Three Reasons I love Russian Literature

It’s the tall, dark, alluring stranger in the corner of the library

My foray into the snowy mountains of Russian Literature began in junior year when my high school offered a new course called “Get to Know Fyodor Dostoevsky.” It was taught by one of my favorite teachers, my good friends had signed up, and I felt that reading Crime and Punishment would enhance my literary pedigree. That moment forever ruined my social life.

Four years later, I received a birthday gift jokingly wrapped in pictures of Vladimir Putin and get giddy whenever I encounter something remotely relating to Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky. It’s amazing where high school social pressure leads. There are, of course, practical benefits from studying Russian literature, which I might write about later, but there are even more reasons to simply enjoy the journey.

1# Look at the World Through Non-Western Eyes

Because literature and culture are inextricably connected, reading is like traveling. It’s a way to look at the world through a different perspective. American curriculum tends to focus on Western classics like Austen, Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain, and so on. Russia shares the West’s Christian heritage, but the flavor is different.

Western literature also tends to simplify our search for meaning into binaries — rational versus beautiful, Enlightenment versus Romantic, individual versus collective. Characters in Russian novels don’t simplify the relationship between human reason, emotion, and Truth, but embrace and explore its complexity. As Tolstoy’s Levin realizes at his crisis of faith,

“Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not” (Anna Karenina, 906).

2# Russia is Mysterious

Russia exists in a perpetual identity crisis. Is Russia in Asia or Europe? Is it culturally East or West? It’s been a key issue in Russian politics for centuries. In Dostoevsky’s time, the “Slavophiles” thought that Russia should promote its own national identity. They were in constant debate with the “Westernizers,” who thought that Russia should modernize and be more like Europe. The tension runs through the literature — explicitly as characters discuss politics, and implicitly as themes of the individual (western emphasis) versus the community (eastern emphasis) play out in the stories.

Russian literature searches to express what the “soul of Russia” really is. Is there a “Russian dream” like the “American dream”? I’m drawn to people, places, and ideas that are difficult to categorize and the mystery of Russia is beautiful and alluring. I think Dmitri Karamazov’s ramblings on his train-wreck of a life sums it up,

“… here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together” (The Brothers Karamazov, 108).

(Plus, I feel better about my own identity crises knowing I’m in the company of a giant nation-state. Maybe we can share a box of tissues and cry in the bathroom together).

3# Wander Through the Human Soul

In one of his descriptions Soviet prison life, Solzhenitsyn wrote,

“But the prisoners had left marks on the warped surface of the table, strange, wavy, or angular graffiti, which in a mysterious way preserved the subconscious twistings of the soul” (The First Circle, 259).

Russian literature takes us through those “subconscious twistings.” Anna Karenina is torn between her love for her son and her passion for her lover. Ivan Karamazov “returns his ticket” to heaven but can’t live without God. Alexander Solzhenitsyn realizes that spiritual freedom comes from physical suffering. The prostitute evangelizes a murderer. The rationalist goes insane. The sensualist becomes a saint. There’s a sense of extremes — of unimaginable suffering and spiritual darkness coexisting with ecstatic beauty and passion. If you’re interested in psychology, religion, aesthetics, or existentialism, Russian literature is full of endless opportunities for thought.

BONUS: Jordan Peterson frequently quotes Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn — “The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.” Pope John Paul II also does — “Beauty will save the world.” And you can’t go wrong in their company. ;)