Such crisp, captivating film making from beginning to end. I do think the Soviet era is sort of mis-characterized in Western portrayals. Compare the Assa and the recent Chernobyl, both depicting about the same era.
Also "Assa" seems like a Soviet mirror image of how Blood Simple depcits the USA.
It's much deeper than that... But honestly I don't think Western audience will appreciate the movie. It's such profoundly prophetic look at future of Russia after collapse of USSR.
For many non Russians I know this is the first film that comes to their mind when I ask what Russian/USSR movies they have seen.
Kindzadza is not only about particular country. It show wide set of social issues even in modern world.
‘Assa’ is about the end of the Soviet era and the coming of Perestroika youth. I haven't seen ‘Chernobyl’ yet, but I doubt I'm gonna see many Perestroika youth among the people at the plant.
There were a lot of movies in the late 80s and the early-mid 90s about the life of lower-class people in the crumbling USSR/Russia of that time: from simple depressing realistic depictions to surrealistic transgressions, simply because all these kinds of expression became permissible. ‘Assa’ is essentially a fantasy about the zeitgeist. USSR functionaries weren't forgotten of course, but their portrayals flipped upside down—there isn't a single point of view on the Soviet time, and ‘Chernobyl’ likely just has a different perspective.
I'm gonna bet, though, that execs in ‘Chernobyl’ are close-ish to Krymov of ‘Assa’, at least as I will see them.
By the way, funny thing: in a podcast by Russian cinema critics on Western films about Russia, someone remarked that no matter how much effort the crew puts into researching details, something always gives away the fictional and foreign nature of the work. In ‘Chernobyl’, one such moment is when a woman goes against a committee of bureaucrats and tells them how wrong they are. (Again, IDK what actually happens in the scene.)
>By the way, funny thing: in a podcast by Russian cinema critics on Western films about Russia, someone remarked that no matter how much effort the crew puts into researching details, something always gives away the fictional and foreign nature of the work. In ‘Chernobyl’, one such moment is when a woman goes against a committee of bureaucrats and tells them how wrong they are.
It all comes down to expecting that another society will obey one's own sensibilities.
George R. R. Martin has talked about how so many fantasy works based on medieval Europe have a scene in which the brave boy and spunky girl sassily talk back to the powerful lord. As Martin puts it, what really would have happened is that the boy would have been killed, and the girl would have been raped then killed.
Tangential, but the "Most Replayed" feature on you tube makes me really not want to watch movies on there. Every-time I mouse over the scrubber a graph shows up that shows me exactly what the most rewatched section is, so for instance I immediately know there's an important scene 20 minutes into Assa.
Couldn't it plausibly just be a confusing scene, or have difficult-to-understand dialog? I can think of several things other than importance that might correlate with users re-playing a scene.
> Yes, many Mosfilm classics seems to be on YouTube
This seems to vary a lot. I just checked and there were several Moscfilm films available (including Stalker) but I'm pretty sure I checked this about 6 months ago and there weren't many available - some were available for rent, but not free view.
Usually both channels have subtitles but generally the global one is burnt-in while the russian one is selectable from the Youtube interface. Also the russian channel has much much more uploads.
Another great resource is rutracker.org, which has active torrents of media dating all the way back to shortly after the turn of the century.
If somebody is looking for a wonderful series, 17 Moments of Spring (Семнадцать мгновений весны) is an amazing series about the end of WW2 and the international tug-of-war largely between the USSR and USA to determine the fate of Germany, from the perspective of an individual who inside of Germany at the time. One of the few series I've watched multiple times.
Enough to spark a historical curiosity, certainly not enough to sate it. The broad strokes storyline is accurate, and most of the main characters (excepting the protagonist) are also generally historically accurate. It also has some interesting allusions to characters like Müller who disappeared at the end of the war and remains the highest ranking Nazi whose fate was never determined. However the storyline and details of such are fiction.
The real beauty of the show is simply in the people and the dialog and discussions. It hits on issues that are timeless in such a concise and elegant way. This [2] is one of my favorite dialogues/scenes from the series. And it's that which makes it such a great series. The pacing is excellent, the story is great, and all of that. But the series just provides such amazing dialogues, even absent all context, over and over.
Criterion has both the The Passion According to Andrei clocking at 3:25:55 and Andrei Rublev at 3:03:12, this last being the closest to Tarkovsky’s preferred version.
"I made some cuts myself. In the first version the film was 3 hours 20 minutes long. In the second — 3 hours 15 minutes. I shortened the final version to 3 hours 6 minutes. I am convinced the latest version is the best, the most successful."
It's the pre-cut original version shown to the CCCP we'll never see. Had they approved it first pass we would have had a wildly different movie.
I’m not sure why you’re not crediting the uncut original 1966 version of the film titled as The Passion According to Andrei which is available in The Criterion Collection released in 2018 in both DVD and Blu-Ray. It is also available in The Criterion Channel. Are you saying that The Passion is not the pre-cut version and if so, can you provide a reference?
I hear a lot how people find it difficult to slog through anna karenina because of its length and numerous characters.
They cannot see how such a book could be one of the greatest of all time.
I think the analogy to music may be like: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is one of the greatest of all time. But it’s a really long and complex piece lasting over an hour. It can be hard to pay attention to the entire piece.
That said, the recommendation for reading Anna Karenina would be to read it fast or watch a good tv series on it. War and piece 2016 tv series was excellent for example.
