Other Worlds

Other Worlds PDF Author: Teffi
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681375397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Stories about the occult, folk religions, superstition, and spiritual customs in Russia by one of the most essential twentieth-century writers of short fiction and essays. Though best known for her comic and satirical sketches of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Teffi was a writer of great range and human sympathy. The stories on otherworldly themes in this collection are some of her finest and most profound, displaying the acute psychological sensitivity beneath her characteristic wit and surface brilliance. Other Worlds presents stories from across the whole of Teffi’s long career, from her early days as a literary celebrity in Moscow to her post-Revolutionary years as an émigré in Paris. In the early story “A Quiet Backwater,” a laundress gives a long disquisition on the name days of the flora and fauna and on the Feast of the Holy Ghost, a day on which “no one dairnst disturb the earth.” The story “Wild Evening” is about the fear of the unknown; “The Kind That Walk,” a penetrating study of antisemitism and of xenophobia; and “Baba Yaga,” about the archetypal Russian witch and her longing for wildness and freedom. Teffi traces the persistent influence of the ancient Slavic gods in superstitions and customs, and the deep connection of the supernatural to everyday life in the provinces. In “Volya,” the autobiographical final story, the power and pain of Baba Yaga is Teffi’s own.

Other Worlds

Other Worlds PDF Author: Teffi
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681375397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Stories about the occult, folk religions, superstition, and spiritual customs in Russia by one of the most essential twentieth-century writers of short fiction and essays. Though best known for her comic and satirical sketches of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Teffi was a writer of great range and human sympathy. The stories on otherworldly themes in this collection are some of her finest and most profound, displaying the acute psychological sensitivity beneath her characteristic wit and surface brilliance. Other Worlds presents stories from across the whole of Teffi’s long career, from her early days as a literary celebrity in Moscow to her post-Revolutionary years as an émigré in Paris. In the early story “A Quiet Backwater,” a laundress gives a long disquisition on the name days of the flora and fauna and on the Feast of the Holy Ghost, a day on which “no one dairnst disturb the earth.” The story “Wild Evening” is about the fear of the unknown; “The Kind That Walk,” a penetrating study of antisemitism and of xenophobia; and “Baba Yaga,” about the archetypal Russian witch and her longing for wildness and freedom. Teffi traces the persistent influence of the ancient Slavic gods in superstitions and customs, and the deep connection of the supernatural to everyday life in the provinces. In “Volya,” the autobiographical final story, the power and pain of Baba Yaga is Teffi’s own.

Memories - From Moscow to the Black Sea

Memories - From Moscow to the Black Sea PDF Author: Teffi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781782272991
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description


Teffi

Teffi PDF Author: Edythe Haber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786724391
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Get Book Here

Book Description
Teffi was one of twentieth century Russia's most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.

Teffi

Teffi PDF Author: Edythe Haber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786734397
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
Teffi was one of twentieth century Russia's most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.

Subtly Worded and Other Stories

Subtly Worded and Other Stories PDF Author: Teffi
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1782270833
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
A selection of the finest short stories from “one of the most popular writers in Russia,” praised by many as the female Chekhov (The New York Times) Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny—a wry, scathing observer of society—she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of émigré society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

In the Eye of the Wild

In the Eye of the Wild PDF Author: Nastassja Martin
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1681375850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
After enduring a vicious bear attack in the Russian Far East's Kamchatka Peninsula, a French anthropologist undergoes a physical and spiritual transformation that forces her to confront the tenuous distinction between animal and human. In the Eye of the Wild begins with an account of the French anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s near fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear in the mountains of Siberia. Martin’s professional interest is animism; she addresses philosophical questions about the relation of humankind to nature, and in her work she seeks to partake as fully as she can in the lives of the indigenous peoples she studies. Her violent encounter with the bear, however, brings her face-to-face with something entirely beyond her ken—the untamed, the nonhuman, the animal, the wild. In the course of that encounter something in the balance of her world shifts. A change takes place that she must somehow reckon with. Left severely mutilated, dazed with pain, Martin undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, while also being grilled by the secret police. Back in France, she finds herself back on the operating table, a source of new trauma. She realizes that the only thing for her to do is to return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Even people call it, medka, a person who is half human, half bear. In the Eye of the Wild is a fascinating, mind-altering book about terror, pain, endurance, and self-transformation, comparable in its intensity of perception and originality of style to J. A. Baker’s classic The Peregrine. Here Nastassja Martin takes us to the farthest limits of human being.

A Very Russian Christmas

A Very Russian Christmas PDF Author: Mikhail Zoshchenko
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931444
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of short Christmas stories by some of Russia’s greatest nineteenth and twentieth century authors—several appearing in English for the first time. Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, this collection offers a holiday feast of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy; Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales; Chekhov’s unmatchable skills are on full display in his story of a female factory owner and her wretched workers; Klaudia Lukashevitch delights with a sweet and surprising tale of a childhood in White Russia; and Mikhail Zoshchenko recounts madcap anecdotes of Christmas trees and Christmas thieves in the Soviet Era—a time when it was illegal to celebrate the holiday in Russia. There is no shortage of imagination, wit, or vodka on display in this collection that proves, with its wonderful variety and remarkable human touch, that nobody does Christmas like the Russians.

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141392541
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Get Book Here

Book Description
'She turned into a frog, into a lizard, into all kinds of other reptiles and then into a spindle' In these tales, young women go on long and difficult quests, wicked stepmothers turn children into geese and tsars ask dangerous riddles, with help or hindrance from magical dolls, cannibal witches, talking skulls, stolen wives, and brothers disguised as wise birds. Half the tales here are true oral tales, collected by folklorists during the last two centuries, while the others are reworkings of oral tales by four great Russian writers: Alexander Pushkin, Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov and Andrey Platonov. In his introduction to these new translations, Robert Chandler writes about the primitive magic inherent in these tales and the taboos around them, while in the afterword, Sibelan Forrester discusses the witch Baba Yaga. This edition also includes an appendix, bibliography and notes. Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler With Sibelan Forrester, Anna Gunin and Olga Meerson

Rasputin and Other Ironies

Rasputin and Other Ironies PDF Author: Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Tėffi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781782272175
Category : Russian essays
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings

Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today

Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today PDF Author: Simon Morrison
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871408309
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this “incredibly rich” (New York Times) definitive history of the Bolshoi Ballet, visionary performances onstage compete with political machinations backstage. A critical triumph, Simon Morrison’s “sweeping and authoritative” (Guardian) work, Bolshoi Confidential, details the Bolshoi Ballet’s magnificent history from its earliest tumults to recent scandals. On January 17, 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid into the face of the artistic director, making international headlines. A lead soloist, enraged by institutional power struggles, later confessed to masterminding the crime. Morrison gives the shocking violence context, describing the ballet as a crucible of art and politics beginning with the disreputable inception of the theater in 1776, through the era of imperial rule, the chaos of revolution, the oppressive Soviet years, and the Bolshoi’s recent $680 million renovation. With vibrant detail including “sex scandals, double-suicide pacts, bribery, arson, executions, prostitution rings, embezzlement, starving orphans, [and] dead cats in lieu of flowers” (New Republic), Morrison makes clear that the history of the Bolshoi Ballet mirrors that of Russia itself.