What to read from the classics of Russian literature reviews. Classical Literature (Russian)

I will quit smoking on Monday. Next week I will start running and join the gym. At the weekend I'll clean up the room and find a job. You have to do more, right?

2019 has landed on our shoulders. It's time to get off the couch, open your eyes, drink mineral water and finally start. I have compiled for you 2 lists of books of world and Russian literature, which you should familiarize yourself with at least in 2016, if you have not done so before. Let's start, perhaps, with the "boring" Russian classics. Listen!

Fyodor Dostoevsky "Dream of a Ridiculous Man"

Have you thought about suicide at least once in your life? If not, then this is no reason to bypass Dostoevsky's story. Everyone knows this author purely from the book "Crime and Punishment", however, in my opinion, in order to fully understand the essence of Dostoevsky, one should start with the story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". How to understand the essence of human existence before the last shot in the head? How to exchange paradise for world wars and hatred of one's neighbor? And most importantly - how not to pull the trigger. The end of the story can be titled with the expression "Cherchez la femme", if you understand why, then everything was not in vain.

Anton Chekhov "Ward number 6"

Do you think Russian classics go better with a glass of vodka? I have a subjective opinion on this matter, but how are things going with Comrade Gromov's views? How to combine reading books, a glass of vodka, a psychiatric hospital and two brilliant people with completely different and at the same time the same views on existence in this world? Such an oxymoron permeates the whole story about the sad truth of the cheerful Chekhov. Have you already figured out how to drink literature?

Evgeny Zamyatin "We"

Yevgeny Zamyatin can be safely considered the founder of the great genre of dystopia. I'm sure if you chose him, then you simply must know such great anti-utopians as Orrwell and Huxley. If these names mean something to you, then without even thinking, get Zamyatin for yourself and start absorbing it with tablespoons. The military system, coupon relations and solid capital letters. Instead of people. Instead of names. Instead of life.

Leo Tolstoy "Death of Ivan Ilyich"

On the cover of this book, I would write in huge red letters: “Caution! Causes frustration, pain and awareness. Sentimental stupid people are strictly forbidden.” Forget about the hackneyed book "War and Peace", you have a completely different side of Leo Tolstoy, which is worth all the volumes of a huge novel. Trying to find a deep semantic subtext in the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", you will miss the most important thing that lies on the surface. A banal, simple truth that is available to everyone, every time eluding us. If you found it in the story, and besides, you learned to live by it, my bow to you and white envy.

Ivan Goncharov "Oblomov"

That's something, and in the novel "Oblomov" to find yourself as easy as shelling pears. Alas. How beautiful is the contemplation of this life from the outside, when the stupid vanity of this world bypasses you. First love that somehow makes you get off the couch, obsessive friends, always trying to pull your lazy ass into the light - how absurd this whole "seething life" is. Avoid it, contemplate, think and dream, dream, dream! If you are a supporter of this statement, congratulations, your soul mate has been found in the protagonist of the novel Oblomov.

Maxim Gorky "Passion-face"

It is no coincidence that Gorky's work received such a symbolic name "Passion-muzzle", because the story cannot be read without trembling in the knees. If you love children too much, don't read. If you are impressionable and emotional - do not read. If girls with syphilis disgust you, don't read. In general, do not listen to me now, open the book and start to be afraid of the cruel realities of this life. The social bottom, dirt, vulgarity and yet truly happy, "pure" people in children's and adult swords about impossible happiness.

Nikolai Gogol "Overcoat"

A small person against a huge terrible society, or how to lose everything that is dear to you, even if it is a simple overcoat. A stingy official, an unnecessary environment, a small happiness in exchange for a great disappointment and death as the only logical conclusion. It is on the example of Akaki Bashmachkin that we will consider a large weighty and significant problem of society - the theft of an overcoat.

Anton Chekhov "The Man in the Case"

How do you keep in touch with your work colleagues, classmates or friends? I will advise one great way to improve your communication skills - come to visit them and be silent. I give you a 100% guarantee that society will be delighted with you. An umbrella in a case, a watch in a case, a face in a case. A kind of shell behind which a person tries to hide, protect himself from the outside world. A man who even managed to shove his sincere love into a case and protect it not only from the object of love, but also from himself. So what about maintaining relationships? Shall we keep quiet?

