| Text Source: |  |
| Description: | Not available |
| Table of Contents: | Not available |
Customer Review: A Romantic Rhapsody
Gogol gives us in this little book a romantic snapshot from Russian history. Essential reading for all lovers of Russian literature.
Customer Review: That violence and that mentality are still with us
"Taras Bulba" is a magnificent story which portraits the life of the Ucrainian Cossacks who lived by the river Dnieper in the XVI Century. Taras Bulba is an old and hardened warrior who feels a little rusty by the lack of action. When his two sons return from school at Kiev, he eagerly takes them to the "setch", the camping and training island of the Cossacks. There they spend their time drinking and remembering old glories. It happens that the Cossacks are going through an uneasy truce with their Turkish hegemones and the Tartar horsemen. Taras Bulba, always the warmonger, harangues the Cossacks, engineers a change in leadership and leads them to attack the Catholic Poles (with religious arguments and some information that the Poles have shut down Orthodox churches and vexated priests). The Cossacks ride West, razing down everything they meet with extraordinary brutality, and they set siege on a walled city. It is there where the drama surfaces: Andrew, Taras's younger son, finds out the woman he loves is inside the city, and through her maid he learns that they are starving. He goes into deep agony, a moral dilemma, and finds himself in an impossible situation. I won't spoil the rest for you, but believe me this is one of the cruellest and bloodiest tales you'll ever read. It brings to life religious and racial hatred in all its crudity and absurdity. It reminds you of Tolstoi's story about the old Chechenian warrior, Hadji Murad (especially now that Shamil Basayev was killed). But even for all its brutality and sadness, it is masterful.
Customer Review: Great masculine fun!
This is probably the most unabashedly masculine novel I've ever read, chock full of bloodshed, adventure, drinking, feasting, carousing, bravery, horsemanship, swordplay and all manner of derring do, with hardly a woman in the entire story. Gogol depicts the harsh and brutal brotherhood of the Russian Cossacks with a romantic splendor that is fun and easy to read.
The book also serves as a great commentary on the lengths to which religious fervor and vengence will drive man.
If you're a teacher, beware of studying this novel, as it reads like a primer on prejudice, anti-semitism and even misogyny, and surely many parents will want to challenge your choice.
But that doesn't have to stop average readers from enjoying a great, old-fashioned adventure story.
Customer Review: The literature of hate
It's a mystery to me why an experienced translator of Tolstoy chose Taras Bulba as an important project.He must have felt some regret at the novel's end,for here in precise and unvarnished English is Gogol's deep-seated hatred of all persons who do not fit into a dark and constricted view of Russian nationalism.In Hemingway,Jews are depicted as stubborn and unglamorous.In Gogol,they are vermin.Likewise,women are dismissed with a brusque wave (Gogol had no personal relationship with women in his lifetime).There is no character development in Taras Bulba.Indeed,Gogol has created such a narrow world-view that even his Cossack heroes are trapped in stereotypes of a brutal ideal.
It is known that Stalin was widely-read and he personally supervised the construction of a memorial to the author. The image of the Russian dictator reading Taras Bulba in the Kremlin should chill the thoughtful.
Customer Review: A great version of Bulba
Peter Constantine's translation of Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba is the best I've read (although being the first translation of Taras Bulba I've read I may be a little biased) in that all previous translations seem to be lacking in verve and energy.
Constantine's version of Taras Bulba seems to differ also from other translations in that Constantine translates Taras Bulba's sons as sporting 'chub', a scalplock on an otherwise shaven head. All other translations (at least the ones I've read) translate 'chub' as sidelocks or "... long locks of hair on the temples...", much like the jewish peyots. Considering that 'chub' in Ukrainian means 'crest' it seems Constantine has got it right.
Anyway, I digress...
I recommend this version of Gogol's Taras Bulba to anyone interested in those land-pirates, the Cossacks, Ukrainian history and storytelling, and to anyone who doesn't believe religion can be made an excuse for thuggery and war.
Product Description
The First New Translation in Forty Years
Set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol’s epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba’s two sons.
As Robert Kaplan writes in his Introduction, “[Taras Bulba] has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bulba to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia.” And the critic John Cournos has noted, “A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic’s observation about Gogol: ‘Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.’ But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol’s work his ‘free Cossack soul’ trying to break through the shell of sordid today like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that his works, true though they are to our life, are at once a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us. And they have all the joy and sadness of the Ukrainian songs he loved so much.”
Book Categories:
Fiction
Short stories
Books / Subjects
Books / Refinements / Binding (binding) / Paperback
Books / Refinements / Format (feature_browse-bin) / Printed Books
|
Pick of the Day
Lists of Interest
Modern Library 100 Best Novels:
In 1998, Modern Library picked the top 100 Novels of the century. This list contains all of the bo
...
Webmaster's Favourites:
These are my selections, humbly presented as books that I particularly enjoyed.
Other ways of browsing
|
