Links
January 22, 2014
- Jekaterina Shulga of The Faculty of Useless Knowledge has a piece on Yuri Dombrovsky on the UCL SSEES Research Blog. Dombovsky spent decades in exile and years in the Gulag, but didn’t write much about the Gulag except in his poetry, and “even here there is a contrast between the terrifying subject of the camps and a light and cheerful rhythm and rhyme. Similarly, his fiction represents the darkest period of Stalin’s oppression in a surprisingly colourful and engaging manner.”
- Sarah J. Young has links to digital collections of twentieth-century Russian material: Futurist books, émigré journals, political satire, and early Soviet journals.
- Languagehat is up to Odoevskii’s Russian Nights (Русские ночи, 1844). I think it gets a better review than “Taras Bul’ba.”
- Jamie Olson’s 2013 nativity poem was by Timur Kibirov. See his translation and the original here.
- One of the things I’d do if there were an extra hour in the day is read more of Lizok’s contemporary Russian literature recommendations. I’ve never been sorry when I have. Here’s her 2013 round-up post.
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XIX век 
Yeah, I liked it a lot better than “Taras Bul’ba.” The latter I wouldn’t recommend to anybody except for historical purposes (it is, after all, foundational for Russian culture, however repellent); Odoevsky’s stories are mostly a delight to read, it’s just the thick wad of philosophizing they’re plopped into that put me off (and my reaction would certainly not be shared by everyone — I’m sure there are lots of people who take an interest in what an intelligent, thoughtful fellow like Odoevsky had to say about the burning issues of the day, I just don’t happen to be one of them).