U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature

(14) Love and Mushrooms Anton Chekhov is often considered the first great short story writer in the modern vein. He is known for the s...

(13) Marriage and Family (con.) Throughout the novel Tolstoy treats a huge variety of family relationships and quasi-relationships. ...

Tolstoy and His Family, at the time of Writing of "Anna Karenina" (from A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy (N.Y., 1988) (12)...

IVAN BUNIN LATE IN LIFE Bust in Yelets, Russia By the mid-thirties Nabokov-Sirin's position as the best prose writer of t...

On Mar. 18, 1921, Vladimir Nabokov, who was still a student at Cambridge University, wrote the following letter to Ivan Bunin in Russia...

Once Vladimir Nabokov was setting off to hunt butterflies near the Wellesley lake. A distraught student from one of his classes approach...

Vronsky and Frou-Frou Before the Race Illustration by Orest Verejsky (10) Vronsky the Rider Why does Vronsky, an expert hors...

"Watching the Race," Illustration by Orest Verejsky (9) The Steeplechase One of the most famous scenes in the nove...

Late in Tolstoy's life the young English writer Desmond MacCarthy came on a visit to the Yasnaja Polyana estate. Tolstoy took him as...

"Dear Sweet Anna" In March, 1887, Anton Chekhov's brother Aleksandr fell ill with typhus. Anton Pavlovich immediately...

(8) Karenin's Compassion Following the metaphor of the crippled dog (see previous post), we are given some insight into why Kareni...

(7) Sympathy for Karenin As previously discussed, after she falls in love with Vronsky, Anna views her husband largely in terms of hi...

"Karenin." Illustration of the novel by K. Rudakov, 1940-1945 (6) Karenin's Ears Tolstoy's habit of viewing h...

Tolstoy House Museum in Moscow (5) Tolstoy's Alter Ego Lyovin. Fascination with Physical Details Konstantin Lyovin ...

Tolstoy with His Family, Yasnaya Polyana, 1892 (4) Stiva, Monogamy, and Oysters "Anna Karenina" treats a wide va...

(3) Stiva in the 1870s Like nearly all of the great Russian realists, Tolstoy is intent on describing the Russia of his time in his nov...

Lev Tolstoy, Moscow, 1862, photo by M.B. Tulinov (2) THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NOVEL: STIVA OBLONSKY Citations are from ...

Note: Back when I was teaching at Miami University I developed 125 pages of lecture text (handwritten) on the novel "Anna Karenin...

The year 2014 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of Mikhail Lermontov's birth. So all over the Russian-speaking world people are get...

First published book of short fiction by U.R. Bowie http://www.amazon.com/Anyway-Anyways-Short-Stories-Collected/d...

SPEAKING WITH STRANGERS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita features the story of Satan's...