their heft. Their long-form sagas integrating intellectual investigation into fiction would produce their fuller perspective and individual opinions more efficiently, if at quite a weight....more
Mamet's later-life return to religion I've followed with interest. Although his essays in The Free Press haven't lately wowed me. Nor his The Wicked SMamet's later-life return to religion I've followed with interest. Although his essays in The Free Press haven't lately wowed me. Nor his The Wicked Son. He's better with drama than journalism, I'd advise.
As to this 2017 play, the premise holds promise. Charles' former analysand gets arrested for killing ten people. Who naturally get quickly forgotten. The headlines pivot to frame the shrink, for the accused "misstates" that his doctor claimed homosexuality was an "abomination" rather than the correctly titled article as "adaptation." This ruins the reputation of the protagonist, and he argues with his wife about whether to accept a newspaper's retraction "on page twelve" or to refuse to testify, citing the patient-client confidentiality Hippocratic Oath defense, against the legal defense which badgers him.
Oddly, that "abomination" itself, infamous as a KJV translation of the Leviticus passage about gay sex, doesn't itself get parsed in court at length. Although the "strange fire" verses about that far-less discussed act when two sons of Aaron get consumed by divine conflagration do. Which shows Mamet in a sharp mindset. I suppose between the lines, actors could flesh out what on page seems sparse.
I wasn't convinced by the last turnaround. It seemed too melodramatic. Until then, it had a chance....more
I may have read this after Harold Bloom's The Western Canon in the 90s, albeit well before the wars in Chechnya. As Azar Nafisi's insightful introductI may have read this after Harold Bloom's The Western Canon in the 90s, albeit well before the wars in Chechnya. As Azar Nafisi's insightful introduction from this Modern Library 2003 then-timely ed. of the Maudes' rather fusty translation a century earlier points out, Tolstoy by the twilight of his career didn't look romantically upon war, and neither the ("original?") Caucasians nor the invading Russians come off nobly. Environmental devastation emerges in the powerful opening vignette. She shows how what George Steiner labeled as Tolstoy's use of detailed backdrops as if "furniture" alter the landscape, so we see as if for the first time fresh the "Tartar" flower uprooted by the foreign plow.
Whether or not I'd encountered the novel or Bloom's encomium, the Maudes (who I didn't mind at all for War + Peace), kept a thee-thou patter which didn't endear me. I suppose he was forced to render the familiar vs. the formal, in the layers of multilingual dialogue between the various peoples and ranks, but it distanced me. Tolstoy, who consulted eighty books and took a decade to write this (and it fell foul of tsarist censors for its antiwar themes), may have fussed too long; the plot stays plodding.
The preface says this is but a tenth the length of Tolstoy's epic of battle in 1812 rather than 1850. Yet if felt maybe half its duration! Its tone mired in Victorian mustiness, and while the machinations of a truly repellent Nicholas enshrined as head of the empire kept my attention, their literal execution did not live up (!) to the sinister schemes invented among the top brass. It'd have helped if Tolstoy took more space to expose the impacts on the "collateral damage" of innocents, cannon fodder, grunts......more
It's almost as if, two centuries ago, the events a lightly fictionalized Leo Tolstoy documented predict flash fiction. They're conveyed as pithy vigneIt's almost as if, two centuries ago, the events a lightly fictionalized Leo Tolstoy documented predict flash fiction. They're conveyed as pithy vignettes, and while their contents show the promise rather than fulfillment of his talent, that's here, as even at a young age, he's skilled at delineating emotions.
Which isn't easy. Unlike Maxim Gorky's Childhood (reviewed recently), his gentrified predecessor has the self-discipline (and admittedly, privileged education in French and German from the beginning) to analyze his emerging psychological and philosophical formation with detachment, not hyperbole.
While it doesn't add up to much more than efficient prose, it's evident that Tolstoy, with the leisure, influences from tutors, mentors, and forebears, and companions capable of motivating and guiding him, already possesses the wherewithal to observe his coming-of-age, transforming his troubled mind and restless spirit into precision on the page. He may have been embarrassed in later decades by his fledgling start in print, but it's no cause for shame other than the ego he diligently tried to tame.
The sweeping narrative, divided into little scenes, may not captivate, but Tolstoy's aiming for analysis not entertainment. There's a firm control exerted upon his stand-in. It may not send out sparks, but within a steely introspection, Tolstoy's honing his acumen, and refining his tools of soul-dissection.
