A Guide to Russian and Eastern European Studies: Literary History

"Rather than presenting a conventional chronology of Russian literature, Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction explores the place and importance in Russian culture of all types of literature. How and when did a Russian national literature come into being? What shaped its creation? How have the Russians regarded their literary language? The book uses the figure of Pushkin--'the Russian Shakespeare'--as a recurring example, as his work influenced every Russian writer who came after him, whether they wrote prose or verse. It furthermore examines why Russian writers are venerated, how they've been interpreted inside Russia and beyond, and the influences of the folk tale tradition, orthodox religion, and the West." - from the publisher

"Russian literature has always been inseparable from Russian history. D. S. Mirsky constantly keeps in mind the ever-colorful and ever-changing aspects of the one in discussing the other. Sound in judgment, luminescent, and exquisitely written, Mirsky's book is essential reading for anyone interested in one of the world's great literatures. A History of Russian Literature covers the beginning of Russian fiction, the Age of Classicism, the Age of Gogol, and the poets, journalists, novelists, and playwrights of the Age of Realism." - from the publisher

"This magisterial work, written by one of the world's foremost Slavic scholars, presents a survey of Russian literature from its beginnings in the eleventh century to modern times. Victor Terras argues eloquently that Russian literature has reflected, defined, and shaped the nation's beliefs and goals, and he sets his survey against a background of social and political developments and religious and philosophic thought. He traces a rich literary heritage that ranges from the early folklore, the medieval literatures, the dissident and emigre writing after the revolution, and the masterful realist fiction of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoi, to the dissident literary movement that followed Stalin's death." - from the publisher

"The second volumes contains selections from the imaginative literature of the reigns of Catherine and Paul I. Narrative prose is represented by the work of Fedor Emin, Mikhail Chulkov, and especially Nikolai Karamzin. The poetry of the age is best found in the epics of Mikhail Kheraskov, the fables of Ivan Khemnitser, the mock-epic or heroic-comic poems of Vasilii Maikov and Ippolit Bogdanovich, and most especially in the odes and lyrics of Gavrila Derzhavin, the first outstanding Russian poet and the best poet of the language before Pushkin." - from the preface to Volume II

"In Selected Prose of N. M. Karamzin, Henry Nebel’s translation and extensive introductory material presents a collection of primary sources by a Russian author whose tales explore the creative exploitation of sentimentalism’s potentialities. NIKOLAI MIKHAILOVICH KARAMZIN (1766-1826) was a Russian writer, poet, historian, journalist, and critic. Karamzin promoted the sentimentalist school of thought in Russia, and his other works include the twelve-volume History of the Russian State."

"Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favorite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original." - from the publisher

"A new English translation of two of Alexander Pushkin's greatest short stories, 'The Queen of Spades' and 'The Stationmaster', together with the poem 'The Bronze Horseman', extracts from Yevgeny Onegin and Boris Godunov, and a selection of his poetic work. 'The Queen of Spades' ('Pikovaya dama'), originally published in Russian in 1834, is one of the most famous tales in Russian literature, and inspired the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky." - from the publisher

"This two-volume edition at last brings all of Gogol's fiction (except his novel Dead Souls) together in paperback." - from the publishers

"A comic masterpiece about Chechikov, a trafficker in souls (adult male serfs), who can still be of profit even when dead."

"The first example of the psychological novel in Russia, A Hero of Our Time influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov, and other great nineteenth-century masters that followed. Its hero, Pechorin, is Byronic in his wasted gifts, his cynicism, and his desire for any kind of action-good or ill-that will stave off boredom. Outraging many critics when it was first published in 1840, A Hero of Our Time follows Pechorin as he embarks on an exciting adventure involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers." - from the publisher

