Eastern European

What can you recommend me in terms of Eastern European literature? I know of Milan Kundera and basic stuff like that, but I haven't read it yet, just compiling a list. A shit ton of eastern european books seem to be about the holocaust or other WWII events. I'm not looking for that. I want novels, poetry, mythology and perhaps history with a fictional twist (if I want plain history I'll get a book on it). Again, no WW2 stuff.
Thank you.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=hVqrW-fPOQ0
youtube.com/watch?v=4F6DCPTB-3A
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interslavic_language
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Do you mean non-Russian lit? Because this thread will just be about Russian lit otherwise

Oh, and about mythology: if there is an Eastern European equivalent to the Eddas, Mabinogion etc I'd appreciate it. When I say mythology I don't mean dracula, I mean the original pagan myths.

Yes, non Russian. Thanks for the reminder. From the Balkans up to the Baltics (perhaps even something from Ukraine, for the heck of it - but no Russia)

It would also be cool if for once in my life I found a book from Poland that isn't about the Holocaust or Russians. Is it too much to ask for a novel, or dare I say, even poetry? Poetry often gets lost in translation though

Melancholy of Resistance
Any Krasnahorkai novel really.

Oh and inb4 someone recommends me the Greeks for mentioning the Balkans...

Thank you, anything else? Something that came to mind is how Wagner put to music the Nibelungenlied. Perhaps a nativist such as Bela Bartok has done something similar? Something I should add to my previous limitation of non WW2 stuff is cold war books, there seems to be a load about the resistance. Not that it's unimportant, it's just that I'm looking for new things, be it fiction or folklore

I assume Romania is East enough for you. Also Gogol is technically from Ukraine if you haven't read him already though admittedly his best stories were written when he was in St. Petersburg. Same thing with Kafka,
he's Czech, but his greats are in German
Also Witold Gombrowicz is from Poland but I doubt his highly academic fiction if what you're looking for, so I guess save him for the end

Also fucking thisssss from Hungary. I know it borders Austria, whose literature is incredibly rich but quite decidedly middle-European, but Nadas is definitely most Eastern centered, like how you wouldn't mistake Budapest for Vienna

Jokai Mor
Kundera ofc
Kadare
Sorescu
Blaga
Arghezi
Sienkiewicz
Kazantzakis
Sabri Godo
Jaroslav Hasek
Orhan Pamuk(similar in tone)

Check out the series Writings from an Unbound Europe

ion creanga
ion caragiale
mihai eminescu
mircea eliade
marin preda

peasant folk tales, german idealism, french existentialism, and some early 20th century fascistic ideas which resurfaced after the 89 revolution. you wont find a lot of translations because almost all eastern european stuff is third rate. the music and cultures of all the eastern european countries are especially interesting, because they were constantly invaded over the 7000 years due to geography, you either go around the black sea (or over it) taking the long route across ukraine and poland or make the mountain crossing over the carpathians into 'civilisation' western europe.

indo-european chariot/horse nomands, samaritians, scythians, greek-macedonians,roman empire, mongol hordes, ottoman turks, austrian-germans, russians, now americans. what you get then is a deep melancholy for a forgotten (pastoral idyllic nativism) past and a rich mixture (cultural and genetic) of asian, middle eastern both arab and turkish, greek orthodox, roman-italian, french and german influences. there is a certain distaste for americans and the british, possibly due to indiscriminate bombing of churches during ww2. bsurprisingly there is still some original celtic influences there maybe over 10000 years old, especially in the animism, original religious beliefs (reincarnation, ancestor worship, folk superstitions) and traditional costumes.

each of these countries is fiercely independent and protective of its cultural heritage to the point of insanity, like refusing to acknowledge a deep common language root (possibly albanian being the closest extant example of what the people originally spoke), romanians insisting they are descendants from roman settlers (they are probably daco-thracian + latin + bulgarian + serbian + german + greek + hungarian + turkish + mongolian) and that hungarians have no claim to transylvania, the whole region is relatively complicated, there is also the problem of the gypsies who somehow survived for thousands of years as wandering nomads causing mischief and crime yet retaining their own vulgar language and traditions, called gypsies because they claimed to come from egypt, they are more likely indians displaced by the khanate expansion across asia in the middle ages.

my suspicion is that under the 18th and 19th century influences of german and french intellectualism and the scientific enlightenment, a conscious attempt was made by ee intellectuals to attach their own history to that of germanic folklore, #metoo. in part because so much of the original history had been rewritten, in part because it made sense to ally with the most advanced powers in your region. due to inherent racism in western europeans these attempts were never really reciprocated or even acknowledged and eastern europe was left to the soviet empire (satellite dictatorships) after WW2.

youtube.com/watch?v=hVqrW-fPOQ0

youtube.com/watch?v=4F6DCPTB-3A

Hello to you too my fellow gyppo friend. I'd add

>sorescu
>arghezi
>voiculescu
>blaga
>ionesco
>ion barbu
>dinu sararu
>stanescu

Your analysis is spot on.

thanks a lot man. looks like just my kind of thing.

