Just another roadside picnic

In an effort to kickstart this blog again, I recently received a copy of Roadside Picnic, which inspired Tarkovsky's Stalker. I saw the movie years ago, and quite frankly couldn't make heads or tails of it, so am hoping that the book will help me put together some of the pieces before doing another viewing. It was interesting to read that I wasn't the only one interested in the classic Soviet sci-fi novel. WGN bought the screen rights to it and is planning a television series based on the novel. A video game has also been designed around the theme.

Neither of the Strugatsky Brothers are with us anymore, but for decades they were kind of like the Coen Brothers of Soviet science fiction, turning out a great number of novels in the genre dating back to 1958. They were mostly collaborative efforts, but there were a few solo novels as well, with Boris penning the last work in 2003.

Soviet sci-fi is what propels Victor Pelevin, one of my favorite writers, although he fuses it with contemporary thoughts and observations as was the case in Generation $π$ , or Babylon as it has been retitled in English.

There's quite a bit of Soviet and Russian science fiction translated into English. Here's a sampling. Yevgeny Zamyatin is the most well known writer on the list. We was the basis for another Tarkovsky movie, Solaris, which was also adapted into an American film.

It was more the existential aspect than the science fiction element that attracted Tarkovsky to these novels. In Stalker, you get more a post-Apocalyptic feeling in which everything has been reduced to ruins and persons are left to interpret what it all means. I gather the Strugatsky Brothers were more upfront in their novel, so very curious to read what it meant in their minds.

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Ward No. 6

Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892. It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921. In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town. He introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster. It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin. Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.

Light and Dark

I'm still trying to sort out the ending. The story had to end tragically but was surprised that Rogozhin actually sought forgiveness in Myshkin after what he had done to Nastya, although I think that Dostoevsky intended the two to be read as one, along similar lines as The Double . He kept Rogozhin a shadowy figure throughout the novel, ever lurking in the dark of the Prince's soul. Try as he might, Prince Myshkin could not alter events and thus the fantasy world he had lived in upon returning to Russia crumbled before his eyes, leaving him at a total loss as how to reconcile himself with it. Once again, Dostoevsky plumbs great depths of the human soul. This is a psychological drama told in theatrical terms, perfectly suited for the stage. Characters appear and disappear as if moving from the shadows of the stage. I can see the "green bench" as the central stage piece. In the final part, one gets the sense that Lebedev is orchestrating event...

The Morning of Our Motherland

I was watching a History channel special on Socialist Realism art of the Soviet Union and this was one of the grand canvases that is now stuffed away in the Tretyakov State Gallery . The painter was Fyodor Shurpin and he had a wonderful eye for detail, right down to the secret service black car on the road to Stalin's right. To the left, one sees a row of combines turning over the field of golden wheat, which became symbolic of Stalin's Soviet Union. Утро нашей Родины is from 1949, with Stalin radiating a post-war confidence. It is also known as Dawn of our Fatherland and other titles. Shurpin was one of the better artists to carry over from the pre-war years. The narrator pointed out how socialist realist art changed dramatically as a result of the war, becoming much more static and propagandist in appearance. He pointed to two stops along the Moscow subway as an example of this divide. Here, Shurpin essentially transposes Stalin fo...

Chekhov's Gun

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