I find AK pretty easy going, and I've read it 3x, each time a different translation. War & Peace OTOH is impenetrable. I tried to build a habit of 10 pages each day. I lasted 8 days. Brothers Karamazov was similar. The most I got was 100 pages in during a 10-hour flight with no wifi, then put it down, probably forever.
Very interesting! I as well really enjoyed AK, but I also extremely enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov, even more than Anna Karenina. It's probably my favorite Russian classic! I too gave up on War and Peace however about 200-300 pages into the story.
I find timing plays a big part of my enjoyment of tougher classic novels. If I'm extremely busy or don't have time to dedicate to reading in decent chunks (an hour or more per day) then I find it hard to maintain motivation to read dense novels.
I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me :)
I have read the first book of War and Peace a long time ago and had a fairly similar experience to you. I never got to reading the second one because I didn’t have the time to do so at the time. I remember it as long but easy reading however. War and Peace definitely is entertaining.
> I somehow got through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow but don't recommend anyone do that, I was just too stubborn to let it get the better of me
Strangely I think everyone should do that. It’s an insanely fun book once you have accepted you are not supposed to get everything. Pynchon is probably my favourite author all things considered. Still I think starting with Inherent Vice, The Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland is probably a good idea.
These comments are very interesting to me. I first read War and Peace in abridged format in English as a high school assignment, and loved it enough to follow up immediately with unabridged in Russian (am a native speaker). Found it enthralling.
On the other hand I recently gave Gravity's Rainbow a go right after slogging through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and just couldn't do it. The premise seems interesting/odd enough, but I found the writing impossible to follow. I'm sure listening to it as an audiobook didn't help, but this was the first book I gave up on after 15 years of audiobooks. At some point I just thought to myself, why am I subjecting myself to something I neither comprehend nor enjoy...
I can’t help you with the Infinite Jest comparaison. I have only read short stories by Foster Wallace, didn’t really like his style and had no interest in the themes explored in Infinite Jest so I am probably never going to try reading it.
I really like Pynchon style however. I think he perfectly nails the mix of serious and zany. Vineland is a good example. On the one hand, it’s a fairly serious book about the end of the counterculture and what the election of Nixon meant for the American dream but on the other hand it’s also a book in which a community of living-dead has its own radio station, one hundred pages in the middle of it concerns a woman training to be a lethal ninja and perfecting a delayed assassination technique and Godzilla makes a cameo and despite all of that the whole things feel coherent and properly jointed. I also really enjoy the rhythm of Pynchon sentences. I can definitely see why it wouldn’t work as an audiobook however. It’s writing you definitely have to read at your own pace.
I can imagine reading them in original Russian would add another level to the experience.
Interestingly enough, I devoured Infinite Jest and loved the entire novel. Gravity's Rainbow was simply too confusing to me and I think I would have done better had I used a reading guide to support me through the novel.
I think it is almost impossible to read Gravity's Rainbow exactly once. Either you give up halfway through it, or you finish it and re-read it. It makes more sense, I think, when re-reading it.
Youth and timing! I dropped out of college after my 3rd semester. I read widely and kept seeing W&P cited as the greatest piece of literature ever. I read it and liked it -- in two weeks, which was about 100 pages a day. I read it during breakfasts, dinners, coffee breaks and lunch at work, and then at bedtime until 2 in the morning. So, I was able to concentrate on it and enjoy it; being young, I could slough off the lack of sleep.
I read AK next and it was great. A customer at work saw me carrying AK and suggested I read BK, so I did. I too found BK to be my favorite of FD's novels. I also read most of his other novels, except I only got part-way through The Idiot. When I returned to school, I took a Russian Literature course, for which I reread W&P, AK, BK, and Crime and Punishment (instead of using the Cliff's Notes).
(My professor pointed out the humor at the end of AK, something I had failed to see in two readings: the narrator is talking to what's-his-name, who has a horrific toothache and therefore doesn't really care that the most beautiful woman in Russia ... oops, no spoiler here! It was kind of funny when he explained it and he was a zillion times more knowledgeable than me about FD and FD's writings.)
Again, I had youth on my side and, as you noted is important, I had the time to concentrate on the books. Decades later, a few years ago, I finally read The Idiot all the way through -- it was a long slog; it being a weird story anyway didn't help.
Just as another data point, I managed to finish and kind of enjoy Gravity's Rainbow, accepting that I just couldn't understand everything and just go along for the (rocket) ride. Only after finishing it I read some notes and interpretations online.
But I tried several times reading or listening to The Brothers Karamazov and I didn't manage to finish it, I felt out of touch with the characters, their little lives and foibles weren't interesting, the tone felt dry and didactic, and there was no "fun" mystery to keep me hooked.
This was weird because I did manage to finish and ultimately like Crime & Punishment several years earlier.
However like you said, this was back before I had my current job. I wouldn't be able to read any of them today, I think, I'd lose motivation.
That is interesting because I found War and Peace the easiest to go through.
Though it might be because I actually found his materialistic approach to history very interesting and his views an leadership extremely valuable. So I am one of the few that actually enjoyed all the rambling about how much Napoleon sucked.
It is one of the few books that made a lasting impression on my worldview. I wish more management type people would read it. It just so exhausting to work with people that see leadership as some ego trip. A good leader's job is to simply enable the people to do their job.
