Many have heard of Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but few have managed to crack through the depths of their ambitious narratives. The first reaction of many when it comes to approaching Russian literature is one of overwhelming emotion; I myself admit that there is a daunting feeling that settles in me every time I see the sheer size of Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, with many of his – and other Russian authors’ – novels reaching quadruple-figure page counts of expansive and panoramic narratives of characters across decades.
These literary giants are treated like cultural monuments; their literature has sparked conversation not just on their creative work, but also on the political, ethical and social dilemmas relating both to the societies they inhabited, as well as to a universal readership. The greatness of the Russian literary giants in their development of the novel form cannot be ignored. Whilst the novel was informed by the French literary style before the ‘birth’ of Russian prose through the literary innovation of Alexander Pushkin, prose narratives permeated by introspective psychological exploration into their characters, led to the formation of what many understand to be a characteristically ‘Russian’ novel.
However, innovation for Russian authors has not just been limited to the novel form and is captured in the work of playwrights and modern novelists such as Chekhov and Nabokov respectively. From Chekhov’s use of the dramatic form to embody the performative and visible deterioration of the aristocratic classes of the Russian empire during its descent in The Cherry Orchard to Nabokov’s fragmented fusion of writing styles in Pale Fire and construction of emigree narratives built on memory in Mary, these writers have managed to not only break the mould of the Western literary canon they were set apart from in the 20th century, but also reshape an understanding of Russian identity, which was growing to become increasingly splintered.
It was this splintering of Russian identity that led to interrogations of the accessibility of the canon. Whilst many have argued that characteristically ‘dense’ narratives have made it impossible for historically disadvantaged groups in society to access them, modern translations have widened readership – these groups could finally not only involve themselves in discussions on narratives, but also envision themselves in them. Once an author known for the complexity of his narrative layers, Tolstoy’s characteristic discussions on the boundaries of morality have actually directly influenced (and not isolated) the work of female author Tatyana Tolstaya, and the Kyrgyzstan author Chingiz Aitmatov.
It is this very characteristically ‘dense’ nature of Russian literature that has, over centuries, inspired generations of authors and opened up the possibility of the expansion of Russian identity away from the hegemonic experiences of the patriarchally defined aristocracy. Perhaps we ourselves should learn to reshape our way of thinking when approaching these ‘Russian literary giants’, pushing our own moral codes of conduct (or, in other words, our boundaries). And it is in this spirit that I think I am finally convinced to pick up Anna Karenina once again…
Photo by Светлана Химочка on Unsplash