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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
В последний раз читал в 7 классе. И тогда, как оказалось, ничего не понял толком. А вот теперь перечитал и открыл для себя много нового. Перечитывать книги, оказывается, весьма интересно.
It sounds mandatory that Pushkin Press, as a publisher, takes after Alexander Pushkin’s name should publish his works among others. The Captain’s Daughter is a historical novel that is among Pushkin’s most interesting works that codified the modern Russian language. The story tells a romanticized account of the Pugachev’s Rebellion between 1773-1774, most notably in the region of Orenburg. The rebellion itself was one of a series of popular rebellion that took place in the Russian Empire after Catherine the Great took power in 1762. As the Russian monarchy caused the demise of the serfs, the peasants ran amok to support the rebellion. After a series of success, Yemelyan Pugachev assumed power and took the name of the late Tsar Peter III to pose an alternative government to the Empire led by Catherine the Great, he declared an end of serfdom. Apart from the historical facts, this story focuses on the account of Pyotr Andreyich Grinyov, a military officer who served in Orenburg.
In my opinion, the story is a bit face-paced. In short, Pyotr Andreyich was only 17 when his father sent him to serve in the military post in Orenburg. He was assigned at Fort Belogorsky under captain Ivan Mironov. Upon having dinner with the Mironovs, Pyotr fell in love with Marya Ivanovna, the daughter of the captain. This caused a competition between Pyotr and his fellow officer, Shvabrin who was turned down by Marya. They did a duel when Shvabrin insulted Marya’s honour but lost and injured. Soon, the fortress was besieged by Pugachev’s army who got help from the cossacks who defected to his side, causing the fortress to fall easily. Captain Mironov and his wife were murdered after refusing to swear allegiance to Pugachev, leaving Marya Ivanovna orphaned as a result. Shvabrin defected to Pugachev’s side, and it was finally turning for Pyotr to also change his side. When Pugachev realised that Pyotr was the person he once rescued from a blizzard, he was about to be executed.
As a short novel, The Captain’s Daughter seems to be a really concise story with little need to explain historical contexts, unlike most modern historical fiction. Each of Pushkin’s sentences finds its way to form the bigger narrative of the turbulent situation in the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great. It captures the heroic side of a minor character, Pyotr Andreyich, against the bigger layer of Pugachev’s Rebellion. Morally, it asserts the view of loyalty to Catherine, while at the same time also poignantly describes the tragic-yet-ending-happily love between Pyotr Andreyich and Marya Ivanovna as a result of Pyotr’s flight from Orenburg.
I have yet to read Pushkin’s other works, but this edition published by Pushkin Press also includes two short stories written by Pushkin: The Stationmaster and The Queen of Spades. Between the two, I like the former more rather than the latter. The Stationmaster tells the story from the first-person point of view of someone who befriends many stationmasters in some parts of the Russian Empire that he has traversed. One day, he passed a station where he befriended a stationmaster a long time ago, but it turned out that the station no longer operates. Curiosity brought him to the knowledge that his friend has passed away one year ago and is now buried. The tone kinda echoes [a:Thomas Mann|19405|Thomas Mann|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430109860p2/19405.jpg]’s short story The Road to the Churchyard, that I can’t help thinking that Thomas Mann might have got his inspiration from Pushkin’s story. But overall between the stories included in this edition, The Captain’s Daughter is the most interesting as it provides an outlook to the Russian society during the reign of Catherine the Great.
In my opinion, the story is a bit face-paced. In short, Pyotr Andreyich was only 17 when his father sent him to serve in the military post in Orenburg. He was assigned at Fort Belogorsky under captain Ivan Mironov. Upon having dinner with the Mironovs, Pyotr fell in love with Marya Ivanovna, the daughter of the captain. This caused a competition between Pyotr and his fellow officer, Shvabrin who was turned down by Marya. They did a duel when Shvabrin insulted Marya’s honour but lost and injured. Soon, the fortress was besieged by Pugachev’s army who got help from the cossacks who defected to his side, causing the fortress to fall easily. Captain Mironov and his wife were murdered after refusing to swear allegiance to Pugachev, leaving Marya Ivanovna orphaned as a result. Shvabrin defected to Pugachev’s side, and it was finally turning for Pyotr to also change his side. When Pugachev realised that Pyotr was the person he once rescued from a blizzard, he was about to be executed.