Funny enough I don't remember much about the actual characters. Really need to read it again some other time. AK was a bit more difficult for me as it is more story-driven and a bit more subtle with it themes.
>War and Peace is only as long as Lord of the Rings, after all. It's odd to me that people will read something like ASOIF and then punt on that.
I read the first four ASOIAF books in two weeks (before the TV show). I read the fifth one in two days straight after buying the ebook at midnight on release day.
I have repeatedly failed to read more than a few dozen pages of LotR.
You should keep going with Brothers Karamazov. The first 150 pages are mind-numbingly boring. But starting at around page 151, it does indeed become one of the best, if not the absolute best book ever written.
AK is not difficult to read, IMHO. I say that as someone not particularly persistent about "difficult" books: I couldn't get through either War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, or many other "classics".
Browsing open culture I realised there is enough free content to last several life times … why do you think people still pay for content like books, music, movies if the classics are good and free? Is it a marketing problem ?
I think that it is partially a matter of relevance. For instance, there are vast newspaper and magazine archives which are free to read, but they don't have the same relevance as (eg) the latest New York Times articles. (Not that they are without value by any means, but reading them serves a different purpose).
Perhaps a better example would be someone in the 60's choosing to listen to an old Andrew Sisters record, or purchase a new Bob Dylan LP. The Andrew Sisters (as fun and lovely as their music is) would not speak to that present moment in the same way that Bob Dylan would.
Many aspects of art and culture are timeless, but many are not. There will always be a demand for new works to respond to the current day.
The classics generally aren't as good. There are exceptions (e.g. Star Wars) but old films generally have terrible pacing. Film making skills have not stood still.
The only thing that hasn't got better is speech clarity which is often terrible in modern films.
I watched Battleship Potemkin the other day. Sure, some of it is a bit pokey compared to modern films, but the editing doesn't drag and there aren't many films in history with better shot composition.
Honest question; how do you force yourself to get through a book like Anna Karenina? I have sincerely tried multiple times to get into it, and haven't been able to make it more than 30 or so pages.
I'm generally a fairly well-read guy, so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
I read Anna Karenina and also War and Peace at a time in my youth between work and school where I had the time to just relax with friends and just read a lot of novels. Only in retrospect do you realize how precious those times are.
War and Peace was hard to start because of all the characters, but I got lost in it and it was really worth it. You don't have to pay a lot of attention to the chapters on the meaning of history unless it interests you. Anna Karenina I felt like I dived right into because it was a "smaller" story focused on really well defined characters. But I don't feel like it gripped me all the way through as much as War and Peace.
With books like that-- if you have the time to really sink into them-- you feel like you know the characters as people in the way you know your friends. They are like people you have known. The closest modern book to that I think is A Suitable Boy.
But if it isn't for you in terms of your time or your interest you shouldn't feel bad about it.
Exactly this, there were periods in high school and college were for whatever reason I had full days of nothing to do. I also didn't have a smartphone so wasting time online was less tempting.
There were the perfect openings for laying down and just read until you forget to eat. In the end, there was some sort of sorrow of having to leave the characters behind.
> how do you force yourself to get through a book like Anna Karenina?
Don't force yourself to read a book you don't enjoy. Life is too short. There are so many books out there.
As many 19th century novels, the plot takes some time to get underway, but I was gripped by the characters and the language from the start. Perhaps you should think of it like a TV show which take a few episodes to establish the characters and universe, before the story gets underway.
Force myself? That's the last thing I have to do. I can't start reading it again, because I know I won't be able to put it down. But I do look forward to a third pass through the book at some point. And another reading or two of War and Peace.
Start with some easy Tolstoy, like Kholstomer, The Story of a Horse, or Master and Man. If you don't like those, maybe you're just not a Tolstoy reader. No problem there.
I love 19th-century English literature, especially Hardy, and the same goes for the Russians Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the Ukrainian/Russian Gogol, so maybe it's a patience for carefully described settings/characters, carefully developed plots, and a willingness to be dragged, slowly, methodically, and for me, magically into another world and time. Not sure. It's possible certain books only suit certain temperaments. Tolstoy, I'm almost certain, appeals to those who've wrestled with religious belief or doubt for decades, whether they've moved towards or away from belief. He himself scared the Russian elite greatly because of his strong desire to live a truly Christian life, and his apparent willingness to do so. A truly Christian life terrifies most folks, religious or not. Don't assume I'm in sympathy with Tolstoy on this topic. But his sincerity clearly bled through into his writing, and gives it a power few other authors exhibit.
There may be authors on a par with Tolstoy, but I'm hard pressed to come up with one I consider better. War and Peace? Best book I've ever read.
A desire for intellectual growth is a very good reason. If other minds that I find interesting tend to mention a particular book a lot, I want in. I want to get it, to understand it, to have what they're having. This drive has led me to learn and enjoy many things that I would have missed out on if I hadn't persevered past the "I don't get this" phase (in literature, programming, science, anything). The notion that people should only read things they already 'enjoy' is modern anti-intellectual bullshit. Some things take effort before the reward. It's perfectly sensible for someone with a thirst for growth to ask for tips on how to get into something that smart people, in their estimation, seem to enjoy. And when they do ask for help, they should be encouraged.
>> so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
First of all, this sounds like wanting to "having had read" a book to check a box rather than the desire for the intellectual growth that comes from reading it.
