Lectures on Russian Literature

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This volume complements the widely praised <i> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/971579.Lectures_on_Literature" title="Lectures on Literature" rel="nofollow noopener">Lectures on Literature</a> </i>, which the <i>Washington Post Book world</i> ranked "with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1461.Flaubert_s" title="Flaubert's" rel="nofollow noopener">Flaubert's</a> letters, James's prefaces and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6765.Woolf_s" title="Woolf's" rel="nofollow noopener">Woolf's</a> diaries as privileged, nourishing, irreplaceable meditations on the art of fiction." If Nabokov sparkled in those lectures on European authors, here in his commentaries on the great 19th-century Russian writers—<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/232932.Gogol" title="Gogol" rel="nofollow noopener">Gogol</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/410680.Turgenev" title="Turgenev" rel="nofollow noopener">Turgenev</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3072763.Gorki" title="Gorki" rel="nofollow noopener">Gorki</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3137322.Dostoevski" title="Dostoevski" rel="nofollow noopener">Dostoevski</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/128382.Tolstoy" title="Tolstoy" rel="nofollow noopener">Tolstoy</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5031025.Chekhov" title="Chekhov" rel="nofollow noopener">Chekhov</a>—he is completely in his element. "Not only did these writers represent to him the absolute height of Russian Literature (with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3072763.Pushkin" title="Pushkin" rel="nofollow noopener">Pushkin</a>, of course)," Fredson Bowers notes, "but they also flourished counter to the utilitarianism that he despised both in the social critics of the time and, more bitingly, in its later Soviet development." They were the last unfettered voices of his lost homeland. As Nabokov guides readers through intricacies of plot and character, meticulously supplemented with facts about 19th-century Russia, he again demonstrates his brilliance as a teacher and his ability to enchant. Thirty-eight illustrations give evidence of the care with which he prepared these celebrated lectures.