An Anthology of Russian Literature from Earliest Writings to Modern Fiction: Introduction to a Culture

by Nicholas Rzhevsky

Russia has a rich, huge, unwieldy cultural tradition. How to grasp it? This classroom reader is designed to respond to that problem. The literary works selected for inclusion in this anthology introduce the core cultural and historic themes of Russia's civilisation. Each text has resonance throughout the arts - in Rublev's icons, Meyerhold's theatre, Mousorgsky's operas, Prokofiev's symphonies, Fokine's choreography and Kandinsky's paintings. This material is supported by introductions, helpful annotations and bibliographies of resources in all media. The reader is intended for use in courses in Russian literature, culture and civilisation, as well as comparative literature.

Genres: Fiction, Russian Literature, Anthologies, School, Read For School, Russia, Literature

608 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1996

Reviews

[kavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my Russian Literature class and these stories were actually interesting for the most part…..

[Saurabh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is very good as an anthology - I can imagine the job of selecting pieces for such a work must be hard, and Rzhevsky has done a fine job. If you're interested in Russian literature (and history), this will introduce you to authors and cultural aspects that may interest you and guide your future reading. What more do you want from an anthology?

My "notes to self" during the book were: read more Gogol, reread and read more Chekhov, that Tolstoy can write!, Turgenev is still lovely, Bulgakov still overrated, read Lermontov, get my hands on Abramov, nay to Leskov and Ilf & Petrov and old Russian "comedy" in general, file away Pushkin for later (Boris Godunov was nice).

But all this pales compared to The Life of Avvakum, easily the best thing in the book. It blows my mind that someone could endure so much hardship for seemingly trivial issues such as how many fingers to make the sign of the cross with. It almost felt to me that his sacrifices made the two-finger sign the "true" sign, as if willingness to endure for one's faith elevates it somehow. It reminded me of what Alexievich says in The Unwomanly Face of War, "... suffering is a special kind of knowledge. There is something in human life that it is impossible to convey and preserve in any other way... That is how the world is made; that is how we are made."

[Cecelia]

Bezhin Meadow is interesting for its interplay of class sturcutres with folklore belif.s