I'm currently researching German idealism as it manifests in Romanian philosophy and radicalism, particularly with Eliade, and this is interesting.

Romanians are such a strange people especially.

If you're the same Romanian user:
As a hint, start with Eminescu as he was easily the most Germanophile man in our literature. Eliade had Jung, sure, but Jung's occultism is kind of an outlier in the school of Germanic thought.

We Romanians are strange, sure. Our sense of humor uses mysery as catharsis and punchline, while at the same time poking fun at it and wallowing in it. We are fairly patriotic and nationalistiv but have no problem dealing with Arabs and Turks, even Gyppos. Arabs especially have integrated well here, remember when we overthrew a government for a Palestinian man because we like and respect him? We share a lot with our Arab peers, the acumen for business, the cuisine, a certain disdain for law and order bred out of 2 generations of oppression and pain. On the other hand we hate Islam. We dislike Gypsies but would never go as far as killiing them. Shit, manele was for a while the most popular genre in Romania.

This reflects in our literature. The organic one I mean, not Calinescu's copy/paste Balzac garbage. Morometii is fantastically funny and grim, often at the same time. Eminescu's journalism is acid and harsh, but humorous and filled with underlying despair and hope.

I can't really define Romania as a country. You have to live here and drown yourself in the culture to understand what we're about.

For my legionaries by codreanu

>Our sense of humor uses mysery as catharsis and punchline

OH WOAH, NO OTHER NATIONS DO THIS
HOW UNIQUE

Czesław Miłosz

It's hard to tell because there isn't much left about Rodnovery. Most of it is larping and made up stuff by russian nationalists stealing and convering other eurpean mytology into their own nations. Just look at the kolovrat, a post 1900 artsy made up symbol used and claimed to be original slavic pagan sun weel.

It will be even harder for those interested which can't read at least Polish or cyrilic, as most of those don't get translated.

If OP i interested he should start with online books or google translate whole wiki articles from slavic languages into english and check out the listed sources.

>perhaps even something from Ukraine

"The Doll" by Bolesław Prus
"The Teutonic Knights" or "With Fire and Sword" by Henryk Sienkiewicz
"Solaris" or anything else by Stanisław Lem

As a Pole, it's an insulting oversimplification to say that Polish literature is about the Holocaust. You should feel bad honestly.

Stanislaw Lem

As a Croat, I'd recommend Krleža

>distaste for USA and Britain from church bombings in WW2
Or because of the war in the 90s

Hungary is central Europe and Budapest is interchangeable with Vienna.

Forest of the Gods :^)

>Our sense of humor uses mysery as catharsis and punchline
That is in no way particular to Romanians and their literature.
>fairly patriotic and nationalistiv but have no problem dealing with Arabs and Turks
Just like the rest of the Balkans then. You "have no problem dealing with them" because you are being colonized by them, as in the past.
>Arabs especially have integrated well here
There are far too few of them so far, for you to say that. But not for much longer, probably.
>acumen for business
Lol, no.
>2 generations of oppression and pain
I thought that had been going on for pretty much the entirety of your existence.
>organic
What does that even mean? If anything, copying is more organic for you. Everything is "copied" more or less, anyway.
>I can't really define Romania as a country
Because you're Romanian and it makes you feel better to think you're somehow special. Don't get me wrong, you're not worse than what's to be expected in this part if the world. You have a lot in common with your neighbours, especially your Eastern ones, as much as you'll never admit it. I'd definitely not prefer seeing your country (where, by fate's cruel turn, I have found my home) overrun by shitskins or completely demanteled by Gyppos. Don't mean to shit on you and your culture, just your deluded exceptionalism.

Miłosz is great. Prus is terrible.

Czech republic is not eastern european country you fucking ameritard.

>Czech republic
>not geopolitically and culturally in the eastern european sphere

Do we have a larping Kraut here? Everything beyond the german/ austrian border is eastern europe. Some would say even east germany isn't really part of the west, culturally.

