Anton Chekhov's The lady with the little dog

When organising our meeting schedules, we like to mix it up every now and then. It keeps us fresh and on the ball! And so it was that in July, we did something a little different - a classic short story recommended by a member because it had been referenced in a Quarterly Essay! The short story was Anton Chekhov's classic, "The lady with the little dog", which, as we discovered in our various editions, goes by various names, such as "The lady with the lap dog", "The lady with the dog", "The lady with the pet dog". The Quarterly Essay that inspired our member was Issue 72, published earlier this year, and written by Sebastian Smee. Its title is Net loss: The inner life in the digital age. This was not obligatory reading for the meeting, and there had been an initial mix-up about which work had inspired the Chekhov recommendation, but some did manage to read (or listen to) all or some of it.

Many of us read the Chekhov's story in different editions - including different Penguin editions, and a Pushkin one - which comprised different collections of stories, not to mention different translations.

First impressions

As always we started with some first impressions:

• Enjoyed Chekhov's writing, particularly his understated style.
• Found the link with Smee's article concerning the idea of the "self" and how we define the "self" interesting.
• Read several of the stories, and found many to be funny, about behaving badly; liked the story "Grief"
• Agreed with the emailed comment by one of the absent members regarding Chekhov's use of irony.
• Enjoyed the short concise vignettes of Russian life contained in the stories.
• Not generally a big fan of short stories, but did enjoy these.
• Enjoyed the Conversations podcast in which Richard Fidler interviewed David Gillespie on "How the iPhone rewrote the teenage brain" (which, in the above-mentioned mix-up, had been initially noted as the work referencing Chekhov!)
• Read several short stories, and found them good to read in her post-broken limb "drugged state"! Loved how Chekhov gets us immediately into the stories, establishing his characters with just a few words. Enjoyed the humour in "A misfortune", for example.
• Doesn't really like short stories, but did read this, and watched some of the Russian adaptation of the story via You Tube.
• Was interested in the idea of the "inner" and "outer" life, as expressed by the character Gurov, and taken up by Smee in his essay.

More discussion

The story concerns an adulterous affair between a 40-year-old man, Gurov, and a younger woman, Anna, who meet while holidaying, without their respective spouses, in Yalta. Given the story was recommended because it had been referenced in an essay about social media and the Internet, one member pointed out how much harder it would have been to have such an affair in the pre-digital age, particularly to continue it after both had returned to their home cities. It would be much easier now, said our member, to organise assignations via social media than it would have been then when letters, for example, could fall into the wrong hands!

We wondered about the significance of the dog, given it plays no significant part in the story. One member suggested it symbolised Gurov becoming her lap dog? That seemed a reasonable idea.

The story is about love, and boredom. Gurov and Anna seek to feel alive, both being dissatisfied with their spouses. Gurov's marriage was an arranged one to someone who sees herself as "a thinking woman" but who "makes love insincerely", while Anna sees her husband as "no more than a lackey" or "flunky" (depending on your translation!). She wants "to live". Gurov initially sees his seduction of and relationship with Anna as a bit of a fling, not expecting to care when she returns home to St Petersburg, but after he returns to Moscow, he realises that he's been touched by her. He finds that his outer life is constraining him, that:

Those pointless business affairs and perpetual conversations – always on the same theme – were commandeering the best part of his time, his best strength, so that in the end there remained only a limited, humdrum life, just trivial nonsense.

At this point, we listened to the opening minutes of the audio version of Smee's essay, which led us to talk about this "inner life", from several angles.

Smee's article is about the incursions of social media into our lives. He starts by suggesting that these apps only know "superficial stuff" about him, that they can't know his "inner life", which leads him to wonder what, in fact, this inner life is - and he turns to a Chekhov quote from his notebooks:

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth - such, for instance, as his work in the bank, his discussions at the club... his presence with his wife at anniversary festivities - all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. (? translator)

One member asked whether we thought we had "inner lives" to which the majority of us said, yes. We all have inner lives, we thought, and further, we also felt that we can never really understand another person's inner life.

