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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Last year’s Lermontov posts

    If anyone is interested in going deeper into the topic of Lermontov and the Caucusus, there are a few old posts on this blog that you can check out. There’s a map of Vladikavkaz up here, and a post on Lermontov’s Romantic Caucusus-themed paintings here.

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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 [...]

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Apropos of Lermontov

As you may have realised while reading A Hero of our Time, most of the action in the first section takes place in the now heavily contested borders of “independent” (at least according to Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) South Ossetia.  With winter coming on, and most of the mountainous passes becoming impassable, it looked as though [...]

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Lermontov’s Image of Tbilisi

Here’s a postcard of Tbilisi, ca. 1890s: The city appears to enjoy a moderate climate, is encircled by a few low hills, and has a calm, smoothly-running river in the middle of town. You can click this link here to view another, more modern photograph that appears to have a lot in common with the [...]

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Tbilisi – Vladikavkaz

here’s the area where the narrator’s journey in “Bela” takes place: Take a good zoom in to view the massive Caucasian Mountains that are located in-between. It was this area that registered a good portion of the hostilities in September of this year.

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