Russian Stories

A Dual-Language Book

Gleb Struve

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486120287
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The story, or novella, as a literary genre has a much shorter history in Russia than in some Western countries, but it has nevertheless produced important works by some of the greatest names in Russian literature. This dual-language volume contains 12 such stories — memorable tales by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Bunin, and other masters. Each selection is presented here in the original Russian with an excellent literal English translation on the facing pages.
Also included are linguistic and cultural notes, a Russian-English vocabulary, study questions and more. In addition, Professor Struve has supplied an enlightening introduction to the Russian short story, as well as concise biographical/critical introductions to each selection. An especially helpful feature for students of Russian is the presence of stress accents in the Russian text, a feature usually found only in primers.

NIKOLAY GOGOL

(1809-1852)

Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol-Yanovsky (he dropped the second half of his family name) was born in the little town of Sorochintsy—it figures in one of his stories on which Mussorgsky based his short comic opera—in the Province of Poltava. His family was Ukrainian (or Little Russian, as Gogol himself would have said) Cossack gentry. His father was a small landowner and an amateur playwright who, unlike his son, wrote in Ukrainian. After studying at the Lyceum of Nezhin, Gogol went to St. Petersburg and entered civil service. Later he taught history at the Young Ladies’ Institute and even at the University of St. Petersburg, though in this latter job he almost immediately proved a failure. He had come to Petersburg with literary ambitions and a long narrative poem in his pocket. Upon its publication, it proved a complete flop: Gogol bought up the copies and destroyed them. Stung by this setback he decided to emigrate to America but went only as far as Lübeck. Befriended and encouraged by Zhukovsky, Pushkin and other writers of their circle, he brought out in 1831 and 1832 the two volumes of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, followed in 1835 by two volumes of Mirgorod and two volumes of Arabesques (which contained his first Petersburg stories). In April 1836 his comedy Revizor (The Government Inspector), which many believe to be the greatest comedy in the Russian language, was produced in Petersburg. It had a mixed reception. Rather in a huff, Gogol left Russia and for the next twelve years lived abroad, in Rome and elsewhere. There he wrote The Overcoat and the first volume of Dead Souls, his greatest work. Gogol’s last years were marked by a profound psychological and religious crisis. Suffice it to mention: the publication of his Selected Passages from a Correspondence with Friends (in 1847), a book of great conceit and yet of undoubted sincerity which incensed even his closest friends and greatest well-wishers; his frantic trip to the Holy Land in quest of spiritual comfort (1848); his subsequent fits of ascetic self-mortification; his burning of his manuscripts, including most of the second volume of Dead Souls (1852). The account of the details of Gogol’s death reads like a grotesque nightmare from one of his own works.

Gogol is one of the most enigmatic and controversial figures in Russian literature, both as a man and as a writer. Belinsky and other social-minded critics extolled him as the father of Russian realism. Thi...