The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podgolomorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.

Hello, in 1846, the Critic Bolinsky said, there is, quote, seemingly nothing easier, but in fact, nothing

harder than to write about Russian literature.

End quote.

Bolinsky had early grades like Pushkin and Gogol to talk about,

but some of Russia's greatest literature was yet to come.

Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Pasternak, these became household names in Russia and beyond.

At the start at the 20th century as Russian literature became more widely available in English a kind of Russian craze said in among English-speaking writers and intellectuals

H.G. Wells and Henry James were fans, even fanatics.

And Virginia Wolf, 20 years after reading War and Peace at the age of 26,

said that she read it one summer while lying in bed enthralled and that she had called Tolstoy the

greatest of novelists ever since.

In 1914, 34 British intellectuals signed a statement in the London Times, thanking Russian

writers for their contributions to the world.

Quote, beneath all the strangeness, there was a deep sense of having discovered a new home,

of meeting our unknown kindred, of finding expressed great burdens of thought which had lain unspoken.

End quote.

Even today we talk about Russian literature or sometimes just the Russians as in

I've been reading the Russians. As if Russian novels and sometimes short stories and poetry are a thing apart,

a special something exemplifying certain qualities and undeniably great.

Genius, we say, unrivaled, unsurpassed, culturally significant, great achievements on a level with Bach and Mozart or the Sistine

Chapel.

...