Alexander Pushkin "The Bronze Horseman"

And again we meet the big problem of the little man, only this time in Pushkin's work "The Bronze Horseman". Eugene, Parasha, Peter and a love story, it would seem, what could be more ideal for the plot of a romantic drama? But no, this is not "Eugene Onegin" for you. We break love, we break a city, we break a person, we add to this a drop of the symbolic image of the Bronze Horseman and we get the perfect recipe for one of Pushkin's best poems.

Fyodor Dostoevsky "Notes from the Underground"

And the last one on the list of Russian classics will be the one with whom we, in fact, began - the great beloved Dostoevsky. It is no coincidence that I put “Notes from the Underground” in the final place. After all, this work is not just exciting, it is wild in places, so to speak. Increased awareness of being is a deadly disease. Activity is the lot of the limited and stupid. If you like these interpretations, then you will like Dostoevsky, and if you also humiliated prostitutes at least once in your life, then the "underground" will become your favorite place to stay.

Read about the top 10 foreign classic books in the second part of the book list for 2016. Love Russian classics.

Ancient Greece

Homer "Odyssey" and "Iliad"

Did Homer really write these poems? Was he blind? And did it exist at all? These and other questions still remain unanswered, but pale in the face of eternity and the value of the texts themselves. The epic "Iliad", which tells about the Trojan War, was for a long time better known than the "Odyssey", and to a greater extent influenced European literature. But the wanderings of Odysseus, written in simple language, are almost a novel, perhaps the first one that has come down to us.

Great Britain

Charles Dickens "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

An innovative novel that shows real life without embellishment, Dickens composed at the age of 26. He did not have to strain his imagination much: the main character, who lived in poverty, is the author himself, whose family went bankrupt when the future writer was just a child. And even the name of the main villain Feygin Dickens took from life, borrowing, however, from his best friend.

The release of "Oliver Twist" had a bombshell effect in England: society, in particular, vied with each other to discuss - and condemn - child labor. Through the novel, readers learned that literature can act as a mirror.

Jane Austen "Pride and Prejudice"

A cornerstone of British literature, as classic as Eugene Onegin in Russia. Quiet home young lady Austin wrote "Pride" quite young, but published only 15 years later, after the success of the book "Sense and Sensibility". Austen's phenomenon, among other things, is that almost all of her novels are classics, but Pride and Prejudice stands out against the general background with the presence of one of the most amazing couples in world literature - Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Darcy is a household name, without him Britain is not Britain. In general, "Pride and Prejudice" is the very case when the sign "women's romance" causes not a smirk, but admiration.

Germany

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Faust"

The 82-year-old Goethe completed the last, second part of Faust six months before his death. He began work on the text when he was twenty-five. Goethe put all the scrupulousness, efficiency and attention to detail inherited from the pedant-father into this ambitious work. Life, death, world order, good, evil - "Faust", like "War and Peace", in its own way is an exhaustive book in which everyone will find answers to any answers.

Erich Maria Remarque "Arc de Triomphe"

“One of the two always abandons the other. The whole question is who will get ahead of whom”, “Love does not tolerate explanations. She needs deeds ”- Remarque’s novel from those books that diverge into quotes. The love story in Paris besieged by the Germans turned the heads of more than one generation of readers, and the author's romance with Marlene Dietrich, and persistent rumors that it was Dietrich who became the prototype of Joan Mado, only add to the charm of this beautiful book.

Russia

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"

Fyodor Dostoevsky was forced to write this novel because of the need for money: gambling debts, the death of his brother Mikhail, which left his family without funds. The plot of Crime and Punishment was "inspired" by the case of Pierre François Lacière, a French intellectual murderer who believed that society was to blame for his deeds. Dostoevsky composed parts, each of which was published in the journal Russkiy Vestnik. Later, the novel came out as a separate volume, in a new edition, abridged by the author, and began an independent life. Today, "Crime and Punishment" is part of the world classics, one of the symbols of Russian literature and culture in general, translated into many languages ​​and filmed many times (up to the manga comic of the same name).

Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace"

The epic four-volume masterpiece, written in several passes, ended up taking Tolstoy nearly six years. "War and Peace" is inhabited by 559 heroes, the names of the main ones - Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova, Bolkonsky, have become household names. This novel is a large-scale (many people think that it is completely exhaustive) statement about everything in the world - war, love, the state, etc. The author himself quickly lost interest in War and Peace, a few years later calling the book "wordy", and at the end of his life - just "nonsense".