We expect to learn about inner lives in literature. We talked about true cores and sham exteriors. One member liked Smee's discussion that the self exists in relation to others:

... domestic life is like, isn’t it? Inner lives rubbing up against one another, for better or for worse.

And so, of course, we talked about social media apps, and how much they really know about who we are from the information we make available to them (that they gather from us by various, sometimes nefarious, means.) We talked about Smee's question regarding whether we are becoming habituated to providing information about, or creating performances of, ourselves, on social media, and whether this will change, fundamentally, who we are, who our "selves" are.  This led also to some discussion of Gillespie's ideas on how social media is impacting the teenage brain.  One shared some research done in which some participants did not access Facebook for some time, while the others did. The outcome was that those NOT on Facebook were happier because they didn't know what they were missing.

We returned to an issue mentioned during First Impressions, which was whether we like short stories?A couple said they don't particularly because they feel that just when they've got into a story, it's over, although one made some exceptions (like Alice Munro's short stories). Others of us liked them for various reasons: for their ability to encapsulate an idea or feeling succinctly and often with real punch; for the fact that they are easy to slot into busy lives with minimal reading time and yet provide that readerly lift that we all like!

A couple of members would have liked to have talked more about the Smee article, and we thought that, in fact, we could consider scheduling a Quarterly Essay sometime, because they can offer a lot of meat for discussion.

The evening started with a delicious vegan meal cooked and served by member Janet, who is soon to leave us for that state south of us. We'll miss her engaged discussions, but it's never bad to have friends scattered over the continent! Thanks Janet, anyhow, for a lovely treat. It was special.

Present: 7 members (with winter escapees and colds, taking their respective toll)

Sayaka Murata's Convenience store woman

For our May meeting we ventured into rare territory for us - Japanese literature.

The novel, Convenience store woman by Sayaka Murata, is about 36-year-old Keiko Furukura who isn't "normal". Her family worries she will never fit in. However, at 18 years old, she obtains work at a newly opened convenience store where she finds a comfortable role in undertaking routine daily tasks, but 18 years later, this is not seen as a valid job for a woman of Keiko's now mature age. Then she meets another convenience store worker, the also, but differently, nonconformist Shiraha, and she thinks she can solve both their problems!

As is our practice, we started with our ...

First impressions

• Eerie, strange, off-beat and yet flat, took a while to get into the different voice.
• Started off thinking it was funny, then quirky, then weird and then sad. It offers a reflection of Japanese culture - patriarchal, the pressure on women. It was almost satirical.
• Quirky, sad. An odd book, didn't know what to make of it.
• A good thing is that it was short. Didn't really didn't like it, though it had fabulous details about how shops like that work.
• Not been to Japan, and didn't like it at first, but the confines of the convenience store was fascinating.
• A flat read, sparse (a bit like Sally Rooney's Normal people), quirky, well-written.
• About a non-conforming autistic spectrum person. Has been to Japan three times, and while it has a reputation for being conformist, has met varied, interesting people.
• Interesting read, but wondered whether she was autistic; thought her preference for living in a safe environment was a comment on Japanese society.
• Loved it, likes this sort of dispassionate tone, which feels a little typical of Japanese literature, reminiscent of works by Murakami, Kirino, Yoshimoto and even Ishiguro. Loved the juggling of the real and the fantastic as though it's all "normal". 
• Liked this curious little book, but was it a parody about Japanese society? However it had a wider appeal too (from absent member).
• Loved it, one of the best books we've read this year (from another absent member).

We then explored in more detail some of the issues raised in first impressions.

We talked quite a bit about the character, and whether we empathised with her or not. We talked about rules, and the role rules play in human relationships. We all confront this - being in a new situation and trying to work out the rules by which we need to act. Our convenience store woman, Keiko, had trouble understanding life's rules, but the convenience store's rules were clear for her and enabled her to be "a cog in society".