As a short novel, The Captain’s Daughter seems to be a really concise story with little need to explain historical contexts, unlike most modern historical fiction. Each of Pushkin’s sentences finds its way to form the bigger narrative of the turbulent situation in the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great. It captures the heroic side of a minor character, Pyotr Andreyich, against the bigger layer of Pugachev’s Rebellion. Morally, it asserts the view of loyalty to Catherine, while at the same time also poignantly describes the tragic-yet-ending-happily love between Pyotr Andreyich and Marya Ivanovna as a result of Pyotr’s flight from Orenburg.
I have yet to read Pushkin’s other works, but this edition published by Pushkin Press also includes two short stories written by Pushkin: The Stationmaster and The Queen of Spades. Between the two, I like the former more rather than the latter. The Stationmaster tells the story from the first-person point of view of someone who befriends many stationmasters in some parts of the Russian Empire that he has traversed. One day, he passed a station where he befriended a stationmaster a long time ago, but it turned out that the station no longer operates. Curiosity brought him to the knowledge that his friend has passed away one year ago and is now buried. The tone kinda echoes [a:Thomas Mann|19405|Thomas Mann|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430109860p2/19405.jpg]’s short story The Road to the Churchyard, that I can’t help thinking that Thomas Mann might have got his inspiration from Pushkin’s story. But overall between the stories included in this edition, The Captain’s Daughter is the most interesting as it provides an outlook to the Russian society during the reign of Catherine the Great.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Something About Pushkin
(Daniil Kharms, [b:Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings|792712|Today I Wrote Nothing The Selected Writings|Daniil Kharms|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348685296l/792712._SX50_.jpg|778695], 1936).
No writer in the world, not even Shakespeare or Goethe, has ever been more venerated in his homeland than Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, Russia’s mythic national bard, proclaimed in unison by the Russians their ‘all’, their Genius, their divinity, the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ of Russia, and Art incarnate. Even the Soviets acknowledged his unique and godlike status, exploiting the Pushkin cult during the height of the purges, mirroring Stalin’s cult of personality. At the 1937 Jubilee Pushkin was made a representative Soviet hero just has Dostoevsky in his famous speech has made him the ultimate Russian prophet in 1880, at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. While one hero after another has toppled in Post-Communist Russia, Pushkin has withstood all the vicissitudes of Russian regime changes, to emerge intact. Growing sideburns in Russia, all the rage in the 19th Century, is nowadays still immediately associated with trying to imitate the poet.
Turning more and more to prose after 1830, Pushkin wrote the concise historical novel The Captain’s Daughter, the only novel he finished, published two months before his tragic death in 1836.
Unlike his poetry, Pushkin’s prose didn’t resonate much with the wider audience at the time. Blending a style averse from prolixity or frippery, playing with literary conventions and genres, his prose didn’t fit the more conventional taste of his time. But his prose deeply impressed the literati following in his footsteps: Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Nabokov.
At the end of his life, Tolstoy preferred Pushkin the prosaist above Pushkin the poet: 'The main thing in him is the simplicity and terseness of the narrative: there is never anything superfluous. Pushkin is amazing because it is impossible to change a single word in his writings. And not only is it impossible to take away a word, but it is impossible to add one'.
The captain’s daughter was Chekhov’s favorite. According to Gogol, Pushkin’s friend and protégé “in comparison with The Captain’s daughter, all our novels and tales are like saccharine mush. Purity and lack of artifice rise to such a high degree in it that reality itself seems artificial and a caricature next to it.” Dostoevsky praised the naturalness of his prose. Dealing with the most important paroxysm of popular fury known in Russian history, the Soviets valued The Captain’s Daughter for its realism and apparent class-consciousness.
The obligated romance and quarrelling about Masha, the daughter of the officer mentioned in the title of the novel, occurs more like a fairytale subplot, a vehicle to highlight two antagonist characters: the narrator, the naïve and noble poet-hero Pyotr Grinyov, and the archetypical disloyal villain, Shvabrin. In fact, they look like anemic schoolboys compared to Puskhin’s vivid portrayal of the real protagonist of the story, the Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev, the leader of the most widespread and serious popular revolt under Catherine the Great in the years 1773-1775. Pushkin put a lot of effort in his research on the resurrection, studying state archives and travelling to Orenburg to interview witnesses. The bloodshed and savagery - on both sides – aren’t sugarcoated – Pushkin’s nonchalant observations on tsarist mutilation punishments like nose-cutting and the slaughtering and hanging of officers by the rebels left me shivering. Unlike his image in official history, Pugachev himself however is not depicted as a monster. Pushkin accredits him with human traits, painting vibrantly his boisterous bravura, casual cruelty and boasting vanity as well as his camaraderie, magnanimity and simple generosity.