If it was in the eastern bloc people will consider it eastern europe. Deal with it.

Vilnius Poker by Ričardas Gavelis

Came here to post this. He's a genius.
Also, Marinković and Andrić (who usually isn't regarded as a Croatian writer but should be mentioned as well; he won a Nobel, after all)

>mythology
As a Croat, there really isn't any coherent folk mythology here. In the early 20th century Ivana Brlić Mažuranić described the situation: "Whoever has even slightly studied mythology knows that sadly our Slavic mythology in its whole is a collection of nearly incoherent conjectures, a field of ruins from which only names stick out like pillars."
She may have exaggerated, I am not familiar with other slavic mythologies, but that is still absolutely true for Croatian culture. Brlić Mažuranić herself wrote "Tales from long ago", which functions like slavic folk tales and wonderfully captures the feel and atmosphere of them, but they are still only pseudo-mythology, sort of like Tolkien.

Patriotism is far more important in our cultures than folk tales. In Croatia we have Nikola Šubić Zrinski (an opera), Ivan Mažuranić's "Death of Smail-aga Čengić" (Smrt smail-age Čengića, a romanticist epic poem) and August Šenoa's historical novels, for example. In Russia there's Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov", Poland has Sienkiewicz's "With Fire and Sword"...

Ok, if you just want a simple list, from ex-Yugoslavia you should read Miroslav Krleža, Ranko Marinković (Croats), Ivo Andrić, Meša Selimović (Bosnians) and pic related for Serbs. There are other excellent Croatian writers, but their translations are rare or non-existent, so I won't mention them.

I've seen books about Perun and other eastern european deities before, but I don't know the quality of those books, since they were mostly in polish and cyrillic

Joseph Roth

Especially Hiob and Hotel Savoy.

From Hungatian literature I'd recommend Sándor Márai. I only read one lesser known novel by him (dealing with Ullysses' and his families life after coming home to Ithaka, from the POV of his wife and sons) but I really liked that one so I assume his other works are great aswell.
I strongly recommend Madách's Tragedy of Man. You can find it online. It's a grandiose and monumental play(not even meant to be played in theatres), similar to Faust. I would definitely name that as the most important Hungarian piece of literature.

I've got "Mitologie Swiata - Slowianie". It's about all those slavic deities but still most is just what we think is meant by those as we really don't knwo anything. They could mean anything and nothing because just nothing is left due to envoirement and the surfaces on which the were written (wood in a humid envoirement wont last).

second on Vilnius Poker. kinda like The Process on drugs

and Witkacy - Insatiability. For poetry - Beniowski by Słowacki is basically on Dante level

Gombrowicz isnt highly academical, at least not all of this. Ferdydurke is funny novel about guy who comes back to primary school and just want to be sincere, no matter how futille this idea is

Aren't there slavs working on reconstructing it? Some lores were able to be redisscovered due to associations with other pantheons, since there is an equivalence of gods between different European pagans. Since the Baltic pantheon seems to have been preserved I thought it could be a starting point for slavic (although I'm aware the Baltics were pagan for much longer). What it takes really is retrieving the tales and its symbols, since those metaphors represent the values of European pagans. Scandinavian folklore, for instance, was only preserved because of texts kept in Iceland, because the Church burned most of what was in land. From the Eddas and the sagas they reconstructed the ancient traditions, and the few documents still in land became useful. I wouldn't be surprised if texts on slavic traditions could be found in the Baltics, for example. I think the major obstacle for reconstructing slavic lore is the political power plays. If the region had been more stable during the last century or so my guess is more documents would resurface. If the violence wasn't enough, I think slavs also dislike the US and Britain for robbing them their traditions given the above context.

There are no texts and for example polish pagans have nothing really to to with balkan ones, making it like that would be literal larping and you could just as well use germanic ones. Slavic mitology is long gone and nothing really has been preserved if we don't find a whole temple in some marsh prevented from rotting.

Poland is christian for over a millenia and has profited from it a great deal. No pole wants seriously to go back larping as some pagan like westerners do because they lost their christian faith and still want some spirituality. All those pagan temple nonsene popping up is mostly to generate shekels.

It's nice to know from an historical perspective but there is no way we will ever be able to construct their whole pantheon through that, it will be guessing and filling in in the best case.

>I think slavs also dislike the US and Britain for robbing them their traditions given the above context.
Ahaha what the fuck are you talking about?

