Julia

"I have known the site for donkey's years, and I can assure you it is not spam. what did you mean about google ads?" - Julia

"All the works listed below are important and absolutely essential to read... but I'd recommend a few more, for, let's face it, getting through an entire novel may be daunting, whereas there are so many plays and short stories in Russian literature. So, my suggestion re: Dostoyevsky would be to try his shorter stories first: Nevsky Prospect, Belye Nochi, Netochka Nezvanova. From there I'd go to The Idiot, this is the work that most often cited, studied and mentioned by Western writers. Crime and Punishment is on Russian school curriculum, but it might require a bit of acquaintance with Russian philosophy of the time. Dostoyevsky was a spokesperson for "pochvennichestvo", a current in philosophical thought after 1860 that invested Russian people with a messianic role in saving the mankind from the rotten bourgeois morals, and instructed intelligentsia to embrace the masses through religion and ethics. I'm not discarding C&P, just saying that it contains some very specific commentary...." - Julia

"being Russian, I'm so pleased to be reading all the comments, thank you! re: profound respect for the rulers of the country and the upper class - don't forget that most of Dostoyevsky's novels were composed in the years immediately following the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The emperor Alexander II had a sobriquet 'The Reformer', and curiously he and Dostoyevsky died in the same year, except that the emperor was assassinated. In spite of the activities of "the devils", the society's disdain for the morals and values of the upper class was not as yet so profound as it became by the early 20th c. And in this case we may remember that Nastasya Filippovna from The Idiot was also a kept woman who was effectively "on sale" from her upper class lover because he could no longer keep her. So, yes, the upper- and middle-class setting that Dostoyevsky gives us IS extremely traditional, and indeed only a few people were opening up to the problems of peasants, kept woman, etc. Yet even then the..." - Julia

"oh, I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive, and given that Blake (and most of us here, I presume) have Christian "background", Christian "agenda" probably should be present. I guess my question is more about what is prevalent, i.e. is it a Christian discourse that has been spiced up with "racial" commentary, or is it a study of interracial relations with the added Christian overtones? I realise that it's hard to divide the two, yet I thought that one theme has to be running undercurrent..." - Julia

"that image is something I haven't found, that you!" - Julia

"yes, I also think that the black boy is balancing between what he's learnt from his mother (that his black skin is a kind of godsend) and what he's seeing in "real life", when his colour evidently puts people off, and thus he lives for the day when a superior white boy can see that both of them are rather equal. Until then he has to reassure both himself and us. I don't know Blake's poetry very well - are there any more poems where he makes comments on race?" - Julia

"I know what you mean. In fact, the place oozes the tragedy and faith. The Romanovs memorial at Ganina Yama is a far cry from this rather solemn spot. Although I know that locals were not amused when the cathedral was built on this spot because apparently you could watch magnificent sunsets from there! :-)" - Julia