Is he overrated or am I just a pleb?
I'm reading his plays for a 20th century Russian literature class and I've never been more underwhelmed in my life.
He seems like a writer whose influence is undeniable, but whose style is more interestingly executed by later artists (namely, 1960s new-wave cinema).
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I read a collection of his short stories and I loved it. Such a loving and deep understanding of humans. His stories are often small, understated and don't have a lot of action. But come off very powerful.
He might be my favorite russian outside of Tolstoy.
Maybe try his short stories? Maybe he isn't for you?
I'll try his short stories. Maybe he really isn't for me.
Thanks for the reply
I feel the same way about Three Sisters, got absolutely nothing out of it. At the same time there seemed to be something lurking that I just couldn’t grasp, the way the characters felt and why they acted the way they did. Maybe watching it would help.
The few short stories I’ve read have all been very good though, so try those.
His short stories are ok, although nothing too remakable. I liked a couple of them, tho, one about a soldier who gets kissed by a stranger and another one about a doctor who dies and leaves his wife and daugher in extreme poverty.
About your question. He's not overrated, but literature has its contexts and they're vital to understand the significance of writers. ´many works are just meh if you take them out of their context.
In any case, what does "overrated" mean anyway?
Do people actually prefer his plays? I thought he was more well-known for his short stories.
the latter, sorry
The opposite.
t. Ivan Ivanov
He is absolutely not overrated.
I would say the Russian Realists go...
1. Tolstoy
2. Chekhov/Gogol
3. Goncharov/Dostoevsky
5. Turgenev
6. Others
>I took 19th century Russian lit in undergrad the post
but yeah pretty much spot on just take Tolstoy off the top of that list
If I don't care for his plays, will I enjoy his short stories? Which ones do you recommend?
I prefer his stories
The new wave could capture boredom, but Chekhov links it to characters and human motivations better than any of those hacks.
>Turgenev lower than Tolstoy
You’re not wrong, I have read others but these are the ones I really feel are worth it.
Where would you put Tolstoy and who else should I read?
Turgenev never wrote anything that I felt stood up to Anna Karenina or even War and Peace. That’s not to say I don’t love him, Fathers and Sons, Diary of a Superfluous Man, A Sportsman’s Sketches, and First Love I all read and found worthwhile, but the only characters who come close to Tolstoy in my mind is Bazarov.
I did forget Bulgakov I admit but I’m not sure he would really beat out the others.
>Anna Karenina is better than Living Relics
hell, Leskov is more evocative and heartrending than Tolstoy
I must apologize, I am biased against Tolstoy, mainly due to Anna Karenina falling severely below my standards for sincerity. I know it seems a pointless complaint, but I could never find any trace of a man's soul behind the pages of Tolstoy's works. It is clear why some say if the world were an author it would write like Tolstoy. It is because the world is an object. There is no mechanism that bleeds even the faintest of humours within his writing. You can feel free to disagree with me, and in many ways his technical skill is difficult to surmount, but there is no heart, no soul, not even the whispers of a russian dream in Tolstoy.
>mainly due to Anna Karenina falling severely below my standards for sincerity
Did you just turn off your brain during the childbirthing scene or the scene with Anna and Karenin? Levin and Kitty? I don't understand your point. What about any of these characters is insincere to you?
> but there is no heart, no soul, not even the whispers of a russian dream in Tolstoy.
Except the parts where he literally details the superiority of the peasant dream and ends the whole fucking book with that dream.
We simply disagree on what defines a heart. Depictions of certain moments does not reflect a soul. I will say that during the mowing scene with the peasants in which Tolstoy was clearly channeling his own life, there was a spark, a spark of life breathing through, and I could sense a human soul on the other side of the ether. Whereas while reading Turgenev's Sportsman Sketches at large, I could not resist the overflow of human spirit pervading every sentence. Every word embodied with the author's own lifebreath.
Look, we're not going to agree. You've gotten upset and there isn't any gain from us arguing. I'd rather you not be upset over a difference of emotional influence.
Just know that I felt many of the moments in Anna Karenina were dances of wooden puppets. Tolstoy himself declared vengeance is mine at the very beginning. It is ultimately a work of crime and punishment, and not of the heart.
>Is he overrated or am I just a pleb?
i've thought this to myself a few times. i like Chekhov's stories and plays but not as much as 4 or 5 other guys doing similar stuff at around the same time so he isn't at the top of my list - but he seems to be so for just about everyone else because people/lit crits always refer to a certain style of realism as "Chekhovian" as though his influence is omnipresent and inescapable, which i doubt is as justified as the ubiquity of this particular insinuation suggests - although maybe its becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy because people read book reviews and magazine articles sprinkled with references to Chekhov and think that he must be the one you have to read, and so we neglect the others (like Chekhov's severely neglected friend and successor Ivan Bunin). its kind of like when people call everything "Kafkaesque," although i wouldn't rank Chekhov's originality anywhere near as highly as Kafka's
Seinfeld isn't funny
Plays need to be played, at least in your head, with pauses and stuff.
youtube.com
Or watch “Vanya on the 42nd Street”.
I don’t get you. All of the things you missed, feel so incredibly obvious to me even in just the first two parts of AK. Levin meeting Kitty, Anna meeting Vronsky at the station in the snow, Tolstoy’s criticism of the purely rational Karenin, and the pastoral sections in prt two, how can you say there is no passion? Passionate is one of the first things I think of when I think of AK.
I didn't miss anything. In fact I read the book in a secluded time, genuinely in a prison cell.
The moments that would have been filled with a human soul were stilted, as though viewed from afar by a skeptical eye. I told you we disagreed. It doesn't make either of our views any less valid for it.
If I were to be honest, I would say you are unquestionably be one of the people who fell for the human mask Tolstoy inevitably wore.
Why do you say he was masking something?
Because as a man, his actions spoke of a different entity. His wooden tales do not fool me, but rather echo a person who I have been at times. Someone who pretended to feel. I know that sounds corny as hell, but that's what I've lived. You should look into Tolstoy as a man one of these days, and you will see how false his "passionate" moments truly were, and how little they reflected who he truly was.
though, I knew all of this innately before I read about him as a man, so it may never click for you.
Redpill me on Tolstoy
What do you think of “A Confession”?
I haven't read it. Probably will not read it, I have other things to occupy my time. I've moved on from Tolstoy. Why bother with him when his work doesn't compel me, and when I find the man himself abhorrent? Why would I subject myself to more of it?
Well, there are a lot of things. I would suggest looking into his relationship with his wife, mainly. It is where his character shines through above all else.
Look, I'm not trying to attack anything. I just find other Russian authors to have blessed us with more genuine and beautiful works than Tolstoy's. It's not something I could academically establish, nor anything I expect anyone else to hang their hats on. It's my impression of the work and the man. I don't wish to ruin Tolstoy for anyone else, really. It's just at times annoying to hear people gush over someone I wouldn't let lick my boots.
>Realist
>Dostoevsky
Pick 1 u fage
true, Gogol wasn't much of a realist either.
>Gogol
>realist
Russian Realism started with “The Overcoat” buddy. Just because it has “ghosts” doesn’t mean it can’t be realism.
no, that was the russian novel, you nitwit.
because it has ghosts is quite literally why it isn't realism. god damn.
>Russian Novel
>it’s a short story
>started with
>reading comprehension malnourished by pleb habits