Tag: Tolstoi

“Darwin and Mechnikov in Tolstoy’s literary imagination”

On By europeancollectionsIn RussianLeave a comment

Friday 9 October sees the start of the 2015/16 CamCREES seminars. At the previous year’s final seminar, Professor Anna Berman (McGill University) spoke on Tolstoy’s attitude towards the scientific discoveries of Charles Darwin and Il’ia Mechnikov.  These CamCREES bibliographical notes look at accounts of Tolstoy’s meeting with Mechnikov and at Russian books on the latter and Darwin.

Darwin, Mechnikov, Tolstoy
An intellectual triptych:Darwin, Mechnikov, Tolstoy.

Tolstoy’s opinion of science and scientists was, as all his opinions, very certain and firmly held.  Mechnikov in particular comes in for a scathing reception in his letters and diaries (one of his books is described as “very interesting in its scientific stupidity”).  Yet, as Professor Berman explained, despite Tolstoy’s frequent criticism of Darwin’s and Mechnikov’s theories “their ideas helped shape his fictional works. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy used his two main characters to represent an acceptance and a rejection of Darwinian theory and, in so doing, highlighted the dangers of regarding it as scientific law. In his final novel, Resurrection, rather than making the characters’ fates provide a judgement on scientific theory as he did in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy co-opted Mechnikov’s phagocytic theory for his own ends, making it the metaphoric basis for his moral philosophy. This offered him a way of synthesizing science and religion through art.” (from the talk’s abstract)

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“Tolstoy, Chekhov, and the music of Russian prose”

On By europeancollectionsIn Historical collections, Russian, SlavonicLeave a comment

The latest CamCREES bibliographical notes look at Dr Rosamund Bartlett’s talk on 3 December 2013 on Chekhov, Tolstoi, music, and English modernism.  They end with explorations of a major new website about Tolstoi and the incredible literary resources offered by the online Fundamental’naia elektronnaia biblioteka (Fundamental electronic dictionary).

The end of Chekhov's short story Student, showing the enormous 94-word concluding sentence, which Dr Bartlett mentioned in her talk (757:23.d.90.96)
The end of Chekhov’s short story Student, showing the enormous 94-word concluding sentence, which Dr Bartlett mentioned in her talk (757:23.d.90.96)

The final CamCREES seminar of the Michaelmas term and the last of the seminars arranged as part of Dr Katia Bowers’ CEELBAS-funded project ‘Promoting the Study of Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature in the UK’ saw an excellent turnout for an extremely interesting talk.  Dr Rosamund Bartlett of the University of Oxford spoke about music and the works of Chekhov and Tolstoi, looking at patterns of musical composition in the writings of these authors and drawing links with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, whose own work has recently started to be considered in musical terms.  As Dr Bartlett explained, these new angles of criticism cast Chekhov and Tolstoi, traditionally considered realists, in a more modernist light.

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“Tolstoy’s ‘About mushrooms'”

On By europeancollectionsIn Historical collections, Russian, SlavonicLeave a comment

The latest set of CamCREES bibliographical notes looks at Professor Robin Feuer Miller’s talk on 12 November 2013 on the tale of the mushroom hunt in Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina.  They end with a look at Tolstoi-related publications catalogued in the University Library in 2013, with search tips and an insight into some of the Library’s working practices.

Text from the mushroom hunt scene in Tolstoi's Anna Karenina (757:23.d.85.186-188)
Text from the mushroom hunt scene in Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina (757:23.d.85.186-188)

The third CamCREES seminar of Michaelmas 2013, once again part of Dr Katia Bowers’ CEELBAS-funded project ‘Promoting the Study of Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature in the UK’, was given by Professor Robin Feuer Miller of Brandeis University and the University of Oxford.  Her talk focused on a small section of Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina which involves two relatively minor characters: Varen’ka, a young woman who Kitty (Kiti in Russian) has met at a German spa, and Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev, the half-brother of Kitty’s husband Levin.  The section of the novel focused on in the seminar describes a mushroom hunt undertaken by these two characters in Levin’s estate, during which a proposal of marriage is prepared for but never realised.

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