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The most recent poem I can recall reading in a Russian literature class in the 1990s was from the 1930s. It was all prewar Akhmatova, or Mandelstam, or Tsvetaeva at the most recent. It was as though literature ended completely when World War II started in their minds. No one would ever teach a class on postwar authors at the time. It was infuriating. I can appreciate that authors from the 1980s or who were publishing then might not make it onto their radar because it's hard to determine what will endure or be meaningful and what won't, but it was already clear that the 1960s authors had made a mark by then. Hell, even if they didn't want to accept them they at least knew Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were significant writers.
The most recent poem I can recall reading in a Russian literature class in the 1990s was from the 1930s. It was all prewar Akhmatova, or Mandelstam, or Tsvetaeva at the most recent. It was as though literature ended completely when World War II started in their minds. No one would ever teach a class on postwar authors at the time. It was infuriating. I can appreciate that authors from the 1980s or who were publishing then might not make it onto their radar because it's hard to determine what will endure or be meaningful and what won't, but it was already clear that the 1960s authors had made a mark by then. Hell, even if they didn't want to accept them they at least knew Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were significant writers.
we began with Pushkin, moved onto Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and ended with Chekhov. My professor, who was a Russian herself didn't think anything past 1900 existed. I supplemented additional readings thanks to what I discovered for myself and what my parents recommended I read. I wonder if its because she was a Russian herself and liked to pretend that the Soviet Union and everything within it, including literature, never happened.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, influential Russian poet, has passed away
- 03/04/2017 05:30:50 PM
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He loomed large in the novel by Aksyonov I read relatively recently, A Mysterious Passion.
- 04/04/2017 03:47:45 AM
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Non-Russians don't necessarily know they should be interested.
- 04/04/2017 12:35:49 PM
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I must say, I don't think I'd heard of him before.
- 04/04/2017 10:31:26 PM
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You'd be able to name Pushkin too.
- 05/04/2017 01:11:14 PM
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Yes - wasn't counting him as 'modern'. Though I guess that depends where you draw the line.
- 05/04/2017 06:01:37 PM
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Don't get me started on Russian literature classes
- 05/04/2017 04:10:04 AM
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Mine was similar.
- 05/04/2017 01:17:59 PM
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I honestly don't know enough about him.
- 04/04/2017 12:41:35 PM
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Here's an analysis of why he deserved the Nobel in Literature.
- 04/04/2017 05:54:28 PM
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He absolutely deserved it. Much more so than that Russian woman who got it recently.
- 05/04/2017 04:18:37 AM
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From my understanding, that might be because she writes non-fiction? And is Belarusian? *NM*
- 05/04/2017 06:02:59 PM
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