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Don't get me started on Russian literature classes Tom Send a noteboard - 05/04/2017 04:10:04 AM

The most recent poem I can recall reading in a Russian literature class in the 1990s was from the 1930s. It was all prewar Akhmatova, or Mandelstam, or Tsvetaeva at the most recent. It was as though literature ended completely when World War II started in their minds. No one would ever teach a class on postwar authors at the time. It was infuriating. I can appreciate that authors from the 1980s or who were publishing then might not make it onto their radar because it's hard to determine what will endure or be meaningful and what won't, but it was already clear that the 1960s authors had made a mark by then. Hell, even if they didn't want to accept them they at least knew Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were significant writers.

Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.

ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius

Ummaka qinnassa nīk!

*MySmiley*
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Yevgeny Yevtushenko, influential Russian poet, has passed away - 03/04/2017 05:30:50 PM 9252 Views
He loomed large in the novel by Aksyonov I read relatively recently, A Mysterious Passion. - 04/04/2017 03:47:45 AM 2097 Views
Non-Russians don't necessarily know they should be interested. - 04/04/2017 12:35:49 PM 1950 Views
I must say, I don't think I'd heard of him before. - 04/04/2017 10:31:26 PM 2017 Views
Poetry loses almost everything in translation. - 05/04/2017 04:05:34 AM 2272 Views
You'd be able to name Pushkin too. - 05/04/2017 01:11:14 PM 2125 Views
Don't get me started on Russian literature classes - 05/04/2017 04:10:04 AM 2013 Views
Mine was similar. - 05/04/2017 01:17:59 PM 1884 Views
I honestly don't know enough about him. - 04/04/2017 12:41:35 PM 1911 Views
You know his work. You just don't know you know it. - 05/04/2017 03:56:28 AM 2040 Views
This appears to be true. - 05/04/2017 01:22:49 PM 2065 Views

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