Today marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of the great French writer Marcel Proust. On this day, literary scholar Armen Zakaryan (YouTube channel «Armen and Fyodor») is publishing, with the Parisian publishing house Éditions Tourgueneff, the book «Conversations About Marcel Proust’s Novel ‘In Search of Lost Time.’» The closest analogue to this work is Vladimir Nabokov’s «Lectures on Foreign Literature»: they are even more interesting to read than the books Nabokov was telling American students about. Zakharyan’s guide to the universe of Proust also grew out of a series of his video lectures. They were prepared for publication by producer Roma Liberov, for whom they served as «great consolation in those dark years into which, like cold murky water, we all stepped». We spoke with Armen Zakharyan about what Proustian prose can console us with today.

#ArmenZakharyan #VladimirNabokov #Dreyfusaffair #interview #bookclub #LeoTolstoy #literature #MarecoeProust #FirstWorldWar #Renaissance #MiddleAges #France #existentialcrisis #Emigration

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The brief period of the rise of Ukrainian literature and art in the 1920s-30s is called the «Executed Renaissance.» The intellectual and creative atmosphere of those years was so enticing that emigrants fleeing the Civil War began moving to Ukraine. But the golden age ended as abruptly as it began. «Most.Media» recalls the tragic biographies of the participants in this movement.

#20thcentury #Holodomor #CivilWar #dictatorship #historicalmemory #History #literature #poetry #repressions #Sandarmokh #freedom #theUSSR #Stalinism #Ukraine #Kharkov #Emigration #language

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We, Soviet children, were incredibly lucky. We went through patriotic education with books by Vasily Bykov and Boris Vasilyev, Samuil Marshak and Lev Kvitko. And our early youth was not overshadowed by works of Vladimir Medinsky, Oleg Roy, and unknown authors included in the «List of Patriotic Works Created by Contemporary Writers and Recommended for Extracurricular Reading» published last week by the Ministry of Education.

#shaman #AgniaBarto #VladimirMedinsky #VladimirPutin #children #dictatorship #ideology #literature #MinistryofEducation #OlegGazmanov #OlegRoy #aftertheUSSR #propaganda #Russia #SergeiMikhalkov #Stalinism #school

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We have long been inside his endless Telluria, living within his self-fulfilling prophecy, tumbling inside the Machine of Violence he described. And it cannot be said that we were not warned; Russian literature has never before had such a clear prediction over the past decades leading up to the catastrophe.

#VladimirSorokin #war #dictatorship #Dostoevsky #catastrophe #literature #aftertheUSSR #postmodernism #Russia #thick #totalitarianism

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Boris Akunin has been sentenced in absentia in Russia to 14 years, Dmitry Bykov declared wanted: two of the most important Russian writers have been subjected to exemplary criminal repressions. This is a milestone and another signal, as they say, for the entire intelligentsia. Although what signals are there, everything is already clear. Rather, this is a milestone for the repressive apparatus itself, which is worth noting.

#akulin #bulls #dictatorship #dissidents #intelligentsia #kgb #movie #literature #aftertheUSSR #Putin #repressions #series #Sovietpower

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Berlin journalist Marta Hillers did not seek fame or popularity. She certainly was not trying, as one might say today, to «hype» her suffering. She simply needed to speak out, to share with others what she herself experienced and what hundreds of thousands of other German women of that time endured. To feel, if not compassion, then at least understanding. Alas. During her lifetime, she received neither from her country.

#story #personalexperience #literature #war

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