2006-07-23 16:49:06 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
Ok.some are not long. but why most of them are very very long?
2006-07-24 09:53:56 · update #1
Thank you for answering! Some answers are really cool. :)
2006-07-25 17:04:27 · update #2
These novels are filled with so much detail that they end up being longer.
2006-07-31 12:30:42 · answer #1 · answered by bookgirl 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Long before television and radio and public photographs (from newspapers, etc.) few people had any real knowledge of life outside of their own small world, their own communities.
When writers wrote back then (and it wasn't just Russian writers) they felt compelled to describe in full detail everything that was happening, the settings, the cultures around the settings, etc.
Writers today (except perhaps Dan Brown) don't have to worry or bother with telling the reader everything. Most writers assume the average reader already has some basic knowledge.
Our world has gotten so much smaller because of the telecommunications age.
2006-07-24 01:42:18 · answer #2 · answered by Doc Watson 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I have always had the theory that they wrote so voluminously because they had such bad weather. The Russians are also a passionate people, capable of talking arguable points at great length. Their history is so irregular that they have a lot to talk about, fortunately. The real art in reading Russian novels, in my opinion, is to allow the words to become part of you so that you can really live inside the characters. Some of them, of course, translate better than others. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, for example, doesn't seem to translate all that well, but Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev and a few others do. I have always felt that Boris Pasternak must write very beautifully, but my guess is that it is lost in the translation. The great ones seem to have that hauntingly human quality that leaves nothing of the soul unexamined.
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2006-07-24 00:05:27 · answer #3 · answered by Bentley 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
My daughter teaches a class in Russian literature. She has passed lots of books on to me over the years. They were not all long.
There are a few in particular I remember as not so long, comparatively speaking-
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov
Brothers Karamazov by Dostoefsky
There are also tons of well known Russian short stories and plays- The Cherry Orchard, The Nose, etc.
2006-07-24 00:47:21 · answer #4 · answered by C R 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Some are and some are not. For example "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzenitzin.
2006-07-24 00:46:01 · answer #5 · answered by brainstorm 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
That's a good question. All the ones i've read have been very long. Maybe they have a lot to say.
2006-07-23 23:52:30 · answer #6 · answered by Grog The Fish 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
There used to be a lot of trees in Russia.
2006-07-24 00:08:07 · answer #7 · answered by scary visionary 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Cause there ain't much to do in those long, cold winters.
Much Love!!
2006-07-24 00:22:48 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
they need time to kill off all their characters
2006-07-24 01:02:39 · answer #9 · answered by constanze_mylove 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