I'd have preferred a wrap-up. Youth takes up half the contents, but it steps aside on a downbeat note, as if a closing episode for the adolescent's season, as it were, needed to be staged. It throws off the balance of the previous accumulation of compressed, crafted scenes, and dissipates their momentum.
Rosemary Edmonds' Penguin version represents her own aplomb. I first read Anna Karenina in her 1970s rendering early the following decade, and her War + Peace, while British-inflected, has been unfortunately overshadowed by a certain heavily promoted married couple currently dominating the scene of Russian classic titles for English-speaking audiences. In this debut trilogy, Edmonds shows her command of an upright, steady style, slightly stiff or hesitantly confessional, faithful as I imagine. to newcomer Tolstoy entering the fray, above which he'd soon enough triumph in his mature work....more
Compared to David McDuff's stolid translation of Poor Folk and Other Stories, the first Dostoevsky published full of dissolute and/or dissipated St PeCompared to David McDuff's stolid translation of Poor Folk and Other Stories, the first Dostoevsky published full of dissolute and/or dissipated St Petersburg men renting downscale digs, Alan Myers' renders the short fiction in A Gentle Creature with a sprightly style. White Nights opens with familiar settings, as young love's in the air. But, raised on Pushkin and The Barber of Seville, Walter Scott and Romanticism, the couple will predictably find their mutual longing entangled with prior love's claims.
The titular tale shows Dostoevsky's growing skill with editorialized, framed, narrative, featuring once again a headstrong suitor, a pawnbroker swept up as Goethe's Faust is spouted in his conversation, filled with headlong passions he can't wait to fulfill. Myers expresses the self-aware, elevated tone of smarts, lust, and a fervent paean to what we've all felt, if up to 175 years later. That he's 41 and she's but sweet 16? Can he thwart his mercenary motives, honed in his disreputable trade, in his courtship?
The third installment, like the second labelled "fantastic," relates "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." Not for the first time in this slim volume, suicidal tendencies surface as the manic reveries reveal a fellow verging on breakdown. He longs for the "gaslights" to be turned down on the streets, as their illumination sharpens the unbearable lightness of being. Another disparity triggered by a wronged girl, this iteration all of age eight. The transport during sleep prefigured Mark Twain's sardonic, sour versions of the afterlife. Nevertheless, it also anticipates Alyosha Karamazov, in its humanitarian end.
David McDuff's introduction tactfully eschews plot summary for the entries he translated. Instead, he decides to excerpt from Dostoevsky's fevered remDavid McDuff's introduction tactfully eschews plot summary for the entries he translated. Instead, he decides to excerpt from Dostoevsky's fevered reminiscences of his debut published in 1845, aged 22. As McDuff explains, this epistolary effort's effusive reception by his mentor Belinsky proved stillborn.
For their reading public wasn't as swept away. And I can see why. It's very much of its era, mid-19c. Pleasant tone, romantic scenes of passionate declarations of fidelity between lovers, deaths of young and old, odors of tenements where onions stew and "old underwear" hangs nearby to dry in kitchens.
That's effectively conveyed. But the main characters feel overwrought by our less indulgent standards. Their concerns (outside failing to bargain down a secondhand bookseller, which I sympathize with), don't stick beyond their conversational flow, an affable register McDuff channels, if inconsequential.
Yet the fellow in command of storytelling suddenly goes out on a dreary day. Makar conjures up disparities of poverty and affluence vividly. A hurdy-gurdy man, plea by an urchin, the never-changing nagging of conscience when we're morally charged with distinguishing false claims by the public poor from cases of true destitution: here, a promise of Dostoevsky glimmers, if (as often with Dickens) at prolonged length and excessive explanation. We grasp his point long before it's blunted.
"The Landlady" follows. A reclusive, odd bookworm (my kind of protagonist) must find new lodgings. His bent quest impels his renting near a femme fatale with whom he's obsessed. Dostoevsky's back on firmer grounds, St Petersburg as viewed by a young native son, but an off-kilter sort. Soon, rumors of insanity, folklore, mysticism, and weird relationships swirl around ill, unworldly Vasily. Reminds me of Dickensian London, if skewed through a phenomenological lens. Psychological analysis of motives, depicting unsettled drives, and hints of unsavory instincts among our intelligent self-righteous snobs
Katerina's mad recital of seduction smacks of countless heroines plagued by guilt and comprised by shame. An old codger's machinations, intergenerational rivalry, melodramatic showdowns in the dim parlor. So Dostoevsky's channelling his predecessors, working out his influences, if not yet polished. I admit I'd had enough well in advance of the finale. Another tenant, another story, of Mr Prokharchin, similarly unhinged, a miser who's back after a drunken spree, and whose cantankerous outbursts fail to ingratiate him with the dozen others in his boardinghouse, doesn't add up to much of profundity.