> If other minds that I find interesting tend to mention a particular book a lot, I want in. I want to get it, to understand it, to have what they're having.
That isn't a book chosen for intellectual growth, that's a book chosen out of mimetic desire.
> The notion that people should only read things they already 'enjoy' is modern anti-intellectual bullshit.
Perhaps enjoy was not the best word for me to use.
My point being, there are more classic books and books which other intellectuals reccomend than there is time in the world to read. Rather than keep banging ones head against the wall because this particular book does work out, they may be better served by trying a different book (one of the other 1,000s).
That almost is what my original comment was, and I still stand by the original one.
But rather than “if it’s hard, why try?”, what I meant by it is "you've tried several times and still don't like it. Why is it that you're trying in the first place".
It is not anti-intellectual to say that one should stop reading a book they don't enjoy and don't have a good reason to get through. There are many other books which will qualify as an intellectual pursuit that the person could enjoy.
But in order for this to be acceptable advice (IMO), it has to include the 2nd part, which is that not trying doesn't mean you abandon the pursuit of what you originally had in mind when you picked up the book, assuming you still have the same underlying goal.
Pulling this momentarily into the technical domain, there are hundreds of ways to learn about computing, and the underlying concepts that make it all work.
If one day, I decide I want to learn how operating systems work, there are a myriad of resources I can choose from.
I might choose one, and discover that something about it just doesn't help me learn the subject matter. Perhaps it's too dense, or assumes knowledge that I don't yet have, or is just not written very well.
My end goal is still to learn about operating systems. I can abandon this goal entirely (which is how one might read that original comment, and I think it's fair to ask whether it's imperative that I learn about operating systems), or I can find other resources that help me achieve the same goal, possibly through a very different learning process.
All I'm saying is: "If it's hard, why try?"
Is very different from: "If it's hard, consider looking for another starting point"
To the point that the 2nd sentence takes on an entirely different meaning and leads to a very different conclusion than the 1st.
> It is not anti-intellectual to say that one should stop reading a book they don't enjoy and don't have a good reason to get through
I agree with this statement, but this is not what the original comment stated. The original comment made no distinction about "a good reason to get through" the material.
I'd go a step further and say that if you don't have a good reason to get through the material, and you don't enjoy it, it's actively harmful to spend the time. At that point, you might as well fire up your favorite video game or Netflix series, which will at least give you some momentary enjoyment.
But even then, some uncertainty emerges when deciding which things are important to get through. It is often not easy to make that judgement without understanding the material, which you cannot do without getting through it. And so we look to others who we respect, who found profound meaning, and trust that there's something there.
I think the most important thing is forming some idea of what you hope to achieve (a new understanding of things, or some insight into a particular phenomena, or personal growth, etc), and then making decisions about which steps you take next based on whether or not you're achieving that goal.
One of those steps might be choosing to stop struggling through a particular book. Or one of those steps might be deciding the original goal isn't worth the effort. But I do think that choosing purely based on enjoyment or difficulty will lead to never growing.
Growth usually comes via the hardest stuff, and if growth is important to you, a different decision making framework is required.
> All I'm saying is: "If it's hard, why try?"
> Is very different from: "If it's hard, consider looking for another starting point"
Yes, but I never claimed the first. I said "I think it's worth reconsidering why you wish to read this book if you do not enjoy it."
My point being that the original comment sounded more like wishing to check a box of having read a classic book rather than wanting to approach the book for what was in it and growing from the experience:
> I'm generally a fairly well-read guy, so I would like to knock this classic out, but I am not sure how.
> I'd go a step further and say that if you don't have a good reason to get through the material, and you don't enjoy it, it's actively harmful to spend the time.
Yes I broadly agree with that.
> And so we look to others who we respect, who found profound meaning, and trust that there's something there.
There being something there for others does not mean that we will get the same thing out of it, or even anything at all if we're not in the right place for it. Doubly so if we did not pick the book because we wanted to get out of it what those others have said they got out of it.
> There being something there for others does not mean that we will get the same thing out of it, or even anything at all if we're not in the right place for it.
Sure, but it's reasonable to want to try, especially for a novel considered by some to be "the greatest work of literature ever written". That seems worthy of investigation at least. Giving up when things get tough is a pretty problematic approach if you want to grow. Whether my objection matters admittedly depends on whether the goal is to learn/grow, but I think there's a good case to be made that it is.
> My point being that the original comment sounded more like wishing to check a box of having read a classic book rather than wanting to approach the book for what was in it and growing from the experience
But the point of being well-read isn't just to complete a checklist. I think you are reading very deeply into something and drawing a potentially unwarranted conclusion.
Everyone I know who reads avidly, and who many would consider well-read, who are even aware of the existence of Anna Karenina read not for the sake of it, but to improve themselves, their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, etc.
I think that's where our differences in this thread are coming from. I'm assuming the whole point is the acquisition of knowledge/understanding, and you seem to be assuming a different motivation, although I'm not entirely sure what that motivation is (I don't think "checking a box just for the sake of it" is a warranted conclusion in context, and "checking a box" is just a rhetorical device to help us understand that this person has a gap in their reading that they haven't succeeded in filling yet). Perhaps they primarily value good literature, in which case having a list makes quite a lot of sense.
