The business of comparing national literatures across
languages and time is definitely tricky. Take the English 19th century
prose from Jane Austen through Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Trollope, George
Eliot, Hardy, to Joseph Conrad. By any yardstick it would be recognized as an
exceptional constellation of talent. How exceptional? Maybe not so exceptional
when one brings in the Russians. The 19th century Russian novelists
and short story writers, that is. What we have there is a fully comparable
embarrass des riches: Pushkin (yea, “Eugene Onegin” is a novel) Lermontov (“A
Hero of Our Time”), Gogol, Herzen, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekov.
It may not come as a complete surprise to the reader of this
blog that I love 19th century Russian literature (I love the English
19th century too). In fact, the alert reader of “The Estate of
Wormwood and Honey” might notice that the book pays specific homage in a number
of instances to these 19th century Russian writers by making
references to the various themes that were important either in their lives or
in their books.
I challenge you to engage in some harmless literary
detective work. Your object is to match a theme in the book to at least one 19th
century Russian writer from among those listed above. Some connections are
fairly obvious, others might not be. Correct answers will be provided in future
posts.
Themes/references in “The Estate of Wormwood and Honey”:
1.
Battle of Borodino (Chapter XXX)
2.
Inanities of provincial courtship (Chapter
XXXII)
3.
Libraries (Chapter XXXII)
4.
Provincial officialdom (Chapter V)
5.
Close bonds with old servants (Chapter X)
6.
Siberian penal settlements (Chapter XXVIII)
7.
Losing one’s prized possessions to gambling (Chapter
XXVI)
8.
Cruelty to and abuse of one’s own family members
(Chapters XXII, XXIII, and XXVIII)
9.
Elderly decorated officials and their pretty young
wives Chapter (Chapter V)
10. Obrok
vs. barshchina (modalities of settling serfdom obligations) (Chapter VIII)
11. German
relatives (Chapters X, XIX, and XXIII)
12. Natural
sons (Chapter XVII and many others)