The Slavic Literature Pod

Show Notes: Check out our illustrator Caryoln's Instagram , YouTube , and portfolio ! This week, Matt and Cameron talk though some updates for the podcast and reflect on the journey that's taken them here. The music used in this episode was “bella ciao,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube . Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠  Socials: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Tw...

Show Notes : Kristina's Website , The Orchard This week, Matt and Cameron do something a little unusual - for once, they’re intentionally talking around a work rather than examining it in detail. That’s because - in a Tipsy Tolstoy first - we’re being joined by the author of The Orchard , Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry. We had a wide-ranging conversation that covers her journey as an author, the i...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron wrap up part 3 of Eugene Onegin with the help of the Gothic (in research focus) Dr. Katherine Bowers. Not only will we be wrapping up Parts 7 and 8 of this novel in verse, Dr. Bowers will also be covering Tatyana’s dream from our previous episode. The topics will be wide-ranging and the education, constant. Be sure to tune in and have as much fun as we did...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron dive into one of the greatest duels in all of Russian literature* in Part 2 of Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. We’ll be examining the particulars of dueling etiquette of the era as well as Pushkin’s relationship to his contemporary poets - it’s always exciting in the 19th Century, babey. Grab your finest winter-time wine and tune in! * According to Matt,...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron kick off a mini-series to get the mood up with Chapters 1 through 3 of Eugene Onegin ! In it, we’ll be following…well, some of Eugene’s story as the narrator wanders back and forth between explaining our protagonist’s life and the narrator’s own lost loves (both in terms of people and passions). Get ready for your soirees tonight, use all 30 brushes in your...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by the knowledgeable Dr. Kate Holland to cover the epilogue of Crime and Punishment as well as discuss some of the overarching themes of the book as a whole. After the dark, dark time that is Part 6, we finally get to kick back and spend some time with Raskolnikov in Siberia and his ups, his downs (mostly his downs) as he and the people around hi...

Show Notes : Content warning for this Episode: Child abuse, pedophilia, sexual assault, and suicide. This week, Matt and Cameron are happily joined once again by Dr. Kaitlin Shirley to cover the final part of Crime and Punishment (minus the epilogue!). And wow is her expertise needed to cover this whopper of a section. Among a bucket of unpleasantry, we’ll be wrapping up Svidrigailov’s story and s...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron slow things down a bit and attend a funeral in part 5 of Crime and Punishment. This time we’ll start by recommending that you grab your cheapest wine or liquor because we are going to be spending some significant time in Luzhin’s POV in this part. Pay attention to the things that he, ironically, doesn’t. Perhaps it would be crass to tell you to enjoy this p...

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron spend some time with unpleasant people in Part 4 of Crime and Punishment as Svidrigailov appears and everything is worse now. Awkward family dinners, debating your fiance into loving you, and telling your only friend to drown herself ahoy! Many things get weird in this part. Sit down, find the light of God as Dostoevsky would want, and turn in! Quick note: t...

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Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron continue with Part 2 of our Crime and Punishment series, now with a very heavy emphasis on punishment. Grab some black tea and a beer, then join us as we discuss Raskolnikov’s psychosomatic torture and his attemps to confess all while Razumikhin continues to be the best friend alive. And you know it wouldn’t be Dostoevsky without a death or two in the mix!...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron are kicking off our Crime and Punishment series in a bloody fashion! They’ll be speaking with Dr. Katherine Bowers - an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and vice-president of the North American Dostoevsky Society- about Crime and Punishment’s relationship to narrative, to contemporary crime reporting, and oh so much more! Dostoevsky...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by Dr. Ian Garner to cover “The Polykhaevs” by Pavel Nilin, a work that Dr. Garner had originally translated for his upcoming book, Stalingrad Lives . The Polykhaevs follows the story of an elderly couple who are seeing their grandson for the first time in the better part of a decade after he was evacuated from Stalingrad during World War 2 - alt...