If someone expressed the same frustration about the Greek myths, a potentially more productive response would be to point someone to Stephen Fry's Mythos, Heroes and Troy, which he wrote exactly for the reason that this comment thread exists: some people find the original material difficult to get through, but the underlying message was important enough to re-tell.
In the case of Anna Karenina, perhaps exploring the various translations that exist and choosing one vs. the other would be the ideal next step.
> Giving up when things get tough is a pretty problematic approach if you want to grow.
I think this and the rest of our disagreements is how we view the original comment, and the kind of motivations we ascribe to the original comment.
I'm biased, perhaps unfairly, in that the people I've met who talk about books this way do so with the goal of being able to say that they've read X, that they can show themselves as the kind of person who has reads books like X.
Again perhaps unfair to the original comment given that I don't know where they're coming from.
Because we are the rest we are mostly in agreement about. I am the last person to argue that one should give up when and things get difficult.
But not all roads to the acquisition of knowledge lead to this book, or any one specific book.
Maybe it’s just good luck, but I haven’t encountered the type you describe so that just didn’t compute for me.
And I agree that not all roads lead there. My position was founded entirely on the stated desire to read this book, and the implied desire to learn from it.
If Shakespeare interests you, that’s fine. If you find him tedious, leave him. Shakespeare hasn’t yet written for you. The day will come when Shakespeare will be right for you and you will be worthy of Shakespeare, but in the meantime there’s no need to hurry things. -- Jorge Luis Borges.
This is a national meme in Russia. War and Peace is mandatory reading in schools, but it's always only 3-4 students in class who really read it. Most students just skim through ("read diagonally", as we say), use summary or watch the movie.
In principle, I understand how this book can fail to connect with some people. I’ve encountered many “great” books that I just couldn’t read. But Anna Karenina is so damn good that it’s hard to fathom others see it differently. The writing and character development are exquisite. I can reread it endlessly, or start randomly at any page. It’s always a pleasure.
This happens to me, too, on occasion. You might want to try an audio book version. This helps in a couple of ways. The narration might change narrator for different characters or change their voice and the name pronunciation is probably much better for languages one does not speak. This also gives you a basis for the character in your mind and frees up your imagination for the text not related to character voice and emotion. I still find some books with a larger number of characters or particularly different cultures/settings requiring multiple re listens at the start for me to be able to see what is described in my mind's eye, versus my brain being immediately receptive to other books from the beginning. It does require a certain amount of concentration to comprehend and not just hear like background music that is available when I am walking or riding a bicycle or cooking, sometimes when I am driving.
I've read it three times and it didn't take any forcing. Whereas other long Russian classic novels: not so much.
I don't know if this is a "tip" or not, but what I found easy about AK was the descriptions of people's inner lives, and how much insight Tolstoy has on the human condition. He was a very religious man, but the characters don't so much think about Christianity as live it (or try to).
Anna's feelings about Karenin's stuffiness, and their inability to connect, are SO modern. You see how they treat their son, and contrast it with the way "modern" parents try to raise their kids. Vronsky's behavior with his fellow soldiers is a beautiful picture of male bonding before there was such a term.
Writers are exhorted to "show, don't tell" and Tolstoy doesn't tell you Anna felt guilty, he shows you.
Anna Karenia is still on my list, but here's what I did for Jane Austen and the Tale of Genji: Just read one chapter a night. My old AP Lit teacher gave me that advice, said you need to treat these books like a soap opera, because they're written with the same idea in mind.
As someone who had this book as mandatory reading in high school, along with many other books I would call dense, I would say the secret ingredient is to go fast. With regular books, I take breaks to ponder the ideas multiple times per chapter. If I know I have to go through 800+ pages, I decide to read 100 pages a day, and just brute force it through. After you've gone through the whole thing, there's plenty of time to go back and revisit the themes you found more interesting, I know other students also made heavy use of notes and sticky notes to grok the thing.
It may seem so boring at first because it is so real. The depth of insight into the characters and culture is what makes it so moving as the plot picks up.
Another perspective shift that makes it more enjoyable: it's a time machine. I wouldn't care for that level of detail in a modern American context or even a fantasy, but a distinct culture nearly 200 years ago? Sign me up.
Then again, if you don't dig it no shame in moving on. There are more books than there is time to read them.
first, i'd just read The Death of Ivan Ilyich which is much much shorter.
after reading that if you feel like reading tolstoy is something you want to do a whole lot more of, then pick up Anna Karenina or War and Peace. I've read both, because i enjoy reading Tolstoy, but i would not recommend reading them if you do not enjoy the process. there are plenty of other great literary works out there (and most of them are shorter).
I focused on the individual characters I liked. Levin is a personal favorite and as you get further along you get a little more of him. Read each character story as a vignette and don't worry about connecting the dots of the whole book until later -- or until it comes up again. Interestingly, it's the same method I use for Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
There is a contrasting beauty of prose in Marquez, though, in spite of war being a common theme. Maybe because of environment: 19-century Russia seems raw and cold, whereas Marquez's Latin America is warm and colorful, and of course magic realism adds another level of aesthetics.
This is how I got through it - I read it in 1990 while riding the bus to and from a summer job. I had nothing else to do to kill the time. I don't remember it being a terribly boring story. So, to get through it - get off the Internet, and all devices since they're just time wasters much like Anna Karenina.
I think the "go fast" guy is right. The problem with really old classics is that they have been imitated a lot. I had the same issue with "War & Peace" - I felt like I have read the book a 1000 times before. I find Chekov and Bulgakov to be far more interesting. Their work is shorter and hits harder.
