- Define and explain Tolstoy and Realism in your own words
- Use key terms such as роман (román) — novel accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Tolstoy and Realism: tackle War and Peace and the moral questions of the Russian realist novel.
Tackle War and Peace and the moral questions of the Russian realist novel.
Key ideas
Reading film as text
Sergei Eisenstein's montage — монтаж (montázh) — cuts images together to create ideas neither shot contains alone; see the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin. Andrei Tarkovsky does the opposite: long, slow takes that make time itself visible. Both directors ask the same question as the novelists: how does art show truth?
The Onegin stanza
Eugene Onegin is written in a unique 14-line stanza rhyming ABABCCDD EFFEGG, which Pushkin uses for everything from landscape to irony to direct addresses to the reader. The stanza's conversational ease lets Pushkin slip between narrator and character — a technique to name in essays as authorial intrusion.
Key term — роман (román) — novel: The long prose form. The great Russian романы — Война и мир (Voyná i mir — War and Peace), Преступление и наказание (Prestupléniye i nakazániye — Crime and Punishment) — are as much philosophy as story.
Name two great Russian романы and their authors.
Война и мир (Voyná i mir — War and Peace) by Tolstoy (Толстой (Tolstóy)); Преступление и наказание (Prestupléniye i nakazániye — Crime and Punishment) by Dostoevsky (Достоевский (Dostoyévskiy)).
Answer: Война и мир (Voyná i mir — War and Peace) by Tolstoy (Толстой (Tolstóy)); Преступление и наказание (Prestupléniye i nakazániye — Crime and Punishment) by Dostoevsky (Достоевский (Dostoyévskiy)).
- Treating film as illustration of the book Eisenstein's montage (montázh) makes its own arguments — analyse the editing itself rather than using the film as a picture-book of the novel.
- Calling Onegin a romantic hero Onegin is the original лишний человек (líshniy chelovék — superfluous man): bored, clever and useless. Admiring him uncritically misses Pushkin's irony.
Practice
ABABCCDD EFFEGG.
Лишний человек (líshniy chelovék) — 'the superfluous man': a clever, bored aristocrat unable to act meaningfully.
Подтекст (podtékst) — subtext: the real meaning carried by pauses, trivial remarks and omissions.
Every detail introduced must matter — if a gun hangs on the wall early on, it must fire later; analyse objects, not just dialogue.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "роман (román) — novel"?
Contrast Eisenstein and Tarkovsky in one sentence each.
- Tolstoy and Realism: tackle War and Peace and the moral questions of the Russian realist novel.
- Reading film as text: Sergei Eisenstein's montage — монтаж (montázh) — cuts images together to create ideas neither shot contains alone; see the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin.
- стихотворение (stikhotvoréniye) — poem: Pushkin's natural habitat.
- Watch out for: treating film as illustration of the book