Unless his latent sympathy for his fictitious Pugachev, Pushkin, the nobleman of “six—hundred-year-old lineage” , clearly rejects the insurrection:
God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others.
Having a soft spot for the Russian classics ever since my youth, I was enchanted when reading Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin years ago (and mesmerized by the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky). The Captain’s Daughter is the kind of novel I turn to when longing for homecoming, for charm, equivalent to a beam of sunlight, a treat. I loved the dynamic vitality of the language, the compelling and powerful story, the playfulness, and was intrigued by the picaresque complexity of Pugachev’s personality and this part of Russian history.
Thank you so much, Florencia, for reminding me of this gem.
It’s hard to say something about Pushkin to a person who doesn’t know anything about him. Pushkin is a great poet. Napoleon is not as great as Pushkin. Bismarck compared to Pushkin is a nobody. And the Alexanders, First, Second and Third, are just little kids compared to Pushkin. In fact, compared to Pushkin, all people are little kids, except Gogol. Compared to him, Pushkin is a little kid..
And so, instead of writing about Pushkin, I would rather write about Gogol.
Although, Gogol is so great that not a thing can be written about him, so I'll write about Pushkin after all.
Yet, after Gogol, it’s a shame to have to write about Pushkin. But you can’t write anything about Gogol. So I’d rather not write anything about anyone.
(Daniil Kharms, [b:Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings|792712|Today I Wrote Nothing The Selected Writings|Daniil Kharms|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348685296l/792712._SX50_.jpg|778695], 1936).
No writer in the world, not even Shakespeare or Goethe, has ever been more venerated in his homeland than Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, Russia’s mythic national bard, proclaimed in unison by the Russians their ‘all’, their Genius, their divinity, the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ of Russia, and Art incarnate. Even the Soviets acknowledged his unique and godlike status, exploiting the Pushkin cult during the height of the purges, mirroring Stalin’s cult of personality. At the 1937 Jubilee Pushkin was made a representative Soviet hero just has Dostoevsky in his famous speech has made him the ultimate Russian prophet in 1880, at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. While one hero after another has toppled in Post-Communist Russia, Pushkin has withstood all the vicissitudes of Russian regime changes, to emerge intact. Growing sideburns in Russia, all the rage in the 19th Century, is nowadays still immediately associated with trying to imitate the poet.
Turning more and more to prose after 1830, Pushkin wrote the concise historical novel The Captain’s Daughter, the only novel he finished, published two months before his tragic death in 1836.
Unlike his poetry, Pushkin’s prose didn’t resonate much with the wider audience at the time. Blending a style averse from prolixity or frippery, playing with literary conventions and genres, his prose didn’t fit the more conventional taste of his time. But his prose deeply impressed the literati following in his footsteps: Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Nabokov.
At the end of his life, Tolstoy preferred Pushkin the prosaist above Pushkin the poet: 'The main thing in him is the simplicity and terseness of the narrative: there is never anything superfluous. Pushkin is amazing because it is impossible to change a single word in his writings. And not only is it impossible to take away a word, but it is impossible to add one'.
The captain’s daughter was Chekhov’s favorite. According to Gogol, Pushkin’s friend and protégé “in comparison with The Captain’s daughter, all our novels and tales are like saccharine mush. Purity and lack of artifice rise to such a high degree in it that reality itself seems artificial and a caricature next to it.” Dostoevsky praised the naturalness of his prose. Dealing with the most important paroxysm of popular fury known in Russian history, the Soviets valued The Captain’s Daughter for its realism and apparent class-consciousness.
