Lectures on Russian literature

In lecture courses prepared in the 1940-1950s for students of the University of Welle and Cornell University and first published in 1981, the largest Russian-American writer of the 20th century, Vladimir Nabokov, appeared before his audience as a thoughtful reader, insightful, meticulous and very very much A preferential researcher, temperamental and demanding teacher. On the pages of this volume, the nabokov-class gives an excellent lesson in the “close reading” of the works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorky-reading, whose method is exhaustively described by the author himself: “Literature, real literature, you should not swallow in one gulp, like a detergent, useful for the heart or mind, this "stomach" of the soul. Literature must be taken in small doses, crushing, crushing, grinding - then you will feel its sweet fragrance in the depths of the palms, it needs to be gnawed, with pleasure rolling in your mouth in your mouth, and then you will appreciate its rare aroma and fragmented, fragmented, then it is dignified. The crushed particles will again combine in your mind and will gain the beauty of the whole, to which you mixed a little of your own blood. ”