"Featuring some 75 poems, from the early elegies to poems from his final years, Baratynsky’s A Science Not for the Earth is the first representative collection of the poet’s lyric verse in English translation. A selection of Baratynsky’s letters, reflecting his critical thoughts on writing as well as his personal struggles, is also included. Baratynsky was lauded by Alexander Pushkin as the finest Russian elegiac poet. After a long period of neglect, Baratynsky was taken up by Russian Modernists who considered him a supreme poet of thought. This "most daring and dark of the nineteenth-century poets," as Michael Wachtel has called him, inspired Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, and later, according to the Nobel laureate himself, forced a young Joseph Brodsky "to get more seriously into writing." It is only in the past quarter-century or so that Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800–1844) has gained wide recognition in Russia as one of the great poets of the 19th century. While the psychologically acute love elegies and meditations he wrote in the early 1820s earned him some fame during his lifetime, his later lyric verse was ignored or misunderstood by most of his contemporaries. Yet it is this body of work in particular, where he explores fundamental questions about the meaning of existence from an analytical epistemological perspective, that today seems remarkably modern. The poet’s radical skepticism, as well as his increasing sense of isolation from the literary world, is reflected most profoundly in his lyric masterpiece, the book Dusk (Sumerki, 1842) — translated in its entirety in this volume — a work that is notable, among other things, for being the first collection of poems published in Russia as a coherent literary cycle (a practice that would become standard only 60 years later). The book is guest-edited by Russian-American poet Ilya Bernstein."

"His high and secure place among Russian writers Aksakov owes to three works--his Years of Childhood and Recollections, which are autobiography, and his Family History, which is here translated under the title of A Russian Gentleman. This is his most famous work: his portrait of his grandfather is his masterpiece, and his descriptions of his parents' courtship and marriage are as vivid and minute as his pictures of his own early childhood. [...] A Russian Gentleman seems a suitable title for this book, because the whole scene, in which a multitude of characters appear, is entirely dominated and permeated by the tremendous personality of Aksakoff's grandfather, Stepan Mihailovitch. Plain and rough in his appearance and habits, but proud of his long descent; hardly able to read or write, but full of natural intelligence; capable of furious anger and extreme violence in his anger, but equally capable of steadfast and even chivalrous affection; a born leader of men and the very incarnation of truth, honour, and honesty--Stepan Mihailovitch is more like a Homeric hero than a man of modern time." - from translator's preface to an earlier edition

"One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator of Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature." - from the publisher

"Believing he can commit the perfect crime, Roderick Raskolnikov robs and murders an elderly pawnbroker. He eventually finds himself engaged in a battle of wits with inspector Porfiry, a policeman who is determined to wring a confession from the once confident Raskolnikov, a killer whose conscience is slowly beginning to destroy him.Crime and Punishment is one of the most important novels of the nineteenth century. It is the story of a murder committed on principle, of a killer who wishes to set himself outside and above society. The novel is marked by Dostoevsky's own harrowing experience in penal servitude, and yet contains moments of wild humor. This new edition of the authoritative and readable Coulson translation comes with a challenging new introduction and notes that elucidate many of the novel's most important and difficult aspects." - from the publisher

"Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel is, above all, the story of a murder, told with hair-raising intellectual clarity and a feeling for the human condition unsurpassed in world literature. It is a masterpiece that chronicles the bitter love-hate struggle between an outsized father and his three very different sons. The author's towering reputation as one of the handful of thinkers who forged the modern sensibility has sometimes obscured the purely novelistic virtues – brilliant characterizations, flair for suspense and melodrama, instinctive theatricality – that made his work so immensely popular in nineteenth-century Russia." - from the publisher

"Turgenev's first major prose work is a series of twenty-five Sketches: the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia satisfying his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters - peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers - each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev's great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons. His depiction of the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes was considered subversive and led to his arrest and confinement to his estate, but these sketches opened the minds of contemporary readers to the plight of the peasantry and were even said to have led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom." - from the publisher

"A 19th-century Russian masterpiece about love, politics, family, and the tension between the new generation and the old world.

Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children is a book full to bursting with life, both comic and tragic. At the heart of this novel about love, politics, and society, strong beliefs and heated disagreements, illness and death, is the generational divide between the young and the old. When the young university graduate Arkady and his mentor, the nihilist Bazarov, leave St. Petersburg to visit their aging parents in the provinces, the conflict that ensues from the generations’ clashing views of the world—the youths’ radicalism and the parents’ liberalism—is both representative of nineteenth-century Russia and recognizably contemporary. At the time of its publication in 1862, the book aroused indignation in critics who felt betrayed by Turgenev’s refusal to let his novel serve a single ideology; it also received a spirited defense by those who saw in his diffuse sympathies a greater service to art and to humanity." - from the publisher

"Oblomov (Russian: Обломов; [ɐˈbɫoməf]) is the second novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is the central character of the novel, portrayed as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature. Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed. In the first 50 pages, he manages only to move from his bed to a chair. The book was considered a satire of Russian intelligentsia." - from Wikipedia

"From the award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov comes this magnificent new translation of Tolstoy's masterwork. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men. As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature." - from the publisher

"Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. While previous versions have softened the robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear and Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This award-winning team's authoritative edition also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this Anna Karenina will be the definitive text for generations to come." - from the publishers

"A vibrant translation of Tolstoy’s most important short fiction by the award-winning translators of War and Peace. Here are eleven masterful stories from the mature author, some autobiographical, others moral parables, and all told with the evocative power that was Tolstoy’s alone. They include “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” inspired by Tolstoy's own experiences as a soldier in the Chechen War, “Hadji Murat,” the novella Harold Bloom called “the best story in the world,” “The Devil,” a fascinating tale of sexual obsession, and the celebrated “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption. Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation captures the richness, immediacy, and multiplicity of Tolstoy’s language, and reveals the author as a passionate moral guide, an unflinching seeker of truth, and ultimately, a creator of enduring and universal art." - from the publisher

"Searingly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, the ancestral estate of the Golovlyov family is the end of the road. There Anna Petrovna rules with an iron hand over her servants and family-until she loses power to the relentless scheming of her hypocritical son Judas. One of the great books of Russian literature, The Golovlyov Family is a vivid picture of a condemned and isolated outpost of civilization that, for contemporary readers, will recall the otherwordly reality of Macondo in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude." - from the publisher

"Of the two hundred stories that Anton Chekhov wrote, the twenty stories that appear in this extraordinary collection were personally chosen by Richard Ford--an accomplished storyteller in his own right. Included are the familiar masterpieces--'The Kiss,' 'The Darling,' and 'The Lady with the Dog'--as well as several brilliant lesser-known tales such as 'A Blunder,' 'Hush!,' and 'Champagne.' These stories, ordered from 1886 to 1899, are drawn from Chekhov's most fruitful years as a short-story writer. A truly balanced selection, they exhibit the qualities that make Chekhov one of the greatest fiction writers of all time: his gift for detail, dialogue, and humor; his emotional perception and compassion; and his understanding that life's most important moments are often the most overlooked. 'The reason we like Chekhov so much, now at our century's end,' writes Ford in his perceptive introduction, 'is because his stories from the last century's end feel so modern to us, are so much of our own time and mind.' Exquisitely translated by the renowned Constance Garnett, these stories present a wonderful opportunity to introduce yourself--or become reaquainted with--an artist whose genius and influence only increase with every passing generation." - from the publisher

"This Norton Critical Edition includes five of Chekhov's major plays (Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard) and three early one-act farces that inform his later work (The Bear, The Wedding, and The Celebration). Laurence Senelick's masterful translations closely preserve Chekhov's singular style - his abundant jokes and literary allusions and his careful use of phrase repetition to bind the plays together. "Letters" is the largest collection of Chekhov's commentary on his plays ever to appear in an English-language edition. "Criticism" includes eleven essays by leading European and Russian Chekhov scholars, most appearing in English for the first time, including those by Boris Zingerman, Maria Deppermann, and Lev Shestor. This volume also provides discussion of Chekhov's plays by some of the twentieth century's great directors, including Konstantin Stanislavsky, Peter Brook, and Mark Rozovsky. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included." - from the publisher

"The Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main hero, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting. He is at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard. The plot moves from Peredonov’s petty quest for a promotion to arson and murder via one of the most incredible and uproarious scandal scenes in world literature, the masquerade ball, which the boy Sasha attends as a beautiful geisha. Even in its censored form, it is one of the most provocative and sexually open of Russian books. Sologub removed many passages which would have been unacceptable at the time of publication. In this edition these censored sections are appended, and all are keyed so that the reader can place them in the novel as it was written." - from the publisher

