Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Pushkin, Pasternak, Platonov, Panova

Well, I’ve done the unthinkable twice today: first I posted a piece to the wrong blog, for which I apologize, now I’ve skipped the letters N (Н) and O in my “Favorite Russian Writers” series. I don’t mean to disappoint fans of Nabokov, Nekrasov, Odoevsky, or Okudzhava but I don’t have any real, true favorites among those letters… despite enjoying Nabokov’s Gogol and some of Ostrovsky’s plays. Beyond a dearth of N and O favorites, the letter P (П) is so much more fun that I’m happy to jump N and O…

The letter P, of course, has to start with Alexander Pushkin, who would be a favorite just for his Повести Белкина (Belkin Tales) (previous post) and the short story “Пиковая дама” (“Queen of Spades”). They get better for me with each rereading. And then there’s all the poetry…

Moving into the Soviet era, I can’t not mention Boris Pasternak, whose Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago) I read multiple times in grad school. Even if I didn’t enjoy Zhivago as much when I read it four years ago (previous post), I still have a deep sentimental attachment to my experiences (re)reading and talking about the book in school, trying to figure out the meaning of the rowan tree and gathering references to sources of light so I could write a paper. Plus there’s the Pasternak dacha, which I visited regularly when I lived in Moscow.

Platonov's grave, Moscow. 

Then we have Andrei Platonov, whose “Возвращение” (“The Return”) is one of the most perfect short stories I’ve ever read. I think “Родина электричества” (“The Motherland of Electricity”) was my introduction to Platonov, though, followed by his difficult Котлован (The Foundation Pit) (previous post) and his wonderfully disorienting Ювенильное море (Juvenile Sea or Sea of Youth) (previous post). I think disorientation is what I love so much about Platonov: his word choices, word order, and word inventions create texts that jar me linguistically and emotionally. Platonov may be my favorite of these favorites. 

Another favorite is Vera Panova, whose novella Серёжа (translated as Seryozha and Time Walked and A Summer to Remember) is a beautiful account of a child’s life with his mother and new stepfather. My previous post generated lots of very enthusiastic comments from people who first read Seryozha in Tamil, Bengali, and other languages. I thought Panova’s Спутники, (The Train), about people who work on a hospital train during World War 2, was also very good.

Among contemporary writers, Zakhar Prilepin is probably my closest to a favorite, thanks to his Грех (Sin) and a few short stories that I also thought were very good; I enjoyed his political novel Санькя (San’kya) far less.

Bonus! Daniel Kalder, who writes a weekly column for RIA Novosti, sent the link to his interview with Russian critic Lev Danilkin; it’s in English. Danilkin mentions Prilepin and another P writer—Victor Pelevin—as popular, even naming Pelevin when asked “Who are the great authors of today?” I was particularly happy to see Danilkin mention books that discuss the October events of 1993… Enjoy!

Up next: Andrei Rubanov’s Жизнь удалась (All That Glitters, on his literary agency’s page). And more soon about Read Russia and BookExpo America… 

Photo: SreeBot, via Wikipedia. 

Back to Classics: "Doctor Zhivago"

“Любовь к жизни, чуткость к её голосу, доверие к её неискаженным проявлениям – первейшая забота автора.”
“Love for life, sensitivity to its voice, trust in its undistorted manifestations – these are the author’s foremost concern.”

–Evgenii Pasternak about his father’s Doctor Zhivago, in an introduction to a Russian edition of the novel.

The Book: Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago)

The Writer: Boris Pasternak

Dates: Written in the 1940s and 1950s; publication in the USSR was refused in 1958, the year Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for literature. (A previous, related post.)

Why it’s important: Doctor Zhivago looks at the life of the intelligentsia before, during, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was banned in Russia until the Gorbachev era, primarily because the title character did not support the revolution.

Criticism: A Critical Companion by Edith W. Clowes. Letter to Boris Pasternak from the Editorial Board of Novy Mir (in Russian); this highly political letter is published in an appendix of Edward Crankshaw’s Khrushchev’s Russia. Writers in Russia 1917-1978, by Max Hayward, a co-translator of Zhivago, contains interesting observations about the book. Original New York Times book review by Marc Slonim (Sept. 7, 1958). (PDF, paid unless subscriber.)

