Annotated Class 27/11

I wanted to pass on a few links following our discussion in today’s class.
The first is to a blog post from last year regarding Pushkin’s mythic status in the Russian cannon.  Specifically, Pushkin’s more sexually-charged poetry was suppressed in the Soviet Union in order to maintain his saint-like status.  The link can be found here.
There’s [...]

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More on Chatman

In today’s 19th century class, we discussed a possible reading of Lermontov’s HoT according the Chatman’s diagram of narrative elements (ie author, implied author, narrator, etc.).
The book that this comes from is Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1980), by Seymour Benjamin Chatman.  Here’s a passage from page 150 dealing with the [...]

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Physiognomy: Fighting on in the 20th Century

In one of last week’s classes, we discussed the 19th-century psuedo science known as physiognomy, where one attempts to divine personality traits of a subject given their physical attributes.  This “science” was extremely popular in the 1830s in Russia, and certainly did seem to have influence upon Lermontov.
Most sources that treat physiognomy refer to it [...]

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Who was Lord Byron?

Today in class we were discussing Lord Byron and the impact of his work upon Lermontov’s HoT.  If you have twenty minutes, check out this podcast on Lord Byron’s life.
It’s from the “Stuff you Missed in History Class” programme at HowStuffWorks.com.  They broadcast free, entertaining, and informative bits on history, and their site is well [...]

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A more clear outline on russian participles …

I did a bit of a quick run through participles in class yesterday, and I just wanted to direct you to a useful resource in case you’d like  more systematic approach.  In particular, I mixed the adverbial and adjectival participles together (which could be a little confusing).  The site has all kinds of hilarious little [...]

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Annotated Class 13/11

(For your assignment for Tuesday, please click here.)
To make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a list of the main points I hit today:
(Please take a close look at them and ask if you have any questions because I’ll be asking you about this material next week!)
1.    Pushkin did not come from nowhere. [...]

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Tuesday Assignment

Here are the two reading assignments for Tuesday: also make sure to help out with our PROROK translation!
Also remember to bring a copy of these poems along with you to class on Tuesday with all of your mark-ups on them.
Now after our class on Pushkin and The Myth Of Pushkin, it might be an opportune [...]

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our class’s PROROK translation

NB: the original is here.
1“Spiritual thirst torments me,
I wandered in a gloomy desert,-
And a six winged seraph
Appeared before me at the crossroads.”
3 His ears touched me / My ears touched him (???)
And they are filled with sound and chime
And I heed Heaven shuddering / And shuddering I heed Heaven (damn Russian word order!)
And mountain angels [...]

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Update for Thursday’s class

I’ll be handing out “Gypsies” tomorrow in class along with the reading assignment for next Tuesday.
For tomorrow: let’s start getting up parts of the PROROK translation (you’ll see below that I have marked the poem numerically)
Again, tomorrow’s class will be one part lecture, and one part discussion section that will be class lead.  Please be [...]

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For Thursday

Hey all: today we’re going over two Pushkin poems.
For tomorrow we’re starting work on Pushkin’s “Gypsies”.  You should already have found and read the text in English.
A Russian version is available here.
We’ll have a total of three classes on the piece.

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