I thought Polzunkov, told in the first person, might round off this collection of misfits in an engaging manner. But as a sketch of a buffoonish cadger, this anecdote isn't one we haven't heard at a dinner party. I'd judge this anthology for completists. I perused it as I'll be re-reading his longer narratives, and eventually Joseph Frank's condensed biography, and I want to survey Dostoevsky's large output.
Seems translated well, evoking a hard-bitten Spaghetti Western, tinged with bitter Argentine yerba mat茅. Can be read in under an hour. Really a novellSeems translated well, evoking a hard-bitten Spaghetti Western, tinged with bitter Argentine yerba mat茅. Can be read in under an hour. Really a novella, barely. Told in four terse voices over four dusty decades. But too stylized for me. I'm not a "classic" Cormac McCarthy type. Nor a pulp fiction fan.
But if you are either or both, this may suit you. It's literary, but feels derivative of (North) American styles. In turn drawing on tropes of frontier, lust, rhetorical asides, and self-consciously arch delivery.
So, an acquired taste, like the Latin pampas' national drink. It might wow more in Spanish. Yet still, I can't shake the feeling Ronsino's capable of original inspiration rather than shopworn phrases and characters who don't rouse much of a reaction beyond lassitide, indifference, or eye-rolling swagger....more
They're "liberated" from Polish occupation, 1939. Into ramshackle, sinister, slapdash Belorussian SSR, although Ukrainian speakers, confusingly. TheirThey're "liberated" from Polish occupation, 1939. Into ramshackle, sinister, slapdash Belorussian SSR, although Ukrainian speakers, confusingly. Their supposed comrades--some of whom turned thuggish agitators for the Reds only after "persuasion" and prison--impel Russification. So opens this semi-autobiographical novel. Unfortunately a half-edited start of a projected trilogy to dramatize German invasion and post-war predicaments under Stalin. Its author, from Canadian exile, depicts his home, among the Pinsk Marshes, a remote stretch perhaps understandably overlooked in fiction and in fact.
Kulik, through whose indirect perspective we witness Bolshevik indoctrination, must get re-educated for he's a rookie headmaster in a backwater hamlet. While another 欧宝娱乐 reviewer dismissed its depiction of NKVD goons as stereotypical, certainly the historical record documents how rapidly the ranks of apparatchiks brutalized themselves while herding millions into gulags. If they weren't first tortured and executed as class traitors refusing a discipline of imposed collective farms, or of famine.
Marusia, who he falls for in thr urban hubbub, represents its contrast. Her neighbors support Soviets. At a teacher's conference, Kulik resists pressure among Party toadies to reject rubes like himself. Yet, in a clever characterization, more than one callow, provincial challenger to his defense of Ukrainian rights slips into that mother tongue during debates, rather than their Fatherland's smug vernacular.
But does fidelity to what happened transform the account into gripping narrative? Well, to parallel recent events, Pinsk itself epitomizes how quickly a city capitulates to a Soviet Bear's fatal handshake, giving up its cultural inheritance and regional pride. His friend confesses he's being forced to inform to the not-so secret police, while Kulik struggles with surviving, supervising, spying, and integrity.
Marusia's meanwhile alternatively falling for and fending off a Russkie henchman's favors proffered. It's a stock subplot, fumbled melodramatically. So in this instance, I admit that Odrach's unable to carry off this episode with nuance. He's better with Kulik's earnest attempts to reform a sorry school.
Where Dounia, of easy virtue, tries to wrap Kulik into her own amorous web. Odrach's lighter touch provides a welcome respite from his heavier treatments of outwitting the preening, stomping regime. An election for her as (unopposed) Village Deputy affords a send-up of hamfisted rhetoric, even as she imposes collectivization against "kulaks"--tragic policies amateur functionaries enforced so fatally....more
In both Chaim Grade and Isaac Bashevis Singer's memoirs, they mention Polish communist activists smuggled into Stalin's supposedly utopian worker-peasIn both Chaim Grade and Isaac Bashevis Singer's memoirs, they mention Polish communist activists smuggled into Stalin's supposedly utopian worker-peasant realm. And these two Jewish chroniclers agree that many were from Yiddish-speaking backgrounds. Eager to make messianic visions reality.
A spin on "asylum seekers"? They, alongside smitten agitators from around the globe, expected, of course, a hearty welcome. Freed of surveillance, threats of torture, or score-settling from Trotskyists, capitalists, and ever-multiplying rivals among Red factions, these idealists sought fulfillment. Or so they thought. Instead--a harbinger of what millions under German occupation or internment would soon discover if Soviet control returned--they'd endure deportation, internment, or gulag--at "best."
This roused curiosity. Despite reviewing Paul Mendes-Flohr's big biography of Martin Buber not long ago, I must have missed what happened to his ex-daughter-in-law. (Who mentioned neither her first husband nor his famous father鈥�) Her prisoner's tale, not unlike a deceptively titled My Mother's Sabbath Days (whose second half is harrowing) of Grade, testifies to what from my search seems a very short shelf (at least in translation) documenting fates of Marxist sympathizers who dismissed rumors of persecution and insisted on sneaking into a post-Lenin CCCP.
Divorcing Rafael Buber, "Grete" joined the Party, and fled the Reich. She with her "fellow traveller", a suspected Heinz Neumann, in 1935 gambled they'd found a (not-so) safe haven in GPU's Moscow. I needn't divulge details, as the intro by Nikolaus Wachsmann in this expanded (by Grete's daughter) 2009 ed. tells what happened after the Great Purge consumed Heinz. Suffice to say it's a rare account of an inmate of both a USSR carceral archipelago in Kazakhstan and a Ravensbr眉ck Nazi death camp.
"Returned emigrants" as their Gestapo escorts label these once-fervent faithful, whom their quondam allies in 1939 march back over the Brest-Litvosk bridge into fascist-occupied territories. Where soon they're informed that being "cured" of their delusions, they must undergo "preparatory training" before "contributing" to their Fatherland's fortunes. I aver if Grete was Jewish and/or Polish, let alone a combination, she'd have been far less likely to survive "protective custody" for "re-education". She cooly relates her long travails in aborted causes of Labor clearly, with admirable sangfroid and firm, steady gaze. Keeping her wits, she adapts with courage, and refuses to play either martyr or turncoat.
There's a surprising amount of postwar coverage too, as Grete meets refugees, freed "convicts," G.I.s, but luckily, none of the troops from the East. Still, among those on that former front, many dismiss the truth she embodies. Instead, they welcome Uncle Joe. Amazing saga, deserving to be better known....more
After my latest round of finishing three more of his novels (saving Collected Stories in Library of America trio for last), finally got around to thisAfter my latest round of finishing three more of his novels (saving Collected Stories in Library of America trio for last), finally got around to this autobiographical trilogy, here as a single publication. So, lacking Raphael Soyer's illustrations, but it's via Kindle, thus limited choices to plain text, alas.
From the start, Singer speaks in an accessible, yet polished, style full of erudition, eroticism, realism, speculation, spiritual and scientific Big Questions, and of course many events he's drawn on in fiction. As a Rebbe's son (Singer observed his father's community court in another pair of autobiographical reminiscences), Isaac shows how he and older brother [Israel] Joshua, determinedly atheist, from an early age squared off as the little boy wrestled with concerns I've wondered about all my span as well.
It's refreshing to find an account of growing up without wallowing in reverie, resenting parents, or blaming "society": he adopts an "ethics of protest." Unable to be swayed by Tolstoy, Spinoza, the Torah, or Einstein, Isaac affirms doing as little harm as possible, diminishing suffering caused by slaughter of animals, and, from WWI on, to insist upon nagging about behaviors, exploring passions, seeking justice, rejecting rhetoric, exposing cruelty, denying fanaticism, and resisting fatal ideologies.
Part two follows him in Warsaw between the wars. Looking for stimulation, shy but driven to meet women, bent on making a scant living by his Yiddish typewriter, he indulges in hypnotism even as he vows to study philosophy. Zionist emigration isn't an option, as skepticism hobbies idealism. Refusing to bow down to any "World Betterment" political, psychological, or physicist 1920s idols, nevertheless he stirs up whims, a penchant for affairs, diversions, and for sabotaging any system imposed upon his stubborn self. As he doesn't confesses, he can't stop worshipping two other icons: love and literature.
He can't shut off suicidal thoughts, conjuring up "suspense" as his irritating spice of life which he incorporates into his relationships and fantasies, or posing as a nihilist vs. a hidden, merciless God. There's meandering, uneven pacing, but I'm unsure if this can be attributed to Yiddish in translation.
