A Literary Road Trip Into the Heart of Russia
- 6 years ago
A Literary Road Trip Into the Heart of Russia
The three lively women on the train; Dina and Damir, the young couple in Kazan with a baby on the way; Sergei the truck driver; the old, old woman in the village
and the elderly couple who cared for her — which story about Russia could contain all of them without, at the same time, drastically reducing what was unique to each of them?
If I wanted to see what life in Russia was like, unfiltered by news stories, I couldn’t think of any better place to start than Turgenev’s world, the countryside
that formed the setting for his first book, “A Sportsman’s Sketches.”
Published in 1852, “A Sportsman’s Sketches” is a collection of simple stories about a hunter’s encounters as he wanders around the woods.
One of the men in black asked, ‘Who’s that shouting
and screaming?’ He spotted me, and then he asked: ‘How long has he got?’ ‘One year,’ said one of the others, ‘for a few good deeds.’ And then they disappeared.”
The truck driver looked at me.
Lenin, the oppressor, read Turgenev all through his life, and Vladimir Putin revealed his love for “A Sportsman’s Sketches” in an interview from 2011, when he said: “The main character, in a simple
but picturesque and very sympathetic way, tells stories about people he met while hunting, and their lives.
Stories have always held Russia together, and what makes them different from most other countries’ nation-building stories, perhaps, is
the authoritarian nature of the stories themselves: One story has been paramount while all that deviate from it have been forbidden.
Alfiya put some fresh bread in a bag for us, Kasym gave us some bags of candy,
and each of us was also presented with a small embroidered cloth to take with us.
The three lively women on the train; Dina and Damir, the young couple in Kazan with a baby on the way; Sergei the truck driver; the old, old woman in the village
and the elderly couple who cared for her — which story about Russia could contain all of them without, at the same time, drastically reducing what was unique to each of them?
If I wanted to see what life in Russia was like, unfiltered by news stories, I couldn’t think of any better place to start than Turgenev’s world, the countryside
that formed the setting for his first book, “A Sportsman’s Sketches.”
Published in 1852, “A Sportsman’s Sketches” is a collection of simple stories about a hunter’s encounters as he wanders around the woods.
One of the men in black asked, ‘Who’s that shouting
and screaming?’ He spotted me, and then he asked: ‘How long has he got?’ ‘One year,’ said one of the others, ‘for a few good deeds.’ And then they disappeared.”
The truck driver looked at me.
Lenin, the oppressor, read Turgenev all through his life, and Vladimir Putin revealed his love for “A Sportsman’s Sketches” in an interview from 2011, when he said: “The main character, in a simple
but picturesque and very sympathetic way, tells stories about people he met while hunting, and their lives.
Stories have always held Russia together, and what makes them different from most other countries’ nation-building stories, perhaps, is
the authoritarian nature of the stories themselves: One story has been paramount while all that deviate from it have been forbidden.
Alfiya put some fresh bread in a bag for us, Kasym gave us some bags of candy,
and each of us was also presented with a small embroidered cloth to take with us.