“A convict’s thoughts are no freer than he is: they come back to the same place, worry over the same thing continually. Will they poke around in my mattress and find my bread ration? Can I get off work if I report sick tonight. Will the captain be put in the hole, or won’t he?Continue reading “RKS Literature: Thoughts of a Convict (Aleksander Solzhenitsyn)”
Tag Archives: Russian Literature
RKS Literature: Tarus Bulba on Women and Vodka (Nikolai Gogol)
“Enough! Enough whining, old woman. Cossacks aren’t Cossacks so they can hobnob with women! Given half a chance you’d hide them under your skirt and sit on them like a hen. Off with you, quick, and get the table ready. Lay out everything we have. No need for fritters and poppyseed cakes, or any otherContinue reading “RKS Literature: Tarus Bulba on Women and Vodka (Nikolai Gogol)”
RKS Literature: Tarus Bulba’s Thoughts on a Seminary Education (Nikolai Gogol)
“You’re a milksop, I see!” Bulba said. “Don’t listen to your mother, my boy. She’s a woman, she knows nothing! What do you need sweetness for? An open field and a good horse, that’s all the sweetness that you need. You see this saber. This saber is your mother! They’ve been filling your heads withContinue reading “RKS Literature: Tarus Bulba’s Thoughts on a Seminary Education (Nikolai Gogol)”
RKS Literature: The Raunchy Prince Valkovsky (Dostoevsky)
“I love influence, honours, good hotels, a huge stake at cards (I adore cards). But the main, most important thing is women….women in all theirs shapes and forms. I even go for debauchery, that’s covert, secretive, and the more eccentric and depraved the better, even with a whiff of sordidness for extra delectation….HaHaHa! You shouldContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Raunchy Prince Valkovsky (Dostoevsky)”
RKS Literature: The Dark Underbelly of St. Petersburg (Dostoevsky)
“It was a strange story of a mysterious, in many respects barely credible relationship between a demented old man and his little granddaughter, who had fathomed him out thoroughly, mature beyond her years in the comprehension of what to other children, living in more stable and comfortable conditions, would remain a closed book till aContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Dark Underbelly of St. Petersburg (Dostoevsky)”
RKS Literature: The Lost Soul of Russians (Dostoevsky)
“He was getting steadily more drunk and maudlin. Masloboyev had always been a fine fellow, level-headed but rather too clever by half; sly, astute, devious and a scallywag from his school days, but deep down quite a softie-a lost soul. There are many amongst the Russians. They’re often endowed with considerable talent, but somehow theyContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Lost Soul of Russians (Dostoevsky)”
RKS Literature: A Russian’s View of Politics
“He, to whom so called politics (that ridiculous sequence of pacts, conflicts, aggravations, frictions, discords, collapses and the transformation of perfectly innocent little towns into the names of international treaties) meant nothing, would sometimes immerse himself into the vast bowels of Vasilev and live for an instant actuated by his, Vasilev’s inner mechanism where nextContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Russian’s View of Politics”
RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenin”: Love and Jealously
“In her eyes Vronsky, with all his habits, ideas, desire – his whole spiritual and physical temperament could be summed up in one thing – love for women – and this love, which she felt ought to be wholly concentrated on her was diminishing. Therefore she reasoned, he must have transferred part of it to otherContinue reading “RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenin”: Love and Jealously”
RKS Passage of the Day: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin: Two Classes of Women
“Oblonsky smiled. He knew that feeling of Levin’s so well – that for Levin all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except Kitty, and they all had all the human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls: while Kitty was in a classContinue reading “RKS Passage of the Day: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin: Two Classes of Women”
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