You can see where a plot of The Certificate emerged, and elements infiltrating The Family Moskat and Shosha in their womanizing protagonists, learned, lazy, low-budget, lackadaisical though they both be. A final section shows him following Joshua to the Daily Forward in Manhattan, fortunately. For it's 1935, he's thirty, and he's off thanks to acclaim afforded Satan in Goray, his long-form fiction debut.
There's an extended detour to Toronto, as he needs a workaround for his visa to stick. He's in quirky company of Zosia and Reuben, intriguing figures who undoubtedly show up in some as yet unread by me story (actually Z. can be recognized among the cast of Shosha). But the tone can't shake off steady melancholy. Despite his amorous conquests, happiness never stays. It ends off-kilter, with Singer in isolation, unable to return to his homeland. Searching for solutions which will evade but inspire him....more
I started this after The Family Moskat, for Shosha Koppel, and siblings with the same first names, are mentioned as minor characters in that long multI started this after The Family Moskat, for Shosha Koppel, and siblings with the same first names, are mentioned as minor characters in that long multigenerational narrative. There, Shosha's similarly shown as stunted mentally, but not as extremely as in this her eponymous novel, which appeared in 1978, a generation later. So Singer kept "her" original inspiration, but far as I can discern, barely so...
I wasn't enchanted by her. Found her romance with Aaron as creepy as previous critics often do. But the backdrop of other lovers he courts, with utterly unbelievable ease, typically Singer's alter ego of a Platonic modern protagonist, stuffed full of secular claptrap and eager to separate himself from the Warsaw rabbinical milieu when the Shoah shadows the near future between the wars, interested me. Sam, Betty, Morris, Celia, and Dora come across as striving and self-mocking, brassy caricatures, slightly or exaggeratedly delineated, but not totally obscuring their relatable qualities and hustling schemes for compromise with the demands of hectic capitalism, or in at least one case, communism.
And lighter moments. Yiddish theater, (off-off?) Broadway conventions, and meddling as Aaron's play gets hijacked by unions, nepotists, and catcalls, energize the spirit in a brief subplot that's successful. Instead of a titular, turgid affair between mournful mooncow Aaron and his manic pixie dream girl.
Halfway in, a plot twist disappointed. I got annoyed by Aaron's moral evasions and rationalizations. Plus, the near-deathbed ultimatum uttered by a wealthy old patron's a tired schtick from melodrama. However, the epilogue, which I'd thought unnecessary (added after installments in Forward), redeems itself in its final moments, after bringing us up to date postwar on the fates of the dramatis personae.
Being told in Aaron's voice helps these heaping lumps of saccharine exchanges go down smoother. Even if I never found him very sympathetic. Still, Aaron's simpering, pampered presence's arguably slightly more immediate than many of Singer's fictional tellers, this direct tone. He's not as profound, provocative or as philosophical as they might be. Yet Singer manages to move these entanglements of the hearts ahead, as Aaron's amorous conquests (unlike real life?) seem open-minded, unbelievably......more
I agree with the reviewer who applauded this valuable compendium. It's like plowing through Studs Terkel's Depression oral history, Hard Times. That iI agree with the reviewer who applauded this valuable compendium. It's like plowing through Studs Terkel's Depression oral history, Hard Times. That is, there's an inherent fascination (or grim grip on one's concentration) that such contents by grizzled survivors carries for those of us who've heard but secondhand these stories. But at 700 pages, by a fourth through, I admit I got her gist. Perhaps these worthy projects come with a predetermined readership, and an added narrowed "appeal" to "natives."
There's nothing obscure about the translation, and it's footnoted for us foreigners. And I don't deny it's part of a series of documentation of Soviet endurance, resistance, arrogance, reluctance, and/or persistence deserving of her Nobel Prize. Certainly far more than many of its lofty laureates, too often chosen on "political" or "lifetime career achievement" grounds rather than merits of the work nearest the award. I found out about Alexievich from my recent reviewing of Gary Saul Morson, Wonder and Certainty, and she earns her place alongside Solzhenitsyn as a diligent USSR participant-observer.