Colombia

Gabriel Garcia Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

The saga of the Buendia family is the second most popular Spanish text in the world (the first is Cervantes's Don Quixote). An example of the "magic realism" genre, which has become a kind of brand that unites completely different authors, such as Borges, Coelho and Carlos Ruiz Safon. One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by 38-year-old Marquez in a year and a half; To write this book, a father of two quit his job and sold his car. The novel was released in 1967, at first it was sold somehow, but eventually gained worldwide fame. The total circulation of "One Hundred Years" today is 30 million, Marquez is a classic, winner of everything in the world, including the Nobel Prize, a symbolic writer who has done more for his native Colombia than anyone else. It is thanks to Marquez that the world knows that in Colombia there are not only drug lords, but also

Being an active reader, I will try to take on the role of an assistant and sketch out a few ideas, making a list of the most recognized and most successful, from my point of view, works of both domestic and foreign literature. Most of these novels have already won and continue to gain popularity, which means that these are exactly the books that you need to read in order to discover and know this magical, mysterious and so tempting world of literature.

1. What to read from the classics? The relevance of the issue.

Usually a similar question arises among those who suddenly realized the need for self-education or decided to fill in their gaps from the school course on Russian literature.

This is where the main difficulty arises. Everyone wants to read something from the collection of world masterpieces. But is there such a thing as a literary masterpiece? Critics argue that it is impossible to unequivocally answer this question: someone likes Russian literature, and someone foreign, someone reads it to holes, and someone cannot imagine an evening without an exciting love story.

Having visited one of the major second-hand bookshops in the capital, I asked the sellers what questions visitors most often ask. As it turned out, one of the most common requests is precisely the request for advice on what to read from the classics.

It turns out that in fact there are many who want it, literature of this kind is in demand, but low awareness sometimes scares away potential customers.

First of all, let's take a look at the novels. By the way, they should be understood as a shorter form of presentation of current events than, for example, a story or a story. This type of narrative is characterized by the presence of only one storyline, and the number of characters is very limited.

I would highlight the following:

1. Augustine "Treatises"
2. D. Swift "Gulliver's Travels"
3. F. Kafka "Process"
4. M. de Montaigne "Complete Essay"
5. N. Hawthorne "Letter to Scarlet"
6. G. Melville "Moby Dick"
7. R. Descartes "Principles of Philosophy"
8. Ch. Dickens "Oliver Twist"
9. G. Flaubert "Madame Bovary"
10. D. Austin "Pride and Prejudice"

1. Aeschylus "Agamemnon"
2. Sophocles "The Myth of Oedipus"
3. Euripides "Medea"
4. Aristophanes "Birds"
5. Aristotle "Poetics"
6. W. Shakespeare "Richard III", "Hamlet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
7. Molière "Tartuffe"
8. W. Congreve "So do the world"
9. Henrik Johan Ibsen "A Doll's House"

Dreamers and romantics very often try to find answers to the questions posed in verses. What to read from the classics in the poetic genre? Many things. But I would especially highlight:

1. Homer "Iliad" and "Odyssey"
2. Horace "Odes"
3. Dante Alighieri "Hell"
4. W. Shakespeare "Sonnets"
5. D. Milton "Paradise Lost"
6. W. Wordsworth "Favorites"
7. S.T. Coleridge "Poems"

As for the works of our country, is there really nothing worthy? - Well, of course not! - If I were asked to answer the question of what to read from the Russian classics, I would, of course, recommend “Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, “Mtsyri” by M. Lermontov, poems and poems by A. Pushkin.

3. Reading masterpieces of world literature. What does this give us?

Is it worth returning to this direction, or is it better and more correct to pay more attention to modern works? It is very, very difficult to answer this question unambiguously.

Sometimes opinions are divided just the same cardinally.

For example, opponents argue that it is already completely outdated, has lost its relevance, gradually turning into a kind of utopia. In turn, philologists and students of linguistic universities defend the masterpieces of the world epic, insisting that without studying the history, culture and subtleties of the language, it is impossible to understand and comprehend our today's world.

Well, well ... Each side is right in its own way ... Probably, everyone will agree that, say, Homer's "Odyssey" is not the so-called tabloid reading for a vacation or an empty pastime. It is difficult to read a work of such a plan and you need to do it thoughtfully, slowly and without being distracted, comprehending and remembering the details. Not everyone is able to do this.

It is these books that can introduce the reader to the world of both native and foreign literature, help to better understand the traditions, culture and mentality of peoples. And they will also reveal all the charm and richness of the colors of the narrative language, thereby replenishing the vocabulary of the reader.

Undoubtedly, reading all the books mentioned in this article may take several years, but in any case, it certainly will not be time wasted.

