16 Results in the "Blog" category

Bielinsky’s weighty articles, written between 1843 and 1846, remain to this day the sole exhaustive review of Poushkin’s poems, and continue to form the basis of all close analysis of his work. But even these criticisms are lacking in the complete insight which comes of biographical research. For many years after Poushkin’s death the suspicion which still attached to his name, and the close…

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol’s innovation in literature lies in his ability to create multilayered works that combined elements of realism, romanticism, satire, and mysticism. Before Gogol, many of the movements and artistic techniques he introduced or perfected were absent from Russian literature. Key aspects of his innovation include: Grotesque as a means of depicting reality Gogol was the first Russian writer to embrace the grotesque…

Alexander Sergevitch Pushkin was born in 1799 at Pskoff, and was a scion of an ancient Russian family. In one of his letters it is recorded that no less than six Pushkins signed the Charta declaratory of the election of the Romanoff family to the throne of Russia, and that two more affixed their marks from inability to write. In 1811 he entered the…

What happens when two people with completely opposite personalities meet in this life? She’s madly in love, also smart, rich, yet… very unattractive. He’s a rake who’s already managed to charm dozens of women. No wonder. After all, he’s so handsome that he’s considered the most handsome man of his time. A well-born but impoverished officer, a brilliant commander, a veteran of the Napoleonic…

Publishing a book used to be simple in concept and brutal in practice. You wrote it, you found an agent, the agent found a publisher, the publisher decided your fate. If that chain broke anywhere — and it usually did — your book went nowhere. The manuscript sat in a drawer, or worse, in a box in a garage. That world hasn’t disappeared. Traditional…

Sometimes you read a book or a story and believe the author. It’s written so clearly, it touches your soul, you understand—it really happened that way, and the characters are so real before your eyes. Why does this work for some authors and not for others? You might say: I need to write in the realism genre, maybe then everything I describe will feel…