bright sunny days in Russian literature

[anne marie devlin]

Did Crime and Punishment not take place on a bright sunny day?
 
> Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:13:44 -0500
> From: burt2151 at COMCAST.NET
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian accent: investment in football
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> Doom and gloom has perhaps also been attributed to, say, American 
> literature of the nineteenth century (there was a [fine] book about 
> Poe, Hawthorne and Melville by Harry Levin called The Power of 
> Blackness), and to Kafka (but the story goes that his friends would 
> roll on the floor laughing when he read his stuff to them aloud), and 
> to Scandinavian literature (talk about the weather!). I think Russian 
> literature in particular has suffered unduly by being read too 
> sociologically and biographically (e.g., Gogol). Or think of all 
> those maudlin productions of Chekhov’s plays. Perhaps also because 
> Russian writers sometimes seem to take themselves so seriously, and 
> this is always taken at face value, without looking at what and how 
> they actually write. And it was and is hard to find good translations 
> of Pushkin (Robert Chandler’s Captain’s Daughter shows what can be 
> done though!). But it is a puzzlement – we had a thread about funny 
> Russian stories and novels and the list was not overflowing with 
> writers who have been translated at least into English. So perhaps 
> the stereotype is due at least in part to the American/British need 
> for it (which itself needs explanation I know).
> 
> Penny Burt
> 
> On Dec 10, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Slava Paperno wrote:
> 
> >> Olga Meerson raises an interesting point: has anyone given any
> >> consideration to the question why Russian literature, taken 
> >> generally,
> >> has a reputation for being particularly gloomy, at least among 
> >> English-
> >> speaking non-specialists (if not non-readers)?
> >
> > That's because of the Russian weather :) Does anyone want to count 
> > the bright sunny days in Russian novels?
> >
> > Slava
> >
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