Status Updates From Russian Literature: A Very ...

The author starts with the Soviet hagiography that placed Pushkin on a pedestal as the “father of Russian literature” and then examines how Pushkin did or did nor influence Russian authors and poets from 1837 on (the date of his death in a duel). That is how he brings Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky into the picture. Some learn from Pushkin and others ignore him or push back. Fascinating.

It may be “very short” but it’s also very intense. The portion I just completed dealt with Pushkin being used as propaganda in both Tsarist times and Soviet times. For Tsarists he must be read and interpreted as a conservative, for post-1917 times as a progressive and his writings prescient of the Revolution and the governments of Lenin and Stalin etc. It was difficult to critique his writing as art.

Starts with Pushkin who I’ve never read. I’m not into long narrative poems in any language. My Russian reading is the novelists. In poetry, Yevtushenko. In Ukraine - Taras Shevchenko’s. Otherwise, novels, plays (The Cherry Orchard), and short stories. But I will probably try Pushkin’s Onegin eventually.

Reallllllyyyyy enjoyed this book.