Once indiscriminate violence becomes welcome, is there any limit to that harm? Chekhov suggests: perhaps the greatest brutality comes from humane, well-educated idealists. –Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions And Why Their…
Russian literature might almost be described as the literature of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts…
Norman Mailer once related a story he came across: Somewhere around the turn of the century, Chekhov visits Tolstoy. He takes the train to the nearest station. Let’s say it’s wintertime. He rents two horses…
On Sunday 10 April I invite you to share a favorite poem or two with us, whether by a poet you love or one of your own poems. Or you can tell us a story involving poetry, as you…
It should come as no surprise that black folks would immerse themselves in this Russian literary tradition that is so profound in its willingness to raise unsettling questions. They say when you go into James…
Opera excepted, I never asked myself, in those early years of reading literature in translation, what I was missing. It was as if I felt it were my job, as a passionate reader, to see…