Title | Russia's gift to the world |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Hodder and Stoughton |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1915 |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 48 pages; 22 cm. |
Original Item Location | DK32.7.M3 1915 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304497~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 14 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_1315132_013.jpg |
Transcript | 12 Russia's Gift to the World i I in Europe. The great impulse towards a truly national Russian literature was given by the national war of 1812, and the first really great work which that impulse produced was Karamzin's History oj Russia, published in the year after Waterloo. For its period it was a remarkable achievement merely as history, but its chief importance was in its larger aspect as literature. It established interest among the educated classes in the history of their own country, and it also established Russian prose as a fine art, and became a classic on its literary merit. About the same time there were writing a number of poets who, though not of the first rank, helped to do for verse what Karamzin had done for prose. All this work was pioneering in unexplored regions. It may help us to understand Russian literature to think of it as like English literature starting with Scott and Byron if these authors had had no predecessors except the ballads, chronicles, and romances of the Middle Ages, and if in the beginning of the 19th century they had had to make their language as well as write in it. The new movement rapidly bore fruit, and it took shape in the works of Pushkin, the real founder of modern Russian literature. He was both a poet and a prose writer of the romantic school; he corresponds broadly to both Scott and Byron in this country. He was much influenced by Shakespeare, but his genius was quite individual and also quite national. His narrative poem, Evgeny Onegin, his historical tragedy, Boris Godunov, and his prose stories of Russian life are all masterpieces. He remains not only a founder but a model. He was more of an artist than a thinker, but his writings have a purity and sincerity of the highest and most lasting value. Like Scott, he was a romantic who did not lose touch with reality, and who gave voice in his writings to the life of his nation. Through him Russian literature was able to claim a place t m |