>since there is an equivalence of gods between different European pagans

Pure bullshit

Odin, Lugh, Jupiter, Perun etc are basically the same god, with only slight changes according to region. If you have no knowledge about the matter there's no need to voice your ignorance.

> If you have no knowledge about the matter there's no need to voice your ignorance
Found the russian larper. You probably think Kushnier is to be taken seriously. Muh huwhite bagan burderhood.

I'm not Russian, but if your only argument is that and "you're a larper" I think that says more about you than about me. Expected a higher level of discourse in Veeky Forums of all places.

> Everything beyond the german/ austrian border is eastern europe.
This is an anachronism.

Well I am a Pole and read into the lit on multiple occasions. The point beeing is that there is practically NO accurate lit on the Topic and practically all non-scholar books are larping pagan faggots jut making up shit like the Kolovrat and filling in from neighbooring pagans like the scandinavians and germanics.The onyl thinks which survived time are stone and metall, both haven't been widely used in those times in slavic areas. The most we know about their religion are things conserved through moor, which is also a great indicator to the overall envoirement and why otherwise everything else just decomposes fairly quickly. Till the day we find a dry vace untouched by civilization with the writtings of foreign cultures (as slavs didn't really had much of a written language before christianization) we don't really know shit. The best sources are those of enemy groups or tourists coming through from literate areas. Another historically good source are mouth to mouth tales like those of the baba jaga, but which obviously evolved in the last 1000 years, which makes it practically impossible to clear it out to a pantheon.

To go on and claim that a whole different race of indo-europeans in comparison to germanics had the same good, without beeing as rough as beeing able to claim the same globally is silly "evrobean bruda" thinking aka pagan larpers which come from slavic countries but in lack of their own edda just invent and steal shit from other regions like Kushnier. There are multiple sects in russia for example "living the faith" practically larping as a Arkona Musicvideo while thinking the Kolovrat is some ancient symbol and not a 20th century artistic invention.

That's why I quoted you. If you don't know anything about a topic, jst don't open your mouth.

>Pavic
Thanks for posting this. Came here to recommend him since OP doesn't want any WWII lit. I feel like he really gets undue credit for how original he was.

Also, I'm listening to a tomb for boris davidovic right now on youtube. It's excellent. I think miki manojlovic is doing the reading. Check it out if you have time.

Magdalena Tulli
Ismail Kadare
Olga Tokarczuk
Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Peter Nadas

What is a good book on the topic though?

I only read through scholaric arcticles in Polish which were to be taken seriously and beeing raised in the cultrue one gets to know the mouth to mouth history and mythology, but I didn't found yet a good book in english about it which I would recommend. It's simply to specific for a wider audience. The book I listed above "Mitologia Swiata - Slowianie" or "Bestiariusz Slavic" has a nice overview if you take it with a grain of salt. If you can find a PDF/ online version you would be able to google translate them - probably.

But that will be something you will always encounter in the "slovosphere". If you don't look for normie stuff, most of it will never get translated into a western tongue.

Now that I think about it, it's similar to the japanese Yokai, if all those weebs wouldn't be so thirsty to get it into the west. You would need to learn the language to really get to even know what you are missing.

Plus side of learning a slavic language is that you will be able to understand most of them by learning one, as they are pretty similar and tehre is even a slavic esperanto which can be understood by everyone without real problems.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interslavic_language

Well, without english books i'm pretty lost because i don't intend to start learning a third foreign language in the next few years :/ but thanks

>Plus side of learning a slavic language is that you will be able to understand most of them by learning one,
That's not true at all, though. If it were, we wouldn't need that invented esperanto language that you mention.

It is, it's just not easy. Most words are just written with exchanged letters or mean something similar in the other language but stil can be very well understood in the proper context. let alone the fact that most slavs had to learn russian till then 90s and therefore can communicate pretty well. It's similar to old english and old german, which were very, very similar and have the still a couple same words till today.

Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko. A collection of poems that helped prop up the modern Ukrainian language.

>it's just not easy.
So, yeah, you're not automatically able to understand them all like you initially implied.

>the fact that most slavs had to learn russian till then 90s and therefore can communicate pretty well
In which countries was Russian taught like that?

How similar is Ukrainian to Russian, really? I'm studying Russian atm so I'm wondering if I'll be able to understand Ukrainian as well.

Its just like reading cursive while not beeing fluent in it yourself. You just need to get into it again.

>In which countries was Russian taught like that?
Poland for example thanks to the filthy commies which made the transition to the rest of the world (which learned the easiest universal language english) even harder for that generation.

...

Lmao we even had to learn russian in hungary