"Polish literature has a long and rich history. But only in recent years, with the decline of communism and censorship, have scholars been able to give full and objective attention to all works and authors in Poland. As the first English-language dictionary of Polish literature, this volume is an enormous contribution. It is the first scholarly work to give extensive attention to literature after the downfall of communism and the first to highlight the work of the newest Polish writers. The dictionary includes alphabetically arranged entries for authors, literary periods, individual literary works, major publications, and organizations related to Polish literature. Each biographical entry provides basic information about the author, an overview of the author's literary output, a detailed discussion of the author's most important and most representative work, a discussion of the author's development and use of themes, and a statement of the author's place in the Polish literary tradition. Entry bibliographies list primary and secondary sources, and a general bibliography of the most important works on Polish literature concludes the book." - from the publisher

"This book is a survey of Polish letters and culture from its beginnings to modern times. Czeslaw Milosz updated this edition in 1983 and added an epilogue to bring the discussion up to date." - from the publisher

"A literary masterpiece by a Polish traveller, aristocratic adventurer, political activist, ethnographer and publisher. Alphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which tales of characters transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories, which, like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, provides entertainment on an epic scale." - from the publisher

"First published in Warsaw in 1816, Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition has been largely—and unjustly—ignored by the Polish literary canon. Ingeniously structured and vividly related by a Tristram Shandy-esque narrator, Maria Wirtemberska's psychologically complex work is often considered Poland's first modern novel.This splendid translation by Ursula Phillips should restore Wirtemberska to her rightful place in the literary pantheon while providing fertile new ground for the study of the international development of the novel.The romantic story of the young widow Malvina and her mysterious lover Ludomir, Malvina combines several literary styles and influences—from the epistolary to the Gothic. Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz argues that Malvina is quintessentially a sentimental novel—a model of the genre whose chief aspiration is to promote a change in sensibility and inspire new forces of feeling and imagination. For this reason Wirtemberska may be compared to her English contemporary, Jane Austen.A work of genuine artistic daring and sophistication, Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition has been overlooked by critics for too long, and readers have been denied the pleasure of reading one of literature's major landmarks—until now." - from the publisher

"The national epic of Poland and touchstone of modern European literature, now in a fresh translation by award-winning translator Bill Johnston. A towering achievement in European literature, Pan Tadeusz is the central work of the Polish literary canon, heralded for its lovingly detailed recreation of a bygone world. The traditions of the Polish gentry and the social and natural landscape of the Lithuanian countryside are captured in verse of astounding beauty, simplicity, and power. Bill Johnston's translation of this seminal text allows English-language readers to experience the richness, humor, and narrative energy of the original"-- Provided by publisher."The national epic of Poland, Pan Tadeusz is a panoramic view of early 19th century Polish provincial society. Interlacing narrative threads include the homecoming of Pan Tadeusz from his studies in the city; a feud between local families over ownership of a ruined castle; clandestine preparations for Polish participation in Napoleon's anticipated invasion of Russia; and the mystery of Father Robak, a monk whose involvement in all the different stories seems to draw them together. Written in elegant rhyming couplets, Pan Tadeusz has become ingrained in the Polish literary consciousness. It has influenced subsequent Polish literature like no other text, and is considered the last great epic poem in European literature." - from the publisher

"Bolesław Prus is often compared to Chekhov, and Prus’s masterpiece might be described as an intimate epic, a beautifully detailed, utterly absorbing exploration of life in late-nineteenth-century Warsaw, which is also a prophetic reckoning with some of the social forces—imperialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism among them—that would soon convulse Europe as never before. But The Doll is above all a brilliant novel of character, dramatizing conflicting ideas through the various convictions, ambitions, confusions, and frustrations of an extensive and varied cast. At the center of the book are three men from three different generations. Prus’s fatally flawed hero is Wokulski, a successful businessman who yearns for recognition from Poland’s decadent aristocracy and falls desperately in love with the highborn, glacially beautiful Izabela. Wokulski’s story is intertwined with those of the incorrigibly romantic old clerk Rzecki, nostalgic for the revolutions of 1848, and of the bright young scientist Ochocki, who dreams of a future full of flying machines and other marvels, making for a book of great scope and richness that is, as Stanisław Barańczak writes in his introduction, at once 'an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story … a still topical diagnosis of society’s ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man.'" - from the publisher