Taking a Literary Tour through 19th-Century Russia

By Stan Walens

In the decades from 1848-1914, Russia underwent one of the greatest social upheavals in human history. What had been for 1,500 years a medieval farming society based on serfdom and slave labor—with powerful nobles acting as warlords constantly threatening a weak central government—rapidly transformed into a modernized society, with over 35,000 miles of railroads, suburbs centered around large cities, and the largest steel production facilities in the world. Yet these enormous changes also created a new society in which poverty was widespread for all but a few obscenely wealthy, corruption was rampant, and hopelessness was common. Russia became a cauldron, boiling with suppressed rage, a perfect breeding ground for political extremism and the underpinnings of revolution.

During this time of immense social turmoil, three Russian authors stand out as the key moral and political voices of their era: Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoievski, and Lev “Leo” Tolstoy. Learn a few facts and discover how these three authors came to be celebrated as three of the best writers of their time.

1. Born into a wealthy family, Ivan Turgenev inherited his family’s vast estates and thousands of serfs. Yet he was a political progressive whose first book, Notes of a Hunter, was as influential in the ending of serfdom in Russia as Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to putting an end to slavery in the United States. Fathers and Sons, one of the first novels to depict a vast family saga and the ideological clash of generations, provided the model for many other historic sagas, from Gone with the Wind, to Doctor Zhivago, to Dynasty.
2. Unlike his fellow writers, Dostoievski and Tolstoy, who saw Russia’s salvation as coming from its deeply-rooted Orthodox spirituality, Turgenev saw Russia’s future as lying in the adoption of Western European principles of social reform. Frustrated by criticisms of his work by critics who found his progressivism anti-Russian, and frightened of persecution by the secret police, he moved to Paris, where he began a decades-long affair with the beautiful and intelligent Pauline Viardot, the most famous opera singer of the time. The two of them counted among their colleagues and friends nearly every famous artist, musician and author of the 19^th Century, from Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt to Gustave Flaubert and Henry James.
3. Russia has a long history of persecuting writers and artists, and during the tumultuous 1840s and 1850s, when violent revolution was sweeping across Europe, Tsar Nicholas I had thousands of artists arrested, exiled or executed. In 1849, Dostoievski was part of a group called the “Petrashevsky Circle” that was discovered and disbanded by the government. After eight months in prison, Dostoievski was sentenced to death, but just moments before being shot found out that his sentence had been commuted to four more years in prison plus four years in the Siberian army. The mock execution and subsequent “show of mercy” was staged by the Czar merely to impress people with his benevolence.
4. The novels of the great 19^th Century Russian authors are rich with psychological insight and an awareness of the complexity of the human psyche. Sigmund Freud considered Fyodor Dostoievski’s The Brothers Karamazov to be one of the “greatest artistic achievements of all time” and held it in equal esteem with Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Dostoevsky and Parricide, 1928). In addition, four of Dostoievski’s works are on the 100 Best Novels list, including Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
5. Throughout his life, Leo Tolstoy was profoundly influenced by the political and religious thinkers of his time. After finishing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy turned increasingly towards a life of simplicity and self-denial. He adopted a philosophy—whose ancient origins Tolstoy found in the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha, but whose modern origins can be traced to the works of Thoreau—that all social change should be achieved with nonviolent resistance to the State, whose power he considered to be immoral. Tolstoy’s writing on religion and nonviolence has had profound impact on the last century of world history, influencing leaders as diverse as Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Join instructor Peter Clark in one of his latest course offerings and enjoy some of the most unforgettable and beautiful characters in fiction while learning about the fascinating lives and personalities of some of the world’s greatest authors.

Five Facts about Faulkner

All the great writers of the American South have an incredible sense of place. In their works, the South is more than just a setting, but is a character of its own. William Faulkner’s masterpieces are no exception: they are filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of the South and the distinctive frame of mind of its people. Faulkner’s richly-imagined Yoknapatawpha County, a fictionalized version of his own Mississippi homeland, is inhabited by a cast of vivid and unforgettable characters that Faulkner drew from his own family’s centuries-long history in the American South.

Faulkner, a bona fide Southern gentleman who shunned the spotlight, was a unique character himself, who often amused those around him with his idiosyncratic ways. Here are a few fun facts to provide a new perspective on this astonishing literary genius:

1)      Faulkner declined a dinner invitation from First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, saying, “That’s a long way to go just to eat.” (What the Great Ate, Jacob and Jacob)

2)      He supported himself as a postmaster at the University of Mississippi, but was fired for reading on the job.

