Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterises modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by young Tourgénieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out of the débris of a novel.N:
The Christian decision to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.(And let's not forget the havoc wreaked by Platonic dialogues!)
And it's a phenomenally stupid way of assessing the value of literature—by instrumentalizing it and showing it to be good for promoting something else.I don't assess the value of literature that way. I was responding to the OP: "Imagine how different the world would be if he had died as a result of one of them."
But just how many other works of literature have had measurable effects outside of literature?Hilarious.
Literature isn't a closed system, but the openings are pretty small.
I don't assess the value of literature that way. I was responding to the OP: "Imagine how different the world would be if he had died as a result of one of them."How different would the world be if Shakespeare hadn't lived? I hadn't heard of this guy but apparently people think he's the Russian equivalent. I think the idea that things would be the same without him seem ridiculous. You can't "measure" these kinds of things because it's a chaotic system, but anything that influences people's thinking in a broad way is going to have a major effect.
I'm just wondering- are these types of duels usually to the death? Two men enter, one man leaves kind of deal? Seems like it would have thinned the young high born male population an awful lot if so!Death at a young age was much more common though. I mean, we are talking about essentially no modern medical care for anyone, no matter how rich they were. People routinely died from cuts and scrapes getting infected.
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is father to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
They say that a man whose leg is cut off at the hip can feel it for a long time, moving nonexistent toes and flexing nonexistent muscles. Thus will Russia long continue to feel the living presence of Pushkin. [...] I do not think one could find any other poet who peered so often—now in jest, now superstitiously, or with inspired seriousness—into the future. Right to this day there lives in the Province of Kursk, topping the hundred mark, an old man whom I remember as being already elderly, stupid and malicious—but Pushkin is no longer with us. Meeting in the course of my long life with remarkable talents and living through remarkable events, I have often meditated on how he would have reacted to this and that: why, he could have seen the emancipation of the serfs and could have read Anna Karenin! . . . Returning now to these reveries of mine I recall that once in my youth I had something in the nature of a vision. This psychological episode is closely linked with the recollection of a personage still thriving to this day, whom I shall call Ch.—I trust he will not blame me for this revival of a distant past. We were acquainted through our families—my grandfather had once been friendly with his father. In 1836, while abroad, this Ch. who was then quite young—barely seventeen—quarreled with his family (and in so doing hastened, so they say, the decease of his sire, a hero of the Napoleonic War), and in the company of some Hamburg merchants sailed nonchalantly off to Boston, from there landing in Texas where he successfully took up cattle breeding. [...] Once, on a winter's day in 1858, he visited us unexpectedly at our house on the Moyka, in St. Petersburg: Father was away and the guest was received by us youngsters. As we looked at this outlandish fop [...] my brother and I could hardly contain our laughter and decided there and then to take advantage of the fact that during all these years he had heard absolutely nothing of his homeland, as if it had fallen through some trap door, so that now, like a forty-year-old Rip van Winkle waking up in a transformed St. Petersburg, Ch. was hungry for any news, the which we undertook to give him plenty of, mixed with our outrageous fabrications. To the question, for instance, was Pushkin alive and what was he writing, I blasphemously replied, “Why, he came out with a new poem the other day.” That night we took our guest to the theater. It did not turn out too well, however. [They see a performance of Othello with "the famous black tragedian Aldridge."]posted by languagehat at 8:47 AM on April 21, 2012 [11 favorites]
“Look who's sitting next to us,” my brother suddenly said to Ch. in a low voice, “There, to our right.”
In the neighboring box there sat an old man. . . . Of shortish stature, in a worn tailcoat, with a sallow and swarthy complexion, disheveled ashen side-whiskers, and sparse, gray-streaked tousled hair, he was taking a most eccentric delight in the acting of the African: his thick lips twitched, his nostrils were dilated, and at certain bits he even jumped up and down in his seat and banged with delight on the parapet, his rings flashing.
“Who's that?” asked Ch.
“What, don't you recognize him? Look closer.”
“I don't recognize him.”
Then my brother made big eyes and whispered, “Why, that's Pushkin!”
...It seems funny now to recall what a strange mood came upon me then: the prank, as happens from time to time, rebounded, and this frivolously summoned ghost did not want to disappear: I was quite incapable of tearing myself away from the neighboring box; I looked at those harsh wrinkles, that broad nose, those large ears . . . shivers ran down my back, and not all of Othello's jealousy was able to drag me away. What if this is indeed Pushkin, I mused, Pushkin at sixty, Pushkin spared two decades ago by the bullet of the fatal coxcomb, Pushkin in the rich autumn of his genius. . . . This is he; this yellow hand grasping those lady's opera glasses wrote Anchar, Graf Nulin, The Egyptian Nights. . . . The act finished; applause thundered. Gray-haired Pushkin stood up abruptly, and still smiling, with a bright sparkle in his youthful eyes, quickly left his box.
Philby: "I'm just wondering- are these types of duels usually to the death? Two men enter, one man leaves kind of deal?"A duel stipulated until death would probably have been unusual (reserved for great affronts). The norm would have been for the challenged to fire first, then the challenger shoots, and then any survivors go their merry way again.
« Older Have a seizure.... | We shrugged when friends told ... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Think how much different the world would be without James Clerk Maxwell, for comparison. Or Thomas Edison. Or Abraham Lincoln.
If the only thing this guy influenced was "Russian and American literature", that's pretty small beans.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:00 PM on April 20, 2012 [2 favorites]