I may get back to this if the mood strikes. For now, it merits its niche high among works on the fall of the CCCP. It's simply that my appetite for such closely detailed, quotidian, and inevitably "you had to be there" discussion isn't sufficient to keep delving so deeply into these painful, intimate, transcripts....more
Rating this three stars, only by comparison with Dostoevsky's later works, the raw materials within this "based on true events" memoir, perhaps like SRating this three stars, only by comparison with Dostoevsky's later works, the raw materials within this "based on true events" memoir, perhaps like Solzhenitsyn a century later, loosely document "an experiment in literary investigation". Notes, as Michael Scannell's introduction in this 2013 Eerdmans translation (well executed by Boris Jakim), combines realism--events drawn from subjects which had not been treated by previous Russians--and novelty, in a sensational, daring fresh depicting of pain.
The result, similar to Gulag Archipelago, for English speaking readers, however, challenged me. I was not drawn in much. The episodes rambled, the pace quickened and then faltered, and the range of the topics--arrival, customs, characters, work, food, punishment, vodka, smuggling, hospitals, squalor, inspection, escape, and too much for me about Christmas (albeit if I was incarcerated, I'd be revelling) didn't sweep me along. I felt conscious of the pages accumulated, and after novelty, it grows tedious.
Of course, this recapitulates the prison sentence. So there's verisimilitude. But after hundreds of facts, the scene of nature glimpsed as the narrator hauls bricks, and of poor dog Ball, who only gets a pat on the head from the storyteller, stick out. But, as Scannell observed, the experiences Dostoevsky revives will enrich his fiction, journalism, and advocacy. And consider how tsarist censors opined that their former convict hadn't laid a heavy enough hand on the recollections, and that they wouldn't deter the audience from a life of crime! Hard to fathom, yet Notes stands despite a wobbly structure on moral grounds which, one hopes, as the protagonist admits, did begin to mitigate the worst of its horrors....more
I'm covering Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater's NYRB 2023 translation. Odd, as unlike many reissues from this publisher, this version lacks noI'm covering Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater's NYRB 2023 translation. Odd, as unlike many reissues from this publisher, this version lacks notes and even an introduction. While I found the flow of this short storyline easygoing, there's some Russian references that escaped me, and German as well as expected French sentences and phrases scattered throughout, so readers may be forewarned.
The plot's likely familiar to many, 175 years later. Turgenev probably went as far as he could to send up in Bazarov the pretentious nihilism of his era. While Arkady, his pal, gradually regresses into the conventional nice young man who finds love and settles down. Both fellows benefit in the telling from us seeing their parents on home turf, gentrified to a greater or lesser prosperity as serfs emancipated.
For even the comparatively impoverished paterfamilias, thanks to his wife, still supervises twenty-two hired hands. Which gives you a sense of the scope of class distinctions in 1850. The common folk, however, aren't the focus. It's not a social screed. Rather, a thoughtful look, by an omniscient voice, at the tensions between generations as "free love," secular and scientific impacts, and changing land ownership transform the interior. 1848 isn't directly invoked for revolutionary sentiments wafting at a distance across the continent. But their tremulous aftershocks, perhaps, ripple, as the successors to Turgenev will dramatize. I recommend two studies which helped me appreciate this novel better. Gary Saul Morson, Wonder + Certainty, and Caryl Emerson, Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature......more
I realize, given Disraeli numbers in this series, there's room for ambiguity; unlike Benjamin D., M. Proust waGreat bio, but not quite a "Jewish life"
I realize, given Disraeli numbers in this series, there's room for ambiguity; unlike Benjamin D., M. Proust was born to not only a Mother of the Tribe, but that Mme. Weil never renounced ancestral ties. Benjamin T., who treats, as expected, L'affaire Dreyfus, passes a devastating judgement on Marcel.
Proust's "telling phrase that perhaps summed up his feelings about the maternal heritage, that he was 'not free to have the ideas I might otherwise have on the subject.' This choice of words, so tense with ambivalence, is Marcel鈥檚 deepest avowal about the Jews: He was not at liberty to dislike them."
But that's about it. Marcel's First Communion may have been his last, his mother was required by his father--one presumes as a nod to formalities imposed by the groom's own paterfamilias--to raise any children as Catholic, and the matter of maternal identification itself may have been largely moot, as his aunt converted and brought his cousins into the embrace of Holy Mother Church, not long after.
As for the scope of Taylor's study otherwise, you'll peek into the erotic fantasy enacted with procured lads and, uh, rats. Unfortunately this episode may remain the most vivid from my reading of overall a valuable examination of how life gets transmuted to art, rather than transmitted as if a roman 茫 clef. And to his credit, his biographer demonstrates smoothly (or with a bit of hesitation), how the sexual drive compelling Proust energizes his oeuvre, in channelling investigation of the sordid alongside the elevated, true to his determination to honestly present the overcoming of inhibitors in his own career.