Show Notes : Cameron goes on a tangent about Spain between 4:32 and 9:02 so…feel free to skip that part if you want, it has no bearing on the episode. This week, Matt and Cameron jump back into Russia’s past with an exploration of one of Tolstoy’s later works, Father Sergius. In this piece, Tolstoy explores his own version of hagiography - or the telling of a Saint’s Life - with all his usual flai...

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron have a few announcements for you…and then a whole lot of reflecting. Stay tuned for our Father Sergius episode, which will be released when we return on January 7th! Thank you all for listening! And being here for a whole year. Sometimes we can’t believe we’ve made it this far; on the other hand, blowing past our expectations has made it easier to imagine th...

Show Notes : If you’d rather not hear references to sexual assault, skip 19:35 - 20:06; mild mention between 45:15 - 45: 20. This week, Matt and Cameron continue building the factory in the second half of Fyodor Gladkov’s Cement . Following the assault upon the factory, dark clouds loom on the Soviet horizon as committees interfere, the effects of the NEP become clearer, and a party purge approach...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron kick off a two-part series on Fyodor Gladkov’s Cement , one of the most famous examples of literary Socialist Realism. (Or...is it?) Stay tuned to hear one man’s brave journey to...make a factory work again amidst famine and devastation. No - wait, that’s not a good sell — stay tuned to hear Matt and Cameron argue that Cement is much more interesting that a...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron explore the effects of addiction with Bulgakov’s “Morphine,” wherein a doctor begins to treat a minor malady with an ultimately fatal cure. Grab your drink of choice - though laudanum would be thematically appropriate, it is not advised - and tune in to hear us talk about the Russian medical profession in the twenties! I promise - it’s a lot more interestin...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron take up positions as Sergeants of the Guard in Aleksandr Puskin’s historical novella, The Captain’s Daughter . We’ll be talking about the real history of the Pugachev Uprising, the place of violence in Pushkin’s era, and - naturally - about imagined communities. So grab your grapeshot, find your local pretender to the throne, and tune in! Major themes: Is i...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron take up their surgical tools to dissect Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog , in which a dog is turned into a man, a creation is turned into a proletarian, and a doctor is - maybe - turned into a murderer. Written in 1925, the novella reflects Bulgakov’s reactions to the changing world around him in ways general and specific - we’ll tease apart what we find i...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron celebrate life, death, and cultural identity abroad in The Funeral Party by Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The plot of this book is deceptively simple: in a sweltering New York apartment, a group of Russian emigres take care of a quickly dying artist who is the nucleus of their strange little community; in another way, the book is about everything other than that. A r...

Show Notes: This week, Matt and Cameron talk about movie night and the novel Laurus! This is a preview of the Bonus Episode that will be coming out on Patreon in a few days (as you can tell...it was one of our drunker ones). Major themes: Rusalka, Audible Sponsorships, and Laurus. The music used in this episode was “bella ciao,” by Toasted Tomatoes. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by Dr. Kaitlin Shirley as they discuss “The Meek One,” sometimes alternately translated as “A Gentle Creature.” In usual Dostoevskian fashion, “The Meek One” explores themes of exploration (or perhaps better called: thoughtful misunderstanding) of one’s self, the place of suffering, and questions of domination. Introspection, suffering, and attem...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron cover Part 8 of Anna Karenina, the FINAL section of this incredibly dense novel. Although you may expect this story to end with Anna’s death—a belief we would understand given both every movie adaption and the fact that this novel is named after her—life goes on for the other characters. So join us as we cover the final journey of the most important charact...

Show Notes : This week, Matt and Cameron reach the penultimate Part 7 of Anna Karenina full of exciting things like Levin awkwardly visiting people he doesn’t know at Kitty’s behest, Levin getting into gambling, and Levin not liking this new-fangled Wagnerian art. Am I missing something? Hm. It can’t be all that important…can it? Apologies for Cameron’s audio in this episode—he was recording away...