author and poet Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin is considered the father of modern Russian literature and is often compared to the likes of England’s Byron or Shakespeare. Pushkin challenged literary norms and was a vital voice in Russian society. Although Alexander Pushkin’s greatest piece, “Eugene Onegin”, is a narrative tale it says much about Russian character and culture itself as influenced by the time and circumstance. Pushkin was born May 26, 1799 into Moscow nobility. In 1817, Pushkin accepted a
In Alexander Pushkin’s novel, Eugene Onegin, Pushkin immerses the reader into Russian high society in the 1820s and focuses on a “fop” (Pushkin 15) called Eugene Onegin. The namesake characters’ personality is truly an illusion. In the two stanzas describing Eugene’s dressing room, the word choice, personification and the use of simile gives the reader insight into the state of Eugene’s ingenuity and why both he and Russian high society are driven by vanity. The narrator spends considerable time
Aleksander Pushkin, had a very short lived life, but still became the one of the most or most recognizable principal figure of literature in Russia’s history, a role with equivalence to that of William Shakespeare in the English culture. Pushkin started writing off the work of Karamzin as an inspiration and other writers construct a new, westernized language, which he used to form unique masterpieces such as “I remember the wonderful moment,” which were built upon the basis literary custom established
The Use of Numbers in The Queen of Spades The use of numbers, especially the three and to a lesser extent the seven, is of major importance in Alexander Pushkin's The Queen of Spades. The use of three permeates the text in several ways, these being major, minor, and in reference to time. According to Alexandr Slonimsky in an essay written in 1922, "A notion of the grouping of three is dominant..." (429). In the major details of the story, we find "three fantastic moments" (Slonimsky 429)
through many examples such as Alexander Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and “Diary of a Superfluous Man” by Ivan Turgenev. The characters described by these authors reflects the lifestyles of such a man, and seems to imitate the lives of the men who wrote these stories, as the real life Pushkin and Turgenev were both to be described as superfluous men. Alexander Pushkin can best be described as an idle aristocrat, a man whom excelled at being superfluous. As his creation, Pushkin best portrays his character
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s the Queen of Spades opened many doors for Russian writing. The Queen of Spades is a Romantic short story, but it contains many Enlightenment aspects as well. The Queen of Spades is associated with gambling and insanity, both very Romantic ideals. To go along with the Romantic ideal it also includes a lot of common sense and obsession. These are quite the opposite of how romantics thought and very much how the people of the Enlightenment thought. Pushkin stepped
shortcuts and quick solutions, making us bait to the cons of our society. The premise of the film is the idea that people are always self-interested and will believe what they want to believe. This idea is hardly new to literature and films. In Alexander Pushkin’s Romantic era fiction novel, The Queen of Spades, “Everyone is out for what he or she can get” (Sarah Lawall 801) and many of the characters fall victim to scams. The Queen of Spades is centered on high-stake card games. The meaning of the
through changes that affected the people in a new. In the 1830s, the new Russia known as Golden Era came through. This was the time romanticism came through and started the rise in Russian literature. Romanticism focused on the theme of romance. Alexander Pushkin was the first recognized poet, and then came Nikolai Gogol who was the first known novels. After romanticism impacted the literature world, realism merged out. Realism focused on life as it was, it brought light to the lower class in the Russian
analysis will define the power of literary illusion of the three possible options of supernatural intervention in the Countess Fedotovna’s card trick in “The queen of Spades” by Alexander Pushkin. In the card game, Hermann attempts to understand the card trick the Countess uses to win a game of cards against the Duke of Orleans. Pushkin presents the three options of (1) chance, (2) literary illusion, and (3) counting cards as the possible methods of debating the Duke. However, the overriding use of literary
Imagine that there is an intriguing man standing in the darkest corner of the room all alone, and while he seems to be quiet and depressed, all the women in the room are looking right at him. This is a perfect example of a Byronic hero. One common characteristic of many works in the Romantic Era is the presence of a Byronic hero. A Byronic hero is classified as a depressed and rebellious young man who is very attractive to women because of his dark and mysterious past. First created by Lord Byron