IMVHO: I read Zhivago multiple times – six, seven? – in grad school, gathering references to light and darkness so I could write a paper. I loved the book as a literary puzzle: What was the significance of the rowan tree? How did mechanical and biological metaphors compare? How did Biblical references enhance Lara’s character? And then there were trains and the Apocalypse…

These and other motifs, along with the novel’s banning in the USSR, made the book feel important. Zhivago became a favorite because there was so much to analyze and discuss. Later, while living in Moscow during the ‘90s, I loved visiting the Pasternak dacha-museum, particularly for celebrations of Pasternak’s life on the anniversary of his death, which corresponds with my birthday.

Years later, to paraphrase a friend, the book hasn’t changed, but I have. I still enjoy thinking about Zhivago, but, after recommending the novel for years, I feel like something of a traitor to Pasternak and a bit of a jerk to my friends and students for writing the truth: I simply didn’t always enjoy reading the book this spring.

I recognize the novel’s place in literary history and respect its moral significance and authority, particularly among others who suffered during the Soviet era. I also admire the considerable beauty of certain passages. But reading Zhivago as a piece of fiction – and looking for a story to develop out of nuanced characters and relationships – highlighted narrative flaws.

Unfortunately, Zhivago feels almost as deterministic as socialist realism because Pasternak’s characters are rather flat for an epic. They felt, to me, more symbolic than real, often with names that both define and confine them: the orphan Zhivago’s name is rooted in “living,” the parasitic Komarovsky is based on “mosquito,” and the revolutionary Strel’nikov is derived from “shoot.”

One serious consequence of Zhivago’s undeveloped characters is that discussions of politics frequently feel like uncontextualized exhibitions of ideas, not organic thoughts. They often stalled my reading. I have no quarrel with lengthy dialogues about philosophy – I witnessed and even participated in similar talk when I lived in Russia – but, for this reader, pages of talk only become art with description of settings, faces, and gestures.

These and other technical weaknesses in Zhivago probably arise from Pasternak’s lifelong focus on poetry. Fortunately, Pasternak’s lyricism also produces the book’s best passages. My professor, Elliott Mossman, liked to say Pasternak “gave” his best poetry to Zhivago. I think Pasternak also gave the best prose of Zhivago to Zhivago, for his diary. Pasternak makes the diary device work by filling Zhivago’s ten pages with simply written notes that discuss family, and reference literature and nature. The writing feels more personal and natural than most of the rest of the book, where the language is sometimes so dense that even some Russians have told me they found it difficult to read.

Many of Pasternak’s beautifully drawn descriptions are highlights, too: the evil Komarovsky and his dog Jack, the spring thaw, and the use of drowned suicides in Zhivago’s med school classes are only three early examples. I enjoyed many other passages, including some of the conversations between Zhivago and Lara in Iuriatin, and Zhivago and Strel’nikov’s meeting at Varykino. These dialogues filled in details for the reader without feeling too contrived. For the record, I have no objections to Pasternak’s use of coincidences.

My reactions to other themes in Zhivago are more personal. As an eternal optimist writing in spring, I can appreciate lines like “Oh, how sweet it is to exist! How sweet to live on earth and love life!” As a science writer, I enjoyed following the theory of relativity through the novel. I can’t say I’m as thrilled about the tragic love theme or Zhivago’s treatment of the women in his life.

But Zhivago probably couldn’t help himself: I still maintain, after 20 years and this seventh or eighth reading, that Zhivago is a descendant of the 19^th-century superfluous man. I think it’s emblematic that his name, unlike the majority of Russian surnames, is indeclinable (doesn’t change depending on its function in a sentence), giving his name and character an inert feel. This carries especial irony about the fate of the intelligentsia in early 20^th century in Soviet Russia: Zhivago (Живаго) means, roughly, “of the living one.”

Summary. I have contradictory feelings about Zhivago: my sentimental attachment to a book and ideas I’ve spent many weeks reading and discussing collides with my literary preference for plots that arise from character development. The combination of Pasternak’s cast of dozens with frequent Biblical and historical references results in a crowded novel that works best as a stimulus for discussion or research. The book contains some beautiful passages, but the experience of reading Zhivago is, for me, less enjoyable than the experience of contemplating it.

