A First Series of Representative Russian Stories: Pushkin to Gorky

by Janko Lavrin (Editor)

Contents include: introduction and notes, by Janko Lavrin; "The Postmaster", by Alexander Pushkin; "Taman", by Michael Lermoniov; "The Carriage", by Nikolai Gogol; "The Singers and A Strange Story", by Ivan Turgenev; "An Honest Thief" and "Bub-boo", by Feodor Dostoevsky; "Three Deaths" and "Diary of a Madman", by Leo Tolstoy; "The Artists", by Vsevolod Garshin; "Heartache" and "The Black Monk", by Anton Chekov; "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl", by Maxim Gorky.

239 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Janko Lavrin was a Slovenian literary historian, essayist, novelist, translator, poet and editor.

He was the editor of European Quarterly, a member of International PEN, and the founder of the Slavic Department at the University of Nottingham, where he was professor of Russian literature.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the undercurrent drags you under, do you find comfort in the way the water rushes over your skin? Holding you cold. Do you smile at the last rays of sun permeating the blue as you sink? Exhale and shatter the last of it. Shut your eyes and remember warmth. Open your arms and fare thee well. Kiss the stars good-bye and thank them for your time - because you are gone, but once you were not.

No, he kicks and lashes out. Screaming and breathing salt.

He understands, but he doesn't comprehend. Is it pride? It is pride. Arrogance? He is stubborn, maybe. It feels like something more. Bloody and raw. Fight, fight, keep fighting, gotta fight, always fighting. Never, ever allow the thought, not for one second. It might all just be beyond his control.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

This older anthology contains stories by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev (2), Dostoevsky (2), Tolstoy (2), Garshin, Chekhov (2), and Gorky.
The stories by Pushkin and Lermontov, and one of the Chekhov stories, were duplicates of stories I had read earlier this fall. The ones that were new to me were Gogol’s “The Carriage”, which reminded me of Chekhov’s early stories; Turgnev’s “The Singers” and “A Strange Story”; Dostoevsky’s “An Honest Thief” and “Bub-Boo” (more often called by its Russian title “Bobek”), which is another comic satire; Tolstoy’s “Three Deaths” and “Diary of a Madman” (quite different from the Gogol story of the same title); Vsevolod Garshin’s “The Artists”; Chekhov’s “The Black Monk”; and Gorky’s “Twenty-six Men and a Girl”. I had never read anything before of Garshin or Gorky, but Garshin’s story was my favorite of the collection; it somewhat reminded me of Ishiguru’s The Artist of the Floating World.