To paraphrase James Joyce, this is a book about how love loves to love Russian love, or how prominent Anglo-American cultural figures in the first half of the 20th century got swept away by human and literary manifestations of “Russianness.”

Galya Diment, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington, USA

Ira Nadel takes readers on a dizzying journey to the mysterious, intoxicating world of love & literature, passion & politics. Embodied in nine paradoxical stories of thinkers, writers, diplomats, fermented with the live yeast of Russian’s catastrophic history, the book plunges you into the thunderstorm atmosphere of a century of upheaval. A fantastic celebration of Modernism’s centennial!

Olga Panova, Lead Research Fellow, Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Russia haunted the British cultural imagination throughout the 20th century – whether as a romantic source of literary and political inspiration or as a warning of creeping totalitarianism. In this new book, Ira Nadel, charts the story of that influence through the work of some of the key figures in British literature across the century, including Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Jane Harrison, Virginia Woolf, and H.G. Wells. Framed by the story of two romantic encounters, between Walter Benjamin and the actress Asja Lacis in Moscow in 1926 and between Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova in 1945, Love and Russian Literature casts a vivid new light on the ways in which responses to Russia shaped the history of British modernism.
Les mer
Introduction: ‘Magnanimous Despair’Prelude: Walter Benjamin in LoveCh. 1 Somerset Maugham: ‘Love and Russian Literature’Ch. 2 H. Bruce Lockhart: Love and RevolutionCh. 3 Jane Harrison: In Love with LanguageCh. 4 William Gerhardie: Flattery is Not EnoughInterlude: Edmund Wilson: In Love with Lenin/ EdmundWilson Russian LoveCh. 5 H.G. Wells: TrianglesCh. 6 Virginia Woolf: The Sound of Russian LovePostscript: Isaiah Berlin: From the Finland StationIndex
Les mer
To paraphrase James Joyce, this is a book about how love loves to love Russian love, or how prominent Anglo-American cultural figures in the first half of the 20th century got swept away by human and literary manifestations of “Russianness.”
Les mer
Ira B. Nadel chronicles the history of British modernism's engagement with Russian culture throughout the 20th century, from Virginia Woolf to Tom Stoppard.
Explores the ways in which Russian art and culture haunted British literature throughout the 20th century

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781350115019
Publisert
2023-11-30
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
U, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
264

Forfatter

Biographical note

Ira Nadel is UBC Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a prolific critic and biographer whose previous publications include David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre (Methuen Drama, 2008) and Modernism's Second Act (2013)