yeah, I am a huge fan for Russian literature ( before 1917) and movies (before 1989). I have been to St Petersburg three times. I took thousand pictures there and most of mine were for architecture and landscape only. I love yours more...I was exhausted every time. Next time if I go there, I won’t take my camera (I don’t think I can do this, hahahahahaha).
Thanks again! I had a very good time in your blog and I will continue enjoy your posts, past and present ones...
I just had a quick flash in my mind for what I have read in the past from Russian literature. You are so right: 富人当然只写些贵族间的故事，即便有穷人的世界，也是通过富人的眼睛看到的，又和穷人从自己的角度描述不同。
In any case Russia's upper classes oscillated between sympathy and hatred for the peasantry. Many landlords were brutes.
Turgenev was among the first writers to insist that the peasants had much to teach the intelligentsia. Memories of childhood helped. But a chasm of distrust persisted between privileged writer and poor, downtrodden peasant.
I will reread the book with your insight. Thanks...
megchen 发表评论于
回复北京西城区的评论:
Thank you for your reply. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia was written by Orlando Figes, a British scholar.
In Tolstoy's War and Peace Natasha Rostova, at the end of a day's hunting, goes to a wooden hut where folk songs are played to the balalaika. Natasha twirls around. But it is not a waltz or polka she is doing. Without even thinking about it, she dances like a peasant girl.
Figes's point is that upper-class Russia was always much more "Russian" than it pretended. Members of the educated elite liked to impress each other with their European and urban sophistication; and in their palaces or salons in the cities they disdained to draw attention to their rural connections.
Still can not change your idea: "娜塔莎那段舞在电影里并没有达到你描述的那样效果..."?
Thanks for the discussion! It's very interesting, isn't it. Actually, I love Pierre Bezukhov most in War and Peace.
"Taking its title from a scene in Tolstoy's War and Peace, where the young countess Natasha Rostova intuitively dances a peasant dance, the book "Natasha's Dance" explores the tensions between the European and folk elements of Russian culture, and examines how the myth of the 'Russian soul' and the idea of 'Russianness' itself have been expressed by Russian writers, artists, composers and philosophers."
Sadly, I couldn't find the scene in Russian version of movie "War and Peace" from website. If you have watched the movie, you would be very impressed.
megchen 发表评论于
Many thanks for sharing. I simply love these pictures.
"曾有次与德国朋友聊天，被问到如何评价俄罗斯人。想了想，我说：他们的确是那片天空下的子民。" What a description!
Russia was described by Winston Churchill as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". It was a conventional thought, eccentrically expressed.
Russian high culture and its conundrums ravished the western 19th-century imagination. The novelists Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky conquered Europe. Even Turgenev, whose prose was carefully coutured, depicted the sharp edges of Russian life. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, though, were out on their own. Their characters - aristocrats, Caucasian tribesmen, drunkards, prostitutes and soldiers - gambled, sang and philosophised in each other's company.
-words from a review for a book callled Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia.
