in every russian book ever

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

"...he crossed a patch of wasteland and passed by the house at the edge of the village without knocking, because he knew that people who live at the edge of villages are surly and rough and ready to take flight...

...and in the fourth house he was taken in by a dirty one-armed man and a sturdy half-blind woman who had been waiting for the arrival of Jesus Christ for seventeen childless years"

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Much later: they go mushroom-hunting.

― Paul Eater (eater), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:21 (twenty-three years ago)

... and then they all lez up.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:30 (twenty-three years ago)

"They were idle, and chatted late."

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:37 (twenty-three years ago)

mine is actually from a real book, i wished i had made one up now. i shall try and think of one

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:42 (twenty-three years ago)

'He pondered the futility of his existence in a cold land where someone of his particular training and talents could find no place. It was as if he had achieved a new level of irrelevance, of superfluity, given the lack of change in a society that would grant him no change to rise further, no way to easily return to the level from which he had come from. He looked out from the porch of the abandoned dacha where he had taken flight from the local court gathering towards the already dark horizon as the winter night closed in further around him and shuddered at his depth of feeling. If Natasha ever knew the truth, there would be rigors yet undreamed of for him to go through.

In St. Petersburg, the Czar ate some caviar.'

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:51 (twenty-three years ago)

Dude that just sounds like you're describing my friends.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Haha Nedoevsky.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:23 (twenty-three years ago)

they eat onions and drink vodka, possible with some dill, smetana and pickled herring on the side.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:31 (twenty-three years ago)

then later, whilst walking along ___________________ Prospekt, they see a gang of children throwing stones at a pony. A soldier, returning from the Crimea on foot and limping on account of a poorly-bandaged war wound, walks over and reprimands them and the eldest one informs him that "Everything is permitted". This seems to satisfy him and he goes on his way.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Dude that just sounds like you're describing my friends.

They need some rock action, then.

Haha Nedoevsky.

I have found my new career. Nedoevsky Mikhailovich Raggetskorny's newest novel, The Rotting of the Barley Under a Grey Sky.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:51 (twenty-three years ago)

"Good morning, old man!"
"Good morning, Mr Ivanov!"
"Good morning, Mitya!"
"Good morning, Dmitri Sergeivich!"

Four ppl greet the same person in the opening pages of the first chapter.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 26 November 2002 17:52 (twenty-three years ago)

russian novels are better if you read them out loud in a fake russian accent

― (doorag), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 04:50 (twenty-three years ago)

"In the town of ___ to which our friends set off was under the jurisdiction of a governor who was still a young man, Yevgeny Ilyich Svyetchin - a man who, as is often the case, was at once progressive and despotic."

Serious question: what's up with the names? They are all too complex, I've sort of half figured out meanings and such but can someone give me a clear meaning on why these books, whilst only having, say, 4 characters, appear to have 437?

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 28 November 2002 02:32 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad liked to say that when he was studying Russian lit at the Naval Academy he and his classmates, rather than trying to memorize all the endless names of all thousand characters per novel, gave them short cut names like "Old K" and "Yuri N" and the like. Sounds like a smart idea.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 28 November 2002 02:57 (twenty-three years ago)

But that's my point, there aren't that many characters, it's just that all the characters have about 47 names.

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 28 November 2002 03:03 (twenty-three years ago)

what are you reading, gareth?

― Maria (Maria), Thursday, 28 November 2002 03:19 (twenty-three years ago)

dmitry bakin ~ reasons for living.

― gareth (gareth), Thursday, 28 November 2002 09:52 (twenty-three years ago)

And it's the same 47 names that each character has!

― RickyT (RickyT), Thursday, 28 November 2002 10:02 (twenty-three years ago)

The best is when the characters are talking to each other using one name, but the narrator is using a different name. "Bazarov stared down Madame Odintsov. 'Anna Sergeyevna, I do not know what you mean.' 'Yevgeny, you know well what I am speaking of when I talk of Kirsanov and Katya.' At the mention of his name, Arkady perked up." I MEAN HOW IS ONE MEANT TO FOLLOW THAT CONSISTENTLY, ESPECIALLY IF TIRED?

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 28 November 2002 15:06 (twenty-three years ago)

"There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically."

― Dave Fischer, Thursday, 28 November 2002 15:23 (twenty-three years ago)

fourteen years pass...

mentioned this in xyzzzz's xmas-break poll thread--

dostoyevsky's style is sloppy+urgent (never-forgotten sentence from the translator's preface to the edition i read in hs, which i think was david magarshack: "suddenly is one of the most frequently used words in crime and punishment")

--and was reminded of it this morning by this passage in bely's petersburg (my own xmas-break choice):

AND MOREOVER THE FACE GLISTENED
Reader!
"Suddenly" is familiar to you. Then why, like an ostrich, do you hide your head in your feathers at the approach of a fateful and inexorable "suddenly"? Start talking to you about an alien "suddenly", and you will probably say:
"Dear sir, excuse me, you must be an out-and-out decadent."
And you will probably expose me as a decadent.
You are even now before me as an ostrich; but in vain do you hide--you know me perfectly well: you also understand the inexorable "suddenly".
Then listen...
Your "suddenly" steals up behind your back, indeed sometimes it precedes your appearance in the room; in the first case you are made horribly uneasy: in your back an unpleasant sensation develops, as though a gang of invisible beings had begun to throng into your back, as through an open door[...]
Your "suddenly" is nourished by your cerebral play; the vileness of your thoughts it devours gladly, like a dog; it swells up, you melt like a candle; if your thoughts are vile and a trembling takes possession of you, then "suddenly", having gorged itself with all forms of vileness, like a fattened but invisible dog, it will everywhere begin to precede you, provoking in a casual observer the impression that you are screened from view by a black cloud invisible to the gaze: this is the shaggy "suddenly", your faithful domovoi (I knew an unfortunate fellow whose black cloud was nearly visible to the gaze. He was a literary man...)

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 21 December 2016 01:13 (nine years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.