Despite its bleak character, Russian literature is a wonderful genre that offers a continuous and revealing examination of the human experience.
In his article published by the American Big Think website, writer Tim Brinkoff said that in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Memoirs from the Underworld" published in 1864, the anonymous narrator asked the following question: "What can be expected of man as Someone who has strange qualities?
And the answer within the novel was, "Even if man is nothing but a piano key and this has been proven to him by science, until then he will not become rational, but he will do something deliberately perverted just for the sake of ingratitude... and perhaps he will cause destruction and chaos only to justify his point of view. ".
A little person with great strength
The writer shows that this narrator turns out to be a malevolent bureaucracy, dissatisfied with his career, and uses the little power and petty power that his position affords him to make the lives of those with whom he interacts a living hell;
His former colleagues who have successfully climbed the ladders of the military and high society have outdone himself, while the narrator spends his days alone pondering why the world has yet to discover his incredible talents.
After the narrator ends his incoherent sermon on the discontent of society, a glimpse of his daily existence and the events that made him bitter can be explored, and in one scene, he invites himself to a party for a recently promoted colleague, only to spend the rest of the night grumbling about the fact that everyone is spending Have fun except for it.
The writer shows that it is possible that all students, for example, experienced this kind of social anxiety at one stage of their lives, which leaves them amazed at the accuracy with which this long-dead writer was able to formulate his own ideas on paper, pointing out that Dostoevsky's ability to absorb our consciousness The mysterious had an influence on the physician and psychologist Sigmund Freud and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
dancing with death
The writer points out that some critics say that the best way to analyze a book is its content while ignoring external factors such as the author's life and place of origin, indicating that the literature of the Russian Golden Age is characterized by infinite precision and organization, but it simply cannot be studied without taking into account many factors, For these writers;
Art did not exist for the sake of art alone, but the novel was like guidebooks that help us understand ourselves and solve social problems, and were - in the words of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin - mirrors that reflect the outside world.
The writer states that Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was sentenced to death at some point in his life for reading and discussing socialist literature, and while the firing squad was preparing to shoot him, the tsar changed his mind and exiled him to the outskirts of Siberia, and by returning to life again in a labor camp, Dostoevsky developed a new appreciation for the religious teachings on which he was brought up, such as the value of devoting peace no matter what hardships he faced.
The writer explains that Dostoevsky's experience with death - which he often talked about in his novels - was as painful as it was amazing. In the novel "The Idiot";
which centers on a Christ-like character trying to live a decent life among the corrupt and absurd nobles of Saint Petersburg;
The protagonist recalls an execution he witnessed in Paris, a personal experience of Dostoevsky.
The writer notes that religion has always played an important role in Dostoevsky's writings, but it took center stage when the author returned to St. Petersburg;
His latest and most famous novel, The Brothers Karamazov, asks the question of "evil" that has haunted philosophers and theologians for centuries: "If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and merciful, why did He create a world in which there is suffering?"
and for him;
Religion was creating an endless battle between good and evil in the human heart;
He believed that happiness did not lie in the pursuit of fame or fortune but in the ability to sympathize with each different person;
According to the author.
What art?
The writer asserts that no discussion of Russian literature is complete without talking about Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), who believed that stories were not supposed to be interesting and entertaining, but should, as he wrote in an article he published in 1897 under the title “What is Art?” To be "a link between people to live the same feelings", and therefore, the only purpose of the novel was to convey a certain feeling or idea between the writer and the reader, and to highlight the feelings of the reader that he was unable to express.
He goes on to say that in Tolstoy's book;
"Stories of Sevastopol" (the largest city of the Crimea), which are short stories that talked about the period in which he served as a soldier in the army, did not glorify the victories of the Russian army and did not condemn the Ottomans, but he stressed the importance of the truth, and he focused on this in his most wonderful creative writings that were Entitled "War and Peace", which tells the story of Russian society during Napoleon's campaigns against Russia.
and in his later years;
Tolstoy fell into a state of depression that prevented him from being able to write, but when he began to recover, he began writing a "confession" in which he tried to understand the causes of depression and the sadness he controlled and revolved around the author's struggle with an existential crisis related to the meaning of life.
The writer stresses that Tolstoy not only helps you understand your feelings better, but also offers advice on how to deal with them. He believes that what makes humans different from all other beings is the ability to realize the inevitable end, which is death;
While such awareness may be a terrible burden on a person, it can also make us realize the importance of benevolence and tolerance.
urge to move
The writer continues, saying that since Russia in the 19th century was based on an autocratic system (the gathering of power in the hands of an individual) is not parliamentary;
Books were the only recourse for people to discuss the politics of the country. While Tolstoy and Dostoevsky offered conservative arguments focused on personal growth, others went in a different direction. The books of the Russian writer and thinker Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–89) represented thought experiments;
She explores his novel, What's to Be Done?
What would a society based on socialist foundations look like?
The writer believes that Chernyshevsky's book, which he wrote while he was in prison, "What to Do?", became the destination of any ambitious Russian revolutionary imbued with the human emotion that the reader so deeply touches in Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov".
These types of Soviet literary works offered a forward-looking view of Russia's future.
According to the author, the novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) wrote - several decades later - an equally compelling book about the years he spent in a concentration camp in Siberia. Solzhenitsyn grew up on Marxist-Leninist principles and defended his country against Nazi invaders in East Prussia. Only to be sentenced to 8 years of hard labor once the government intercepted his speech questioning some of the military decisions taken by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
human secret
“All mediocre writers are alike,” Andrew Kaufman, a lecturer in Slavic literature and languages at the University of Virginia, once told a magazine, in an attempt to refer to Tolstoy’s saying in his novel, Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike, but all An unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
The writer expresses his belief that the style of Russian writers may be similar and interested in the global experience, but their skills are different, referring to what the writers Francine Bruce and Benjamin Moser said - in an article for the American New York Times - about what makes each giant of literature distinct from the last “distinguished (the great Russian writer). Gogol, with his ability to "make an unexpected event not only plausible, but convincing"; the novelist Turgenev is distinguished by his "characters that he described accurately but remain mysterious"; and the playwright and novelist Anton Chekhov is distinguished by his extraordinary skill in revealing his deep feelings in his plays.
The writer asserts that the impact these writers had on society was profound. Just as Tolstoy needed at least 1225 pages to tell the story of War and Peace, one also needs more than one article to explain the importance of Russian literature at the historical level and its ability to change the political landscape of the Russian Empire. and ultimately, the world as a whole, not to mention its educational value;
It inspired readers to take stock of their lives and improve their relationships.
Finally, he stresses, more importantly, Russian literature may prompt you to take a critical look at yourself and your surroundings.