Short Stories on Wednesday [December 28]

Tags

How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials, Mikhail Saltykov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Russian Literature, Short Story

Short Stories on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Risa over at Breadcrumb Reads. This encourages the reading of short stories every week.

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Due to the holidays, I only managed to finish one short story from the Best Russian Short Stories, compiled by Thomas Seltzer.  The short story I read was by Mikhail Saltykov called How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials.  But before I tell about the story, I just wanted to say that I have never heard of Saltykov which prompted me to search a little information about him.

Anyway, Saltykov was a well known Russian satirist back in the 19th century.  He was also most known by his pseudonym Shchedrin.  Based on the Wikipedia article I was reading about him, his best known work is The Golovlyov Family. 

I also just wanted to include this one from the same Wikipedia article on Saltykov:

 ”The sole object of my literary work,” wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin, “was unfailingly to protest against greed, hypocrisy, falsehood, theft, treachery, stupidity of modern Russians”.

On to the story.  I found this one very amusing that it had me shaking my head.  The basic synopsis is that there are two retired government officials who are transported to an island where they are forced to fend for themselves.

These government officials know nothing but the work they used to do for the government.  They are not used to doing chores as they have other people to do it for them.  So you could now imagine the scenario of them being transported to an island where they do not know any basic survival skills and are now forced to fend for themselves.  :)

Since I don’t know what a muzhik is either, I had to search for the meaning as well.  According to the freedictionary.com, a muzhik is a Russian peasant.  The connection of the muzhik to the Russian officials is pretty obvious from the title itself but the story is still a good read and for some laughs.  :)

{Read online}

Short Stories on Wednesday [December 21]

Tags

A Christmas Tree and a Wedding, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, God Sees the Truth But Waits, Leo Tolstoy, Russian Literature, Short Story

Short Stories on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Risa over at Breadcrumb Reads. This encourages the reading of short stories every week.

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This week I read two short stories from two Russian authors.  The short stories I read were from Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy.  The short stories were from the Best Russian Short Stories collection that was compiled by Thomas Seltzer, which is available as a free ebook at Project Gutenberg.

The short stories that I read are:

The Christmas Tree and the Wedding, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  I must say that I really enjoyed this story by Dostoyevsky.  The story is told by the narrator who gets invited to a Christmas party. The party was disguised as a children’s party but it was actually just a front for the hosting family to talk business with their guests.

The narrator, knowing no one but the host, retreats to a corner to observe the guests. This is where the story gets interesting as it displays Dostoyevsky’s talent for observation. He notices one guest in particular, Julian Mastakovich, that stood out for him and he observed rather closely. Apart from Julian, he also takes notice of one of the young female children. These group of people that he observes at the party also serve as the connection to another event he witnesses five years later.

I read the Introduction by Thomas Seltzer for this book and found some elements of this passage he wrote about Dostoyevsky in the story I just read:

In Dostoyevsky, indeed, the passion for the common  people and the all-embracing, all-penetrating pity for suffering humanity reach their climax. He was a profound psychologist and delved deeply into the human soul, especially in its abnormal and diseased aspects. Between scenes of heart-rending, abject poverty, injustice, and wrong, and the torments of mental pathology, he managed almost to exhaust the whole range of human woe. And he analysed this misery with an intensity of feeling and a painstaking regard for the most harrowing details that are quite upsetting to normally constituted nerves.

I also liked the way Dostoyevsky describes his characters or how his characters feel about the other characters in the story.  Like this feeling the narrator had for Julian, which gives you an idea of how the story will go:

There was another guest who interested me. But he was of quite a different order. He was a personage. They called him Julian Mastakovich. At first glance one could tell he was an honoured guest and stood in the same relation to the host as the host to the gentleman of the whiskers. The host and hostess said no end of amiable things to him, were most attentive, wining him, hovering over him, bringing guests up to be introduced, but never leading him to any one else. I noticed tears glisten in our host’s eyes when Julian Mastakovich remarked that he had rarely spent such a pleasant evening. Somehow I began to feel uncomfortable in this personage’s presence.

{Read online}

God Sees the Truth but Waits, by Leo Tolstoy. This is a story of a merchant, Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov, who is wrongfully accused of murder and gets sent to prison. The story presents itself as rather simple but it is quite heavy in other aspects. I think this post says it best:

This is a emotional story of acceptance and forgiveness — acceptance of the failings of yourself and others and the strength to forgive even when understanding is beyond your grasp.

{Read online}

Short Stories on Wednesday [December 14]

Tags

Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Gogol, Russian Literature, Short Story, The Cloak, The District Doctor

Short Stories on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Risa over at Breadcrumb Reads. This encourages the reading of short stories every week.

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This week I got to read two short stories from Best Russian Short Stories, compiled by Thomas Seltzer. These two are: The Cloak, by Nikolai Gogol and The District Doctor, by Ivan Turgenev.

The Cloak, by Nikolai Gogol tells the story of Akaky Akakiyevich, a poverty-stricken government official, and how his obsession with his cloak affected his life.  It was a very interesting read with a slight tint of the supernatural, just like Pushkin‘s The Queen of Spades, and a touch of comedy.

There’s a lot in common with Akaky’s situation then and the situation today.  The example that comes to my mind is how he decides to skip dinner in order to save money just to buy a new coat.  This is a reminder that as the world progresses, some things do still remain the same.

The District Doctor, by Ivan Turgenev is part of a collection of short stories by Turgenev himself called A Sportsman’s Sketches.  The story is told by the narrator (the sportsman) but using the words of the doctor.  The narrator here has fallen ill during one of his trips and is being treated by this doctor.  The doctor, Trifon Ivanich, tells of how he fell in love with a dying girl, Aleksandra Andreyevna, whom he was treating for her illness.

The District Doctor was a pretty short read actually.  The story telling was pretty straightforward.  I would just share a little bit of the text here that I found rather interesting because I find that it applies to real life:

Queer things happen in the world: you may live a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and never once speak openly with them from your soul; with others you have scarcely time to get acquainted, and all at once you are pouring out to him–or he to you–all your secrets, as though your were at confession.

Short Stories on Wednesdays [December 7]

Tags

Alexander Pushkin, Queen of Spades, Russian Literature, Short Story

Short Stories on Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted at Breadcrumb Reads where you share the short stories that you have read for the week.

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Since its already Thursday, this one’s gonna be a miss for me this week.  And I was doing so well on Monday and Tuesday when I was able to post daily memes! Boo.  Its not even the new year yet and I’ve already started a break in the chain.

I’m not even gonna share this over at Breadcrumb Reads because it would be a shame when someone gets to read this post and all it says is that I did not read anything at all for this week.  Instead, I’m just gonna mention a short story that I read and liked.  Its totally pointless but I just feel the need to post something that should have gone up on a Wednesday.

The short story that I am talking about is The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin.  It was a very good read for me.  I read from the Best Russian Short Stories compiled by Thomas Seltzer et al ebook that is also  provided for free over at Project Gutenberg.  Its about how far greed will take you and its consequences.

That story really helped me want to read more Russian literature.  To be totally honest, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy are the only Russian authors I knew until I read the short story by Pushkin.  That and the ebook that I got from Gutenberg is filled with other Russian authors.  So, I’m really looking forward to reading all the stories in the ebook.