#superfluous man

[ivo3d]

'the superfluous man's anger' (being redundant is a kind of a revelation recently, originally this clip was made for the next piece (oh, russland, territorium), but it seems to be unnecessary as well)

[ostolero]

thinking of him

[ionbookintros]

Rudin

Part 1 of the full audiobook reading, with scrolling text, on YouTube. The rest of the parts and the chapter-by-chapter videos are queued in the playlist.

Watch the rest in the playlist: Ion Books on YouTube.

Subscribe to Ion Books: @ionbooks.

[russia-libertaire]

After the 'superfluous man'

Gorkiy's favourite type is the 'rebel' - the man in full revolt against society, but at the same time a strong man, a power; and as he has found among the tramps with whom he has lived at least the embryo of this type, it is from this stratum of society that he takes his most interesting heroes.

Gorkiy cannot stand whining; he cannot bear such self-castigation in which other Russian writers so much delight - which Turgueneff's sub-Hamlets used to express so poetically, of which Dostoyevskiy has made a virtue, and of which Russia offers such an infinite variety of examples. Gorkiy knows the type, but he has no pity for such men. Better anything than one of those egotistic weaklings who gnaw all the time at their own hearts, compel others to drink with them in order to perorate before them about their 'burning souls'; those beings 'full of compassion', which, however, never goes beyond self-commiseration, and 'full of love' which is never anything but self-love.

Russian Literature, by Peter Kropotkin

[russia-libertaire]

The superfluous man...

...'the hero of the new literature of protest, a member of the tiny minority of educated and morally sensitive men, who, unable to find a place in his native land, is driven in upon himself, and liable to escape either into fantasies and illusions, or into cynicism or despair, ending more often than not, in self-destruction or surrender.'

'Fathers & Children', in Russian Thinkers, by Isaiah Berlin

[clovercloverclover]

You cannot tell me, you cannot teach me what it is that I want, give it all to me so that I — and as for tenderness - you can find it anywhere!

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov

[russia-libertaire]

“Happy is the man who carries on work already begun, who receives his occupation as an inheritance: he is introduced to it at an early age, he has no need to spend half his life making a choice; his energies, being confined and concentrated, are not wasted; accordingly, he accomplishes something. We, on the other hand, are always beginning all over again; the only thing we inherit from our fathers is movable and immovable property, and this we rarely preserve intact; that is why most of us are inclined to do nothing, and if we should desire to do something, we find ourselves in a boundless steppe – here, go wherever you like: north, east, south, west! - free we are, but we will never get anywhere, and all because of our many-faceted inactivity, our active indolence.”

What is to be Done?, by Alexander Herzen

[russia-libertaire]

“New gates were opened to him with an audible squeak. Beltov passed through them and found himself in an unknown land, so unfamiliar in fact that he could find no place for himself therein; he was out of sympathy with every aspect of the life surging about him…”.

What is to be Done?, by Alexander Herzen