When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.

Keiko's behaviour is strange to most people - sometimes even verging on the psychopathic. When a young child she hits another child over the head with a shovel in the school playground, thinking she was doing the right thing to stop a fight; she muses to herself, looking at a sharp kitchen knife, that it would be easy to stop her nephew crying. Many of us wondered whether she was on the autism spectrum. However, while there is a sense that her family wants to "cure" her, there are no references to a particular diagnosis so most of us felt that we should not treat this as critical to our understanding of the book.

The main theme concerns society's pressure for people to conform. This is particularly Japanese, we understand, but we recognised that many cultures, including our own, aren't good at accepting difference. So, when Keiko and ex-convenience store worker, Shiraha, decide to live together - in a convenient, not romantic, relationship - their families and acquaintances are happy, and start assuming their "story" (the story, that is, of the traditional marriage-children-job course of life.)  People/society are happy that they are (seem to be) conforming to the usual story. Keiko is both amused and mystified by this.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s convenient having him here. Everyone’s really happy for me. They’re all congratulating me. They’ve all convinced themselves my new situation is great, and they’ve stopped poking their nose into my business. So he’s useful.

However, it is then expected that she will no longer work at the convenience store, and her life starts to disintegrate when she loses her norm!

Shiraha is not an appealing character. Unlike Keiko he has no desire to work - preferring to be "kept" by Keiko. He takes advantage of her need to appear "normal" (even though it satisfies his need for the same) and he excuses his laziness by criticising society and its unfair gender expectations on men (even since the Stone Age). 

“Naturally, your job in a convenience store isn’t enough to support me. With you working there and me jobless, I’m the one they’ll criticize. Society hasn’t dragged itself out of the Stone Age yet, and they’ll always blame the man. But if you could just get a proper job, Furukura, they won’t victimize me anymore and it’ll be good for you, too, so we’d be killing two birds with one stone.”

One member discussed a review which suggested that the book is, in a way, a love story between a convenience store and a woman. Indeed, there are many references in the novel to her "bodily" reaction to the store - "I automatically read the customer’s minutest movements and gaze, and my body acts reflexively in response" She suggested that, with our Rocky Horror Picture Show hat on, we can comprehend her feeling comfortable in the store. After all, in modern society, we are seeing all sorts of things, particularly technology, replacing human relationships". While some members thought the story was a sad one, most of us thought it had a happy ending, because Keiko had worked out the right life for her.

We also discussed the idea of ambition. Keiko and Shiraha feel the pressure to have ambition, to progress in their jobs and their lives, but as one of our members who emailed in her comments wrote "There are lots of us who are happy in our lives and don’t have large ambitions." Amen to that!

The book is also about the need to have empathy for people who are different, the need to recognise that people who don't fit the norm are "human" too.

We discussed the unusual style, with one member wondering whether the strange stiltedness was the writing itself or the quality of the translation. Most of us felt it was the writing itself, that Murata intended the strange, flat, stilted style. It is also very funny in places. We all enjoyed the humour.

Overall, it was a book that may have mystified some of us to start with but it stimulated a fascinating, lively discussion about the book and its author, about Japan itself, and about some universal truths as well. Can't ask more than that.

Present: 9 members (plus input from two other members)

Austerlitz by W G Sebald

Six of us hardy souls gathered on a cold night before a fire to talk about Austerlitz by the German English author W G Sebald.

This book is a fictional biography of a war refugee called Jacques Austerlitz. Rather surprisingly it includes black and white documentary photographs. It tells the story of a child, born in Prague, who escapes the Nazis as a 4 ½ year old and grows up in a Welsh village with an unhappy religious couple. He becomes an art historian with a passion for architecture. However he is also passionate about his origins and only finds out his real name as a young man of 18. He researches his mother and father, and his mother’s tragic end and while doing so meets the narrator – supposedly W G Sebald. He is also reunited with his nanny in Prague and this helps him to discover more about his parents.

