A Big Book of Russian Culture

Happy New Year!

I decided to start off 2008 with a tome - and one from the Russian Reading Challenge in order to get started on that list - and I'm while reading is harder now that work has begun again, I am making decent progress.

The book? Orlando Figes' Natasha's Dance. Figes became one of my favorite Russian historians when I was in grad school; he was so personable and witty and vast. There was plenty to quibble with in his scope and analysis, but that was part of the fun too. In Natasha's Dance, he takes on the oh-so-manageable task of writing "a cultural history of Russia."

One of my happy discoveries thus far is that I haven't forgotten all my history in the 3 years since leaving Georgetown. Several times I've wondered "will he talk about this?" a few pages before he does. (In particular: philanthropy among the merchant classes in late 19th century Moscow, which btw was the topic of the first scholarly book I read in full in Russian) Another surprise: the Natasha of the title is the imperious heroine of War and Peace. The passage Figes references - where Natasha instinctively performs a peasant dance - represents for him Russian cultural history, the interplay between Western aspirations and the "Russian soul."

A little lighter on the history than maybe I would like, but lots and lots of books and art and music. Hooray! Oh, and architecture. Plus, I loved this little ditty by Turgenev, about one of the foremost critics of the day:

Argue with someone more intelligent than you:
He will defeat you.
But from your defeat you will learn something useful.

Argue with someone of equal intelligence:
Neither will be victorious.
And in any case you will have the pleasure of the struggle.

Argue with someone less intelligent:
Not from a desire for victory
But because you may be of use to him.

Argue even with a fool:
You will not gain glory
But sometimes it is fun.

Only do not argue with Vladimir Stasov.

Re-discoveries, Russian style (part 2)

One of my favorite things about Leonid Tsypkin's Summer in Baden-Baden is saying Baden-Baden out loud. And that really proves what a big dork I am b/c there is so much to like about this novel.

I first learned about it sometime in the fall of 2001, when Susan Sontag wrote about it in the New Yorker. It was a lost novel, written in the 1970s Soviet Union in secret. Sontag gushed, and provided the introduction for the English translation. (Kudos to the translators, Roger and Angela Keys, who must have had their hands full, but more on that later.) I haven't read much Sontag, so couldn't know whether our tastes aligned, but this was one of the best book recommendations I've ever gotten. (That same fall, the New Yorker also turned me on to Orhan Pamuk and My Name is Red - there must have been some sort of perfect storm of literary taste-making.)

Tsypkin - more or less - is one main character of the novel; he's on a train to Leningrad, reading the diary of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's wife Anna. At the same time, Fyodor and Anna are traveling to Baden-Baden, Germany, to take the waters. Also, Dostoyevsky falls prey to a gambling addiction, a humiliating run-in with Ivan Turgenev, and some epileptic fits. It becomes painfully clear how difficult - and yet still rewarding - it must have been to be Anna, amanuensis and caretaker. Reading the final pages of the book (in the sunshine out behind my Berkeley apartment - memorable for whatever reason), tears came to my eyes. I was in love with this book.

Like Dostoyevsky, Tsypkin shows a great eye for detail, demonstrating the Russian realism that was warped into Soviet socialist realism. And as is much easier to do in Russian than English (but done, thanks to the Keys's), he employs run-on sentences and paragraphs, building clauses upon one another for a rich layered effect. Plus Tsypkin - most likely typical for any thinking Soviet citizen of his era - is keenly aware of the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the sublime.

To sum up, Summer in Baden-Baden is extraordinary.

Generation Gaps

I just reread Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. It's been about 10 years and a whole lot of growing up in the interim, so I was pleased to discover that many of my initial insights still seemed sound: parents and children will always struggle to simultaneously bridge and widen the gap between them; it's tragic when people are so wrapped up with negation that they deny themselves the joy of ever embracing anything; you can enjoy both a simple, sweet love story and a passionate one.

But knowing Russian history and literature enriched the story in so many ways. Reform and revolution were really starting to take hold in younger generations, and the reform had to choose between Europhilism and Slavophilism - learning from the (to be freed) serfs or teaching them, elitism or back-to-the-soil-ism. So after generations of a relatively static caste system, there was about to be room for limited social mobility, and plenty of anxiety about how that would look. The novel was published in 1862 and set in 1859 or '60, and make no mistake - this was a seminal moment in Russian history and book is firmly grounded in it. It is not an explanation of primitive Russian through the ages.

However, what makes it work for a Western audience is that the relationship between fathers and sons (i.e. parents and children) is a universal one, even in harmonious times. And certainly, the generation gaps between Boomers and their parents, and Xers and Boomers are part of the contemporary American consciousness - so we are predisposed to identify with the story of an older generation battling to maintain its hold on society while its children begin their inevitable march to dominance.

I like Turgenev quite a bit. His descriptions and characterizations are vivid, and his attention to detail - finding wonder in the smallest events - lovely. A wonderful introduction to mid-19th century Russia, a place of turmoil and boredom, impoverishment and beauty.