Still, even allowing for the disciplined approach Taylor takes, and probable paucity of reliable primary source material about another delicate, and potentially blackballing matter--Jewishness--which in Proust's personal maturation might have been sidelined for complicated reasons, necessary caution, and social advancement, the comparatively light touch exerted on this subject in a "Jewish Lives" entry left me let down, despite the consistent craft of the elegant volume. For often, generalists within introductions to Proust--which may in passing cover his Jewish concerns among a plethora--nod to the put-down of cancer-ridden Charles Swann, insulted by the ducal pair of Guermantes, with no less scrutiny, pointing out his precarious position. In Taylor, this predicament doesn't get sufficient space.
So I anticipated a deeper close reading of this portentous scene in Taylor's presentation. I understand he's offering us not literary criticism, but biographical insight. Yet, for a pivotal moment in the grand saga, which undeniably, if typically subtle in its dramatization, reveals the persistent anti-Semitic and prejudicial turn of many in France (plus 莽a change...), this episode deserved heightened analysis......more
This series, which may trace its delineated lineage to Pantheon's Rius-penned, beige, prole-packaged Marx, Trotsky, Communism for Beginners titles I pThis series, which may trace its delineated lineage to Pantheon's Rius-penned, beige, prole-packaged Marx, Trotsky, Communism for Beginners titles I picked up as an undergrad early in the final Cold War decade, hasn't appealed to me judging by its covers. I find the triple-headed Cerberus-like icon of Proust unappealing. Ok, I get it: author, mature Marcel, youngster, but those caricatures evoke NYRB David Levine, speaking of a bygone, if elevated literate era, before these handy screens intervened...
That caveat pre-empted, I confess I overcame my reluctance. Although Van Howell's Levine-esque ink still occupied too much of the content, I guess it's par for the course. I admit the cute illustrations of Terence Kilmartin's alphabetized themes in Recherch茅 (wisely, Steve Bachmann emphasizes how the "research" 谩 la radioactive Mme. Curie reverberates in Proust's appropriate appropriation of tech to service his philosophical investigation as another harbinger of nascent modernism as rigorous study, being a spawn of a scientist or two himself) succeeded with wit, although half the letters got dropped.
And Bachmann manages the endeavor on the print side skillfully. I highlighted many excerpts as I ready myself (fortified by the brief Beginners Guide of Ingrid Wassenaar, and the heftier Patrick Alexander, which seems to have established itself alongside Bachmann-Howell's as recommended) for tackling the Modern Library set at long last. I sense, contrasting the relatively terse summations of each volume to their page count, that indeed plot's not the point. Rather, as this introduction teaches us, it's the evocation of how powerfully our recollections drift, often unbidden, across our conscious present. This juxtaposition challenges us to wrestle with the demons, to contemplate the angels, and to grapple with the shadows of chiaroscuro cast over our lives, as Proust conjured up in his bold book....more
Not sure why 欧宝娱乐 files this under "unknown author." This 2000 entry in Hodder + Stoughton's Beginners Guides anticipated the post-millennial demNot sure why 欧宝娱乐 files this under "unknown author." This 2000 entry in Hodder + Stoughton's Beginners Guides anticipated the post-millennial demand for simplification of complexity. But given nearly all of us, at least non-Francophones raised in less demanding educational settings, appraised of more "equitable" criteria to speed us from classroom into cubicle, and crazed by postmodern rants about the hegemony imposed by European white males, suffer diminished vim when left to flail in one of the longest fictional streams of consciousness bequeathed a century ago: want handy water wings?
Wassenaar's brisk, no-nonsense primer provides useful metaphors. Dehydrated food, H2O, WWW and hypertext, a folding fan, binoculars, and a handy p.47 napkin-like diagram of the course of Recherch茅 embody her approach. And comparing, she stresses, underlies the entire project Proust engineered. He insisted on self-analysis, even if he never, she claims, read Freud. He teaches us how to parse truth and sift fantasy as we ponder involuntary recollections and willed memory. How to discern unreliable narratives we conjure up. How to hack through uncomfortable recrimination and crippling mourning.