3)      Faulkner never graduated from high school or earned a college degree, yet he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, two Pulitzers prizes, and the National Book Award, twice.

4)      A notorious ladies man, Faulkner’s affair with the young writer, Joan Williams, from 1949–53, is the subject of her 1971 novel, The Wintering. (One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, Jay Parini)

5)      He wrote two volumes of poetry The Marble Faun (1924), which is named after a Nathanial Hawthorne novel, and A Green Bough (1933), as well as a short story collection of crime-fiction called Knight’s Gambit (1949).

Take the time to immerse yourself in literature and history with instructor Michael Caldwell in one of his upcoming courses.

Finding a Place for Jane (Austen)

By Peter Clark

Jane Austen created some of the most memorable characters ever to appear on literature’s grand stage. Born in 1775—the year marking the start of the American Revolution—she lived during the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, but her characters rarely talk about or even allude to these massive turning points in European and American history. For that reason,  she has been labeled,  mainly by male critics, as a miniaturist,  as opposed to such 19th century titans as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky who focused on some of the major movements of their day. However, since when is human nature a small subject?

Jane Austen’s continuing appeal to all ages comes from the fact that she writes about real human beings in such depth and with such artistic wit and irony. In some ways, Austen herself is an enigma, a spinster aunt who never rubbed shoulders or exchanged ideas with the literary elite of Regency England. She never married and perhaps was courted just a time or two, yet every scene involving Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy—even when they seem to dislike each other—crackles with romantic energy and tension. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy seem to Austen’s millions and millions of followers in countries around the world as real people, not simply make-believe characters in a novel. Her characters pop off the pages and walk around your home as if they were members of your family.

Though she lived only 42 years, four of her six books—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion and Emma—are classics that appeal to one generation after another and which seamlessly translates into movies. Why? Because she is a master of dialogue, so much so that directors usually let the books tell the story without changing so much as a noun or pronoun. Not even Shakespeare invented a comical character as hilarious and entertaining as Reverend Collins in Pride and Prejudice, whose pompous vocabulary and toadying to his superiors leaves us in awe of Austen’s wit and her mastery of irony.

Other authors, nearly all of them male, often discounted Austen’s writing. Henry James underrated her work, sniffing that she accidentally found her metier and produced tolerably decent novels dealing with the manners and morals of the English country gentry, but of course nothing like his more “sophisticated” books. Mark Twain claimed he hated Austen’s novels, although his famous line (“I hated Pride and Prejudice the first time I read it and still hated it after a sixth reading”) suggests otherwise in ironic fashion.

Peter Clark earned a Ph.D. in History and Literature from the University of California-Berkeley. He has taught numerous courses in both subjects for the UC San Diego Extension program, including courses in English, Russian and American literature. He is currently teaching The Genius of Jane Austen which begins April 12, 2012.

Please note, in a previous version, a research paragraph was added by an editor that lacked proper attribution and was included without Dr. Clark’s knowledge. We apologize for the error. It has been corrected in the current version.

Living the Literary Life

By Reneé Weissenburger

My love affair with literature art began at an early age. As with most children, it began with fairy tales, and not those nice, sugary ones, either: I loved the tragic tales, mermaid foam and all. By the end of grade school, I had formed intimate alliances with Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisa May Alcott and Judy Blume.

As a teenager, I used these guides quite literally—such as the summer I lugged around a giant pot of basil trying to understand Keats’ Isabella and her tragic love of Lorenzo. I have always been interested in trying to crawl beneath the skin of such characters, to find out what makes them tick, what makes them endure.

While I still love dressing up as ill-fated heroines, I tend to use these texts and images a little more pragmatically these days. Tennessee Williams, for example, is the constant voice of compassion in my ear. Virginia Woolf reminds me how fragile and isolated we all are—even in a crowd. Toni Morrison makes me weep for the world, while Gabriel Garcia Marquez reminds me to marvel at it. To date, I have yet to encounter a situation—no matter how lovely or horrifying—that these great instructors have not helped me through.

Reneé Weissenburger, M.A., in Literature and Writing has worked as an artist for CoTA (Collaborations, Teachers, Artists), a non-profit program that seeks to integrate art into existing public school curricula, and as a literature & creative writing instructor at National University over the last six years. She is immensely interested in the relationship between literature and art. She is teaching two courses in Winter: Magical Realism: Where the Mythic Meets the Mundane and Beyond Image: Using Photography with Other Media.

UC San Diego Extension is also offering a course in Winter entitled Literature, Imagination, and the Sacred with Catherine Guthrie, who will also share view on the literary life in January.