The Great Russian Language/Turgenev

[Alexandra Smith]

Dear Olga,

I guess that the allusion to Turgenev's 1882 prose poem  was meant to  
be funny and was meant to suggest that Turgenev was right in his  
assessment of the creative potential of the Russian language. See the  
whole poem here:http://ilibrary.ru/text/1378/p.51/index.html
It defines Russian language as velikii and moguchii...

Yet if we bear in mind that Turgenev's poem was included into his book  
of prose poems  titled SENILIA (Starcheskoe)and that this book  has  
very strong melancholic overtones evoking Arthur Shopenhauer's cycle  
of philosophical fragments "Senilia" (as well as Baudelaire's "Petits  
poemes en prose"), then the poem on the Russian language appears to be  
much more philosophical than the allusion to the poem suggests.

All best,
Sasha Smith

-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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