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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3335 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 2024

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What are the great Duels in Russian Literature?

I'm working my way through The Brothers Karamazov for the second time, and I got to the life of the Elder Zosima, and his pivotal duel. And it got me thinking of reread of War and Peace earlier and how the duel there was a clear parallel to Evgeny Onegin, subverting the outcomes.

So you have Onegin sort of accidentally tragically killing his best friend. (Pushkin of course died in a duel). You have Pierre grievously wounding Dolohov for a perfectly valid reason, then instantly regretting it. You have Zosima letting his opponent shoot then, then throwing away his own gun and begging forgiveness. All playing with each other's themes.

Then by Anna Karenina Vronsky and Karenin never duel although Karenin considers it, to what extent was that a matter of technology? Firearms were better by that setting, death more likely and more related to skill. And in Notes from Underground the Underground Man fantasizes about Duels that never occur because he's not cool enough to be noticed, a kind of school shooter psychology. The stakes of these literary teases are created by the predecessors.

Then of course somewhere in there is Lermontov originating Russian Roulette in A Hero of our Times, betting on whether a pistol will go off.

So literati and Russophiles of the motte, which other examples are there?

Ada or Ador a family chronicle by Nabokov has one duel; also I think two attempts or near misses to duel . In the duel that does take place there is more discussion of seconds.

There's a duel in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. And there's a novella called Bretteur by him as well.

There's one more duel penned by Pushkin, in The Captain's Daughter.

And Chekhov's The Duel. And Kuprin's The Duel, of course.

I'll go with Pushkin's The Shot. It's a remarkably tightly plotted duel story despite taking place over many years (in more than one sense).

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