Links worth following. Russian-language recordings of Boris Pasternak reading full or excerpted poems from Doctor Zhivago.

"Fairy Tale"
"Wind"
"Wedding"
"Parting"
"Encounter"

Fiction for Revolution Day

Today's date felt suspiciously important when I wrote it, but it took a news report on Lenta.ru to realize why: today is Revolution Day. Yes, indeed, that photo shows the old Soviet flag in front of the Russian Duma, as a prop for a "meeting" of 7,000 communists.

Revolution is one of the first things that foreigners think about when Russia is mentioned. But when I started to think about favorite books related to revolution, I struggled. Of course there's Boris Pasternak's Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago), one of my all-time favorites. It's easy to recommend on any day of the year.

I can also recommend Aleksandr Blok's atmospheric poem Двенадцать (The Twelve), which, like Zhivago, includes religious themes along with its political and ideological observations. The poem was written in January 1918, when the streets probably were as snowy and windy as the city the poem describes. Although Blok was generally considered sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, the violence of the poem -- and its ending -- makes one wonder. Part of my enjoyment of The Twelve is that I hear voices and rhythm when I read it: a theater from Arkhangel'sk performed this and several other poems in Portland during the early '90s.

My biggest difficulty with many novels (poetry is another matter) about revolution and revolutionaries is that their authors often focus most on making political points. The majority now read more as period pieces with historical importance or samples of ideology, than as art. That can make the books interesting to analyze, though they may not feel satisfying if you're looking for recreational reading. Keep that in mind as you read these descriptions!

Что делать? (What Is to Be Done?), by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. A dubious classic with the subtitle "Tales about New People". This book has taken a lot of abuse over the years because it's ideological, not literary: Chernyshevsky himself evidently admitted it wasn't very good. The book was on my graduate reading list, and I was saved by an abridged edition that I read through quickly -- sometimes the obviousness of political books makes them easy to read! This one also has a catchy title. Best of all, with modern technology, you can now download the Russian original onto your cell phone!

Мать (Mother), by Maksim Gorky. One of the quintessential Russian novels about revolutionaries. That doesn't mean it's good: I read the first half of this book, about a group of young revolutionaries who get help from a member's mother, and then couldn't go on. Here's what I wrote about it for a workshop last year:

Maxim Gorky’s “Mother” was so awful that I couldn’t even finish it as an example of Soviet-era kitsch. It holds moderate interest for its mixture of pre-revolutionary socialist propaganda and religious motifs, but it is inadequate to simply say that the characters are clichéd and the plot is predictable. The book itself is a work of determinism; my Russian friends have always complained about being forced to read it. I do recommend reading a portion of it to get a feel for what passed as “literature” during the Soviet period and to understand why many see Gor’kii as untalented. (I also did not enjoy his Childhood very much.)

Аэлита (Aelita), by Aleksei Tolstoy. If revolution on the Red Planet -- yes, I do mean Mars -- is your thing, this is the book for you! It's a quirky classic that's not very well known outside Russia. Here's what I wrote about Aelita for my workshop:

What can be said about Aleksei Tolstoy’s “Aelita,” a book that describes a 1920s trip to Mars? This is a very strange piece of work that combines, among other things, science fiction (and the inevitable existentialist musings), an odd bit of socialist realism, giant spiders, and a love story. Although Tolstoy was a decent writer and the account of early space flight is entertaining – a matter of days from Earth to Mars? -- I found the book rather sloppy. Adapted into a silent film, Aelita, Queen of Mars, available on NetFlix. For his efforts, Tolstoi has a crater on Mars named after him.

Воскресение (Resurrection), by Lev Tolstoy. This last of Tolstoy’s major novels is a medium-length (400+ pages) book that looks at how a man reacts when a woman he seduced years ago has trouble with the law. Revolutionaries come into the last third of the book, though I won't say how... Although much here is fairly obvious, the book should be particularly interesting to people who have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina – you’ll see some stylistic differences and notice some common themes. Tolstoy sold the book earlier than he might have wanted to because he wanted to give money to a religious sect that he supported. The book evidently caused quite a ruckus in Russia because of its scathing portrayals of the legal system and clergy.

