The Village of Stepanchikovo

Dosty, ma che scherzi mi fai? Una pochade?
Ma, il meccanismo è perfetto, i tempi da gran teatro e la satira senza scampo, per quelli che ne sono colpiti. Si ride, ma è un intero mondo che viene messo alla berlina. Rivoluzionario (in senso proprio!)

A very flat novel. Even though it’s clear which specific characters the author was portraying, and those characters are described very well and quite consistently— interesting to some extent — they become so repetitive and painfully simple (even if they are unusual in many ways) that it’s simply not engaging to read. I believe that traits pushed to such an extreme level of absurdity stop being interesting and lose their depth.

Risking banishment from Mother Rus' literary revival tent, I had problems with this novel, which was principally a farce. It forms a pairing with Uncle's Dream and I find both wanting when considering The Eternal Husband.

Considering its comedic trappings Dostoevsky is a bit catty towards Gogol here. The pantomime villain is a Rasputin of letters and all of his epigrams are iced with Gogol. I'm tempted to explore, was it a slight against Fyodor? Was it Gogol's orientation which made him a target or was it his holy roller novocaine?

A college boy comes home to the sticks to find all has went to hell. A charlatan has everyone's ear and he's a Dr. Phil with a social program including teaching the serfs French. The real patriarch of the show more family is a bit of a buffoon. I thought what ensues is a touch whimsical. I understand that every narrative might not bear the benefit of a nihilist who ponders the morality of political terrorism. Momentarily I'm finding the search for benefit in this novel a challenge. show less

قصة ياجور العم الغني الذي يقرر ان يرسل لسيرجي ابن اخيه يقنعه بزواجه من فتاة تعمل معلمة اولاده
ليصل سيرجي ويحكي لنا الحكايات من داخل قرية ستيبانتشيكوفو لنستمع لحكايات شخصيات ضيوف عمه في بيته والكثير من الاحداث المجنونة

فوما فوميتش وما ادراكم من هو فوما فوميتش هو النصاب الاعظم في الحياة
يتحكم في الجميع ويستغل مشاعرهم لتحقيق منصبه الكبير وسط هذا الجمع
شخصية فوما شخصية مركبة معقدة ومن كتر تعقيداتها في لحظات show more قليلة كنت اشعر ببداية تفاعل معه وتعاطف ولكن فجأة يتحول لمقت رهيب ورغبة في قتله اكيد show less

The Village of Stepanchikovo is less well-known than other works of Dostoevsky's mature period. It was written near the end of his Siberian exile yet, despite that, was basically a farcical comedy. The abundant humor and small size combines to make it an entertaining work that is worthy as either an introduction to the author or a light entertainment for readers who have already encountered the masterful novels of his maturity. If it is read with the expectation that it will simply amuse and entertain you it will succeed. At least it did for this reader.

This is the work with which Dostoevsky returned to literature, after his four years in prison. It is also one of the strangest and in many ways the least characteristic of his works. All traces of his terrible experiences in the gulag are absent; all traces of his conversion to a highly individualised version of Christianity are absent; all traces of the loneliness and frustration of the Siberian exile in which he wrote it are absent. Instead, he presents us with a Gogolian comedy of manners, a rural retreat, an intricately wrought invention, a summer farce. Or at least this is how it seems. But there are nonetheless, carefully buried indications of what Dostoevesky had been through, and where he was going.

The narrator is summoned to show more visit his uncle in a village in the country, where he has come under the sway of a former servant, Foma Fomich Opiskin, a nasty, hypocritical manipulator of other people’s good natures. There follows a convoluted plot spanning forty eight hours, involving a host of minor characters, wild chases in carriages, a Pickwickian elopement, moonlight trysts and a climactic thunderstorm. It’s very Gogolian, both in its setting and its plot, and full of a kind of manic comic energy, with some very funny scenes...

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/02/village-of-stepanchikovo-dostoevsky.html show less

Foma Fomitch is quite the memorable character. Unlikable in the extreme yet, astonishingly, regarding with almost god-like esteem by nearly all the characters in the book.