Nikolai Gogol's masterpiece novel, Dead Souls, remains faithful to the Gogolian tradition in terms of absurdity, lavish detail, and abundant digressions. Although these three literary techniques coexist, interact, and augment each other-the focus of this analysis is to examine how Gogol (or the narrator) deviates from the plotline, the significance of it, and what aesthetic purpose comes from the digression. Although Gogol's marriage to elaboration is at times strenuous-in fact, it is the underlying
Nabokovs Spring in Fialta Spring in Fialta’s opening line, “Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull,” (Nabokov 413) is quite an atypical beginning for Nabokov. This line, coming from a man who is overly concerned with trifles, brings up many questions. Is Nabokov intentionally leaving out the trifles of Fialta here at the beginning? If so, why? Perhaps the answer to this question is that Nabokov intends for the line in question to be a double entendre referring to both the town and the story itself
Importance of St. Petersburg in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment explores the dangerous effects of St. Petersburg, a malignant city, on the psyche of the impoverished student Raskolnikov. In this novel, Petersburg is more than just a backdrop. The city plays a central role in the development of the characters and the actions that they take. Raskolnikov survives in one of the cramped, dark spaces that are characteristic of Petersburg. These spaces
Ivan Turgenev is one of the greatest Russian writers of the nineteenth century. In his pieces, Turgenev shows deep concern for the tangible problems of Russia at that particular time, such as the evolution of peasants and intellectuals, the women question and the hierarchy of Russian population. In his masterpiece Fathers and Sons, Turgenev emphasizes the enormous difference between subsequent generations by describing their distinctive philosophical views and life ideologies. The protagonists of
A Satire for the Ages Satirical fiction, although unique and one of a kind in its nature, has continued to be an enthralling and captivating subject out of the plethora of themes that exist throughout literature history and thrive to this day. While the many forms of humor that appear throughout a novel, from comical, ironic characters to witty, exaggerated plots, are often considered tame and childish themes, authors, skillful and clever alike, are able to utilize such forms of humor and transform
In Nikolai Gogol’s short story “Nevsky Prospect” (1835), setting illuminates the theme of lies and deception. The setting of the story is the city of St. Petersburg, Russia. St. Petersburg was custom-built as a distinctly European-style capital. The replication of European architecture gives St. Petersburg an artificial feel, which can be seen in the setting of Gogol’s story. The story’s setting is more than just a city; it is a character of its own. The setting of the story is initially presented
which hums like a taut string. When Pushkin writes: Herman quivered like a tiger, Mérimée adds: ... lying in wait. When he has Lisaveta bend over a book, Mérimée says gracefully. This charming writer thus marks his own manner, and if some criticize his dryness it is clear here that the criticism is ill-founded, or, at least, that only by comparison with the lush style of the writers of his period can Mérimée's style seem so unadorned to us. The clarity of Pushkin, on the other hand, chafes him
Gogol’s Values Every individual has their own values they follow as they are growing up. For Gogol he has gone his entire life knowing and following Indian values and being very family-oriented. When the Ganguli’s move to America and Gogol grows older American values start to take over his life and he becomes more individual. There was a major twist in the novel that rapidly changed Gogol’s personality form individuality to family-oriented. In the end the Indian values were the most significant.
and Genius of Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades In Alexander Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” many aspects of the short story have made for considerable debate among scholars. Pushkin fills an integral role in Russian literary history, and there are abundant research sources to use in analyzing and interpreting his texts. Pushkin is often referred to as the Father of Modern Russian Literature, but until just recently much of the criticism on Pushkin focused on Pushkin himself as the
The Alexander Technique is not so much something you learn as something you unlearn. It is a method of releasing unwanted muscular tension throughout your body which has accumulated over many years of stressful living. This excess tension often starts in childhood and, if left unchecked, can give rise in later life to common ailments such as arthritis, neck and back pain, migraines, hypertension, sciatica, insomnia and even depression. Vast amounts of money are being spent on the treatment of these