Конармия (Red Cavalry), by Isaac Babel. I definitely can't say I enjoyed these short stories by Babel: I read them because I had to, and I found their violence quite difficult to take. That said, many hold them in high regard, and it's tough not to have a certain respect for a Jewish writer who rode with Cossacks during the revolution. Lionel Trilling's introduction to my old edition (New American Library, 1955, pg. 11) of Babel stories includes this line: "It was impossible not to be overcome with admiration for Red Cavalry, but it was not at all the sort of book that I had wanted the culture of the Revolution to give me."

Two other books: Тихий Дон (And Quiet Flows the Don), by Mikhail Sholokhov, also looks at Cossacks; it helped win Sholokhov a Nobel Prize. Not a favorite from my grad school reading list, perhaps in part because my edition was blurbed by Maksim Gorky, who compared it to War and Peace. (No comment there.) There is also Бесы (The Possessed), by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which might be described as a psychological sketch of revolutionaries. This is one that I've been meaning to reread for years. It has gotten a lot of attention in recent years because of its parallels to 21st-century terrorism.

Edit: I neglected to mention a favorite title: Valentin Kataev's Белеет парус одинокий (A White Sail Gleams). This is a quirky book because it mixes ideology with coming of age as it looks at the 1905 revolution and two boys in Odessa. A friend who read it in childhood lent it to me, and I enjoyed it, too. And another: Nikolai Ostrovskii's Как закалялась сталь (How the Steel Was Tempered) is a classic socialist realist novel that fictionalizes Ostrovskii's own experiences fighting in the Civil War and later becoming blind and paralyzed. I don't know how I could forget that one, either!

For more ideas on books about revolution, be sure to visit SovLit -- they specialize in this stuff and have lots of background material to help you get the most out of your reading!

"Not By Bread Alone": A Literary Footnote to "Doctor Zhivago"

When Boris Pasternak was named the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1958, he initially intended to accept the award. But five days after telegramming his delight with the honor, Pasternak caved in to pressure from the Soviet literary community and sent another telegram to Sweden, this time refusing the award. Pasternak’s telegrams to the Nobel Committee and his inability to claim the award are well known. This brief Sovlit.com account of the controversy quotes from Pasternak’s letter to the Soviet Writers Union, mentioning Pasternak’s belief that writing and publishing Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago) was not inconsistent with being a Soviet person.
Pasternak’s rationale? Official publication of Vladimir Dudintsev’s Не хлебом единым (Not By Bread Alone), a novel that examined questions of individuality and the collective. Unlike Doctor Zhivago, Dudintsev’s book has been largely forgotten, except as an example of loosened censorship and hope during Khrushchev’s thaw.

Unfortunately, Zhivago was not published in the Soviet Union until perestroika. Russian-language editions were available in the West in two forms: regular-sized books or tiny paperbacks that were easy to sneak into the USSR in a pocket. I bought the miniature version because the standard book was much more expensive.

Here's what I wrote for a Soviet fiction workshop last year about Not by Bread Alone:

Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not By Bread Alone is a somewhat peculiar book because of its historical time, the Khrushchev thaw. With a production novel structure and a hero battling to do what he feels is right to produce a better pipe-pouring machine that will help Soviet industry, the novel almost feels socialist realist. The twist is that the hero, Lopatkin, is an inventor who is reviled and called egotistical by a group of government bureaucrats and scientists. Government bureaucracy – not capitalist wreckers -- is the villain here.

The novel, written in 1956, was controversial when published in a literary journal, and my take is that it’s most important for the fact of being published, not its literary merit. The ado about the book was so strong that Dudintsev was condemned at a writers’ union meeting, whereupon he fainted. If you have read a socialist realist novel or two before this book, you’ll understand the book’s significance. As a novel, however, Not By Bread Alone is far from great. Much of what happens is predictable, and the characters are not all very developed, despite the book’s length. Some literary devices are painfully obvious and awkwardly handled: naming a character Надежда (Hope), comparing the inventor to Christ, etc. The book reads easily because the inventor and love subplots interrupt each other, but it feels too long.

Books mentioned in this post:

Doctor Zhivago Not by Bread Alone by Vladimir Dudintsev