📆 On 14 April 1745, Denis Fonvizin, 'the father of #Russian comedy', the master of satire and 'northern Moliere' was born
✍️ During his lifetime, this classic master of Catherine the Great's era managed to greatly contribute to the development of Russian culture, literature and diplomacy.
🔹 Fonvizin graduated from the Moscow Imperial University. At civil service he entered in 1769 he became the secretary of Nikita Panin, head of Russia’s College of Foreign Affairs and one of his most trusted persons.
✏️ Fonvizin started literary activity back in his student years, when he translated fables and satirical pieces from German.
Today he is mostly known for comedy plays “The Brigadier-General” (1769) and “The Minor” (1782).
🔹Fonvizin is believed to have been told after the premiere of “The Minor” in St.Petersburg: “You should die, Denis, as you won’t write anything better”. The comedy is to date successfully staged in Russian theaters.
#RussianCulture #Fonvizin #Literature #DiscoverRussia
✍️ During his lifetime, this classic master of Catherine the Great's era managed to greatly contribute to the development of Russian culture, literature and diplomacy.
🔹 Fonvizin graduated from the Moscow Imperial University. At civil service he entered in 1769 he became the secretary of Nikita Panin, head of Russia’s College of Foreign Affairs and one of his most trusted persons.
✏️ Fonvizin started literary activity back in his student years, when he translated fables and satirical pieces from German.
Today he is mostly known for comedy plays “The Brigadier-General” (1769) and “The Minor” (1782).
🔹Fonvizin is believed to have been told after the premiere of “The Minor” in St.Petersburg: “You should die, Denis, as you won’t write anything better”. The comedy is to date successfully staged in Russian theaters.
#RussianCulture #Fonvizin #Literature #DiscoverRussia
✍️Today marks the 195th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian writer and thinker Leo Tolstoy
Born on 9 September 1828, Leo Tolstoy was called a genius of Russian literature even during his lifetime.
The epic "War and Peace" and the novel "Anna Karenina" and "Resurrection" brought world fame to the writer. His ideas influenced the development of European humanism and served as the basis for a unique spiritual and moral movement - Tolstoyism.
Tolstoy had a long and remarkable life, leaving behind a significant literary legacy, which has not lost its relevance after almost two centuries.
This is proved even by the fact that he was the most published writer in the USSR, and the total number of copies of his works published exceeded 430 million.
#tolstoy #russia #russian #literature #russianliterature
Born on 9 September 1828, Leo Tolstoy was called a genius of Russian literature even during his lifetime.
The epic "War and Peace" and the novel "Anna Karenina" and "Resurrection" brought world fame to the writer. His ideas influenced the development of European humanism and served as the basis for a unique spiritual and moral movement - Tolstoyism.
Tolstoy had a long and remarkable life, leaving behind a significant literary legacy, which has not lost its relevance after almost two centuries.
This is proved even by the fact that he was the most published writer in the USSR, and the total number of copies of his works published exceeded 430 million.
#tolstoy #russia #russian #literature #russianliterature
📚Anti-apartheid literature in the Soviet Union
Anti-apartheid writer Peter Abrahams (1919–2017) was well-known in the Soviet Union. His novel “The Path of Thunder” first was translated into Russian in 1949 and was reprinted many times until the late 1980s with hundreds of thousands of copies.
In the Soviet Union this South African work was used by the Soviet Ministry of Education to learn English. Even a textbook for English learners was based on this novel.
📒 Abrahams was inspired by Afro-American realist fiction. Es’kia Mphahlele noted that for black writers in South Africa “realism burst into full blossom” in the 1940s. Abrahams’ novels continued Mphahlele “were to provide an inspiration for later fiction – that of the next decade.” In South Africa Abrahams became a role model for black journalists and fiction writers of the 1950s.
Richard Rive, a prominent South African author and academic, believed that Abrahams’s realism also comes from the social realist traditions of the prose produced in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century. Rive pointed out that “Abrahams was intent on showing social conflict in the broad, political sense of the word.”
In the Soviet Union, where South African fiction often had bigger print runs that in South Africa, “The Path of Thunder” became the first widely known African novel. Through Abrahams’s work readers in the Soviet Union were first introduced to anti-apartheid fiction, long before they read novels by Alex La Guma, Andre Brink or Nadine Gordimer.
Moreover, “The Path of Thunder: was adapted for ballet by Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev in 1957. The ballet was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. In 1956, in Armenia, Stepan Kevorkov and Erasm Karamyan directed a drama based on Abrahams’s novel, which was seen by millions of people across the Soviet Union.
The materials provided by the Center for Southern Africa Studies of the Institute (https://www.inafran.ru/en/).
#pagesofcommonhistory #russia #sovietunion #russiasouthafrica #ussr #humanrightsday #africa #literature
Anti-apartheid writer Peter Abrahams (1919–2017) was well-known in the Soviet Union. His novel “The Path of Thunder” first was translated into Russian in 1949 and was reprinted many times until the late 1980s with hundreds of thousands of copies.
In the Soviet Union this South African work was used by the Soviet Ministry of Education to learn English. Even a textbook for English learners was based on this novel.
📒 Abrahams was inspired by Afro-American realist fiction. Es’kia Mphahlele noted that for black writers in South Africa “realism burst into full blossom” in the 1940s. Abrahams’ novels continued Mphahlele “were to provide an inspiration for later fiction – that of the next decade.” In South Africa Abrahams became a role model for black journalists and fiction writers of the 1950s.
Richard Rive, a prominent South African author and academic, believed that Abrahams’s realism also comes from the social realist traditions of the prose produced in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century. Rive pointed out that “Abrahams was intent on showing social conflict in the broad, political sense of the word.”
In the Soviet Union, where South African fiction often had bigger print runs that in South Africa, “The Path of Thunder” became the first widely known African novel. Through Abrahams’s work readers in the Soviet Union were first introduced to anti-apartheid fiction, long before they read novels by Alex La Guma, Andre Brink or Nadine Gordimer.
Moreover, “The Path of Thunder: was adapted for ballet by Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev in 1957. The ballet was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. In 1956, in Armenia, Stepan Kevorkov and Erasm Karamyan directed a drama based on Abrahams’s novel, which was seen by millions of people across the Soviet Union.
The materials provided by the Center for Southern Africa Studies of the Institute (https://www.inafran.ru/en/).
#pagesofcommonhistory #russia #sovietunion #russiasouthafrica #ussr #humanrightsday #africa #literature