XIX век

Five years ago I tried to trace a popular quote from its two 1870s literary appearances, to its becoming so hackneyed it was a punchline for Il’f and Petrov in the 1920s, to its later life in twenty-first-century political rhetoric.

Here are some notes—nothing groundbreaking, but things I want to remember later—on Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya’s Ursa Major (Большая медведица, 1870–71).

It took three summers of enthusiastically reading a hundred pages, then reluctantly having to put it aside, but I finally finished Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya’s Ursa Major (Большая медведица, 1870–71).

Prichetnik combines a common prefix, root, and suffix to make a culture-bound and fairly precise meaning.

We’re used to thinking about how Dostoevsky read Pushkin, or Balzac, or Sand.

Good news for readers of Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya!

Sharaban is like abazhur: it makes sense once you separate the French elements to char à bancs or abat-jour.

Heaven knows my Notes from Underground (Записки из подполья, 1864) translation comparison was long enough without me getting back on this hobbyhorse, but I was keeping an eye on how the translators handled formal and informal pronouns.

“Of all the works of nineteenth-century Russian literature I have translated, without doubt Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground [Записки из подполья, 1864] remains the most challenging,” writes Michael R.

Via the North American Dostoevsky Society on Bluesky, I’ve learned of a virtual talk by Michael Marsh-Soloway: “When Earthly Minds Contemplate Infinity,” this Thursday, April 2nd (tomorrow!)