brief russian update
2/12/04 14:36![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schmericaBoth the professors are off to Boston this week for a Slavic studies conference. This means I have no classes until Wednesday. Which means a very long weekend to write my Onegin film critique, study for my final, write my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ds_seekritsanta story, finish my canon reviewing for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide, and clean my room.
The lecture this morning was on Turgenev -- we just read Fathers and Sons (which I enjoyed rather a lot). I don't want you to think I'm horribly shallow, but there is, at least, a shallow bit of my brain that never turns off. This is why, while writing my intelligent notes on the lecture, part of me was still stuck going "Wow, Turgenev has a huge mancrush on Belinsky!" and "Turgenev/Pauline Viardot/Viardot's husband = OT3!"
And then, of course, reading over my notes on Pat talking about "Hamlet and Don Quixote" -- well. My notes look something like this, jotted down in my tiny tiny handwriting while she talked:
"Hamlet and Don Quixote" (1860)
--2 very different approaches to life, personalities, appearing early 1600s
--Don Quixote type: faith something beyond humanity. Believes in ideal -- willing sacrifice everything. Enthusiastic, courageous, sometimes madman. Serene, pure type.
--Hamlet type: constantly preoccupied with situation not duty. Self-conscious, introspective, doubts everything, doubts self, questions everything. Paralyzed into inaction or wrong action? Less easy to love.
--Don Quixotes push humanity forward. Russians are Hamlets. Neither is full story.
Which only makes me giggle because I reread those over a few times and went "hmm, I really can't think of very many Don Quixote types off the top of my head at all" and then went "Oh. Yes. Hi, there, obsession." Really, it must be a sign of good fannish health that it's been almost a year in due South and I still feel a need to connect everything in the world to it.
ds_seekritsanta story, finish my canon reviewing for yuletide, and clean my room.The lecture this morning was on Turgenev -- we just read Fathers and Sons (which I enjoyed rather a lot). I don't want you to think I'm horribly shallow, but there is, at least, a shallow bit of my brain that never turns off. This is why, while writing my intelligent notes on the lecture, part of me was still stuck going "Wow, Turgenev has a huge mancrush on Belinsky!" and "Turgenev/Pauline Viardot/Viardot's husband = OT3!"
And then, of course, reading over my notes on Pat talking about "Hamlet and Don Quixote" -- well. My notes look something like this, jotted down in my tiny tiny handwriting while she talked:
"Hamlet and Don Quixote" (1860)
--2 very different approaches to life, personalities, appearing early 1600s
--Don Quixote type: faith something beyond humanity. Believes in ideal -- willing sacrifice everything. Enthusiastic, courageous, sometimes madman. Serene, pure type.
--Hamlet type: constantly preoccupied with situation not duty. Self-conscious, introspective, doubts everything, doubts self, questions everything. Paralyzed into inaction or wrong action? Less easy to love.
--Don Quixotes push humanity forward. Russians are Hamlets. Neither is full story.
Which only makes me giggle because I reread those over a few times and went "hmm, I really can't think of very many Don Quixote types off the top of my head at all" and then went "Oh. Yes. Hi, there, obsession." Really, it must be a sign of good fannish health that it's been almost a year in due South and I still feel a need to connect everything in the world to it.
