Thomas Seltzer

Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who, leaving the art galleries, wanders out among the trees and wild flowers and birds that the pictures of the galleries have sentimentalised. It is some such joy that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness. Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "Behold how the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor, as it were, from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the well-to-do. There is no insistence upon peculiar virtues or vices. The poor are portrayed just as they are, as human beings like the rest of us.

Best Russian Short Stories

Leonid Andreyev

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES

"It is some such joy that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. The whole of Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness." From Chekhov to Gorky, Pushkin to Dostoyevsky, Russian writers have long been celebrated for their excellent short fiction. Even Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, one of the longest novels ever written, wrote short stories. These Russian storytellers, along with others, are represented here by nearly a score of stories. Acting as translator and editor, Thomas Seltzer selected these as the very best examples of Russian short fiction (including three stories by Anton Chekhov, whom Raymond Carver declared to be "the greatest of all short story writers").

Russia's Best Short Stories (Illustrated)

Leo Tolstoy

Fyodor Dostoevsky

""Everything is subordinated to two main requirements -- humanitarian ideals and fidelity to life. This is the secret of the marvelous simplicity of Russian literary art."" -- THOMAS SELTZER These stories -- by such Russian masters as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Maxim Gorky, Nikolay V. Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Alexsandr S. Pushkin, Feodor Sologub, and Leonid Andreyev -- were collected and published in English in the years just before the Russian Revolution. In a very real sense, they sum to show the revolution that would come: food for thought from Russian masters of the literary arts.

Embers of a Revolution

Nikolai Gogol

Claud Field

D. j. Hogarth

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 - 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls), leading to his eventual exile. The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman," "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich," "The Portrait" and "The Carriage," round out the tally of his best-known works. In this book: The Mantle and Other Stories Translator: Claud Field The Inspector-General Translator: Thomas Seltzer Dead Souls Translator: D. J. Hogarth Taras Bulba and Other Tales

Thomas Seltzer

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