I'm pairing this with two subsequent handbooks, Patrick Alexander and Steve Bachmann's. Purists or snobs sniff at training wheels, but with but wobbly French fluency, this lexical toddler shouldn't be pushed up onto unicycles. I'd counsel editorial excision of superfluous, silly cartoons (ditto Buchman); l'Affaire Dreyfuss, the Jewish Question, and arrivistes as class bounders post-1871 deserve expansion. Still, designed for the rapidly depleted ranks of conscripts into the literature ranks, this big-print, bullet-point, if too over-easy illustrated book(let, nearly) may prove a tonic to gin up callow troops.
Preparing to embark on my own Proustian quest, having ordered six paperbacks, I discovered how the famous opening vignette, the falling asleep at Combray, prefigures his entire investigation. That the conclusion and beginning were both penned together in 1910-11, enabling Proust to start stitching the intervening sections. What Wassenaar likens to a dressmaker's assemblage into a seamless flowing.
And given personal circumstances, the evocation of immersion into a psychologically intricate deep dive (given intellectual novels about historical, cultural, religious, and social movements tend to attract me; Ulysses is my favorite fictional experience; I've put off Proust far too long) as mental mapping might help me heal from loss. How many Great Books fizzle, prematurely being assigned?
In hard-won or bitterly lost life lessons, sage reflections of the intrepid who've preceded us a few decades (well, Proust died of pneumonia at 51; coddled in his cork-walled bedroom fifteen years, supposedly, couldn't have helped prospects) may ease our struggles as we rage against the dying of the light, fantastic, andphantasmic. And patience, cultivated by "Marcel," remains a vanishing virtue....more
I liked the rush of recollections Gorky shares. Made me think of Joyce and Proust, wondering if they'd read him. The flow ofHeadlong, full of memories
I liked the rush of recollections Gorky shares. Made me think of Joyce and Proust, wondering if they'd read him. The flow of touching sensations of the beauty, the thud of blows as his grandparents tell of how frequently they got clouted contrasted with a (supposedly) easier discipline inflicted on kids these (those) days, and the dreamy beliefs of his grandmother compared with the harsh regimen of the Orthodox adhered to by her husband all convey powerfully the mindset of the young narrator. Therefore, his story raced along.
However, the lack of context for readers now 150 years, nearly, after these events, and the paucity of translation or at least annotation of the Russian terms (which in Ronald Wilks' Penguin version don't get notice), makes the backdrop and asides cloudy. I'd have wanted a typical edition from this series that informed contemporary audiences about these references. But we only get a basic introduction.
Still, I didn't mind this--the grandmother's telling of seeing French prisoners of war expands Tolstoy (who as Wilks notes despised his proletariat rival) vividly--it's more a period-accurate piece than a profound achievement. I can see its popular appeal, for via Wilks, the verve pulses of the senses and intellect both within the characteristics Gorky self-dramatizes. This endured as the memoirs best quality....more
While immersed in Gary Saul Morson's "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (2023; see mWhile immersed in Gary Saul Morson's "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (2023; see my review) I paused to peruse his former collaborator, Princeton's Caryl Emerson, for coordinates before I plunged deeper. It sketched contexts orienting me. Refreshed, I returned to "Wonder" less prone to my callow hunches or shallow vagaries.
For Emerson gives the "advanced beginner" with a cursory knowledge of the canon in translation and general course of the nation (me, to a tee) an ambitious, yet compact, overview of key themes, such as Word, Space, Face, and then surveys texts to illustrate her theories. These may be topical, or largely chronological. But the necessary scope informs the novice about this formidable terrain, habitually stereotyped, simplified, exaggerated, parodied, and propagandized in our West, fearing and warping.
For example, she shows how the reliance on Old Church Slavonic limited Greek and Latin inculcation. This sparked either Gallomania or -philia in the early modern period among the smart set, who gave higher status to French than their native tongue. Or, despite evil depredations under Stalin, content creators welcomed not having to bow to craven demands of Hollywood to produce "quality" art that'd uplift the masses, hasten progress, and instill values inimical to capitalist immorality. You don't have to back Uncle Joe to reflect on why such appeals resonated for so long, outside the USSR too. It's fresh to be challenged to reconsider how from behind the Iron Curtain, "we" were viewed with disdain...
I think the part on 18c. neoclassical drama, for instance, could have been trimmed, to allow greater attention to the issues she raises during the Soviet hegemony, but that's my preference. Certainly in the probably scant page count (she notes 23k words were cut from her draft), Emerson manages to educate us confidently, and granted the complexity of different perspectives distinguishing this field from its British, Continental, American, and "world" literary and cultural counterparts, within this handbook, she distills a lot of raw material into palatable and even pleasurable portions to ponder....more
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