The story is told over many years with a monologue occasionally assisted by the narrator.  Austerlitz suffers a breakdown from the stress of learning about the effect of the Holocaust on his mother. The story concludes with a visit to a cemetery and the narrator reading a book given to him by Austerlitz of a man looking down into a diamond mine in South Africa:

‘terrifying to see such emptiness… to realize that there is transition , only this dividing line, with ordinary life on one side and its unimaginable opposite on the other’. (p414)  

Our initial reactions to the novel include:

• Stunned by it
• Loved the fact that he wove ‘things’
• Impressed by it
• Struggled with it
• Found the long sentences difficult/structure
• Very gloomy and sad
• Intellectual, complex
• Talks about time, water and memories – mentioned in a Guardian review
• Loved it – reminded her of Sebald's The Emigrants, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (because of the theme of "beating back the past")

We talked about the author W G Sebald. He was born in 1944 in Germany and died from a brain tumor in 2001 in Britain. The introduction by James Wood was helpful in advancing our knowledge of the effects of WW2 on people living in Central Europe and the transportation of children from there to England. It helps the book make sense.

Sebald’s style was discussed in some depth. There are so many different aspects in this novel. The long sentences, no chapters and no paragraphs were hard for some of us to cope with although the chronology of the story helped. Sebald was very clever in the way he included peripheral stories without giving the full story eg of his childhood friend Gerald. We are just supplied with ‘crumbs’.

We were astonished at the way Sebald discusses the effects of the Holocaust without actually going into details.  It made us think we can understand how some people reacted. One member reminded us that in An Unnecessary Woman the main character loved this novel because it dealt with the Holocaust but by only mentioning it indirectly. (We chose to read Austerlitz in fact because we were intrigued by its mentions in An Unnecessary Woman.) 

We wondered about our own journey in finding out about the Holocaust. Many of us were first exposed to it by reading Anne Frank’s autobiography, which has lingered in our heads since we first read it – many years ago. However our generation grew up with the effects of the Second World War. We grew up with war stories.

We also discussed the language, remembering that it was written in German and translated, although the author spoke English. One member noted that the unnecessary woman (mentioned above), who translated into Arabic, said that the elongating of the sentences with little punctuation was ideal for Arabic. Another point was the use of French and German in the novel. These sentences are fine for readers who have the language but difficult for others of us. One member has knowledge of Czech so she enjoyed the few words in that language. She also explained that the Czechs have a keen sense of humour which she felt was revealed in the novel.

We noticed that Austerlitz’s love of architecture was evident through the novel in descriptions eg the Bibliotheque Nationale – as ‘light faded more like moss’. Architecture ‘affects the human spirit with plays of light on materials and shapes’ as seen in his descriptions of the new Library. He also made us laugh about the well-known foibles of French bureaucracy.

The gloominess of the novel and intensity was a feature we all felt. The black and white tiny photographs compel the reader to accept the sad and grim conclusion on the character and life of Austerlitz. Austerlitz’s brief romantic liaisons are also very sad and give little reprieve to this man. Austerlitz and his life are gloomy and very grey.  In comparison Prague is bright and light because Austerlitz is given clues which can help him solve some of the questions he is battling.

There is an intense sense of place – wherever he happened to be. Austerlitz’s trauma even as a mature man is overshadowed by his displacement from his mother and being sent to Wales. The narrator often met Austerlitz in gloomy places too to hear more of the story so that didn’t help, such as cafes in railway stations.

Bleakness in Wales for the young boy living with two very religious and unstable people was disturbing and only lightened by hearing about his friendship with the boy at school and his acceptance into Gerald’s family or the weekly visit to the church to sing hymns.

One member told us about an extraordinary woman she recently heard about called Dame ‘Steve’ Stephanie Shirley who was born in Germany and ended up in Wales as a child having escaped from the Holocaust. She too travelled on the Kindertransport as a very young child. She was brilliant at maths but had to attend a boy’s school to study it. She learnt about computers at the beginning of the computer age and changed her name so she could apply for relevant jobs. She went on to say that she thought it was all worthwhile because ‘my life was worth saving’.

