Returning to Turgenev after a long break I have reached the extraordinary Smoke (1867). This novel was badly received at the time and does not appear to have been much rehabilitated in the century and a half since its publication. One does not have to search far for the reasons for the contemporary hostility: in …
Tag: herzen
The Romantic Exiles
I happened to espy E.H. Carr's book The Romantic Exiles (1933), which tells the story of the lives of certain 19thC Russian exiles, in my favourite second-hand bookshop in Gateway-of-Fleet, and was delighted to be able to buy it. My primary interest was in the private life of Alexander Herzen but the book turned out to be of much …
Letter From An Unknown Woman
After a long period of closure Birmingham's main 'arthouse' cinema at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) has reopened. Actually the whole of MAC has been resigned/redecorated/refitted and it is now a much more pleasant and airy space. I don't think they have done that much to the cinema, but it does mean that foreign language/independent/reissues …
A Brief Introduction to Alexander Herzen
I have been reading over the past few months Alexander Herzen's My Past and Thoughts - or, more accurately, an abridgement of My Past and Thoughts. It is a book about which I could, and probably will, write at inordinate length. Herzen is a companion for life. But I wanted to start by attempting to explain why I …
Berlin on Turgenev
In 1970 Isaiah Berlin delivered the Romanes Lecture in Oxford under the title 'Fathers and Children - Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament' ; the text is contained in the 1975 Penguin edition of Fathers and Sons. It is deeply fascinating not only for the insights which it gives into Turgenev, a man whom Berlin found …
Gogol’s Dead Souls
As a result of reading Alexander Herzen's brilliant My Past and My Thoughts (about which I am still trying to start writing) I have embarked on a course of 19thC Russian literature to try and, very slowly, enlighten my dismal ignorance in this area. My first book was Nikolay Gogol's novel Dead Souls. Due to …
June Miscellany (2009)
A scanty month dominated by another bout of Depression. In fact a week of recovery at the beginning June has only punctuated an episode which began in May and from which I am far from recovered. The problem in writing about Depression is that it is miserably re-iterative, solipsistic and impossible to make interesting. Depression …
Moving Toyshop 