About My Blog
Sharing my most interesting texts.
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I created this blog in March 2023 when I was in my final year of the university, graduating from philological department (BA in Russian language and literature). I have been thinking about creating a blog for a long time by then, but could not make up my mind about the topic. Finally I understood that there was just one thing in the world which interested me so much, that I was eager to discuss it from different angles for ages. Since then I keep writing about the things which I find the most fascinating, varied, inspiring and endlessly entertaining — the issues of fiction texts.
I write about fiction texts from different points of view. I am fond of classical poetics which studies the ways fiction texts are made (their composition, artistic techniques, the laws by which they are organized, etc.). I also enjoy writing about the questions connected with texts' perception and comprehension: the way fiction texts make impact on readers, history of reading in different countries, how to approach different texts and understand them deeper, etc. Sometimes I feel that fiction literature itself seems to be less interesting for me, than the books devoted to literary analysis...
One of the topics which keeps interesting me is the question of how to distinguish great texts from ordinary ones. I have already written several posts devoted to this issue, but I am still trying to articulate what makes great text a great text and sometimes not just great, but classical.
I also enjoy writing posts which are aimed to help people understand complicated (read — any) fiction texts. In posts like this I try to explain difficult issues of the fiction world of the author I am writing about and suggest keys which may help better understand his works. This post devoted to Nabokov is one of such texts.
The text about Chekhov's plays is one more post from the series «How To Read And Understand...». This post means a lot for me, because I remember reading «The Cherry Orchard» for the first time at school and understanding completely nothing of it and I remember seeing the same play 4 years later through different eyes, being a third-year university student and having heard a lecture about Chekhov.
I am planning to write more texts of this type soon, devoting them to Brodsky, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov and other authors.
I find it absorbing to think about the reasons due to which text becomes classical. What the word «classical» actually means? And how come some texts are read even 100 years after creation and some are forgotten soon after being published? I am still trying to figure it out.
As I have already said, the issues of text perception and comprehension also interest me a lot. Why reading fiction gives us pleasure? What is so magical in the set of signs printed on a piece of paper? Is it just about the fascinating plot or maybe there is something else that makes us dive into fictional worlds and come out of there a different person?
Issues of composition and narratology seem to be especially enchanting for me. I love reading about the innovative techniques authors used in their texts and the ways these techniques affect readers' perception. Texts can deceive the reader, play with him, make him experience mixed feelings and so much more. And I find it intriguing to read and write about the ways texts can do this to us.
The next post is one of those I have been dreaming of writing when I just had an idea of creating a blog on Medium. Very often I hear from people that they did not enjoy some text, because it does not correspond to the real life, and I truly enjoy discussing the issues of correlation between fiction text and reality.
Last but not least, the post devoted to the reasons we read books. I am curious to know why people keep reading fiction, despite the fact that those are imagined stories about imagined people and this is not the kind of information without which one can not survive.
Hope you found something inspiring and interesting in this list!
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