Salman Rushdie, The Florentine Enchantress (2008)
Rushdie's tenth novel, full of historical metaphors, tackling the important question of which came first, East or West. After reading the novel, you look at any historical book as if it were childish fantasies - condescendingly and without due respect - realizing that there are no unambiguous historical truths, there are speculations and no one knows whose quotes, from which facts are subsequently formed that are bursting at the seams. George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
Compulsory reading for all revolutionaries and revolutionary-minded comrades. In his well-known dystopia, Orwell clearly demonstrates where a group of determined “freedom, equality, fraternity” can lead, and that for any slogans there is one big “but” - the desire of some to subordinate and the willingness of others to obey. Like it or not, you draw parallels with the revolution of 1917 and everything that followed it. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871)
The triumph of the absurd, the start of the fantasy genre - and the best fairy tale in the world. Amazing in its impact on the imagination, the story of the adventures of the girl Alice, first in the rabbit hole, and then on the other side of the mirror. After two fairy tales about Alice, Carroll, as soon as they were not called - both a philosopher and a prophet, the books were sorted into quotes, several cartoons and films were made from books. Ken Kesey, Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
The main novel of the beat generation on the confrontation between a free-spirited patient and a despotic head nurse in a psychiatric hospital. The book differs slightly from the famous film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson - in the book the narration is from the point of view of one of the patients, who is relegated to the background in the film, and attention is focused on the character of Nicholson. The novel is included in the list of the 100 best English-language works from 1923 to 2005 by Time magazine. Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
A wonderful story about the typical American wealth of the early twentieth century - the First World War is over, the economy is progressing, those who profited from Prohibition feel especially good, society is drowning in money and entertainment. Fitzgerald's hero ends up on Long Island, where he meets the cream of society and resists the abyss of parties, beautiful women and good booze - Gatsby is at the head of the party movement, a strong and controversial personality. The best book is that money ruins everything, and taverns and women bring you know what. Patrick Suskind, Perfumer. The Story of a Killer (1985)
Only the works of Remarque are more popular than this German novel. Criminal in its essence and insanely beautiful in its form, a story about a man who from birth was endowed with a phenomenal sense of smell - as a result, he is a slave to his gift all his life: in an effort to compose and preserve the perfect fragrance, he goes on a murder, one after another, and in ends tragically. Suskind perfectly conveys the aromas with letters, better than, say, the creators of the film adaptation of the novel did in 2006. Stanley Kubrick himself once thought about the film adaptation, but in the end he came to the conclusion that it was impossible to transfer Suskind's creation to the screen - it would ruin it . J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954)
The adaptation of Peter Jackson, a well-known Tolkienist, is so detailed and scrupulous that, it would seem, there is no need to re-read the source. Error. Being a philologist, a connoisseur of the medieval epic of Northern Europe, Tolkien created his own separate world, based on the Finnish epic Kalevala and the legends of the Arthurian cycle (the Celtic history of the British Isles). Yes, so convincingly that thousands of Tolkienists to this day gather somewhere in the forests and arrange role-playing games. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1797)
Austin began writing her first and, as it became clear later, great novel at the age of 21 - he did not impress the publishers in any way, and for more than 15 years lay, as they say, under the cloth. Austin always wrote sincerely and realistically - her novels always touch a nerve, they do not have grace and show off, ordinary feelings of ordinary people, that is, whatever one may say, a classic. Roald Dahl, Stories with an Unexpected End (1979)
A Welshman with Norwegian roots, a master of paradoxes and a bit of a genius, Dahl gave us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda, but he was best at shocking us with his near-Chekhovian stories, with the only difference being that in the finale, the reader, as a rule, , eyebrows creep up sharply, and his mouth spreads into an ironic smile. “I only write about things that take your breath away or make you laugh. The kids know I'm on their side," Dahl used to say. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Idiot (1869)
It is absolutely impossible to choose one of all Dostoevsky, so we settled on our favorite. Great work by a great man. Dostoevsky - he is always about cleanliness vs. vice. All attempts by the infantile epileptic Prince Myshkin to become an ordinary sinful person lead nowhere - more precisely, only to the complication of the disease. Women, money, rivalry with other men, power and other temptations over Myshkin are not powerful - he gradually withers by the end of the novel, but against the backdrop of total discord in the souls of all other characters, Myshkin is like the resurrected Jesus. Ian Banks, Wasp Factory (1984)