The narrator was an excellent way to tell the story we felt and we were bemused by the fact that the narrator had internalized the story so that he could remind Austerlitz of the facts at times.

Towards the end of the novel we learn of Austerlitz’s mental state from his years of research about his parents and WW2  (page 322 Penguin 2011 edition).

I had discovered the sources of my distress… looking back over the last few years ... as that child suddenly cast out of his familiar surroundings : reason was powerless against the rejection and annihilation which I had always suppressed…. 

It is terribly sad and must have been a common reaction from those displaced people.

Time is a common thread and the thought that inanimate objects can tell a story as they know things. 

‘The dead are outside time, the dying and all the sick at home … for a certain degree of personal misfortune is enough to cut us off from the past and the future… A clock has always struck me as something ridiculous, a thoroughly mendacious object, perhaps because I have resisted the power of time’ …( pp143-4)  

(This is very telling of Austerlitz’s character – trying to fathom one of life’s great puzzles).

Some members thought Napoleon’s battle scenes were memorable.

Music is also a theme we discussed in this book, from Austerlitz singing hymns in the Welsh chapel with his adopted parents, to later in life when viewing a circus performance near the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. (See pp 382-4)

‘seemed to hear a long forgotten Welsh hymn … a waltz, or the slow sound of a funeral march ... nor could I have said at the time whether my heart was contracting in pain or expanding with happiness for the first time in my life. ( pp 382-3).

An excellent review of the novel is presented in this review written in 2001.

  

PRESENT: 6 members

The great swindle by Pierre Lemaitre

This novel, The great swindle, by an acclaimed French writer won us over completely. It is a war story showing us a microcosm of human nature with real drama and violence and exploitation of people. It also is visceral and smelly at times. There are eccentric characters who are slightly larger than life and reminded us of characters from other novels and plays such as in works by Camus and Stendahl. Even similarity to the play Les Miserables was mentioned. We think that Lemaitre plays with you as a reader too for instance there is a reference to Austen’s Pride and prejudice in Chapter 2 when he is talking about Pradelle:

Anyone will tell you that a man in possession of such good looks and such a name must be in want of a fortune. (6% ).

Celeste suggested it and we all complimented her for it. It was written in French and the translation by Frank Wynne was good. It is entitled Au revoir la-haut (Goodbye until we meet in heaven). Lemaitre has won 3 awards with this novel including the 2013 Prix Goncourt.  He is a former literature teacher and now writes fulltime. This novel in film version is to be released in 2017.

This story is complex. Albert Maillard and Edouard Pericourt are very young French soldiers in the last few days of WW1. Albert is rescued by Edouard after being buried alive and then Albert befriends Edouard and looks after him when they are demobbed.  Edouard has been very badly disfigured in a final act of war by their mutual enemy, Lieutenant Pradelle. Edouard refuses to undergo surgery to alleviate some of his injuries. So he suffers terribly and Albert suffers too in trying to help him.

Albert discovers that Lieutenant Pradelle has been involved in both of their lives basically trying to kill each of them. D’Aulnay-Pradelle is an aristocrat who after the war defrauds French soldiers and their families by ‘managing’ the cemeteries and not respecting the dead soldiers. He finally ends up being caught and loses everything. He is a cold-blooded killer, which is evident in the first few pages of the novel. Edouard and Albert concoct a massive fraud too but Albert is successful in running away with the money. Edouard is accidentally killed by his father.  

We talked about the factual events which are related in this story such as the exhumations, harassment  of ex-soldiers and loss of identity of corpses. One of the many shocking scenes involves exhumations which happened in France after WW1. See this site for further information. Pradelle’s fraud was so disrespectful of the soldiers and so typical of his character that we were not surprised about the mess he got himself involved in.

We also talked about the main characters, Albert, Edouard and Edouard’s father who is the one character who grows through this story. Albert is the classic anti-hero and somewhat reckless after being initially timid. He is the typical bourgeoisie and good Samaritan type, and extremely loyal to his friend. Edouard  is an artist and disdains the rich and the bourgeoisie and has the original idea of the swindle carried out by them. The senior Pericourt began his life like Pradelle, in being money hungry but changes slowly through his career especially driven by the supposed loss of his son. We also explored some of the more minor characters such as Albert’s mother  (who we never meet but hear her words through Albert’s musings) and Madeleine Pericourt, Edouard’s sister.  She is a strong character who falls in love with Pradelle when she is grieving for her brother. However she realises early on that he is a fraud in many ways. She is plain but aware of her status as the daughter of very wealthy man who she alone can manage. She loves dumping Pradelle and sees him destroyed. Pauline Albert’s girlfriend is also a great character, just getting on with life and trying to get the most out of it. And she doesn’t take long to work out that life with Albert and money is her way out of domestic service.

There is a lot of sarcasm and irony and some humour in this story – for instance, in the tensions between Pradelle and his father-in-law. The same man was also Edouard’s father. M.Pericourt is told by Albert that Edouard was killed. He had not been a good father but realises this slowly through the novel and just as he is about to meet his son (unbeknowing to him) he runs over him (literally). Black comedy and farce all in one moment. Edouard’s costumes after he discovers masks brings a certain humour as does the angel outfit he wears leaving the hotel at the end of the novel.

We didn’t quite understand the ending and fully expected a different scenario. Maybe Lemaitre’s crime detective novels have taught him to leave a conclusion till the very last pages.

We really liked the characters of Albert and Edouard and sympathized with them despite their behaviour. They are very vivid descriptions and encouraged the reader to continue reading to work out the plot. Will the two swindles be successful?  We were amazed by Albert’s loyalty to Edouard despite the trials he had to suffer, especially when he had to buy drugs for Edouard and the carrying out of the swindle in the bank. Edouard was so disfigured and it is hard to imagine his face. We were all aghast at the thought of Albert putting his fist into Edouard’s missing face. There is also a lot of talk about soldiers with only one arm. Just after the war, France was a society who had forgotten to look after its living soldiers but wants to honour only the dead ones. It shows how people can so easily exploit each other given the opportunity.

It is a farce but a well meaning one and cleverly written. We thought the title was excellent for the English version as it sums up beautifully the crux of the story.

My crime, your punishment?

Dostoevsky

Crime and punishment

Our first reading group for 2015, and I had persuaded our group to read Crime and Punishment over summer, and to discuss! A select group met, with a number having read it as young adults at University, and others reading for the first time, with one keen member re-reading it and another deciding to read The Idiot instead. Those who had read it in their youth were quite affected by it, with the re reader declaring it did not quite have the same emotional impact for her as a later reader.

It was written in 1866, the year after Alice in Wonderland was written, and the same year as Dickens' last book, Our Mutual Friend. It was written in 12 parts in a magazine. 

I reported that I related Raskolnikov to my experience with psychosis and schizophrenia, with many similar symptoms displayed, including: Impulsiveness, delusion, paranoia, disorganisation, passive aggressive, self centred, unable to manage money. We agreed though that mental illness was not Dostoevsky's intention in writing the book, but the  book is described as a psychological drama, as it describes the action quite often from inside the head of the main character, describing his mood changes, uncertainties and irrational behaviour. 

We discussed the significance of the Superman idea, where there are those in the world to whom normal mores do not apply, and who can exert their superiority by their power over others, including the ultimate power, to murder others of less value. This was Raskolnikov's avowed reason for murdering the old pawnbroker, and he compared himself with Napoleon and others. However is Dostoevsky supporting this idea? Perhaps as the consequences of Raskolnikov's action unfolds, we see the flaws in this ideology. He was punished ultimately after he finally confessed, and then finally came to repent in the epilogue, under the influence of the saintly Sonia. Another reader suggested that his punishment was also in evidence throughout the book, as he was racked with anxiety, and fear of being uncovered, while still maintaining he was quite justified in the murder.

