Russian Literature
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Russian Literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. In the second h ...
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Tolstoy And Chekhov
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution reform, pre-reformed Russian. ; ), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909; the fact that he never won is a major Nobel Prize controversies#Literature, controversy. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, Tolstoy's notable works include the novels ''War and Peace'' (1869) and ''Anna Karenina'' (1878), often cited as pinnacles of Literary realism, realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, ''Childhood ( ...
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Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics."Stories ... which are among the supreme achievements in prose narrative.Vodka miniatures, belching and angry cats George Steiner's review of ''The Undiscovered Chekhov'', in ''The Observer'', 13 May 2001. Retrieved 16 February 2007. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of ''The Seagull'' in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 189 ...
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Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. Despite being the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. As a member of his Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground, Zamyatin was repeatedly arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. However, Zamyatin was just as deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the All-Union Communist Party (b) (VKP (b) following the October Revolution as he had been by the Tsarist policy of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. Due to his subsequent use of literature to both satirize and criticize the Soviet Union's enforced conformity and increasing totalitarianism, Zamyatin, whom Mirra Ginsburg has dubbed "a man of incorruptib ...
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Fyodor Sologub
Fyodor Sologub (russian: Фёдор Сологу́б, born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, russian: Фёдор Кузьми́ч Тете́рников, also known as Theodor Sologub; – 5 December 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, translator, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European ''fin de siècle'' literature and philosophy into Russian prose. Early life Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor, Kuzma Afanasyevich Teternikov, who had been a serf in Poltava guberniya, the illegitimate son of a local landowner. When his father died of tuberculosis in 1867, his illiterate mother. Tatiana Semyonovna Teternikova, was forced to become a servant in the home of the aristocratic Agapov family, where Sologub and his younger sister Olga grew up. The family took an interest in the education of young Fyodor, sending him to a pedagogical institution where Sologub was a mod ...
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Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev (russian: Леони́д Никола́евич Андре́ев, – 12 September 1919) was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, who is considered to be a father of Expressionism in Russian literature. He is regarded as one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period. Andreyev's style combines elements of realist, naturalist, and symbolist schools in literature. Of his 25 plays, his 1915 play ''He Who Gets Slapped'' is regarded as his finest achievement. Biography Born in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family, Andreyev originally studied law in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg. His mother hailed from an old Polish aristocratic, though impoverished, family, while she also claimed Ukrainian and Finnish ancestry. He became a police-court reporter for a Moscow daily, performing the routine of his humble calling without attracting any particular attention. At this time he wrote poetry and made a fe ...
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Ivan Bunin
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( or ; rus, Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин, p=ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbunʲɪn, a=Ivan Alyeksyeyevich Bunin.ru.vorb.oga;  – 8 November 1953) was the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language. Best known for his short novels '' The Village'' (1910) and ''Dry Valley'' (1912), his autobiographical novel '' The Life of Arseniev'' (1933, 1939), the book of short stories ''Dark Avenues'' (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary ('' Cursed Days'', 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among white emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Tolst ...
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Aleksandr Kuprin
Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (russian: link=no, Александр Иванович Куприн;  – 25 August 1938) was a Russian literature, Russian writer best known for his novels The Duel (Kuprin novel), ''The Duel'' (1905)Kuprin scholar Nicholas Luker, in his biography ''Alexander Kuprin'', calls ''The Duel'' his "greatest masterpiece" (chapter IV) and likewise literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith calls ''The Duel'' "his finest novel" (''The Guide to Modern World Literature'', p. 1051) and ''Yama: The Pit'' (1915), as well as ''Moloch (Kuprin), Moloch'' (1896), ''Olesya (Kuprin), Olesya'' (1898), "Captain Ribnikov" (1906), "Emerald" (1907), and ''The Garnet Bracelet'' (1911) – the latter made into a 1965 movie. Early life Aleksandr Kuprin was born 1870 in Narovchat, Penza, to Ivan Ivanovich Kuprin, a government official in Penza Governorate. and Liubov Alekseyevna Kuprina, Kulunchakova. His father was Russians, Russian, his mother belonged to a noble Volga Tatar ...
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Marina Tsvetaeva
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (russian: Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈtaɪvə; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature."Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna" ''Who's Who in the Twentieth Century''. Oxford University Press, 1999. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and their daughter Ariadna Èfron, Ariadna (Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as ...
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Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 April 1930) was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement. He co-signed the Futurist manifesto, ''A Slap in the Face of Public Taste'' (1913), and wrote such poems as "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915) and "Backbone Flute" (1916). Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work during the course of his career: he wrote poems, wrote and directed plays, appeared in films, edited the art journal ''LEF'', and produced agitprop posters in support of the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. Though Mayakovsky's work regularly demonstrated ideological and patriotic support ...
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Sergei Yesenin
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin ( rus, Сергей Александрович Есенин, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ jɪˈsʲenʲɪn; ( 1895 – 28 December 1925), sometimes spelled as Esenin, was a Russian lyric poet. He is one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century, known for "his lyrical evocations of and nostalgia for the village life of his childhoodno idyll, presented in all its rawness, with an implied curse on urbanisation and industrialisation." Biography Early life Sergei Yesenin was born in Konstantinovo in Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire to a peasant family. His father was Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1873–1931), his mother's name was Tatyana Fyodorovna (nee Titova, 1875–1955).
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Nikolay Gumilyov
Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov ( rus, Никола́й Степа́нович Гумилёв, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ɡʊmʲɪˈlʲɵf, a=Nikolay Styepanovich Gumilyov.ru.vorb.oga; April 15 NS 1886 – August 26, 1921) was a poet, literary critic, traveler, and military officer. He was a cofounder of the Acmeist movement. He was husband of Anna Akhmatova and father of Lev Gumilev. Nikolay Gumilyov was arrested and executed by the Cheka, the secret Soviet police force, in 1921. Early life and poems Nikolay Gumilyov was born in the town of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island, into the family of Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov (1836–1910), a naval physician, and Anna Ivanovna L'vova (1854–1942). His childhood nickname was "Montigomo," the Hawk's Claw."Gumilyov's Magic Wand". Mikhail Sinelnikov. ''Moscow News'' (Russia). CULTURE; No. 15. April 18, 1996. He studied at the gymnasium of Tsarskoye Selo, where the Symbolist poet Innokenty Annensky was his teacher. Later, Gumily ...
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Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; uk, А́нна Андрі́ївна Горе́нко, Ánna Andríyivna Horénko, . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. was one of the most significant Russian poets of 20th century. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year. Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as ''Requiem'' (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry.Harrington (2006) p. 11 Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) ...
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