Banks' debut in literature, a gothic novel about a strange boy Frank, who, as he grows up, gets to know both the world and himself better, and is not always happy with what he learned. Some details in the book cause outright nausea and contribute to some kind of puberty reflections, but in general, this is an ideal postmodern in literature: a philosophical presentation multiplied by some kind of commercial absurdity. Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita (1966)
According to Bulgakov's widow, his last words about the Master and Margarita novel before his death were "to know... to know...". To know WHAT - remains a mystery. That talent is not given with impunity? That a person is a bug that has no power over the next second of his life? Be that as it may, the mystical melodrama crashed into the consciousness of millions - we personally knew people who, after the first few chapters, walked the streets, looking around. If Bulgakov lived in the USA, the novel would have been filmed in Hollywood during his lifetime. In the USSR, M and M became an underground outlet for the intelligentsia - however, it has remained to this day. Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift (1938)
You can, of course, read Lolita for the coming dream. You can grow up a little and swallow the Camera Obscura in a couple of evenings, you can even take a swing at the Luzhin Defense. But in order to go through the whole Gift, from beginning to end, not to get lost on these endless, two-page sentences, to distinguish autobiographical notes from fiction, to master the last, fourth chapter - a book in a book - only a person who needs a WORD in literature can, not business. Yaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Schweik (1921)
The brave soldier Schweik is somewhat similar to the Hollywood Forrest Gump - a kind of blockhead who lives poorly, and he goes to war, and manages not to die there. Intelligent satire at its best - many jokes, however, are less clear to us than to Hasek's contemporaries, but mockery of laziness, narrow-mindedness, drunkenness and the absence of any moral principles is obvious and timeless, because these are eternal "values". I. Ilf, E. Petrov, 12 chairs, The Golden Calf (1928)
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov worked as literary blacks for the famous Soviet writer Valentin Kataev: it was he who suggested that they roll out a novel for him about diamonds sewn into a chair, while he himself went to rest in Batumi. Arriving after some time and reading the first six sheets of the work, he first laughed like crazy, and then told Ilf and Petrov that he had no right to even stand next to these pages, that they were independent creative units - blessed, so to speak. What, we must say, HAPPINESS! Albert Camus, Outsider (1948)
In the list of the 100 books of the century by the French newspaper Le Monde, the Outsider is number one. Laconic Camus (in the novel, all sentences are short, and, as a rule, in the past tense) will subsequently be borrowed by many European writers of the twentieth century. Outsider - about loneliness and hopelessness, about the search for oneself and the meaning of one's existence. Existentialism of pure water, headache and depression. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938)
The protagonist of the novel is sick of everything that surrounds him, and of himself - he analyzes the meaning of certain actions, discusses with himself the purpose of certain objects - the reader watching this painstaking thankless work begins to feel sick by the middle of the book. However, Nausea, like any fruit of existentialism, forces us to face the truth: in most of our actions there is no meaning, what we create does not make us better, there is no peace in religion, there is no happiness in love, life is loneliness. Kazuo Ishiguro, Don't Let Me Go (2005)
It is difficult to attribute this work to any genre. Fiction? Dystopia? No, it's more of an alternate history. The children go to a closed school. They grow up, prepare lessons together, draw, participate in performances. They grow up knowing that they are different from those others who live outside the perimeter. Over time, they learn that their fate is to be a kind of farm for growing donor organs. And now begins a terrible adult life. When Katie or her friend experiences a recession, another, and some fourth, after which comes the end. And even if they manage to prove that they are also living people, with the same feelings and even capable of love, it will still not work. This book is scary because it describes terrible things with ease. Only one thing is not clear - why no one is fighting for their future. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (1955)
Reading this book, you understand that Pasternak received the Nobel Prize for a reason, no matter what they say. It is not the artistic level of the work that fascinates - Pasternak is rather a poet. And the plot that describes all the vicissitudes of a huge ruthless and completely incomprehensible war, in the thick of which is an ordinary person with his habits and principles. And it becomes a pity for this person, and it's a shame for him. That he could not adapt to this new life, did not find his place. He was confused and lost all those who were close to him. Aldous Huxley, Oh Brave New World (1932)
This story is about a genetically programmed consumer society. Here one is born into an idyllic world, guaranteed a life of luxury. And the other goes off the assembly line to another level and must be content with what he has. Everything is in order and on schedule. There is no evil and crime, no obligations, and marriage under 30 is considered defective. And with all this, everyone is happy with what he has and everyone is happy. With his miserable beggarly happiness. Taking into account the 30s, when Huxley created his world, the thought involuntarily creeps in: he knew something!