Just about anything. Go to Project Gutenberg, pick a book of plays, or short stories, and just start reading. Be forewarned, though. Chekov doesn't do endings (for the most part) and he made no apologies for his lack of endings. You'll find out with a minimal investment of time whether or not you like his style. I do, despite the paucity of endings.
Endings are hard. I suspect one of the things that has enhanced Tom Hanks' acting career is making sure most of the stuff he did had a good solid ending, not a quick fade -- consider Saving Private Ryan, and Castaway. Killer endings. Tolstoy, unlike Chekov, does great endings.
Couldn’t agree more, I read it last year and it’s as good as everyone says it is. That said, I did read a lot of Russian literature during that period so the constant names/nicknames didn’t bother me.
If you didn't enjoy it, first try with a different translation or read something else, life is short and there are plenty of good books. Personally I really liked Anna Karenina and read it twice. War and Peace on the other hand, I had to force myself to finish it.
You might try "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky first, which is much shorter, just to get a taste of his characters and writing style. If you like that, go on to "Crime and Punishment", and then read "The Brothers Karamazov" last.
I saw a dust jacket quote that said something like, "Dostoevsky writes about the unconscious as though it were conscious". When I started reading his books, I felt like he naturally reveals his character's psychology through dialogue (both inner and intrapersonal). They are surprisingly relatable. They have quirks and insecurities, can be hot-headed one minute and fearful the next. "Do you know what it means to demand when you are only in a position to implore?" asks one protagonist. They struggle with big questions, their motivations are laid bare, and they endear empathy as would a self-destructive family member. Dostoevsky may not write inspired literature, but he has something important to say, and he says it from his uniquely Russian soul.
Well, I mean, "reading something else" has been what I've opted to do thus far, hence why I've only gotten about 30 pages in, but I've found that sometimes when I force myself to actually one of these "certified classics" I end up feeling glad I did. That's how I felt about Crime and Punishment, for example.
crime and punishment is what got me hooked on russian literature. i would try some of dostoyevsky's other works before moving on to tolstoy. just finished karenina this year but enjoyed the idiot and karamazov more.
Don't know, I actually didn't have too much trouble getting through Anna Karenina, and it remains one of my favorite novels. Saying this as someone who has tried and failed many times to finish other classics such as One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
Within a few pages I knew it was great and honestly was sad that it couldn't have lasted longer. If you're not enjoying it, just stop, it's meant to be enjoyed like a nice whisky or something. No point forcing yourself.
I listened to it as an audiobook over the course of a week or two, and it was pretty bearable. I know there is some debate about whether that counts as "reading" the book, but on something like this I consider it close enough.
An audiobook and a character name cross-reference can be instrumental in getting through some of these massive Russian tomes. I was definitely confused by War and Peace (I think it was) until I realized that there was one character with fifteen various names and not fifteen different characters.
It all starts with the attitude. If you just want to "knock this classic out" then you set yourself up for a failure from the beginning. I can read classics only for enjoyment of the language and images.
Some classics just aren’t worth the work if they’re that much of a slog. There’s a reason I never finished watching Gone the Wind but had no issue reading Crime and Punishment.
I just have the newest Penguin Classics version, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Not sure if it’s the best one, but I found it good. I’ve just tried reading some Russian Classics from public domain translations and sometimes they are a lot harder to read.
> The uploader has not made this video available in your country
In Russia, that is. Har har har.
Not sure what's going on here and who blocked whom, but when people propose boycotting this vid due to its provenance, I have trouble even counting the layers of irony. There are at least two, but then it gets confusing.
I'm not sure if I see how boycotting a free version of a series based on a long dead author's public domain work makes a difference one way or another.
Thanks for trying to whitewash him, but no, we Russians know him very well.
Sterilization of anti-invasion people is one of the mildest things he suggests. He’s also a huge homophobe standing against “Western homosexual values”.
He’s been an almost weekly speaker on Russia 1 channel since 2000’s. His views were on clear display for years.
He’s one of the most hawkish anti-Ukrainian and ultraconservative Russian filmmakers save for Mikhalkov.
In exchange he’s been given tons of state awards and kept as a head of largest filmmaking company (Mosfilm). Also budgets for productions like this.
He had a couple okay-ish films during perestroika (Courier) but afterwards his sole job is a person shouting on state TV how he hates Western gays and Ukrainians.
Please assume good faith; your arguments will carry more weight. I googled the guy, and that came up which clearly countered the invective against him here.
I will repeat comment you responded to: Series director Shakhnazarov is one of the ultra pro-war and pro-Putin celebrities. He’s almost daily on Russian TV spewing hatred against Ukrainians, Americans, minorities. Be careful. It’s tempting to say “not all Germans”, but this case is clear-cut.
Your link is not showing ANYTHING to cancel out the above or undo the damage. He is still spewing hatred. There is literally no goalposts movement, except yours.
Lets quote Shakhnazarov in state TV saying approvingly: "The opponents of the letter Z must understand that if they are counting on mercy, no, there will be no mercy for them. [...] There will be concentration camps, re-education, sterilisation of those who oppose the letter Z". This is him saying what should happen.
The implications of that article are pretty dangerous.