The obligated romance and quarrelling about Masha, the daughter of the officer mentioned in the title of the novel, occurs more like a fairytale subplot, a vehicle to highlight two antagonist characters: the narrator, the naïve and noble poet-hero Pyotr Grinyov, and the archetypical disloyal villain, Shvabrin. In fact, they look like anemic schoolboys compared to Puskhin’s vivid portrayal of the real protagonist of the story, the Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev, the leader of the most widespread and serious popular revolt under Catherine the Great in the years 1773-1775. Pushkin put a lot of effort in his research on the resurrection, studying state archives and travelling to Orenburg to interview witnesses. The bloodshed and savagery - on both sides – aren’t sugarcoated – Pushkin’s nonchalant observations on tsarist mutilation punishments like nose-cutting and the slaughtering and hanging of officers by the rebels left me shivering. Unlike his image in official history, Pugachev himself however is not depicted as a monster. Pushkin accredits him with human traits, painting vibrantly his boisterous bravura, casual cruelty and boasting vanity as well as his camaraderie, magnanimity and simple generosity.
Unless his latent sympathy for his fictitious Pugachev, Pushkin, the nobleman of “six—hundred-year-old lineage” , clearly rejects the insurrection:
God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others.
Having a soft spot for the Russian classics ever since my youth, I was enchanted when reading Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin years ago (and mesmerized by the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky). The Captain’s Daughter is the kind of novel I turn to when longing for homecoming, for charm, equivalent to a beam of sunlight, a treat. I loved the dynamic vitality of the language, the compelling and powerful story, the playfulness, and was intrigued by the picaresque complexity of Pugachev’s personality and this part of Russian history.
Thank you so much, Florencia, for reminding me of this gem.
mi è piaciuto sin dalla prima pagina, mi ha lasciato un segno profondissimo
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Sono rimasta piacevolmente sopresa da questo libro, perchè ha un'ironia e una vivacità che che normalmente non si associano ai romanzi russi, intensi e monumentali.
Tutto qui invece è dinamico, si entra subito nel vivo della vicenda e le descrizioni lasciano il posto a dialoghi brillanti ed incisivi. I personaggi sono fortemente caratterizzati e alcuni quasi caricaturali (pensiamo al devotissimo servo Savel'ic), l'unico a mancare di spessore è proprio il protagonista, che in quanto narratore della storia sembra destinato ad un ruolo più da "spettatore" che da attore.
Si respira un clima giocoso, anche nei momenti più tragici c'è comunque un brio che potrebbe sembrare fuori luogo, ma che in realtà serve a sdrammatizzare e paradossalmente a coinvolgere di più il lettore.
Attenzione però a non farsi ingannare dalle apparenze e a non scambiare la leggerezza per superficialità: dietro la trama rocambolesca c'è un lavoro storico molto accurato e l'ironia nasconde riflessioni acute sul potere e sul conflitto di classe.
Lo stile rispecchia il tono dell'opera ed è semplice e scorrevole, complice anche l'estrema brevità.
Insomma una piccola gemma della letteratura russa, a cui approcciarsi con la mente sgombra da pregiudizi e pronti a lasciarsi rapire dalla storia.
Tutto qui invece è dinamico, si entra subito nel vivo della vicenda e le descrizioni lasciano il posto a dialoghi brillanti ed incisivi. I personaggi sono fortemente caratterizzati e alcuni quasi caricaturali (pensiamo al devotissimo servo Savel'ic), l'unico a mancare di spessore è proprio il protagonista, che in quanto narratore della storia sembra destinato ad un ruolo più da "spettatore" che da attore.
Si respira un clima giocoso, anche nei momenti più tragici c'è comunque un brio che potrebbe sembrare fuori luogo, ma che in realtà serve a sdrammatizzare e paradossalmente a coinvolgere di più il lettore.
Attenzione però a non farsi ingannare dalle apparenze e a non scambiare la leggerezza per superficialità: dietro la trama rocambolesca c'è un lavoro storico molto accurato e l'ironia nasconde riflessioni acute sul potere e sul conflitto di classe.
Lo stile rispecchia il tono dell'opera ed è semplice e scorrevole, complice anche l'estrema brevità.
Insomma una piccola gemma della letteratura russa, a cui approcciarsi con la mente sgombra da pregiudizi e pronti a lasciarsi rapire dalla storia.
Read when I was 17. Beautiful short story about love during peasant uprisings in the late eighteenth century in Russia. Pushkin isn't my favorite Russian author, but this was a nice acquaintance with that literature.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes