Posted by guillermo maynez
on 18/10/2010, 11:56:06, in reply to "Re: Petersburg"
189.189.17.237
Thanks for the pictures, Steven. I'm simply dying to go there, hopefully in 2012. While reading the book, I've been searching for images on the internet and I'm astonished at the quality, size and beauty of the buildings, bridges, and monuments. You are absolutely right when you say it's different form how we usually imagine European cities, especialy in times past. I am frsutrated when I remember the mental images I had of the city at the time I read "Crime and Punishment". I always had in mind a closed, almost Medieval, network of filthy narrow streets, and dark fortress-like buildings where misery and utter poverty prevailed. Not that Biely's book sends the mesage of a uniformly prosperous town (hence the Revolution), but it is certainly a much more open space. I wil ask you for recommendations if and when my visit is closer.
--Previous Message--
: I really like books so firmly set in a place. I love
: to be able to read such books before travelling to
: those places.
:
: I visited St. Petersburg two years ago, and had read
: the novel a few months earlier. I'm not sure that
: reading the novel prepared me for the visit quite as
: much as the visit prepared me for the second reading
: of the novel. Petersburg is so unlike our image of
: Russian cities, or of European cities in general, that
: you have to see it to appreciate it. The huge
: buildings, oversize monuments and vast open spaces
: make it look like a city built for giants. It is also
: a collection of architecture and artifacts from many
: places and periods, ignoring only those of Russia
: itself.
:
: I love the end of chapter 1. Steven, is this stuff
: missing from the Cournos translation?
:
: Only part of it is missing--the paragraph that reads
: (in the Elsworth translation): "The author,
: having once displayed these pictures of illusions,
: ought quickly to remove them and break off the thread
: of the narration with this very sentence; but... the
: author will not behave like this: he has sufficient
: right not to do so."
:
: This is consistent with what I had read about Bely's
: revisions in 1922, removing all first person
: expressions and other references to the author
: himself.
:
: If the links work, you should see two of the pictures
: I took in Petersburg. The first is a view of the
: palaces lining the Neva, with St. Isaacs looming in
: the background as described several times in the
: novel. The second is, of course, the bronze horseman
: himself. Of course, Bely pictures these scenes in an
: often dark and dreary smoke-filled autumn landscape. I
: was there in June when the sky was bright enough at
: midnight to read a newspaper.
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
Message Thread
« Back to index