It's one tiny step removed from plain claiming some (Russian) authors should be canceled or not read because there's some folklore surrounding their importance for the construction of the national identity, and/or they defended some nationalistic ideals, and/or school children are taught silly nonsense about them.
Not many classic authors in any language would survive that filter.
Why, if we were to bar pieces of culture because school children are taught silliness about them, not much of the culture of the English-speaking world would survive!
I get that the current trend is to abhor anything Russian -- and also, that the current situation has not made it easy to sympathize with Russian-ness -- but really... this kind of articles is positively Orwellian.
Nothing good can come from ignoring/banning/canceling classic authors.
I see your point and I agree with most that you wrote. I don't believe the article I linked to is dangerous, though. It clarified many things for me (not to mention putting Brodsky in a new context, personally I found it quite shocking).
I remember watching the Chinese movie Hero (2002), sponsored by the state. The main premise of this beautiful movie is that dictatorship has its value that must be respected, and only people with deeper insight can understand it. Banning such works serves no purpose, but it's important for people to learn to spot manipulation and propaganda.
I sure hope they never ban "Hero", it's one of my favorite wuxia movies! I don't see it as propaganda at all, regardless of the ambiguous interpretation of its ending.
As far as I can see it has many people from Hong Kong in its cast -- including the awesome Maggie Cheung -- and the production company was from Hong Kong. Regardless, I don't consider "sponsored by the state" to be a naughty word, nor do I consider "fully privately sponsored" to be a badge of honor.
** Spoiler alert - don't read further but watch the movie instead! **
The whole movie is about the assassination attempt (OK, there is love and beauty and music, but the main plot is that). The main protagonist of the movie doesn't kill the emperor though as he understood what another character meant: that the emperor must not die, as the peace is possible only by uniting various ethnic groups by him.
On the surface, this kind of reasoning seems acceptable. In practice, though, forcing peace in this way just brings suffering and is a weak justification of imperialism. Look at the situation of Uighurs and Tibetans. A federation of states, in an integrated form like the USA or weaker like the EU seems to work much better in terms of benefits to their citizens than authoritarian empires in Chinese or Russian style.
I think that's reading too much into the movie. It's not an apologia of modern day China, it's a wuxia fable about imperial China, and the message of unity is not a bad one.
> A federation of states, in an integrated form like the USA or weaker like the EU seems to work much better in terms of benefits to their citizens than authoritarian empires in Chinese or Russian style.
That's a lot of baggage to unload into a wuxia movie. It's a movie, a folklore fable more in the style of a Chinese Rashomon (to which it's been compared) than a way to introduce political discourse. I wouldn't overanalyze it, just like I don't watch samurai movies to criticize them because Japanese feudal society wasn't democratic.
I can guarantee you "Hero" is not communist propaganda. I thought we were past this level of paranoia with the Cold War over.
Well, I had to look at the WP page just to check if I'm imagining things and nobody else thought about this (mind you, I'm a great fan of wuxia, and Hero is one of the best movies I've ever seen, with each minute being extremely satisfying on all levels). It turns out there are others[0]:
> Nevertheless, there were several film critics who felt the film had advocated autocracy and reacted with discomfort. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice deemed it to have a "cartoon ideology" and justification for ruthless leadership comparable to Triumph of the Will. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post wrote an otherwise positive review but concluded: "The movie, spectacular as it is, in the end confronts what must be called the tyrant's creed, and declares itself in agreement with the tyrant."
It is fascist to decide to not watch movies made by fascists? People are free to not read feminists books and most of them don't precisely because of who authors are. But, why is willingness to go out of your way for art made by fascist always the mandatory test? (And yes the director counts in that category.)
Western people did not exactly read arab poets while ISIS was expanding their territory either. Also, people in west were never too quick to read Ukrainian, Polish, Czech or whatever literature.
My point here is: if art of other countries is so important for nations being together, why is the Russian one being constantly treated as more important then everyone else? Why not urging us to read Finnish, French, German, Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian? Or literature from Belarus for that matter?
Seriously, why did emphasis on Russian art went UP after the latest invasion?
Russian literature has been a mainstay among western audiences for the last hundred years. Works like Punishment and Crime, War and Peace, Anna Karenina are widely known across the world.
This is just tradition, personally I don't believe Russian writers of 18/19 centuries were better or worse than their counterparts living in Eastern Europe, for example. It is indisputable Russia produced some great writers and poets, such as Anna Akhmatova (but especially for poetry 70% is lost in translation). The reason that Tolstoi and Dostoyevski got famous is largely geopolitical; what we are doing now is just a part of tradition. I remember I relatively enjoyed reading Crime and Punishment, but when I started to read Brothers Karamazov, I started to have a feeling there are so many better ways to spend my life than reading these two bricks and this feeling only increased with time. YMMV.
Future purchase decisions are already affected by the sanctions. Shops will already not be able to restock. So consumers not buying the current stock is moot.
People are asked to bear sacrifices to hurt the Russian nation through all out sanctions, and you are also asking them to have empathy and identify with Russian characters through their Russian life.
Some people compartmentalize enough to be able to do both, but that's a tall order.
Hurting the Russian nation state through financial and technological sanctions is one thing. Vilifying Russian culture or the Russian people is more slanted towards fascism--the same thing the Russian government is doing in Ukraine towards Ukrainians.
What you propose is also pretty ironic seeing that the majority of civilian casualties and destroyed cities in Ukraine are from areas that have majority of Russian speakers. Not really fair towards those people I suppose :).
