CULTURE HUNT - Names every Russian knows
You are given the information about Russian outstanding writers, painters, composers of 19th century, but some facts are missing. Use any available sources to provide bits of information. The questions to answer are printed in bold. On the Internet look up the portraits of the prominent figures and reproductions of the paintings mentioned below.
Cultural Figures from Russia's 19th Century
1. Alexander Pushkin (1799- ?) When did Pushkin die?
• THE national poet
• "Pushkin is our everything."
• "Bronze Horseman"
• novel The Captain's Daughter, about Pugachev Rebellion in 1770s
2. Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)
• 1st professional writer
• prose and drama
• comic, supernatural stories about Petersburg "The Nose," "The Overcoat" (1830s)
• play The Inspector General (1836)
• What is the major Gogol's novel?
3. Ivan Turgenev (? -1883) When Turgenev was born and where?
• 1st Russian writer to be widely translated
• excellent stylist; no detail is extraneous
• stories and novels (A Hunter's Sketches, Fathers and Sons)
4. Fedor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
• impoverished nobility
• sentenced to death in 1849 for "revolutionary" activity, but spent 10 years in prison
• 1860 onward increasingly pro-Russian national traditions; look to the Russian soil
• stories, novels, journalistic essays, commentaries, etc
• 4 major novels
1. Crime and Punishment (1864) -- the student Raskolnikov, who murders a pawn broker for the sake of proving his superiority, comes to confess his guilt for the crime
2. The Idiot (1869) -- the truly good Russian man Myshkin tries to save the beautiful but capricious Nastasya Filippovna, who has been sexually abused
3. The Demons (1873) --harshly satirical novel about Russian revolutionaries, who are ready to kill and destroy even the innocent and helpless
4. The Brothers Karamazov (1880) -- the rivalries and tensions between a debauched father and his three sons (a soldier, an intellectual, a monastic novice). It is a murder mystery as well when the father is killed. What are the names of the Karamazovs?
5. Lev (Leo) Tolstoy (1828-1910)
• most prolific writer
• What was Tolstoy's social position?
• broad experience --soldier, farming, teaching peasants, boot making, carpentry
• stories, plays, novels
• 2 most famous novels
1. War and Peace (1865) -- epic tale of three Russian families, their interrelations, and their response to the national crisis of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812
2. Anna Karenina (1877) --two intersecting stories: one about the beautiful young Anna who betrays her old husband for the dashing Vronsky and is forced out of "proper" society; the other about Levin and his search for a meaningful life in family, in agricultural work...
6. Repin (1844-1930) What is his first name?
• great Russian painter of 19th century
• portraits, social issues, broad canvases of Russian life, historical themes
• They didn't expect him (1884-88) --son returning to middle class family after his imprisonment for political activity
• Volga River Boatman (1870-73) -- the excruciatingly hard labor of these men who are in essence reduced to animal labor.
7. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
• Great Russian composer
• focus on interpreting Russia's history
• Name his two most famous operas.
Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina (=The Khovansky Affair)
• set in the 1690s
• Prince Khovansky, a traditionalist, opposes the coming reforms of Peter the Great; tries to use the
Streltsy (Musketeers) to revolt against Peter
• the revolt is crushed; his son flees; executions are commuted by Peter's grace
8. Pyotr Chaikovsky (1840-1893)
• wide range of music
• 1812 Overture
• symphonies (Pathetique)
• Name his most famous ballets
• operas (Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades)
• best-known Russian composer in the West
• contraversial accounts of his death
--cholera from mistakely drinking unboiled water (most likely)
--suicide over threat that his homosexuality would be revealed (scandalous, but probably false)