We compared Dostoevsky with Dickens, seeing them both as writing on a large scale, with a complex intertwining of characters, focussing on the lower classes, and revealing a lot about the social ills of the time. Dostoevsky wrote at a time when the impact of the emancipation of the serfs, flooding into the cities, but often living in great poverty was being felt. The impact of alcoholism was also clearly revealed through the Marmeladov family, where the father had been sacked twice from a well paid position, leaving his family in poverty, and forcing his daughter to become a prostitute. There was some debate about whether Dostoevsky was writing about the social times, and trying to raise awareness of some of the inequities and suffering of those who fall into poverty. He had a strong focus on ideas, and discussion about morals and religious ideas. 

We talked about Dostoevsky's portrayal of women, and his use of the saintly whore (Sonia), and the sacrificing sister and mother, whose role seems to be to take care of Raskolnikov as the son in the family.

Did we empathise with Raskolnikov? Most of us not totally. We are inside his head, and we see his mood changes, and his frailty, and his generosity. However in the end the murder served to alienate us as readers, and some of us were not convinced by his speedy redemption at the end. One member compared him with Macbeth, as he unravels following the murder.

The use of religious metaphors and the significance of religion in the book was shown as important, and in the end the hero is redeemed by the love of a good woman, and finally repents. However, the sense of nihilism, the chaos in society, the superman ideology indicate Dostoevsky was very affected by ideologies running at the time, including Darwinism and capitalism, which were challenging the dominance of religion. Dostoevsky was a Russian Orthodox, and in one of his later books: The Brothers Karamazov, he explores a range of religious questions, and seems in favour of Courts run by the Church rather than the state.

We looked at some of the challenges of the language, often in keeping track of the names, and their derivative forms. We also compared translations of the books we had, some reading the traditional translation by Constance Garnett, and others quite modern translations, which may have given the text more flow in reading, but in the sample we looked at did not greatly vary many of the words used. 

So most members were pleased to have read this significant work from world literature, even though we could spend a lifetime unravelling the many aspects of this great novel. Thanks Minerva members for indulging me, as I now continue my reading of The Brothers Karamazov! And there's much I have left out, so happy to take other input!

The last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani

Minervans found Diego Marani's The last of the Vostyachs both enjoyable, unpredictable, very funny and a linguistic puzzle.

It was published ten years ago in Italian and only recently translated into English. How much do we like reading translations? One member raised the question of trusting translators and the possibility of feeling disconnected with the author. Most of us liked this novel and we were not bothered about its origins.

 Is it satirical? Is it a myth? Why did an Italian write a story about Finns and their language? We discovered that Marani is obsessed by language and has even written his own called Europanto. His "primary concern is how international understanding rests with a shared language". (Luke May in Readings.com.au review, 30/4/13)

This story's background is the longterm antipathy between the Finns and the Russians and all that that connotes. This antagonism is clearly highlighted in the characters of the Finnish scholar Professor Aurtova and the Russian scholar Olga.  She says to him:

your language has never known the dizzying heights of universality. No one studies it and all you can do is repeat it among yourselves because it tells of a tiny country no-one knows ... 

The professor tries to counter this with statements such as  'long live Finland long live ignorance'.

Marani surprises the reader by making the Finn the bad guy (actually, truly evil) hero' and the Russian woman being of outstanding character, foresight and exemplary behaviour (for most of the novel).

The 'Vostyach' is a 'strange' fellow whose language develops with time and we were interested that 'things that had not been named for years emerged sluggishly from their long sleep, realizing they still existed'.  The happy ending for Ivan (the Vostyach) was a little incomprehensible for some readers in our group.

We endeavoured to talk about the 'big picture' too -- how does language define culture and nationality? In order to have a nation do we need to have a common language? Big questions but few answers !