tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post4997353805480882644..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: This last thought completely stunned me. - the last volume of the Education of Maxim GorkyAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-89372710131712844432019-01-29T11:05:40.342-06:002019-01-29T11:05:40.342-06:00"Drunk to tears" is good. It describes ..."Drunk to tears" is good. It describes more drunks as I have known them.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-48515856495238778322019-01-29T09:19:25.821-06:002019-01-29T09:19:25.821-06:00I'll really have to read the whole trilogy; he...I'll really have to read the whole trilogy; he really was a wonderful observer of life. (Fun fact: the Russian phrase translated as "blind drunk" is in the original пьяный до слёз 'drunk to tears.')Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-82645608783898052242019-01-28T21:58:27.994-06:002019-01-28T21:58:27.994-06:00I think a lot of high-level writers are like that,...I think a lot of high-level writers are like that, although how many are there? Not so many.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-80298525460329937052019-01-28T14:42:34.570-06:002019-01-28T14:42:34.570-06:00Chekhov's eye for detail was something else. F...Chekhov's eye for detail was something else. From his travel notes book, Sakhalin Island: "Traveling with me on the anchor steamer to Sakhalin was a convict in leg irons who had murdered his wife. His daughter, a motherless little girl, aged six, was with him. I watched him when he came down from the upper deck to the WC, the little girl and the soldier with his rifle waited outside the door. When the convict climbed back up again, the girl clambered up behind him, hanging on to his fetters."Cleanthesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15363416290397892659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-46499608348690914782019-01-25T11:09:31.834-06:002019-01-25T11:09:31.834-06:00Chekhov gave good advice!Chekhov gave good advice!Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-34705415705747966272019-01-25T10:53:58.526-06:002019-01-25T10:53:58.526-06:00In 1898 Chekhov wrote a response to a fan letter f...In 1898 Chekhov wrote a response to a fan letter from Gorky. Part of it reads:<br /><br /><i>Talking about a talent’s shortcomings is like talking about the shortcomings of a tall tree growing in the garden; the issue at hand is not the tree itself, but rather the tastes of the person looking at the tree. Isn’t that so? I’ll start by saying that, in my opinion, you lack restraint. You are like a spectator in the theater who expresses his delight with so little restraint that he prevents himself and others from listening. This lack of restraint is especially evident in the nature descriptions you use to break up your dialogues. When I read them—these descriptions—I feel I’d like them to be shorter, more compact, only about two or three lines long. Frequent reference to languor, murmuring, plushness and the like give your descriptions a rhetorical quality and make them monotonous; they discourage the reader and become almost tiresome. The same lack of restraint is evident in your descriptions of women (“Malva,” “On the Rafts”) and love scenes. It is neither a majestic sweep nor bold strokes of the brush; it is simply lack of restraint. Then the frequent uses of words that do not belong in the type of stories you write—such words as musical accompaniment…[and] harmony—is annoying. You often speak of waves. In your descriptions of intellectuals I feel a tenseness somewhat akin to caution. That doesn’t come from not having observed intellectuals enough. You know them, but you don’t know exactly from what angle to approach them.</i><br /><br />They wrote fairly often over the years. Chekhov pushed Gorky to write for the stage ("Go watch some plays and then set aside six weeks to write a script!").scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-26779890684677923522019-01-25T09:25:25.001-06:002019-01-25T09:25:25.001-06:00Very interesting, interesting in part because Gork...Very interesting, interesting in part because Gorky seems, in these later books, to have understood and accepted Chekhov's advice. The memoirs, and the great author-portraits in <i>Gorky’s Tolstoy and Other Reminiscences</i>, do not suffer from that tic. Or the translators hid it; what do I know.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-52667245135795344092019-01-25T09:12:47.706-06:002019-01-25T09:12:47.706-06:00That contrarian wit, W. M. Spackman, wrote somethi...That contrarian wit, W. M. Spackman, wrote something that might be apposite. "Chekhov once wrote that Gorky's style wore him out. The sheer Russian downpour of modifiers exhausted his attention -a simple statement that a man sat down on the grass became, helplessly, 'A dignified, pigeon-breasted, middle-sized personage with a short reddish beard seated himself on the green but now stroller-trampled grass, seated himself without a word, and began staring timorously and twitchily about'. Chekhov wrote this amiable parody, as advice, to Gorky himself".Cleanthesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15363416290397892659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-9134757738549390352019-01-24T15:49:30.417-06:002019-01-24T15:49:30.417-06:00I mean, Janis Joplin ought to walk in and start si...I mean, Janis Joplin ought to walk in and start singing with that guitarist.<br /><br />The wandering Tolstoyans have an especially strong hippie flavor.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-35231571658313319782019-01-24T15:08:07.356-06:002019-01-24T15:08:07.356-06:00Always get geeked up over these Gorky posts of you...Always get geeked up over these Gorky posts of yours. Your Haight-Ashbury citation and allusion are just the latest unexpected example of how often he seems to bring out the best in you, "strong hippie haze" on the prairie or not. Nicely played!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-48764086711806865362019-01-23T18:58:03.738-06:002019-01-23T18:58:03.738-06:00Chekhov comes closest to Gorky's subject matte...Chekhov comes closest to Gorky's subject matter, since he covers so much ground, spatial and social. Gorky's setting is in provincial cities, plus the Volga, not the countryside, and the main "characters" are generally not peasants. It's not Tolstoy's or Dostoevsky's world at all, really, although the ideas in the air overlap in a lot of interesting ways.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-40908623001941407072019-01-23T18:42:40.363-06:002019-01-23T18:42:40.363-06:00I really should read these books. My impression of...I really should read these books. My impression of Russia under the tsars is all from Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Troyat (I do not include Chernyshevsky because I'm not sure he wasn't writing fantasy). And Gorky, why not? I haven't read much Gorky.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-62451308072644374642019-01-23T09:30:46.949-06:002019-01-23T09:30:46.949-06:00Yes, although the three parts of the autobiography...Yes, although the three parts of the autobiography were published over the course of a decade, so there is no hurry to plow through the whole thing.<br /><br />I would point the reader interested in pre-Revolutionary Russia, not just Russian literature, to a fat collection of Chekhov first, but after that Gorky's memoir would be a good place to go. It is not as intellectual as, say Herzen's. It is more like a boy's adventure book, a miserable one.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-56087475682444359082019-01-23T05:34:08.334-06:002019-01-23T05:34:08.334-06:00Well, I obviously need to drag these off the shelv...Well, I obviously need to drag these off the shelves and read them straight away... Thank you! :D<br /><br />kaggsysbookishramblingsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45554747537531151052019-01-22T20:41:37.613-06:002019-01-22T20:41:37.613-06:00I know! And think of the copies of the copies, par...I know! And think of the copies of the copies, partial and whole. Just that one paragraph, the part I quoted and the rest about the grocery store with the secret radical book closet, was an eye opener.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-13587114306980782042019-01-22T18:27:54.212-06:002019-01-22T18:27:54.212-06:00Can you IMAGINE copying "What Is To Be Done?&...Can you IMAGINE copying "What Is To Be Done?" out by hand? Great googly moogly.Jeanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14247515387599954817noreply@blogger.com