> What you propose is also pretty ironic seeing that the majority of civilian casualties and destroyed cities in Ukraine are from areas that have majority of Russian speakers.
This is the terrible irony of this war! I've had many colleagues in eastern cities like Kharkov. They would all identify as Russians. It wasn't a big deal, ever - they were Russians living in Ukraine, speaking Russian just like everyone else, of course knowing some Ukrainian but not caring about that much. And most of them would welcome joining Russia just like many people in Crimea did.
But a few days or weeks after the war they realize they are just insignificant pawns in the hands of cruel people: their own kind were shelling them, killing their families and so on. They realized this way too late, it's a tragic situation. (Fortunately most of my colleagues managed to escape, but not everybody was able to, especially old people.)
There's a huge gap between villifying Russian culture and not wanting to watch Russian movies in the current climate. You're pushing it to an extreme that was not in the discussion.
Also, do you really draw a line between hurting "Russian nation state" and the actual Russian people's everyday life ?
I can't imagine the current sanction has no effect on the regular population's everyday life nor near-future prospects, and it's a choice we're making as we have no other lever to pull. I understand the trade-off and am not comfortable sugar-coating it in "nation state" denomination.
Of course the sanctions are hitting the pockets of the citizens of Russia, but that was not the point I was making.
I was saying that there are a lot of Russians not living in Russia, some of whom are currently the victims of the current war that the government of Russia started. So isolating these people, making them double victims is to me really dumb.
Culturally isolating Russians in Russia is also a dumb move as this is a goal of Putin as well.
I can't stop you from actively helping Putin, I can only point out that what you are doing is counter productive, if what you are doing is done out of ignorance :).
> the same thing the Russian government is doing in Ukraine towards Ukrainians.
It is so fun to see how this whole thing was turned upside down.
Just a small advice: when researching this topic and googling for information, consider setting a time limit on before the conflict, before propaganda machines had been turned on at full power.
It is just very insightful to see what people had to say on some matter, before it became politically significant.
Same with sanctions, or any other form of violence (violence, in the most abstract sense). The idea is to positively influence by exerting pressure. That's the ideal, anyway.
It can become difficult to tell whether violence is motivated by noble intentions, or vengeance and disdain. Or, whether it's done by conscious choice, or via group-think.
Any strategy of war must be effective. Russia maintains a positive trade balance, largely by exporting commodities, and most of the world remains happy to buy them. On 1st January, a Euro would buy you 85 rubles, today, you'd get 62.
It might feel like the right thing to do. It might even be the right thing to do, the West is wealthy and can afford to take certain haircuts as a moral stance.
It doesn't appear to inflict any harm to the target, however. Asia makes all the electronics and Russia has its own heavy industry, what can we deny them, Facebook? No they have their own one of those as well.
The harm it does to our side is obvious, and the polite thing is always to ignore it, but that's premised on the sanctions harming the enemy in some fashion, which, they don't.
Europe pays billions for gas daily basically sponsoring invasion.
It’s enough for Russian elite to flourish and pay people and companies reliant on state (most of Russia).
Putin’s bet is that sanctions will be lifted before tech embargo hits anyway.
Western politicians already drag their feet on arming Ukraine. Just mentioning unrest and refugee influx from North Africa due to hunger is enough. They will pressure Ukraine to surrender and gradually lift sanctions.
You don’t pay for watching propaganda, yet it influences.
Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism. The same that thinks it’s alright to murder, loot, rape and pillage.
> Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism.
I don't believe that you have any first-hand knowledge of Russian culture or literature. In fact, this seems more like ignorant western propaganda talking points.
I had to chew through quite a few of those rus books in school, read Dostoyevsky again later. Quite enjoyed Bulgakov. But still most of the big names convey rus greatness and how suffering for the czar is honorable.
No they don't. That's like the opposite of Russian literature (at least that which had survived through the ages)
I'd get if this was a difference in interpretation, but I don't understand how can you even make such a claim, when it is a historic fact that most of the "big names" had been in confrontation with czars, had problems with overcoming censorship or were altogether considered crimanals and were exiles.
Either you are confusing the author's point of view with the point of some character (maybe due to cultural perspective and different traditions of virtue signaling), or maybe you don't get the Aesopian language, or worse.
Also, ad hominem is quite a valid argument, especially if it comes to subjective stuff. Especially if we have to consider cultural background.
> Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism. The same that thinks it’s alright to murder, loot, rape and pillage.
I don't know this guy; maybe he is a raging monster, no idea.
But in any case, he has virtually no influence in shaping “rus” (you know they switched to “russian” for over five centuries now, right?) culture and imperialism.
I understand that train of thought, but does this really apply to Anna Karenina?
It's a pre-soviet work from well over a century ago, from a time when the Russian state and society were very different from what exists today.
Well, I guess I should be used to the fact that western media often treats their readers as illiterate idiots without their own opinions, but still... Wow!
I refuse to watch propaganda garbage made by the Russian fascist who is enthusiastically cheerleading the genocide of Ukrainians (1). If you are interested in Anna Karenina - do yourself a favor and just read Tolstoy. It's a fantastic book by one of my favorite writers (although War and Peace appeals more to me).
It behooves one to know their opponent. The mere act of viewing the media does not "support" the film-maker or the regime, assuming you're not paying for it.
